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On Mar 7, 2013, at 8:42 AM, “Jason Flatford” <forum-3257@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> Michael White
> I don’t think I’d worry about penalizing the person who leaves without dropping, but I do find it discourteous to the person who they’re supposed to be paired with who is likely only sticking around because they want to play.
>
> I've never seen it done, but would anyone have an issue repairing two players with similar records that both have no-show opponents? Obviously, this is going in the opposite direction, where we were trying to avoid extra work, and now we’re creating some.
>
> …

Jason Flatford:
>
> I'd strongly suggest against this suggested course of action.
>
>
I tend to agree here. I do suggest if there are multiples beside each other they can play each other for fun. Explain they win the round and they still get to play some magic. Granted if it is only 1 match then it really does not work though.

Thanks
Ryan

Originally posted by Jason Flatford:

I'd strongly suggest against this suggested course of action.

In addition to the reasons Jason named, both of these players “have won”, or at least so they feel; repairing means one of them will lose that match and feel like a win was stolen.

On the other hand, I always try to do this ‘unofficially’, even at the Grand Prix level; if two players both end up with a match win at the 40 minutes mark, after the paperwork, I will tell them there's someone else with the same situation and they can play for fun against each other. (And they then do that quite often.)

I also just write ‘no show’ in the drop section of the slip, and fill it out 2-0 for the non tardy guy. If the scorekeeper is someone I'm not familiar with, I generally ask if they have any issue with it and so they understand what they are going to see.
I have never had one disagree, unless the event is small and the SK just wanted “the practice”
The warning for tardiness is important because we can give it to the player and educate, and use it to enforce behavior. The Match Loss for no show…well, we aren't exactly educating, and we aren't enforcing anything because the guy is already gone.

I'll admit to having been annoyed by entry of Tardiness penalties. However, if we want these penalties to mean anything - and, thus, discourage the inconsiderate behavior of players who leave w/o dropping - we need to capture the data, track the trends, etc.

So, I'll bite the bullet and enter the penalties, whenever I'm the SK.

Meanwhile, let's step our efforts as judge-ucators (hmm, doesn't really have a nice ring to it): let's help players see how their behavior affects others. By leaving w/o dropping, they're making random opponents into victims; sure, it's nice to get a free win - but if you're paired against a no-show, you're probably just sticking around for the fun of playing, not looking for free wins.

d:^D

Not only I feel that “No Show” Tardiness should be penalized, but I also feel that it should be moved from TE to Unsporting Conduct, and treated as such by the Investigation Committee, with warning letters and eventual suspension for repeated offenses.

I'd say that 99,9% of No Show penalties occurs on people who are out of contention for sizable prizing and just go away without noticing any official. Their opponents are people who are out of contention and play for fun. Not showing up, preventing them to play, and forcing them to wait one hour just because you're impolite is a really rude and disruptive behavior and should be treated as such. That contributes to turn a tournament in a miserable experience for people, who, I stress it again, are likely now here only for fun.

The current penalty (ML) doesn't have any practical impact on those situations and couldn't be seen, alone, as a way to prevent or educate players who left the tournament.

I acknowledge that some people may have to leave a tournament in an hurry for valid reasons. Those are rare, though, should still leave plenty to opportunity to call for a judge or go to the score keeper to tell them about it, and if not, a warning letter is not the end of the world.

Usual (“non-No Show”)Tardiness penalty are still disturbing for the opponent and potentially for the whole tournament. I'm fine with them being UC as well, just don't expect them to lead to any warning letter, as the player is already penalized for them, by getting a GL in a match he shows intented to play, giving us a direct tool for education and a direct deterrent.

I like the idea of making “No Show” it's own penalty & making it Unsporting Conduct. There are a lot of local players that will not drop just to get a few more PWP, especially when getting close to the bye they are chasing. I've talked to them before, but the response I normally get is something along the lines of “Meh, no one's going to do anything about it.”

Plus it would allow us to track the true No Shows seperately from the time-impaired.

>I'll admit to having been annoyed by entry of Tardiness penalties. However, if we want these penalties to mean anything - and, thus, discourage the inconsiderate behavior of players who leave w/o dropping - we need to capture the data, track the trends, etc.
Do we really?? Do we ever imagine a scenario where this would ever be brought up to a player? I honestly can't. In fact, I think the overwhelming majority of these penalties get entered without the penalized player even knowing it. I seriously can't see anyone at WotC mining the data for players who no show and giving anyone trouble for it, or even using it as part of the justification for suspension following a DQ for that matter.
I fully agree that it's annoying, but I disagree that it's anything that needs to be tracked or penalized in any meaningful way after the fact. While the data entry for a SK doesn't take that long, I'd argue that at a GP when a SK really does have a lot of data to enter each round, including penalties, these ones serve only to hamper the SKs efforts for no useful purpose. I think it would be just fine if we stopped entering no-show Tardiness penalties altogether.
>Meanwhile, let's step our efforts as judge-ucators (hmm, doesn't really have a nice ring to it): let's help players see how their behavior affects others. By leaving w/o dropping, they're making random opponents into victims; sure, it's nice to get a free win - but if you're paired against a no-show, you're probably just sticking around for the fun of playing, not looking for free wins.
On this point, I quite agree. I think encouraging players, particularly at local small-scale events, to remove themselves from the event before leaving as part of end or start of round announcements is a useful investment.
Jason Ness

