And a lot of complaints when you do, because it’s often unfair.
Misclicks are reality; overplay is reality; hail Mary moves are reality. A game doesn’t happen in a space where reality is overridden.
Unless it’s AI vs AI, two people playing should be treated as two opponents with agency.
You are deciding game results with what “feels right”. Unless there’s malice, let the games be.
I don’t understand why there’s so much insistence to “correct” game results, when there are glaring flaws in the system (like we’ve discussed elsewhere, misclicks and the such, let’s not repeat that). I have the suspicion it’s because the game results are bent to fit the system and not the other way around, and this makes me feel really uncomfortable.
I understand this is cemented opinion for the moderating system, so, as I said, I’ve opted out from ranked games.
I strongly suggest to reconsider extreme interference with game results. Other than that, I predict a mess in the thread, so I’ll bow out.
I don’t like the way it’s handled, so I opt out. I still get to play, I just don’t feel like my rank is manipulated if my rank isn’t part of the equation (also, it’s not about my games, I doubt I would end up with mod interference in my games although you never know. It builds the whole system in a way that I don’t agree with).
I like the vibes, so I stay for the vibes. I don’t agree with a specific part (the ranking/ game result interference), so I stay away from that.
Not really, to be honest. In the majority of cases both players agree (I usually notify the opponent or write a message in the game chat when annulling a game). It’s the complaints that are loudest, since those are vented on the forums or in the chat. If the only thing you experience is edge cases where a moderator made a dubious decision, it’s easy to forget that the vast majority is overly clear cases of sandbagging, score cheating or egregious stalling. But those never leave the mod reports.
We don’t, we have both a set of rules about this and previous cases to compare judgements to. We’re not just doing what feels right, and most mods discuss dubious cases before making a decision.
Like I said, it’s not moderators running around checking games randomly and changing the results: it’s players asking us to take a look as an arbiter and decide if the game is fairly scored. We don’t insist on a correct result, we reply to people asking for a correct result.
i believe time-stealing tesuji is also allowed. In the old days, Japanese players were famous of honoring resigning asap, but before doing that, they had a classic tactics to play speculative invasion. As soon as they saw it couldn’t play out or more the opponents responded correctly, they would resign though.
Cool.
This finally results in an official answer to my other thread. lol
I’m very frustrated with arbitrary moderation on OGS as well.
I have started go on OGS 2.5 years ago. The game and the server are completely intertwined for me.
A part of the reason I’ve been playing my games elsewhere (fox server) for the last year, is various bad decisions I saw from moderators and how the objections were handled. If I am going to play on OGS despite the huge player-base the fox server offers, I would at least like to feel safe in ranked environment. When moderators you can interact with daily don’t spend enough care and effort, show very unreasonable decision-making and are not willing to admit fault when proven wrong in further discussions, it is really disheartening to active community members.
It is ok to make mistakes. It is not ok to insist on them. It is not ok to try to blindly cover for your teammate’s mistakes. It is not ok to do nothing to not repeat those mistakes in the future.
OGS team are a very nice bunch of people overall but they need more reflection.
As far as time-suji is concerned, I don’t think it’s an important part of the general discussion here, but just to clarify this specific case:
Judging by the timing data neither B10 nor B9 were played as a timesuji, since both were played in a couple of seconds, far before the byo-yomi period was supposed to run out. If I’m counting correctly White also still had two byo-yomi periods left when B10 and B9 were played.
The most important thing for me when playing go is fair game. A win is a win and a loss is a loss. This thread, and the responses from the mods proves that preventing stalling (oh how an impossibly arbitrary word) is more important than fair game.
I don’t think it is overly dramatic at all. But really, I am kind of disappointed that OP:s reaction is more discussed than this horrible ruling.
I would not be frustrated, let alone VERY frustrated. Part of the game is to handle stress, one of the stress is time pressure. I used to be very angry when my opponents played such moves. But overtime, it allowed me to reflect and train myself to be better. Most of my stress are caused by my own inability to deal with situation correctly.
I agree 100 %. The lack of “yeah this was an obvious mistake, we’ll correct it” is disappointing. I would also prefer a follow up like “… and we’ll try to fix the rules to require LESS mod interference, rather than more.”
Why are we talking about “stalling”? That’s misdirection itself. The only reason this thread happened is because black didn’t spot an atari so he whinged to a mod who was inappropriately sympathetic. If White played those 2 silly moves being labelled as stalling on the left side and black spotted the atari this thread would never have happened.
I believe we have an unwritten rule not to overturn each other’s decisions without discussion. I don’t insist on the annulment being the correct action, but I do insist on having to wait for Kosh before I would take any action, out of respect for my fellow moderators not to undo their actions without discussion first.
It’s essential for the coherence of our moderation team that we don’t go about calling out each other’s mistakes. You may see it as stubbornness, I see it as courtesy. Especially since Kosh isn’t online yet, it would be pretty unfair to them if other moderators would take a hard stance in this discussion.
From my experience (1300 games on OGS), very few of my opponents had a bad behavior, and I never had to interact with a moderator.
Conversely, my experience on Tygem (about 200 games) and Fox (about 200 games) has often been more unpleasant: sandbaggers, people who refuse to count and play pointless moves at the last second of each byo-yomi period in a game they were losing by 80 points, etc. They are not the majority, but my impression that such unpleasant behavior is more frequent than on OGS. My guess is that this is due to a stricter moderation policy on OGS.
A stricter moderation policy may cause more mistakes from the moderators, but that’s the price to pay. If people don’t like it, they can go to the “jungle” (Tygem, Fox).
We all want a fair game, though I’m not sure we agree on what it is. I see two questions here:
Should stalling be punished?
Was OP stalling in the game he posted?
I do think stalling should be punished. To take an extreme example, if somebody is filling his territory one stone at a time, always waiting the full 30s, hoping his opponent loses patience or somehow disconnect, then this isn’t playing fair, to me it’s not even Go anymore.
Now once you accept this kind of rule, you also have to accept that there will be some clear cases, and some not-so-clear cases. I think OP wasn’t stalling and so would consider it a mistake, but I can understand where it’s coming from.
If such situations were common I would agree it’s a problem, but I feel this is really exceptional and will never have any genuine effect on anybody’s rank, so I’m a bit surprised by the reactions I see here.
The level of the players is usually taken into account by moderators when making decisions.
E.g., if two 10k players disagree in scoring because of a seki (and marking the stones in scoring repeatedly), I would ascribe that to inexperience. If two 3d players disagree about a seki, I would consider it to be a form of score cheating instead.
I support you on that and I’ve said I generally trust mods when they say there’s malice (AI usage and such). I believe you have a good system there.
And it goes without saying when both players agree something’s wrong, or if one of the players didn’t know that they did something wrong (for example a player who doesn’t know how X rule works in scoring).
But the “what should have been” cases… IIRC it was mentioned in a previous discussion that annulments of that type can happen without the players ever being notified. So, I don’t know if the cases that actually reach complaint phase are representative of how many people would actually care to complain.
Among all the things that professional games have, the one thing I would like to bring over to amateur internet Go is “it happens, it stays”.
Obvious mistake that leads to self-atari? Eh, better luck next time.
If I play with someone, we between us make an agreement to play and honor (or not) the unofficial contract of the goban. If, without one or both knowing, that contract is changed, I don’t like that, I feel it like an intrusion.
Dishonor I find uncouth. Any other result in a battle, I signed up for it.
Hm … so what makes timesujis an acceptable tactic? If the rule is “no stalling the game with pointless moves”, then one could argue that timesujis are not accepted on OGS because they fit this criterium.