# [WCA Regulations 2014] Scramble Filtering (new poll)



## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

Pros of scramble filtering (more than the +2 and solved positions):
Reduces chance of slower solvers getting ridiculously lucky and undeserved solves.

The 2014 changes to the WCA Regulations included the addition of 4b3 (https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/48):


> 4b3) Specification for the scramble program: An official scramble sequence must produce a random state from those that require at least 2 moves to solve. The following additions/exceptions apply:
> 
> 4b3a) For blindfolded events, the scramble sequence must orient the puzzle randomly (equal probability for each orientation).
> 4b3b) 2x2x2 Cube: The (random) state must require at least 4 moves to solve.
> ...



Here is what would be filtered:
Rubik's Cube: 19/43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (0.000000000000000043928601%)
2x2x2 Cube: 385/3,674,160 moves (0.01047858558%)
Pyraminx: 221,233/7,558,2720 moves (0.29270314696%)
Skewb:7,1625/3,149,280 moves (2.27432937052%)
Square-1: working on that

Here is a discussion for filtering for more info: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wca-scrambler/3x_hN9Y4HCM
This regulation was added in an effort to add transparency to the process that TNoodle uses to find random scrambles. This scrambling filter (except for Skewb and Square-1) has been in effect for a long time and was documented in the readme for TNoodle but was never addressed in the Regulations or Guidelines.

This discussion was originally brought up in this thread but I thought a poll would be useful.

Should there be scramble filtering for determining scrambles?
If so, how should these limits be decided?


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## Kirjava (Jan 3, 2014)

I'm resigned to the fact that this probably won't ever change, but have to register my disdain at 4b3b, 4b3c and 4b3d - I truly believe we should not be doing this.


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## uberCuber (Jan 3, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> I'm resigned to the fact that this probably won't ever change, but have to register my disdain at 4b3b, 4b3c and 4b3d - I truly believe we should not be doing this.



Where did they even pull the numbers 7 (for pyraminx) and 11 (for square-1) from? Did they just make up some random numbers that sounded good to them?

I also don't like these regulations.


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## Erik (Jan 3, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> I'm resigned to the fact that this probably won't ever change, but have to register my disdain at 4b3b, 4b3c and 4b3d - I truly believe we should not be doing this.



I strongly agree with this. Either go with a truly random position or (if you like to reason that even noobs can scramble so that there is not a 4 move solution) let random bypassers pick a position. Setting ANY filter is wrong therefore I think.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

uberCuber said:


> Where did they even pull the numbers 7 (for pyraminx) and 11 (for square-1) from? Did they just make up some random numbers that sounded good to them?
> 
> I also don't like these regulations.



Adding those regulations changed nothing. The minimum number of moves was already in place in TNoodle which is the only official WCA scrambling program. These regulations were added to inform the cubing community how the scrambles were being generated (https://github.com/cubing/wca-documents/issues/48). Here is a conversation about scramble filtering: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wca-scrambler/3x_hN9Y4HCM



Erik said:


> I strongly agree with this. Either go with a truly random position or (if you like to reason that even noobs can scramble so that there is not a 4 move solution) let random bypassers pick a position. Setting ANY filter is wrong therefore I think.



If a random state was one move away would you want somebody who has no idea how to cube get the WR just because they could see one move in advance or would you give it to the people who actually know how to cube?


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## Escher (Jan 3, 2014)

uberCuber said:


> Where did they even pull the numbers 7 (for pyraminx) and 11 (for square-1) from? Did they just make up some random numbers that sounded good to them?
> 
> I also don't like these regulations.





Erik said:


> I strongly agree with this. Either go with a truly random position or (if you like to reason that even noobs can scramble so that there is not a 4 move solution) let random bypassers pick a position. Setting ANY filter is wrong therefore I think.




Shame that when this change was enacted, I remember me and Kir posting several times in the relevant thread (I'll try to dig it up) trying to explain our reasoning and we didn't seem to be very popular.


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## uberCuber (Jan 3, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> Adding those regulations changed nothing. The minimum number of moves was already in place in TNoodle which is the only official WCA scrambling program



This has nothing to do with the fact that I disagree with this scramble filtering.