Subject: Re: Match loss penalty for Tardiness (Competitive REL)
From: forum-3257@apps.magicjudges.org
To: snoman321@hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2013 16:59:14 +0000

I'll admit to having been annoyed by entry of Tardiness penalties. However, if we want these penalties to mean anything - and, thus, discourage the inconsiderate behavior of players who leave w/o dropping - we need to capture the data, track the trends, etc.

So, I'll bite the bullet and enter the penalties, whenever I'm the SK.

Meanwhile, let's step our efforts as judge-ucators (hmm, doesn't really have a nice ring to it): let's help players see how their behavior affects others. By leaving w/o dropping, they're making random opponents into victims; sure, it's nice to get a free win - but if you're paired against a no-show, you're probably just sticking around for the fun of playing, not looking for free wins.

d:^D

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A few data points:
1) I have it on good authority that at the moment, these aren't being looked at long-term, nor is there action taken on them.
2) The powers that be may or may not know that making it easier to enter No Shows such that they are tracked as a penalty would be quite nice to have, even above and beyond generally making it easier to enter penalties.

As is my usual mantra, let's not let the scorekeeping logistics or software be the deciding point on what the right policy is, especially when any assumptions based on how things work now may or may not hold longer term. At the least, figure out what you would want to have happen ideally without worrying about that, then we can figure out how practical the solution is and whether any adjustments need to be made.

Opinion: Eventually we should be on the same page in terms of recording and action - either we should track them and something should be done with that tracking, or if nothing will ever be done, then we shouldn't bother. I suspect that at the moment, because it is spotty as to who does and doesn't enter them, acting upon that data is a low priority.

Personally, I'd like to believe that if everyone entered things, an e-mail that says “by the way, when you no show for a match, here are the effects, you should really try not to do that, here's how to drop on your slip, and here's how to drop if you already turned in your slip” would be a nice supplement to any judge education efforts. So I'd rather keep the penalty, push for more stringent tracking across all scorekeepers, and push for a certain number of these penalties to generate some education.

That said, if that's not going to happen and someone can definitively say it's never going to happen, then yeah, probably not worth the work anymore.

No one, I believe, is going to inform a player at a future event that he or she received a match loss in the current event for not showing up. “Hey, Timmy, thanks for coming today. By the way, I match lossed you last week because you walked out” is 99.99% bad PR and 0.01% education.

Anyone who knows anything about modifying behavior and correctional methodology will immediately recognize a problem. To the offender, the penalty has both no meaning (they were gone anyway) and is not delivered at a time associated with the offending act–it's delivered either never or at an unassociated time. Lack of effective penalty and lack of association means that we likely have not and never will actually change behavior with match loss for 10 minute tardy walk-outs.

That doesn't mean there's no hope though. Most of the time someone walks out is because they forgot or are ignorant. After all, how many times have we all had a guy come up after the round is paired and want to leave? Tons. And when we tell that guy it's polite to go to their current opponent and concede rather than just walk out how often do they do that? I think maybe once in 16 years have I had a guy refuse. Maybe once. Not twice. So there's no ill intent nor advantage to be had based on what evidence my experience shows.

Since we're not changing behavior with the recording of a match loss, is there value in having a record? If the tardiness penalty record influences policy and enforcement, then there could be value in the record. That data is internal to how the program is run, so we can only infer. However, I can't think of a time where I've heard of anyone in authority reference even tangentially a suspension investigation or policy decision being affected by a specific or total number of tardiness match losses. Thus, it seems that what data exist isn't applied in any way. Frankly, I can't imagine a case where the data would be useful as an enforcement element. Sure, an email saying “hey, please drop and here's how” (which I doubt would happen anyway, see Timmy crying above), but tardiness as in extenuating circumstance to determine how guilty a savage cheater is? Um, no.

Actually, the penalty folks could even try a little experiment: take every player on the suspended list, run a scan of their entire penalty history, and see how many of any tardiness penalties they have. I'd bet the really bad apples in our community (as evidenced by their exclusion from the community) aren't serial tardy offenders. So it's not like tardiness is a good indicator of evil.

I believe losing the match should happen, so the result for the player in the event would remain the same. I don't believe that recording a penalty for an absent player that has little or no value in the bigger picture is a worthwhile endeavor. I believe doing so takes away from the staff's time and resources.

I think the answer is twofold:
1) Put more effort into educating players how to drop from an event. Generally, if they know the right way, most people are polite enough to do it right.
2) Decriminalize a no show (not a tardy but then at the match–the walkout no show). Record the match as a loss but don't waste time with issuing a penalty.

