[WCA Regulations 2014] Mean of N for FMC

[Laura O]

Thank you for responding Laura, I was hoping you would write.
I don't understand how you can say "So mean of 3 did not change anything for me". Your approach to FMC seems to be the same as mine and the result is the same as mine: Sometimes you get good results, sometimes you DNF because you can't find a good enough finish. But in the past that didn't matter because your result for the event would be your best of the 3 solves. Now it immediately turns your result into a DNF. How can you still say that it didn't change anything for you.

What do you mean by "it didn't matter"? Or what actually matters?

To summarize my point of view again: I have done sub30s at home, so my goal is to do this officially. I think I can solve any scramble in about 35 moves if I have the time to build a promising skeleton and find good insertions. Since I am also doing FMC solves at home, I am constantly improving and becoming faster. But I still do not have the skills to find a (sub)35 moves solution in one hour without having the luck to find the right "path" early.
Nevertheless I can solve a 3x3, I know several methods, substeps, tricks... But in fact I'm too proud to submit such a solution in FMC.
So, the situation for me in a "best of x" format: aim to do a good solution and get that as a personal record in my WCA profile.
Situation in a "mean of 3" format: aim to do a good solution and get that as a personal record in my WCA profile.
The actual difference would be a good ranking in the competition. But as said before: I don't care and that is exactly why it doesn't change anything for me.

Also, I stick with my point that the thread went dead and then came alive again by Sebastien. How can so many people deny that when it is so obvious just by looking back:
29th of April 2013, after about 40 posts in 1 week the thread dies; http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...n-of-N-for-FMC&p=848173&viewfull=1#post848173
12th of August 2013, after Sebastien didn't become World Champion he revives the thread; http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...n-of-N-for-FMC&p=887963&viewfull=1#post887963

And what's your point with that?
Sure, he was the one who revived the discussion in August. In your last post you connected that to the fact that he didn't become the world champion in FMC. You didn't write that clearly, but you seem to implicate that he did that in order to higher his chances to win future championships. I think you mix up personal and (WCA-)official interests in a mean way.
Furthermore the WCA is not some kind of dictatorship, where decisions are made by one single person.

 

[tim]

Furthermore the WCA is not some kind of dictatorship, where decisions are made by one single person.

A dictatorship can consist of more than one person. And the WCA board is actually a dictatorship. (Disclaimer: I don't think that's bad.)

 

[Laura O]

A dictatorship can consist of more than one person. And the WCA board is actually a dictatorship. (Disclaimer: I don't think that's bad.)

I think it's obvious what I meant to say: the rules are not changed because a single person (Sébastien in this case) wants them to be changed.

 

[AvGalen]

You know he wasn't the person who remained this thread but I was? Not after the world champs but 4 months earlier after the BW Open and Moritz Karl's ER - the same frustration he had as a good FMCer

And in LV he first had the chance to talk to other Board Members directly

I see you edited your post to say that you reanimated it first. Please read more carefully next time. I specifically said "Then he reanimated this thread just after not becoming the world champion in Las Vegas.". This thread was dead for 4 months and anyone claiming that Sebastien didn't reanimate it is trying to rewrite history.

The actual difference would be a good ranking in the competition. But as said before: I don't care and that is exactly why it doesn't change anything for me.

And what's your point with that?
Sure, he was the one who revived the discussion in August. In your last post you connected that to the fact that he didn't become the world champion in FMC. You didn't write that clearly, but you seem to implicate that he did that in order to higher his chances to win future championships. I think you mix up personal and (WCA-)official interests in a mean way.
Furthermore the WCA is not some kind of dictatorship, where decisions are made by one single person.

Okay, I understand now why you said it didn't change anything for you. You didn't care about getting a mean, you just wanted to get a single and didn't care about your competition ranking.
I actually didn't make the connection between him reviving the thread and him not becoming the world champion in my last post, I did that in the post where I said he revived the thread and much before that as well: http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...n-of-N-for-FMC&p=939573&viewfull=1#post939573

I have never said or implicated or even felt that Sebastien did this to higher his chances to win future championships. I have only made the connection to the past. I am not mixing up personal and official interests in any mean way but I cannot stop you from thinking what you think.

