I would be careful with that advice. I can’t speak for the other mods but if I got a reported game where the winning player resigned because the other player went on vacation, they may well get a sandbagging warning. Vacation is a player available resource just like the game clock, and we don’t typically police how either gets used except for quite extreme stalling.
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My actual advice was to block the person. I did not advise to resign; I left that up to the preference of the player (“can” not “should”). Also I did not describe nor imply the status of the game. I find it farfetched that someone who is winning would resign, unless they really are a sandbagger.
This is the statement that was being addrssed.
It is not the case that one can resign “for any reason whatsoever”. Nor even “if the opponent is annoying”. Generally speaking(*), the only legitimate reason for resigning is if you have a reasonable belief that you are losing.
(*) I can think of exceptions, but they are rare and “my opponent is annoying me” is not one of them.
I think you didn’t actually mean “resign if they are annoying”. Upon re-reading, I think you meant “finish the game properly (by whatever means, scoring or resigning at the right time) then block them”.
I just didn’t read that way.
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Maybe you missed it, but your colleague said I was giving advice with regard to resigning, which is false as I have already demonstrated.
And I don’t need you to point out the point of contention. Ironically, your description is also false, since “one can resign” is the actual objectionable phrase, not the whole sentence, unless you are implying that it is now illegal to block players in this situation.
I am removing the objectionable phrase, since i was unaware of this new regulation and certainly don’t want to sow confusion.
Edit: typo
Maybe you missed it, but I looked hard at your words to find what you actually meant rather than what you said, and generously acknowledged that you weren’t as mistaken as you appeared to be.
But I see that you were actually mistaken, and have now “learned a new regulation” about when it’s OK to resign. I stand corrected.
I admire your new craftsmanship in the art of insult.
I still find it farfetched that someone would resign in that situation unless they really were a sandbagger. And since when have mods given sandbagger warnings based on one thrown game?
Hah - thanks - I appreciate the defuse of that silly direction of conversation. 
We’re talking about very cross people here, people who feel that the vacationers are disrespectful and want to give some sort of direct feedback about that. Those kind of people likely might resign in disgust from a correspondence game stalled by vacation, I suspect. That’s what I had in mind anyhow.
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What makes you so sure they would only ever encounter one opponent who uses vacation time?
The whole context of the conversation was the abuse of vacation time. I have never encountered that, so I am unconvinced that it is common. More important, you, not I, spoke of a single incident:
If you had meant a pattern of such resignations, you could have easily said so.
Most important, as I have said, I think it would be extremely rare for someone to resign the game if they are winning, unless they are already a sandbagger, in which case whatever I say is irrelevant.
Finally, once again, what I said about resigning was not advice (I said “can” not “should”).
I assume sandbagging reports prompt a look at the game history, where the difference between a “vacation resigner” and a sandbagger is clear?
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Of course, but according to what GreenAsJade has said, such a resignation if one is winning is not allowed.
This rule should be even more known as the capture rule of go by now.
I have two questions: 1) What does that have to do with sandbagging? 2) Isn’t resigning an available player resource too?
People have many different reasons to resign.
- Many players resign even though they are still ahead in the game, because they just made a big mistake and it discouraged them. Is that sandbagging, resigning a game even though they are ahead?
- Many players resign when they lose a group, especially in a semeai, regardless of whether they are still ahead.
- In live games players sometimes resign when they are too tired to continue, regardless of whether they are actually ahead or not.
- In a real-life tournament, I’ve seen a player resign because their opponent was entering their second Canadian byo-yomi and they just didn’t want to stay in front of a go board for that long.
- In real-life tournament games I’ve seen players resign because their opponent was rude and they didn’t want to play go for 3h against someone unpleasant.
The player who resigns is already “punished” by losing the game. No referee would ever give them a warning or an extra sanction for their decision to resign. It’s their decision.
I’m currently playing 8 correspondence games on OGS, and I have all 8 of those games in my head all the time. If an opponent went on vacation for an extended period, then the game would probably leave my head and I wouldn’t care about it as much as I do now.
