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Baltimore Spring 2010

Will you attend this competition?


  • Total voters
    30
  • Poll closed .

fanwuq

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Michael said that he was paying attention during the FMC round and that the only thing he saw was sign language communication between Shane and Christopher Philips during the first 20 minutes of FMC. He thought that Shane was explaining the rules of FMC to Chris. He did not see any cell phone usage. I'd say he isn't any less attentive than any other FMC judge. What makes the most sense is to only DNF Christopher Philips for cheating by communicating with Shane. I could not see how Chris could have possibly cheated to get the solution unless Shane told him the solution.
 

masterofthebass

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Michael said that he was paying attention during the FMC round and that the only thing he saw was sign language communication between Shane and Christopher Philips during the first 20 minutes of FMC. He thought that Shane was explaining the rules of FMC to Chris. He did not see any cell phone usage. I'd say he isn't any less attentive than any other FMC judge. What makes the most sense is to only DNF Christopher Philips for cheating by communicating with Shane. I could not see how Chris could have possibly cheated to get the solution unless Shane told him the solution.

You obviously didn't notice when he started judging 4x4 towards the end of FMC. That disqualifies him from being 'attentive'.
 

fanwuq

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Michael said that he was paying attention during the FMC round and that the only thing he saw was sign language communication between Shane and Christopher Philips during the first 20 minutes of FMC. He thought that Shane was explaining the rules of FMC to Chris. He did not see any cell phone usage. I'd say he isn't any less attentive than any other FMC judge. What makes the most sense is to only DNF Christopher Philips for cheating by communicating with Shane. I could not see how Chris could have possibly cheated to get the solution unless Shane told him the solution.

You obviously didn't notice when he started judging 4x4 towards the end of FMC. That disqualifies him from being 'attentive'.

Really? I was concentrating on my solve the whole time, so I did not see anything. I'll speak to him again later. However, from what I understand, Christopher Phillips finished before that.
Also, you think really attentive FMC judges exist? It's just that at the typical competition, people don't try to cheat and that deaf people are harder to interrogate.
 
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Dave Campbell

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Did anyone happen to find a stackmat timer with the button covers removed?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Dave Campbell has it. His is missing, unfortunately.

It is true, i have a timer that fits your description. You will, however, have to come to Canada to get it back. And yes, my timer disappeared, along with my sense of security at cubing competitions. It was labelled, so it would be hard to mistake it.

He may have been given a cube that was scrambled incorrectly, and is thus the scrambler's fault, technically.

I was the scrambler during this incident. I don't get 3x3 scrambles wrong very often. Granted, i could not check its accuracy due to black and white print outs. When i scramble, i am trying to just plow through, so i don't often look at the name. Therefore i cannot attest to the fact that i scrambled his cube or not for the first scramble. I can, however, assure that i did the remaining four solves.

I'd say he isn't any less attentive than any other FMC judge.

You obviously didn't notice when he started judging 4x4 towards the end of FMC. That disqualifies him from being 'attentive'.

Considering you've been to all of one competition with an FMC event prior to this one, i am not sure you are qualified to make that statement, anyway.

I would like for Wuqiong to be more receptive to the criticism here. By trying to justify every issue brought up, you are essentially saying you don't feel anything was wrong, and as such, would be very unlikely to work to remedy these things. But believe me, there were things that were done poorly. I spoke with you after the competition about these things, and Kian outlined many of them in this thread, as well.

Yes, you got through the events you wanted to, but i don't think that equates to victory. To put things in perspective, there were only 45 competitors in the 3x3 event, so less than 50 total i am sure. There were a total of 10, yes, 10 timing stations. With those sorts of numbers, we should have been able to have three rounds of 3x3, OH, 2x2, and virtually everyone should have been able to do 4x4 and 5x5 averages regardless of solve times. Instead, we barely got through the events listed, had to drop the OH finals, and only had 2 rounds of the main events.

Dave Campbell had a lot of organization experience. We should have discussed the plans at the beginning of the day.