> If a random state was one move away would you want somebody who has no idea how to cube get the WR just because they could see one move in advance or would you give it to the people who actually know how to cube?



If a person has no idea how to cube, they wouldn't be trying to compete and would never see the scramble in the first place.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

uberCuber said:


> If a person has no idea how to cube, they wouldn't be trying to compete and would never see the scramble in the first place.



Ok. If a person normally solves cubes in 50 seconds.


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## uberCuber (Jan 3, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> Ok. If a person normally solves cubes in 50 seconds.



Presumably such a person would not be able to start a stackmat timer, perform a move on their cube, and stop the timer in a faster time than every fast-ish cuber in the round. And if they did manage to, then good for them. Luck is inherent to cubing.


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## Erik (Jan 3, 2014)

First of all: you know perfectly well that the chances of this are smaller than that I win the lottery 10 times on a day without rain in the Netherlands.
And to answer your question: in that case that person would be lucky. Good for him, yay, much wow. But that is part of the game, we have averages of 5 to filter the skill. 

Imho a 1 move scramble and solution is no worse than a 4 move scramble and solution. Both extremely lucky and unbeatable on a 'harder' scramble.


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## qqwref (Jan 3, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> Adding those regulations changed nothing. The minimum number of moves was already in place in TNoodle which is the only official WCA scrambling program. These regulations were added to inform the cubing community how the scrambles were being generated


I told you guys! If the way scrambles are generated is defined by a bunch of code rather than by the regulations, changes will happen and you won't even know until someone feels like telling you, because the regulations will stay the same...


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

uberCuber said:


> Presumably such a person would not be able to start a stackmat timer, perform a move on their cube, and stop the timer in a faster time than every fast-ish cuber in the round. And if they did manage to, then good for them. Luck is inherent to cubing.



For some reason I don't think the cubing community would be very happy with the 3x3 single record becoming unbeatable and would also defeat any purpose that 3x3 single record might have.



Erik said:


> First of all: you know perfectly well that the chances of this are smaller than that I win the lottery 10 times on a day without rain in the Netherlands.
> And to answer your question: in that case that person would be lucky. Good for him, yay, much wow. But that is part of the game, we have averages of 5 to filter the skill.
> 
> Imho a 1 move scramble and solution is no worse than a 4 move scramble and solution. Both extremely lucky and unbeatable on a 'harder' scramble.



Yes, it is EXTREMELY unlikely, so why not filter it?
If averages of 5 are the real test of skill why do we even have singles?



qqwref said:


> I told you guys! If the way scrambles are generated is defined by a bunch of code rather than by the regulations, changes will happen and you won't even know until someone feels like telling you, because the regulations will stay the same...



That is why we're adding these regulations now and not later.
Although this information has been available in the readme for TNoodle if anyway ever bothered to look.

I am curious as to how they chose these numbers as previously mentioned. The exceptions I get, but having 2 moves as a standard seems odd. I don't think two moves away on a 3x3 would be any harder than one move.


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## Erik (Jan 3, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> For some reason I don't think the cubing community would be very happy with the 3x3 single record becoming unbeatable and would also defeat any purpose that 3x3 single record might have.


This is already reality on 2x2.



> Yes, it is EXTREMELY unlikely, so why not filter it?
> If averages of 5 are the real test of skill why do we even have singles?


This logic does not make sense. Seriously.




> That is why we're adding these regulations now and not later.
> Although this information has been available in the readme for TNoodle if anyway ever bothered to look.



I really don't like the fact that this was almost conceiled and I'm glad it ended up in the regulations.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

Erik said:


> This is already reality on 2x2.
> 
> 
> This logic does not make sense. Seriously.
> ...



But it doesn't have to be reality for other puzzles.

Your logic is that it's so unlikely that we won't ever have to deal with it.
My logic is that it would defeat the purpose of a single in the case that it did happen, so why we would let that position even have a remote possibility of being generated?


