2009: Record Recognition

[BryanLogan]

9i2) Regional records are recognised at the end of a round. If a record is broken twice or more in a round, only the latter is recognised.

This worked fine in the past, but now where we have weekends where there are 7 competitions occurring on the same day. In theory, the finals in a Spain competition could be occuring at 4 PM while the first round in New York is occurring at 10 AM. Unless you know exactly when every solve occurred, it's impossible to determine which was first. Also, for averages, it could be even more confusing.

I would recommend that records are only recognized at the end of the day.

Also, I still maintain that for any new events, there should be a 1-year wait on recognizing records so that the records reflect the true progress of people, and not simply which ones were able to compete first.

[Lucas]

I think that it should be appropriate to take any record times in order of being set, even if it disadvantages later people in a round, and especially the California west coast. In fact, I wouldn't be against recognizing records in the same round. Nevertheless, it's not hard to record the time a WR was set.

Does anyone know what is done for track&field events, with multiple heats and multiple competitions on the same day? They might have a good procedure for this.
I don't care so much about it, but I recommend trying to find parallels in other sports, especially track&field, to anyone who does.

Also, I disagree with the 1-year hold. The fastest time done will be the world record; why not recognize it officially?
I'm reminded of Chris Brownlee. Apparently, he had a good chance at the Megaminx WR for a few years, but has not had the chance to compete. We can't remove opportunity bias, and in this case I don't think we should impose semantic restrictions on what's a WR.
People can just attribute less meaning to a new event WR. That's what we do for '03 WRs.

[BryanLogan]

But the trouble with recording them in order, is if you have two competitions in the same time zone, it becomes very difficult to figure out which solve was first. Unless you're timestamping every single solve, it's just impossible to be sure. And while you can record the time a WR was set, what about national and continental?

Also, it wouldn't disadvantage California at all. Under the current rules, if Japan sets a WR, and then California beats it later in the day, the WR would be recognized as Japan, and then California. Under the new rules, it would simply be recognized as California.

As for the one-year thing, if the person was truly the fastest, then their result would be recognized at the end of the year as the WR. Yes, 03 was different, but there's no reason we need to follow that.

[qqwref]

That's an interesting idea, whenever a WR is set you can just record the time in GMT (accurate to the minute, say). For averages the time the record was achieved could be equal to the time of the last solve. For national and continental records we could simply ask the competitors to tell the judge if they think they have broken a record (in which case the judge will write down the time), and if they do not tell the judge this then the time will be set as the time when the person who is entering the times into the computer realizes that it is a record (at the end of an event, say). Recognizing the WR only at the end of the day would be unfair to you if you set a record, and then find out that because someone else broke it several hours later your record is not valid. I would much rather have a system where we give each record an absolute timestamp and just define a WR as the best solve achieved up to a given point in time.

I don't like the one year thing. It's true that it will give everyone a fair chance to improve, but it does not take an entire year to get good at a new puzzle. Waiting a year would just disadvantage the people who get good at the puzzle faster (for example by starting to practice as soon as the puzzle comes on the market, rather than six months after the puzzle becomes official). Look at the Essen V-cube competition - the people who were ranked #1, #2, and #4 on the official 5x5 ranks, and the people who were ranked #1 and #2 on the computer cube 6x6 and 7x7 ranks all showed up, and I think the 6x6 and 7x7 times at that competition were very good even if you don't consider the amount of time between their release and the competition. By the time the new WCA events are ratified, some of us early V-cube buyers will have had a 6x6 or 7x7 for five or six months, more than enough time for someone to get sub-5 minutes if they spend serious time practicing the cubes, and having to wait yet another year to be able to set official records would be silly. If we need to wait 18 months to let people get good at an event, we might as well just wait until the best possible time is achieved, because cleraly when people are not as good as humanly possible they have not had enough time to practice...

[jbcm627]

Does anyone know what is done for track&field events, with multiple heats and multiple competitions on the same day? They might have a good procedure for this.
I don't care so much about it, but I recommend trying to find parallels in other sports, especially track&field, to anyone who does.

With regard to this, I assume the procedures are similar to swimming. In swimming, even if you have the world record for 5 minutes, you still had it. It is probably a lot easier to keep track of this in other sports as the timing systems can be a lot more complex (particularly at that level), and it is pretty easy to find exactly when and where records were set. Case in point, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_100_metres_butterfly. Of the 5 most recent records, 3 were set at the same meet, and 2 of them were set 5 minutes apart. In prelims, it was broken by Andriy Serdinov, then broken by Michael Phelps just a heat later (maybe two? I think it was back to back). The next day, during finals, it was broken again.

I don't think timestamping records would be too tedious to do if there are multiple competitions going on the same day - they are rare enough.

I do agree with the one year wait though.

