Leavers: autoresign, timeout warning, temporary suspension, anything.

Just a few weeks ago, a couple of times, with my great pleasure I saw a system warning appearing in the chat window right after seeing yet another "leaver" leaving without resigning. The warning said that leaving without resigning would result in a temporary ban. Then I thought to myself: "Finally, they got it, halleluja, they are doing something against these lazy selfish people who can't even press a button to resign before quitting their loss games, who don't care wasting their opponents time."
Then... stop. Not anymore. Leavers keep on leaving, no autoresign, no victory claiming option until 2 or 3 minutes passed (in a 5 minutes game!). Why?
I checked a couple of times what my leaver of the moment was doing after leaving, and I found him on TV already playing a new game, with a new opponent, while his time with me was still running. Why does Lichess allow that?
I tried chess.com just to check how they are dealing with the problem and I found a nice 30 seconds autoresign feature. Why can't Lichess implement at least that?
But I don't understand, it would be so simple: while you're playing, you tap the back button, or any other function that let you leave the board, and you get a warning: "If you leave, you loose the game right now. Confirm?"
Please, Lichess programmers, do something. I like Lichess far better than chess.com, but I'm tempted to move there just not to waste my time anymore on leavers. Thanx.

I never had someone waiting for the time to run out except when playing without being logged in where it doesn't really matter as much, you can just resign and play another match.
The current system is fine, you can claim victory if the opponent is inactive for a couple of minutes. 2 or 3 minutes like you said is fair. It is possible for the opponent to avoid it by keeping the tab open and checking it once in a while I think, but very few people would do that and you can just report them.
Only once my opponent waited a long time for a very obvious move, we exchanged rooks or something like that. I really thought he was just trolling on purpose, but there's no way to know and he did play his move after a while. Maybe he had something to do IRL or had technical issues, who knows.

About playing another game, I don't know, last time I checked it wouldn't let me play more than 1 game at once unless making a simul.

@flutters1 I'm surprised you haven't experienced this - for me about 10-20% of my opponents do this. Perhaps because I mainly play classical games?

My strategy for dealing with people who keep the tab open and let the clock run is to give them extra time, so if they want to wait it out, they'll have to waste 40 minutes of their own time doing so, or more depending on how I'm feeling

I almost exclusively play 10+10 rapid. As for giving them more time, well, if you don't mind having to wait really long then that's ok I guess. But you never know, maybe they can wait it out for really long too and then you're just wasting your time. I think just waiting until the clock runs out and reporting them is the best way to deal with them. You're still wasting time, but not as much and you get a guaranteed win and they get punished for it. Avoid talking to them as much as you can because they probably like getting attention.

> 2 or 3 minutes like you said is fair.
No, it is not. For one simple reason: there is no reason. It's just rude to quit a game without resigning, you have no right to waste your oppoent's time. This is a long standing issue here, I see.

> My strategy for dealing with people who keep the tab open and let the clock run
That's not the problem. Problem is when people quit intentionally without resigning. They grey out and leave the game, with the clock running.

2 or 3 minutes is fair because there is no way to really know if someone did it on purpose. Maybe it's just connection issues, maybe the browser crashed, whatever. Immediately ending the game would be a terrible idea, 2 or 3 minutes of waiting time is really not that much to ask. Anyone can have connection issues or unexpected crashes so giving them a bit of time to come back to the game is reasonable. The warning is pretty clear, if someone does it often without coming back then that person may get banned.

Also intentionally letting the time run out is worse than quitting because you may end up waiting 10+ mins instead of 2 or 3.

> No, it is not. For one simple reason: there is no reason.

So if your connection drops for 20 seconds, you should lose the game even though you were winning and had plenty of time left? Obviously there has to be some limit, but 2-3 minutes is a perfectly fine compromise.

@tulir instead of autoresign, the system that is currently in place, in which the opponent decides whether to win or draw the game, or do nothing, is quite good, so if you know you're losing and you are an ethical user, you will not claim victory.

> 2 or 3 minutes is fair because there is no way to really know if someone did it on purpose.
That's not true. when the player taps or clicks his way out of the game, the program knows perfectly well, and should issue the "keep on playing or resign" warning.

> The warning is pretty clear,
At the moment, there is no warning whatsoever.

> Also intentionally letting the time run out is worse than quitting
That's unavoidable, because one has the right to use his time to think, and there is no way to tell a thinker from a quitter, if the game window stays open. That's not a problem, at least not a reasonably solvable one.

2 - 3 minutes in 5 min game is way too long. There's no reason to keep opponent waiting for your reconnection for over 30 sec. If that means you lose a won game then start another one.