bockatore wrote:When I first joined BGA, I didn't understand the implications of joining games with no time limit. Now I have multiple games cluttering up my "games in progress" view where someone hasn't taken a turn in weeks. Is there any way to get rid of these games without suffering a reputation penalty?
No.
That's the short answer.
The long answer is that if it's 2 player you can concede. You can offer a group abandon. If everyone agrees the game will automatically end. It is not true, however, that the site admins will do it. It just happens automatically. The group abandon is under the menu (gear?) in the upper right. Be aware of two problems. One, if you are waiting on someone who isn't taking their turn, they won't see the game and therefore won't see the group abandon, and the other players not on turn may not see it. Second, if even one person votes no, it won't happen - it's not a "majority vote."
That said, if someone hasn't taken a turn in weeks like you claim, you should be able to skip their turn. The so-called unlimited option actually has a limit, something like 8 days I believe. Once you skip their turn, it would move to the next player - the game can continue with some variants on ELO. Also, once someone's turn is skipped, you can then just quit the game without punishment, but you'll still share the tie just the same. If the skip turn option isn't coming up, that might be a bug, but check that. You need to actually go into the game to do this.
And you can just ignore it and wait for it to die a slow death. Sometimes there's something to be said for just letting it fall off the edge of the earth.
Would it make sense to have a cap on the time limit that is shorter than 125 days? Or maybe not let new people join games without a time limit until they understand the implications of the turn system?
As to a shorter cap, in my opinion, no. That cap is not a turn cap. As I said, I think the time limit is 8 days. (Although they've changed that before and may have again.) If you do not choose to skip the player's turn, then there's the longer cap when the game will disappear and there will basically be no record of it. All the turn-based games final cap is relative to the turn time, so it's appropriate this one is longer.
As to the suggestion of not allowing new people to do that... when I was new was exactly when I wanted to do unlimited because I felt uncomfortable with time limits. However, it could certainly give a big giant warning that you might not want to do that. I believe there is a warning somewhere but perhaps not some place obvious? But unlimited is kind of a bad idea unless you know who you're playing with, in which case it can come in very handy.
