UPSB v4
General Discussion / WT13 System Complaint
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 16:53:33
Hello, guys, I'm here to post my honest opinion about why I don't think this WT will be as honest and fair as the previous ones. My main complaint is about the judging system. The new way that the "biggest" boards have a higher power of judging is simply pointless. In r1, for example, if PSH and JEB have voted for you to pass, you have passed, no matter if the rest of the boards voted the opposite. Of course, this is a grotesque example, but it doesn't mean that it's not true. The smaller boards practically have no way to influence the judging in this way. If the organizers wanted to take the power away from the smaller boards, why didn't you guys simply just chose the judges by yourselves? I mean, the concept of each country having their own judge is for each one to have the same power of choice in this tournment, isn't it? I'm not posting this because no one in my board have passed for r2, but because I can't stand such unequality you organizers have imposed. Don't you guys trust the skills of the smaller boards to judge? I assure you that those judges are even more capable to choose a fair winner than the bigger boards', since most of them don't vote for the winners because of their names, but because they actually judge fairly. Something that evidently, and unfortunately, doesn't happen to big communities many times. Like I said, if you want to reduce the power of the smaller boards, just choose the judges by yourselves. This is, in my honest opinion, arrogant from the organizers' part. I'm sorry if I offended any of the organizers with this, but I got myself offended with such injustice. Darkinhex from BRPSB
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 17:07:02
The problem is that many of the judges are incompetent to judge, not what you said.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 17:20:30
Migi wrote: The problem is that many of the judges are incompetent to judge, not what you said.
This. The best judging system in my opinion would be system in which a few really good and qualified judges decide who passes and who doesn't. People like Zombo or taichi1082 who really know about penspinning and judging and who do stuff like this: http://forum.penspinning.de/viewtopic.php?f=148&t=28163&p=514439#p514439 . The idea that every board should have equal rights and every board should send some judges is pure bullshit. Who guarantees that the sent judges aren't complete morons (like in most cases of the past WC/WT)? -
Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 17:29:40
And also who guarantees that the big boards judges aren't complete morons as well? Like I said, what they should do is to put who they want in judging, if they want to avoid this "morons" problems, not to take away the power of the small boards.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 18:01:01
Please dear god no more moron judges, so annoying. Communities having more voting power encourages tactical voting, so they might vote down penspinners that are higher up to get their own spinners in (Which likely happened here)
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 18:39:59
As I understood it, weight to community judging is assigned not for community size, but for number of judges they provide. Which leads to conclusion, that you could attach more weight to your community voting by giving bigger number of judges. If I'm correct, your complaint doesn't make much sense. Anyway, I think that every judge should count as independent vote. Summing it up to one community vote doesn't make much sense to me.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 18:50:30
Darkinhex wrote: And also who guarantees that the big boards judges aren't complete morons as well? Like I said, what they should do is to put who they want in judging, if they want to avoid this "morons" problems, not to take away the power of the small boards.
The board itself is responsible for the judges they sent. I don't think a big board want to risk their reputation on sending "moron" judges. In my opinion a small board is that more likely to do. -
Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 19:12:21
Impulse wrote: This. The best judging system in my opinion would be system in which a few really good and qualified judges decide who passes and who doesn't. People like Zombo or taichi1082 who really know about penspinning and judging and who do stuff like this: http://forum.penspinning.de/viewtopic.php?f=148&t=28163&p=514439#p514439 . The idea that every board should have equal rights and every board should send some judges is pure bullshit. Who guarantees that the sent judges aren't complete morons (like in most cases of the past WC/WT)?
