Am I the only one who thinks that there should be an option to cancel game offers?
This seems rather basic for a go server.

not changing the settings is one thing but i would think if i told someone not taking my challenge again its rude doing it. Its polite to accept his wish thats the way to deal with this situation. The OP have the choice to do this its not an auto challenge. To force someone to change his settings is not right. You could ask if he didn't know how to do this or just let him be. But it could be that he just don't want to play this OP and i think canceling a game is a sign for that, so it's clear that you take it like: Okay then we don't play, your problem.

I guess blocking someone from the Server is a big thing and i think that it was not only for accepting the games.

Regardless of whether the Xylol is right or wrong, regardless of how he acted, moderators/admins should always remain polite and professional. It really doesn't matter what the user did or said, moderators should not lower themselves to that level. That's just basic professionalism. Your comments and actions as a moderator of OGS impact how OGS is perceived. If you are rude, it reflects poorly on OGS, regardless of the circumstances.

That is an accurate interpretation.

My interactions with moderators/admins have mostly been pleasant and positive, but there have been exceptions. Whether you want to consider that a compliment is up to you. Would you buy a car if the reviews said that "the brakes on this car work most of the time"?

Arguing with a moderator who is telling you to desist has a high probability of getting you booted from any server. We tend to be looser and more forgiving on OGS. So if someone has been banned from OGS for a reason like this, you can be certain that they argued long past a reasonable state of discussion.

In this case, the moderator did turn to sarcasm to cope with the nonsensical and reptitive argument of the OP before hitting the ban button. He summarized the OP's argument with "I can, so I should" (which I remember thinking was rather accurate) and then added that he wished trolls in general would apply that concept to jumping off bridges. (I admit to laughing out loud here.)

When a moderator says something to the effect of "cease and desist, or I will be forced to make sure you do," it isn't a "threat." It's a warning. Warning problem users is part and parcel of a moderator's work. Ignoring the warning leads to banning. Copy/pasting perfectly normal private admonishments into main chat is considered a blatant ignoring of said warning. Hence the ban. Of course, we see this kind of trolling on almost a daily basis. It's amazing how fast it gets old. Even so, we tolerate a great deal.

Had the OP emailed immediately to the address he considers beneath his dignity and apologized for failing to cooperate with the moderator, his ban would have been lifted immediately. It seems the OP choose this ineffective route instead.

I should also note the feature to block users from accepting challenges is really new. Maybe a month or two, so not everyone knows about it yet. It was one of the top requested features because of users like the OP.

-tinuviel
OGS moderator

There can be many reasons for wishing (or disliking) the feature. Has each person wishing it stated to wish it because of this and only this reason?

In this thread, I see by far too many assumptions conveyed as facts. Administrators and moderators (of a server) should not make assumptions that cannot be proven.

IveBeenBadButIPromiseToBeBetter@online-go.com contains another unproven assumption. Somebody having been treated wrongly by the server admins (e.g., being a third person victom of an IP ban) is treated badly again by telling him to have been bad already in the email address.

Without any need, OGS discourages new people from using OGS at all because they have to expect bad assumptions made about them.

The philosophy of running OGS seems wrong. - Welcome people instead of treating them badly by making bad assumptions about them from the beginning!

Herman, I see what you mean, and I assume that we agree that striving for the ideal is a Good Thing™, but let’s remember that people are beings, while cars are things. I have yet to learn about a human whose actions and communication (= also actions) are, or have been, “stellar”, ALL THE TIME. (Not even the so-called “saints”.)

A car has to be maintained regularly in order to work safely, so I will take my little car to the service station next week.

Humans need to communicate and exchange their views on things in order to, so the mod team on OGS (of which I also am a member, though probably the most “lazy” one) “meets” on several channels and discusses the situations and members they encounter. They have their ethics which they try to meet — and <gasp> develop. It happens that moderator decisions are revoked if a “perpetrator” — or suspected perpetrator — talks to them (without just bursting out in insults) and explains their perspective, convinces them. Sometimes those complaints are not convincing, and while this, of course, is totally subjective, keep in mind that the mods talk with each other and try to “intersubjectivate” (since being “objective is impossible for any subject). The main goal is to keep OGS a friendly place for ALL players. Yes, they must be careful that they don't develop a “cocoon” syndrome, a mindset of “us vs. them”, and this needs … maintenance by the users, i.e. communication, exchange that does not “blame” but rather “suggest”, and as far as I can see, the OGS team is open to this. Remember, ALL of the team are amateurs in “people handling”, none of them, AFAIK, is a … therapist, social worker, psychotherapist or … priest, politician, military officer, sales expert or pimp yet “social intelligence” is not an alien concept for them.

