If you are getting absolutely crushed and your opponent loses their internet connection (say the power goes out), should you get a win? That seems more bizarre to me.

It may also discourage sandbagging by helping to ensure that ranks stay relatively accurate.

BaronGossettEulerPhD, the bots on KGS do not run on KGS hardware. They are functionally/technically equivalent to you or I. They log in to KGS and play games just like normal users.

No.

I didn't defend that position either, but it is certainly more understandable that the leaver might get an undeserved loss than whoever wanted to continue the game.
If that was implemented in Go servers the easiest way to increase our ranks would be to just study the fuseki. We would play 40 moves "optimally", get an advantage and then leave, let the bot play the rest.

I don't think that having the bot play the rest to absolutely determine the outcome is a good idea until the late endgame, at the very least. If one were to go with a bot (a dubious idea) I think it might make more sense to require a predicted win by a certain score, which could go down as rank increases and which also would allow games to be voided if the result is not clear. Say a 50-75 point win for beginners and working down from there, on the assumption that as one gets stronger one is less likely to make very swingy mistakes?

EDIT: The size of the required botplay win would probably need to change depending on how late in the game it is as well.

Just to be clear, I also don't think that this is the best solution for this, but it is A solution for those who complain that they are cheated when people abandon games, or that escapers need to be disincentivised.

Speaking of programming skills: I don't know why, but a nice exercise comes to my mind:

Write a program that determines for the L19x19 forums:
1. How many posts does it take (on average) in a thread after the first appearance of the string 'KGS' until the string 'escaper' appears?
2. And what is the percentage of threads where this does not happen?

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

what makes you think you've been labeled the loser?

I think the Escapers issue is the equivalent our "Hitler" in a the lifein19x19's version of Godwin's Law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

We can set it up like

"As a discussion about KGS grows longer, the probability of talking of escapers approaches 1"

Well, what if you were losing?

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Occupy Babel!

The game isn't over until both players pass or I resign, those are the rules of Go. If I'm losing I'll either give up or try to come back, an action of my opponent can't decide which one it will be.

And do those rules mention the time system?

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Occupy Babel!

Timing has nothing to do with this. Internet play brings a whole new problem not considered before. The only equivalent of a dropped connection would be someone walking into a live game and abducting one of the players. You are being prevented from continuing. Automatic adjournment with the chance to resume once you've returned is the only fair choice, but it's too easily abused.

I've yet to hear a better solution; maybe something like automatic adjournment, with the caveat being the inability to play ranked games until the adjourned game is completed (if the player who automatically adjourned the match upon disconnection cannot resume play with the opposing player, moderators can intervene).

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Sincerely, Chad R. Sobodash

Yeah? Adjournment has to be agreed upon by both players (each player gets to ask for adjournment once per game). Otherwise, the disconnected player loses after 5 minutes. End of escaper discussion.

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

I've come to this conclusion, too. I don't know why more people don't agree with this policy.

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be immersed

It looks like this discussion has drifted away a bit. No new server can "solve" the escaping issue, only provide a different solution. Still, if you express your opinion on it and other topics, then developers can at least know what things are important to people. But, again, it`s only about choice: I`d like to have alternatives to KGS, and still to have KGS!, but there will never be a perfect go server.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

My point is that he's talking out of his rear when he says "the rules of go." The rules of go are either the basic rules (alternating play, capturing, scoring a completed game), in which case, they don't say a thing about the process of ending the game. Or they're something like the rules of a go server or tournament, which can have all kinds of procedures surrounding timing, adjudication, respectful behavior and so on. The latter kinds of rules are determined by consensus, voting, tradition or what have you--there's no impartial authority on what those rules should be.

If you don't like a particular way of resolving a game that someone leaves, that's fine--you can argue that your way is better than mine*. But don't pretend like you're just saying what the rules of go are. You're expressing a personal preference about how to handle a competition. It can be better or worse for various reasons, but you can't settle it by talking about what "the rules of go are".

* I don't think the bot idea would work that well. It can only reliably score games that are already unbalanced, it probably can't score strong players. But it's a nice idea, even if it doesn't work.

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Occupy Babel!

Perhaps, but SpongeBob's solution is the best solution

The only argument I've *ever* heard against it is that on KGS, you have the option to "not play with people you don't want to play with".

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be immersed

For the sake of argument, you're playing a 30s byoyomi game and meet a player who refuses to end the game and plays inside his own territory and your territory for a while. What do you do?

Personally, I think it's fine to 'escape' in this case. Should I get a loss? It sounds like you think so. Would I take a loss, yes. I don't want to waste time I could be playing a good game.

I don't like SpongeBob's solution, because abandoned games can skew the ranking system, intentionally or not. Of course, the counterargument that not counting abandoned games will skew the system is also true, which makes me think that the ideal solution is to remove serial disconnecters from the ranking system. Beyond that, I think that most of the people who get angry about escapers now will also be angry about them if they are awarded a win, though I may be wrong about this.

Is not! Is too! Is not! Is too!