I support the proposal to count all timeouts as losses.
The current system aims to address a problem, but since it creates an opportunity for players to escape losses, I think it actually creates an even bigger problem.
With all timeouts counted as losses, you’ll occasionally get the noise from a player inadvertently losing a bunch of games that they were winning.
With the current system, you’ll get noise whenever a player decides to abuse to system to escape a bunch of games that they were losing.
Either way, you’ll have noise in the rating system. However, with the second case, the noise is not just happening randomly, but rather by design from players exploiting the system, since it actually incentivizes players to inject noise. There might actually be more rank corruption caused in the current system, depending on the scale of people exploiting this feature to artificially boost their rank.
I think changing the system to count all timeouts as losses might also make people happier. I think more people would feel cheated by a player escaping to invalidate their win, than occasionally getting an undeserved ratings boosts from timeouts.
I think concerns about long-term rank drift (inflation or deflation) are mostly irrelevant to this debate. Drift is possible in both systems and could possibly be insignificant compared to other causes, such as the default rank for new players and how provisional ranking is exactly handled (i.e., the system needs to be non-zero-sum to account for the possibility that the actual average player skill also might drift). The only way to address long-term rank drift is to periodically evaluate the situation and make adjustments.
Make it a player’s decision… display someone’s “[games unranked due to serial timeout] / [correspondence losses + unrankedTimeouts]” and you have a metric indicating if someone is abusing the serial timeout system to avoid losses. The thing is, even if they do, they should be propelled to ranks they can’t handle and eventually just start losing every game. Of course since it’s correspondence that effect might take 2 years to crystallize.
I do appreciate the effort to provide the extra context. My point however was to avoid speculation and look for ways to close off the discussion. Topic over trivial matter had grown to more than 60 posts already thanks to the digressions.
I suppose I’m trying to create a perspective, where rather than rationalising current solution the burden of proof of validity sits on proponents of the house rules.
I just won another game by time out. It is the 5th in a series of time outs for that guy. It says the game is “ranked”, but it’s there any way to know if it is counted? If under the current rule it is not counted, shouldn’t it be marked “annulled”?
Hi, Andysif. The way I know is by watching my rank when I get the blue notification, clicking refresh, and my rank should improve for the win; with serial timeouters, my rank does not improve for the win. If you didn’t watch it closely and at that specific time—you only get one chance to see it—likely you didn’t notice that you didn’t get the rank bump. I think most people don’t even notice their lack of rank bump for the “win”.
As you state, we still get the “Win by Timeout” notification, which is salt in the wound if you’ve played a long game and chosen ranked as an agreed upon commitment since the very beginning of the game. I’d wager that, if “Annulled by Timeout” was sent by OGS instead of win, as you appropriately suggest, there would be a huge outcry to change the unfair rule immediately from dozens and dozens of players. You’re right, annulled is what is essentially occurring, even though you did exactly as you agreed upon when you took the game, and you just spent days to weeks on that game.
Frankly, that’s part of the issue: since it’s not obvious that one’s rank did not change, the cheaters can continue the ploy indefinitely. For every player than knows the rule and blocks that opponent forever, there are many players that are oblivious that they’ve just been “had” so they welcome new games with the same opponent, allowing the opponent to not only clear their “Recently Timed Out of a Game” badge, but also so they can “rinse and repeat” the dishonest process.
This is the part I hate most in the whole discussion, even more than the rule itself: the fact that it is not clearly pointed out. It is not printed in a Rules or FAQ page. It is not marked in the game result box. Not everyone goes to the Forum. You can even say the Admin is trying to hide it.
If you thinks you are righteous, then states your points out loud for chirt sake. If you have to do anything in a secretive way, then I will see it as unjust and scandalous.
What’s the purpose of the current system anyways? To protect the rank of a player that suddenly timeouts of many games consecutively? If these players never come back, why does it matter? For those that do come back, I suggest that a better solution would be to handle these on case by case basis, and potentially allow the moderation team manually fix their rank.
I support the suggestion to clarify which ranked games have no impact on the ranking system. Such games should be clearly labeled as “Annulled” and I think reporting the outcome as “Annulled by Timeout” is a good suggestion.
I’ve had a glance at game history of the chap who timed out on you.
I’ve played the guy and lost 3 out of 3 games
In the context of this thread he’s not a serial timeout offender.
Over the course of 2 days he timed out 10 times. He is now on vacation.
I reckon he became unavailable for whatever reason and just forgot to go on vacation in time.
I recently went away for 4 days to a location with no mobile reception and only intermittent wifi. If I hadn’t remembered to set my vacation on I may well have a number of timeouts.
Specifically regarding the game that you ‘won’ with him… With respect you were both only 28 moves into the game and it would be too early to say who would have won.
Looking at some of the other games that you ‘won’ by timeout… One of them didn’t even start, another game, dare I say, looked even when the timeout occurred, one game had only 10 moves, another just one move, etc, etc
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Look guys, sure, I appreciate the feelings of being ‘robbed’ of a rank increase in a game where you are clearly leading and to have your opponent timeout near the end. It sucks but you really do just have to move on and treat it like the game never happened. It’s happened to me and I done it on some of my games. And certainly never deliberately.
I can remember long ago (I think on the old OGS) feeling very pleased when on the rare occasion a higher ranked player timed out on me because I got a very nice undeserved rank boost!