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## Erik (Jan 3, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> But it doesn't have to be reality for other puzzles.
> 
> Your logic is that it's so unlikely that we won't ever have to deal with it.
> My logic is that it would defeat the purpose of a single in the case that it did happen, so why we would let that position even have a remote possibility of being generated?



You don't seem to understand what I'm saying:

you think it's a problem that there is the chance of extreme luck and try to solve this with a filter.

I say:

- There is no problem. Luck is part of the cube.
- A filter does not solve your self-created problem.


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## Kirjava (Jan 3, 2014)

I don't understand how people seem to think that 2 moves is silly and compromises the integrity of the event, but 4 moves is suddenly respectable.

God's Number for 2x2x2 and Skewb is the same, the case distribution and number of states is very very similar, yet the scramble filter limits are completely different.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

Erik said:


> You don't seem to understand what I'm saying:
> 
> you think it's a problem that there is the chance of extreme luck and try to solve this with a filter.
> 
> ...



I understand what you're saying.
- I do not think luck should be the deciding factor of determining records.
- A filter would certainly help.

I created a poll for more discussion.


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## Username (Jan 3, 2014)

That pyra filter rules out about 6.4% of all possible positions. I don't like that.


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## uvafan (Jan 3, 2014)

Username said:


> That pyra filter rules out about 6.4% of all possible positions. I don't like that.



I agree. The pyraminx move filter is absolutely ridiculous. If someone gets a fairly lucky scramble and sets the WR single, it's just part of cubing... 7 moves is way too high.

EDIT: In general, I also disagree with scramble filtering. It is totally unnecessary. Luck is an element in any sport, and eventually it won't really be WRs that matter because they will be broken very rarely, it will be the winner of head-to-head competitions such as worlds, and all competitors will have the same scrambles so...


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## ThomasJE (Jan 3, 2014)

Here is what I agree and disagree with:


> 4b3) Specification for the scramble program: An official scramble sequence must produce a random state from those that require at least 2 moves to solve. The following additions/exceptions apply:
> 
> 4b3a) For blindfolded events, the scramble sequence must orient the puzzle randomly (equal probability for each orientation).
> 4b3b) 2x2x2 Cube: The (random) state must require at least 4 moves to solve.
> ...



BLD events: Adds yet another element of luck. We don't need that.
2x2: Agreed. This also means the single can still be broken.
Pyraminx: Limiting solutions to 7 moves when God's number is 11 is too high. Maybe something like 5.
Skewb: No idea
Sq-1: No idea
5x5, 6x6, 7x7: Kind of goes without saying.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

ThomasJE said:


> Here is what I agree and disagree with:
> 
> 
> BLD events: Adds yet another element of luck. We don't need that.
> ...



Pyraminx: I still don't know if they include tips as moves (which I'm assuming right now that they do), but if they do God's number is 15.
Skewb: God's number for Skewb is also 11. It was meant to match Pyraminx somewhat.


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## tseitsei (Jan 3, 2014)

I am against scramble filtering.

Mainly because I don't think good "limits" can be assigned for each puzzle.
Obviously some scrambles will always be easier than other and some scrambles will be totally ridiculous. And to be honest I think that for example a 4 move scramble for 2x2 is (almost) as ridiculous as 2 move scramble and wr single is impossible to beat with a normal or even a good scramble either way... The scramble has to be ridiculous to even have a chance at wr...

Also the length of the scramble isn't the only criteria to block all possible lol scrambles:

a) now scramble your 3x3 cube with 14 random moves (or take a random state scramble that's ~14 moves long if you can find one somewhere that's even better).
Scramble probably looks and feels completely legit if you solve it.

b) now do an e-perm. Optimal e-perm is also 14 moves long so a random state scrambler with requirement for >13 move states could give you a simple pll as a scramble. Which would obviously result to an "unbeatable WR-single with any normal scramble"

Also just had another thought: if we want to filter out the "easy" short scrambles, then shouldn't we also filter out the long 19 or 20 move "hard" scrambles?
Just to be fair... It wouldn't be fair if someone got a really really hard scramble just like it wouldn't be fair if someone got a really really easy scramble...


