Documentation of Records - Part 3 - Venue, Technical Equipment and Measurements
This discussion has an associated proposal. View Proposal Details here.Comments about this discussion:
Started
In this section I would list the information that needs to be provided about the technical equipment and measurements for a world record.
I think this section is the most specific for each discipline. We could try to summarize the information as generally as possible in the first section and then refer to the discipline-specific requirements.
For example, it could be stated in general terms that the following information is to be provided (in principle analogous to the current section 2.3):
1. information on the confirmity of the competition venue
2. information on timekeeping for all records where a time is measured
3. information on the course/distance/length measurement for all records where a length is measured.
If we want to continue to require general photos and videos for all categories, I would also include this in this general section. However, I don't know how reasonable this requirement is and whether there is really anything for all categories that needs to be proven by photo/video.
Specific requirements for the individual disciplines are then primarily derived from the IUF rules. I would list these specific requirements in the sub-chapters for the individual record categories.
For the Track Races:
Venue, timekeeping, photo finish, false start monitoring and wind measurement according to the IUF rulebook
I can't think of any additional requirements at the moment, but we could explicitly mention in the WRG which evidence must be submitted. The requirements are practically the same for all track races, with the exception of wind measurement, which is not required for distances over 200 m.
The current IUF rules require electronic false start monitoring for all disciplines at the Unicon (including 800 m!) - this would mean that records can only be set in races with a staggered start. This contradicts what we discussed in the other discussion.
In principle, however, I would be in favor of a staggered start and thus electronic false start monitoring in the 800 m being mandatory for world records. This would definitely increase the comparability of performances.
For the Track Technical Disciplines:
Venue, timing, and wind measurement - if applicable - according to the IUF rulebook
In my opinion, a video of the complete attempt should be required for the slow disciplines, because this discipline is more dependent on the experience of the judges than any other and in the past there have always been discussions about this at competitions, so that I consider a complete video of the attempt to be indispensable for an additional review of the performance for a world record.
For the Road Races:
Venue, timing, photo finish, false start monitoring according to IUF rulebook.
Here we would have to critically review what the rulebook currently requires and whether this really makes sense or whether adjustments or additions are necessary.
For the time trails:
Here we should try to bring all the necessary information and requirements into the rulebook with the next rulebook update, so that we also only have to refer to it.
For the jumps:
Venue, length measurement and wind measurement according to the IUF rulebook
Here we would also have to critically review what the rulebook currently requires and whether this really makes sense or whether adjustments or additions are necessary.
Comment
I have decided to split the rule change proposals into the general section 2.3 and the specific sections for the individual disciplines. So far, however, I have only worked out the proposal for the general section, the others will follow in the coming days.
In my opinion, only one major question remains unanswered for the general section: Should we add any general requirements regarding photo and video documentation?
Please let us know if you have any other questions, objections or comments on the proposal!
Comment
I am in favour of adding photo and video documentation.
Comment
But for what exactly? The current rules are extremely unspecific - although it says “The IUF requires photographic and/or video evidence that a record has been achieved”, the list that follows is not specified as a “must”, but only as a “should”. I find such vague requirements difficult to check and not very helpful.
In my opinion, if we want to maintain photo and video documentation, we should therefore make the rules more specific. For the slow balance disciplines, for example, this could mean that we require a complete video of the entire attempt - possibly even specified in more detail in the form that the wheel must be recorded from the side as full-frame as possible. This would give us a very specific requirement that would also be useful for verifying a record.
Comment
Yes I agree with you but then it would be different for every discipline. We cannot expect that somebody sends a video of a whole 10k record but it is not so hard to do this for track records.
Comment
Yes exactly, that was part of my question, whether there is really something that must always be documented by photo and/or video for all records, or whether it is rather very specific things for individual disciplines. As you say, it is certainly not very useful to require a complete video of every record. Normally, the verification of compliance with the rules can be done well and objectively, so that the testimony of the witnesses can be given a certain weight. However, where it is known that there can be major differences between different judges, a technical solution for judging or at least additional documentation should be required.
