How about:
- Don’t tank your rank (sandbagging)
- Resignation is still allowed
One resignation does not tank your rank
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It’s OK to get up and leave from a date for any reason related to the fact that you don’t want to be there anymore. It doesn’t have to be an emergency, you just want to leave.
It’s not OK to leave to avoid paying the bill or because a friend just entered and they will let your spouse know you were cheating.
In both cases, you end up with no date, the other person ends up with no date.
The first case is exercising your right to autonomy. The second is abusing that right because you’re in the wrong.
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By this logic, we might remove the resignation button entirely. Comebacks are not uncommon in the game of Go; since resigning while behind precludes the possibility of a comeback, should that be disallowed too?
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I think there is a big difference in how we define sandbagging.
I think mod side includes everything when a game goes how it “wasn’t supposed to”.
Player side focuses on malicious intent.
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I’m not even concerned with intent - I’m more concerned about the outcome. If the next 5 games are horribly mismatched, that’s a bad experience (sandbagging) and should be disallowed. If the next 5 games are matched just as well as “normal” games on OGS, no harm done (not sandbagging).
In reality, this is what would happen.
The challenge is debating the “rules” to death - trying to express that really generally sensible judgement applies. It’s a challenge because people with power are saying “trust me”. I get it - people with power should be able to explain themselves, but it sure is hard.
The actual point of judgement that we were talking through - with genuine intent (I think!) on both sides to get the proper understanding - is “what should the call be on people who resign when someone goes on vacation?”.
I think we should focus on that, rather than try to generalise with statements like “I should be able to resign whenever I want to”.
I think that what we’ve heard here is that generally speaking, the people in this thread think that it’s OK to resign in response to an opponent going on vacation.
I think that the people in this thread would expect moderators to act to correct cases where this happened so frequently that a person’s rank is affected, but the point is that if an opponent complained about a resignation in response to them going on vacation, the feeling here is that the person should be told “actually, some people dislike waiting for your vacation, and it’s better that they resigned than just abandoned”.
Does that sound about right?
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I think this sounds about right. I’m not even sure a vacationer needs such a specific explanation. Maybe this would suffice and not encourage the debate of whether vacation is okay:
Thanks for the report. Players may resign for a number of reasons, and this does not appear to violate our policies.
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Not exactly.*
*As in, it’s OK to resign if you want to. But that doesn’t make going on vacation wrong.
I believe vacation is a site feature and it can and should be used. Personally, I’ve advised opponent in very fast games to turn vacation on during their night, so they can use the time during my night. Someone might find that wrong, I find it helpful against a player with 2 hours on the clock in a different time zone and an opportunity to play a game that would otherwise time out. Who wants a timeout win if they can avoid it and actually play the game to conclusion?
Also, people on vacation very often keep playing their games, just not in a strict time. Judging by my experience and how I personally go about it.
If a player doesn’t want to wait, they shouldn’t have to wait, though, and a vacation toggle would kill that problem in the creation stage.
If a player abuses the vacation feature by overriding agreed settings the opponent has a case to complain, though.
For example, if I play with analysis on I expect my opponent to read out everything there is to put in a variation. It’s a site feature, people who don’t like it can turn it off. However, if my opponent uses analysis to then use SE to get ideas that they wouldn’t otherwise get, I would find that objectionable.
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I wrote this over 3 years ago, and my feeling is still excatly the same.
I use the vacation mode a lot when something comes up in life and im not sure if i’ll be back home to play moves before my time would run out, and i do consider it being more polite option than simply timing out from games where the time limits are somewhat short.
For example ladder matches have max 3d on the clock and no weekend pauses, so timeouts can happen quite easily when life gets busy for few days.
As a player, i dislike having games end prematurely and i find it really sad if someone resigns from a correspondence game just because it takes a long time to finish, but i can i also understand that long corr games are not for everyone. Correspondence games and tournaments can last literally for multiple years, and i can very well understand how someone doesnt want that kind of commitment.
I think its always better to resign from a game which you dont want to continue, than to abandon that said game and allow it to time out eventually. So as a moderator, i would never even consider getting involved with games that are resigned in orderly manner.
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It’s not surprising, but interesting, to find that so far we’ve been unable to reach an agreed position on this.
I think I summarised ArsenLupin’s position correctly, but Gia immediately contradicted that.
There’s an extra factor to throw in, that I remembered in the middle of the night 
Vacation is a supporter feature (increased vacation).