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## Daniel Wu (Jan 3, 2014)

Pyra though... Why so high?


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## qqwref (Jan 3, 2014)

I think if we are going to filter scrambles we should only filter out the most extremely easy scrambles, so easy that you are unlikely to even see such a scramble in an average of 100 solves. I'm thinking on the order of one in a thousand or one in ten thousand (or less). 2.6% (for Skewb) is way too high.

For reference, here are some God's Algorithm tables for 2x2x2, Pyraminx, Skewb, and Square-1 (and part of the 3x3x3 one):


Spoiler





```
[B]2x2x2 (HTM):[/B]
Moves  Positions
0              1
1              9
2             54
3            321
4           1847
5           9992
6          50136
7         227536
8         870072
9        1887748
10        623800
11          2644
Total    3674160

[B]Pyraminx (HTM, no tips):[/B]
Moves  Positions
0              1
1              8
2             48
3            288
4           1728
5           9896
6          51808
7         220111
8         480467
9         166276
10          2457
11            32
Total     933120

[B]Pyraminx (HTM, with tips):[/B]
Moves  Positions
0              1
1             16
2            136
3            896
4           5456
5          32296
6         182432
7         931983
8        3829067
9       11108868
10      20736353
11      22907032
12      13067528
13       2739808
14         40336
15           512
Total   75582720

[B]Skewb[/B]
Moves  Positions
0              1
1              8
2             48
3            288
4           1728
5          10248
6          59304
7         315198
8        1225483
9        1455856
10         81028
11            90
Total    3149280

[B]Square-1 (twist metric)[/B]
Moves    Positions
0                1
1               64
2             1153
3            17050
4           235144
5          3091458
6         38893230
7        452031138
8       4459167504
9      33671064770
10    149502310936
11    183662070768
12     63945120032
13       157452752
Total 435891456000

[B]3x3x3 (HTM)[/B]
Moves        Positions
0                    1
1                   18
2                  243
3                 3240
4                43239
5               574908
6              7618438
7            100803036
8           1332343288
9          17596479795
10        232248063316
11       3063288809012
12      40374425656248
13     531653418284628
14    6989320578825358
15   91365146187124313
...
= 43252003274489856000
```


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

Username said:


> That pyra filter rules out about 6.4% of all possible positions. I don't like that.



It is not 6.4% for Pyraminx. It is 0.29270314696%. It would be around 6% if you didn't include tips.



qqwref said:


> I think if we are going to filter scrambles we should only filter out the most extremely easy scrambles, so easy that you are unlikely to even see such a scramble in an average of 100 solves. I'm thinking on the order of one in a thousand or one in ten thousand (or less). 2.6% (for Skewb) is way too high.
> 
> For reference, here are some God's Algorithm tables for 2x2x2, Pyraminx, Skewb, and Square-1 (and part of the 3x3x3 one):
> 
> ...



Thanks for the tables. I had just finished figuring out the pyraminx with tips. It was worth figuring it out myself anyway .


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## Kirjava (Jan 3, 2014)

I've always been against scramble filtering, but a 7 move limit for Skewb is just nuts.


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## Username (Jan 3, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> It is not 6.4% for Pyraminx. It is 0.29270314696%. It would be around 6% if you didn't include tips.



Yeah I realized that. I feel like an idiot. Last time I'm argumenting against something ever.


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## KongShou (Jan 3, 2014)

Why all the unnecessary regulations all of the sudden?


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

If want something done about this we should come up with a list of clear arguments and also decide exactly what we're proposing so that we can e-mail the WCA board about it requesting that they consider our proposal.


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## Owen (Jan 3, 2014)

Pretty bad idea. I think luck is an important part of the game.


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## Stefan (Jan 3, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> This scrambling filter has been in effect for a long time



Just to clarify: The Skewb filter is new and the 11 moves for Square-1 were introduced only recently (previously the general 2 moves).



tseitsei said:


> if we want to filter out the "easy" short scrambles, then shouldn't we also filter out the long 19 or 20 move "hard" scrambles?



