Can "gender" be removed from 2c and 2d? The fact that it's in 2c means all new registration forms will have to have a "gender" field. I'm not sure how the female cubers would feel since this is obviously going to be used for some special "Female competitor" results page. If we want to treat the genders as equals, lets do it by treating them as equal.

Hi Bryan, For now the only goal is to officially register all competitors as members of WCA. I think next year we could have official membership of WCA. Later we COULD use this data for other things, but there are no plans for that. Thanks, Ron

OK, but the way 2c is worded, the competitor is required to provide in order to complete their registration. The registration official isn't allowed to infer or make assumptions based off the name, but the competitor is required to provide it. Since it's not going to be use right now, it should just be dropped.

The gender is not a secret, and most of the time the gender can be determined from the name. [quote:2o4c0fi3]Since it's not going to be use right now, it should just be dropped[/quote:2o4c0fi3] The plan is full membership next year. But of course we want to do that also for past members. So actually we should have registered this from the beginning, same for date of birth. This year we start with it, and we should also do our best to gather all data from past competitors. Please explain why you are against this. Thanks, Ron

[quote="Ron":1d1l9udf]The gender is not a secret, and most of the time the gender can be determined from the name.[/quote:1d1l9udf] Yes, but the way the rules are written, we can't determine it from the name, the competitor must provide it. I don't care if I have to enter it on the results sheet I send back to you after a competition, I just don't want to have to put it on the registration form so that the requirements of 2c can be filled.

Actually, wouldn't it be better to collect e-mail addresses this year for competitors? That way when full membership comes up, you're able to just e-mail people their profile link/password or whatever and they can update it. I have no idea what "full membership" means, so this may be an incorrect guess.

[quote="BryanLogan":36v9nhlr]I'm not sure how the female cubers would feel[/quote:36v9nhlr] Hey! What about the male cubers? Note that *you* are the one discriminating the genders!

[quote="StefanPochmann":tufzrv9u][quote="BryanLogan":tufzrv9u]I'm not sure how the female cubers would feel[/quote:tufzrv9u] Hey! What about the male cubers? Note that *you* are the one discriminating the genders![/quote:tufzrv9u] Yes, which is why I'm advocating just ignoring gender Basically, I'm just curious as to why this is being sought out now, since it seems you could have registration without gender in there. Like I said, the only way I could envision it being used is for female-only things, since male-only comprising of a large majority of competitors. Now, maybe I'm wrong and the WCA is planning to setup some cubing dating service, but I doubt it. But just look in society how people always have modifications on the "first" to do something or the "best at" so that it fits. First female in space First Indian-American governor First European to circumnavigate the globe This is just a quick sample of "first * to complete" from google. While some of them are valid, like first amputee to run a marathon, some people just narrow it down redicuously in order to make themselves the first. But like I stated before, if the WCA wants the information, fine, it would just be nice if 2c didn't require us to ask participants. Unless we somehow intrepret that by the competitor's dress and hair they are implicitly trying to tell us their gender.

Actually rule 2d forbids any usage of the gender data without permission of the individuals, doesn't it? Btw, what if we create a "top 10 females" list [b:1bt02bba]and[/b:1bt02bba] a "top 10 males" list? Then both genders are treated equally. It's really simple to overcome the "unequal treatment" issue this way.

Darn, I read 2d the completely wrong way. Sorry about that. One positive thing I could envision is anonymous Demographics. Like categorizing people by age group and gender and counting them or somehow averaging their results. That might be interesting. Or if some female- or kids-oriented magazine wants to interview fast female or kid cubers, WCA could contact the appropriate cubers and they contact the magazine if they want to. I am certain you'll never see a public male/female flag on a WCA member page without explicit consent of the member.

Hi Bryan, With full membership we want to achieve the same as all other organisations with membership do. For now this could be anything: ranging from co-financing WCA activities (not the most popular subject probably ) to offering special discounts, to giving certain rights like competing and voting. For a good member administration all organisations need information. This ranges from personal information to contact information to preferences et cetera. With 2c we receive the right to gather such information. I explicitly did not add things like contact information, because I do not want that to be a requirement, it should be optional. Even though for competition organisers it is much better to have contact information. With 2d WCA receives the right to publish certain information about the competitor. For the choice of information I investigated how IAAF and FINA do it. The information in 2d is similar to IAAF and FINA. FINA for example does not publish addresses of swimmers. We cannot completely compare to IAAF and FINA yet, because these organisations also have national organisations that register membership information. If you are a member of KNZB (Dutch National Swimming Organisation) then you are a member of FINA automatically. Anyway, we have several next steps that we want to take. 1) register required member information (as stated in 2c and 2d) 2) gather required member information for past members 3) make a page where each member can maintain his own information (including the optional information, like contact information) 4) use the member accounts for other things like the WCA forum or elections I hope WCA will be an official organisation in 2009. Then we need a thorough member administration and of course we can start giving rights to our members. Does this sound reasonable? Thanks, Ron

True, but for swimming, gender is required since their events are based on gender. Therefore, in cubing, I think it would be optional. And yes, while a magazine may want to interview the top female cuber, they may also want to interview the top Native American cuber, or the top deaf cuber. But like I said before, I have no problem with providing the information along with the results, I just don't like the idea of being required to have it on the registration form, which 2c seems to imply must be done. I mostly want to avoid having the regulations be something and having how things are actually ran done a different way.

I forgot to mention that WCA will provide a registration form that competition organisers may use. This form will include the public information (like name, country, WCA member id, gender) and for registered users also the private (but optional) information (like address, e-mail address). Wait a few months (hopefully sooner) to see this happen. Thanks, Ron