The problem is that the proposal (and poll) was about ADDING mean-of-3. I might (or might not) have been in favor of that actually. But as we all know by now the actual change has been to REPLACE best-of-3 with mean-of-3 AND make that the prefered format AND make retro-active results.
I have read https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/81 and Sebastien nicely proposes the format-change.
When he is asked to provide proof of community support he adds a poll and soon after writes "the community generally agrees that "Mean of 3" should be a possible format for FMC" which was perfectly true at the time.
Now comes the strange part: Under pros he writes "in contrast to some people's assumptions, organisers will of course still have the possibility to host FMC with a "Best of X" format, just like this is possible for all other events listed in 9b2." This looks like the proposal is about adding mean-of-3
But then comes the twist. He makes another proposal:
"As an addition it bothers me (and others), that Best of 3 is possible for events that can be held using Mean of 3. Hence I also ask you to update 9b2a to:9b2a) Competition formats for these events are: "Best of X" (where X is 1 or 2) and "Mean of 3"."

Now we are no longer talking about adding mean-of-3 but about replacing best-of-3 with mean-of-3. He never asked for community support for this and basically his list of pro's and cons is no longer appropriate. (the DNF issue is actually on the pros part while it should be on the cons)

 

[Sebastien]

So many ridiculous lies, purposely wrongly interpreted facts, false information and logical fallacies...

It proved just how bad this Mean-of-3 idea is:

Stefan and Tim (who even shares your opinion!) already pointed out how wrong this is.

What Sebastien said would happen: Good solvers would not be pushed down by lucky solvers (true) and the results will be a better representation of the skills of people (this is false)

No, that's not false. You are commiting the mistake to not taking into considaration that some people decided to stop caring about their Mean result. They would confirm this to you if you would care to ask them (and actually listen to their answer).

This is what Sebastien said: FMC is the event where you are least likely to have a DNF if you pay attention to time and writing. For the top that turned out to be true but not for the middle-class
The amount of DNF-results is much bigger than normal, as is expected

Big logical fallacy. There is a huge difference between DNFing as result of a lack of ability and DNFing as a result of choice. Laura describes this very well in her previous post.

This is what Sebastien said: This will not influence the results because of "safety solves". Yet he and the top 3 got worse results than normal. Apparently all scrambles were really hard. But then the difficulty of the scrambles seems to be what influences the results and not the luckyness

Logical fallacy. The scrambles at this competition were indeed really hard. Why is it surprising that as a logical consequence, the results of the competitors were worse than usual? And how do you deduce any knowledge about the influence of luckiness about this?

Also, the poll was about ADDING mean of 3 as an option, but in reality mean of 3 has now replaced best of 3 [...]

This is either a false presentation of facts or missing knowledge. Your are mixing up 2 seperate changes to our regulations, where one of those was :

https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/81
https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/109

I couldn't make this competition on Friday, so I had no chance of getting into the ranking for FMC. Because of that I also choose not to do the 3rd solve on Saturday morning, although I love FMC.

I was actually sorry on Friday when I got to know you couldn't make it. I acknowledge that this scheduling decision was rather bad, and I will try to improve on this the next time I am delegating a competition holding FMC as Mean of 3. However, I cannot understand your decision not to attend the 3rd attempt on Saturday morning. You keep saying that your approach is to aim for good official singles. That's exactly what you could have done.

Sebastien keeps saying that there is lots of community support for this, ...

Because there definitely is. I will surely not start to argue about percentages with you though.

but I claim he has tunnel vision and didn't listen or even respond to most of the comments in this thread. Especially the ones about there never having been 3 attempts at a major competition (quite the opposite actually, most competitions with 3 attempts were small and some specialised for FMC and some (co)organised by him) and the different approaches to allow for a DNF.