There was more I wanted to write but it’s getting hot again, I need to get some work done, and I have forgotten what it was …

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

It is an assumption to assume moderators operate off of assumptions, since we have access to a great deal more information than the average user. We actually have a feature voting system (uservoice) AND we have received many written requests that are not all publicly available citing that exact reason for requesting the block user feature.

It used to be that our only option was to ban an uncooperative user for actions like the OP'S with regard to repeated accepting of challenges as a form of harrassment. We were glad that the block user feature would allow such users to continue to play on OGS. As such, I had thought that OGS was rather welcoming of a wide variety of player, even those who can be somewhat trollish, but whose actual play isn't a problem. Indeed, had the OP not continued to argue the validity of continuing to harrass the other user after he was asked to stop both the harassing (politely, the first couple of times) and the arguing, the OP wouldn't have been banned. A simple "okay, I'll stop" would have saved a lot of trouble.

Also, innocents getting caught in a banned user's banned status is really rare, and on the two occasions it's happened, they've emailed without problem.

Even so, the devs are working to improve how specific problem users are banned to further minimize the chance that an innocent newbie gets caught up.

And bonobo is right; as a team, we constantly review decisions and actions taken. We try our best to leave everyone as free to play as possible, and to provide recourse to players who have had action taken against them. Of course, if a user chooses not to use the recourse available, it would be unethical for us to assume contrition on his or her behalf, considering how the other users may suffer as a result.

-tinuviel
OGS moderator

Probably an example of not so "stellar" interaction: https://forums.online-go.com/t/why-does ... clock/4111

I thought I was alone in thinking this was quite a nasty wart... Lovely moderator 'response' too.

I'm away, can't move. My clock should be stopped, period. My opponent is not away, if it is his/her turn, he can move, and should do so. Isn't it easy?

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

Hi tinuviel,
I believe that you guys are trying to do well as admins, and perhaps you take care in exercising your authority. Perhaps you make good decisions most of the time, too.

So maybe you can justify your actions. That's great.

But I think it's also useful for an admin to shield his or her emotions from users. As Herman noted, you are upholding the reputation of the server.

Consider the following quotes from this thread:








This type of rhetoric naturally makes people feel bad. I don't know the specifics of each of these situations, and maybe most readers here don't either.

But either way, this type of tone doesn't leave a good feeling.

Now I'm sure that you guys have reasons for making the decisions that you did.

But rhetoric is powerful. When people get a negative vibe from the messages you are writing, it doesn't matter who is right or who is wrong. People remember how you made them feel, and this, in turn, affects how people view OGS.

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be immersed

Seconded, Administrators seem to acquire an unfairly bad "rap", when most of the time they are at least making logical decisions which shouldn't be scorned as illogical. But it only takes one misplaced word...

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Certainly, that way of acting would've gotten him arrested in real life, eh?

But yeah that was a bit shocking. I certainly can't imagine that any L19 moderator would lock a thread just to protect their own opinion.

On the other hand, here on KGS these kind of argumentative threads tend to drag out for pages and pages. I fully expect that in two weeks or so, maybe more, we will keep seeing new posts added to this thread, and will think "Are they still really talking about THAT?!"

I can understand the impulse to kill it while it's young.

I'd rather let people vent their frustration (in a civil manner) through discussion than to stifle that discussion and force them to find some other way to vent that frustration....

Of course, that's just my opinion, and unfortunately I don't have the mod powers to enforce it.

I'm not saying I would like the forum to be more restrictive, just saying I kind of understand. But I have been on many different forums, and it's just a fact of life that some are more dictatorial than others. (Sometimes it's a real culture shock when you end up on one of those forums where the moderators' primary focus seems to be not to allow any discussion at all.)

Tinuviel thank you alot for paraphrasing.

Could you please help me out one more time and paraphrase the admin calling me an idiot after he banned me from the server? (the chat is public but i forgot to take a screenshot)

Is it normal on OGS to call banned persons idiots? If it is not normal what consequences will there be for the admin?

Come on, Xylol … I ain't going to justify that if it happened so … but … you do know as well, as anybody, how we all are human, right? And how emotions boil high in a fight? I have lived long enough to have acted like an idiot many more times than I’d like to admit, and far too often to feel insulted if finally somebody called me so

I think we all strive towards ideals. I for one have, by my own measures, failed more often than succeeded.

“Bloody bastard called me an idiot” — “Bloody idiot called me a bastard” …

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Sweet, good design!
Still, I took an issue with the proposition that it was the OP who was cancelling games.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

crodgers response to Herman's vacation post is disgraceful. I am disappointed to see that as OGS added real time play like KGS it also added the rude mini-dictator admins like it too. Is crodgers aware that Herman was simply asking for the "silly" and "ridiculous" behaviour OGS happily had for years before the Nova merge?