I’m now unsure of adding to this thread but I have thinking about (too much…)
This is a really helpful example in understanding where you are coming from. I never thought about the undo request itself affecting the “game information” in some way - i.e. knowing that a move was a mistake makes you see the game differently - regardless of whether or not it is accepted.
I have thought through a lot of implications and tangents and my open other threads for some of them but here I will try and stay on topic. Should there be an option to disable undo requests?
This got quite long
I can see that in most cases undo requests are basically not needed - in blitz it’s really part of the game if you misclick and in correspondence there is not much excuse since there is zero time pressure and even in live, there are already setting to minimise misclicking. In terms of undos for other reasons - brain farts, I suppose is maybe a reason to ask for an undo but really things like “I just realised it was a bad move after I played it” shouldn’t really qualify for undos anyway. And I think that is the gist I got from the Lichess discussion. So it is east to conclude that there is no need to undos.
However, it is also clear there there is a level of community acceptance of the “right” to ask and that this is balanced by a right to refuse. Which also seems very reasonable.
Now, the option to limit the “right to ask” feels quite challenging given the existing policy - if it is really seen as something like a “right” then giving individuals the power to curtail the “rights” of others needs to be approached very carefully. This is what led me to suggest that I would be happy for this option to exist if there were clear warnings for the opponent (an “unusual settings” thing for custom games and such). And this has a lot of UI consequences beyond the immediate further “overloading” of settings (which I think are too many currently). Would there be an extra automatch setting? an extra line in the game information? and in tournaments, would there be undo request allowed or disabled touneys and how would this be indicated? Would the undo button in such games be replaced with some kind of indicator that undos are not allowed and would the opponent have the chance to cancel the game?
Not all these things are needed but I think it all needs careful thought.
On the other hand, maybe we could move away from a culture that accepts requesting undos as a “right” and have a general presumption against them. I honestly would be fine if the undos were not permitted for any ranked games (I think they are needed for unranked when they are teaching games - like having analysis on to share vars).
I think there is a difference between Go and Chess here though - it does seem that it’s easier to misclick with single click to move settings in go. I note that Lichess forum talks a lot about “mouseslip” rather than misclick. And that maybe it’s easier to distinguish between a misclick and the realisation of a blunder in chess - in Go the stone could be placed at any intersection on misclick whereas in chess there is talk about asking for takeback and then moving a different piece as a sign that it wasn’t an honest misclick. Therefore, there seems to be more of a case of giving the benefit of the doubt about a misclick in Go.
This is getting too long but the other element that was already discussed was that there are solutions in terms of zen mode and switching off the ? on the stone. Or calling custom games “no undos” and such. I can see that these are not perfect solutions but might help.
Anyway, I need to finish so my conclusion is that I think adding this option seems simple but has various implications. I would like to see it done as part of a bigger overhaul - for example by having more categories of games where some could be subject to this option and others not - e.g. serious games, casual games, relaxed games and teaching games as four types where serious games have no undos, no analysis, se etc, causal are like current ranked - with options to enable or disable all the things, relaxed enable all the things are are like current unranked and teaching enables further tools (like even AI analysis and review features)
Slightly OT question about annuling
After the sandbagging discussion I understood the general OGS policy to be that any game which is not reasonably accurate in indicating the relative strengths of players should be annulled. Therefore, is it right that a game where an undo for a game losing misclick is refused should be annulled (at least where the misclicker was winning or seemed likely to win)?
My opponent left, I waited 29 min - #20 by Vsotvep