Comment
I have seen the requirement for video or photographs to be part "supporting evidence" many times. Although never as primary evidence of a record, judges and systems are always better if well trained and organised. With AI and image editing getting so good I suspect this will become less useful to us as the evidence of a record.
Comment
I agree with Roger that it is not very helpful to require photo and video documentation.
Of corse, we need well qualified judges. But as the event director confirms the competence of the judges or nominates certain judges to judge a world record attempt, I don't see a problem in terms of different experienced judges.
Comment
But as the event director confirms the competence of the judges or nominates certain judges to judge a world record attempt, I don't see a problem in terms of different experienced judges.
That may be the case for bigger competitions such as Unicons. However, I doubt that even at national competition judges are always experienced. I have seen a lot of examples where judges are just there because nobody else was found to help and they have never before judged an event. So then I could not stand behind the word "experienced".
Comment
> I have seen the requirement for video or photographs to be part "supporting evidence" many times.
But what does that mean for our rules? If we require something, then this must be provided for every record - and if we do not require something, then we must recognize records without this evidence. Something that we sometimes get but sometimes don't helps to document records in a comprehensible way in my opinion.
Or we would have to include some kind of rule that if the WRC doubts the authenticity of the required documentation, further evidence in the form of photos and/or video footage must be provided. But even then we should define what this further evidence must be.
> Of corse, we need well qualified judges.
And that's exactly where I see a big problem - if we're honest, we rarely have really well-qualified judges in unicycling. If we would always have them, together with a qualification system for judges like in other sports, we would certainly have far fewer reasons to critically question the statements of judges. But we don't even have a system to measure or document qualification of judges.
> But as the event director confirms the competence of the judges or nominates certain judges to judge a world record attempt, I don't see a problem in terms of different experienced judges.
I wouldn't even agree with that for Unicons. I've been to more than one Unicon event director now and I know what kind of judges are sometimes available. Luckily in track racing the things the judges have to judge are “very simple” and even non-professionals usually get it right, but to say we have experienced judges is definitely more than bold.
The fact that extra judges are nominated for world records is also practically never the case - because records are set during normal competition. So there are no special judges present.
As I said, in many disciplines this is not really a problem because the tasks can also be carried out by non-professionals, especially if the really critical aspects for a record (distance and time measurement) are carried out by professionals.
Comment
> But what does that mean for our rules? If we require something, then this must be provided for every record - and if we do not require something, then we must recognize records without this evidence. Something that we sometimes get but sometimes don't helps to document records in a comprehensible way in my opinion.
Or we would have to include some kind of rule that if the WRC doubts the authenticity of the required documentation, further evidence in the form of photos and/or video footage must be provided. But even then we should define what this further evidence must be.
If I understand well, the summary of Rogers comment ist that photo and video documentation are not a reliable evidence because the submitted photos and videos could be edited by AI or image editing programs and so it gets more important that we have well qualified judges.
>That may be the case for bigger competitions such as Unicons. However, I doubt that even at national competition judges are always experienced. I have seen a lot of examples where judges are just there because nobody else was found to help and they have never before judged an event. So then I could not stand behind the word "experienced".
> I wouldn't even agree with that for Unicons. I've been to more than one Unicon event director now and I know what kind of judges are sometimes available. Luckily in track racing the things the judges have to judge are “very simple” and even non-professionals usually get it right, but to say we have experienced judges is definitely more than bold.
The fact that extra judges are nominated for world records is also practically never the case - because records are set during normal competition. So there are no special judges present.
If we talk especially about slow balance, the situation at an unicon is usually the following: The event director knows very well which judges are experienced and which judges do their job for the first time. Therefore, for the finals the event director nominates two judges. Or in other words: The director contacts these two judges in advance. So, the choice of the judges for the finals doesn't depend on which volunteers are randomly available.
In case of world record we have a similar situation: The director can confirm the competence of the judges. But he can has also decide not to sign the form, if the judges are not appropriately qualified.
I agree that have more inexperienced than experienced judges.
