The concept of temporarily locking other games is certainly ingenious - but the precise model you propose needs refinement. If you have a tough game position that you want to think about - and perhaps that opponent is offline, would it be right to force you to neglect your active, online opponents in order to service an offline one? It would be like a shopkeeper dealing with an email order and ignoring the actual customer he is in the middle of dealing with.
Timeouts
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my kids had giraffe limbo a few years ago it was too hard ,i hurt my back
dommo wrote: my kids had giraffe limbo a few years ago it was too hard ,i hurt my back
That would be a case in point. The C25: Vienna Game: Giraffe Attack might be sufficiently unfamiliar that such a game would call for deeper analysis. Putting all other games in limbo until you had resolved it would be a little harsh. The organisers of this site would be sticking their necks out with such a drastic customer-controlling policy.
You already get penalised for allowing your games to timeout. If your timeout ratio exceeds 10%, you are barred from most tournaments. This mainly arises if you timeout a whole swathe of games - perhaps due to loss of internet access - or failing to set vacation mode.
What would be more desirable would be a smart sanction that discouraged people from procrastinating 'lost' games - or a smart reward that encouraged them to resign in this situation. One possibility would be to use Member Points as a reward. For instance, if you resigned within a day of your last move, that could be rewarded with 3? Member Points. (This would not apply to 1-day games.)
A variation on this smart reward, in tournaments, would be to gain tie-break points for early (within the same timeframe as previously discussed) resignation of 'lost' games For any particular game, timing out impacts more people within a tournament than outside it.
Chessroshi suggested: ( http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/chesscom-feature-requests-and-wishlist-3?page=7 )
What would be really great would be an arbiter option for tournament games with a time control over 3 days. You could make it a rule that any game where one side has a rook advantage (pawn value of 5+ on computer eval) or higher can claim a forced win and have the game decided in their favor by chess.com. There is probably too high a game count for this to be practical, but I think it would really lower the amount of people who drag out lost positions in hopes of annoying their opponent into resigning.
We are basically talking about integrity here. I've never understood cheating in games. I am the composite of all I do. If I cheat in any way, the game means nothing to me and the guy I see in the mirror is somewhat smaller. I'm not a fool, but at 61 years or age, I still don't get it.
I hate the idea of the arbiter. Just let the idiots time out if they're too afraid to make a move in a lost position. Or if they're stalling, let them agonize over the loss for that many more days. Every time they log in, they'll see that big red "My Move!" next to a game which they know they've lost but are stubbornly refusing to play, and it will be yet another reminder that they lost. If they want to wallow in that and drag it out in a game they're playing with me, then I say let them. I'll be relishing the victory every time they finally make another move.
To offset contrived timeouts why don't we force moves as follows:
After a timeout period the game goes into "limbo". The player is allowed (say) 12 moves on other games, but following those any further move is refused on any game until the game in limbo is addressed by either a move or resignation.