As far as i can tell, there was next to no prep work done for this competition. When i arrived, i helped set up the timing stations and scramble stations. After that i sat down and waited, like any other competitor, for the events to start. I had no idea, at that time, that we needed to have a meeting to discuss how things were going to go the rest of the day. It was not until i started to scramble that i realized there were major issues. Specifically, when i managed to scramble every single cube in front of me (i.e. 30+) before anyone even started judging a competitor.

I wanted to collect puzzles before the round starts. Dave wasn't so happy about that; he clearly liked to be in control, so I ended up judging a lot of people off to the side.


I like to think i am a pretty approachable guy. I wouldn't say i like to be in control, at least not at a competition where i am neither organizer or delegate. But i have been to enough of these things to know what works and what does not. I am not certain what you are referring to here. But there were no heats. So basically, we'd have everyone come up at once to give their puzzle in. You asked me in the middle of the 2x2 round if we should start 3x3. I said no. Having that many people rush the table, trying to create their own score card, having judges coming back to the scrambling table to try and get through 2x2, etc, would have just created unnecessary havoc.

I am sorry you feel we are being unreasonable in our view of the competition. But i would like for you to realize that when you have this many experienced competitors and organizers telling you that on a whole, the organisation of the competition was a failure, you should probably take note. Lastly, there is a direct correlation between the Shane incident and the chaos that came with the lack of organisation. So there are bigger reasons why it is so important to the integrity of any competition.
 
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It is true, i have a timer that fits your description. You will, however, have to come to Canada to get it back. And yes, my timer disappeared, along with my sense of security at cubing competitions. It was labelled, so it would be hard to mistake it.

I have a stackmat that's not mine labeled "canadian cubing" that somehow ended in my bag.
 

masterofthebass

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It is true, i have a timer that fits your description. You will, however, have to come to Canada to get it back. And yes, my timer disappeared, along with my sense of security at cubing competitions. It was labelled, so it would be hard to mistake it.

I have a stackmat that's not mine labeled "canadian cubing" that somehow ended in my bag.

THIEF!
 
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fanwuq

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Dave,

I have been receptive to your criticisms. I thank you for your suggestions. Now relax and be a bit more optimistic. A cubing competition is supposed to be fun, not an assembly line. Sure things didn't go perfectly, but it's not like I wasn't working the whole time. I also prepared everything I could think of before the competition. I think it could have been a lot worse. If Shane and his friends tried to cheat for the first time at one of your competitions, I doubt you could have done much more to fix it. I accept my errors and responsibilities and I will do better in the future. You know that people aren't so stupid that they need your bashing to know that they've done something wrong. You've made some nice suggestions, but get a better attitude. Thanks.

For the situation with scrambling 3x3 during the 2x2 round. I asked to do it at another table on the other side of the room. It could have worked. You should be more receptive of new ideas. Not everyone run things the way you want to. You were not approachable.

Edit:
Also, you only complained at the end of the competition. If you did not like the way things were going, you could have easily reported to me during the competition and I would have been able to fix it. I will accept whatever I'm accountable for, but you can't be using me as a scapegoat.
 
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shelley

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WCA regs said:
E2) Procedure for Fewest Moves Solving:
...
E2f) The competitor must be able to give a clear explanation of the solution.

Should Christopher have competed in FMC in the first place if he's unable to give a clear explanation of his solution because of his disability?

I don't see how his disability prevents him from following that particular regulation. He's deaf, not unable to communicate.

1. While it was not the conventional way to do things, what we did for the first event could have worked for everything else.
I expected to just call out that an event is starting. People will line up to write their names and put down their puzzles. The scramblers could immediately start scrambling while people write their names. They can make 4 lines at the registration table and that shouldn't take more than 3 minutes. Apparently that's not the way things work now, but it seems possible that this can become a good system.

Being receptive to new ideas is one thing, but someone with Dave's experience would know that this isn't going to work for events with more than a few competitors. 50 competitors swarming a scrambling table is just a bad idea.
 
