Coopertition - Not As Easy As It Looks!

[Grim Tuesday]

So how does the new Team Update factor into this now?

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

So how does the new Team Update factor into this now?

With this out Mr. Lim's argument is moot. I think it's reasonable to overlook Mr. Lim going around educating other teams about the coopertition bridge, and explaining how declining the powerhouses could affect the rankings. He was acting without this update, but for the future it is apparent that the GDC doesn't want this. This however, reveals some problems which should be addressed:

I personally would like the GDC to make games which are more airtight and don't require self-regulated moralism to work, but that's what we've got. (Also, what's with that snake draft?!?!?)

I also think the fact that this happened only at GTR east bears well for the community at large. However it shows a deep problem in Canadian FIRST that deserves to be rectified (by far the loudest cheer all weekend was the semi-final when 1114 lost!).

[Libby K]

For those of you who may not have seen it yet/don't want to go searching...

Special Message from the GDC

The Coopertition Bridge in Rebound Rumble is this year’s method of fostering Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism among students while inspiring an appreciation of science and technology. The white bridge's purpose is to motivate participating players, teams and alliances to collaborate with other players, teams and alliances (even in the heat of competition) by rewarding them for working together. Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism are tenets of FIRST – they are part of what makes FIRST different and wonderful; all FIRST participants, teams and alliances should strive to exercise those principals at every given opportunity. To quote Woodie, “FIRST does not celebrate being an incompetent jerk. FIRST does celebrate high-quality, well-informed work done in a manner that leaves everyone feeling valued.” In other words, bullying, coercion, and unsportsmanlike conduct have no place in FIRST. We expect all teams to always try their best to accomplish the tasks at hand, and always push themselves to achieve even greater successes. Best of luck to all of you as you continue to balance the real-life struggles of competing against each other while cooperating with each other – both on and off the Court.

I'm so glad for this team update. It makes no official statement on the strategy choice to cooperate (or not).... but it makes the PERFECT statement about making sure there are no repeats of such appalling behavior. It's not a red card to the bullies, but rather a reminder that such action isn't in the spirit of FIRST and should not be tolerated.

Thank you, Game Design Committee. Nice job.

[MisterG]

I see a lot of posts that say: I wouldn't do it but I am not going to judge other peoples actions.

I say that we need to judge each other, or at least judge each others actions. We just need to do it in a loving and respectful way.

Looking the other way can be another way to not live up to our full potential as humans.

Now, how to confront other people about things that we observe, that is a very delicate thing. Make sure that you are focused on the action and not on the actor, make sure that you are thinking about helping someone else get to a higher place and not about building yourself up. Make sure that you remember that you have made some pretty questionable calls more recently then you care to admit.


If all else fails listen to Lavery:

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Would your grandmother be proud of you?

[pfreivald]

I'm glad to both see the update and to see the language expressed in the strongest of terms: "FIRST does not celebrate being an incompetent jerk."

[wilsonmw04]

One of my students showed me this and some how it seems fitting :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HFTP...feature=relmfu

[Mr. Lim]

I'm very happy that the GDC has given us more clarification on the coopertition bridge.

It think it goes a long way to avoiding any further incidents of robots trying to unbalance an already balanced coopertition bridge, or interfering with a balance in progress.

After reading the questions, I realized it would be near impossible to add specific rules to address the issues.

I would like to try and use this update to answer some of the specific questions raised.

Here are some questions that I think this update could address. I've removed the ones that I think are very clearly answered. I've simplified some others to make directly relevant to the new information from the update.

I would love it if everyone took a shot at answering these.

Meta-Coopertition: Teams are cooperating as a group, yet competing against others, by selectively agreeing and refusing to balance.
1) Is “meta-coopertition” acceptable?

Coopertition Bridge Defense:
Some teams in the match want to balance on the coopertition bridge, but for some (let's assume, valid) reason your team doesn't want them to.
2) Is it acceptable to get to the coopertition bridge first, drive on to it, and leave it tipped to prevent others from getting on?
Or is the above scenario now not acceptable?

