It just came to my mind a simple way to avoid the timeouts for those rare situations when vacation days simple just don't do (other because of a prolonged absence or because you're playing against a pawn that had an unforseen situation and doesn't have autovacation)

The simple answer (at least in my mind) is to allow your opponent a postponement. When it's your opponent's turn to play there would be a new link by the game page that says (give your opponent a postponement of XX days for this game). If you clicked it, and confirmed your action, the deadline for your opponent would suddenly be added of XX days (for that game and move alone). Onde the player moves again, time settings are applied as usual. I think this isn't hard to implement with the current timeout protocols that already exist.

In the FAQ entry that would be associated with this feature write something about how this is an exception and people shouldn't count on their opponent providing an extension for them, they should always expect the initial time ocntract to be obbeyed, etc, etc, etc, so that people don't come and rant like "you could have given me an extension and you didn't - you're mean" sort of thing.


This would certainly help in those cases where I think a game is going far too interesting for it to be solved with an unglorious timeout.