It's already epideminc on Lichess with people aborting games at the start just to start another one in 5 seconds if they don't like the first move (if they are black) or don't like the opponent for whatever reason.
It wastes time and skews the rating pool. Why not implement rating points penalty for an abort. Just subtract 5 points for every abort and the problem is going to disappear overnight. Or maybe if that seems too extreme allow for 1 abort per week and after that every subsequent one results in -5 points.
I think the situation won't improve by asking nicely or remote threat of temp ban. Subtracting rating points will have immediate effect.
this could result in sandbagging
I agree I have had the problem with playing a higher rated player(like 2000+) they just abort.
>>this could result in sandbagging
If someone wants to sandbag they will just lose games on purpose or make a new account. It's not something you can do anything about. Why would anyone do that anyway? Lose rating to play weaker opponents? Doesn't sound like fun :)
i say they remove the feature itself
#1 I regularly gain or lose hundreds of rating points in a day, so rating point penalties won't work (unless you're talking about thousands of points, but that would deflate the entire rating pool including your rating).
Take points away from the rating that's displayed to the user (but everyone else will see the unaltered rating). If they ever go a week without aborting more than x% of their games or something, send them a "Thanks for your good sportsmanship! Rating refund: 25 points."
rating points are not a reward, taking them away is not a punishment. they are a quantification of skill. if you add or remove rating points for any reason other than a change in player skill, you are doing something wrong, and it will lower the quality of skill matching, which is the entire point of having rating points to begin with.
if you want to do something about people aborting games, im all for it, just dont mess with rating points, because that is not what it is for.
imo, just give them suspensions. you abort too many games? you cant play for 24 hours. continue aborting? increase the suspension time exponentially each time. second offense is a week, third is a month, etc. if they just dont learn, then eventually their ban lasts a year, so they self-remove themselves from the playerpool. of course, along with this, have some kind of forgiveness, like 1 abort/x amount of time is forgotten, such that players who change their behavior are not punished for old mistakes forever.
>>rating points are not a reward, taking them away is not a punishment. they are a quantification of skil
But many players treat it like this. Some abort games to maximize their rating.
I think what you described is idealized but just doesn't match reality. Many (maybe most) players care about the rating and treat it as a reward indeed.
If we treat abort as a loss then it doesn't really mess with the rating either, there is just some probability you lose after 1 move because of your internet habits and that's reflected in the rating.
#9 Once
github.com/ornicar/lila/pull/4034 is merged (after successful testing) it will become harder to abuse the rating system, since in order to keep a low RD a player will need to play opponents with low RDs. (As for what's considered a low RD versus a question mark, that too may change over time.)