+1. Also, there should be a really strict qualification for the judges that every board send. If retarded judgings'll keep existing like this, I don't know what will happen in the future for penspinning. Every judge needs to be a judge that REALLY knows about penspin like @taichi1082 (Like what Impulse mentioned above), cause they're the few of the people that really analyzes stuff in a detailed way, we need judges like these people, judges that can be a little fucking smarter than what the WT13 have now. It's ridiculous if retarded judgings keeps up like this, smh man. -
Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 20:03:34
i heard some moron didnt even put fel2fram in his top 6 :facepalm: and of course,we need more responsible judges that can at least send the judgment right on the deadline
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 20:30:40
It's difficult to judge whether or not a judge is actually qualified. I'm sure that there are people who think I'm biased as fuck and only vote for LPSA, JEB and a few FPSB members. That's why I'm not sure if this system is really better. Finding the "right" judges is impossible, just think about preferences and stuff.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 20:31:15
this is like US history all over again. One argue that the system should have equal vote for each community meanwhile the other person argue that the # vote should depend on how large a community is. To make it fair we should have a COMPROMISE!!! HAHAHA We can never have a fair tournament here.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 20:40:16
Aftually the US (and other FPTP systems) should use AMS, a hybrid system, because it's a million times better in every way. Likewise, this could do with reform.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 21:09:31
#PenspinningWTProblems
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 21:24:46
? No weight was used in R1. Every community opinion counted the same. So I don't know what your complaint is about... And again, system was put in place several months before the tournament started. If you wanted to make a change, you have to propose it before the tournament starts, not after. Also weight not decided by size of community, it's number of judges, but also past history of the community. (If the community was reliable in past events, then they count more) "Each committee will be assigned a weight, which depends on the number of judges the committee is sending and the committee's past judging performance in international competitions." This encourages eliminated spinners to join as judge to increase weight of a community. Eliminated spinners should make better judges as they should be more experienced that regular judges.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 21:48:31
Eliminated spinners might be tactical voters.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 22:12:49
@Zombo I apologize for not making this complaint beforehand, next time I will do it. And about your answer, it still doesn't make it even for anything, it just adds meritocracy to the tournment. Like I suggested, you should either make it even for everyone or make it strict to specific judges. This would evade the problem about the unequality or the "moron judges" one, respectively. I'm just suggesting this for the next WC or WT, since nothing can be done now.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 22:17:41
Darkinhex wrote: Hello, guys, I'm here to post my honest opinion about why I don't think this WT will be as honest and fair as the previous ones. My main complaint is about the judging system. The new way that the "biggest" boards have a higher power of judging is simply pointless. In r1, for example, if PSH and JEB have voted for you to pass, you have passed, no matter if the rest of the boards voted the opposite. Of course, this is a grotesque example, but it doesn't mean that it's not true. The smaller boards practically have no way to influence the judging in this way. If the organizers wanted to take the power away from the smaller boards, why didn't you guys simply just chose the judges by yourselves? I mean, the concept of each country having their own judge is for each one to have the same power of choice in this tournment, isn't it? I'm not posting this because no one in my board have passed for r2, but because I can't stand such unequality you organizers have imposed. Don't you guys trust the skills of the smaller boards to judge? I assure you that those judges are even more capable to choose a fair winner than the bigger boards', since most of them don't vote for the winners because of their names, but because they actually judge fairly. Something that evidently, and unfortunately, doesn't happen to big communities many times. Like I said, if you want to reduce the power of the smaller boards, just choose the judges by yourselves. This is, in my honest opinion, arrogant from the organizers' part. I'm sorry if I offended any of the organizers with this, but I got myself offended with such injustice. Darkinhex from BRPSB
I actually mostly agree with you but there's still something we need to point out :Don't you guys trust the skills of the smaller boards to judge?
I don't think these communities are completely reliable, of course this is not always true, some smaller boards are able to provide good judgements (BPSC is a small board and I'm not saying this because I'm Belgian but I think our judgements are still "okay" since we have gisele which has been around for almost seven years and has a great vision of penspinning), but some communities provide judgements which are completely crap. (I'm not saying any of R1 judgements is crap, I haven't read all the judgements for this round but whatever). I used to read WT11 judgements, I lost faith in humanity when I saw something like : Rex : 5/5 5/5 5/5 4/5 vs Snow : 5/5 5/5 5/5 5/5 Okay seriously, how is this even possible ? Nobody in penspinning should actually be able to make a 20/20 combo, not even a 19/20 combo... All their judgements had an average of 18/20, that's just impossible. I think these communities need to know much more about penspinning, I don't blame them because they chose Snow (I think Rex should have won but who cares), I blame them cause their way of judging is bad (and they should feel bad :D No just kidding). After all the main problem is a lack of knowledge. The fact that they choose famous spinners isn't a big deal since they have their own way to think, if they think Snow is the winner(and Rex was more famous than Snow back then), then it's okay if they vote for him, as long as they judge this battle in a good way. (sun) -
Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 22:33:09
without mentioning the delay in the results to come out... seriously, if you are a judge and you have things to be accomplished in a certain period of time, you should at least be responsible. This brings me back to the day TEK released this video. [video=youtube;R4FVb3WM0fw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4FVb3WM0fw&list=UUZZHyWLpQSnXIzkr6EyNjhg&index=19[/video]
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 22:41:10
Darkinhex wrote: @Zombo I apologize for not making this complaint beforehand, next time I will do it. And about your answer, it still doesn't make it even for anything, it just adds meritocracy to the tournment. Like I suggested, you should either make it even for everyone or make it strict to specific judges. This would evade the problem about the unequality or the "moron judges" one, respectively. I'm just suggesting this for the next WC or WT, since nothing can be done now.
