Lost on time due to Lichess server restarting?

Just a venting post really. Was winning hands down against a stronger opponent, when the Lichess server restarted. When it came back, I had lost on time.

I got the 'Lichess will restart in 10 minutes' notification after we were already a few moves into the opening (5+3 blitz). Shouldn't games that get interrupted by a server restart be counted as aborted/draws, or is there a reason why that's not a good idea?

In future, should I just offer the opponent a draw as soon as I see that the game will be interrupted by a server restart? Or is the accepted practice to just shrug and move on?

Dear Suryanaren,

This is a very serious and grave issue that you raise here that could potentially question the foundations of the online chess playing community. It was a courageous decision to post such a polarising and radical opinion and question to the community.

The underpinning questions implicit in your "rant" that concisely and precisely points out structural reforms that could paradigmatically change this platform are whether restarts that occur on this platform should affect the players' ratings. Just because the arbitrary points awarded to you are imaginary does not mean you need to be deprived of it by the very same system that created the very same points. Trust me I completely resonate with that feeling.

Every single point is needed to rise up in this cutthroat hierarchy, and those few points that you lost you will never get it back for years, and this platform being free and providing you with almost seamless functioning otherwise, cannot and will not be an excuse for this behaviour.

However, you are not angry with the system, it seems that you are more confused about what is considered appropriate behaviour on this platform. Well on this matter I think the community is quite clear. Do whatever the fuck you want. Except of course hack into the server for personal vendetta and that sort of shit, basically anything illegal. And if you really want the points to impress your friends or other people just lie about it if they are not on the lichess platform, otherwise tough luck. it is not like your skills are going to suddenly diminish because you lost a few points. This is how I would approach it :)

Best of luck next time, hopefully, you might get a restart when it is your opponents turn and you will make a few points yourself.

:)

@bhartrhari uh dont curse on lichess
and @suryanaren maybe dont play games when the lichess restart warning shows up

My opponent already resigned but I got no points due to restart!

@InkyDarkBird I think I mentioned in my post that the Lichess restart warning showed up after the game had already started, which meant that I would have had to resign and lose points if I wanted to avoid the restart.

@bhartrhari I didn't post to the forum to hear these kind of smart-alec responses to a genuine concern. As for your statements - these rating points are not imaginary, they are very real and allow me to set goals and measure my progress. I was frustrated for a whole day by this undeserved loss and lost my win streak which impacted my confidence. But as a player with a barely 1400 blitz rating, I don't expect you to understand any of this. Perhaps chess is just something you do for fun, like most users here, but this site also caters to those who take these things a tad more seriously.

I see Lichess refunding points lost unfairly to cheaters - is this situation that different?

I see we have played some games together on Lichess in the past, perhaps you didn't recognise my username. In any case, your response was a waste of space, time, and energy which told me nothing more than what I already knew. I'd suggest you dedicate more time to the game instead of attempting to school people on the forum in philosophy.

Lichess needs to have server restarts and updates and there's nothing you can do about that. I think the best solution would be for the updates/ server restarts to be announced hours before so that no one starts a game at that time. There will, however always be some people who play at that time. Offering a draw seems to be a reasonable thing to do. Also, 10 points or however many one loses from that game can easily be gotten back with a bit of work.

@VihaanDumir I agree. Announcing them around an hour in advance would be helpful I guess, so that perhaps only classical+ players would be affected. But then again, it hasn't happened to me that often - it's just this particular game that was a bit annoying to lose.