The proposition has been put forth that there is some nexus between closed territory and stalling. I say that is false. If Vsotvep thinks otherwise, it is easy enough to say so and explain how stalling depends on closed territory.
From my perspective stalling is playing moves that a player of a given rank should reasonably know is pointless.
Infilling your own territory beyond the point of reasonable security is a prime candidate.
I think stalling can happen at any point of the game, but that one player passing and the other continuing doesn’t automatically count as stalling without whole board context.
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I agree, as you should know, but my argument isn’t with you.
I have never claimed what you say in the latter half of that sentence—again, as you should know. It is V., not me, who put a bizarre requirement into the definition of stalling. I tried to get a clarification, but never got a straight answer. In addition he made the false claim, which must be very confusing to new players, that the autoscore can’t correctly score unclosed territory. It does so practically every day, by leaving it unscored according to the rules.
I find it very useful to consider things as discussions rather than arguments. Arguments assume one person is right and the other wrong. Discussions are when two different perspectives gain a deeper understanding of one another.
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“The post in question” refers to V’s whole post, not to the part I quoted. The part I quoted—which is completely intact—was quoted so I could dispute the smaller claim that the autoscore can’t properly score unclosed territory. Nothing is misquoted and nothing is out of context. You have mixed things up.
I know that when I pass, the opponent can continue to move. (When the territory is not closed.)
Here I have a few situations:
-
When the territory is roughly completed. (Only very tiny voids remain, one space, two spaces, etc.)
In a situation where it is obviously impossible to change the outcome of the game, is it okay for the winner to pass and the loser to not close the territory or fill in the dame, but save or put in an impossible dead stone in the opponent’s territory? -
When the territories of both sides have been closed, only some dame is left. (Maybe it should assume Chinese rules?)
In the case where it is obviously impossible to change the result of the game (for example, I won 30 points, and there are 10 dame. Even if 10 dame are given to the opponent, the opponent cannot win.), the winner passes, and the loser does not pass and does not fill in the dame , but moving on the opponent’s or own territory, is this okay? -
When the territory of both parties has been closed, and there is no dame.
In the case where it is obviously impossible to change the outcome of the game (for example, I won 100 points, the opponent must save the dead group or kill me at least two groups to reverse.), the winner passes, the loser does not pass, but continues to move, Is this okay?
Careful, you’re beginning to sound like me. Such as when I distinguished between a battle and a discussion, here: Remove the "current thing-flag" please - #65 by Conrad_Melville
Get back to me if I ever try to equate bold text with drug use.
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I have never done that. “Crackpot” has nothing to do with drugs. “Crack” has long been associated with “crazy” (for more than 150 years, as in “crackbrain”) and a cracked pot is worthless. Hence “crackpot” = a crazy, worthless person. Most crackpots, or cranks, seem to be motivated by a combination of obsession and narcissism. Some may lack rhetorical ability and therefore resort to crude devices of emphasis, as discussed in Bruce Kawin’s Telling It Again and Again.
When it comes to stalling, the intention of moves is always important. IMO it’s more about why some moves are played and not just which moves are played.
Trying to exploit weaknesses in your opponent’s shape should be allowed, even if the game could go to scoring already. Playing ko threats when there is no ko on the board, just to force your opponent to respond, without expecting a possibility to gain something with those forcing moves, shouldn’t be allowed.
But the intention behind such stalling moves isn’t always obvious.
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Sometimes it’s fun to discuss detailed definitions - it can expose interesting corners of understanding.
And sometimes it’s just over-thinking.
IMO, the question of “the definition of stalling” is the latter. If some play behaviour appears to be stalling and likely to be undesirable here, report it. The moderator will assess it on its merits. If you don’t like a particular assessment, report it, another moderator will take a fresh look, and discuss with the moderation team. If you still don’t like it, you can open the topic for debate - ideally politely - here.
But trying to nail down in advance the assessment and decisions of moderators with strict rules and definitions is fruitless. They are there to make tricky judgement calls, you can always weasel-word some argument with that sort of thing if you want to, but it is not going to acheive anything. IMO.
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I understand why the mod who resolves an issue isn’t identified anymore. I don’t agree, but I can understand it (inb4 please don’t bring the “we’re volunteers so we’re allowed to whatever” argument).
But mods not even giving feedback for the report? Are we supposed to report to the void?
When I didn’t get feedback a couple of times I think it was said it was an oversight, not a policy.
I’m more often than not reluctant to do any reporting because of attitudes like this. 
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I would add another step before this one. Namely:
If you don’t like a particular assessment, consider forgetting about it and moving on.
This is not apathy, just simple pragmatism. Stalling as with other issues is judged broadly, taking into account level of ability/intent and past behavior/record as well as the more immediate board scenario.
There are inevitably a huge range of shades of grey. Despite that, the responses of the mod team are very consistent. I find if another mod warns when I wouldn’t have or bans when I wouldn’t have or vice-versa then the case was inevitably borderline.
