Just a note: Kit and I have asked the Board whether they are in favor of following community interest, and pursuing a way to allow stickerless puzzles.
We can't promise anything, but perhaps such a decision would prevent everyone from fixating on the details of stickerless cubes.
The problem isn't that people on the WRC/Board believe that stickerless cubes give an unfair advantage right now. The problem is that we need to take in a whole bunch of (conflicting) preferences about how to expand the puzzle Regulations while trying to minimize unanticipated consequences. We need something that allows us to judge new puzzles in the future, without resorting to technicalities or subjective interpretations, as much as possible. (Otherwise, we'll have many more conversations about whether to allow certain puzzles – with no objective way to settle things.)
We also need a way to combine / decide on a subset of possible changes.
Please try to help with that.
Here are some specific responses:
Good thing this is brought up well before the end of the year so there is lot's of preparation time.
Pro and con lists are a nice overview. Although I certainly don't agree with some of the points. I guess in order to make a decision the main issue will be how important certain pro's and con's are (unless more pro's and con's will come up). Ex: Do you value community support more, or consistency with other regs, or the amount of conservativeness...etc?
I've stated this elsewhere, but my personal goal when I was working on the 2014 Regulations was to take all the existing Delegate interpretations and limit it to a set of puzzles everyone agrees should be legal. We were aiming to end up with a simple set of boundaries for what is legal, so that competitors and Delegates can easily tell what cubes are allowed. This was all in response to all the new kind of puzzles that Delegates asked about in 2013.
The bullet point about the regulations being conservative could use a small correction.
I'm not sure about that. I remember the days when it was unclear if the WCA would even allow non-Rubik's brand cubes at Worlds. The Board only occasionally judges new kinds of puzzles to be okay. The leaders of the WRC have been following the interpretation that we should be conservative about judging whether new puzzles features are okay. Delegates frequently ask about puzzles because they don't assume that unusual features are allowed by default.
Perhaps things were more "open" before 2010-ish, but the variety of puzzles was much less.
The main thing you could do was get a puzzle that turned faster, but Article 3 has
always stated that this is okay.
Apart from better turning, every qualitatively new feature has been subject to separate scrutiny.
In any case, the current policy is definitely conservative until we find something better to adopt.
(Sébastien's proposal has been the only serious attempt at this, but no one stepped forward and tried to improve the flaws to make it work.)
I've also changed "has always been conservative" to "is conservative", since that is also more relevant.
I think there are some changes needed for the Reasons for Disallowing (under Stickerless cubes). Seeing things like "This is a weak argument against current stickerless puzzles, but any good proposal should make it clear that this should not be permitted to an unreasonable extent. " makes me doubt the objectivity of the writer of this document. The argument of sticking with the idea of a Rubik's cube, as it originally was made, is also completely missing.
I think the quoted point is important.
Current stickerless cubes are harmless.
But if we're not careful, our changes to the Regulations might allow internal plastic colors to be used for something new and unanticipated (maybe something more like a supercube). Maybe not, maybe plastic colors wouldn't really have to do with it. We just don't know, and hoping that such issues don't crop up... hasn't worked well for us.
I've added the one about the idea of a Rubik's Cube.
In my opinion the whole plan of these pros/cons lists is a little silly. I hope you don't want to make any kind of "The community wants"-argument as I don't really see a lot of diversity here (speedsolving.com) when it comes to this specific issue.
?
If the community wants it, that is usually a reason in favor of a change.
I've seen a lot of discussions about the Regulations in the last few years. One thing I've noticed is that everyone always assumes that others are familiar with a particular set of pros and cons, and often disregards something others consider as important. It's not productive for everyone to talk past each other when they haven't read some of the relevant reasons that others have put forth.
A list of pros and cons allow us to discuss which reasons are more important/popular, instead of what we think the reasons themselves are.
What is the difference here? The qualitative difference between the original game and the new technology.
So the question for us to answer is: What constitutes a qualitative difference to the puzzle we all know as the Rubik's Cube? Where do we draw the line in allowing for technological advances? Surely you wouldn't accept a self-solving cube. But this is no different to your bicycle analogy.
I think the word "qualitative" is very useful here.
- We already allow sanding and lubing? Sure, mech improvements are fine.
- We already allow 7cm cubes? Sure 3cm cubes and 10cm cubes are fine.
But whenever there's a new
kind of change, interpreting whether it falls under
what we previously considered an acceptable puzzle is usually subjective.
(Dene and I have had some thoughts towards a puzzle policy that tries to define what the phrase "basic concept" was trying to get at. I don't believe anymore that this would allow us to judge whether to accept all the new kinds of cubes that will be coming out soon.)
I see that what we're really debating, and what we really need to debate, is whether or not these changes give unfair advantages to a cuber. We know that they give potential advantages, but are they "unfair"?
"Unfair" is the important point, but I've given some thought to the
definition of advantage.
Should the regulations limit these advances in order to maintain a fair playing ground? Or should they allow the advances, leaving each cuber to make their own decisions about which puzzle type works best for them? (which could also be considered a fair playing ground)
I've mentioned this a few times, but one thing that people often fail to consider is that in order to be fair across the world, we need Delegates to be able to make clear judgments about what puzzles are okay.
We already know that competitors get upset if Delegates make inconsistent rulings (e.g. allowing stickerless puzzles for BLD in Europe while they're completely prohibited in the US).
We may expand the puzzle Regulations, perhaps even to something like "anything goes", but we will probably always have a boundary.
As we allow more and more kinds of variations, it may become harder for Delegates to follow that boundary.
In particular, not all Delegates have the time to follow news about updated interpretations.
I wish I knew.
I don't believe that something is fair simply if every competitor is allowed to use it.
My best intuitive thought in that a traditional speedcube should still stay competitive. Gratuitous variations are also not okay.
No cube is unfair as long as everyone is allowed the same cube.
I'm not convinced.
Firstly, good cubes should be reasonably
accessible to all competitors (not just
allowed). Cube prices have stayed stable around $10, so fortunately this is not a concern in the foreseeable future.
We need some limits (it should still turn like a Rubik's Cube, and visually resemble one), and I don't believe that your statement holds unconditionally.
However, I agree that this is the case with most *current* cubes that we're considering.
Suggestion: This could possibly be something to use in the regulations, show a picture of a Rubik's cube and say that any cube that don't give any visual advantages is allowed.
Unfortunately, that would not be detailed and accurate enough. See my discussion of advantage above for something more practical.
