I think the reason people are annoyed by this is due to the fact it's very unsportsmanlike. If it were an otb club game (which is a valid anology, lichess is like a large scale online chess club, the games are rated against other club players, and we have divisions based on clock times, much like any club would) it would be akin to seeing that you've blundered into a lost endgame or a forced mate or lost your queen or whathaveyou, and then rather than offering your hand in resignation or tipping your king or the like, or even abandoning the table in disgust (which is also unsportsmanlike) you rather just sit there with your arms folded looking at your opponent for 20 minutes while your clock runs out. The difference is, since we're online you can actually abandon the game for another game while actually still sitting at the other board. So it's more like if you sat there at the table with your clock running and pulled out your cell phone and played Angry Birds on it while your opponent must sit there and wait for your clock.
In a club, this would never fly, obviously. On the internet, being a bad sport is easier. However, all the ridiculous ideas to try to solve this issue via coding are absurd to me. As I stated earlier in this thread, this is a community problem, and something that must be handled by the community itself. We as a community must find a way to discourage such bad sportsmanship.
#19 TheNaphtali
You agree it's discourteous and annoying and yet you don't see a problem with it? I can't see how to reconcile those two things except to wonder if those that defend this behavior would be the ones that are prone to doing it themselves.
It's highly annoying that someone gets to waste my time by having me sit there and wait for the clock to run down just because they are mad they lost. This is such poor sportsmanship and a lack of maturity. Of course, I don't have to just wait for them. I can go to another tab or program or grab a drink or something, but it's still disruptive when I'm in the mood to play chess.
#21 static_shadow
Why are my ideas ridiculous and absurd? This seems like pretty strong language to use without giving any specific reasons why they wouldn't work.
Also, the lack of specifics for this approach of "Community discouragement"? make it difficult for me comment on that as well. Are you referring to LM AdmiralA's idea of putting notes on their profile page? It seems to me that this method would be labor intensive and prone to abuse by people that might put up false notes because they have some kind of grudge against the person or were angry because they lost a game or for whatever reason. Also, I don't want to have to research prospective opponents like I'm hiring someone for a job when all's I want is a quick game of chess.
Sweetheart it depends on your definition of chess. If it's to sit there, sip some tea, play God Save the Queen, and smile courteously while you give your opponent a gentlemanly shake of the hand, and a tip of the hat, then by all means go ahead and attempt to fix this. As for my definition of chess... Chess is WAR. Only thing that matters to me is wins and tactical firestorms that involve dropping the hammer so fast and hard that it leaves a dent in your forehead.
I just don't see why anyone should care. They're giving you a win. Take it and move on to the next game. That said I guess I haven't truly experienced this yet as I play shorter time controls. What do you usually play?
LOL, chess isn't tea and crumpets to me, but on the other hand it isn't turning yourself into a vegetable staring at a ticking clock either. By all means hit me with your firestorms and dent my head with your tactical hammers if you think can, I'd love it, but DON"T make your opponent dent his own head out of frustration because he has to sit there and watch a clock tick down wasting his time that he could be using for more productive things.
It's not even giving him a win either, because people who do this usually do it after they've already lost the game. And even if it was 'giving you a win' is that the kind of win that you would want?
BTW you can see what kind of time controls someone plays by simply mousing over their name and then each time setting and it will tell you how many games they have played in each.
LOL, chess isn't tea and crumpets to me, but on the other hand it isn't turning yourself into a vegetable staring at a ticking clock either. By all means hit me with your firestorms and dent my head with your tactical hammers if you think can, I'd love it, but DON"T make your opponent dent his own head out of frustration because he has to sit there and watch a clock tick down wasting his time that he could be using for more productive things.
It's not even giving him a win either, because people who do this usually do it after they've already lost the game. And even if it was 'giving you a win' is that the kind of win that you would want?
BTW you can see what kind of time controls someone plays by simply mousing over their name and then each time setting and it will tell you how many games they have played in each.
#23 I wasn't referring to you specifically. I said I find 'all' the ideas to implement a solution via the lichess code are absurd. This is why I say all such solutions are absurd: you can't force people to be nice, and an attempt to do so would completely violate the ideals lichess is founded upon.
Promoting good sportsmanship isn't a matter of implementing systems that penalize players for taking too long to make a move -- I've had times where there's a hiccup on the server and it never shows me that it's my move until I refresh the game. I did not disconnect from the game, I did not intentionally let the clock run down, yet I would be penalized by any form of automated system and marked forever as a bad sport for a connection hiccup? That just isn't a reasonable solution, because no matter how many safeguards are in place, innocent people will be flagged by it and now have an unwarranted stigma.
This is also a potential problem with leaving notes on players' profiles - i.e., innocent players will be marked with a stigma they didn't deserve due to some particular people or teams ganging up on them with notes. The other potential problem is - as you mentioned - no one has time to go view every opponent's profile before playing them. Match selection isn't a job interview.
What I suggested to Clarkey awhile back is what the League of Legends community did to promote better sportsmanship many years ago. They implemented a fairly simple reward system, where after a match players could vote someone a point toward one of 4 badges. Suddenly players were trying to earn those badges and stopped being tools all the time. Sure, that sort of system could indeed be abused, but if the only way to award someone a point toward a badge is 1) after a match you play against them concludes and 2) you can only award a single player a single point, and 3) it takes quite a number of points before a badge is awarded, I think it could work. However, this idea was pretty well fizzled in the dev chat, so I don't expect to see any such thing implemented anytime soon.