So, at slow balance competitions, that are not a final: As rider, if you see that there is only one judge at each board or if you have the impression that the judges do their task for the first time, you can inform the director that you maybe will break a record. In this case the director can nominate two qualified judges for your attempts. Maybe they are not available immediately and you have to wait, but it is possible to find a solution. As rider I have experience with this procedure, so it's not correct to say: "The fact that extra judges are nominated for world records is also practically never the case - because records are set during normal competition."
To conclude: Even if we have only a few qualified judges, it is possible to find a way that world record performances will be judged by experienced people.
Comment
I would say that the competence and impartialness of judges/observers is of great importance. This is where supporting evidence is important (and this may be the videos etc) that shows they are. Although the qualification of the judge is important they are often not available and if we restrict an observer to being a qualified judge it may be restricting.
Comment
> If I understand well, the summary of Rogers comment ist that photo and video documentation are not a reliable evidence because the submitted photos and videos could be edited by AI or image editing programs and so it gets more important that we have well qualified judges.
However, we can't really guarantee well qualified judges and we have to deal with that somehow - and the more crucial a judge is for the decision of a record, the more important it is, in my opinion, that we can back up/verify the statement of the judges itself. And as far as editing videos and photos is concerned, I believe that it would (currently) still be much easier to fake four signatures of witnesses than a credible video. In addition, the video should never replace other evidence, but rather serve as supporting evidence in well defined cases.
I think Roger's last message reflects this - but for me the question remains whether we should include something in the general section “Venue, Technical Equipment and Measurements” about supporting evidence through photos/videos in the form that certain things are (can be) always required or whether we only want this for certain record categories/disciplines.
For example, we could add such a general sentence:
5. For some record categories, additional photo/video evidence must be submitted. Details can be found in the respective sections for the individual disciplines in these Guidelines.
If we want to keep open the possibility of requesting additional photo/video evidence in other cases if there are doubts about the evidence provided, we could formulate the sentence as follows:
5. For some record categories, additional photo/video evidence must be submitted. Details can be found in the respective sections for the individual disciplines in these Guidelines. If there are doubts about the evidence provided for other records categories, additional photo/video evidence of the attmept may also be requested.
> If we talk especially about slow balance, the situation at an unicon is usually the following: [...]
It may be that this is normally the procedure for Unicons - but world records cannot only be set on Unicons and it must be ensured for each record that the required documentation is sufficient. And even at Unicon, there is no guarantee that the judges are really as experienced as they should be.
> So, at slow balance competitions, that are not a final: As rider, if you see that there is only one judge at each board or if you have the impression that the judges do their task for the first time, you can inform the director that you maybe will break a record. In this case the director can nominate two qualified judges for your attempts.
I think you notice how often you've used “can” in your comment - of course it's possible that someone is doing this. But it may also be that this is not the case. It can also be that there are simply no (more) experienced judges available, it can also be that an event director considers a judge suitable who is not actually suitable - who says that at every event the event director can adequately assess which judge is suitable for the - really not easy - task of judging a slow balance world record?
I have the feeling that in the slow balance disciplines we are already in an area that cannot really be judged fairly and objectively without technical aids. For me, it's comparable to the false start detection in track races - that's also something that can't be judged fairly and objectively without technical aids, fortunately there are technical solutions here that we can insist on. But there are still no such solutions in the slow balance disciplines.
Comment
Concerning the request for photos or video. I think that requests should be specific according to the disciplines.
This is a set of evidence that should enable the WR validation committee to make the decision whether or not to validate the WR. It is better to have “too much” evidence than not enough.
Photos and videos cannot be sufficient on their own as evidence.
Indeed, photos and videos can be falsified, just as the form can be falsified and any other evidence.
Moreover, perhaps sanctions should be provided for in the event of false declaration or falsified documents.
I agree that for slow races, a video would help validate the WR.
This reminds me of another discipline where judging is difficult: track gliding. I guess track gliding is no longer organized because it is not possible to judge whether competitors touch the tire or not. I'm not even sure that by fixing an action cam on the frame, we can ensure that the foot touches the tire... According to the UNICON results, track gliding has not been organized at UNICON since UNICON13 in 2006. I think that for some disciplines, if we don't find solutions to help the judgment, they could disappear. It's not just a question of WR.