Your complaint talks about R1 results. But R1 results were not decided by weight, because all weights were equal. So why complain about weight for R1? -
Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 22:55:28
I would suggest a "certificate" system for judges in which the analytical skills are tested. Something like providing breakdowns for combos and being able to describe what makes difficult linkages difficult using examples. Like that the unbiased stuff like technical judgement can at least be provided. For stuff like presentation and style there's not a lot one can do about.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 23:16:28
Ivabra hit the nail on the head. Variance as far as what is considered 20/20 or 0/20 needs to be better calibrated, too many high scores. If, say in a vs match (or even group for that matter) you have spinners with 20/20 and 19/20 the judge should realize they need to move their scale up in order make a better comparison.
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Date: Mon, Feb 11 2013 23:31:12
I agree with your point, but who would be able to breakdown F2F combos?
ChainBreak wrote: Something like providing breakdowns for combos and being able to describe what makes difficult linkages difficult using examples.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 01:03:13
I think the problem we have right now is the huge amount of bias judges have towards spinners. If only there was a way to make people think of "Eriror Kraiaiaiaiooione" as opposed to "Eriror Kraiioeoniayon [B]from UPSB[/B]"
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 01:33:23
eurocracy wrote: Eliminated spinners might be tactical voters.
i agree, but if you downvote the guy who beat you, that means you'd lose to a weaker opponent in fact, it's better if you lose to a guy who goes furthest, since that means your potential strength is higher e.g. if someone lost to fel2fram, then they only lost to the (probable) winner of wt13 whereas if someone lost to say, me (LOL) or ction, then that would imply they're weaker than us, who are weaker than fel2fram (and whoever beats us in later rounds) -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 01:35:49
i.suk wrote: i agree, but if you downvote the guy who beat you, that means you'd lose to a weaker opponent in fact, it's better if you lose to a guy who goes furthest, since that means your potential strength is higher e.g. if someone lost to fel2fram, then they only lost to the (probable) winner of wt13 whereas if someone lost to say, me (LOL) or ction, then that would imply they're weaker than us, who are weaker than fel2fram (and whoever beats us in later rounds)
tactical voting can also mean you're biased for the person who beat you. it would be equally wrong if you voted favorably the person who defeated you. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 01:54:41
Ivabra wrote: I actually mostly agree with you but there's still something we need to point out : I don't think these communities are completely reliable, of course this is not always true, some smaller boards are able to provide good judgements (BPSC is a small board and I'm not saying this because I'm Belgian but I think our judgements are still "okay" since we have gisele which has been around for almost seven years and has a great vision of penspinning), but some communities provide judgements which are completely crap. (I'm not saying any of R1 judgements is crap, I haven't read all the judgements for this round but whatever). I used to read WT11 judgements, I lost faith in humanity when I saw something like : Rex : 5/5 5/5 5/5 4/5 vs Snow : 5/5 5/5 5/5 5/5 [B]Okay seriously, how is this even possible ? Nobody in penspinning should actually be able to make a 20/20 combo, not even a 19/20 combo... All their judgements had an average of 18/20, that's just impossible.[/B] I think these communities need to know much more about penspinning, I don't blame them because they chose Snow (I think Rex should have won but who cares), I blame them cause their way of judging is bad (and they should feel bad :D No just kidding). After all the main problem is a lack of knowledge. The fact that they choose famous spinners isn't a big deal since they have their own way to think, if they think Snow is the winner(and Rex was more famous than Snow back then), then it's okay if they vote for him, as long as they judge this battle in a good way. (sun)
+1:thumb: -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 01:58:06
Ivabra wrote: Okay seriously, how is this even possible ? Nobody in penspinning should actually be able to make a 20/20 combo, not even a 19/20 combo... All their judgements had an average of 18/20, that's just impossible
that's true, that's why numbers are not really taken into account due the vote system. as long as you pick the correct winner, I'm ok with that. doesn't matter if you put 15 to 10 or 20 to 19, if the correct winner is chosen, it's the same outcome. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 05:37:40
Still, have judges get qualified somehow. That's what they do IRL. ;)
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 06:30:54
Well, no system can satisfy everyone, basically. Don't we have something called IPSA (long time no news from it, though)? Maybe appointing judges from boards (of course one can reject) directly by IPSA or some organizer of WT/WC would be helpful, similar to what Impulse suggested. :D anyway, just enjoy the tournament~
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 07:02:12
DArKT wrote: I agree with your point, but who would be able to breakdown F2F combos?
