”Warning: This is a turn-based game site. The game you are about to start may take days, weeks, or even months to complete, depending on the time control used in the particular game. If you start a game, your opponent may not respond right away, in fact they may sometimes take several days to respond. You should not start a game unless you’re aware of this and prepared to finish the game.”

I suggest something like this should pop up the first time a new member tries to start a game from the waiting list. It happens too often that somebody creates an account, surfs around the site happily for a few minutes, finds the list of waiting games, starts a few games, then sits around for a few more minutes wondering why nothing happens, logs off, never comes back…

Of course, when I create new waiting games, I could just limit them to rated or paying players and avoid playing new members at all. I actually do that some of the time. But if everybody did that, how would new members ever get to play? If these ‘ghost players’ were scared away with a warning, I expect that more old members would be willing to play new members, and everybody would benefit :-)