For time trials, photos and videos are additional evidences, in particular to check, for example: the conditions of the start, the absence of drafting behind a lead vehicle.
Comment
> Concerning the request for photos or video. I think that requests should be specific according to the disciplines.
I interpret from this that you are in favor of suggestion 1 regarding an addition to section 2.3? In other words, without specifying that photo/video evidence should also be required for other disciplines in case of doubt?
> Moreover, perhaps sanctions should be provided for in the event of false declaration or falsified documents.
Sounds like a very good suggestion to me, which could probably be most usefully integrated into Section 1 of the Guidelines. Will you open a new discussion on this?
> This reminds me of another discipline where judging is difficult: track gliding. I guess track gliding is no longer organized because it is not possible to judge whether competitors touch the tire or not. I'm not even sure that by fixing an action cam on the frame, we can ensure that the foot touches the tire... According to the UNICON results, track gliding has not been organized at UNICON since UNICON13 in 2006.
I would clearly disagree here - whether the foot touches the tire or not can be heard extremely well. Therefore, as long as the two judges run beside the rider - which they have to do anyway to determine the point up to which the distance is measured - it is no problem at all in track gliding or track costing to judge whether the foot is touching the tire or not. In fact, I would say it is extremely easy to judge.
There is probably a different reason why track gliding has not been offered at Unicon for a long time: until Unicon 19 (2018), downhill gliding was practically always offered and thus simply another variant of gliding, the other variant was then understandably dispensed with due to the already large number of disciplines. So it's more a question of choosing the discipline variant and not a reason for judging.
Comment
I think photo and video are still useful, but not on their own as evidence. Yes, they can be manipulated, but it gives an overview of the event, which is helpful when you are trying to verify a world record on the other side of the world, in an event you'd never heard of, run by people you've never met.
eg it gives you an idea of what the track/course/venue looks like, who was present, the timing/measuring equipment used, etc.
As an aside, we need to look at the term 'Time-trial' records in the IUF Rulebook and WR guidelines. What we have are essentially track records- you have to go around a closed circuit. In bicycling, time trials are part of road racing- it's a race against other riders, just not with them around you. This causes confusion with unicyclists and non-unicyclists alike.
Comment
Aber in den Vorschlägen zur disziplin spezifischen Dokumentation sind ja durchaus schon einige Nachweise gefordert - die Frage ist also, wie und in welcher Form benötigen wir hier etwa sim allgemeinen Abschnitt? Zwei mögliche Vorschläge für eine Ergänzung habe ich ja bereits weiter oben gemacht.
> As an aside, we need to look at the term 'Time-trial' records in the IUF Rulebook and WR guidelines. What we have are essentially track records- you have to go around a closed circuit. In bicycling, time trials are part of road racing- it's a race against other riders, just not with them around you. This causes confusion with unicyclists and non-unicyclists alike.
Certainly a valid point, but not really relevant for the specific rule proposal. If a different term is to be introduced in the rulebook, the terms could be adjusted in an editorial revision.
Comment
> I interpret from this that you are in favor of suggestion 1 regarding an addition to section 2.3? In other words, without specifying that photo/video evidence should also be required for other disciplines in case of doubt?
For in-competition records that take place in a competition, I don't see what kind of "general" photo or video the committee could ask for that would be of interest in the validation process. But we could ask for a photo for publication on the IUF's social networks. In this case, a photo could be required where the unicyclist can be seen on his unicycle in a recognizable way and permission to distribute the image. This would provide general proof and would serve the purpose of communicating about it.
> Sounds like a very good suggestion to me, which could probably be most usefully integrated into Section 1 of the Guidelines. Will you open a new discussion on this?
I didn't think too much about where to integrate it, I was still in the process of reading and contributing to the discussions and proposals that you created.
> Concerning track gliding, thank you very much for your answer. I had remained on a memory that a judge would have told me that during downhill gliding competitions, that participants were doing coast and it was difficult to judge. But it was certainly because the judges could not follow the participant because of the speed. I extrapolated on track gliding without thinking about the noise of the foot on the tire.