I can breakdown what he does so long as his angle does not obscure the view of what he is doing. (He's notorious for making his links hard to see though) -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 08:56:10
F2F combos are seriously high class-lish and hard to breakdown. most of them are just too impossible to see
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 10:51:40
That's exactly why we need qualified judges that have been tested enough to be able to vouch for their creditability. WT judges need to be able to analyze even very hard to see linkages and linkages of high complexity. This is not a fact to be doubted. WT and WC are the highest ranked tournaments we have in the PS world. Anything aside from seemingly perfect judging is not acceptable and shouldn't be accepted.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 11:34:12
Zombo wrote: that's true, that's why numbers are not really taken into account due the vote system. as long as you pick the correct winner, I'm ok with that. doesn't matter if you put 15 to 10 or 20 to 19, if the correct winner is chosen, it's the same outcome.
This. I think in R1 the main problem is that, bigger communities have more influence on results becouse of a lot spinners they can't vote for. PSH, JEB, KPSA, they have a lot of spinners in tournament, less to choose from other = bigger influence. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 12:13:00
Ps is not structured enough to have properly trained judges. Everyone is just going to the flow. It takes a lot of structure to properly train ..would require meetings teaching sessions etc etc.
ChainBreak wrote: That's exactly why we need qualified judges that have been tested enough to be able to vouch for their creditability. WT judges need to be able to analyze even very hard to see linkages and linkages of high complexity. This is not a fact to be doubted. WT and WC are the highest ranked tournaments we have in the PS world. Anything aside from seemingly perfect judging is not acceptable and shouldn't be accepted.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 13:14:45
Just Look at these two videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U61h2m9IbP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A64jd_FPKik sekai is better than sutomo in nearly all respects. I disappointed that they didn't judge the videos according to the 'Judging criteria(:execution, difficulty, creativity, presentation)'.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 13:27:54
optimize0107 wrote: Just Look at these two videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U61h2m9IbP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A64jd_FPKik sekai is better than sutomo in nearly all respects. I disappointed that they didn't judge the videos according to the 'Judging criteria(:execution, difficulty, creativity, presentation)'.
i'm disappointed that you didn't watch these combos properly -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 16:22:13
PenwisH wrote: Ps is not structured enough to have properly trained judges. Everyone is just going to the flow. It takes a lot of structure to properly train ..would require meetings teaching sessions etc etc.
I think if we can get experienced and technically very developed judges like taichi to train a new generation of judges then let them get enough experience to be able to teach and repeat this we can soon have a decent pool of good judges. Even though we need to find the people who have the dedication and talent for this stuff. If we could get people like eurocracy and spenpinner, who have the potential to grow to be not only good spinners, but also good judges, to get education from experienced judges and give them some time to develop they could turn into just the kind of judges we need. At the moment imo the two still lack in certain areas, but if they take the time they should be able to improve. And I'm sure that not only UPSB has people with the talent. I have high hopes especially for boards like FPSB who have spinners with the kind of attitude towards penspinning that will be helpful for judging. Their curiosity for penspinning as a whole has always amazed me. Now a lot of people will say it's too much of a hassle/ too much work for something like penspinning, but I think if we want high quality judges we can't just keep avoiding work all the time. We need to start working for quality if we want quality. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 16:37:33
optimize0107 wrote: Just Look at these two videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U61h2m9IbP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A64jd_FPKik sekai is better than sutomo in nearly all respects. I disappointed that they didn't judge the videos according to the 'Judging criteria(:execution, difficulty, creativity, presentation)'.