Wrong. I read every single post in this thread. I just disagreed - and for good reasons:

- major competitions never had 3 attempts of FMC because there was no good reason for them to have. Now there is, and you will see what happens.
- again: there is no reason to DNF an FMC solve besides personal choice or bad time strategy. Do you seriously argue, that any capable FMC competitor would not be able to submit a correct solution within an hour if he really had to?

He keeps saying that he wants to make it more in line with blind and 666/777 but those are not events that are taking 3 hours and spread over several days.

This is a lie, even if I assume that you were meaning feet instead of blind. I just told you last weekend, that FMC is now equivalent to those events in our regulations, which is different to any motive of making FMC similar to them.

The retro-active awarding of records has no support as far as I have heard. Not even by people that got some of those WR's!

I can't argue against what you have heard, but I would suggest to you to also listen to voices of people that do not share your opinion.

I'm sure the number of FMC means will increase in 2014, but I think at the moment the people who want FMC means form small groups concentrated in a few areas of the world. The majority of serious cubers who regularly attend competitions have never done an FMC mean, and maybe have never even been to a competition which offered it.

No one has ever been to a competition offering Mean of 3 for FMC until January 1st of this year. But now that the format exists, this will likely be changing. It is simply unfair to judge from past statistics, while there hasn't been a clear reason to host 3 FMC attempt, in contrast to now.

Even Sebastien told me that he didn't really like them.

This is a lie.

Because of this variety and the fact that best of 3 is only rarely held it makes no sense to me that suddenly mean-of-3 became the preferred format

Nothing happened suddenly. All this would have been completely clear by simply knowing the rules. The proposal was clearly to move FMC from 9b3 to 9b2 within the regulations. 9p+ did not change in the new version, and there was no indication that it would change either.

It wasn't just based on this sample, it was also based on historic knowledge. Sebastien basically claims that if you care for FMC and are somewhat decent at it you will not DNF.

This is a lie.

Sebastien also claimed that safety solves are not needed, but yet he needed a 33 moves solution. For most people that is good, but for him we have to go back 40 competitions and almost 70 solves to see him do so badly (ignoring the 6 DNF's in there)

Logical fallacy. So I got a 33 move result, that's undeniable. But how can you claim that was a safety solve? It was just the best result that I could get within 1 hour, just like for every other official FMC attempt since the beginning of 2013 (except for 1 anger DNF).

mean of 3 changes the way you have to approach fmc when you compare it to best of 3.

Wrong. It doesn't at least change the way I have to approach FMC, which disproves your general statement.

Having this rule so suddenly implemented and implemented differently than suggested (replacing best of 3, not adding best of 3) by a board member that feels robbed of his 2013 WR-title reflects horribly on the WCA

That's for sure the most absurd statement in this entire thread. First of all, I did not implement anything. I just made a formal proposal, that was considered as reasonable by the WRC and thus proposed to the WCA Board, where it got accepted with an unanimous vote. 4 other board members and the entire WRC will be happy to confirm this.
The next absurd statement is your horrendous assumption that I would feel robbed of my WR-title. You can neither know this, nor is that true in any way. I was in contrast very satisfied with my 2nd place finish at WC13.

Sebastien didn't propose mean of 3 in 2011. He just made a remark that he would love mean of 2 or mean of 3. If you read this thread from the beginning you can see that he actually was in favor of mean of 2 at first.

This is a lie. You are refering to the beginning of this thread yourself, but apparently you just ignored my starting post in which I propose Mean of 2 or Mean of 3. So in particular, I also proposed Mean of 3.

Then this thread died out. Then he reanimated this thread just after not becoming the world champion in Las Vegas. Jimmy Coll, István Kocza, Steven Xu and Devin Corr-Robinett are the reasons we are having this discussion.