Comment
> […] If there are doubts about the evidence provided for other records categories, additional photo/video evidence of the attmept may also be requested.
A am against a retrospective request of photo/video documentation. That would make the impression arbitrariness.
> […] But we could ask for a photo for publication on the IUF's social networks. […]
I like this idea, but should it be part of the WR guidelines?
Comment
>> […] But we could ask for a photo for publication on the IUF's social networks. […]
>I like this idea, but should it be part of the WR guidelines?
In principle, it is not a bad idea to demand such a photo. After all, it is also in the interest of the IUF to be able to publish something about records. However, I ask myself the question, what if someone does not want to submit such a photo because he does not want to grant the IUF the rights to publish it? Or simply doesn't want a photo of them to be published on social networks? Do we then reject the record? I don't think that would make sense...
So for me it could really only be an optional request. A note to all athletes that the IUF would like to report on the records and everyone is asked to send a photo for publication.
> But it was certainly because the judges could not follow the participant because of the speed.
This may indeed be problematic for downhill gliding, as the speeds there are of course significantly higher. But downhill gliding is not an issue for world records anyway due to the different conditions everywhere :D
> A am against a retrospective request of photo/video documentation. That would make the impression arbitrariness.
Or there is the impression that records are really checked and athletes are given the opportunity to provide additional evidence in case of doubt. Without this possibility, the consequence of doubts during the review must be the rejection of the record.
Comment
It doesn't seem like there's really anything we always want to have documented via photo/video for all records. Rather it is a discipline specific requirement. It also looks like there is not a majority in favor of requesting additional photo/video documentation in case of doubt about the submitted documentation.
I would therefore suggest adding the following paragraph to the proposed rule:
5. For some record categories, additional photo/video evidence must be submitted. Details can be found in the respective sections for the individual disciplines in these Guidelines.
Otherwise, everyone seems to agree with the proposal, or is there anything else that needs to be adjusted from your point of view?
As for the photo for publication on IUF social media, I would put this in section 2.4 Additional information, because I would not reject a record if no photo publication is desired. So for me, this is different from the documentation of the record related to Venue, Technical Equipment and Measurements.
Comment
We need to separate out the two reasons you are asking for photos, and specify what they should take photos of.
- To help the committee validate the record, particularly outside of competition. Also important for competition in countries 'new' to unicycling- you will get submissions from organisers/competitors you've never heard of.
- For publicity/social media purposes. It's not necessary to validate the record, so should be optional.
For 1, photos of the measuring equipment, venue, spectators, judges, competitors, race/competition
For 2, you want an action photo, or just a picture of the record breaker.
Comment
For 1. I would suggest you also need photos of the unicycle. I would suggest that this should include overall image, image showing cranks and showing tyre specification.
Comment
In my opinion, this section should only contain rules for photos/videos that relate to the first part - and that are required regardless of the discipline.
For all photos/videos that we require in general, regardless of a specific discipline, we must of course also be aware that it will be more difficult, for example, to fill out and submit a world record claim as event director of a Unicon. It may not be possible to take photos of the participant or their unicycle immediately after a race if you are busy doing something else. All other evidence required so far can easily be collected after the event or even at the end of the day.
Comment
Photos and videos are supporting evidence as everything is already documented as has been set out in the submission. Photos of the unicycle, tyre and crank are as important as such.
Comment
But in your opinion, would the topic be covered by one of my suggestions for another paragraph, or would you include something else in the general section 2.3? If you were to include something else, what would you want to include as a rule?
My two suggestions were the following:
5. For some record categories, additional photo/video evidence must be submitted. Details can be found in the respective sections for the individual disciplines in these Guidelines.
or
5. For some record categories, additional photo/video evidence must be submitted. Details can be found in the respective sections for the individual disciplines in these Guidelines. If there are doubts about the evidence provided for other records categories, additional photo/video evidence of the attmept may also be requested.
Comment
Are there any comments on the current proposal or would everyone agree with it?
Comment
Since there were no further comments here, I would put the proposals to a vote soon and hope that all members of the committee will also take part in the vote.