As a user consider this; If the person you have reported doesn’t make a habit of bad behavior then the importance of getting what you consider to be the right outcome is tiny. If the user does make a habit of misbehaving then it will catch up with them. Again there is no need to make a mountain out of a molehill or write a PHD thesis for every case.
Getting overly worked up about a single case or getting wrapped up in the delights of gratuitous argument is fundamentally counterproductive and only serves to drive hard-working well-meaning moderators from contributing to the process of optimizing user experience on the site.
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I don’t think there is policy involved here.
I’m with you that I think it’s “The Right Thing” for all reports to be acknowledged.
It’s not completely surprising that as the mod pool gets bigger, there may be some who don’t see it as important. Prior to this thread, I personally wasn’t aware that anyone “consistently did not do it”.
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Anonymus feedback by moderators is okay for me too.
And if mods workload is too heavy, then I can also live with with a radio silence after filing a report.
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It would be nice if we could see the status of our reports:
- sent
- read by a moderator; your report is being processed.
- a moderator has taken the following action(s): warn user, ban user, annul game, chat-ban user,…
- the moderator decided not to take action
- optional: anonymous message from the moderator explaining their action or absence thereof.
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It’s preferable for me, as a moderator, to give anonymous feedback as well. Currently the only part where we can give anonymous feedback is in the appeals process after a user has been banned (which is new since a couple of months). I believe the report system has also been reworked considerably behind the scenes, and now users can’t see which moderator is taking their report. Sadly, there is no way yet to chat anonymously with a user. But, also a new part is that we can now anonymously observe games, without our name showing up in the guest list.
The anonymity is quite important, since some trolls find it fun to report something, wait for a moderator to claim it, and then specifically harass that moderator for a while. Others keep an eye on the guest list to know who banned them. We’ve got some trolls with a vengeance.
Especially when a user is suspected to be one of those trolls, it happens from time to time that I don’t respond back to the user who sent the report, but other than that I try to always report back to the user who filed the report. Most moderators seem to do this, but there can be multiple reasons to not respond to the user reporting (one of them being that you accidentally close the report and forgot who the reporter was, which can sometimes be hard to find out after that… I have to admit that happened more than once to me).
I believe this is an excellent suggestion, and it shouldn’t be much effort to work this into the way reports currently work.
I don’t think the third point should be included, as I consider whether a user is warned, chat-banned or banned to sometimes be something private that the reporter doesn’t necessarily need to know. But I am all for a method to send anonymous messages to users (both reported or reporter).
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I understand that public shaming is not supported.
However, if I report someone for score cheating and I don’t know what came out of it, why do it again? I just see it, shake my head and keep going.
Honestly, I usually think to myself “eh, they’ll get a warning at some point if they do it enough” and don’t bother.
Someone mentioned that some cases are repeat offenders that got pardoned after years, because they corrected their ways.
Well, I think their cheating ways probably made people reluctant to keep playing, drove them off this community, turned them off Go completely, made them doubt their own perception, skewed their ranking and other negative implications* that are not just for a “go and sin no more”.
You as a moderator can absolve them, but why don’t I have the option to not play with known cheaters?
Current system is repeatedly presented and defended as basically “ability to annul games that mess with our ranking system, because it’s our baby and we love it”. We are basically encouraged to report so that ranking disparities are corrected, nothing to do with user experience, other than a by-product.
And if you say “well, we don’t say so”, well, we perceive it as so, so there’s that.
*inb4, yes I know there are more important things in life, but within our hobby these are pretty important.
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I think (also from talking to other moderators) that only a very small proportion of reporters are not notified, mainly due to forgetfulness. Of course we apologise for this, but it is not what usually happens.
Maybe because the game is annulled anyway? If not, please report it again 
I think that having cheated in one or more games should not mean being negatively “flagged” forever. People can change.
The hesitancy and confusion I am hearing regarding stalling is puzzling, since this was historically well understood and clearly defined by the mod team. There are three types: (1) repeated restarting, (2) pointless infilling of one’s territory, and (3) playing pointless self-atari moves.
Repeated restarting is pretty clear. In rare instances, it is a response to a cheating opponent (usually involving only one restart), and that is always obvious. Worst case I ever saw was a player who restarted over 100 times.
Pointless infilling is also obvious. “Pointless” excludes the few cases where the player is fixing a cut or making some other interior defensive move. This is very easy to distinguish from the player who ultimately fills in all his territory. Many of these cases are beginners who, I have come to believe, really don’t know how to end a game. They may not even know that they can pass.
Pointless self-atari moves are generally obvious, but admittedly, in some cases, may involve more ambiguity than the other two categories. “Pointless” excludes cases of sacrifices, ko threats, and any other attempt to create tactical advantage. Most of these cases are very clear. The offender simply proceeds to make every legal move on the board, then often continues by infilling, and finally escapes.
To beat two dead cliches: this is not rocket science.