Okay, this one has been on my mind for a few years now.
I'm a big believer that language, and the way we utilize it, characterizes our reactions and perceptions of the world around us. Words have power, which is why there are single words which people get incredibly offended by regardless of context, and why slogans and catchphrases can so easily stir emotion. Forfeit as a term does not have a purely positive connotation. It's a word of apathy. You forfeit when you don't care anymore about the outcome of a match so much that you don't even show up to play the rest of it. I've been moderator of the Random Battles room for about 3 years now, and just about every day we get users posting replays in chat wherein they mock someone for forfeiting, or celebrate their 6-0 by saying "my opponent is so salty he forfeited." While these comments can appear harmless at first, they perpetuate a culture among the userbase of smogon and PS whereby a forfeit is deserving of mockery or a signal for disrespect. For all the time I've been a leader of this community, we have needed a rule that says players may not post replays just to be salty. And even with that rule in place, we see violators nearly every day.
Consider all the interactions you've had on this site. I think you would agree with me that there are plenty of spheres within the PS/Smogon community that could benefit from a little more civility. If even just a small step, I propose we change our collective language to one where we Resign a match that's clearly headed towards defeat. In chess, a game so synonymous with civility and professionalism that the players wear suits and ties to events, the word resign is used when a player concedes a losing position. Resignation grants honor to your opponent, acknowledging you've been bested, while a forfeit implies no match was played at all, potentially even signalling complete dishonor, as done by Magnus Carlsen in the well-known Niemann scandal.
If I load up a random battle and I'm brought to my last pokemon camerupt against a +2/+2 Gyarados, there are no buttons I can click to make me win that game. There are only buttons my opponent can click to make them lose. To continue the chess parallel, in chess at mid to mid-high ELO, it's actually seen as more respectful to resign if you blunder away significant material, signalling you acknowledge your opponent is competent enough to win the game without making a huge error. In that random battle example, I can type a command to end the game, speed along this foregone conclusion and still honor my opponent in their ability to bring about a winning endgame. Draw it out further and you can start to see how subtle language connotations can really matter here. If I'm down 5-6 in a lengthy stall game and my Corviknight gets crit to death, I could try and flounder about for another 40 turns if I wanted. I could also Forfeit, but yikes, seeing "platinumCheesecake forfeited" show up when I still have 4 pokemon up sends the message that I don't care, or I'm tilted, or salty. But if you saw "platinumCheesecake resigned" it sounds more modest. Like I acknowledge I can't win, but I'm not mad about it (even if I totally am).
Ultimately this is a small issue, but one that I think can only have positive consequences. It is low-effort, moderate reward project I suspect can probably get resolved in less than an hour.
As far as implementation, we would also need /resign, with /forfeit being an alias. Wherever "forfeit" or "forfeited" appears in the code as strictly text to display to the player, replace 1:1 with "resign" and "resigned." Any variables already called forfeit are fine to stay named that way.
I'm a big believer that language, and the way we utilize it, characterizes our reactions and perceptions of the world around us. Words have power, which is why there are single words which people get incredibly offended by regardless of context, and why slogans and catchphrases can so easily stir emotion. Forfeit as a term does not have a purely positive connotation. It's a word of apathy. You forfeit when you don't care anymore about the outcome of a match so much that you don't even show up to play the rest of it. I've been moderator of the Random Battles room for about 3 years now, and just about every day we get users posting replays in chat wherein they mock someone for forfeiting, or celebrate their 6-0 by saying "my opponent is so salty he forfeited." While these comments can appear harmless at first, they perpetuate a culture among the userbase of smogon and PS whereby a forfeit is deserving of mockery or a signal for disrespect. For all the time I've been a leader of this community, we have needed a rule that says players may not post replays just to be salty. And even with that rule in place, we see violators nearly every day.
Consider all the interactions you've had on this site. I think you would agree with me that there are plenty of spheres within the PS/Smogon community that could benefit from a little more civility. If even just a small step, I propose we change our collective language to one where we Resign a match that's clearly headed towards defeat. In chess, a game so synonymous with civility and professionalism that the players wear suits and ties to events, the word resign is used when a player concedes a losing position. Resignation grants honor to your opponent, acknowledging you've been bested, while a forfeit implies no match was played at all, potentially even signalling complete dishonor, as done by Magnus Carlsen in the well-known Niemann scandal.
If I load up a random battle and I'm brought to my last pokemon camerupt against a +2/+2 Gyarados, there are no buttons I can click to make me win that game. There are only buttons my opponent can click to make them lose. To continue the chess parallel, in chess at mid to mid-high ELO, it's actually seen as more respectful to resign if you blunder away significant material, signalling you acknowledge your opponent is competent enough to win the game without making a huge error. In that random battle example, I can type a command to end the game, speed along this foregone conclusion and still honor my opponent in their ability to bring about a winning endgame. Draw it out further and you can start to see how subtle language connotations can really matter here. If I'm down 5-6 in a lengthy stall game and my Corviknight gets crit to death, I could try and flounder about for another 40 turns if I wanted. I could also Forfeit, but yikes, seeing "platinumCheesecake forfeited" show up when I still have 4 pokemon up sends the message that I don't care, or I'm tilted, or salty. But if you saw "platinumCheesecake resigned" it sounds more modest. Like I acknowledge I can't win, but I'm not mad about it (even if I totally am).
Ultimately this is a small issue, but one that I think can only have positive consequences. It is low-effort, moderate reward project I suspect can probably get resolved in less than an hour.
As far as implementation, we would also need /resign, with /forfeit being an alias. Wherever "forfeit" or "forfeited" appears in the code as strictly text to display to the player, replace 1:1 with "resign" and "resigned." Any variables already called forfeit are fine to stay named that way.