Retainment of Judges and the judging panel for Semi Finals
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So, one of the bigger problems we ran into at Unicon was towards the end of the day, the riders who did not advance left the competition. Thus, there were not enough judges for the later groups, and a scramble to get volunteers to do it. And making those who already were there all day and judged all day do it again.
There is nothing in the rulebook about how to set up the judging table for the semi final and final groups, only the starting groups. So, this is how I ended up setting it up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VE6RYsmPHsyGMaR7zl011ssw1iWQEw_k-FY56smO9ec/edit?usp=sharing. It seemed fair, each starting group remained together for all of the times they were on the judging table, and each starting group judged the same amount of times, with the riders of the semi-final groups who did not advance judging the final group.
In theory it made sense. In reality, most of the males who did not advance left the competition and did not stay for judging, despite me making it clear they were required to judge other groups. The system worked for the first round since it was early in the day and the results weren't posted yet, but once the semi final rounds began that's where the issue arose, because a lot of the riders who did not advance to semifinals did not stick around.
Now, I'm not sure how to solve this issue? Solicit volunteers to beef up the judging table in case this arises again? Create a system more similar to how Freestyle secures judges? But then these solutions make it less "X-Style", because I feel the main differentiation between X-style compared to freestyle and flatland is how it is a completion judged by riders. Thoughts?
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I kind of liked how it was done at unicon 20 where each starting group was just judged by one other starting group. I also feel like its quite hard for male judges to judge female x-style and the other way around since the styles are so different. So I think this should be avoided if possible.
You have the problem that people dont show up everywhere at unicon. The only way this would be fixed is if once riders dont show up 2-3 time to stuff they signed up for they are disqualied but I feel like until a rule like that is implemented at unicon why should buff up the judging pool by volunteers.
I dont feel like having volunteer judges would make it less X-Style since the main difference to flatland and freestyle is that just the difficulty is judged and not any other aspects.
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I kind of liked how it was done at unicon 20 where each starting group was just judged by one other starting group. I also feel like its quite hard for male judges to judge female x-style and the other way around since the styles are so different. So I think this should be avoided if possible.
You have the problem that people dont show up everywhere at unicon. The only way this would be fixed is if once riders dont show up 2-3 time to stuff they signed up for they are disqualied but I feel like until a rule like that is implemented at unicon why should buff up the judging pool by volunteers.
I dont feel like having volunteer judges would make it less X-Style since the main difference to flatland and freestyle is that just the difficulty is judged and not any other aspects.
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> There is nothing in the rulebook about how to set up the judging table for the semi final and final groups, only the starting groups.
I would say that “starting group” in the rulebook in this case simply means a group of riders who start together - regardless of whether this is a prelim, semifinal or final starting group. However, it might be handy to use something like “prelim starting group” rather than “starting group” in places where it explicitly refers to a preliminary starting group for the first round.
> In theory it made sense. In reality, most of the males who did not advance left the competition and did not stay for judging, despite me making it clear they were required to judge other groups.
Maybe we can add something like, that riders who will not judge when they are required to do so can be disqualified?
> Now, I'm not sure how to solve this issue? Solicit volunteers to beef up the judging table in case this arises again? Create a system more similar to how Freestyle secures judges?
I would definitely prefer the first option. In my opinion, X-Style lives from the fact that riders are the judges. They can often evaluate the skills much better than judges in freestyle, even though the freestyle judges receive extra training in theory for scoring. Nevertheless, the results in X-style are often much more consistent than in freestyle.
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Personally, I don’t think it the riding between the men and women was too different/hard to judge the opposite gender. I had to have females judge males, specifically in the Jr expert categories, since there was only one group for each category and there would have been no one else to judge them. I did two starting groups judging per heat to make sure there were enough judges; I think this can be up to the discretion of the chief judge and the amount of competitors at the competition. I don’t know How many were in Unicon 20, but we had over 100 competitors for Xstyle this Unicon.
Jan, I also initially thought that we could disqualify them, but they already were eliminated from the competition by the point they needed to judge, so disqualifying them would be a moot point since they didn’t advance anyway.
I don’t know if it needs to be added to the rulebook or not, but it seems like whoever runs Xstyle at next Unicon should be recommended to solicit volunteers for judging. I’m planning on creating a document/folder with recommendations and google sheets/forms I used as director that I thought was helpful to hand off to the next director, and I can include this when I suggest the number/position of volunteers recommended. Unless there is something you two think we should add to the rulebook?
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> Personally, I don’t think it the riding between the men and women was too different/hard to judge the opposite gender. I had to have females judge males, specifically in the Jr expert categories, since there was only one group for each category and there would have been no one else to judge them.
I don't think I quite understand the connection to the discussion so far... At all the competitions I've been to so far, men and women have been mixed for the judging, not just men for the men and women for the women. The jury was always mixed and I don't see anything in the rulebook that would contradict this approach.
> Jan, I also initially thought that we could disqualify them, but they already were eliminated from the competition by the point they needed to judge, so disqualifying them would be a moot point since they didn’t advance anyway.
You are right. And as there is no age group ranking in X-Style, a disqualification would have no effect on this either. It would be different for practically all other disciplines.
This is indeed difficult and I have no good idea how this could be solved at discipline level. The only possibility would probably be to actually regulate this across the whole Unicon and not limit a possible disqualification to just one competition - but I doubt that something like this would really be implemented. As Ben wrote, there are already rules in place, but they are never applied.
> I don’t know if it needs to be added to the rulebook or not, but it seems like whoever runs Xstyle at next Unicon should be recommended to solicit volunteers for judging. I’m planning on creating a document/folder with recommendations and google sheets/forms I used as director that I thought was helpful to hand off to the next director, and I can include this when I suggest the number/position of volunteers recommended. Unless there is something you two think we should add to the rulebook?
I think it would be a good idea to create a document containing practical information for future directors and organizers. However, I don't think I would include anything in the rulebook in this regard for now. If it turns out to be necessary in the future, something can always be added.