Sandbagging?

General Go Discussion
42

If you had read my comment, you would note that I never said you equated the question mark with beginners, so no need to get insulted.

But your whole point is that it would be confusing for those who equate the two, which I continue to see as a strange argument. It has never been the case, so that’s like saying “it will be confusing for those that are already wrong and confused”. Well yeah, of course if we use that as a reference point then plenty of things will be confusing.

I agree increasing uncertainty would be more coherent, though it’s not that easy to design.

43

In theory it’s built into glicko.

I have been told that the way it is built in doesn’t well match the way we use glicko, though I can’t find where that was said, and can’t recall the exact reasoning.

I think the best way to tackle this current problem would be to dust off that question and see if we can make it work to our purpose.

We already have “uncertainty” and we already have an indication of when a person’s uncertainty is known to be high. All we need to do is factor “the amount of time since they last played a ranked game” into that.

44

Do we have statistics about

  • The percentage of unranked games that are played on the server
  • The percentage of active players for whom more than 80% of their games are unranked?

My impression is that these two numbers are very low. I looked at a few random games under the “watch” menu and a large majority of games were ranked.

45

Not exactly what you asked for, but when I look at my own games, the percentage of unranked games is about 2% to 3%.
I usually create a challenge, so every one can accept it.
When I see a ? I check the profile, and sometimes, but not often, I cancel the game.

Unclear if this percentage is a good representation for all games on the server.

46

1 month would be too harsh. Not beginner people usually not able to change significantly faster than within 1 year.
when account completely new [?] looks ok, but when someone already played 1000 games, they would be sad if their rank would completely disappear. [8k?] would look more friendly while giving enough information for other users. Possibility of only [?] or only [8k] is less informative.

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47

It’s pretty easy to get some ballpark estimations by toggling the filters on the watch pane:

Screenshot 2023-08-13 at 8.38.52 AM

With various settings I was seeing between 12% and 19%.

No idea how to get an idea of the latter question. I would also be interested in the percentages within “Custom Games created” where I perceive “unranked sandbagging” to be more of a problem.

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48

Interesting information. Among these ~15% unranked games, it seems after a quick look at some random games that a large majority of players have played at least one ranked game less than 1 year ago, so potential “sandbaggers” might represent at most a few percent. And among these potential “sandbaggers”, I guess only a minority have a inaccurate rank, so probably less than 1%.

On the other hand we don’t see private games on that list.

49

That dodge won’t work, because I didn’t say that you “said” I equated the two. As if I had not just explained the distinction—that both beginners and strong players new to OGS get a question mark—you responded by insultingly explaining the distinction to me:

If you gave any thought to writing politely, you could easily have said something like “[?] doesn’t mean beginner, as we both know, nor would the proposed change.”

This is a self-redundant sentence. When we untangle the rhetoric, we get “An easy way to solve this confusion [equating two things that have nothing to do with each other] is to… stop equating two things that have nothing to do with each other.” As I already explained, many DDKs do equate the two, and you offer no “way” to remedy their confusion.

Yes, it is a stigma, because loads of players look upon the question mark with suspicion. It cannot be claimed that “we do not know the rank of this player with high confidence,” unless that can be quantified. So far, all I hear are assertions based on assumptions, as I have already explained.

The elephant in the room (ordinary sandbagging) is laughing because of all the effort wasted on discussing this trivial issue. As already explained, the idea that there is a significant problem here is just an assumption, not at all demonstrated.

50

Lol. @qnpnpmqppnp has been exceedingly polite in this thread. You’d do well to follow your own advice.

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51

All I hear are assertions based on assumptions. The idea that there is a significant problem here is just an assumption, not at all demonstrated.

52

I often see custom games with name like “no [?] please” and [?] users do have a lot of cancelled games in game history

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53

I’ve opened several accounts on OGS and when I had a [?] rank, I didn’t have difficulty finding opponents with the automatch. Very few games got cancelled.

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54

Not to me, he hasn’t. When I am insulted directly, as you just did, I take the gloves off. I will not be abused by anyone unless they are holding my life in their hands.