Well If you REALLY wanna know you can scroll up in this endless thread where I tried to explain or just send me a PM and I will try to give you a short version.
I think this thread has gotten way out of hand, is no longer usefull to anyone, and I will probably close it soon. Kosh had a nice idea in another thread that might be a good compromise Automatic Vacation After Multiple Time-outs (Correspondence) - #8 by smurph we will be looking into that one. For the time being you will have to make do with the current rule. I am sorry if it is bothering you a lot, but we are convinced that it is way better than the simple alternative.
we are not really hiding it, as we are still lacking documentation alltogether. But on the other hand, since we know that the rule might be misusable maybe not showing it too obviously is a good thing, since less people will be tempted to do it.
So is it official or just your understanding? The whole point of this thread was to get an official statement from the mods, and here you say that there is a official position, but it’s not stated anywhere. I think just having it phrased out clearly, ideally with games marked as ‘Anulled due to timeout’ was the ask, wasn’t it? No changes required.
Any subsequent games that time out in correspondence are not counted towards player’s rank. That I can now say officialy since it is coming directly from the dev team. (To which I had no access before and was only guessing at that time). We are aware of the community feedback on the matter and are looking for alternatives but for the time being the rule stands. And reversing it to where all timeouts are counted is not an option. (and I agree with that decision - don’t hate me for it )
The rest is just me being cheeky as usuall (hope cheeky is the right word, I am lazy to google )
I was asking this question rhetorically to make the point that the current system works to the benefit of those that serial timeout, either accidentally or intentionally, at the expense of those that play normally and commit to avoid timing out. I have seen your argument above, but find the counterpoints discussed above more convincing.
Please do not close this thread. I think its size and level of activity indicate how much people care about this topic and want to actively engage on it. I believe people are mainly trying to: 1) seek clarity about what the system is, and 2) offer/debate proposals for improvement. I disagree with your assessment that this discussion is no longer useful. If you wish to relocate the discussion to some other thread, please advise.
I do like that proposal, and that would help out people that accidentally serial timeout, but I’m not so sure that it will address the issue of intentional timeout abusers, unless other changes are also made along with it.
How about having the ‘consecutive timeout streak’ end as soon as a move in another correspondence game is played?
Then a player that is really timing out of all his games both winning and loosing, because of not being able to play for whatever reason, will not loose his rank.
And the time-out abuser that lets only timeout the games he is losing, can no longer abuse the system because he needs to keep on playing the games he is winning. And as soon as he played a move, the next timeout will count as a true loss again.
@mirreke 's proposition is by far the best I’ve seen in the thread. Easy to implement, gets the job done, everybody’s happy kind of solution.
Just keep track of last activity date for the player (whatever the last activity would be, it can be most recent move, most recent login - anything @anoek finds appropriate) and then compare that last activity with previous timeout when deciding if another timeout should be voided.
You could still game this by orchestrating all games to timeout roughly at the same time, but it would be way more difficult than with current system. Additionally a little buffer could be added to make it even more difficult, for example “last activity needs to be at least 3 days before the most recent timeout to void another one”
Crikey, which discussion thread to post this on, there are so many threads talking about the same thing!
Can someone point me to a bona fide serial timeouter?
I’ve glanced at Tongue’s game history and this is my assessment for what it’s worth…
LulluFu has had 2 timeouts in 250 games.
SuzieKyu - I don’t really think she’s a serial timeouter
JadahKRush - ok a bunch of recent timeouts but really? Is she/he a serial timeouter?
cassidoo - I don’t think she’s a serial timeouter
Ingrid is certainly not a serial timeouter (and she was winning!)
Ovudra timed out 4 moves into the game - a number of timeouts in the game history but really??
Shades - ok a number of timeouts in last 50 games but a random look shows games too early in the game. If this guy is a serial time outer… well I really don’t care
Word Office Assistant - 4 timeouts in last 200 games all spread out.
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I’ve played around 2500 games on OGS since 2009. I’ve mostly been DDK and I’ve never once felt that the issue of a serial timeouter was something to be bothered about. In fact it’s only come into my consciousness since reading these threads about it.
What I do know is that in the days when timeouts affected rank, it was no fun to lose to an opponent who was significantly lower than you because of a spate of timeouts, to then have your own rating take a hit.
Sure let’s come up with some code to implement a system that allows timeouts to count but somehow allows for all the problems that it creates to be mitigated against, but… lets leave it as it is!
There is no need to scour our records to check if we are “robbed” of a game. For the record I never claimed I was winning those games. BUT, even if it didn’t happen to me personally, I am sure if I ask all the players who have been robbed of to list out their records it will probably flood the page. Would you like to see it?
This is exactly the problem I found when I started this thread. That guy was timing out some of the games while playing others. (Not saying he was losing those games though). Guess he must have hated my avatar then. Your suggestion will probably make him think twice before timing out.
we are not really hiding it, as we are still lacking documentation alltogether. But on the other hand, since we know that the rule might be misusable maybe not showing it too obviously is a good thing, since less people will be tempted to do it. 
The whole point of this thread was to get an official statement from the mods, and here you say that there is a official position, but it’s not stated anywhere. I think just having it phrased out clearly, ideally with games marked as ‘Anulled due to timeout’ was the ask, wasn’t it? No changes required.
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This seems like an eminently worthwhile and easy to implement suggestion. Just a change in the flag condition.