NPW,
Rating is determined by wins and losses. You may be disappointed by time forfeits and players resigning, but they are still wins.
You may feel that you don't deserve these wins, but your rating reflects your playing strength. At your level, many players resign without realising they could still save the game. Novices should not resign their games, but play them out. That is in order to help them to learn the game, not because of any rating difference that may occur.
You do show a real problem with the rating system though. New players should not be assigned ANY rating. They should be UNRATED. That is how Mark Glickman, the creator of the Glicko rating system this site claims to use, set up the rating. After four games, a player should be given a provisional rating based on his or he performance.
I have posted similar comments about this in the general forum but I think this forum is more appropriate and I hope a staff member will reply.
As a new member I am really enjoying the site and think for what is on offer it is great value. One of the things I want to do is to see my efforts of work and study slowly rewarded with higher ratings. One of the problems with the rating system is that I keep winning rating points because players either don't finish or even resign when the game is far from over - in one game i was only up two points and there was no mate in sight and my opponent resigned.This inflates my actual real rating and prevents me knowing where I am and whether I am actually making progress. I would like to suggest that new players be offered the option of starting at a rating of say 1000 and also that when a game is timed out or there is an early resignation you have the option not to accept any change in rating. I know that in the long run things will all sort themselves out as individual games become less significant in the overall scoring but it is frustrating meantime. I just want to get to an accurate place and things are conspiring to stop that!