55

@Conrad_Melville I’ve seen this pattern 5 or 6 times on the forum:

  1. The conversation is about a subject that you know well. Some facts (F) about that subject are obvious to you.

  2. Someone in the conversation comes in with a different idea. Not having all the information, that person (P) doesn’t understand precisely what you have in mind and expresses polite disagreement.

  3. You think you are personally attacked. You were “obviously” thinking about (F) and (P) acts as if you were saying something else. You find that insulting.

  4. However, (P) wasn’t attacking you. Not being aware of (F), the person (P) genuinely misinterpreted your message. (P) is slightly irritated by you angry reaction but tries to remain calm and polite.

  5. You continue to answer in an angry manner. In your opinion this is justified because you think (P) insulted you. On the other hand (P) feels that your reaction is unpleasant and unjustified.

The only way out of this is to spell out patiently what you have in mind. Remember for instance that most of us haven’t been moderators and, unlike you, we haven’t observed thousands of games between beginners, so our experience as a player is very different from your experience as an observer. Just assume that person (P) is “dumb”, not that he is attacking you.

Another example: in a conversation with me, you were irritated at one of my questions or comments about American English (I don’t remember the exact nature of the discussion). I was surprised by your reaction: my question was genuine, since English is not my native language. But you reacted as if I knew the language perfectly and thought I was insulting you (which wasn’t the case).

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56

Insinuations by broad strokes are extremely hard, if not impossible, to respond to, but I’ll see what I can do.

First, I very rarely criticize the writing style of OGS’s non-native English speakers, whose language skills I greatly admire, as I have stated several times in the Forums. The exceptions are (1) when the writing mistakes are crucial to the argument, and (2) when I have been attacked or insulted. In a recent case of the first, I deconstructed some writing that had unjustly cast the OP (not me) in a bad light. In that case, I noted that I thought the statements resulted from inadvertent bad writing, rather than from intellectual dishonesty.

The current argument falls into both the second and the first categories. Lecturing me by parroting back the point I had already established, that players with a question mark “could be dans” or beginners, is a well-known, smart-alecky way of trying to dominate an opponent. I would have been willing to write that off as a mere writing/language mistake if that had been claimed. Instead, I see a more malicious version of the same technique:

This applies my words to a completely non-comparable situation. People right here in the Forums have asked the developer to bar question-mark players from accepting open challenges with rank restrictions. From the other side, there have also been discussions in the Forums about how hard it is for question-mark players to get ranked games. Also, I already stated that DDKs often file reports claiming that a player with a question mark is a sandbagger. So, what I said is not based on assumption, but on solid evidence.

As for my dissection of the self-redundant sentence: that sentence falls into the first category because it is a flawed form of argumentation that deserves to be knocked down like any other bad argument. It pretends to offer a solution, but doesn’t really do so. It is not a language-related mistake, either, because one can construct a self-redundant sentence in most any language.

I have already done so, but found it unproductive, because the modern method of argumentation is to ignore the points that can’t be easily answered. For example:

As for the conversation between us that you allude to, I can’t answer that at all unless I know what or where it was. I find it hard to believe that it was exactly as you describe, because it is not in my nature to be irritated by an honest question about English. In 40 years of professional activity, I have often discussed esoteric points of style with colleagues, compiled house style manuals, trained staff, and diplomatically dealt with high government officials about their bad writing. This makes me wonder what the circumstances were or whether you misinterpreted my response, whatever it was. However, if I was unduly brusque, I would be happy to apologize.

57

@Conrad_Melville I don’t particularly want to revive our past conversation as it was just a mild misunderstanding but since you are asking: after a search on the forum, I found it in the Lounge, dated october 2021.

I had given a link saying that “new” is pronounced /njuː/ in the UK and /nuː/ in the US.

You said “Not I, nor anyone I know, pronounces tube or new with the long u sound.”

I answered “Is it because you mostly interact with people from the US?” and linked a video which said “BBC News” (pronounced “BBC nyooz”). Then you got angry.

