Maybe a "BRB" option?

[Shadoglare]

Although I haven't had this happen yet, I can easily imagine it - with reputation scores taking very negative hits from going over time, and a few games now taking a good chunk of time (sometimes 30-45 minutes or more) - I thought it might be nice to have a "I need to step away for a moment" option that could only be used once per game or something and has a limit of only 5 minutes or something.
I'm just thinking it would suck to have your reputation damaged because you wanted to grab a soda, or had to use the restroom, or something...

[Laszlosaurus]

Not sure if such a system would be fair to other players--I'm sure some would use it too often, making games less fun for everyone.

However, I would support the ability for players to forgive opponents for going over time. For instance, a couple times a first-time player has joined my table set to "Fast", and I'd inadvertently started the game without switching to "Slow". I would gladly cancel the reputation hits they took, because we were chatting a lot, me giving the strategy tips and rule clarifications, etc. It's not a very warm welcome to new players to leave them with negative reputation scores after their first games!

In other instances too, I'd like the option to cancel or reduce the penalties opponents might receive. Connection issues come up, computers crash, people ask to step away to answer the door--whatever. If it's not a regular thing, I'd want to let them off easier.

[Zebadiah]

I like the idea of forgiveness or penalty reduction by other users. It would be more in the spirit of an actual reputation system. Great point about the new players too.

[Hendal]

You could almost give the first time user double the time or half extra time? Make it even more user friendly here.

I like that you could vote so they do not get neg. rap, that would really help in a lot of ways. I see a lot of my games have me as more time used then what the game took and I get neg rep off it, if that happened and the people where asked to vote to bad rep me or not for reason of a 16 min. game and me taking 118 that may see fit to vote no neg. rep - just one place extra it would help out out of many

I think having a option to rate people slow/ regular/ fast would also help in this area, if your slow and other people know it then everyone can play against people who are usually slow or fast a lot easier and make people happier. Slow people may have hectic lives and step away for the baby, door, wife, phone more then regular or fast players so if other people know that right away - just a thought.

[Geeky_Farmer]

I agree about letting other players "vote" on if a player gets negative reputation points. There are tons of things that could happen.

For example, someone could start a table with a note "Must be done in 25 minutes". That would make me more comfortable playing on my lunch hour. The other day a game of Dominion ran 35 minutes on me, I had started at 12:30 and figured I had plenty of time. But if everyone knew going in, even if the game was not finished it would still be fair.

Or some one could indicate "Strange car pulled up, please give me 5" or "Baby screaming, 5?" and the other players could agree to grant that extra time or not.

And the connection issue is huge for me, I have not yet lost connection totally, but I have been pretty close to going over time a couple times, when my connection speed dropped halfway through a game (hazard of rural living.)

Just ideas. I am new, but I LOVE this site!

Heather