Yeah, I don't understand the thought process.

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be immersed

I think pride and anger are more the issue than trying to game the rating system.

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Occupy Babel!

Excuse me? Are you all mind readers or something? There are many reasons why your opponent may leave that have nothing to do with intention. Kids may be playing and their parents pull them away for dinner. Maybe they are in a library and are getting kicked out. Internet connections do get flaky. People's machines crash. All kinds of stuff happens. And not everyone cares to comment or is capable of writing a message to you in your native language explaining why this is happening beforehand.

My only complaint (more of a whinge, really) is that it takes six months to clear the games from the stored list. 30 days should be more than adequate.

Best wishes.

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No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

Generally, you cannot really escape aggravation by measures enforced on you from the outside, I think.
If your temperament is such that you get aggravated by such unimportant things as escapers, if the system deals with escapers to your liking, you will find something else. I think its just a human nature... this is why I always said that to deal with that is to adjust your own attitude.

Some people want to talk and shout and chat - some want silence (i.e. the EGR fiasco)
Some people want to make funny kibitz remarks, some don't want to see it....
Some people want to be able to escape, some want to force them not to (current issue, very minor.)
Some want more rules and regulations, some want less...

Consider the IGS situation: The have a stricter anti-escaper policy in place, from what I recall, but people were getting so aggravated they had to disable public chat! And now a lot of people are unhappy about that.

People will always find something to get angry about when they want to.

How do you make everybody happy? I don't think you can... so the discussion is only about: "how do i push the regulations which make ME happy, that's all I want."

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I agree that unexpected events can happen, but I do not feel that this is justification for leaving your opponent hanging without giving closure to the game.

If you must go, you do not have the ability to win the game within the time constraints, so you should lose the game. In such a case, I feel that resignation is appropriate.

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be immersed

I think KGS punishes such events rather severely.
I know - I tried. Was not pretty...
Admins were peeved. Brr...

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

QFT

True. However, whether or not other people agree with me, I typically try to do what I feel is right.

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be immersed

I completely agree with that. Aggravation is part of the game (even more so on the anonymous internets), and cannot be solved by means of rules or mechanisms. What I am saying is that details of the current system actively promote aggravation, making matters worse.

Why does the wording have to be ambiguous? Do you think the current system would work any less well, if the popups would clarify the situation and not insinuate that you are doing something wrong if you close a game where your opponent has quite obviously quit in rage (e.g. right after losing a big group)?

More importantly, can you explain to me the importance of being able to join a different game (or do anything else on the server really), when the opponent you just escaped from is still waiting for you on the board? All the heart-warming stories about computers breaking down or pizzas being delivered simply don't seem to be relevant in this case.



While I don't disagree, frankly I don't think that those are good examples at all. Anybody should have a choice of how much chatter they want to be exposed to, and in a well developed system I have rarely seen this to be a problem. Judging by the regularity of complaints about the escape system, I would hardly classify that as a "very minor issue", even if that is your subjective evaluation.

I do agree in general with wms' stance on the matter, just not that it should be beyond consideration. The trick is to find ways to improve the system and make even just a few people happier, without upsetting anybody in the process. It's never easy, but also never impossible.



As far as I can tell I am not advocating for a stricter anti-escaper policy at all, and the more relaxed philosophy on KGS is why it has become my favourite server. This is not just about philosophy though, KGS scores in many ways by providing a better, less stressful user experience. All I am saying is that a few things are amiss and could (probably should) be improved.

I get the feeling that these discussions have been going on for so long, that some people have turned on auto-pilot, defending their corner of the argument without thinking about whether the system could still be improved without changing its fundamental purpose.

The reason this is so important to me is not that I can't possibly live with the situation as it is, but that I am somewhat obsessed with user interface design, and I don't think that its power to affect user behaviour and emotions is given enough credit here. Just because others don't do it better either, is not ever a reason to stop evolving.

It would be absurd though, if one would get punished for resigning a game one has to leave, but not for quitting, refusing to resume, and letting the system do essentially the same thing just with significant delay. If the former is disallowed, the latter should clearly be equally frowned upon?

Joaz said that his opponent was an escaper. I don't know whether he was or not. But since Joaz wasn't making a public denunciation, I didn't think to lecture him about not assuming people are escapers. If he was wrong about that case, does it change much here on L19?

Perhaps that wasn't perfectly clear in my post. But I meant to be talking about escapers in general, and I do think you can make some guesses about their motives. Is someone more likely to cuss you out and insult your skills before suddenly disappearing or before resigning? I can't say for certain that most escapers do it out of pride and anger, but those are common emotions for them. I think some escapers know they're depriving their opponent of the satisfaction of seeing a win.

As far as people leaving a game, it does seem that many people do so because they don't know that they need to resign, or assume that leaving counts as a resignation. I wouldn't really be inclined to call them escapers, and what I say has no bearing on them.

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Occupy Babel!

Fixing this would be a very nice change.

The system is also too subtle about indicating to you that your opponents are available for unfinished games. I have certainly finished a number of games after several days have gone by, but it often doesn't happen.

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Occupy Babel!

I suppose that it could have been a power failure. But it happened just after I made the move that connected my eyeless group, thereby saving it, and simultaneously surrounding his 1-eyed group, thereby killing it. Net profit on the move was 75+ points. Any reasonable person would have resigned.

It could have been a power failure.

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Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

Interesting. Could it be that people used to other servers are closing the window thinking it's the same as resigning?

A long time ago there was a program where someone found a bug that when a particular key sequence was typed, the program would silently exit. There was a short, silly debate over whether this should be fixed. "Hey, maybe people think it's a feature. It's a quick, convenient way to exit."

People see what they want to see. If you want to see escapers everywhere, you will. If you want to see communists everywhere, that's easy, too, as history has shown.

In that case, more like defenestration of laptop. Point taken.

That's the theory--seems like it's definitely part of the issue. It's been discussed on the forums before.

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Occupy Babel!

From my experience with similar issues in other games (and user behaviour in general), I can guarantee you that this is the case. The only thing protecting against this is the popup message, so if somebody is in a rush or can't read it for whatever reason, they will happily close the window.

It is also possible that people press the quit button on the main window, expecting the same thing. There is no helpful popup in this case (I recently pressed it by accident, embarrassment followed).

It is not an unreasonable assumption that quitting a game (which is not the same as disconnecting or crashing) is equivalent to resigning.

If I don't want to listen to somebody, i censor. If I don't wont to play (or cannot win anymore) I resign.

Even though I don't really care about this one way or another, a thought just occured to me!
And that thought is that PlayOk server has a pretty good way of dealing with escapers.
Here is the system:

During game, when one person disconnects, the server start counting like 3 min or so (can be more, can be less).
During this time, here is what can happen:
1. Missing player returns - game continues with the old timer.
2. Missing player does not return, he loses, period.
3. The waiting player leaves - game gets nullified and does not show in the record for neither player (although this can be easily changed to 'adjoured').

There is no perfect system, and whatever you do there will be fussing and hurt feelings. The above system is no exception.
But this way, at least, the decision lies with the player who did not disconnect.

Taking into account that unpredictable connection problems will become less frequent as time goes by and technology reaches more parts of the world, I would say this is a pretty decent system.

Anyway - maybe this is what most servers use, I never paid much attention. If the system is common, please forgive my ramblings. Just trying to be constructive for a change.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!