Haiyan Zhuang banned for 1-3 years

[hawkmp4]

It's a national cubing society. How can you call it a world record if the whole world isn't allowed to compete for it in their competitions? That'd be like me sitting in my room and calling my rather ordinary, less-than-average solves a world record. If I'm the only one allowed to compete for it then I'll have a world record with every PB.

No, that'd be like someone in the CCA setting a record that's faster than the previous CCA record or WCA record.
By your argument, records set in WCA competitions where only one nationality is allowed shouldn't count as records.

 

[Tyson]

"Well Haiyan does have a faster solve...it's just not official."

What makes a CCA record less official than a WCA one?

I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts.

CCA records wouldn't count because they're from a national cubing society. I don't believe they allow international competitors into their competitions (I may be wrong about that) and since they don't allow international competitors, records shouldn't be allowed on the international stage. They formed the CCA, the Chinese Cubing Association as opposed to the WCA, World Cubing Associtation. This implies that all competition will be kept within their borders and if that's the case all records should as well. If they were trying to create another international cubing society like the International Cubing Federation, or something similar, and allowed foriegn competitors I would have a different view.

Your answer had nothing to do with my question.

The WCA's legitimacy is really only in the minds of the community. In the end, most people out there trust that WCA organizers and delegates are doing this for the sake of cubing, and not for personal gain or other motivations.

Looking at the history of the CCA, can you say the same thing? The WCA is the WCA for a reason, as opposed to the WRCA. When money isn't involved, people and companies with financial interest can't come in and demand rule changes for financial gain. I think in this sense, it keeps the sport more pure. We cube because we want to, and because it's fun. When people make rules so that they can directly profit from the competition, or when they change things to help improve their profits, doesn't that change the legitimacy of the records?

And if the WCA only allowed people who blue eyes to compete in their competition, would you consider the WCA's records legitimate? I think the openness of the competitions, that anyone can attend without restriction, and without threats or intimidation, is one thing that makes the WCA records recognized by the community.

 

[Kirjava]

The WCA's legitimacy is really only in the minds of the community. In the end, most people out there trust that WCA organizers and delegates are doing this for the sake of cubing, and not for personal gain or other motivations.

This was the answer I was hoping to get.

My thought was that even if the CCA is founded on madness, over time it may gain an air of legitimacy.

 

[PatrickJameson]

The one thing that I can see would be a problem with this whole CCA not being associated with the WCA thing is that, if a lot of fast people who would normally just got to WCA competitions decide not to go to any of those competitions and instead go to CCA competitions, the WCA rankings will be skewed, as those fast people are not competing in WCA competitions anymore.

This wouldn't be good :|.

 

[freshcuber]

What would you say the percentage of cubers operating under WCA rules are? Atleast 90%. Probably more. There may be other cubing organiztaions out there but I've never heard of any of them (Other than CCA). A record time in a CCA competition would be official, yes. But not the same as a WCA record even if it's faster. I wouldn't qualify it as a record because I go by WCA rules so any times recorded under other rules would make it worthless to a WCA cuber.

 

[jiggy]

And if the WCA only allowed people who blue eyes to compete in their competition, would you consider the WCA's records legitimate? I think the openness of the competitions, that anyone can attend without restriction, and without threats or intimidation, is one thing that makes the WCA records recognized by the community.

Assuming people with blue eyes were competing in one room, and people with every other eye colour in another. If the fastest time overall was then achieved by a blue eyed competitor, then I would certainly consider that a legitimate record.

If, hypothetically, the competition procedure was to be identical between the WCA and the CCA, and a record was broken by a competitor in the CCA (with no WCA delegate present, but still in full competition conditions), do you think the WCA would/should accept that record?

If the CCA were to change some of the rules, as they seem to be talking about, things would certainly get a bit more misty...

 

[Kirjava]

If, hypothetically, the competition procedure was to be identical between the WCA and the CCA, and a record was broken by a competitor in the CCA (with no WCA delegate present, but still in full competition conditions), do you think the WCA would/should accept that record?

This will never happen.