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fanwuq

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1. While it was not the conventional way to do things, what we did for the first event could have worked for everything else.
I expected to just call out that an event is starting. People will line up to write their names and put down their puzzles. The scramblers could immediately start scrambling while people write their names. They can make 4 lines at the registration table and that shouldn't take more than 3 minutes. Apparently that's not the way things work now, but it seems possible that this can become a good system.

Being receptive to new ideas is one thing, but someone with Dave's experience would know that this isn't going to work for events with more than a few competitors. 50 competitors swarming a scrambling table is just a bad idea.

There were plenty of empty tables at the other side of the room. I could have taken the scramble sheets and started to scramble there.
 

puzzlemaster

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1. While it was not the conventional way to do things, what we did for the first event could have worked for everything else.
I expected to just call out that an event is starting. People will line up to write their names and put down their puzzles. The scramblers could immediately start scrambling while people write their names. They can make 4 lines at the registration table and that shouldn't take more than 3 minutes. Apparently that's not the way things work now, but it seems possible that this can become a good system.

Being receptive to new ideas is one thing, but someone with Dave's experience would know that this isn't going to work for events with more than a few competitors. 50 competitors swarming a scrambling table is just a bad idea.

There were plenty of empty tables at the other side of the room. I could have taken the scramble sheets and started to scramble there.

I could have gotten a sub 15 average...did I?
 

fanwuq

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1. While it was not the conventional way to do things, what we did for the first event could have worked for everything else.
I expected to just call out that an event is starting. People will line up to write their names and put down their puzzles. The scramblers could immediately start scrambling while people write their names. They can make 4 lines at the registration table and that shouldn't take more than 3 minutes. Apparently that's not the way things work now, but it seems possible that this can become a good system.

Being receptive to new ideas is one thing, but someone with Dave's experience would know that this isn't going to work for events with more than a few competitors. 50 competitors swarming a scrambling table is just a bad idea.

There were plenty of empty tables at the other side of the room. I could have taken the scramble sheets and started to scramble there.

I could have gotten a sub 15 average...did I?

No. From the beginning, I suggested 2 scrambling tables. It would have made things a lot faster. However, Dave rejected the idea 2 times. He clearly wanted to be in control. When things don't end up the way he likes, he tries to blame it on me. If he was not there, I could have taken control and ran the competition my way. I thought he was experienced and let him do his thing, then helped out as much as possible with everything else.
I guess it's my fault for taking everyone's opinion into consideration. I really could have just ignored Dave and finished everything more efficiently my own way.
 
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Dude, fanwuq, chill out and don't take everything so personally. The people posting suggestions in this thread aren't criticizing you or blaming you for the things that went wrong (most people, anyway). They're simply making suggestions for how you might improve next time. Stop being so defensive and actually listen to what they're telling you, because in addition to being entirely unproductive, denying everything and fighting back makes you seem incredibly childish.
 

qqwref

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If the general opinion is that you aren't good at organizing, you're obviously not going to get the best results by just ignoring people with more experience/skills and doing everything yourself. I respect that you set up the competition, but different styles don't always work together, and sometimes it's a better idea to 100% listen to someone else than to do it yourself. I doubt Dave wanted to "be in control" as much as he knew that some things you were trying simply wouldn't work well, and thought he could do better.

For the record, as far as scrambling goes:
- If you have more than about ten scrambled cubes sitting on the scrambling table, you need more judges and not more scramblers. Nobody wants to wait several minutes for their first solve without their main cube, at least on 3x3.
- Don't bring everyone up at once unless "everyone" is roughly 12 or fewer people.
- One good scrambler is enough for 4x4 and 5x5, as long as the competition isn't too large. You don't need more than two for 3x3 unless you call up too many people at once.
- It's always faster to have the judges do 2x2 scrambles right there if this is possible.

As far as Shane, since Dave remembers scrambling the last four solves, I think it is possible that Shane put down a scrambled (in his special way) cube when he brought the cube up, and that this wasn't noticed in the chaos. A judge could then have picked up the cube, brought it over, and let him solve it (in 13 seconds) without the cube ever having been properly scrambled.
 
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