Let me explain further the reasons of my question: I mostly use written English. I am aware of some differences of pronunciation between US and UK but I also know there are many regional differences within each country. Also, I started using the forum around March 2021 so I didn’t know you well at the time of the conversation. I was confusely aware that you live in the US but didn’t know everything about your life. If you said “not anyone I know pronounces tube or new with the long u sound”, this could have two explanations:

  1. Either you don’t know anyone from the UK
  2. Or the link I had given previously was incorrect, a minority of people from the UK pronounce /nuː/ and you happen to interact with them.

I had no way of determining which of those two explanations was correct. Explanation (1) was likely since you are from the US but I wasn’t sure because living in the US doesn’t mean you don’t know people from the UK. Explanation (2) was doubtful but I wasn’t sure it was incorrect since English is not my native language and don’t interact with people with a variety of local accents.

So I was just asking for confirmation, and instead of just answering “yes” or “no”, you reacted as if I was challenging your post.

Yes I could have been clearer and written a lengthy post like above to clarify my thought and explain why I was asking that question. But hey, this is internet, we are not writing essays that are intended for publication. And I remind you that English is not my native language, so it takes time to eliminate most mistakes and write in a not too clumsy way.

The facts that

  • we don’t always write lengthy and detailed posts
  • we don’t immediately clear misunderstandings like in a real-life conversation
  • we don’t see each other’s facial expression and body language

create misinterpretations that escalate unnecessarily.

Anyway, again I don’t want to revive our past conversation, it was pretty mild, I was just trying to explain my point: several times in the past, you have interpreted as an attack a post which wasn’t one.

About the present thread, the reasons why there are mutual misunderstandings are:

  1. You have been a very active moderator and have observed a large number of DDK games. You have a good estimation of the extent of sandbagging on OGS.
  2. People in this conversation are not aware of point 1, or don’t have it in mind when they read and try to interpret your posts.
  3. Or perhaps you were taking about what you have observed in general, and people were talking about their personal impressions as ordinary players.

Moderators by definition are confronted to users who violate the TOS of the site. I guess that most of these users are new accounts which may get warnings or get closed before they can do too much damage, so that established players don’t interact too much with them. Also, established players don’t usually play with beginners so don’t know what their behavior is in general.

The starting point of the present controversy was your sentence “the question mark equates experienced players with raw beginners”, which you clarified later with “many players, especially DDKs, do equate the two (resulting in many mistaken sandbagger reports)”.

Most of us are, or were, not aware of this fact. We can’t see the mistaken sandbagger reports since we are not moderators, and we can’t see the “many DDKs who equate the two” if we are not DDKs. After your clarification your initial post becomes more understandable but it still requires some mental effort to see things from your point of view, or at least to realize that your point of view is different and we are not talking about the same thing.

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58

Thank you for the effort of locating the exchange.

No, not because you were challenging my post (my post was personal experience, which can’t be challenged), but because it seemed that you were being needlessly confrontational since the question of pronunciation was already settled. Nor was I angry; your earlier word, “irritated,” is more accurate. In hindsight, and with your explanation, I can see that perhaps I was excessively testy, so I apologize for that.

BTW, the answer to your question is that most of my experience is with American English, but I did have a modest amount of live contact with people from the U.K. when I was active in SF fandom. However, I never paid much conscious attention to pronunciation differences.

Let me reassure you again, I don’t take non-native English speakers to task for writing mistakes unless it is germane to the point of the discussion or they are being abusive. Indeed, I don’t even do that for native speakers, even though there are innumerable mistakes in the Forums (such as confusion over affect/effect), and I make my fair share too. Everyone needs an editor.

It certainly would have been better if I had first given the example I later gave, the fact that the prejudice against question-mark players has been well exposed here in the Forums. However, all this is subsequent to the insult: to lecture back to me a fact that I had already established. Moreover, my response to that, showing how a few extra words would have removed the insulting quality, has been studiously ignored on all sides. And the use of the same rhetorical device in a subsequent post, as I detailed in my previous post, confirms my impression of a smart-alecky intent.

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59

Thanks for the clarification. About the current thread, I still think there has been misunderstandings on both sides and that confrontation was completely needless but let’s move on.

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60

Have you tried getting a ranked game on KGS when you have a question mark? The question mark is a stigma.

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61

Is that the main drawback you were referring to earlier? That players who do not play ranked games would have trouble finding games amongst players who prefer ranked opponents?