No. The point is to have proper scrambles. A one or two moves "scramble" isn't really a "scramble" at all. The other extreme (19 or 20 moves) doesn't have that problem.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 3, 2014)

qqwref said:


> I think if we are going to filter scrambles we should only filter out the most extremely easy scrambles, so easy that you are unlikely to even see such a scramble in an average of 100 solves. I'm thinking on the order of one in a thousand or one in ten thousand (or less). 2.6% (for Skewb) is way too high.
> 
> For reference, here are some God's Algorithm tables for 2x2x2, Pyraminx, Skewb, and Square-1 (and part of the 3x3x3 one):
> 
> ...



Do you have the stats for Square-1 if you count (x, y) as a move and / as a move. Would that be just doubling the twist metric table?


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## tx789 (Jan 3, 2014)

7 moves for pyraminx is high but does that include tips? But Skewb 7 moves is very very high since ~2% of scrambles are now unusable in comp. Filtering scribbles is gone for completely stupid 1 move scrambles or something like that.


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## XTowncuber (Jan 3, 2014)

errrm, odder's WR pyra single is 6 moves...I don't think I should have to be less lucky than him to get a WR. 5-6 moves limit seems more reasonable.


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## Pro94 (Jan 3, 2014)

I agree with scramble filtering but I think regulations need some changes:
I'd change Pyraminx 7 moves for two reasons:
1. WR single had a 6 moves solution (without tips);
2. Almost 0.3% filtering is quite high in my opinion.
So 6 moves for Pyraminx should be good.

Same thing for Skewb: 2.2% is too high. If what Sarah said is right, 6 moves (0.04%) would be much better.


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## Erik (Jan 4, 2014)

Like I said in the other thread: we have averages of 5 to filter skill. Luck is part of the cube and it should not be influenced.

Imho a 1 move scramble and solution is no worse than a 4 move scramble and solution. Both extremely lucky and unbeatable on a 'harder' scramble. Why filter one of them? I still see 0 reason for filtering anything.

The "problem" of easy and lucky scrambles does not exist in my opinion. Also the "solution" filtering, does not solve your so-called problem either.


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## DavidCip86 (Jan 4, 2014)

Why does it specify that 5, 6 and 7 should be solvable in 2 or more moves?


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Erik said:


> Imho a 1 move scramble and solution is no worse than a 4 move scramble and solution. Both extremely lucky and unbeatable on a 'harder' scramble. Why filter one of them? I still see 0 reason for filtering anything.



A one move "scramble" is considered *solved *with a time penalty (+2 seconds), so because of that, it's kinda officially *not scrambled*. And our puzzles should get scrambled.



DavidCip86 said:


> Why does it specify that 5, 6 and 7 should be *solvable in 2 or more* moves?



It doesn't. It says "*at least* two moves to solve". Reason is above.


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## qqwref (Jan 4, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> Do you have the stats for Square-1 if you count (x, y) as a move and / as a move. Would that be just doubling the twist metric table?


No, unfortunately I don't have this, and it may not be known. It is not as simple as doubling the twist metric table because (x,y) is counted as 1 if one of them is zero and 2 otherwise. So the table would have to be computed from scratch, and from what I've heard, generating the original table took a year (in 2005).


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 4, 2014)

I'm probably not understanding this problem correctly, but why do 2x2, pyraminx, square-1, and skewb have such a high filter as compared to 3x3. Actually, my real question is why doesn't 3x3 have a higher filter? Isn't the purpose to not let extremely easy (2 moves away) cases happen? Why is 3x3 allowed 2 moves, but other puzzles are not?



qqwref said:


> No, unfortunately I don't have this, and it may not be known. It is not as simple as doubling the twist metric table because (x,y) is counted as 1 if one of them is zero and 2 otherwise. So the table would have to be computed from scratch, and from what I've heard, generating the original table took a year (in 2005).



That's what I thought. Thanks anyway. There's talk about changing the metric for Square-1 in any case.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

qqwref said:


> It is not as simple as doubling the twist metric table because (x,y) is counted as 1 if one of them is zero and 2 otherwise. So the table would have to be computed from scratch, and from what I've heard, generating the original table took a year (in 2005).