 

[jiggy]

If, hypothetically, the competition procedure was to be identical between the WCA and the CCA, and a record was broken by a competitor in the CCA (with no WCA delegate present, but still in full competition conditions), do you think the WCA would/should accept that record?

This will never happen.

What will never happen? A CCA competitor will never break a WCA record, the procedures will never be the same, or the WCA will never accept a CCA record?

I assume you mean the latter, I really don't know where I stand on this issue. If the two procedures were to be completely identical, then what makes a WCA record more official -more legitimate- than a CCA record? (Apparently I'm parroting your question back at you now!)

 

[ExoCorsair]

If, hypothetically, the competition procedure was to be identical between the WCA and the CCA, and a record was broken by a competitor in the CCA (with no WCA delegate present, but still in full competition conditions), do you think the WCA would/should accept that record?

A better question to ask is, "If the WCA WR were broken by a CCA competitor, would the community accept that record?"

 

[Kirjava]

It's not about it being 'more official'.

It's about the fact that WCA don't accept results from non-WCA competitions for a number of reasons. These should be obvious to you.

 

[oprah62]

CCA doesn't matter at all to cubers outside of China, because even if he gets his 2 rounds of BLD and gets a new "WR", the WCA will never acknowledge it and his record will stay the same for 1-3 years or until it's beaten.
I agree, 1+ years is harsh.

 

[jiggy]

If, hypothetically, the competition procedure was to be identical between the WCA and the CCA, and a record was broken by a competitor in the CCA (with no WCA delegate present, but still in full competition conditions), do you think the WCA would/should accept that record?

A better question to ask is, "If the WCA WR were broken by a CCA competitor, would the community accept that record?"

Indeed, and I asked that question a few pages back!

What's more, if we didn't accept that record but the CCA insisted it was in fact legit, would the Chinese community then accept any proceeding records set by the WCA?

EDIT: Forget it, I think speculation isn't helpful at this point. I'm just wondering if this is going to change anything, or if everything is just going carry on as before. Hopefully the second.

 

[PatrickJameson]

If, hypothetically, the competition procedure was to be identical between the WCA and the CCA, and a record was broken by a competitor in the CCA (with no WCA delegate present, but still in full competition conditions), do you think the WCA would/should accept that record?

A better question to ask is, "If the WCA WR were broken by a CCA competitor, would the community accept that record?"

It would be treated as if the competition was an unofficial meetup/event, obviously.

 

[Tyson]

The WCA's legitimacy is really only in the minds of the community. In the end, most people out there trust that WCA organizers and delegates are doing this for the sake of cubing, and not for personal gain or other motivations.

This was the answer I was hoping to get.

My thought was that even if the CCA is founded on madness, over time it may gain an air of legitimacy.

Well, only if people give it the legitimacy.

So let's say you have a CCA competition that follows identical regulations as a WCA competition. Well... how do you know that? How do you know there isn't cheating going on behind the scenes? How do you know this for a WCA competition? In both a WCA and a CCA competition, how do you ever know that a competitor hasn't been given some type of advantage, let's say, a prepared scramble.

You don't. That's the simple fact. When you attend a WCA competition, you're putting trust in a lot of people. It starts from Ron and myself, when we created the WCA and keeping financial interest out of it by not taking any direct sponsorship from anyone. The trust comes from the people who have helped me organize competitions back in 2004 when things were getting started. And the trust continues to the delegates, whom have dealt with either myself, or my colleagues, or some other connection back to the WCA. And I trust the delegates because they have been appointed by either myself, other members of the board, or other delegates that I trust.

So in the end, let's say some miraculous time comes out of the CCA. It's your choice whether or not you want to trust them. That, I can't control. But to compare the CCA records to the WCA I say would be to trivialize the work done over the last 6 years to build an open trusting community.

You don't just start something new because you aren't happy with what's out there. I think the cubers in our community need to ask the question, "Why was the CCA started?" If the WCA is doing such a bad job, and we have things in place that are really that unfair that the CCA needs to be started, then yes, we should have an immediate discussion to try to resolve this. But if the CCA was started because one person wasn't happy with the way some things were run, isn't that a reason to be suspicious of the motivations of the CCA?

