FRC Blogged - Doing the Right Thing

[Dave McLaughlin]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

This is the most valid argument for sending them to champs. No one who watched them play will argue that they are of less caliber than teams who are already going to champs or may be sitting on the wait-list either.

Aside from the fact that in this case 3 teams who had not in fact won championship bids would recieve them. Imagine if the mc at central had come out and said that a disc had been missed and the correct score was in favor of the red alliance but the ruling of a blue alliance victory was not going to be over turned. Should the red alliance then be given bids as well because they were told they had in fact won the match but would not be credited the win? How would the blue alliance feel knowing that their victory was false and empty?

In my opinion it is just a shame that it ended this way, and giving bids to the blue alliance would set a dangerous prescendent.

[EricH]

Giving bids to the finalist alliance due to things that happen at a competition event is not unprecedented. However, giving bids to the finalist alliance in this situation would set a dangerous precedent.

The most recent of these* was due to a verified bad call. SVR 08, F3 as I recall, the Head Ref ruled that a trackball on the overpass being contacted by an opponent was not scored (actually, opponent contact had no effect on scored or not scored that year by that method). But, instead of changing the score, and sending the match the other way (the direct effect of correcting the score), which is what could have been done, half an hour after the finals were over there was a replay. The "opponent" previously mentioned won the replay, "confirming" them as the winners. HQ stepped in within a week and said, in effect, "These teams should have won, our ref made a mistake, all teams in the eliminations get bids".

Central Washington 2013 is what SHOULD have happened in SVR 2008. (I wonder if the refs had that in the back of their minds?) I think the situation where a referee or scorer misses a call, or makes a bad one, then admits to and corrects it does not warrant extra bids being handed out--after all, they did admit that they screwed up, and they did correct the error, even if it was a bit later than teams would like. If, however, the mistake is not admitted to and/or corrected, and it is later discovered, then there is already precedent for giving the finalist alliance bids, in that case and that case only.

*I'm not including Einstein 2012 and its field issues; the only other one I can think of was Arizona 2004, which is not the same situation at all.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by EricH

Giving bids to the finalist alliance due to things that happen at a competition event is not unprecedented. However, giving bids to the finalist alliance in this situation would set a dangerous precedent.

The most recent of these* was due to a verified bad call. SVR 08, F3 as I recall, the Head Ref ruled that a trackball on the overpass being contacted by an opponent was not scored (actually, opponent contact had no effect on scored or not scored that year by that method). But, instead of changing the score, and sending the match the other way (the direct effect of correcting the score), which is what could have been done, half an hour after the finals were over there was a replay. The "opponent" previously mentioned won the replay, "confirming" them as the winners. HQ stepped in within a week and said, in effect, "These teams should have won, our ref made a mistake, all teams in the eliminations get bids".

Central Washington 2013 is what SHOULD have happened in SVR 2008. (I wonder if the refs had that in the back of their minds?) I think the situation where a referee or scorer misses a call, or makes a bad one, then admits to and corrects it does not warrant extra bids being handed out--after all, they did admit that they screwed up, and they did correct the error, even if it was a bit later than teams would like. If, however, the mistake is not admitted to and/or corrected, and it is later discovered, then there is already precedent for giving the finalist alliance bids, in that case and that case only.

*I'm not including Einstein 2012 and its field issues; the only other one I can think of was Arizona 2004, which is not the same situation at all.

I don't think they're exactly comparable, and I think it both cases the refs made the right call in the end. At SVR 2008, IIRC (I was there) the refs had earlier made an incorrect call similar to the one that was made in the final match (that a ball being supported by an opposing robot did not count), and it was never publicly corrected or announced that the call had been incorrect. Again IIRC, a robot on the initially losing alliance spent a significant amount of time at the end of the match attempting to partially support the trackball rather than perhaps trying to score another way, so they were still operating under that assumption. That's why I think the fairest decision there was indeed to replay the match and send both teams to Championships. There was no such confusion about the rules here, only a simple miscount; thus, as unfortunate as it might be, I don't believe the finalist alliance deserves to go to championships any more than any other teams that did not qualify.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

This is the most valid argument for sending them to champs. No one who watched them play will argue that they are of less caliber than teams who are already going to champs or may be sitting on the wait-list either.

So should any alliances that lost in the finals of a regional because of a referee's opinion of gameplay be given spots at champs? I do feel bad for the alliance that was told they won but actually lost, but they lost; I've been a part of matches where we were told we won but then were overturned and vice-versa, so I do know how this feels. But to allow those teams to go because of a regional staff mistake would open up a can of worms into the "but we lost because of x, but we think we really won, so we think we deserve a spot too."

[Racer26]

Eric, in reply to my earlier post, you implied field reset would have found the disc. Maybe.

They would have taken a quick look around, and if nobody saw it, they'd have grabbed a spare and played on. Game pieces go missing from fields all the time.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by bduddy

I don't think they're exactly comparable, and I think it both cases the refs made the right call in the end. At SVR 2008, IIRC (I was there) the refs had earlier made an incorrect call similar to the one that was made in the final match (that a ball being supported by an opposing robot did not count), and it was never publicly corrected or announced that the call had been incorrect. Again IIRC, a robot on the initially losing alliance spent a significant amount of time at the end of the match attempting to partially support the trackball rather than perhaps trying to score another way, so they were still operating under that assumption. That's why I think the fairest decision there was indeed to replay the match and send both teams to Championships.

HQ was the one who issued the invitation to CMP, well after the event. The replay was the problem call there.

