@Toadofsky said in #36:
> Far be it from me to come up with every possible pattern of possible abuse, but I'll try listing those which readily come to mind...
>
> 1. A player gets paired against a strong opponent and the game isn't going their way, so they intentionally disconnect. The opponent decides not to take their rating points. Possibly the player has done this against other strong opponents in the past.
> 2. A player gets paired against a strong opponent and the game isn't going their way, so they intentionally disconnect. The opponent decides to claim victory, then the player harasses the opponent both on Lichess and on social media, since the opponent chose not to abort the game.
> 3. A player studies opening traps and eventually meets an opponent who doesn't fall into them. This player then intentionally disconnects, and the opponent decides to abort the game.
> 4. A player disconnects every 5 moves or so to consult with an engine. Upon discovering that they have fallen into a trap, they decide not to return, and the opponent decides to abort the game.
As
@Clarkey mentions, these seem to be edge cases. But even excluding that, I don't believe these are good arguments.
All of these could be said for the takeback and claim draw features as well. A player might face a strong opponent, and decide to disconnect intentionally hoping the strong opponent would claim a draw. They might try some opening traps, and if they don't get the expected lines, request to take back the last move and try a different one.
The crucial point here is that the choice to abort/claim draw or takeback lies in the hands of the opponent. And most of the time, I believe such requests are denied anyway. So there should be no expected gain on average in the long run, and anyone can be able to see that (if not mathematically then practically or using common sense). This is why we don't usually see players abusing the already implemented take-back and claim draw feature. I fail to see why an abortion claim would make things worse.
Of course, I do agree with the UI/UX and implementation overhead. But this is not a complicated feature and should not add much overhead. And yes, I do agree players would be more likely to abort than to claim draw since claim draw affects the rating change. But regardless, due to the above-explained reasons, I believe the effect of abuse should be negligible.
@Toadofsky said in #36:
> There's all of this, but also if "abort" is added it forecloses the ability to add "adjourn" in the future unless we can figure out a UI which doesn't confuse users. Again, I'm not suggesting that "auto-adjourn" would be a thing, but especially for rapid & classical time controls I can imagine use cases where players may wish to adjourn a game; possibly even in blitz if one of the players starts lagging.
Good points, but adjourning is a complicated thing. Best to leave that to another discussion I suppose.