6v0
An alliance that believes they are going to lose is willing to score less points and instead work with the opposing alliance to guarantee a balanced coopertition bridge and a loss.
3) Are 6v0 arrangements acceptable?

Explanations to your answers would be nice, but not necessary!

[EricH]

For me, the "meta-coopertition" is something like the collusion debate from 2003. In that case, the agreement was to not play defense on your opponent's scoring stacks to boost both sides' ranking. A number of teams said publicly that they would not participate. Others said they would.

It's a bit tougher here, but for this case, I'd call it a team's call to make. It's a strategy. As a strategy, I don't see an issue with it. However, trying to force other teams to join in is an issue, as the GDC noted.

6v0: Again, it's a strategy. I don't see an issue with it, but I do note that it isn't to a team's advantage to go that way, except on the bridges.

With the intentional tipping of the coopertition bridge, I think that might be pretty close to the behavior the GDC commented on. It's not quite there, IMO, but it is saying that "I'm going to deny both of us any chance of the coopertition points." That's (almost) forcing teams to join in. Given that situation, I would expect that some teams would try to push that team up the bridge, taking advantage of the slightly-reduced traction on the bridge--a fair penalty for trying to force your view on someone is that they try and force their view on you, at least in this case.

[MisterG]

IMO:

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

6v0
An alliance that believes they are going to lose is willing to score less points and instead work with the opposing alliance to guarantee a balanced coopertition bridge and a loss.
3) Are 6v0 arrangements acceptable?

No.

While it is acceptable to predict defeat as a reasonable outcome and therefore place a higher priority on balancing than on scoring, it is NOT acceptable to make a deal with the other team that involves reducing your offense.

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

Coopertition Bridge Defense:
Some teams in the match want to balance on the coopertition bridge, but for some (let's assume, valid) reason your team doesn't want them to.
2) Is it acceptable to get to the coopertition bridge first, drive on to it, and leave it tipped to prevent others from getting on?
Or is the above scenario now not acceptable?

No; you have some options available. You can choose not to attempt balance and you can choose to influence your alliance or the opposing alliance to not balance. Any passive or active blocking of balancing is over the line.

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

Meta-Coopertition: Teams are cooperating as a group, yet competing against others, by selectively agreeing and refusing to balance.
1) Is “meta-coopertition” acceptable?

No.

You can't make cross alliance bargains; therefore M-C is unavailable to the teams that are on the opposing alliance. You can't compete against your alliance partner, therefore M-C is unavailable to teams on the 'friendly' alliance.

So, I guess its nos all around.

Blocking the bridge is the grayest one for me; the others that rely on making deals with the other alliance just seem like non-starters.

That's how it looks from where I am sitting.

p.s. hey Mr. Flowers: turns out GP doesn't mean what you thought. It means Grandma's Proud!

Alan Gilgenbach

[SamMullen]

Meta-Coopertition: Teams are cooperating as a group, yet competing against others, by selectively agreeing and refusing to balance.
1) Is “meta-coopertition” acceptable?
Yes, as long as you go about doing it in a gracious and professional manner. If you think this is a viable strategy for you, and you can get your alliances to agree with you, by all means go for it.

Coopertition Bridge Defense:
Some teams in the match want to balance on the coopertition bridge, but for some (let's assume, valid) reason your team doesn't want them to.
2) Is it acceptable to get to the coopertition bridge first, drive on to it, and leave it tipped to prevent others from getting on?
Or is the above scenario now not acceptable?

I really feel that if any part of the alliance wants to get the coopertition points, than you shouldn't prevent them from attempting to get them. You should always respect the opinions and wants of your alliance, even if that makes things a little bit worse for you.

