I was just playing a game on KGS when my opponent left a game with an unfavourable position to start a new game with someone else. I was wondering if it would be possible to make it impossible for people to start new games when they have unfinished games where the opponent is online? Of course simultanious games and tournament games should not be affected by this. Maybe it should also be made so the other party in the game could allow the player to play games anyway. Fx if he does not have time to resume the game ect. To identify the escaper the last player to leave the game could mark the other as an escaper through a popup window. It could just be an addition to the pop-up window you get when you try to leave an ongoing game. Of course this is just a rough idea.

This has been discussed many times ad-absurdum. KGS won't change. The solution for you though is easy - either don't fret over escapers or play on another server.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I do not fret over escapers I just though this would be an easy solution to the escaper culture. I just want to play game I do not care that much about the ranking aspect. Anyway I just play another game.

What if the person the escaper escaped from refuses to resume the game with the escaper? Or just doesn't have time/is in another game/any number of reasons. You could end up forcing the escaper to resign a game because the other player refuses to resume and refuses to allow the escaper to play another game. That's fine if you think escapers deserve to lose their games anyway, but wms and others disagree with that so this idea probably won't happen.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

You can find a discussion about this exact suggestion somewhere in the KGS forum. Hint: look for long threads.

Update: here is one place where it comes up: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=3678. Here is a thread where I propose more or less what you're proposing: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4238

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Occupy Babel!

I think the way escapers are currently managed is pretty fine. If you escape, some day or other the game will be marked as a loss. So, what's the problem? As I see it, as it stands it works very well for my occasional escaping: connection drops. Your connection can drop (which makes you an escaper), you come back and your opponent does not want to play because you were 50 points ahead. And now you can't play? Come on. Also, IIRC, you can't resign escaped games without the other player, but I'm not completely sure. I have one game in my "resume" list and I checked once to see what I could do about it.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

This is likely the most over-discussed topic on KGS although it isn't a bug, but a feature. (You can escape people who write abusive comments e.g. without being punished for it.)

On the other hand there is one really annoying bug on KGS: you can't remove your profile picture, but just change it.

good example is that i had a new account and my first game the opponent and i played 10 min main time. after a few moves he stopped playing for a few mins and when he came back he said he had a call. we played on and i stopped for minute to think on a situation.

he said after 30 secs: "hurry up, don't have all day" which i found rude but i ignored it. i went on and killed his corner when he just escaped and started a new game. i pmed him a couple of times and annoyed him back by using the resume game option to get him back in the game, after a few times he disconnected escaping the game he was already in! These kind of ppl should be punished, not me whose new account is now tainted with an unfinished game. no one will play me on that account again because suddenly i am treated as the escaper while i did not escape!

KGS should mark the one escaping the game so its obvious who of the 2 players is responsible for the unfinished game at least so im not treated in a bad way for playing some random escaper.

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

Agree with stalkor on the escapist/abandoned player marking.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Come on, you already can look whether they have losses by forfeit in their game list. This is as close to a mark you can get. It is obviously clear that an unfinished game alone doesn't tell you anything about who left the game or for what reason every thinking person on KGS is aware of that. And is it so hard to understand that KGS does not want to punish players who flee an abusive player who try to talk people into resignation?

Yes, I know that. But I think marking escapers would be less of a problem than the "damn" ~ mark.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Playing people with the ~ mark is what helps you avoid getting the same mark. So I don't think it is a real problem. I certainly play those players all the time, a marked escaper however would be really damned and quite unnecessarily so.

The problems with marking an escaper in their games list are: (1) the person who escaped may have disconnected but their opponent took advantage of the situation to run away, (2) the two players may have mutually agreed to adjourn and try to resume later, and (3) the escaper may have felt cheated/abused and left the game on matter of principle. In these cases the person who would be marked as an escaper would be unjustly discriminated against when trying to get a game

I think KGS's solution is fine. It assumes that a true escaper will repeatedly run away from games and punishes such people by making all past and future escapes forfeits.

I know it's useless talking about this, but...

I prefer the Tygem setup:
If a person has escaped for 5 mins, you win the game.
If the person d/c'ed 5 times you win.


I can understanding wanting to escape abusive comments, but isn't that one of the reasons Admins are there?
In my experience almost all escapers escape after making a (pretty) big mistake which would probably make you win the game.

On the other hand, my attitude about escapers has become much more chill recently. I now consider any escaped game a way to "level down" my rank. I just resign whenever I want to slow the upward trend of my curve.

It is?

I wonder why... isn't it anyone's decision to resign whenever they want?
Thank you for informing me, but I would be interested in knowing the reason why.

Nevertheless, and this is something that has risen before, it should be every player's right to resign their games. I've been at odds with the admins on this one myself, and I think it's unreasonable to expect players to keep a list of unfinished games in their game list until, and if, the opponent escapes enough games to have them automatically forfeit.

I have known someone who started a new account because he had enough games in his list that he was marked as an escaper even though he wasn't the one doing the escaping.

If my opponent is being incredibly rude during a game, I may well resign just because I don't want to be playing him. Censoring isn't enough, I don't actually want to be playing with someone who's being incredibly unpleasant. That's also against TOS, but I'd do it in real life too.

Don't you see the irony in that?

lol

Well, at least now I know that I need to think of a plausible reason for ending the game if ever an Admin were to ask me why I resigned an escaped game...

I don't. You can escape "politely", tell your opponent that you don't want to continue this game ( plus maybe explain your reasons) and just leave. Resigning whenever you want messes up KGS ranking system, which can in the end affect negatively all players. I think that if this is explained it makes sense… although it could look contradictory at first glance.

This is why KGS takes such a serious view of sandbaggers. They damage the integrity of the rating system. I just wish they would realize that high handicap blitz games also do.