Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, what happened?

[MarsBOtkid]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

In order to be HANGING, the ring must be fully supported by the spider leg, not by the spider foot and/or robot. The referee (not judge!) was 100% correct in removing the keeper. READ THE RULES!!!

You dont need to get mad about it "READ THE RULES" trust me ive read them more then once. You were not in the position that all of us were in. We should of had a re-match yet we could not. Yet when 330 played in the finals and their arm broke off they got a re-match. That is what disapoints us most!!!

[MarsBOtkid]

Like i said overall the oposing alliance was an excellent alliance

[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by MarsBOtkid

You dont need to get mad about it "READ THE RULES" trust me ive read them more then once. You were not in the position that all of us were in. We should of had a re-match yet we could not. Yet when 330 played in the finals and their arm broke off they got a re-match. That is what disapoints us most!!!

Please understand, I was shouting, but I wasn't angry. The issue about the autonomous keeper needs to be dropped - please look at Post #82.

As far as the re-match in the finals, 330's arm did not get broken off in that match, there was a "field fault", perhaps related to scoring (I've not heard a clear explanation). Having a robot's arm break off is not a reason for a re-match, it may be a reason to expect a DQ, but that is a referee's judgment call. The head ref has to decide that the action was strategically aimed solely at causing damage to the robot. Without any knowledge of a "history" between Teams 48 and 1114, the head ref may not be looking for this sort of behavior (which I believe is what Tom Line is saying in his post).

[Daniel_LaFleur]

A lot has been said about the refereeing here.

I'd like to say a few things because I do not believe this thread has been very fair to the refs.

Refereeing is a very difficult and thankless job. No matter what you call, there will be those that disagree with your call (sometimes vehemently). Referees are human, and sometimes miss a call or make a call in error, this is a fact of life and we (as players, people, and teams) have to accept those calls (just consider it another lesson learned from FIRST). In many of the calls, the referee has to make a judgement call as to the intent of the action (did they mean to break the arm? was that ram intentional? etc). This is especially difficult in the heat of competition. I truely believe that the referees do a great job in FIRST, and if they make the wrong call once in a while ... well, it just proves that they are human.

There will always be bad calls. There will always be different interpretations of the rules. There will always be the human factor. And I'll challange anyone who believes they can do a better job of refereeing to volunteer next year.

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

A lot has been said about the refereeing here.

I'd like to say a few things because I do not believe this thread has been very fair to the refs.

Then who should take responsibility of all the bad calls in a game? FIRST for not training them well-enough? GDC for creating the rules? I do agree the being a referee is a hard job and I am thankful to all those who volunteered for it. However, the game is the only fair chance for all teams at an event to compete. I can understand a few mistakes in a game but when they miss something obvious repeatedly and call it differently from regional-to-regional and division-to-division, I think someone has to take responsibility. To me being a referee is a huge responsibility and a huge honor. With great power comes great responsibility.

I usually do not like posting these things because CD doesnt take criticism too well. However, I hope next year is a better year.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

Then who should take responsibility of all the bad calls in a game? FIRST for not training them well-enough? GDC for creating the rules? I do agree the being a referee is a hard job and I am thankful to all those who volunteered for it. However, the game is the only fair chance for all teams at an event to compete. I can understand a few mistakes in a game but when they miss something obvious repeatedly and call it differently from regional-to-regional and division-to-division, I think someone has to take responsibility. To me being a referee is a huge responsibility and a huge honor. With great power comes great responsibility.

I usually do not like posting these things because CD doesnt take criticism too well. However, I hope next year is a better year.

From the 'tone' of your response, I don't believe you are looking for responsibility, but instead someone to blame.

We should not 'Bash' the refs for any bad calls, but instead talk to them (calmly amd politely) when the match is over, letting them know our point of view. Bashing them here on CD is poor form.

To relate this to professional baseball, Different umpires will call different strike zones. A pitcher has to adjust his game to the different strike zone even though the rules are explicit as to what a strike zone is.

Lets not play the 'blame' game. Lets congratulate the referees for all the calls that they got correct, because it is that difficult to be a referee.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

Then who should take responsibility of all the bad calls in a game? FIRST for not training them well-enough? GDC for creating the rules? I do agree the being a referee is a hard job and I am thankful to all those who volunteered for it. However, the game is the only fair chance for all teams at an event to compete. I can understand a few mistakes in a game but when they miss something obvious repeatedly and call it differently from regional-to-regional and division-to-division, I think someone has to take responsibility. To me being a referee is a huge responsibility and a huge honor. With great power comes great responsibility.