[BryanLogan]

By the time the new WCA events are ratified, some of us early V-cube buyers will have had a 6x6 or 7x7 for five or six months, more than enough time for someone to get sub-5 minutes if they spend serious time practicing the cubes, and having to wait yet another year to be able to set official records would be silly.

No, that's not what I'm trying to prevent. Basically, it's trying to prevent a competition from adding 7x7x7 the day of the competition (so it's not pre-announced), or perhaps it's the first competition after the event was added. If the best 7x7x7 there is a 9 minute solve, that's the World Record. Now, that's completely no indicative of the time to solve the puzzle, looking back at the history of the record, world, continental, and national, you'll see a lot of these undeserving records. I originally chose 1 year since some competitions only occur once a year, so after a year, all competitions have had a chance to hold the new event if they desire.

[blade740]

He's got a point. If some random competition were to be the first to hold official 6x6, the fastest person there would get the WR, even if they aren't even close to the best. Say you give it 3 months, then recognize the inagural WR as the fastest time achieved within that "grace period".

[Dene]

What's the big deal about the WR not being the best possible time? What If Dan Cohen comes in, messes up in 6x6x6, and gets a 4:00 average, does he not deserve it the WR, even though he will probably get better times later? We all know he is the best (if not, at least top 2) in 6x6x6, with a potential sub3 average.

I don't think I was clear in what I mean, so I'll say it differently:

We can expect Dan Cohen, at some stage, to hold the WR for 6x6x6 (average, we'll say). We cannot expect me to hold it any time soon, if I'm up against him. Thus we can say: he is deserved of the WR even if he is one of the first to do it in competition, whereas I would not be. If he then messes it up, he would still deserve the WR, even if it isn't his best time.
So why make there be a year wait? Even if the first times set aren't the best, the first person to hold the WR might still be the person that holds it in the end, whether his (or her) first times are good or not.

I still don't think I was clear, but saying the same thing 3 times over should hopefully get something across >.<

[anders]

The case of an event going from being unofficial to official has already happend. The 2x event started as an unofficial event at several competitions before it was acknowledged as official. And when it became official, all the unofficial results became part of the official WCA database. And thus, the first world records in this event were set when the event was unofficial. If applying the same to 6x and 7x, the unofficial results of these events (found here: www.x.se/qer ) will be upgraded to official if these events become official.

/Anders

[qqwref]

I hope you add the V-CUBE competition, otherwise your unofficial 6x6 and 7x7 records are slow I would kind of appreciate it if you added the US Open 6x6 and 7x7 times too, since they were done on stage as an unannounced mystery/side event (and were I believe the fastest 7x7 times recorded?), but you don't have to if you don't want to.

Anyway I still do not agree that we should remove people from the records list simply because they have been beaten or got the record at the wrong time. What if someone gets an unofficial 7x7 solve of (say) 4:15, and then develops Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or whatever and retires completely from cubing... and then their time is beaten before the 7x7 event becomes *really* official? I think it's unfair that they don't come away with a historical WR, because they had the best time ever achieved at one point. It's the same criterion that we've applied since 2003. Just because the 5x5 times in WC '03 weren't as fast as they could be (obviously) does not mean they didn't deserve to be records at the time.

In fact I would say that EVERY time a WR is set it is expected to be eventually broken as people get faster. But that is not a reason to not give a WR in the first place. You wouldn't say in 2005 "sorry, Macky, you can't have any 3x3 world records no matter how fast your times are, because we have not given the sport enough time to develop, and I think in a few years someone will come along and average 11 seconds". That would be just unfair and stupid. The same idea applies here...

[anders]

I have no control of the Unofficial Events Results' Database. Ron has. I think it's up to Tyson (WCA delegte at US Open) and Ron to decide if include these results. The idea behind the database is to compile the results of unofficial events held during official WCA competitions, and where the unoffical events live up to WCA competition standards.

/Anders

I hope you add the V-CUBE competition, otherwise your unofficial 6x6 and 7x7 records are slow I would kind of appreciate it if you added the US Open 6x6 and 7x7 times too, since they were done on stage as an unannounced mystery/side event (and were I believe the fastest 7x7 times recorded?), but you don't have to if you don't want to.

[Ron]

I removed 9i2 from 2009 draft 1. It requires the organisation team of course to clearly register the order in the results file.
This goes for NR, CR and WR!

We should not have a 1 year period to accept a WR.
Just give the first guy a happy day. Emotionally he will still have had the WR regardless of whether we only accept it after 1 year.
In addition: why 1 year? Why not 1 month or 187 days?

I do not have the V-Cube and US Open 2008 results for 6x6 and 7x7. Otherwise I would have posted them.

Ron

[Bob]

I removed 9i2 from 2009 draft 1. It requires the organisation team of course to clearly register the order in the results file.
This goes for NR, CR and WR!