Dude, just... i dont want to disrespect @Sekai, but you can clearly see that althrough he had great use of control, creative links and power, Sutomo had harder links and impressive control + smoothness and some power tricking. that's not one of the problems here '-' *back to topic* I think judges should be people that are kinda "retired" from PS that have the ability to analize combos... people like Kam or something. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 16:40:06
ChainBreak wrote: if we want high quality judges we can't just keep avoiding work all the time. We need to start working for quality if we want quality.
This -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 18:22:51
ChainBreak wrote: I think if we can get experienced and technically very developed judges like taichi to train a new generation of judges then let them get enough experience to be able to teach and repeat this we can soon have a decent pool of good judges. Even though we need to find the people who have the dedication and talent for this stuff. If we could get people like eurocracy and spenpinner, who have the potential to grow to be not only good spinners, but also good judges, to get education from experienced judges and give them some time to develop they could turn into just the kind of judges we need. At the moment imo the two still lack in certain areas, but if they take the time they should be able to improve. And I'm sure that not only UPSB has people with the talent. I have high hopes especially for boards like FPSB who have spinners with the kind of attitude towards penspinning that will be helpful for judging. Their curiosity for penspinning as a whole has always amazed me. Now a lot of people will say it's too much of a hassle/ too much work for something like penspinning, but I think if we want high quality judges we can't just keep avoiding work all the time. We need to start working for quality if we want quality.
Your idea of 'training judges' disturbs me. Who are we, or anyone who pen spins for that matter, to tell somebody what counts as good spinning? To me, that's a very narrow-minded way of thinking, as if there exists a universal ideal that all pen spinners should work towards. You're telling me that we should be telling the newer generation how to view pen spinning. What are you trying to do, domesticate them? I think newer spinners should figure out for themselves what they consider to be good spinning, not be told by some closed-minded old folks. And I say closed-minded because it feels like people think there actually is a universal ideal to pen spinning. It beats me how people think there is actually a way to judge pen spinning objectively. But that's a rant for another time. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 18:48:28
If you had read my prevous statements you should know that the qualification of judges can only be guranteed for the technical aspect of penspinning. I thought it would be clear already that subjective things like style will never be judgable. The idea is not to pound a certain idea of penspinning into someones mind, but to teach people to be able to categorize linkages according to difficulty, the ability to accurately judge the complexity of linkages etc. After all people will be able to tell that a ta release isn't nearly as difficult a trick compared to bakfall 1.5.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 19:04:40
ChainBreak wrote: If you had read my prevous statements you should know that the qualification of judges can only be guranteed for the technical aspect of penspinning. I thought it would be clear already that subjective things like style will never be judgable. The idea is not to pound a certain idea of penspinning into someones mind, but to teach people to be able to categorize linkages according to difficulty, the ability to accurately judge the complexity of linkages etc. After all people will be able to tell that a ta release isn't nearly as difficult a trick compared to bakfall 1.5.
Technical spinning is subjective as well. Edit: why even make that distinction, you give me an objective way of telling me how 1 world class linkage is harder or better than another world class linkage. And don't even get me started on stuff like execution, creativity, and structure. And another thought. By classifying certain kinds of spinning as 'technical' aren't you assuming that world tournament spinners should fit a certain mold? -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 19:46:47
It's not actually too hard to compare one link to the other, it's not really subbjective when it comes to technical theme. Tricks are even easier to compare.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 19:47:57
eurocracy wrote: It's not actually too hard to comparr one link to the other, it's not really aubjective.
You will convince me if you can come up with a completely objective system. Simply claiming it's not subjective won't do anything. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 19:50:45
casual;247496]Your idea of 'training judges' disturbs me. Who are we, or anyone who pen spins for that matter, to tell somebody what counts as good spinning? To me, that's a very narrow-minded way of thinking, as if there exists a universal ideal that all pen spinners should work towards. You're telling me that we should be telling the newer generation how to view pen spinning. What are you trying to do, domesticate them? I think newer spinners should figure out for themselves what they consider to be good spinning, not be told by some closed-minded old folks. And I say closed-minded because it feels like people think there actually is a universal ideal to pen spinning. It beats me how people think there is actually a way to judge pen spinning objectively. But that's a rant for another time.[/QUOTE] This is a TOURNAMENT, probably a new word to you! It is where we determine which person's spinning is better. It's the judge's DUTY to in this. So yeah it needs regulations or results will be fragmented. [QUOTE=casual wrote: You will convince me if you can come up with a completely objective system. Simply claiming it's not subjective won't do anything.
