[WCA Regulations 2012] Remove +2 penalty for misaligned sides

[tim]

and how do you know the rule change will affect them more or not? We can't know.

Correct. I wonder why this question matters at all, though. I'm pretty sure everyone will adopt to the new rules pretty quickly.

As I said before, this debate is going nowhere. I'm wondering what the WRC action will be. Since there is no agreement here, the rule shouldn't be changed. But how exactly will WRC do this? What if the people in there are in favour of changing the rule?

The WRC isn't supposed to be democratic, is it? So it actually doesn't matter if we agree.
(It probably shouldn't be democratic. Most decisions require some background knowledge which the average cuber (me included) doesn't have.)

 

[Escher]

Your statement is of course true. However, numbers mean nothing without analysis. Would you like me to add a disclaimer to my post: "I am not omniscient, all interpretation provided reflect my own views, and are not endorsed by SpeedSolving.com or its sponsors."
I'm curious, what's your interpretation of those numbers?

'Not many people in your sample got +2s awarded' was my interpretation. Maybe it's my negative bias that stopped me from going as far as yours.

That's not what I was saying. Hold a competition exactly as we do now, but simply record +2s as DNF. I expect almost nothing would change.

I expect the metagame would.

Or is the burden on your side, to prove that this psychological boogeyman does exist?

Lol 'bogeyman' to describe metagame. I should make a separate thread with a poll to copy your idea of using a small sample to make conclusions about the effects of regulation change.

I remember in previous discussions of this issue, some said that removing this rule would only hurt slower cubers. That such a change would 'obviously' have opposite results is interesting.

In my experience faster competitors are more likely to attempt to perform manoeuvres like AUF with less pausing and caution than slower cubers since each delay costs a larger percentage of the solve time. If a 40 second competitor spends .5s double checking it's obviously less of a difference between that and a 9s cuber. It seems intuitive to suggest that faster people are more likely to overshoot. Though I guess it could perhaps mean they're more likely to be 100% certain of AUF before performing it.

Also that fact that Dene used the 4 fastest competitors I can think of makes me lol.

I agree with Pedro. This debate is going nowhere (oh no, this supports my position!), I don't think it's constructive to continue.

 

[Pedro]

Correct. I wonder why this question matters at all, though. I'm pretty sure everyone will adopt to the new rules pretty quickly.



The WRC isn't supposed to be democratic, is it? So it actually doesn't matter if we agree.
(It probably shouldn't be democratic. Most decisions require some background knowledge which the average cuber (me included) doesn't have.)

Yeah, I don't think it should be democratic. The problem is who is responsible for the decisions? How will they take the decisions? Based on this thread? On a popular vote? On what they feel like?

 

[Lucas Garron]

The WRC isn't supposed to be democratic, is it? So it actually doesn't matter if we agree.
(It probably shouldn't be democratic. Most decisions require some background knowledge which the average cuber (me included) doesn't have.)

You know, you could just read the proposal and talk about this in the WRC thread.

Although we're still getting things together, Vincent, Clément, Sébastien, and I are essentially operating as the WRC for now, and we're going to be talking about all the regulation changes tomorrow.

Although the Regulations should mostly be built by community consensus, there is a limit to the effectiveness of pure democracy. Ron has made some strong decisions in the past (like removing POPs), and if there is anything the WRC should make a separate decision about, it would be a topic like this.

I will still make sure to read every post in this thread, though.

 

[Dene]

@Godmil if you like i could go through the competition averages of every other person that had the same scrambles, then compare those averages to others of those people around the same time to prove to you that there is no reason to believe the elite cubers would have done better had they not DNFed. But really you're just being way too pedantic and throwing out baseless suggestions that add nothing to the discussion. How about you stop contributing nothing to this thread and start giving evidence for your beliefs like I have attempted to do. The *facts* support my claim, maybe it's time you accepted it (same goes for other +2 supporters).

@Escher I don't understand, why is that funny?

 

[MaeLSTRoM]

Just because it seems to me like this discussion is getting harder to see clarity in, I'm going to quote the 2 posts that has so far made the best argument for keeping the +2 penalty in comps.

I read that as "We already do this and it's frustrating, so why not do it for everything?" I know that's not what you meant, but that's what I think: not allowing +2 is frustrating and just makes it all that much easier to mess up. I feel like a DNF is a huge penalty because two of them in an average means you get pushed to the bottom of the ranking, kicking you out of any future rounds and preventing you from placing anywhere near the top. It is not always possible to prevent misalignments, except by waiting after the solve and putting the cube down carefully, and that isn't something the fastest people should have to do. So basically if you get an early DNF then it's just luck whether you can get an average or not. I don't like that.


Also, there's the intuitive fairness argument. If you get a misalignment that isn't your fault, and are given a +2, that's acceptable: the judge says "you take a 2 second penalty because the cube is misaligned" and you go "eh, alright, I'll be more careful next time." So that's a fair penalty, because luck (or being super careful about putting the cube down) can affect a solve by more than 2 seconds by itself. But if you get a DNF, then it's more like this: the judge says "looks like it's above 45 degrees off, so the cube isn't solved, DNF" and you go "seriously? it wasn't my fault!" and then the judge replies "sorry, those are the rules." It ends up feeling way more unfair and frustrating.


EDIT: My approach in different terms: Suppose you have an unruly child and they break a $30 item while you aren't watching them. The +2 penalty is like the shopkeeper asking you to pay them $50 to compensate for the item and to make you be more careful in the future; that is a relatively reasonable request. The DNF penalty is like the shopkeeper breaking your leg.