6v0
An alliance that believes they are going to lose is willing to score less points and instead work with the opposing alliance to guarantee a balanced coopertition bridge and a loss.
3) Are 6v0 arrangements acceptable?
I kinda lean towards no I guess. I don't understand why you would ever need to formally declare that you are doing this. Before every match you should be meeting up with your opponents to figure out the logistics/the timeline of balancing the center bridge. That should, if not guaranteeing you the coopertition bridge, make it at the very least highly likely, because if they can beat you handily, you both should have plenty of time to get on the bridge. And if you lose, well, these things happen. Planning before hand to throw the match though, just sounds, well, weird to me. Basically though, I just don't like this on a gut feeling kind of level.

[Gray Adams]

The GDC ruling still leaves some questions remaining. If You have 2 teams on an alliance agree the bridge should not be balanced but the third disagrees, must the alliance allow the third team to balance the bridge? If a team is breaking strategy or refusing to cooperate with their alliance, is the alliance not playing fair by unbalancing the bridge?

The idea that the alliance takes precedence over the team seems to be floating around, hence the attitude that unbalancing the bridge is selfish and should not be condoned. But does this apply when the alliance decides not to balance? You could even have 4 robots on the field who all don't want the bridge balanced, but it only takes 2 to balance.

Thoughts?

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Gray Adams

The GDC ruling still leaves some questions remaining. If You have 2 teams on an alliance agree the bridge should not be balanced but the third disagrees, must the alliance allow the third team to balance the bridge? If a team is breaking strategy or refusing to cooperate with their alliance, is the alliance not playing fair by unbalancing the bridge?

The idea that the alliance takes precedence over the team seems to be floating around, hence the attitude that unbalancing the bridge is selfish and should not be condoned. But does this apply when the alliance decides not to balance? You could even have 4 robots on the field who all don't want the bridge balanced, but it only takes 2 to balance.

Thoughts?

I would go so far as to say that even agreeing with your alliance to not balance the bridge (in order to influence the seed of the other alliance) is not a celebration of excellence, and thus not in the spirit of FIRST. It's not a collectivist "alliance > team" quandary, it's a simple "robots showing off > robots not showing off".

I'm comfortable interpreting the GDC's statement on the matter as this: Refusing to engage in an aspect of the game in order to deliberately hurt the seeding of your opponents is not acceptable.

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by lemiant

I think it's reasonable to overlook Mr. Lim going around educating other teams about the coopertition bridge, and explaining how declining the powerhouses could affect the rankings. He was acting without this update, but for the future it is apparent that the GDC doesn't want this.

Alex,

This is a really interesting point.

I'm not sure if the GDC's update necessary wants us to stop educating other teams about the intricacies of the coopertition scoring system. Few teams realize just how much power they yield with a simple decision: "yes" or "no." Particularly when a large enough number of teams start making similar decisions. I think information like this should be shared and carefully discussed, because it certainly leads us all to be more "competent". To stop doing this could be detrimental, for a number of reasons.

We could be denying each other a wonderfully complex discussion and learning experience about what coopertition is, or should be.

Could you imagine if it became "unacceptable" for me to even post the questions I raised in the first post of this thread?

Coopertition in real life is just as, if not even more complex. Being a former executive, I can honestly tell you that helping or accepting help from each and every person I came across was not necessarily in the best interests of myself, the company, the community, the country, or society as a whole.

Each opportunity needed to be carefully considered, the pros and cons of each weighed competently, and the right decision being the one that helps the most while harming the fewest. In order to do this, you need to educate yourself, and hear as much as you can from all sides.

...but I digress...

I think what the GDC DOES make perfectly clear, is that once a team understands these "meta-coopertition" concepts, we MUST leave them to make their own decisions to act on them or not.

We should NEVER coerce, bully or force a team into making a decision they do not want to make. And this likely(?) works both ways, where a decision to say "no" to coopertition should be respected as much as a decision to say "yes."

I am optimistic that this GDC update will end these reported incidents of bullying and coercion, but teams still need to be VERY careful. Just because the GDC said it, doesn't mean it can't still happen.

If you read Gray Adam's post, he outlines a situation where bullying or coercion can happen very quickly, and unintentionally.

What if your alliance wants to do one thing, and you want to do another?

