How hard would it be to set up code to have set times for pauses?

@Maniac - you shoudl have taken it to the Mods. They should do something about it when someone extends the pause by not unpausing. You agreed to a certain length and they should forcibly unpause it for you.

@draugnar - i did take it up with the mods but they refused to intervene. I'm fine with that (I'm used to the mods always finding against me) It was my own fault for pausing in the first place - a mistake I will never make again. So when anyone comes to me with a bleeding heart reason for a pause I will ignore them completely.

You must think the sun revolves around you...

The generally accepted behavior is to grant pauses. If you don't want to, make sure you announce this before the start of each game. Do you really expect everyone else to be thinking about your special needs all the time? :)

@Ivo - i have no special needs that I'm aware off.

Players are under no obligation to grant pauses. However, I fully accept that the majority of the community grant them when requested. I feel my reasons for not granting pauses are genuinely held but accept that I am in a minority. I have tried to bend to the wishes of the majority by voting to pause when I know there is a promise to unpause by a certain date. When people don't honour that pledge and the mods don't force the game to unpause then my only cause of action is to not grant pauses.

I will follow your advice and announce that I don't grant pauses in non-gunboat games.

Your request is noted and will be honored, but you do need to fill out the form first.

Which would you prefer a pause or a NMR or even CD. I have heard rants about CDs, so I would assume that most people would prefer a pause to a CD.

It would be nice to have a pause for x feature, although that may be fairly complicated.

@Maniac - Did the mods give yo a reason why? I would have taken it up with a second mod and harassed them for either A) a reason or to B) do their jobs and enforce the unpause. That's bullshit in my view. Of course, that is why they'll never make me a mod. :-)

Its a hard one for the mods. The best fix is for the unpausing in time x to be automated, but that requires someone to do the UI design and coding for it. Any takers?

How is it a hard one. Someone asked for a pause and specified a date the pause would/should end. Other's granted it. When the time came, a thrid party, as it were, decided not to unpause after all cuase now they wanted a pause and could force it. Seems to me that is a clear case of unpause abuse and the mods fucked that one up.

The mods do a good job and are unpaid so it is hard to be critical or to harass them as you suggest Draug. As stated above the mistake was mine in pausing in the first place.

@ Joey, i accept that most people prefer a pause to CDs or NMR but I don't. If people want to leave a game or NMR then it creates other diplomactic challanges but that's fine by me. People just don't seem to want to take time finding babysitters and there is a growing sense that pauses are a players right and the anti-pause league are out of line. Pauses are optional and I will from here on in religiously invoke my option not to pause.

I feel that the mods got it wrong on this occassion because it has perhaps distroyed the 'happyish' compromise of me and others pausing on the promise of an unpause at a specific date. That isn't a criticism of the mods for the job they do, which as stated above I think they generally do well and for no reward.

@ghost - no coding is necessary, it just requires players agreeing a set of rules they are all happy with and keeping to them and for the mods to enforce rule breaches

Pause rules should be simply stated.

A player may request a pause and state when the pause will expire. If all the other players agree a pause will be granted. In the event that the game isn't unpaused by the due date the mods will unpause the game if a player so requests.

Players shall not be compelled to grant pauses or even discuss them, and pause requests; consideration discussion etc should never be used as a diplomatic tool.

I think this will satisfy all players (unless some people think that pauses are decided by majority)

As someone in the game Manic is talking about, let me clarify: Manic never said anything about the pause. We had a hard time pausing because another party (BESM) didn't want to pause. Eventually she agreed to pause for a specific length. Then the third party removed their unpause vote and left. Manic had never said anything about wanting a specific length of pause, and was the only objection to unpausing. Even BESM was fine with extending, because she felt it was fair.

Ordinarily, I would unequivocally agree with you, Manic and Draugnar, that the mods should have forced an unpause. But I think this is a little less clear of a decision, since Manic never said anything about the pause to begin with - he just put up his pause vote. Had he made it clear that he was only willing to pause for a specific period of time, I would have complete sympathy - but since he voted pause without any such clarification, I don't think he has *as much* ground to stand on.

But I can certainly see both sides.

Yes, the mods could have intervened and unpaused, which still would have left the second person requesting a pause (in your scenario). What then - everyone pauses and again call in a mod a week later? It's only normal for the two pauses to be merged - otherwise you either need 7 people to pause/unpause/pause/unpause... which takes time and may lead to mistakes... or you need a mod on every interaction.... that's insane.

I really don't understand why you have such a problem with pauses. What is really infuriating is when someone asks for a pause for the third time and is obviously trying to stall the game, but once a game... it happens.

Try creating a few games end of November and getting others to commit to not pause over Christmas at all... chances are you'll have trouble finding people to agree.

Noone likes pauses, but the alternatives are not practical.

I think his problem was with the forced pause in which he had no say for another week. and I agree, it was a douchebag thing to do.

And, yeah, I was a bit harsh on the mods. But I still think this one should have had mod intervention and they wimped out, setting a bad precedent as a result.

In a paused game and discover you need a pause later yourself? Refuse to unpause it! The mods won't force it!