When judging, I'd highlight unique linkage parts in the slomo. Then I'd attempt the linkages in steps and rank them based on difficulty with regard to flexibility, trick difficulty and linked difficulty. You could then keep either a mental or physical tally. Then repeat for the other person, compare tallys and judge accordingly. You could also use expert opinion from spinners like I.suk and EK to help you understand the difficulty. Technical spinning is basically difficulty, it's not subjective :/ -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 19:57:42
eurocracy;247507]This is a TOURNAMENT, probably a new word to you! It is where we determine which person's spinning is better. It's the judge's DUTY to in this. So yeah it needs regulations or results will be fragmented.[/QUOTE] I am all too aware of that. So are we going to define that Spinner A is better than Spinner B if Spinner A fits a mold better? When we say that 1 spinner is better than another, we are putting our own personal ideals of what we think is 'good spinning' on those two people, and the spinner that fits that mold better wins out. By regulating our definition of 'good spinning', we are being arrogant, claiming that the definition we placed as 'good spinning' is the most legitimate one. I highly disagree with that. [QUOTE=eurocracy wrote: When judging, I'd highlight unique linkage parts in the slomo. Then I'd attempt the linkages in steps and rank them based on difficulty with regard to flexibility, trick difficulty and linked difficulty. You could then keep either a mental or physical tally. Then repeat for the other person, compare tallys and judge accordingly. You could also use expert opinion from spinners like I.suk and EK to help you understand the difficulty. Technical spinning is basically difficulty, it's not subjective :/
Is it really the case that if you think something is difficult, it is universally difficult? I highly doubt flexibility linkages are difficult to somebody like fire@fox. You only think they are difficult because they are difficult to you. It's relative difficulty. "If I can't do it, then it's difficult". Difficulty is subjective. For a concrete example of this, take the Rex trick in wt11. It was relatively 'new' (actually it wasn't as there were people who did it many months before rex but i digress) and all the rage. Most people in the ps world were amazed by this trick, and wt competitors all started doing it. It was a world class difficulty trick. Nowadays, almost everybody can do it. It is hardly difficult. This is because the relative difficulty of the rex trick was high in 2011, when almost nobody could do it. In 2013, everybody can do it, so the relative difficulty is low. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:00:01
casual wrote: I am all too aware of that. So are we going to define that Spinner A is better than Spinner B if Spinner A fits a mold better? When we say that 1 spinner is better than another, we are putting our own personal ideals of what we think is 'good spinning' on those two people, and the spinner that fits that mold better wins out. By regulating our definition of 'good spinning', we are being arrogant, claiming that the definition we placed as 'good spinning' is the most legitimate one. I highly disagree with that.
By which logif the tournament should not exist at all as we can't have judges. We also use criteria, so would you kindly point out which criteria we should consider unfair and misrepresenting good spinning? -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:05:43
eurocracy wrote: By which logif the tournament should not exist at all as we can't have judges. We also use criteria, so would you kindly point out which criteria we should consider unfair and misrepresenting good spinning?
I think fundamentally, the idea that there exists a universal idea of 'good spinning' is misrepresentative. Therefore, judging criteria is not even the issue. This is just me, but I've stopped considering the world tournament as a way of determining the best spinner a long time ago. To me, the world tournament is a competition to see who can fit a certain mold of pen spinning. However, it is entertaining and improves the overall spirit of the community so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:17:05
Fire@fox had to practice a lot to do his flexible linkages and spent a lot of time hand stretching, so yes, he found it hard to put in the work. You also act like people's perception of difficulty is static, it does adapt so it does not just fall flat like you actblike it does when judging.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:20:46
eurocracy wrote: Fire@fox had to practice a lot to do his flexible linkages and spent a lot of time hand stretching, so yes, he found it hard to put in the work. You also act like people's perception of difficulty is static, it does adapt so it does not just fall flat like you actblike it does when judging.