Does that mean the organizer must put in whether a record is NR, CR or WR instead of the script? Will the script be updated to check for this possibility?

What do you mean by order the results file?

[qqwref]

I have an idea for an alternative to the "one year" criterion. One year is arbitrary, and not only doesn't it completely fix opportunity bias, but it also prevents people from getting a WR no matter how fast the time is or how much skill they have, which is silly. You can't ensure that times will continue to improve at a steady rate, look at the current Magic and Clock WRs...

So what if, at the inauguration of an event, we just set a goal time where a WR is not given out until that time is beaten. This time should be reasonable, but also fast, so for instance it might be 5:00 for 7x7, 3:30 for 6x6, 12 second average for Skewb, and so on. So then the WR wouldn't go to the first person to compete, but to the first person to compete who is fast enough to beat the time. And that's how it is currently and always will be, so there is no problem

I do not have the V-Cube and US Open 2008 results for 6x6 and 7x7. Otherwise I would have posted them.

The US Open 2008 was just one round, best of 1, with three people competing (although I don't think anyone else at the competition would have been able to solve in under 6 minutes at the time). Frank's timer broke, but he came in 3rd. The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl0wrfay2dE. The results were:
1st. Michael Gottlieb, 5:46.38
2nd. Dan Cohen, 5:52.88
3rd. Frank Morris, he finished two or three seconds after Dan, so something under 6 minutes.

[Bob]

So what if, at the inauguration of an event, we just set a goal time where a WR is not given out until that time is beaten. This time should be reasonable, but also fast, so for instance it might be 5:00 for 7x7, 3:30 for 6x6, 12 second average for Skewb, and so on. So then the WR wouldn't go to the first person to compete, but to the first person to compete who is fast enough to beat the time. And that's how it is currently and always will be, so there is no problem

It is? I only found this:
9i) Results of official WCA competitions must be listed on the WCA world rankings, if the full WCA regulations were applied.
9i1) Regional records are recognised for best national/continental/world results.
9i2) Regional records are recognised at the end of a round. If a record is broken twice or more in a round, only the latter is recognised.
9i3) If the regulations for an event are changed, then the old regional records stand until they are broken under the new regulations.

[qqwref]

It's not explicitly written in the regulations, but since a WR is just the fastest time in competition, if there are several people who can beat it the WR always just goes to the one who gets to a competition first (unless they compete on the same day, in which case the regulation you copied comes into effect). So whenever a WR is particularly easy to beat it just goes to "the first person to compete who is fast enough to beat the time", because they are the first person to beat it. Since that's the way normal events work, we should aim to do it for new events too, i.e. the first WR goes to the first person to compete who is fast enough to deserve the WR (in the eyes of the community).

[Bob]

It's not explicitly written in the regulations, but since a WR is just the fastest time in competition, if there are several people who can beat it the WR always just goes to the one who gets to a competition first (unless they compete on the same day, in which case the regulation you copied comes into effect). So whenever a WR is particularly easy to beat it just goes to "the first person to compete who is fast enough to beat the time", because they are the first person to beat it. Since that's the way normal events work, we should aim to do it for new events too, i.e. the first WR goes to the first person to compete who is fast enough to deserve the WR (in the eyes of the community).

But haven't all of our records gone to the fastest person the first time the event was held? I don't see the harm in letting a weak competitor achieve the world record, if even just because they were the fastest person in a slow competition.

If we change this, we are being unfair. Don't just think about WR, think about NR. How many countries have weak national records? Should those records be stripped just because they are not as fast as some arbitrary standard?

[StefanPochmann]

So what if, at the inauguration of an event, we just set a goal time where a WR is not given out until that time is beaten. This time should be reasonable, but also fast, so for instance it might be 5:00 for 7x7, 3:30 for 6x6, 12 second average for Skewb, and so on.

Arbitrariness alarm!

the first WR goes to the first person to compete who is fast enough to deserve the WR (in the eyes of the community).

What do you mean with "deserve the WR"? Oh wait, I think this quote comes in handy:

2) Please give a definition of what "official world record" means to you.

It is the fastest WCA-official time achieved (in a particular event and format) up to a certain point in time.

Strangely I don't see any waiting period, minimum speed, or anything like that in this definition. Can you explain?

[qqwref]

2) Please give a definition of what "official world record" means to you.

It is the fastest WCA-official time achieved (in a particular event and format) up to a certain point in time.

Strangely I don't see any waiting period, minimum speed, or anything like that in this definition. Can you explain?

Well, that's the difference between what the WR is, and what it means. Nothing in the definition means that the WR is an impressive time, but historically it always has been, and I think it's better that way. Only the best cubers in an event should be looking at a WR and saying "that's easy!".

[StefanPochmann]

But why do you want to artificially cripple the world record to something it doesn't even mean to you?