Which is why I didn't provide specifics about how the community could solve their social issues - it's a social problem, and it must be solved socially by the community finding a way to promote sportsmanship. If all the solutions that involve the devs are destined to be shot down due to potential abuse or the likeliness of punishing innocent users in error, then all that is left is for the members to somehow take it upon themselves to promote a more sportsmanlike environment. How? That I don't know.
#26 static_shadow
I appreciate that you weren't directing that to me specifically but since you said all such ideas are ridiculous and absurd that would include mine? To be clear, I'm not asking because my feelings are hurt or I want to defend my position but instead to find out if there really are any problems with my ideas which will allow me to refine and improve them. So I very much welcome any constructive criticism(other than just calling it absurd) and I'm now going to enjoy reading the rest of your post to see what you have.
"you can't force people to be nice"
That isn't the goal. Again to be more specific, which is the key to effective communication, the goal is to reduce the frequency of times people refuse to move and let the clock run out as a result of a lost position. That's a lot different than 'forcing people to be nice'.
"yet I would be penalized by any form of automated system and marked forever as a bad sport for a connection hiccup?"
Absolutely not. I took great efforts to stress this in my post. But since the point still doesn't seem to be clear let me re-emphasize this now. There is NO WAY you would be officially flagged as a "clock sitter" for what you described. It's just not going to happen. I listed a number of safeguards against this in my post and there are others on top of those I can think of that would absolutely prevent this from happening 100%!! For example, an additional measure, might be that software at both ends(client and server) can detect when there is a connection problem and could set a note NOT to flag you for this. If you've ever seen the little red warning near the top that appears when you have a connection issue then that demonstrates that the software CAN detect connection issues, otherwise how did that red text appear? So no flag of any kind against you for this. But, even if that wasn't the case there are other safeguards that would prevent you from being labeled in this way. As I said in my previous post, you would only be officially flagged/labeled if it occurred under certain conditions, such as if you had just started to loose/blundered. In that game that you spoke of is it the case that just before the connection problem your game started to tank? If not then that would rule out your being flagged in any way right there! Even if you have bad luck and it had and this occurred a few times, that would not be enough. It would have to happened FREQUENTLY. In other words it would have to occur X times in Y games, and the developers could set that to a high threshold. So if this didn't occur enough times in one time period(a week for example) then the INTERNAL flag count(which no one can see anyway) gets set back to zero and you have a perfectly clean slate! All these safeguards would help avoid false detections at the cost of missing some legitimate ones. But to borrow a phrase from the law, better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent one get convicted. And that's why I did stress this in my post. So if you really are not guilty of this then you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Relax :)
Everything you said about the 'profile notes' system I'm in complete agreement with . I was even going to mention that about the cliques and groups of people that inevitably form in such systems. Believe me, I've seen this first hand :P That's not to say that a report button has no role in this at all, but it should only be to augment the automatic detection system and its effect should NOT be publicly visible.
While I applaud the spirit of your last paragraph -some nice sentiments there- I have to disagree with most of what it assumes to be fact. I've gone over the idea of false flagging and how it's a non-issue extensively already so I won't mention it again. It seems to me it's more of an individual problem then a social one. By this I mean there are certain people that probably do this type of thing over and over accounting for the vast majority of such incidents. There will always be people like this, because as you say you can't force people to be nice. This is especially true on the internet. It's just a matter of detecting them, providing disincentives to discourage the BEHAVIOR, and when possible mitigating the inconvenience with technological tools such as the 'claim victory' button so that the rest of us can get on with doing what we came here to do- playing chess.
The type of people who let time run out would simply create another account or find another way to be annoying if somehow stopped by coding. When someone does it to you, think of it as the last resistance of a little small minded ego kid. Take pleasure in the fact you played so well that you made your opponent try to annoy you in revenge for you annoying them by winning. If it happens to you so much that you cant stand it , be more selective in choosing opponents. In fact, you are chess player, find your own way to deal with the few minutes of time being wasted by the ego kids who cannot handle defeat. Chess is war, we can fight as warriors or like baboons :)
Uncrowned, I understand that you stressed the fact that safeguards would be in place. I understand you stressed the fact that the intent is to have a high frequency to really only target consistent offenders. I'm saying that no matter how many safeguards are in place, the fact remains this is an automated system to deal with a social problem, and in that sense, it's trying to force people to do something that isn't technically in the rules through some form of punishment (i.e. a flag on their profile).
Nothing is 100%, there will ALWAYS be an innocent caught up in the mix...for instance someone who comes here, has no idea that is a "rule" on this site, drops matches expecting them to time out automatically to move onto another game, gets labeled with a stigma, and then comes to the forums wondering why he can't get a match. It's trying to enforce behavior -- perhaps not necessarily "trying to force people to be nice," but I meant that as a metaphor -- that is not an illegal behavior. The system you propose, no matter how great you might feel it is, attempts to force people to play by a set of rules that is not covered within the standard rules of chess. So, I must, for the sake of brevity, continue to consider these ideas absurd. That, however, does not mean I don't find them to be a noble pursuit. I think sportsmanship SHOULD be a rule. However, until lichess adopts such a policy, these sorts of efforts will continue to fall flat. Perhaps that is what I also meant by a community effort...i.e. the community would have to work toward making such a rule.