Again a logical fallacy. Your connection between me not becoming world champion and me reanimating this thread is completely arbitrary and not based on any knowledge. In contrast, there is no other explanation for this than purely mean intention.

For those that are actually interested in truth instead of arbitrary assumptions: As Linus mentioned earlier, that I had the chance to discuss a lot of WCA topics with the other Board members during WC13. Among other things, I got to know that they were agreeing with the idea of having a Mean-format for FMC and that Mean of 3 would be the most convincing proposal.

I also don't understand, given the knowledge that you should have, you are putting Jimmy and Istvan in line with Steven and Devin. That's just wrong.

 

[Sebastien]

I'm not happy that best of 3 is no longer an option. I didnt realise this. That is not the only thing that was not made obvious at all during the proposal stage e.g. retroactive records, mean of 3 rankings.

Given that there is a mean of 3 ranking now, I'd like to hold a 3 attempt competition in the UK sometime. But I'd much rather rank it by best of 3 because tbh idc whether I get beaten by a lucky solve or another decent solver in a local comp, and it will of course ensure that most people get results.

I'm really sorry that you feel this way. However, there is a ranking for every official WCA format, so I always considered this obvious. The retroactive records are also just consistent with the acceptence of other results in the past (like WC82, WC03, MBF old) that were accomplished under slightly different conditions.

Furthermore, if Best of 3 was still possible, that wouldn't help you in any way, as a Mean-ranking would not be possible - that's something that we do for BLD exceptionally now, as the format is (for good reason) not available for that event.

For everyone that thinks it is easy not to DNF: History has shown that lots of competitors make small mistakes in writing down their solution. I mentioned Guus because he is a previous (undisputed/non-lucky) World Record holder that has often missed a podium because of an error in his solution. All it takes is just 1 apostrophe, or being as stupid as writing down the solution to the inverse scramble. Why don't people realise that DNF-ing FMC is extremely common? If you spend 3 hours, spread over 2 days and you are not allowed the slightest mistake that really removes the fun of FMC for me.

All those described DNFs do clearly result from a risky time management or a sloppy solution checking. Both is easily avoidable. You act like there was an uncontrolable need for DNFing in FMC just like in BLD, which is just false. Again: If I offered you 1000 dollar for a successful FMC attempt, would you have any doubts about getting the money? Could you guarantee the same for a BLD solve?

(as it happens, the only reason Danish Special 2011 had 2 attempts for FMC was because Sebastien decided that it should have it, so yes, Sebastien can be persuading, even when he is just a competitor)

This is just wrong. I can clearly remember that 2 FMC attempts being hosted were one reason for me to go to that competition. I clearly did not "decide that the competition should have 2 FMC attempt". I might have said that it would be nice to have 2 FMC attempts, but I cannot find such a conversation either on Facebook nor in my (complete) mail archive.

Either Sebastien just happens to aim for the 3 attempts competitions else he may have had some influence in the decision of hosting a 3 attempt competition

Given that I attended 104 WCA competitions within not even 6 years and also given that it is not really a secret that I like FMC, I think it is pretty safe to assume that I do especially like attending competitions with 3 FMC attempt. That's no big surprise I guess.

I have heard from others that Sebastien has requested extra attempts for FMC and sometimes asked to adjust the time schedule.

That's a bad presentation of facts, because it is actually the other way around. I'm a very conscious competitor and I always look at the schedules of competitions that I plan to attend. Given that I have a huge experience with creating competition schedule that work very well almost everytime, I spot weak points very easily. And given my personality, I like making suggestions for improvement. FMC is no topic within this most of the time though.

I have never said or implicated or even felt that Sebastien did this to higher his chances to win future championships. I have only made the connection to the past. I am not mixing up personal and official interests in any mean way but I cannot stop you from thinking what you think.

If you don't have a mean intention, then I ask you to provide a good explanation for the fact that you are mixing up the arbitrary information that I didn't become world champion in Las Vegas with the fact that I reanimated this thread in August to inform the community about my plans.