Maniac says there was a specific date in the original pasue request. Was there? If so, then that should have been the resume date. One shouldn't have to write a contract that everyone agrees to that says "I will only pause if everyone here agrees to unpause on X date". If someone requests a pause until X date, then anyone agreeing, by default, accepts that X is the date when the game resumes. If we did this in politics, then we'd have to state that we only vote for this person for the position until X date. But we assume the contract is for one term of office. Here, we assume the contract is until X date.

" i did take it up with the mods but they refused to intervene. I'm fine with that (I'm used to the mods always finding against me) It was my own fault for pausing in the first place - a mistake I will never make again. "

" Someone asked for a pause and specified a date the pause would/should end. Other's granted it. When the time came, a thrid party, as it were, decided not to unpause after all cuase now they wanted a pause and could force it. Seems to me that is a clear case of unpause abuse and the mods fucked that one up."

i'm with draug. but then i don't read the mod emails cause i'm one of the worst mods we have :(

'pause requests; consideration discussion etc should never be used as a diplomatic tool.' - agreed here aswell.

though i would not go so far as to refuse a pause in one of my own games.

Apart from adding limited pauses, i think it is alos possible to add a GM feature, where each game can have a GameMaster. Either playing or not, the person who creates the game by default, this could help relieve a lot of effort spent on tournaments as the tournament director could be GM for all games in a given tournaments.

Giving the GM power to pause/unpause would really help, also locking/unlocking the game changing the password, etc... basically a number of mod powers, including kicking players from the game.

This would be optional for all games, and i would expect some level of abuse, which would then have to be dealt with by mods, but you could think of it as joining "maniac's" game/tournament, and expecting maniac to have complete control over who is playing:

suggestions/comment on these dev threads:
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=435&p=3310#p3310
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=662
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=642

If I can play devil's advocate: Your desire to not want to pause is probably similar to the person who needs the secondary pause. Now there should have been some discussion on the new pause so it is agreed to by everyone except the original pauser by the time the first pause was about to end, but I don't know the specifics of this particular situation.
We try to limit interference in games about pauses to things like people not willing to unpause unless someone does something in game for them, or the game is paused and the player is CD'ed or just hasn't been on in a week or something like that. Remember, we try to not interfere unless something is unfairly unbalancing a game.

And, Maniac, lines like "I'm used to the mods always finding against me" do not help your case. I try to be completely unbiased in every decision I make. I know you've had problems in the past, but I've never worked with you, so consider asking for another mod's opinion on something if you think you are being treated unfairly.

It is difficult, Draugnar, because we don't like to unpause if its going to cause CD and ruin the game.

I actually looked over this game after Thucy made a decision and ended up agreeing with him. It was a douche of a thing to do by the player, but I will not unpause a game knowing that it will throw a country into CD.

@abge:

Would you have forced an unpause had Italy made it clear upfront he was only willing to pause for a certain amount of time?

That may have made a difference, but I would have a hard time justifying CDing a country just because someone wanted to start the game sooner.

Smiley face is accurate in his summary of events. What he couldn't know is that I voted pause without discussion for a number of reasons. (i) contary to popular belief I don't argue about everything (ii) there was very little chance of the pause being allowed by the third party - so I look reasonable and the other guy may not. (iii) the pause had an end date prior to my vote (iv) oting pause help discuise my identity

Just because I didn't discuss the first (only) pause does not in any way deny me an opinion on what should have been a discussion about a second pause.

@fortknox - I really am fine with the mods ruling against me - i realise that someone is usually unhappy and I accept the if in doubt don't intervene approach. How I phrase my comments shouldn't have a bearing on my case - are you saying you would view a request from me any differently (good or bad) than from anyone else? I hope not.

Just to re-iterate - the pause button is optional; I accept that I hold a minority view about granting pauses; I consider what happened to be my mistake, not the mods, I am generally happy with the unpaid thankless task they do.

However, this has re-inforced in my mind that I shouldn't grant pauses in any event; hod the mods of intervened perhaps we could have seen more relunctant pauses as those reluntant to pause would know that a time limit was indeed a time limit.

@fortknox - I really don't think appealing to a second mod would help my case

@abge - would you force pause to stop someone CDing even if a player had specifically refused to pause?

If there was a natural disaster, such as a flood or volcano in that area, I would. Otherwise, no.

Just as a clarification to Smiley, BESM is a guy.

As I've stated before, I'm on the fence with pauses. Sometimes I would like one, but I don't cry if it is denied. I've both sat and gotten a sitter, so those options do exist (although I have to say that in the games I'm currently sitting, they're not going so well for the guy I'm helping...three games, the sitter gets stabbed disastrously in two).

I don't like to grant pauses because of their abuse. In league games, however, I found that pauses must be granted. Right now I'm in a league game that had a pause go several days beyond what the player had asked for. Once it was unpaused the player who delayed the unpause has now asked for a pause. My ADD self can't take delays like that.

@The Czech

You should contact the TD about that. Pause abuse should be more strictly enforced in the Leagues. IMHO, if a player delayed an unpause, it should come out of their free week of pause.

And, from a personal opinion, I simply cannot understand what the problem with pauses is. You've already committed to a game that will last 2 months, so what if it lasts an additional 2 weeks. All the alternatives are bad: a sitter who is a different player, CDing, or an inattentive player as they try to find random Wifi hotspots. Now, if a game has been paused longer than it's been played, I understand that annoyance and if a player habitually needs pauses, but other than that, I simply don't understand the problem.