So it's absolutely surreal reading this thread.
Maybe this is an autistic person thing, but it says in the guidelines of the game:
"Many players consider deliberate blocking (when you take a segment that interferes with your opponent without actually helping you) to be unsporting."
So to me of course if I went into a social space with other people and was told something might be considered unsporting, I simply wouldn't do it, ever. I don't do it because winning isn't more important to me than people's enjoyment of the game or abiding by a community convention. And if I was playing football, and was told certain tactics could be seen as unsporting, I wouldn't be doing them either. If you genuinely don't believe there can be be long discussions in a sport about what is and isn't sporting/in the spirit of the game, I suggest you look at 100 years of cricket history to disabuse you of this notion.
But there's more to it than this, because I play this game a lot, and it's a fact that the majority of players I play against don't block just to sabotage - sure, we put track where we need it ahead of the other person sometimes but the majority of us, from my experience, don't lay track where we can't use it, even if our route is wide open to it, and we certainly wouldn't box someone in to stop them connecting their routes. *
So. There's this guidance written down *in the rules* that people know about, and there's clearly a huge number, if not a majority, who aren't blocking, so this means that folks who block are giving themselves an unfair advantage over those of us who don't.
In reality, if you want to block and feel okay about it, you need to petition BGA to remove that guidance or change it to "there are two completely incompatible attitudes towards playing this game and they are as follows...". As long as it's there as it is, you're not just playing to win, you're taking advantage of other people's sence of decency and following rules and guidance unless you know both of you are playing to the "blocking is acceptable" strategy. It's basically a good example of the prisoner's dilemma.
While the guidance is there as it is, I believe the ethical position would be for the blockers to declare themselves and seek out fellow blockers to play with, not for the non-blockers to do so. If we were just making up a guidline out of thin air that would be different - but we're not.
It's like how when you have a playground fight you don't kick your opponent in the nuts. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or that it's playing fair to do so. Society has all sorts of unwritten rules but in this case it's *written* and people keep conveniently ignoring that bit.
*Moderator edit: text edited for racist remarks
Maybe this is an autistic person thing, but it says in the guidelines of the game:
"Many players consider deliberate blocking (when you take a segment that interferes with your opponent without actually helping you) to be unsporting."
So to me of course if I went into a social space with other people and was told something might be considered unsporting, I simply wouldn't do it, ever. I don't do it because winning isn't more important to me than people's enjoyment of the game or abiding by a community convention. And if I was playing football, and was told certain tactics could be seen as unsporting, I wouldn't be doing them either. If you genuinely don't believe there can be be long discussions in a sport about what is and isn't sporting/in the spirit of the game, I suggest you look at 100 years of cricket history to disabuse you of this notion.
But there's more to it than this, because I play this game a lot, and it's a fact that the majority of players I play against don't block just to sabotage - sure, we put track where we need it ahead of the other person sometimes but the majority of us, from my experience, don't lay track where we can't use it, even if our route is wide open to it, and we certainly wouldn't box someone in to stop them connecting their routes. *
So. There's this guidance written down *in the rules* that people know about, and there's clearly a huge number, if not a majority, who aren't blocking, so this means that folks who block are giving themselves an unfair advantage over those of us who don't.
In reality, if you want to block and feel okay about it, you need to petition BGA to remove that guidance or change it to "there are two completely incompatible attitudes towards playing this game and they are as follows...". As long as it's there as it is, you're not just playing to win, you're taking advantage of other people's sence of decency and following rules and guidance unless you know both of you are playing to the "blocking is acceptable" strategy. It's basically a good example of the prisoner's dilemma.
While the guidance is there as it is, I believe the ethical position would be for the blockers to declare themselves and seek out fellow blockers to play with, not for the non-blockers to do so. If we were just making up a guidline out of thin air that would be different - but we're not.
It's like how when you have a playground fight you don't kick your opponent in the nuts. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or that it's playing fair to do so. Society has all sorts of unwritten rules but in this case it's *written* and people keep conveniently ignoring that bit.
*Moderator edit: text edited for racist remarks