Referees make that sort of call all the time. For whatever reason, a match is scored incorrectly. Usually, the score is quietly corrected later; only rarely is there any announcement. For this particular call, that was not an option. All the time through, they had the option to adjust the score. That was all it would have taken to correct the situation. However, the head ref called for a replay, which I will admit he did have grounds for (human error being one of the items a replay can be called on), but was probably not the best decision. I know that everybody watching via webcast and on CD was wondering what was going on, why is there a replay, why don't they just adjust the scores--and the real kicker was that some of the robots were already in their crates when the replay was called for!

The reason I'm calling that up as a close case was that there, even though the basis for the mistake was different, it was a VERY similar mistake, the type that changes a winner. In that case, however, the announcement of the error (and the handling of the results) were handled in such a way that maximum confusion resulted. In the case at hand, there was minimum confusion, though there was much disappointment.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Eric, in reply to my earlier post, you implied field reset would have found the disc. Maybe.

They would have taken a quick look around, and if nobody saw it, they'd have grabbed a spare and played on. Game pieces go missing from fields all the time.

No, it would have been found. When the next match had started the counter would have immediately registered a disc even before a shot was made. That happened somewhere last week when 6 discs were left in the top goal. As soon as the match started the alliance immediately, literally less than a second, jumped out to a 36 point lead. The announcer realized it immediately and made the comment.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by EricH

HQ was the one who issued the invitation to CMP, well after the event. The replay was the problem call there.

Referees make that sort of call all the time. For whatever reason, a match is scored incorrectly. Usually, the score is quietly corrected later; only rarely is there any announcement. For this particular call, that was not an option. All the time through, they had the option to adjust the score. That was all it would have taken to correct the situation. However, the head ref called for a replay, which I will admit he did have grounds for (human error being one of the items a replay can be called on), but was probably not the best decision. I know that everybody watching via webcast and on CD was wondering what was going on, why is there a replay, why don't they just adjust the scores--and the real kicker was that some of the robots were already in their crates when the replay was called for!

The reason I'm calling that up as a close case was that there, even though the basis for the mistake was different, it was a VERY similar mistake, the type that changes a winner. In that case, however, the announcement of the error (and the handling of the results) were handled in such a way that maximum confusion resulted. In the case at hand, there was minimum confusion, though there was much disappointment.

I understand what you're saying, but I think SVR 2008 was different in one key respect: the originally-losing alliance was acting based on incorrect information based on earlier referee decisions. At that point, I think simply declaring them the losers based on the correct interpretation of the rules would be less than fair. Of course, declaring the replay was also less than fair. Obviously the fair solution would have been for none of the incorrect calls to have been made in the first place, but at that point that was not an option. I believe that telling the red alliance they lost, after they won by what the referees had previously told them the rules were, would not have been a better solution.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by bduddy

I understand what you're saying, but I think SVR 2008 was different in one key respect: the originally-losing alliance was acting based on incorrect information based on earlier referee decisions. At that point, I think simply declaring them the losers based on the correct interpretation of the rules would be less than fair. Of course, declaring the replay was also less than fair. Obviously the fair solution would have been for none of the incorrect calls to have been made in the first place, but at that point that was not an option. I believe that telling the red alliance they lost, after they won by what the referees had previously told them the rules were, would not have been a better solution.

To bring things back onto the track I laid a few hours ago, the point of the SVR story was to demonstrate how incredibly bad a finals has to get before it makes some sense to give the (eventual) finalists a seat at Champs. Contrast that with what happened in Washington where there was a simple scoring error and it was rectified 15 minutes later in the least dramatic way possible, given the situation. Minimum of confusion, no weird replays, no bad calls by refs, just an unfortunate scoring error that would have been completely uncontroversial if it had occured in Finals 1 or 2 instead of Finals 3.

Yes even Finals 2, where the same mistake would have turned a Blue win into a tie, with the rubber match in Finals 3. Because Blue would've felt the went down playing instead of having the win snatched from them with no chance to play for the victory. I'm guessing if things went down in this order, people wouldn't be calling for qualifying Blue for Champs, because when you look at it in this order, it seems "fair". This is the best argument against qualifying the Finalists for Champs, because while it's nearly the exact same situation, it feels totally different.

[CindyLouWhoMe]

Howdy folks.
I'm Cindy, a senior on 360, the captain of the blue alliance. There was a bit of a discussion about this topic (of all the teams getting to go to St. Louis) when Robotics Memes posted this article on Facebook. A brief summary of what our head mentor (Eric Stokely) and I had to say about all this:

Ellensburg was the last competition for 360 this year. But us seniors regret nothing. We built a fantastic robot, met great people, our drive team was wonderful, and we couldn't have asked for a better alliance.
When the competition finally ended, it felt like there were 6 winners, not 3. The teams who get to go to St. Louis were the best bots at the CW Regional; they won the whole thing fair and square. We ended that competition as a true community and because of that Ellensburg will remain a treasured memory of mine for years to come. After all, FIRST isn't all about the robots.

Nobody should feel guilty about what happened. In ways that are hard to explain it feels like, somehow, we took something away from the winning alliance. They were strong, they played hard, and deserved the win. 360's season is over, no regrets. We will have volunteers at the remaining Washington regionals, and Stokely be in St Louis, inspecting robots.

Todai.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Eric, in reply to my earlier post, you implied field reset would have found the disc. Maybe.

They would have taken a quick look around, and if nobody saw it, they'd have grabbed a spare and played on. Game pieces go missing from fields all the time.

A colored disc, in finals, by a now veteran field crew, with the same six experienced teams on the field never having left the area, directly after a tied match? At least on the fields I've worked, we'd find that disc. White discs can go missing (presumably in someone's magazine) especially early in quals, but this is essentially the antithetical situation.

I feel for the blue alliance, but I'm (cheesily) really proud of everyone for the way the handled it, from both alliances to the crowd to the volunteers. It really couldn't have been handled better by anyone. Congratulations to both alliances. And to the human player--I know it might be difficult to celebrate, but that's pretty impressive.