This confuses me. Do you feel that you have the right to modify the result of a game just because you personally don't like your opponent's behavior?

Do you feel it'd be OK to do this in a tournament? Maybe your opponent is playing his music too loud. Does that give you the right to get a no result in your game?

A qualified yes. If my opponent was being sufficiently awful in a face to face game, I'd walk away from the board*, and I wouldn't think of it as a loss, and there wouldn't be some ticker that kept track of it and lowered my rank and raised his because of the incident.

Of course, none of the antics I've seen on KGS have ever been approached by any real life opponent of mine. And you know what? If anyone acted like some people act on KGS, they wouldn't have people escaping them, they'd be known and they wouldn't get a game in the first place.

As for an opponent who played his music too loud at a tournament (I assume you mean open headphones or something), I wouldn't walk off. I'd just have the TD make him turn it down.

* If the better angels of my nature won out. I must confess, it's always possible I'd get in a big ugly stupid argument with him.

A qualified yes. If my opponent was being sufficiently awful in a face to face game, I'd walk away from the board*, and I wouldn't think of it as a loss, and there wouldn't be some ticker that kept track of it and lowered my rank and raised his because of the incident.

I also don't get why people care so much if their opponent escapes in a casual online game. Escaping is slightly bad mannered, but IMO its no worse than those who resign after the endgame. I'd take five escapers over a single game terminated prematurely by a timeout system like on tygem.

Tournaments are serious business. Casual games are less serious. In a way, you could see the kgs policy as partially outsourcing policing to the users. It would suck for the admins if they had to be involved in every single personality clash. A td has signed up for that mediator/therapist role already.

I don't really see the distinction you are trying to draw. a TD has signed up to direct a tournament. An admin has signed up to administrate a go server. In both cases those are jobs where you hope that there is not disagreement, but your job is to settle it if it does occur. What would admins be needed for if there were no disputes?

Does that seem like a reasonable distinction to make? Casual games = playing for fun = casual attitude towards the outcome of games = the guy in charge doesn't need to be the final authority on every little thing. Tournament = playing to determine a winner = strict attitude towards the outcome of games = the guy in charge is always the final authority. Certainly there are always disagreements in life, but which types of disagreements need to be settled by a higher authority depends on the setting in which they occur.

Rated games are meant to be serious games where player's strengths are tracked

for a large proportion of players, winning is everything. Being denied a win (by an escaper) is much worse than a "false" win obtained, even from a lost postion, by timeout. In fact a win on these terms is perhaps even more satisfying for the rank/win obsessed player.

I don't really see the distinction you are trying to draw. a TD has signed up to direct a tournament. An admin has signed up to administrate a go server. In both cases those are jobs where you hope that there is not disagreement, but your job is to settle it if it does occur. What would admins be needed for if there were no disputes?

No. Admins are not there to act as referees.

There seems to be a belief that the KGS escaper policy is preferred by those of us with poor connections. I strongly disagree. I think it encourages the non-escaping player to leave, immediately, when one's connection dies.

If even a small percentage of connection problems can be remedied within the time allowed, that's better than losing 100% of your disconnected games because your opponent leaves immediately.

I got disconnected and came back literally within 10 seconds (maybe 5), got back into the game, and my opponent left a few seconds after seeing me re-enter the game...
I guess I won't lose these games because I haven't been disconnected enough times...

For clarification: If you opponent left after you had already reconnected and reentered the game, they are the one marked as an escaper, not you, so there is nothing to worry about. Any time both players are in the game the "escaper" flag is reset.