Quote:
Originally Posted by dodar
Never said it was; but you are talking as if it means near nothing. Without the competition, FRC wouldnt be nearly as inspirational as it is. It isnt the ultimate goal, but it is a major part to the ultimate goal.
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It isn't ANY part of the ultimate goal (culture change). It's a method to achieve that culture change. But the change in culture is not to increase emphasis on robotics competitions. The very first thing you see when you land on FIRST's homepage is "More Than Robots." The change in culture is aimed at "creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders." Nowhere in that vision statement does it mention a competition.
The competition is important, and getting calls right is important. However, I simply do not think video review really improves anything. It only helps correct a relatively small subset of calls, at the cost of additional equipment, additional volunteers, and/or additional event length. For every hypothetical about teams left uninspired at the hands of blown calls, I can point out actual teams that left before an award ceremony because the event was running longer than they had planned to stay. And even after video review, there will still be plenty of calls that cannot be corrected (think of how many "unreviewable plays" you see during a football game), or that evidence is not there to support a change in the call. In the end, I think you'll have just as many people left unsatisfied with officiating after video review as before, and you have to look no further than professional sports as evidence of that.
The competition itself is always going to drive competitors to be upset about officiating. Emotions run high, and people will naturally take the viewpoint that favors their interests. I have calls I still remember from my participation in FRC. Even with video review, that's not going to change. However, video review is certain to open all sort of new fiascos that aren't available now. Suddenly, there's incentive for teams to have their own video review staff in the stands (just like in pro sports), which creates another source of inequity between teams. The procedures for video review cannot simply be spending 30 seconds watching video, in particular if the basis of the review centers around scoring errors. By definition, for scoring errors, you almost always have to watch the duration of the match to ensure the error wasn't corrected later (anyone who's ever watched the "real time scoring" knows what I'm talking about there). Further still, does the ref simply have to review the single portion of the scoring being challenged, or rescore the ENTIRE match? What level of detail does the team have to provide in order to focus the ref's efforts?
There's a huge slate of issues here, and people are whitewashing them away. I'm quite confident that video review would introduce more inequity and issues than it would correct.