How do you know this about fire@fox? If you've seen any of his early videos you would know that his hands are naturally alien-like. And how am I acting like people's perception of difficulty is static? If anything I am claiming it's dynamic. As people learn more tricks and linkages, they update their definition of what's hard and what's not based on what they can now do and what they still can't do. Difficulty is still based on what the spinner can't do. And therefore it's still subjective. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:20:49
I agree with both viewpoints, competition does not determine the best spinner because this concept doesn't exist, it's for fun and the competitive nature pushes people to improve themselves, new trends are set using the competition as well. also, execution at least is not so subjective, so it can be easily judged. because it is the most easy criteria to judge, a lot of emphasis is put on it in competition, but it is a matter of opinion how much importance should be given to execution.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:40:12
casual, what you don't understand, this tournament doesn't determine the worlds best spinner. It simply determines the Wourld Tournament Winner. Nothing more, nothing less. Accepting this fact it is actually quite legit to judge by some predefined criteria.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:47:51
Impulse wrote: casual, what you don't understand, this tournament doesn't determine the worlds best spinner. It simply determines the Wourld Tournament Winner. Nothing more, nothing less. Accepting this fact it is actually quite legit to judge by some predefined criteria.
Fair enough xD It just irks me when people act like this is the case, that is all. -
Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 20:59:32
retired psers are usually retired for a reason...life school work etc etc. they usually have less time after ps retirement not more so not sure that would work....taking the bias and setting a standard is most important but agaain that requires coaching which is difficult to coordinate
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 21:17:50
Yeah, also consider that it is known that judging must be subjective on some level, but that it isn't black and white, subjective or objective. There's sort of a spectrum to it in the sense that the greater the disparity between two combos in terms of difficulty/execution/etc., the greater the objectivity and certainty. Yes, one can look at the most chaotic situation, that being two very evenly matched spinners in terms of execution and perceived difficulty, creativity, etc. and exclaim that it's totally subjective who one would vote for and so it's ridiculous to try to explicitly say which is the "better combo". HOWEVER, and this is key imo, we are absolutely not at a stage in PS where the best spinners are so evenly matched in all cases so much so that the results of the tournament would be purely subjective. Yes, there are some very close battles like this that have occurred and will continue to occur, but I would argue that there is, at the very very least, a non-trivial amount of battles where the gap between one or more elements of the two combos is large enough that it can be said with some objectivity, and in some cases with great objectivity, which is "better" overall. I say "better" because really, when we classify one combo as better than another in a tournament setting, the meaning is basically just a shorthand for "higher sum of desired elements + inherent subjective error". It's pretty much just semantics, but we don't mean to claim that one kind of spinning is explicitly better than another, simply that it rates higher based on explicit criteria in a tournament setting, give or take some possible subjective error. I think I can speak for more people than just myself in saying that we are not up in arms about the inherent subjective errors, but rather the situations where there is a large enough gap in quality that a result in favor of the "worse" combo (perceived weaker on a statistically significant level beyond style/subjectivity) borders on the edge of either lacking strong justification at the very least, or just being explicitly invalid at the most. Also worth noting is that it's understood that, especially when there are close battles with high levels of subjectivity in judging by necessity (should occur with greater frequency as rounds progress, in principle), the result of the tournament is not explicitly who the "better spinner" is, but rather who the favorite is given the state of PS for that given year. If spinners are that evenly matched that it can't really be decided beyond "I like that one better", which should be a somewhat rare occurrence in reality, then all this really means is that competitive PS has a meta-game of sorts. And obviously, it does, to some degree, as does any competitive field that extends past triviality (tic-tac-toe has an explicitly known outcome, no strategy or ability involved, and also no subjectivity, so something like that obviously has no meaningful meta-game). I don't really see the issue with PS having a meta-game, especially when the extent of said meta-game is essentially what "style" is for us. In a competition of evenly matched skill/ability, it should be obvious that the opponent who "out-metas" the other will win. For PS, sometimes this means playing to the current trends (e.g. rex trick in wt11), and sometimes it means going against them (e.g. fel2fram, though much of his success can be attributed to higher levels of difficulty/creativity elements than competitors, obviously it isn't purely due to novelty though it plays a role), but really my point is that sure these things exist, and I understand your point, but I think that the issues people had with R1 this year are not so much in the gray area as you're suggesting, and that while black and white answers don't exist, "blackerish" and "whiterish" ones certainly do, at least as defined by the tournament setting of PS, @casual
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 21:53:26
@Iota I agree with you. But with the current settings, the spinners who are competing are also the spinners who understand the unspoken 'tournament metagame' the best. With that understood, competitors are entering this tournament with the knowledge that their spinning is going to be judged under the ideals of probably less experienced spinners who have a different metagame understanding. It isn't hard to see, based on the results, that spinners with very obvious wow factor has benefited much more from this less experienced metagame. This conflicts with the supposed metagame of the elites, in which intricacy is much more highly respected (by today's fel2fram influenced world). There have been some suggestions on this thread on how to improve the judges. Back to my original criticism of Chainbreak's suggestion, you cannot simply teach someone how to look at pen spinning in a sophisticated way. Your appreciation of pen spinning changes through time and watching lots of pen spinning videos over different periods of time and your own personal judgment. Teaching someone how to look at pen spinning gives them a very artificial precomputed way of looking at things, which I think is unhealthy, especially when there are so many other possible viewpoints of pen spinning out there.
