Letting time run out instead of resigning. A suggestion to solve this problem.

#20 No, then people will use that for sandbagging purposes (and it won't work, it'll just drag down their next opponents' ratings). Ratings exist to pair opponents of similar strength.

I like humbll's suggestion (increase loss of rating points for increasing abuse of time-run-out). If people want to lose on purpose to lose rating points (sandbag) they can do it multiple ways already with big blunders or resigning early etc so having one more way to sandbag isn't going to change that, but humbll's suggestion could help with the initially posted problem.

I disagree because rating is strictly for the reflection of a players playing strengh not behaviour . adding any other factor will destabilize the system.

The rating system is destabilized enough by berserks and forfeits in tournaments. This doesn't change much. However, this is useless, people doing this often don't care about ratings.

How about a combo of tactics:

Normal rating loss - 10 points
1st instance of letting time run down - 20 points
2nd instance - 30 points
3rd instance - 40 points plus 1 day ban plus not allowed to play rated games for 1 week
4th instance - 50 points plus a week ban plus not allowed to play rated games for 1 month
etc

I appreciate that there are genuine reasons why a player might leave a game (connection issues, phone rings etc.). However, I find that quite a few player simply leave when the position is lost. While waiting for the "claim victory" pop-up to come up I usually check my opponents "game completion" percentage, and quite often the percentage is below 90%. That strongly suggests that some players just leave the site instead of hitting the resign button when a game is lost.

One solution might be to have a setting that allows you to only be matched with players who have a certain game complete rating. For instance, I personally quite like the idea of only playing people who have a game completion rating of at least 98%.

playing on a pad or phone is hardest. i would like a button just so server could notice. im winning, sometimes near mate or +3. opponents waste all our time hoping for server glitches, or our impatience, when rating means some skill. what kind of chess is that? for free points.. i give takebacks and advise takebacks when my opponent blunders. yesterday i was playing 2 games at once, yet the server said i left the game when opponent waited 8 minutes to choose 2 moves or 1 blunder. i have never left a game on purpose. i would also like a button to quickly switch from move confirm to off quickly. lichess is great, always a percentage of internet people
that need something else to do. Ed

@ftdftdftd Don't give up.
@Toscani Your attitude in this post is perfect for the Lichess community. Go nowhere. Post more often.

@Lichess Admins The only improvement might be to add the following line under the warning: "If this was unintentional, please ignore this warning."

This way we can prevent problems before they start, and people acting in good-faith don't need to be put off by the warning.

@Everyone Else The fact of the matter is, that after 3 pages, there is nothing that improves on the system that's already currently in place, much less substantively.

The only adjustment that might be needed is a tweak regarding the frequency or degree, but none of us are privy to the raw data that would be needed in order to speak as though we're informed on the matter.

@loose_pawn
"One solution might be to have a setting that allows you to only be matched with players who have a certain game complete rating. For instance, I personally quite like the idea of only playing people who have a game completion rating of at least 98%." <- I agree! This is another really feasible feature that would really ameliorate the situation (although I would prefer the one I suggested in the first post of this thread).

@Tantalus @loose_pawn Implementing these parameters will increase wait times for everyone. This is a very big deal and before anyone touches any dials that will increase wait times, it should be proven that the gains are well worth it.

I'm not saying that it is, or isn't, the right thing to do.
I'm just saying that there is a set of data that first needs to be studied and understood.

It seems that half of the work-around would be to add the warning that, "Enabling this feature will increase your wait time for finding games," but that still leaves all of the others waiting, that don't see your match, that would have otherwise selected it.

Definitely an interesting idea...