+2 is murder and can ruin an average. This does not need to be even more draconian by kicking the cuber when he or she is down with a DNF to the stomach.

If it takes you longer than +2 to turn a side, as in feet, I don't think you'll be breaking any records today and I won't lose any sleep over the fact that you might have gamed the system.

Again, this is just me trying to make the arguments clearer on both sides, it seems to have partly boiled down to people saying "Thats a stupid idea, let's do it this way".

 

[jskyler91]

Has anyone truly found a fair solution to the +2's of the past on other people's records? Many people have gotten +2's and DNF's in an average and allowing them to have the saving grace of the plus two, but not us seems unfair. If no one can find a way to solve this issue then it seems that it would be simply unfair to change it now. One possible solution that might make a happy median however (sorry if this has been discussed, but there is 22 pages in this forum already and I do not have the time to read them all) is to make a quarter turn a +2 and anything over that is a DNF.

I would actually say this is a more fair system as being U2 away seems much more of a not complete cube then simply being a U or a U'. I realize that we consider them to be the same in our half turn metric, but in reality they are not and I think (I we are going to make the rules stricter) then this is how we should do it. All of this being said I still really don't see a way to make the old times comparable to the possible new ones.

 

[Kirjava]

Has anyone truly found a fair solution to the +2's of the past on other people's records? Many people have gotten +2's and DNF's in an average and allowing them to have the saving grace of the plus two, but not us seems unfair. If no one can find a way to solve this issue then it seems that it would be simply unfair to change it now.

We removed POPs in the past - what you have brought up is not a problem.

 

[MTGjumper]

Except we were significantly further away from the human limits of speedsolving when that change was made.

 

[FatBoyXPC]

So this was somewhat mentioned already, about a non-cuber who will turn a side and then say "look I solved it!" I believe here though that when a cube is in an obviously solveable state to a non-cuber, then the cube is obviously solved enough. The problem this presents though is that some non-cubers actually know how to fix the M2 U2 M2 pattern, or the M2 E2 S2, etc. We wouldn't consider either of those states solved, but when only one face is turned incorrectly it is very obvious the competitor knows how to solve the cube.

 

[Stefan]

Except we were significantly further away from the human limits of speedsolving when that change was made.

Indeed, and I remember someone pulling out a crystal ball and predicting that we would get this much faster. So we definitely knew that back then. And he also said we wouldn't get faster after the end of 2011 anymore.

 

[MTGjumper]

Except the rate of improvement of world records is clearly much slower.

 

[Dene]

So this was somewhat mentioned already, about a non-cuber who will turn a side and then say "look I solved it!" I believe here though that when a cube is in an obviously solveable state to a non-cuber, then the cube is obviously solved enough. The problem this presents though is that some non-cubers actually know how to fix the M2 U2 M2 pattern, or the M2 E2 S2, etc. We wouldn't consider either of those states solved, but when only one face is turned incorrectly it is very obvious the competitor knows how to solve the cube.

Whether a competitor knows how to solve a cube or not has no effect on whether they solved it this time or not. I don't see any reason why you even make that point. I could swim 40 metres in a 50m pool without too much hassle and it's clear that I could finish if I wanted to, but if I don't I won't get a time in the Olympics (or any other swimming event). (btw, this example is not referring to myself; I can swim 50m but it would take a long time and would not at all be easy >.< ).

 

[MaeLSTRoM]

Whether a competitor knows how to solve a cube or not has no effect on whether they solved it this time or not. I don't see any reason why you even make that point. I could swim 40 metres in a 50m pool without too much hassle and it's clear that I could finish if I wanted to, but if I don't I won't get a time in the Olympics (or any other swimming event). (btw, this example is not referring to myself; I can swim 50m but it would take a long time and would not at all be easy >.< ).

It doesnt have any effect on whether they solved it in that case, but the point is speedcubing is not like other sports. To give a counter example, in a game of chess, if one player knows that they are going to be checkmated before it happens, and there is no way for them to stop it, they will stop the game there and take the loss. Does this mean that the other player didn't win, since the end of the game was not truly reached, even though both players and any spectators know that the game is over?

 

[Stefan]

Except the rate of improvement of world records is clearly much slower.

Please clarify what you mean, as this can't be it:

1982   1 world record
2003  18 world records
2004  42 world records
2005  54 world records
2006  51 world records
2007  72 world records
2008  73 world records
2009  74 world records
2010  79 world records
2011  73 world records (as of Dec 22, with six competitions still ahead)

select year, sum(if(regionalSingleRecord='WR',1,0)+if(regionalAverageRecord='WR',1,0))
from results, competitions
where competitions.id = competitionId
group by year
order by year

 

[Kirjava]

How many world records would be affected if the rule had already changed?

 

[amostay2004]

How many world records would be affected if the rule had already changed?

A recent one that comes to mind is Feliks' 5x5 avg WR at World Championships. He had a counting +2, and if it was a DNF he would still have WR average, just not sub-1

 

[Kirjava]

I think what simon's trying to say is that if we change the rule, records set with the rule enabled may become unbeatable.

I'm pretty sure the record will be broken again without any +2.

 

[MTGjumper]

I was mainly pointing out that making a change to the rules that could make it harder to set faster times is easier when people are getting much faster anyway. I wasn't saying that it was significantly less likely for more records to be broken if +2 was changed to DNF.

Also, in regards to my point on rate of records being broken, I meant the increments by which average records are being broken tend to be smaller, most notably for puzzles that are very popular (2x2, 3x3 etc.)

 

[TheZenith27]

I never get +2s, but I would never support removing the penalty. I would, however, suggest making M slice a +2, as I think getting a DNF on an M slice is outrageous.