If you can't resolve an issue like this amicably, and within the short time you spend with your alliance in the queuing line... you can see how feeling bullied and coerced can happen really fast?

Imagine yourself in that position.


It may be the greatest test of Gracious Professionalism that FIRST has ever thrown at FRC teams.



A few of us didn't quite pass at GTR-E, but luckily we have a few more cracks at it.


More importantly, I am very confident that we will eventually get it right.

[jawebste]

Very interesting thoughts.

Our team was actually the recipient of "being left" at the bridge (being stood up for the prom?) twice. In one of the two matches the two bots on our alliance that had said they could do our bridge couldn't balance, so our alliance received no balance points while the team on the opposing alliance that had agreed to cooperate never came near the coopertition bridge and went and made a two bot balance for their own alliance.

Why couldn't the teams have to report to the refs the numbers of the cooperating "teams" as they set up their bots on the field and then at the bridge, if a team is left and they can get on and balance, they could earn the points and the other alliance would all be dinged the the same number of points. The points total for balancing on your own bridges would all stay the same.

Yes, under this scenario many teams will never agree to cooperate, but if they do agree and are not a team of their words they would receive a penalty.

Fortunately, I did not see any sabotaging of the coopertition bridge at our district. I am saddened to think a coach let that happen. I hope I could pull a driver off the controls before I let them do that. I know the rules did not spell that out as not permitted, but like so many have said, there are interference fouls, there are fouls for holding, and fouls for touching other robots' safe zone. Sabotage at the bridge is so "un-FIRST."

But I think it's also "un-FIRST" when teams do not honor their plans or make plans without the rest of their alliance. Teams that are dishonest in this way should be "known" to the other teams before elimination selection.

And if many qualification matches go without coopertition bridge attempts that's not the end of the world, at least dishonorable conduct would not be rewarded like happened to us twice.

Sadly, I have to say we have learned our lesson and will probably not attempt a coopertition bridge at our next district because we were hurt very badly by this strategy. And I am disappointed because I am sure the lesson we learned is nothing the GDC had in mind either.

All in all, it's a tough but fun game. The championships and state/area regionals should be very interesting.

[Shankar M]

I think we as a community are all in agreement (even before this update) that egregious attempts to unbalance the Coopetition Bridge are wrong and should be unquestionably frowned upon.

However, even after this update from FIRST, I continue to stand by the strategy of choosing, as an alliance, not to balance the Coopetition Bridge in certain situations. There are, of course, several conditions that MUST be met to make this strategy acceptable. These have been captured in in any number of preceding posts - the entire alliance agreeing to do so without any coercion or bullying on the part of any member(s) of the alliance being the dominant one.

It seems that there is some "contentious" strategy that arises each year which causes people to cry foul citing it as an affront Gracious Professionalism. As has been said so many times before: let's not forget that we are all competing in a competition. We all want to have fun and enjoy ourselves. We all want to cooperate and help each other out. We all want to win. Often, that means finding strategies to accomplish certain tasks that help us to achieve this goal - choosing not to balance the Coopetition Bridge in certain situations is just such an example.

I worry a little about teams using this update as a basis to "bully" or "coerce" teams on an alliance that chooses, as they are perfectly entitled to do, not to balance the Coopetition Bridge. I certainly hope this is not the case, but I know that if a situation arises in the future where my alliance chooses not to balance the bridge, I will be at least a little bit on edge about how things will play out.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I would go so far as to say that even agreeing with your alliance to not balance the bridge (in order to influence the seed of the other alliance) is not a celebration of excellence, and thus not in the spirit of FIRST. It's not a collectivist "alliance > team" quandary, it's a simple "robots showing off > robots not showing off".

I don't know if I agree with this. If I am scoring in the last thirty seconds, am I not showing my robot off? If I am balancing the alliance bridge, am I not showing my robot off? In both instances, I am exhibiting plenty of excellence (arguably, in certain situations, with the added element of strategic excellence).

I know that everyone may not see eye-to-eye with me on this. If that is the case, let's agree to disagree and play the game in the manner which we think is in each of our best interests?