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Date: Tue, Feb 12 2013 22:10:10
@casual Yeah, I totally agree with that point. Also, while I don't think Chainbreak's suggestion is optimal, I do think it's possible to "teach" judging simply by having those interested practice it, and giving constructive criticism where applicable. In other words, I think it's wrong to tell them how to look at and view pen spinning, but that it's okay and should be sought after to teach those interested how to better understand it so that their personal viewpoints are built on a foundation of justifiable observations about some given battle, for example. So it's possible to teach someone how to look at PS in a sophisticated way, but I think it IS possible to help them mature their understanding of it without robbing them of subjective/personal judgements. To put it another way, ultimately I feel that it's essential that a judge be able to explain and justify their decisions to another judge of an OPPOSING viewpoint, and have them deemed reasonable and understandable, and vice versa. I think if requirements to be permitted to judge were more stringent and based along these kind of lines, or if a group of intelligent/experienced judges with varying but roughly evenly mixed personal preferences were decided for a given competition, results would be far more reasonable. Honestly I kind of like the idea of something along the lines of the second suggestion as it would not be as difficult to implement, though it would be hard to balance, and would require actual collaborative work and dedication from those involved.
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Date: Wed, Feb 13 2013 04:42:42
^Cool story, guys. :trollface:
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Date: Wed, Feb 13 2013 12:05:36
casual wrote: Technical spinning is subjective as well.
There is nothing subjective about difficulty. For example: Thumbspin 2.0 is harder than Thumbaround. Pinkybak -> Pinkybak 1.5 is harder than Sonic. Inverse Thumbspin - Fingerless Thumbaround -> Palmspin is harder than Shadow -> Middlearound. Anyone who would disagree with the above statements is not simply subjectively having a different view. They are wrong. -
Date: Wed, Feb 13 2013 13:02:10
Mats wrote: There is nothing subjective about difficulty. For example: Thumbspin 2.0 is harder than Thumbaround. Pinkybak -> Pinkybak 1.5 is harder than Sonic. Inverse Thumbspin - Fingerless Thumbaround -> Palmspin is harder than Shadow -> Middlearound. Anyone who would disagree with the above statements is not simply subjectively having a different view. They are wrong.
how about comparing [fl ta ~ palmspin 0.5] continuous with [fl ia ~ palmspin 0.5] continuous? not everything is as black and white as the simple examples you outlined, difficulty is subjective for many linkages and tricks -
Date: Wed, Feb 13 2013 15:33:02
i.suk wrote: how about comparing [fl ta ~ palmspin 0.5] continuous with [fl ia ~ palmspin 0.5] continuous? not everything is as black and white as the simple examples you outlined, difficulty is subjective for many linkages and tricks
As I said, it definitely is mandatory to accept the fact that nearly nothing about penspinning is objective. This leads to the fact that any tournament is determined by the opinions of the judges. That said I would rather have a few really competent judges evaluate the combos since these judges in general can make at least decisions that are as balanced as possible than a lot of judges who either can't consider a number of different aspects about a combo or are too lazy to do it. -
Date: Thu, Feb 14 2013 17:50:48
^ exactly my thoughts, the only slightly tricky part is finding such a group of judges that will also have roughly evenly-distributed variety in terms of what style/elements they personally stress most. So like, we don't want all of them to be judges that really care most about flawless execution, nor all judges that only look at the difficulty of linkages/power, etc. I think it's doable though, and really, regardless of what they truly prefer, as long as it's a solid group of people I'm sure they'd be as objective as possible with it and eliminate that personal bias/preference for all but the most evenly matched or close of decisions :)