feature request (or discussion): flag rude players

Most of us ran into players who think that it is a good idea to use online chess to take their bad moods out on other people without consequences.

The administration's advice is to block them. This is a pretty good way to deal with this, except you still run into more of them, since it is difficult to block every abusive person that is already registered or will register in future.

I played on playchess.com through Fritz a few years ago, and they had a flagging system for abusive behavior. I think it really discouraged it and made playing more enjoyable.

As far as I remember, they had 5 choices: abusive, questionable manners, neutral, good, very nice (i don't remember the exact wording). So, if chess.com were to implement it, it could be similar to giving a trophy. I think it would make sense to wait until there are 5-10 evaluations to avoid abuse of the system. Then some kind of a symbol would be shown near player's nicknames (like ?!), so that you can tell what other players thought about the person challenging you before accepting. Of course any evaluation is subjective, and what is questionable manners for one person may seem charming to someone else, but if 50 people think that someone is rude, then he probably is. On playchess.com most people didn't have any evaluations, only unusually rude or nice players did, and I think it worked quite well.

So, what does the community think?

I agree, simply blocking rude players isn't enough. They need some sort of deterrent, otherwise, they'll move from harassing you to harassing the next player. Ignoring the problem by disabling chat or blocking the person doesn't actually remedy the situation. I've blocked players, ignored them, disabled chat and somehow they were able to leave nasty notes...

they will just close thier account and create a new one...

Kco: you are right, but at least in correspondence games there is an option to challenge only players who alredy played a certain number of games.

Also, people with paid accounts wouldn't want to close their account.

The best way to tackle this menance is to simply ignore their comments and move on with ur games lest they keep on changing their ID's and continue with their rude/abusive/insulting behaviour..

Chess makes one's mind strong so let this mental toughness be cultivated in each and every player by simply showing ur maturity by not reacting to such adverse situations in life Anna.

Well, in 3 years on playchess.com I didn't encounter any rudeness, and here in less than 3 months I ran into two that were really horrible, I'd be happy if they would disappear. A couple others I just didn't like, so I'm content with just blocking them so that I don't have to play them again. Blocking feature is very nice by the way.

Also, I'm more interested in having a good time, relaxing and enjoying intellectual side of chess than engaging in psychological warfare. I'd rather cultivate toughness in real life.

I posted this because I ran into some mildly questionable behavior yesterday, nothing huge, but annoying. So, I searched forums for other people's experiences, and it seems that there are lots of threads on this topic, but I could not find any feature requests.

The same is true of cheaters, but it's no reason not to pursue and eject them.

You missed these ...

sportsmanship-meter

sportsmanship-rating

chess-playing-style---new-indices

complaint-against-unsportiness

rating-opponent-sportsmanship

 Yes I know that, you and I see this thread happening quite often even I put one up.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/too-easy-to-join-up

Thank you artfizz. I liked the second link, but I could not find any info about what the administration thinks about this.

I'd rather call it 'manners' instead of 'sportsmanship', to make sure that people don't give each other poor evaluations just because they have different ideas of good sportsmanship, manners are somewhat easier to understand.

To my knowledge, this system worked well on playchess.com. If anybody had any problems with it, please share it with us. As far as I remember, you could give at most 3 evaluations a day, which, as I understand, helped to avoid abuse of the system. I don't know how well it would work with correspondence  chess, but with live games most people tried to use their votes wisely.

Patzer24 (staff) wrote:   We were thinking of developing some kind of "sportsmanship rating" where after a game you can rate the sportsmanship of the opponent during the game and then when you are considering starting a game with another player you can check out their sportsmanship rating from previous games so that you know what you are getting into. Of course there are some down sides to this such as a person purposely giving you a bad sportsmanship rating after a game despite you having good sportsmanship during the game.    Ref.: complaint-against-unsportiness   7th February 2008

There will be less consensus than you think on what constitutes 'good manners'.

Erik's (original) take on this ... rating-opponent-sportsmanship ... in 2007.

Player conduct evaluations are used in xbox live and boy some people really do use it to bear grudges.  Human nature being what it is you cannot reasonably expect anything else.

 this idea was started 4 years ago...... sheez.

Thank you.

If I didn't miss anything, they thought that the sportsmanship thing is a good idea several years ago, but never went through with it. I will think about it for a few more days and decide if I want to contact them about this or not. As I already said, I personally don't like the word sportsmanship, because there are too many conflicting opinions about it.

If anybody has more input, please fell free to share.

One way a rating scheme could be made to work is to calibrate everyone's reactions beforehand e.g.

So a person who considers disabling chat as bad [behaviour] will mark someone down for that, whereas a person that considers disabling chat as good [behaviour] will mark someone positively for it.

This removes the subjectively of good and bad assessments!

I think this would be a good scheme for some kind of a chess matching service: you fill out the form, and it gives you a list of ideal opponents. I feel that most of these have more to do with individual style than with manners.

I am more concerned about giving verbally aggressive members some feedback, and warning the rest of the players.

My problem is that sometimes in late evening hours I don't want to open my CC games that I am winning, because I am not particularly interested in what some middle aged retard may have to say about me, and I don't want to lose my sleep over that. Another good option would be to be able to turn chat off in all of my games at once, and then to turn it back on in the morning. Maybe we should request that instead. ;) I am sure that great majority of my opponents are wonderful people, but since I don't know most of them personally, and there is no 'niceness' rating, I have no way to tell which ones are bad.

As for subjectivity, no matter what we do we will still be subjective. I know that if I lost a game I am more likely to give a bad evaluation for a small offence, and if I won I may let it slide even if it was more serious.I am hoping that with large number of votes all subjectivity will average out. I expect that people will fool around with these ratings for a few weeks, but eventually they will get bored and start using them sparingly and with an effort to be objective.

I agree with you Anna. Interesting considerations. I think the simply thing to do is playing ignoring abusers. I like to chat with my opponent, I'm positive and open person, but if a player is rude with me (or sarcastic) the first game is the last one with him/her  Have fun! 

People's behaviour here is merely a mirror of society... you can implement systems and functionality, but at the end of the day it comes down to letting ppl talk to you - or not. If you select the former you'll always run the risk of getting somebody abusive. 

I'd much rather see a setting where I can avoid players with high lag  automaticlly, especially when playing 1 min games. THAT is something that really annoys me. You wait 20 seconds for a move then YOUR time is up... That is a main cause for my anger ...and possible rudeness :o)~~

About ppl being rude in general... well, my advise is: get over it. It only 'works' if you let it get to you.