The problem is that the proposal (and poll) was about ADDING mean-of-3. I might (or might not) have been in favor of that actually. But as we all know by now the actual change has been to REPLACE best-of-3 with mean-of-3 AND make that the prefered format AND make retro-active results.
I have read https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/81 and Sebastien nicely proposes the format-change.
When he is asked to provide proof of community support he adds a poll and soon after writes "the community generally agrees that "Mean of 3" should be a possible format for FMC" which was perfectly true at the time.
Now comes the strange part: Under pros he writes "in contrast to some people's assumptions, organisers will of course still have the possibility to host FMC with a "Best of X" format, just like this is possible for all other events listed in 9b2." This looks like the proposal is about adding mean-of-3
But then comes the twist. He makes another proposal:
"As an addition it bothers me (and others), that Best of 3 is possible for events that can be held using Mean of 3. Hence I also ask you to update 9b2a to:9b2a) Competition formats for these events are: "Best of X" (where X is 1 or 2) and "Mean of 3"."

Now we are no longer talking about adding mean-of-3 but about replacing best-of-3 with mean-of-3. He never asked for community support for this and basically his list of pro's and cons is no longer appropriate. (the DNF issue is actually on the pros part while it should be on the cons)

I have explained most of this before. However, as an addition concerning the second proposal: There was not much discussion about this, as the change was apparently uncontroversial (if you just read the discussion on Github). We simply considered it as inappropriate, that the events in 9b2 could still be held as Best of 3 while Mean of 3 was the preferred format (already before!) and as the number of attempts provided is still the same. I still haven't heard any good argument against this. As already said as well, that proposal did not target FMC at all and I did not see any special connection to FMC and I still don't do that now either.

 

[Sebastien]

As a summary:

It is fine to disagree with some of the changes made in the Regulations 2014.

What I claim to be unacceptable though:

- telling lies or making arbitrary assumptions without having the knowledge about me in person
- arguing via false presentation of facts and logical fallacies just to fit those different opinions
- mixing up the 2 seperate proposals of removing Bo3 for Mo3 events (9b2a) and recognizing retroactive records (which is still likely to be changed in some way anyway) with the topic discussed in this thread.

 

[AvGalen]

^^there is too much info above to respond to now. I am happy that you finally responded so thoroughly but you will have to wait for my response until tomorrow after work.
Just a short comment that bothers me the most: "As already said as well, that proposal did not target FMC at all and I did not see any special connection to FMC and I still don't do that now either.". The special connection is that in https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/81 you mention (unchanged) 9b2 in the pros AND also mention "As an addition it bothers me (and others), that Best of 3 is possible for events that can be held using Mean of 3" Hence I also ask you to update 9b2a to: 9b2a) Competition formats for these events are: "Best of X" (where X is 1 or 2) and "Mean of 3".

Here is a tip for everyone that prefers best-of-3: Organise best-of-2 round 1 and best-of-1 (or best-of-2) final. It is not the same as best-of-3 of course, but at least it allows for more people to get a BEST result.

 

[Sebastien]

I am happy that you finally responded so thoroughly but you will have to wait for my response until tomorrow after work.

I didn't really have any reason to answer, because as you could see your arguing style already led enough people to do that.

I finally replied because I was sick of so many lies, purposely wrongly interpreted facts, false information and logical fallacies, mainly concerning me in person.

Feel free to reply but you can expect me to simply ignore your reply if you don't significantly improve your arguing style, which is apparently necessary, unless you are able to invalidate every single point me and all the others listed above.

 

[qqwref]

Feel free to reply but you can expect me to simply ignore your reply if you don't significantly improve your arguing style, which is apparently necessary, unless you are able to invalidate every single point me and all the others listed above.

Is that how we are doing things now? The opposing side has to "invalidate every single point [you] and the others list" to get the regulations changed back? Where's the part where you invalidate our points? Or do you not have to because you already pushed the change through?

