[EricH]

Originally Posted by CalTran

I was a first year ref this year, and at the event I reffed at, my former team (2410) and my cousin's team (2335) competed at. I'm also a student at Missouri S&T, and studied the manual more in depth this year than my other college years.
That being said, for the record, EricH was calling out the other poster because his "constructive criticism" was simply "Reffing sucked this year."

Many times this year, and other years, when someone has a gripe about the Referees, is is not constructive criticism. It simply calling out the refs on doing a terrible job, and it really does scare off new refs. I'm contemplating becoming a regular ref, schedule allowing, but sometimes the threads on CD make me contemplate the decision, and I'm sure others choose not to ref because of the public callouts.

This is what I'm getting at. Just so everybody's clear, I disagree with some calls, and I am, in fact, a ref. The difference is this: I disagree with the CALL, but I don't blame the REF. There is a difference. Most CDers will jump straight for blaming the refs.

There's a spotlight, might crop up eventually, from a good long time ago, and it goes something to the effect of "if you're going to say that the call was bad, you better know for a FACT that the call was bad".

Now, I strongly disagree with a couple of calls that were made at Worlds, and the primary disagreement I have is CONSISTENCY. (If you're going to make the wrong call, at least make the wrong call against everybody, see?) But, that's not something I can control. I wasn't reffing at Worlds.