Some of the arguments about the regulations are getting very heated, with people strongly defending opinions without thinking clearly about their justifications. So, I would like to tell a story about a specific regulation revisions took place 2005-2006, when I was joining the community.
It used to be that if your cube popped during an official solve, you could request an additional attempt. From the
2005 regulations:
In 'Best of' rounds solves with a puzzle defect cannot be exchanged by an extra attempt. If a puzzle defect occurs, the competitor may choose to repair the puzzle and continue the solve.
In 'Average of 5' or 'Mean of 3' rounds solves with a puzzle defect may be exchanged by an extra attempt, depending on the announcement for the competition. There may be maximum 1 extra attempt per round.
In the
2006 regulations, this changed to allow extra attempts only for 'Mean of 3' rounds. 2006 is also the only year we've had two major revisions of the regulations, and in the
2006v2 regulations, pops were no longer allowed:
"5c) If a competitor has a puzzle defect, this does not give him the right to an extra attempt."
At this time, the
speedcubing.com UWR pages were still a central place where everyone posted their times, and which defined community standards. Macky provided a good argument for removing pops in a
Dec. 2005 post. After the initial regulation change, there was a thread about whether competitors
could intentionally pop a cube. After Ron's announcement of the
2006v2 (draft) regulations, there was another discussion about
pops and the UWRs.
Here are some thoughts on this:
Some people believed there was no need to disallow pops. The fast cubers know and trusted each other, and there was no reason to believe someone would cheat. But it is easy to mistake the fact that you don't think you/someone else would/could abuse a rule with the fact that a rule can be easily misused. You might have tried to argue that a person should deserve another pop if the judge could tell it wasn't on purpose, because it wasn't their fault. I can't find it ight now, but I posting a comment saying that I received an extra attempt on a POP once, and that I was glad the rules allowed it. The rule was nice, and it could have been fair. But the fact is that that the rule did provide an advantage that people were simply used to.
(Also: Just because you don't think a rule can be abused doesn't mean it won't. We learned this the hard way in 2008 with BLD, but peopel succumb to this argument time and gime again. There is also such an aspect to +2s with BLD.)
I believe there are many things we're holding on to just because we're used to them, mainly:
- Inspection time
- +2 penalities for misalignments
Here's how I see most people arguing in this thread:
You have an opinion and you're trying to come up with reasons to support it. Instead,
you should be looking at the facts and seeing which stance it supports better.
Stefan its playing Devil's advocate against removing +2s because he's trying to help figure out if the arguments Chris is using are strong enough, and he's looking at it from the perspective of trying to understand how we should define "solving the puzzle" in a competition setting. Although the "how-it-looks-to-an-outsider" reasoning should be used with care, you should think of yourself as someone who is trying to understand the WCA Regulations for the first time. The +2 penalty can be justified, but is a historical courtesy, not an absolute solution. I don't think anyone would argue that the removal of POPs was a bad decision, and I believe that most of the reasoning for keeping +2s are similar reasons that justified allowing POPs.
Personal opinions:
I was against removing pops because I didn't understand things well enough at the time. I used to be against removing +2s, but this thread has done enough to convince me that most arguments arbitrary/emotional opinions or based on the fact that we're just used to them. I believe that competitions will work just fine if we remove the privilege of +2. Competitors still have fair chances to get an average, and if they want to avoid risking a +2 they should practice it like they would practice to avoid pops. Looking at all the reasons, I've come to the conclusion that I think it is better and simpler to define a cube either as solved or not (with no penalty inbetween), and I will ask the WRC to consider this change seriously.
Note: While I used to be against removeing inspection time, I think that it also makes much more sense that solving the puzzle should *not* allow for this. However, this is a much harder change to make to the regulations; in particular, it is a much harder *transition* to make from previous results. Removing +2 misaligment penalties is much more realistic.
P.S.: More history, because I don't think most people remember it. The rules about alignments have had two major changes in the past. One was that the allowable misalignment for a cube was up to 45 degrees instead of
one piece touching the next. The other was that any number of slices on the same axis were allowed to be misaligned at once. Both were significant changes, but I don't think anyone has disputed that either was a reasonable decision. I think keeping the one-axis definition is good, and 45 degrees ("closer to a sovlved than not") is useful enough to make the limit.
tl;dr: Please try to look at this issue more objectively, and consider the fact that such "drastic" changes in the past have been good decisions. And: look at the highlighted sentences in the middle of this post.