 

[mycube]

I see you edited your post to say that you reanimated it first. Please read more carefully next time. I specifically said "Then he reanimated this thread just after not becoming the world champion in Las Vegas.". This thread was dead for 4 months and anyone claiming that Sebastien didn't reanimate it is trying to rewrite history.

Don't say something you are not knowing for sure. I edited my post for the last sentence, not for changing anything I wrote before.
And you know, you can't discuss something like such a change in the regulations within a small amount of time?
It seems like you ignored my last sentence just because it is against your 'logicial' sence.

 

[Carrot]

This is just wrong. I can clearly remember that 2 FMC attempts being hosted were one reason for me to go to that competition. I clearly did not "decide that the competition should have 2 FMC attempt". I might have said that it would be nice to have 2 FMC attempts, but I cannot find such a conversation either on Facebook nor in my (complete) mail archive.



Given that I attended 104 WCA competitions within not even 6 years and also given that it is not really a secret that I like FMC, I think it is pretty safe to assume that I do especially like attending competitions with 3 FMC attempt. That's no big surprise I guess.

Don't get me wrong, but having two attempts of fmc was not against my will at all. (yes, I like fmc a bit, not that I'm good at it, I just like to do it once in a while) And you can't find the conversations because they happened on IRC.

I don't think anyone does NOT know that fact, but I'm impressed that only Spain, Japan and China (not counting chile) managed to host 3 attempts without having you going, it's a feat in itself!

 

[Laura O]

I actually didn't make the connection between him reviving the thread and him not becoming the world champion in my last post, I did that in the post where I said he revived the thread and much before that as well: http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...n-of-N-for-FMC&p=939573&viewfull=1#post939573

And your opinions written in that post are not longer valid?

I have never said or implicated or even felt that Sebastien did this to higher his chances to win future championships. I have only made the connection to the past. I am not mixing up personal and official interests in any mean way but I cannot stop you from thinking what you think.

Of course you can: explain what you mean by "a board member that feels robbed of his 2013 WR-title" or what this description is based on.
Believe it or not: I don't want to defend Sébastien or speak for him, I'm just curious.

 

[Sebastien]

Is that how we are doing things now? The opposing side has to "invalidate every single point [you] and the others list" to get the regulations changed back? Where's the part where you invalidate our points? Or do you not have to because you already pushed the change through?

Don't be moronic. I'm clearly refering to his arguing style, that as of now mainly constisted of lies, assumptions without knowledge and logical fallacies. I'm just not willing to argue on such an indecent level and I think it is pretty hard to dismiss that desire as not adequate.

 

[TMOY]

I don't think anyone does NOT know that fact, but I'm impressed that only Spain, Japan and China (not counting chile) managed to host 3 attempts without having you going, it's a feat in itself!

Just for completion's sake: there have also been at least four French comps with three FMC attempts and Sébastien not coming, in addition to the two he attended

 

[Ninja Storm]

Furthermore, if Best of 3 was still possible, that wouldn't help you in any way, as a Mean-ranking would not be possible - that's something that we do for BLD exceptionally now, as the format is (for good reason) not available for that event.

That's something we do for BLD, but BLD doesn't take an hour per attempt. FMC does.

 

[Sebastien]

That's something we do for BLD, but BLD doesn't take an hour per attempt. FMC does.

I'm curious how this is supposed to match the paragraph you quote.

 

[Carrot]

Just for completion's sake: there have also been at least four French comps with three FMC attempts and Sébastien not coming, in addition to the two he attended

yes, but no one got a success mean (else I failed at checking)

 

[ThomasJE]

Surely we can add 'Best of 3' again in addition to 'Mean of 3'?

I don't think I've seen this in the thread, but why was 'Best of 3' taken out?

 

[TMOY]

yes, but no one got a success mean (else I failed at checking)

You failed at checking

(At the other two, the three FMC attempts were divided into two rounds (best of 2 then best of 1, so no mean for anybody there, granted.)