What would be worse then, keep playing the game for 150 more moves, but without really thinking about it and replying automatically to my opponent’s moves without having the game in my head, not enjoying playing and making far inferior moves than usual; or resigning this game so we can both focus on games we are really invested into?
And regardless of what choice I’d make, why would OGS moderators judge me for it and why would I get a sandbagging warning for something that is completely unrelated to sandbagging?
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OGS is the sum of linguistics and rate algorithm worship.
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I think that a lot of the points you raised are legitimate and warrant exploration.
However this repeated assertion is not true.
Resigning when you are ahead is exactly what sandbagging is: deliberately taking a loss when you could have had a win, distorting your rank to suggest that your skill is lower than it actually is.
And this answers the question “why would you get a warning” - the answer is because folk generally detest it when they feel that they have encountered an opponent who’s rank is artificially depressed by deliberate actions by that person - that’s what a “sandbagger” is.
What you have illustrated is that there may be reasons to resign a game that mean that your motivation is not sandbagging, even if your action is.
I think that in general this is where judgement comes into play, and a discussion takes place. If a moderator contacts you with a warning about sandbagging, you respond with “actually, I resigned for this reason”. If that reason appears reasonable, the response will probably be “Oh, OK, avoid that if you can please”.
However its fair to say that if you give the reason as “that person annoyed me by taking vacation” this would not be viewed sympathetically.
Basically, if you do anything that negatively impacts player experience, even dragging a game until second coming, all is fine. Get over it™.
If, within the same rules, whatever action you take might impact your rank even minimally, it’s a sin and you must be punished.
You can’t inquire a player
Why they take vacation
When they plan to be back
If they plan to be back
To not pass and resume just to check the score (where did that thread go btw)
To not cheat (the first time is forgiven)
A million other things that annoy everyone
You can’t inquire if your game result is how you left if last time you checked (it might be annulled, deal with it)
You can’t inquire to have a win if a serial timer out who was losing your game timed out (ha, the rule doesn’t apply here!)
But a player resigns a game AI says they’re ahead? Burn them!!!
… And thus I’m reminded why I avoid ranked games on OGS.
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I hope you’re being deliberately hyperbolic, and that we don’t actually come across that way, because that is not at all how anyone on the team moderates in practice. If this is what has been described to you, I apologize. We will try to explain ourselves better going forward.
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No, it is not. “Sandbagging” is when you pretend to be weaker than you are, and the term applies to other games and situations that do not even have “resignation.” Resigning when winning is merely a technique in the service of sandbagging, and, as I have noted before, is a very trivial one compared to other techniques.
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A bit.
The sentiment is mostly accurate, though. I agree 100% that moderators do the best they can with the best intentions, you won’t find me arguing against that.
But I do find that there is a specific zooming in on “resign when AI says ahead” when there’s a score of other things that negatively impact rate accuracy. I vaguely remember a similar discussion, I’d have to search to find the very specific examples we all agreed on.
Somehow we always come back to sandbagging. Which is very normal to exist as data, because new users come in and old users might be outdated. The intention behind sandbagging, as in crush others because someone didn’t get hugged enough during critical stages of their early development is of course serious and should be punished. It’s malicious.
However, ranks go up and down all the time. A mismatched game is finished as we speak, probably.
I understand we see things differently and we won’t agree. I find moderation comes across as too much micromanagement of things that should be allowed to go their own way. Maybe because it’s the loudest cases and fortunately OGS isn’t a viper pit, it’s daily a nice and calm experience, so some things just stand out.
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I don’t think we can force anyone to play or finish a game they don’t want to.
Realistically people can resign whenever they want.
It’s really more so that if done regularly, and a pattern emerges that they seem to be intentionally lowering their rank, it’s going to come across like sandbagging. At least I would say that that’s a particularly common way for people to sandbag.
I suppose one could always ask their opponent to agree to annul the game assuming they don’t want the points for winning.
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