Well, in a way that’s actually where the ethical issue may arise. I often hang out in the chat, and when a beginner comes to say hi, if I have time I ask them if they’d like a teaching game – so it’s almost like I’m “fishing” for them in practice.
Yes, it is a bit of a problem. Since I’m only 15 kyu, it can be surprisingly difficult to play a “gentle” (and principled, so not fight-oriented) game while also making sure that I win – that’s why when I tried it yesterday I played a 13x13 game, since I feel that in a 9x9 game the only way to ensure winning is often to play pretty aggressively.
To answer @Atorrante’s question, by “beginners” I mean “Go beginners”, not just “OGS beginners” (which I usually call “newcomers”). Since I talk to them before offering the game, I can ask them directly how much experience they have, and of course I only offer teaching games to actual beginners.
I had an inkling this would come up. I can’t find the topic now, but there was a similar situation with a player who asked “how do I get to play beginners” and someone, @Uberdude if I’m correct, perhaps jokingly, said “make a new account, all the beginners are 6 kyu”, and a moderator replied that intentional rank manipulation is not allowed.
I imagine the same issue would be brought up if I proposed to teach beginner newcomers how to manipulate their rank to get down to 25 kyu as quickly and painlessly as possible.
While I don’t like to start a fight, I have to say that all of this is absurd: the site has set up a system that forces beginners to go through a kafkaesque rigamarole to be able to do the main thing that they usually want to do coming here, playing other beginners, and most if not all of the attempts to help them go through that as painlessly as possible are marked as against the rules*, and implicitly threatened of moderation measures even though they’re clearly meant in good will.
*I do understand that they’re marked against the rules because the same behaviour could be performed maliciously, such as for cheating or intentional rank manipulation.
I think you don’t need me to tell you that I don’t agree with this kind of position. I won’t respect the rules if the rules are being enforced in a mindless way that hurts the community more than it helps it.
For the most part, the terms of service of OGS were clearly intentionally written to be vague, so that it would be up to the good sense of the moderators to only enforce them when a malicious intent was detected in a user, or to quench behaviours that would hurt the community even without malicious intent.
So in the context of OGS, I believe it is quite tone-deaf to point out that the rules do not allow something if that something is both done in good faith and doesn’t hurt the community.
I believe the initial proposal (usually attributed to you?) was meant to bring the initial matchmaking rank to something like 18 kyu (6 kyu minus twice the initial deviation), but it was implemented as “6 kyu minus once the initial deviation”, so the current initial matchmaking rank is 12 kyu.
But the humble rank seems to be working – although with the fact that it’s displayed in the profile page and that there’s also a glitch causing the real provisional “6 kyu” rank to be visible in game thumbnails, it also often causes confusion.
Also, related to the humble rank, is the fact that 12 kyu established players (and surrounding) are unwillingly tasked with the burden of dealing with all the newcomers on OGS. See this topic around that, and this reply of mine if you’d like to know my proposals to improve the system.