I think I’m confused.
The original argument was that if players are at 25kyu and there’s a reasonable skill difference between them, we shouldn’t differentiate between them in rank because that would have connotations about whether one player should be able to beat another player with x amount of stones. Is that right?
I don’t think x kyu really translates to stronger player can beat weaker player with x stones anyway in the ogs ranks. This would probably be true if all ranked ogs games were forced to be properly handicapped or use reverse komi in some way. From what I understand they aren’t, and there’s a number of users that don’t like playing handicap games anyway.
So you could probably argue that a strong player at any rank might find it tough against a weaker player with handicaps if neither are used to handicap game; or in fact that it could make no difference. I don’t know how to argue either side, and I’m not sure how to interpret what you’re saying for the 25kyus.
Are you saying handicaps are unnecessary for 25+ kyu as they would affect the outcome as much as flipping a coin would (something random/luck based/unrelated), and they just serve to make one or both players uncomfortable?