What happens to disconectors?

Ok so every now and then an emergency calls us away from a game or the connection goes down.  But an awful lot of my games end with a message...

"......may have violated our Fair Play policy - it has been noted and they may have their account restricted."

Usually this happens when my opponent is in a clearly lost position - one that I personally would have resigned ages ago.

Does anything happen to these people?  It is so frustrating, I wish that these players could be identified, so I suggest some kind of sportsmanship rating icon be used so that we can judge wether or not to play against such an opponent and also to incentivise them to develop a better attitude.

Well that's my moan and my suggestion.

        I sympathise with the above member's frustration and have read it stated in a previous post on this subject that the staff will be able to tell whether somebody has deliberately disconnected, rather than innocently losing his connection. I have inadvertantly lost my connection on a number of occasions and have had the game awarded to my opponent as a result - I have never deliberately disconnected. I cannot see how the staff would be able to tell a deliberate disconnection.   

I presume they could just check the position on the board of serial offenders when the disconnection happened, it happened to me last week but the game was even, by the time I got back the game was gone.

I played 2 games at the weekend against a superior opponent, ran out of time to checkmate him on the first soit ended in a draw, the 2nd game I was beating him well, with about 7 mins to go and he disconnected, (no problem with his connection up to that point), itmeant I had to hang around and waste my time.

 I think the sportsmanship rating is a good idea if it could be implemented.

Chess.com should marked those losers and maybe there should be a botton on those kind of players when you are playing against them. When they disconnect for just one second, you click the botton and you win by abandon or something like that.

Even on beginner-level this is a problem. And soooo frustrating. I mean, if they see they are going to loose, why not at least push the "resign" button?
I second the idea about a sportmansship rating-button-kind- of- thing.
Or else I am really loosing my interest in here.
It is a very disappointing feeling the very few times I start to believe I may win, and then "disconnected- wait 5 minutes". GRR

I don't really understand why they don't resign as their time is being wasted too, but I agree that it is really annoying. I like the idea, and I think something should happen even if this doesn't.

They should all be thrown to the crocodiles

        I suppose deliberate "disconnectors" might be identified by the number of times they are involved in the incidents and the positions of the games at the time. If everything is equal, to coin a phrase, everybody should suffer an accidental loss of connection about the same number of times as everybody else, taking into account the number of games played. If a player suffers accidental disconnections disproportionately, it is open to him to do something about it. Given that serial offenders can probably be identified in this way, action could be taken.

What happens to disconnectors? If they do it often enough, they have to wait 5 minutes between games. If they continue to misbehave, the consequences escalate.

There must be some kind of record as to the number of losses due to disconnects. If it hits a certain high threshold (which should be percentage) then action may be taken.

I think thats how it should be done anyway. My 5 cents on this. It's really annoying though.

I think the ideal way to deal is the following (since some people disconnect for legitimate reasons):

When a disconnect happens, chess.com runs an analysis on the position. If the disconnecting side is losing by some margin (say, by 3.0 or more points), then it is an instant loss. This should catch most of the people who are disconnecting becuase they suck, and leave alone people who have disconnected for legitimate reasons, like a bad connection.

        A further thought on whether the website managers can detect deliberate disconnections: 

        Looking at the positions in games where disconnection has occurred might show an obvious losing position for the player who has become disconnected and this, by my experience alone, is certainly going to be obvious in many cases, but in many others, not. At any one time there are thousands of games going on (the site tells you how many members are online at the time and how many games are active). Examining all of the disconnected games for evidence of inappropriate or unsporting action of the above kind would be totally impractical.

        Further, the wbsite's statement that a player "may have violated our fair play policy" is a clear indication that they do not actually know whether this is the case or not. One thing they could rely on is spotting repeat offenders - however, I suspect it is just possible that legal action could be provoked if a person were accused and subsequently penalised. It is not easy to see a solution.

In my view, it is the deliberate disconnection in it self that is disrespectful and annoying. Regardsless of who is winning or loosing. The fact that one has to wait 5 minutes to finish is boring, and also (speaking for myself) I would like to loose properly as well as win properly (the few times that may happen).
It is just so much better for everyone just to push the "resign" button.
I go for the "frequency"-solution. If someone is a notorious disconnector, he/she is most likely doing it deliberately and should be thrown out for a while (at least).

What about people with poor lines?  It's bad enough having to lose clock time on reconnects without picking up a ban as well!

        Re the above, is it not always possible to rectify poor lines? If you are unfortunate enough to have an unreliable connection, you can't blame Chess.com or the opposition. I think we have probably satisfied ourselves that the website staff cannot reasonably detect poor connections as opposed to deliberate disconnections, unless frequency of disconnections is taken as evidence and even then innocent "poor connections" could be caught up.