Instructions/Guides

[lgarron]

I've become convinced that we will never be able to slim down the Regulations. With more and more competitions all over the world each weekend, we find the need to standardize on every possible detail.
However, I think what we can do is provide an instruction sheet for each role that gives them the right ideas. (I don't believed a simplified version of the regular Regulations is the right way to go.) These would ideally be one page per role, and have pictures with good cues. We should make them available as HTML on the website, with PDF downloads available.

The following roles should have such guides:

• Competitor
• Judge
• Scrambler
• Score Taker
• Audience Member (no flash, keep distance from competitors, don't pick up pieces)
• Equipment setup?

I think we should also have one that covers what to do for various incidents (e.g. inspecting too long, pop, corner twist, misalignment, touching/dropping the cube during various parts of the attempt).

If these turn out to work well, we can adapt 2t) to emphasize knowing these guides (while still accepting responsibility to follow the Regulations).
We should also make sure that they are easy to translate (and make translations available).

Various things that should go in these guides, that I might otherwise forget:

• Cutoffs

[lgarron]

Here is a rough concept for the competitor guide I made a few weeks ago:

A few flaws:

• No diagram showing you can hold the cube during inspection.
• No speech bubbles for 8 and 12 seconds (the diagrams should be as standalone as possible, for clarity and internationalization).
• No explanation that the competitor needs to put their hands on the timer well ahead of 15 seconds.
• Doesn't remind competitors not to talk about scrambles.
• Doesn't tell them about handling incident. (Always call the Delegate - see 11e.)

[lgarron]

Suggestion from Natán:

Judges! sigh. Maybe instructions to judges should include running through a checklist before allowing an attempt to start: check hand timer, check Stackmat, check for music or other electronic devices being used by competitor, check for and make mental note for opaque shield for BLD, etc.

[lgarron]

From the Report for Singapore Open 2015 by Zhou Yichen:

On an separate note, can we have some regulations displayed during the registration process on WCA and make it compulsory for all the registered competitor to read it? For this competition, we actually send the WCA regulations with a lot of other instructions to the competitors but I doubt many really read them. A lot of the competitors still did not know the basic rules or asked questions about information which was clearly stated to them before. For a few moments, I was tempted to disqualify those competitors from the competition as I think what they did was wasting of the organiser's time and hence all the competitor's time. Basically, I feel that it is the competitors' responsibility to know at least the basic rules and follow other extra instructions imposed by the organiser, so that they do not need to spend time to ask about these during the competition.

[lgarron]

An idea based on a comment by Rafael Cinoto: encourage organizers to place a label at the puzzle drop-off table with high-level reminders: please stay in the competitors area, please don't discuss scrambles, etc.

[lgarron]

After the Big Apple 2016 incident (public speedsolving.com thread), I want to prioritize official judging guides. We should figure out what information is critical for each judge to know, and put it in one place, along with a reference for common edge cases (e.g. twisting corners, using cameras).

People have made separate guides, and there was even a guide used at Big Apple 2016. But these guides are all made by different people and separately maintained, so they don't build on each other to converge on the sweet spot of critical information and brevity.

Will try to make progress on this when I have time to work on cubing stuff.

[shelchang]

Lucas, you should talk to Kenneth Lu. He's written up a how to judge guide
for newbies that tries to cover the most common incidents a judge might
have to deal with without just being a rehash of all the regulations. It's
still a bit of a rough draft but it's a good starting point.

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 3:38 PM, Lucas Garron [email protected]
wrote:

After the Big Apple incident (public speedsolving.com thread
https://www.speedsolving.com/forum/threads/judging-certification.62072/),
I want to prioritize official judge tutorials soon. We should figure out
what information is critical for each judge to know, and put it in one
place, along with a reference for common edge cases (e.g. twisting corners,
using cameras).

Will try to make progress on this when I have time to work on cubing stuff.

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[lgarron]

He's written up a how to judge guide
for newbies that tries to cover the most common incidents a judge might
have to deal with without just being a rehash of all the regulations.

I didn't know about that one, thanks!

Now that you mention it, I should probably start compiling all current known guides so we can learn from them. Here goes (I plan to update this post as I find more):

For Competitors

• CubingUSA (USA)

For Judges

• Kenneth's incident guide (USA)
• Brandon's adaptation of Noah's (source) (USA)

For Scramblers

For Organizers

• CubingUSA (USA)
• Rafael Cinoto (Brazil)
• French

For Delegates

[Laura-O]

Sorry, if I missed it here, but there is also a CubingUSA Judging Tutorial, which seems to be a bit outdated and focuses more on the whole procedure than on the actual things a judge should know.

And I'd like to cite Dene:

I'm not going to act like I have the secret formula to bring about this change, but it starts with the officials taking responsibility at the top level. We need to remove a lot of the casual attitude to competitions (at least as far as the actual competing part is concerned), and instead build a culture of formality and procedure. To motivate people to help out... well I guess we have to work in our own ways depending on our local groups. Perhaps if people see volunteering as something "exclusive" they may be motivated. Or perhaps if they got a certificate, or something on their WCA profile to indicate their status, that might motivate people to get involved. (Of course the key to exclusivity is that some people have to be rejected).

[lgarron]

I'm not going to act like I have the secret formula to bring about this change, but it starts with the officials taking responsibility at the top level.

Yeah, we somehow have to figure out how to make accountability and professionalism an ambient thing, not something that we hope organizers tack on.

I didn't want to cite it on speedsolving.com directly, but my post that Dene was responding to was a reformulation of #121.

[lgarron]

Here is a rough concept for the competitor guide I made a few weeks ago:

A thought based on #385.
"Do not touch the puzzle yet" probably should be something like "Do not touch the puzzle until the judge says OKAY[/states the result?]".

[lgarron]

I really like the reminders that were printed on the cube covers at Euros:

The WQAC is currently working on a combined guide for judging and competing, although I think we have farther to go.

[AlbertoPdRF]

Putting it here too:

• The "D" in "Delegate" needs to be capitalized.
• We should try to track who created those and credit them.

[lgarron]

I plan to heavily prioritize this once the WRC has grown and the 2020 Regs process is underway!

[lgarron]

A draft I have lying around, for 2020, listing every valid move for Fewest Moves: