Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

This is where this discussion has headed for me: change the manual! This has gotten ridiculous enough, and FIRST can do better in the future than they have in the past.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

I had a chance to referee an FLL event this year and thought the conferences at the end of the matches were great. The teams and referees go through the scoring chart and verify that it's right at the end of each match. Teams walked away from the matches knowing what deductions were made and what they got credit for, and the students corrected my inevitable mistakes.

I do think it would be worth exploring options for correcting human errors that are bound to occur. I would entertain the option of an FLL style conference at the end of a match to let the teams verify the scoring. That could correct simple numerical errors such as, for example, assigning points to the wrong alliance for end game. Something like that swings a match, and with the current system there's no recourse if mistakes like that happen. It's unnecessary for it to be that way. For some types of errors, it would be an easy discussion and both sides would agree that the points went to the wrong alliance. In some scenarios, I could picture a team clarifying a penalty and admitting that "actually we did XYZ, it wasn't the other alliance." And realistically, sometimes the alliances will disagree and they'll have to just accept what the head referee says like we have now. At least they'd hear the reasoning straight from the ref. "I called a G99 because you did ABC." I'm not proposing a solution to those judgment situations, because human judgment by referees is going to have to take care of those. BUT, I do think a quick conference could help with an error that everybody agrees was an error, and then it can just be resolved quickly and without a bunch of bad feelings.

I am not offering any opinion on whether the scenario in this year's controversial match was an obvious error or not. I am just musing on a process change that I think could help to catch certain human errors and improve the integrity and positive experience of the competition.

It would be a tricky balance, because you'd have some people pushing the limits of grace and professionalism while other people would find a decent balance between competitiveness and respecting the volunteers and the process.

Maybe I'm wrong and this would put undue stress on volunteers. There seems to be an idea that revealing the scoring breakdowns would be bad for volunteers. But I think that would be a welcome bit of transparency, and I think it's unfortunate that currently there's no mechanism for identifying and correcting mistakes that naturally happen occasionally.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

From my perspective, far removed both in space and time from the event, it seems clear to me that replaying the match would have been the wrong thing to do. If the referee did not think that the call was wrong, there was no justification for a replay. Any number of teams wanting a do-over doesn't count. On the other hand, if the referee did agree that the call was wrong, all that needed to be done was to correct the call and adjust the score accordingly.

Asking for the call to be changed based on the collective viewpoints of all the teams seems appropriate. However, if the teams approached the ref with a request for a replay, they were doing the wrong thing.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

G14 clearly lays out the conditions for a replay. The term "Arena Fault" is not used. There is no clause under the rules to replay a match for a wrong call. The call is simply corrected if the referees agree that the initial call was wrong.


What would you change in the manual? Simply removing the clause the prohibits video, images, and media from being used in discussions with the referee?

The problem I have with this is the amount of overhead it adds. Ignoring the costs that official review systems bring upon organizations because that has already been addressed earlier in this thread (and because some could argue that having the teams do the video reduces the cost), the amount of time overhead could quickly become a huge problem. How other major organizations solve this problem is by only giving teams a certain number challenges (the NFL gives each team 2, in the MLB it varies between the game type but it's generally 1-2 per team per game). However at an FTC event, there are many, many teams. I'm going to run through a hypothetical scenario for a 40-team event.

Let's say that, under this system, each team gets 1 "challenge" where they can use video evidence in their arguments with the referee. So the team very calmly approaches the question box and talks to the head referee raising their points. Because of the nature of video evidence, the head referee will need to spend ~3 minutes looking at it, examining it, replaying the video while consulting with the referees involved with the call, and then making a decision. Now let's assume that every single team has an issue with a call made by the referees at some point during the event. 40 teams * 3 minutes per review adds an extra 2 hours to the event. 2 hours that aren't built into the schedule, and cannot be planned for. That's a huge amount of time and if it had to be built into the budget would severly cut into match playing time for teams, because events should not run 2 hours behind schedule.

On top of that, referees catch enough flak as it is for calls that they make, and opening them up to video review would likely only make this worse.

I understand that FIRST is for the teams and that it is important to get the calls right, but a system like this is incredibly hard to implement successfully.

I know this is done at some events, and I think implementing it as a standard across FIRST would do a lot towards preventing situations/misunderstanings like this from occurring again in the future.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

Granted it would be unresonable to add some kind of review mechanism during qualification matches. However with FTC only 4 alliances go through to eliminations and there are a maximum (tied matches ignored) of 9 matches to determine the division winning alliance. It's hard work making it to eliminations and teams really deserve a fair shot without being cut down by errors.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

I would agree that possibly giving each alliance a "review" card in addition to their timeout cards is a possible solution to the the time issue, and honestly one I didn't initially consider. It still doesn't solve the problem of the referees being under more scrutiny from the parents and teams, but I'm not sure if that issue can be solved while at the same time introducing a formal review process.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

I'd like to thank all the people that responded to this thread that are not presently FTC or VEX referees. We have a huge need in these programs and your willingness to do these jobs is a blessing.

Make sure you contact your nearest FTC or VEX team, there are lots of summer events that you can go to in order to practice your skills.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

I really don't think that's where he was heading. I suspect that he was aiming at including "challenged score" as a reason for a replay, or something along those lines.


Incidentally, FRC's replay rules were updated for 2015. They now declare that not only does there have to be a field fault for a replay, but it has to have affected the outcome and one or more affected teams have to ask. Though I suspect that "scoring error" could theoretically be counted as a field fault...

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

Fair enough, he could have been referring to that as well. That was my misunderstanding.

FTC has a similar clause stating that it has to affect the outcome of the match. But a scoring error does not fall under any of the clauses stated in G14 (failure of a field element, failure of the FCS, or failure of the field router) and therefore can't be used for a replay.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

This is at the heart of the problems you're running into. You're right. This IS FIRST. It's a high school competition. How many high school sports accept video reply?

You're discussing a cell phone video. Do you believe it would be more fair for teams that have more members volunteering to be able to get more camera angles and thus have a better chance at a video replay than other teams? Would that be a "justice" in your mind?

People that are suggesting you move on aren't doing so for their benefit. They're removed from the emotion and are trying to find a reasonable fix. What you're asking for is an unlikely scenario. You stated the other teams only agreed with you after you shifted towards asking for a replay rather than a score correction. This makes it sound less like they entirely agreed with you.

It happened. It sounds frustrating. You make a point about impacting change. I'm not sure any meaningful change has ever resulted from ranting on a forum. I'm also not sure how much weight I'd put into a point laced with hyperbole. Calm the tone of your post and send it to FIRST. It's much easier to find middle ground with two rational arguments.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

I would like to chime in here, as I am a mentor of Team 5026, and have been able to watch all the posts. I do think it is unfortunate that Cougar Robotics was not able to play in the finals, and looking at the video, I would mostly agree that it was a questionable call. I think the referee saw the way Eagle was defending us, and that they pushed us onto the tube, and saw our robot pull it over. If they applied the rule that an opposing robot cannot cause a team to incur their own penalty, I can see how this could have been interpreted. Like I said though, I think it should have gone the other way and I believe 3 of the 4 teams agreed with this in principle.

I would really like to point out just a few things though that need considered. It is interesting to me that it isn't Cougar that feels vilified and torn apart. They aren't complaining about grave injustices, Fraud or eternal failings, at least not that I have seen. I walked by ERX pit several times and noticed that the team was very visibly shaken and HOT, while Cougar was talking to other teams, including mine, and trying to put this in perspective. Now with this petition, all the forums and such, I think ERX, you really don't understand the damage you are doing to yourself, and to the FIRST community.

What is happening is that all of this vitriol is making this look just like High School football and basketball, the two sports funded so highly above robotics. Angry students, coaches and parents that just can't see how that blind zebra is allowed to referee their sport. This isn't what this sport is all about! 5026 Tesla Coils could have just as easily been writing this same post because of a call made in round 1 of the qualifiers. Up against HotWired, there was a penalty called that we pushed our rolling goal into their parking zone. We weren't even close, video replay is very clear that HotWired pushed the tube in, and we lost our first qualifier. Think of how the picking alliances would have changed if this call had been made correctly. We would have been 2nd picking captain instead of 5th, and things could have been much different. Were our kids upset about the call? Of course! Did they go to the box and question the call? Yes, with their mentors encouragement. The point is, the call was not reversed, we lost, had to regain our composure, still won 7 of 9 matches, with the 2nd or 3rd highest RP of the division. What we did not do though, is let it destroy our dreams of the future and completely challenge all the work all the FIRST volunteers are putting into this program. And I know you are going to come back with "but this was the SemiFinals, not the qualifiers, but don't insult all our intelligence! Everyone knows how important those qualifiers are, because only 12 of 68 teams gets to move on, and one bad game can ruin the chances of being a picking captain!

This program is not all about crowning a World Champion. It is about Dean Kaman's vision of becoming leaders in society through STEM fields. The championships are fun, and they are a huge investment, but the real deal is that I have a daughter in her sophomore year already receiving attention from Universities and Engineering programs. She's a Dean's List finalist this year, and already has her first scholarship for school. I'm not bragging her up or I would name names, I'm just saying, WOW. Have we forgotten what this is about just a little bit? Our team pumped a couple thousand dollars and a couple thousand hours into this program just like everyone else. We had to raise an ungodly amount of money to get through Supers and Worlds just like the other 127 teams.

Eagle, I'm sorry about this experience. I know it hurts. I know because last year, you were picked by Hotwired, and Coils moved up to 2nd picking captain, when we thought we probably could have played just a little better with them, and believe me we tried to convince them of that. We lost in our semi's last year because of a very bad call by a referee, which we tried in vain to protest. This year, we were 5th in the standings, and felt like we could have played really well with Cougar, and maybe could have been the combination to take down Redneks in the other division in the finals. You are an awesome team that builds a fantastic product each year, and other teams look to you for guidance.

Don't let this very negative experience destroy 3 years of good work. I would hate for this to end over one bad experience that really means nothing at the start of next season.

We will miss you next year. This was the Tesla Coils final try at the Championship, at least for a while. Graduation and FRC have taken all but a couple of our warm bodies. We have made great friends at World's and at Supers in the West. We made it to Worlds 3 of our 4 years. What an incredible and valuable experience for our kids!

Remember, it's not all about winning.....It is all about teaching!

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

Yes, but going to a team and saying "that call was wrong, we should play again" is a lot more likely to get a favorable reaction than if you were to say "that call was wrong, you guys should have lost".

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

This sums it all up for me

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

Asking to replay a match based on a disputed call shouldn't get a favorable reaction in any case. The rules do not -- and in my opinion should not -- provide for such a thing. If the referees stand by the call, then accept it and move on. If the call is deemed wrong, a replay is not necessary. Just correct it.

Re: The Fraud of FTC Worlds - How FTC & FIRST have failed me forever.
 

Agreed. In my opinion the only reasons for a replay is a field fault. If a ref missed a call, but realizes it, then it's not a valid reason to replay. Fix the score and move on. Replaying the match is a waste of everyone's time if we know what the outcome should have been.