Am I the only one who finds it extremely rude to go on vacation during a tournament? One person could single-handedly bring the entire website to a halt by joining 100 tournaments then going on vacation.
The tournaments I host I do not allow vacation, but I would prefer if it were simply not allowed. If you think you have to go on vacation, then don’t join any tournaments. It’s very disrespectful to everyone else in the tournament.
I assume this has been discussed before–what does everyone else think?
I think the expectation that all tournaments have to finish quickly is wrong. I’m fine with people setting up tournaments where they state vacation shouldn’t be used and I’ll respect that by not joining. If all tournaments disallowed vacation I wouldn’t play any and probably leave the site.
In most of the tournaments there vacation is either frowned upon or outright forbidden. You’ll still get the occasional person abusing it, but the round robin tournaments are usually completed in a few weeks.
As far as a site-wide rule? No. I think that TDs should be able to set whatever rules they’re willing to enforce.
I agree this–I went too far saying they shouldn’t be allowed at all. Here’s a good idea: an option in setting up the tournament: “Vacation/Pause allowed? Yes/No.”
In my tournaments I do specify that vacations are not allowed, at my discretion, meaning that if you do have an emergency, then of course we’ll allow it.
I just don’t like having to enforce it. My real point is that it is the height of discourtesy, whether it should be allowed or not. I would say courtesy dictates if you need to go on vacation, you announce your intentions in the tournament chat and ask if anyone objects.
Just doing it is extremely impolite; it is the selfishness that I object to.
My personal opinion is that I don’t really like the tendency of some tournament organizers to prevent vacations. If a player joins a tournament it is usually because they want to play. If, for personal reasons, a player can no longer play for a certain time and decides to use vacation mode it is because they want to continue playing. Otherwise they would resign or run out of time.
We can’t know (without asking) why a player is “forced” to be in vacation mode, so why not be understanding or at least dubious instead of judging them impolite?
I don’t find it disrespectful, it’s just annoying but necessary. I wish we could just dilute time and play many-hour tournament in a few minutes.
As far as I remember a slow player can be just as “bad” so vacation doesn’t exactly prolong rounds significantly. Often person that uses vacation still on average is in time limits.
The best way to have fast rounds is handpick fast players to participate.
My suggestion is to report players that are deemed to hold up a tournament.
Tournament directors are free to ask the players to continue playing despite vacation time being active, or to disqualify players that hold up (emphasis added later: prevent the tounament from progressing) a tournament because of being on vacation. At least, this was the consensus among moderators some time ago, not entirely sure if that’s still the case.
When disqualifying players, I’d recommend strongly to first attempt to communicate with the player, and especially refrain from disqualifying if there are still other ongoing games. Note that disqualifying a player also automatically ends their games. In particular, disqualifying for reasons other than explicitly breaking the rules of the tournament is seen as abuse. Disqualification is really a last resort for when a single player prevents a tournament from progressing to the next round by taking a holiday.
I think a “refinement” of this sentiment is that they might disqualify players if either the tournament description ruled out vacation, or if the hold up is in some sense “grievious” (I can’t think of what would be grievous off the top of my head).
I don’t think there’s support for tournament directors disqualifying “just because a person went on vacation”. In fact, rather the opposite: that would be frowned upon outside the above situations, because vacation is a feature with supporter-paid enhancement that should not just be “wished away by someone in a hurry”.
I think that this is why there is the opportunity for TDs to ask for players to be “committed” to playing at the agreed speed for the duration of the tournament - because there are plenty of people who either are impolite, or simply don’t share the same view of “what is polite” in this case.
It seems to make sense to me for those people who think that vacations should not be used in tournaments to get together and have a tournament where vacation is not used, without having people with other opinions joining. It’s entirely optional, and what’s the worst that happens … if one of those people gets an actual RL event that means they can’t play for a while, surely an ejection from an online go tournament is the least of their concerns…
Nevertheless, shouldn’t tournament directors have some autonomy over the tournaments they organise? If the rules state that vacation is not allowed, then they should be able to disqualify people breaking those rules, right? Just because someone paid OGS money to get extra vacation time shouldn’t make a difference there. In general, we don’t treat supporters different than non-supporters from moderation perspective either.
The purpose of my comment was only to emphasise that in the case where vacation had not been ruled out in the rules, then someone should not expect that raising it with a moderator would likely have an effect, and that tourney directors should not feel empowered to disqualify someone for vacation if they didn’t put that in the rules in the first place. Doing that would be an exception for some reason (which I can’t think of now) rather than normal.
Is there any example of an OGS Title Tournament where the TD has (or has even been able to) specify that vacation not be used?
It’s quite conceivable that players would intend to keep playing Go on holiday. IF you intend NOT to play Go on holiday, then it would seem wise not to sign up for Tournaments that specify vacation is not to be used, if those Tournaments seem likely to last long enough to bump into your holidays.
I don’t see what’s so hard about this… (personally, I get to play more Go on holdiays).
Indeed your points are sensible. But OP made sweeping statements about going on holiday during tournaments being extremely rude / very disrespectful and should not even be possible in all cases. Whilst that might make sense in a fast correspondence tournament designed to last just days or weeks which is presumably the kind of tournament he plays in, it makes no sense for the kind of tournaments I played.
P. S I like to go on holiday to places with no Internet.
I agree with Uberdude. Correspondence games typically take a few months to complete. Going on vacation for a couple of weeks won’t do much harm in general.
I see what you mean: the OP’s feeling that all tourney’s should be vacation-free does indeed need refutation, and I can see that the “you” in your post was meant to be the OP, not the recent posters
