People won't resign

About half of the players that I beat leave the game without resigning. Shouldn't there be a bigger penalty for this behavior?

There should be a big penalty for abandoning a game. It is especially annoying when each player has 30 minutes. It is a lack of courtesy to abandon a game.

Lichess' programmers... they prefer to cling on to an indefensible position, protecting leavers. They won't give up:

<< How to let a computer distinguish between games that have been abandoned on purpose, and games which are temporarily unintentionally left (e.g. for connection issues, this happened more than once to me)? >>

Two answers:

1) Every time a leaver hits any button to leave the game, just DON'T LET HIM. Yes, it's that simple.
2) If a player has connection problem, that's HIS problem, NOT his opponent's! Just resign him after 30 seconds and that's it. Lesson learned, next time he's going to wait till his connection is ok, then play, without annoying other players and playing better chess himself.

<< Also, how to be sure that the game is abandoned until the very end? >>

Because the player is OFFLINE! If he is online, just let him be. Amen. Those are a tiny minority of leavers.

<< Sometimes people disconnect and then start playing again with few seconds left, and I guess this should be allowed right?>>

NO NO NO! These people are the worst type of cheater: when they get themselves into a losing position they simulate being offline, than come back at the last moment hoping that their opponent is distracted because he is tired of waiting, so he lose on time instead of them! These ones should be BANNED! Of course, if Lichess stopped protecting leavers, these type of cheaters wouldn't even exist. Lichess creates them, by forcing fair players to undue waitings.

All this has been said here countless times. I've seen this twisted logic affecting many programmers: if they can't reach the mathematical certainty to solve 100% of the problem, than they won't do anything to solve 99%, even if they easily could.

So here we are, always reading those ridiculous warnings, the wrong message in the wrong place: "If you quit without resigning, you'll be temporarily banned". I would like to meet the genius who had the brilliant idea. The insult after the injury. Hello?! C'mon guys, there's only one player here left to read your useless warning, and HE IS NOT the one you're talking to.

You are exaggerating, really. Half of the players? That is nonsense.

And why be so angry? You never lose more time than you agreed first place to use on the game. Sure, if you are 1 move away from checkmate, it is a very unfriendly behaviour not to finish it. Of course that annoys me, too. But really, be a little bit more patient. Sometimes the internet connection sucks, and that is not the fault of the player.

"Insult after the injury" ... Godness me @Mark_Iorio ... The programmers are not too stupiid to recognize that the person to whom the warning is destined won't read it. It is a sign for the remaining player to assure him the fact has been noticed and will have consequences in due time.

"The programmers are not too stupiid to recognize that the person to whom the warning is destined won't read it. It is a sign for the remaining player"

So, if "they are not stupid" as you say, can't they write a correct message in English? If their intention is how you describe it, then they should address the message to the remaining player instead, telling him "we have warned your leaver of the moment". But that would be not true, because they never send any warning to the leaver's message box. THAT is what they should do as a warning, instead of annoying correct players adding - de facto - insult after the injury.

"One can leave games in ways beyond programmers' control"

So what? This is exactly the twisted logic I was talking about in my previous message: "if I can't catch 100% the birds, let the other 99% be free". Just inhibit all the ways you can control, and that's a lot! Hit any control to leave the board in the app or the browser and you get a "Resign? Yes/No" question. Answer No, you get back to the board. Yes, we all know, one can still quit the app or the browser, then you start a 30 second timeout and then the opponent wins. End of the problem.

"this quite restrictive cutoff will likely damage "innocent" people with genuine connection issues."

Not 'innocent' people. Selfish ones who pretend to discharge *their own* connection problems on their opponents. If you have connection problems DON'T PLAY. De facto, these people pretend to alter time control in a chess game.

"Online or "OFFLINE!" doesn't play a role"

Yes it does. Online leavers are an insignificant minority, of course because it's the leaver himself that is wasting his time also. And you can't tell a "green leaver" from a legitimate thinker. Again, that's one out of 100 birds you won't catch. That's perfectly ok, while you catch the other 99.

"because they never send any warning to the leaver's message box.". Yes the message is sent to the offender of course. The same message is also sent to you so that you know that you know the problem has been noticed and if the offender keeps on doing that he will be banned.

You choosing instead to believe the devs went to the trouble of implementing the detection of the problem only to in the end "protect the leaver" and do nothing about it is just yet another crackpot conspiracy theory.

You can look at the code for yourself: github.com/search?l=&q=RageSit+repo%3Aornicar%2Flila&type=Code

I sometimes navigate away from the lichess window to skip a track on my music player or glance at an email or something. I'd find it incredibly obnoxious for the website to stop me from doing that.