I think it's very clear that I have no "personal glory" reason to benefit from the WCA. My time to shine was 5 years ago and I'm just way too slow to even attempt to come close to those types of records. I think pretty much all of us are like that. Ron, who is still a very fast cuber, really isn't anywhere near the top on the large cubes anymore. And Masayuki, who used to be a top 5x5 solver, we're all just old. We have no records to shoot for anymore. We've stepped aside. So from this standpoint, I can assure you that the WCA, especially the board members... we're not doing this because we want some record or international praise for being the fastest. It's simply not going to happen. We're too old and slow.

And as for financial gain, I'd be happy to show anyone with doubts that there is any personal financial gain from WCA events the paperwork that no one is personally putting money away for their own use. All revenue generated from WCA events gets put back into WCA events. Any left over money is saved for the future.

So why, at least myself, do I spend the time and effort to organize a WCA event? I dunno... I think I've just been involved for 6 years now, I just keep on doing it. It's also very satisfying for me to see a large scale event come together, like US Nationals. Most of all though, these types of events are reasons for me to see some of the friends I've made over the last 6 years. It was a privilege to host Stefan Pochmann week at my home in California. And yet a privilege again to see him at US Nationals.

So these are my motivations for the WCA. It's simply a lot of fun for me to meet people from around the world, and have something in common to talk about. And it's these motivations over the last 6 years, shared by myself and the other WCA delegates, that give the WCA records their legitimacy. If we have nothing to gain, then it's every reason to ensure a fair and open competition.

What then, is the motivation of the CCA? If it is to improve on the WCA, then what has the WCA done so badly that a discussion couldn't have taken place with the WCA to correct these alleged transgressions.

I guess that's all I really have to ask then, in terms of the question of CCA records. For what reasons was the CCA formed, and is this an organization that you want to trust given the context of everything that's happened?

 

[jiggy]

Thanks for your input, Tyson, that was a very interesting read. I agree with what you're saying about trust in an organisation. I suppose it's hard to trust an organisation that came in to strength because a person wanted to change things to better suit them.

I'm not looking forward to a time when I can have a conversation along the lines of:
"Did you hear there's a new world record of 6.92?"
"No, that's the Chinese record, not the world record."
"Oh...there's a difference?"

 

[Kirjava]

I guess that's all I really have to ask then, in terms of the question of CCA records. For what reasons was the CCA formed, and is this an organization that you want to trust given the context of everything that's happened?

It seems that many people already do trust Haiyan and therefore the CCA.

I understand what you're saying, but just because CCA was founded for poor reasons doesn't mean the organisation will be fraught with cheating.

 

[Bryan]

I'm not looking forward to a time when I can have a conversation along the lines of:
"Did you hear there's a new world record of 6.92?"
"No, that's the Chinese record, not the world record."
"Oh...there's a difference?"

You're just answering the question wrong.

"Did you hear there's a new world record of 6.92?"
"Yes, it was set under the Chinese Association rules, where are different from the more common WCA rules".

Especially if they have stuff like unlimited inspection time.

 

[Tyson]

True, I agree that it doesn't necessarily imply that it will be fraught with cheating.

It seems too convenient to me though, that Haiyan starts getting sub-30 second BLD solves in his own organization.

In the similar vein, it's why it would be a bad idea for Feliks to be a WCA delegate now. This isn't because he's trust worthy, but it's best to have no conflict of interest. Same with Rowe Hessler. If you're that good, it's best not to have that responsibility.

If people want to trust Haiyan and the CCA, well, there's really nothing I can do and nothing that I should do. I do see it a shame that people would trivialize the work done over the last 6 years by the WCA to ensure fair and open competitions though. We've done a lot of work to make competitions open and accessible to everyone.

 

[Kirjava]

Especially if they have stuff like unlimited inspection time.

This will die soon after everyone starts to do speedbld.

 

[freshcuber]

We should also look at this from the CCAs point of view. They believe they've been mistreated and cheated by the WCA and the ban of Haiyan just solidified this idea in their minds. If there's any one way for this problem to be resolved it's that all the leaders of the WCA and CCA should discuss the problems that Haiyan was confronted with and figure out what truly happened and what's causing the schism.