Making judging mandatory
Comments about this discussion:
Started
This idea came up after Winter EUC this year, where once again it was hard to find judges.
How about, we make it mandatory to judge preliminaries if you are competing.
Everyone who takes part in the competition and is riding in one of the waves, has to also judge a wave (or have someone judge in their place)
It is always the same people who do step up to judge. They would not be effected since they would judge anyways.
But we could get those who enjoy riding (and therefore relying on others to judge them) to give back and help others in the same way too.
Before getting into details here on how this could be implemented, what are your thoughts about the general idea?
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I think it's a good idea in principle.
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I like and support the concept, but I am unsure if this belongs in the Rulebook? To me, this isn't really a competition rule, but more like an event specific rule - wouldn't it be simpler to just say this is a rule of an event in case it's necessary?
Do you think it's easier and more efficient to perform this, if it's in the Rulebook?
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That's a good question... has anyone ever tried to enforce this as an event specific rule and did it cause any problems?
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Since there would need to be a consequence for riders not showing up for judging (which could very well be disqualification) I think it does belong in the rulebook.
I definitely don't think it should be ruled that judging always has to be mandatory, but even putting it in the rulebook as an official option for event organizers would probably make it easier to argue for consequences against riders not complying with it.
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> Since there would need to be a consequence for riders not showing up for judging (which could very well be disqualification) I think it does belong in the rulebook.
But the consequences of not appearing for judging could also be defined as an event-specific rule. The Rulebook does not prohibit any event-specific rules that go beyond the Rulebook.
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I want to avoid event organizers having to get their event specific rules approved by IUF to get their events endorsed and was under the impression, that adding mandatory judging would mean they had to. But you might be right, since it shouln't interfere with any rules in the rulebook.
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I agree that it's hard to find judges, especially on winter EUC, but I don't think that we should force riders to judge. Not on a rulebook level. In my opinion, its against professionalising our sport. Being a competitive rider in a big event is already a mind game, and a tough situation,n especially when looking at winning something.
Therefore my proposal would be to make it "mandatory" on events where it has been hard to find judges in the past - Winter EUC for example. If they don't show up, they get banned from the results or from riding the next wave.
But on a rulebook level, and for UNICON, I am against mandatory judging.
Comment
Chris, that's a solid point about the professionalism of the sport and the rules. With unicycling it is a bit tricky because as I see it, we are balancing on the edge of being a community based sport and professionalism: we are mostly community based, but in order to evolve, we have to focus on professionalism too.
I can see this rule being added to the Rulebook, but only as an optional one.
Normally I would say that this should be event specific, and it doesn't belong in the Rulebook, but Ian also has a valid point about events being endorsed by the IUF - which we are trying to promote, so in order to do that, we shouldn't make it harder for event organizers to get their events endorsed :)
I would add in the section that this rule must not be in effect at Unicons though.
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> Normally I would say that this should be event specific, and it doesn't belong in the Rulebook, but Ian also has a valid point about events being endorsed by the IUF - which we are trying to promote, so in order to do that, we shouldn't make it harder for event organizers to get their events endorsed :)
But would we really make it more difficult for organizers to have their events endorsed if there is nothing in the Rulebook about this?
After all, it doesn't contradict any rule in the Rulebook if an organizer adds such a rule as an event-specific rule. As long as event-specific rules don't contradict any rules in the IUF Rulebook, I don't see an increased hurdle for the endorsement of events - there will always be some event-specific rules that are not in the Rulebook.