This tells us both that at least in the past it was seen as a highly desireable thing, and also explains why moderation position on it is comparatively “hard”, at least among longstanding moderators (who’ve been exposed to this debate over the years previous). Because someone paid for that feature they’re exercising, there’s a perceived need to defend the right to exercise it as “normal and expected”.
I’m not using this to say that it has to stay that way - in fact, I’m trying to emphasise that the purpose of talking about it is to make sure moderation is calibrated to community expectation. But I found this realisation about “the kind of thing that vacation is” did at least help understand why we are at the current position.
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I feel like there’s some nuance here.
If we want to frame it as a paid feature (and I think this is a useful exercise*), subscribers are paying for the right to go on 4 extra weeks of vacation. Most of us in this thread agree that vacation is a valid feature that can and should be used by whoever has it.
However, subscribers aren’t paying for the right to hold other players hostage in their games. And that’s why I and others are defending the right to resign for various reasons, including stagnant vacation games.
*even though my personal support is going toward (a) AI reviews and (b) existence and maintenance of the site as I don’t really use vacation.
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This seems to be a new concept. What is a “stagnant vacation game” that is different to “use of a valid feature”?
Or do you mean that “vacation games can be viewed as stagnant, and we should be able to resign, while also accepting the right of the person to use vacation?”.
In that case, I don’t think the word “stagnant” belongs. It’s just “a game on vacation”
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Exactly!
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The explanation is that this thread, like so many in the Forums, began as a discussion of one subject and gradually morphed into a different, but related subject, with the two treated as if they were the same. Specifically, it began as a discussion of abuse of vacation and morphed into a discussion of vacation itself, as if vacation were equivalent to the abuse of vacation. The atmosphere is almost like mass amnesia, in which posts and participants are often talking at cross-purposes. As long as this atmosphere, this lack of focus, continues, confusion will reign.
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Yes, exactly this. I was wondering about attempting summarise and possibly closing this discussion. I’m not sure what else could be usefully added!
The cases we’re discussing (player goes on vacation, doesn’t play corr games, does play live games and joins additional Corr games) are likely to be rather rare, or at least unusual, it seems to me. The set within those that get reported to moderators must be vanishingly small - someone who is ignoring their hundreds of corr games finds they won one or two when vacation runs out, will that ever be reported?
And then, on report, likely as not this isn’t a pattern of behaviour and no particular moderator action will happen, maybe some words of advice.
And as we’ve gone round, mods will use their judgement and listen to the players concerned and take a reasonable approach.
So my summary is that the position is:
It’s annoying when people use vacation to drag out games that they are clearly capable of playing more quickly.
It’s understandable that sometimes people need to use vacation.
It’s ok to resign if you can’t or don’t want to continue a particular game for some reason as long as you don’t make a habit of it or do it so frequently that your rank is significantly affected.
Chances are no one will notice these resignations or care about them.
If they are reported, moderators consider each report on its merits, considering the rules, histories of the players and any conversations with them and look to take the best action for the community as a whole. (As for any report)
I hope I’m at least approximately right here and not inadvertently opening another whole can of worms!
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The irony is that two reasonable proposals addressing the issue of abuse were made (not by me) and then almost immediately ignored and forgotten: during vacation, (1) prohibit acceptance of new games and/or (2) prohibit all moves by the vacationer. Personally, I think #1 is very good, while #2 might be problematic, since it would make games even slower because of vacation.
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Well, to be fair conversation almost always turns to what people find interesting, what really matters and/or where real disagreements exist.
Trying to force a boring discussion turned interesting back to its origins rarely succeeds, unless someone actively is deflecting to avoid responsibility or whatever it may be.
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That may well be true, but it doesn’t contradict the explanation I offered. Moreover, confusion undermining the discussion will occur if people do not realize what has happened, as so often seems to be the case.
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Maybe we can get a bot to help us out 
OGS needs a tournament option for custom tournaments to turn off vacation time for the tournament games.
The current solution to write the rules in the tournament and then wait for a mod to have time and feels like it doesn’t work.
this tournament again:
2023 Rounds Survival (online-go.com)
another vacation, now over a week hinders ~190 people to continue.
the rules are clear and the report was made ~2 days ago. The 5 day rule from the tournament is already way past.
With the option to disable vacation for custom tournaments such things wouldn’t happen anymore.
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