I usually do not like posting these things because CD doesnt take criticism too well. However, I hope next year is a better year.

A point to consider:

NFL referees are paid professionals. They have rules that don't change from year to year. Many of them are veterans with decades of experience. They have the wonderful benefit of instant replay. And yet, despite all of this, there's still almost always atleast one bad call in a game. From someone's point of view.

I believe that most of the FRC refs do take their jobs seriously, do take responsibility for their calls, and do come as close as humanly possible to being as perfect as some people seem to think they should be. Mostly, I think people should step back and consider whether they really should be expecting MORE bad calls than there are.

[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

Then who should take responsibility of all the bad calls in a game? FIRST for not training them well-enough? GDC for creating the rules? I do agree the being a referee is a hard job and I am thankful to all those who volunteered for it. However, the game is the only fair chance for all teams at an event to compete. I can understand a few mistakes in a game but when they miss something obvious repeatedly and call it differently from regional-to-regional and division-to-division, I think someone has to take responsibility. To me being a referee is a huge responsibility and a huge honor. With great power comes great responsibility.

I usually do not like posting these things because CD doesnt take criticism too well. However, I hope next year is a better year.

I think I've heard Dean state more than once "life isn't always fair". FIRST isn't exempt from this statement. It's very hard to accept that fact. We need to accept that there will be errors in judgment. It's a different matter if there are clear biases being shown by referees. FIRST deals with this by virtue of a "Conflict of Interest" form that is signed by referees and even robot inspectors. If anyone believes a referee is biased (intentially making calls in favor or against any teams), that needs to be addressed to FIRST - privately, not here in CD.

We live in a world where distrust has made life more difficult than it needs to be. Hence the need for so many laws, so many pages in a contract and so many people needed to protect our interests (lawyers, judges, police, etc.). I'd like to think that within the FIRST community, a higher level of trust exists than in the rest of the world. For the most part, that's been my experience and that's why I believe in FIRST.

[thoughtful]

First of all congratulations to team 1114 for another great year, and all the teams on both the alliances. Let us keep the discussion down to facts without our own perceptions and emotions involved.

I was not at the Championships but I have personally seen 1114's bot at GTR and it was one of the best and most robust bots there. This has been their tradition since they started FIRST, as 1219 is not far from them in the pits. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to doubt their engineering or robustness.

I think the biggest question in this situation is not about whether the calls should have been different or whether the pinning was illegal. These things are too objective to debate about; they are in the past now. As teams in FIRST we realize that things happen and the show must go on.

However, reading this thread I have read 3-4 reports of a single person or a group of people witnessing celebration from the team in question (48) after this unfortunate event. As a historian if you were to write about this event, those eyewitnesses will weigh heavily in your decision. I personally think that this hurts team 1114 greatly because such a matter should not be celebrated upon and it shatters the great image of FIRST held in our hearts. I am not going to make a judgment as to if the celebration was because of the arm and I would assume and hope that there is a better explanation. But I would definitely want to hear this explanation.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by xzvrw2

... from what i understand, the ref that was there didnt know the rules every well. ... from what i hear, there was a alot of refs that were first time volunteers.

I'm not sure where you heard that. Did you know that 11 of the referees in Atlanta had been Head Refs at one or more regionals? Did you hear the Chief Ref give the resumes of the field Head Refs, listing 2 or 3 regionals each?

Originally Posted by Ian Mackenzie

... I'm less annoyed at the referees; I may disagree with how things were called, but at least in the case of pinning I can see there being confusion about the rule (since it was changed at the drivers' meeting) ...

I thought the 3 feet for 3 seconds rule was new too - lo and behold, it's in the manual. It wasn't a change in the rules.

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

Then who should take responsibility of all the bad calls in a game? FIRST for not training them well-enough? GDC for creating the rules? I do agree the being a referee is a hard job and I am thankful to all those who volunteered for it. However, the game is the only fair chance for all teams at an event to compete. I can understand a few mistakes in a game but when they miss something obvious repeatedly and call it differently from regional-to-regional and division-to-division, I think someone has to take responsibility. To me being a referee is a huge responsibility and a huge honor...

FIRST has some responsibility here. What is written in the manual is NOT what is being enforced in all cases. Yes, I'm saying there are some secret rules interpretations, which may come out only at drivers meetings, or may not be made known at all, and are not documented. For instance, was anyone ever penalized for a "foot-fault" this season? You wonder why? That's all I'm at liberty to say.

