Vacation Time: Let's be honest with ourselves.

It seems that my attempt to inquire others opinions on a particular feature of this site has somehow failed for the most part. With the exception of a few, most responses have been made towards me and not the feature in question.

"Now for the opinion: I think the way Vacation Time is being used by some members deters others from playing or continuing to be a part of the Chess.com community. Especially when you leave a Chess venue, (go on vacation) your clock doesn't stop and you may lose the match.

Opinions anyone?"

Perhaps I should have worded my post differently. Perhaps I should have typed: "Is the allowance of vacation time on chess.com a justified rule?"

The best answer was given in a list of USCF Correspondance rules, which I did not know, and that certainly justifies the vacation time rule hear.

Now, the second part of my inquiry (does it deter people from playing) is also met with this same answer. People should NOT be discouraged from playing based on this accepted rule AND the fact that a player can use such a time to his/her advantage.

To those few who actually answered my original post, you have my thanks.

To all others, my appologies for the lack of clarity.

yeah.  but I think all those questions would have been Fails too...

fact is , opinion threads- where the OP is asking whether chess.com does something right almost always devolve down into insults towards the OP.

chess.com doesn't really seem to care what the community feels about policy.  so expressing it, doesn't make any changes and people that DO play widely on chess.com have clearly at least adjusted to that policy.

I know it doesn't sound sensible to asking for an opinion should incur a lot of hate, but perhaps you've not been on the forums for a long time.  its either jokes or hate.  the third alternative, is the "this is the way things are" and that obviously isn't what you want when you ask for an opinion.

Its the interwebz, and we all know what sitting behind a monitor, not actively enganged in one to one physical interaction can do to people.

Yes congratulations to my opponent who over the course of 12 months and 22 holidays has won the majority of boards. The one remaining game is in the 13th month. On no occasion did his holidays fall on anything other than a tough position. The remaining game will have to be played by multiple generations of my descendants. It's not less a win, but is considered to be strange behaviour by everyone on that site. I never thought that one board would take the better part of my life. That's what it took for him against my 5-20 minute calculations.

An upside with vacations for me, the way I use or abuse it, is that it allows me to have more games going simultanously with ok quality of play. I can have 20-30 games now, and play ok. If there were no vacations I think ca 10 games would be the limit for me personally.

And your opponent is allowed to use his time as he sees fit.  

I honestly don't surf the forums. There are only a few that I really follow. So, in that regard, I must plead ignorant. But hateful content is not what I or anyone should expect. And what Diakonia implied, what some people become by sitting behind a monitor, is absolutely true.

This is a strange comment for a staff member, as the pattern I'm stating shows clear evidence that these were not holidays at all. Contrary to the rules of both that site and this one. Diakonia also locked both forums I spoke in for no reason for a few minutes and now they are unlocked. So what really is Diakonia's point.

You can take vacation when its not a holiday.  

I meant that if you read the site rules, there is a sentence within that says you will not go on holiday specifically for that reason. Though we all understand there's no way to prove this, Such deviants will be known by all. That's what this forum really is. It means we know your a bum, but such a thing can't be moderated. It's simular to raising a pinball machine in the air to effect the ball.

We all know and understand that people abuse theie vacation.  But to just make blanket statements doesnt help or resolve anything.  Stuff comes up, family emergencies, etc.  My point is that while we all know vacation abuse happens, sometimes stuff unexpectedly comes up, and making unfounded statements dont help.  The site rules also state to be nice :-) but we know that doesnt always happen either.

Anyone, literally anyone who reviews those boards will not find this unfounded. Furthermore it is not the intention of the forum  to put owness on the site to do something after the fact. Another site gave some thought to this a said you must scheduele holidays a week in advance. However, since it's seven days a move he could still do this. So if for example a holiday was only possible during the opponents move and had to be schedueled a greater number of days in advance than the time limit, it would eliminate this. He originally timed out on every board with no moves. Because I had claimed wins on time before, he thought to accuse me of waiting on the edge of my seat to claim time, but I waited. At that site it's generally accepted that everyone will allow a double time out to keep tournament scores honest. See better heads make better sites. The knock against this one is that instead of fielding those ideas you will wave your arms around and shout at people to stop finding anomallies to fix. I'm not invincible you know. I guess I struck such terror into him that this is what he did. My point is I can do it in a championship regulation amount of time.

Years ago paying members were able to accumulate something ridiculous like 90 days worth of vacation. I wonder if it's still like this.

In conclusion, this site is relying on hit's on the top domain name but then suppressing problems, delivering no customer service, and pouring revenue into it's sales pitch. It's not the worst site ever but this is considered to be ignorance of the fact that we're not ignorant.

A bunch of [Edited for language - Mod.] should take precidence over reasonable people and their ideas and that's what these forums are for. Now where indeed would you ever go if that were not the case kaynight. 

kaynight I demand you resign against me in every forum. It's embarrassing. Somebody should at least be able to mount some kind of defence. You're a slab of meat in there.

Paying members have some priviledges. I think it is logical.

Yes, max accrued vacation for Diamond and Platinum is still 90 days.

As a disclaimer,  if you are on v2 my icon is not correct and I'm not staff (it's something for v3 preparation), but I wanted to say that Diakonia is correct when mentioning players can use their time as they see fit.

The actual implementation of vacation and auto-timeout protection mean that it does not have to be used just for actual vacations. I have used it in the past for times when life just got in the way or I was too busy and I couldn't dedicate time to finalizing my thoughts on a chess game. Others do the same and that is fine.

What is spelled out in the rules is that vacation can not be used to prolong hopelessly lost games. In such cases players have the option to open a ticket and staff can decide if a player is abusing their vacation. It is possible that could be used if a player is just using vacation to prolong a few of their games on purpose, maybe ones that are lost but not hopelessly, but that would be a judgment call.

I think you're horsing around, Sir knight....

BTW, Happy "Kaynight could have said it but didn't!" day.  June 29th.

tomorrow I'll be back to my normal, banal humor.

Please Do, Sir knight!

it would be Oh so much my luck to Reach the media at 11:59pm ---

MIDNIGHT!