Thus, I'd revise the policy to be:
“A player not in his or her seat 10 minutes into the round is considered to have conceded the match and will be dropped from the tournament. If he or she reports to the Head Judge or Scorekeeper before the end of the current round, that player can be reentered for subsequent rounds.”

That covers the player losing without a penalty. I broke the second half into a second sentence to so the two parts function separately. That second half tells players what to do if they decide to stay in the event.

If we don't enter the Tardiness, we *can't* do anything about it. If we do enter those infractions, the data exists, and Wizards can act on it as they see fit.

I've been told that something may change this year re: tracked Warnings, and that we should encourage people to record these (and all) infractions.

d:^D

P.S. - Carter, where's your customary TL;DR summary? :)

I don’t know if this is logistically possible, but the way I see it, the problem with not dropping from the tournament is that the person you’re paired against has to sit and wait for 10 minutes in case you come back.



I wonder if it would be possible for serial no-show’ers to be placed on a new list, and have their tardiness penalties times from 0-10 to 0-1. I see the waiting 10 minutes for them to show up as a grace period, and I don’t see reason to give a grace period to someone who is habitually absent.



On a first no-show, you get an automated email that says “you just made someone wait for 10 minutes, please tell us if you’re dropping from a tournament to prevent that”.



On a second no show you get an automated email that says “you did it again, if you do it one more time you’ll lose the 10 minute grace period in future events”.



On a third, the person goes on the list of serial no-show’ers and they get an email that says “at future magic events, you will receive a tardiness game loss at 0 minutes and a match loss at 1 minute”.



That should help to reduce the frustration for the opponents, without being an out-of-proportion response for the no-show’er.



Just an idea.

Short Version:
As is, the penalty is not structured in a way to change behavior it is addressing
Players no show out of ignorance
Players aren't that evil; the evil players aren't identified with no show data
If we don't use it, then we shouldn't bother
The answer is education, not enforcement
I don't think we should enforce–our resources are better served elsewhere

Long Version:
See 01:05:08 PM

Concerning future changes:
If the program is going to be better with mining data, then let's worry about stuff that matters in brand-positive ways. I believe the upside of someone being less likely to no show at a match (one opponent mildly inconvenienced) is nothing compared to the downside of someone no showing to an event (one customer no longer as interested in buying Magic) because we nagged them via email about doing it wrong.

Hi,

Eric and I will post on this topic tomorrow. We will explain further then, but please enter these penalties in your competitive events.

Andy

From: Michael White
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2013 10:27 AM
To: Heckt, Andy
Subject: Re: Match loss penalty for Tardiness (Competitive REL)

I don’t know if this is logistically possible, but the way I see it, the problem with not dropping from the tournament is that the person you’re paired against has to sit and wait for 10 minutes in case you come back.



I wonder if it would be possible for serial no-show’ers to be placed on a new list, and have their tardiness penalties times from 0-10 to 0-1. I see the waiting 10 minutes for them to show up as a grace period, and I don’t see reason to give a grace period to someone who is habitually absent.



On a first no-show, you get an automated email that says “you just made someone wait for 10 minutes, please tell us if you’re dropping from a tournament to prevent that”.



On a second no show you get an automated email that says “you did it again, if you do it one more time you’ll lose the 10 minute grace period in future events”.



On a third, the person goes on the list of se rial no-show’ers and they get an email that says “at future magic events, you will receive a tardiness game loss at 0 minutes and a match loss at 1 minute”.



That should help to reduce the frustration for the opponents, without being an out-of-proportion response for the no-show’er.



Just an idea.

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Michael-

While that IS a rather novel idea, the amount of work that would go into maintaining such a list would be too much to justify its usage. Every judge at every event would have to cross reference their entire list of players against the list of chronic no-showers, and then make sure that they know which tables have to be ML'd at 1 minute instead of 10 minutes (not to mention some tournaments that run at 3 and 10 minutes for tardy). I think it would be much too work for far too little gain.

I know I'm guilty of not always doing this, but I try to make a reminder each round for players to either mark that they are dropping on their match slip, or take the 5 seconds it takes to come up to the scorekeeper's station and sign the “I want to drop” list before they leave. That's about all we can do without creating entirely too much work for ourselves.

The real problem I see with No-Shows is the PWP-thing - if you drop on your entry-slip, you don't get paired for the next round (which is good from our point of view, but does not matter from the dropping/non-showing players), and therefor do not get PWP for that round (which does not matter to us, but is strictly bad for the player).
If the dropping player instead does NOT drop and simply not show in the next round, he will still get the PWP for that round - to which he really should not be entitled to.

Therefor, besides the whole tracking-and-punishing repeated offenders discussion, the one thing the No Show ML (this would require No Show to become its own penalty, doesn't matter whether under TE or UC) should do is the following - If a player gets a No Show penalty, he will not be awarded PWP for the round he did not show in.

I do not know if this is easily (or even possibly) implementable into the WER-software, but if it is possible, I think it should be done to remove the unnececary ‘incentive’ we give players to No-Show instead of dropping.