[Joel J]

Originally Posted by GaryV1188

I'm not sure where you heard that. Did you know that 11 of the referees in Atlanta had been Head Refs at one or more regionals? Did you hear the Chief Ref give the resumes of the field Head Refs, listing 2 or 3 regionals each?

I thought the 3 feet for 3 seconds rule was new too - lo and behold, it's in the manual. It wasn't a change in the rules.

FIRST has some responsibility here. What is written in the manual is NOT what is being enforced in all cases. Yes, I'm saying there are some secret rules interpretations, which may come out only at drivers meetings, or may not be made known at all, and are not documented. For instance, was anyone ever penalized for a "foot-fault" this season? You wonder why? That's all I'm at liberty to say.

Are you saying the refs are well qualified, and thus their rulings are just.. or are you raising a question as to what it takes for a ref to be well-qualified, given that there were a consistent (ly high) number of bad rulings across the divisions?

How many mistakes before THE question can be raised?

[Tom Line]

I already posted once regarding why I think the refs did a good job. If they had DQ'd 48, I'm sure we'd be arguing in the other direction. We've already had several discussions regarding lack of DQ's or DQ's without warning. A bit pointless, really.

Let's move on to how this can be prevented in the future.

Clarify and simplify the rules.

I think everyone would agree that this year had far to much rules-lawyering and unhappy folks as a direct result of the rulebook growing to the point where it's become VERY difficult to be proficient at it. When people in this post who are claiming to "know" the rules are disagreeing, the point is pretty much proven.

Simplify the rules. For instance you could disallow pinning entirely. You may push, you may not pin. You may block, you may not pin. You may not hold someone stationary against ANY object. Period. End of story. NO more counting, no more guessing.

While your at it, take a good hard look at the wiring rules, and every other ruleset in the game, and SIMPLIFY it to get us out of this whole rules-lawyer game so many people are falling in to. The quality of the refereeing of the matches is DIRECTLY proportional to the complexity of the rules.

[Liz Smith]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

Are you saying the refs are well qualified, and thus their rulings are just.. or are you raising a question as to what it takes for a ref to be well-qualified, given that there were a consistent (ly high) number of bad rulings across the divisions?

How many mistakes before THE question can be raised?

Honestly, these referees especially at the Championship are not just people they find last minute roaming th Georgia Dome. I consider myself pretty active within FIRST, and in the referee meeting Thursday afternoon I pretty much felt out of place without a 5 or 10 year volunteer pin on my shirt. As stated before, there were at least 11 regional head referees on the floor of the Dome distributed on each of the fields. The referees watch and analyze every single match of each event they attend. With a lot of the referees at the championship officiating at more than regional, by the time they get to the Georgia Dome, I think it makes them pretty well qualified. I think a lot of people are thinking of the referees in the wrong light. They make up part of the FIRST community just as the students, and the mentors and everyone else does.

[Corey Balint]

The thing about saying there were 11 Head Refs on the floor of the Georgia dome is basically a moot point. Saying they head-reffed means very little to me. There were numerous regionals that were complained about this year for poor reffing, changing the rules, etc.

[Brian Beatty]

I would like to take a different approach to this whole argument. First off, 1114's arm was not the first arm to be tore off this year. Our team's( 71 ) arm was tore off in MWR during eliminations( no call )--and there was much rejoicing. Did we like it? No. But we accepted it as part of the game. Of course, we took the opportunity to reinforce the broken area.

The question being asked right now is the wrong question. We should not ask,"Did 48 try to purposely break 1114's arm and did they intentionally pin for more than 10 seconds?" but we should ask, "How much defense should we allow in FIRST and under what conditions?". FIRST has run the whole gambit of human emotion from 2001 with no defense to 2002 and 2003, which was all out war. A game like 2001, which we at Team Hammond liked a lot, was chastised as "too boring", or "Darn--my failed offensive design couldn't be morphed into a beater to be competitive". After 2003, the game of denial, in which wonderful machines like 67 were never allowed to do their thing, FIRST started to change the rules to allow "vigorous intereaction", but protect offensive machines from annihiliation. The rules have been tightened as we went to no tipping, no wedge bots, no ramming,no high hitting, to the yellow/red card system, but still allow "vigorous interaction". As long as we allow "vigorous interaction", we will be subject to human interpretation. And as long as this human element remains, these discussions will continue.

In conclusion, I feel for 1114's tough break, but if a bad call/no call was made, that's the game. The only way to end these human element disputes is the "nuclear option" --no defense.

Sincerely,

Brian Beatty