But we can use it for a bound. Ten moves counting all U/D/R-turns corresponds to at most five R-turns, right? So only states reachable with at most five R-turns are filtered out, so at most 1 out of 130316 states.

Also, computers today are much more powerful than in 2005, and if you just want to know the percentage of states filtered out, you don't need the full distribution table.



Methuselah96 said:


> I'm probably not understanding this problem correctly, but why do 2x2, pyraminx, square-1, and skewb have such a high filter as compared to 3x3. Actually, my real question is why doesn't 3x3 have a higher filter? Isn't the purpose to not let extremely easy (2 moves away) cases happen? Why is 3x3 allowed 2 moves, but other puzzles are not?



I believe 2x2, pyraminx, skewb and square-1 get special treatment because there, "too short" solutions have a non-negligible chance of actually happening.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Pro94 said:


> Same thing for Skewb: 2.2% is too high. If what Sarah said is right, 6 moves (0.04%) would be much better.



You don't jump between 2.2% and 0.04% with one move. That's a factor of 55. Not even the 7x7x7 has that many possibilities for one move. I notified them.


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## DavidCip86 (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> It doesn't. It says "*at least* two moves to solve". Reason is above.



Yeah, but I dont think a scramble could be that lucky on big puzzles


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## Kirjava (Jan 4, 2014)

DavidCip86 said:


> Yeah, but I dont think a scramble could be that lucky on big puzzles



You're wrong.


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## ottozing (Jan 4, 2014)

XTowncuber said:


> errrm, odder's WR pyra single is 6 moves...I don't think I should have to be less lucky than him to get a WR.



I was thinking the exact same thing when I heard about the 7 move limit.... So many weird regulations and stuff this year. Not sure how I feel about them.


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## Robert-Y (Jan 4, 2014)

Scramble filtering wont prevent all bad scrambles. Extremely easy scrambles, which do not violate the scramble filtering regulations, may still occur. You could still potentially get an F2L skip for 3x3x3, for example.

Is anyone going to suggest filtering scrambles in which at least two thirds of the puzzle has been solved?
If so, what about one third of the puzzle? Is it okay to have a first layer skip? No?
What about just a cross skip?

Where does it end?


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> *I don't understand* how people seem to think that 2 moves is silly and compromises the integrity of the event, but 4 moves is suddenly respectable.



Let me try to help you understand then, at least my personal reasoning, as I happen to think that.

Zero moves is solved, *not scrambled*. One move is still considered solved by WCA (with +2), and one or two moves also just feels *"not scrambled"* to me. Even non-cubers can solve that easily. And wouldn't give it to us when asked to scramble. Plus, if I remember correctly, for 2x2 a two moves scramble has already been thrown out a while back, so there's precedent for not considering it scrambled (enough) and forbidding it. Now at this point, the question for me already isn't anymore *whether* to draw a line. Ruling some states out but others not, I now *have to* draw a line *somewhere*, and the question only is *where*. Three moves still seem doable for non-cubers (they can easily reduce it to two moves), but four moves finally feel like it's (somewhat) scrambled. Also, for 2x2 (which I guess you meant, as you said four moves) we have already used a four moves scramble, so there's precedent for considering it scrambled (enough) and allowing it.

Maybe now you or one of the others who think we shouldn't even filter the solved position can enlighten me about that, cause that's something *I* don't understand. Do you consider a solved cube scrambled? Or do you think we don't need to scramble?




uberCuber said:


> Methuselah96 said:
> 
> 
> > If a random state was one move away would you want somebody who has no idea how to cube get the WR just because they could see one move in advance or would you give it to the people who actually know how to cube?
> ...



Almost true (I believe I heard of at least one such person competing), but change Meth's remark to say _"somebody who's a beginner/intermediate at Skewb"_ and it becomes realistic. What's your answer then?


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## Julian (Jan 4, 2014)

I don't agree that how we've handled scrambles in the past should set a precedent. If skewb were to be introduced with a minimum scramble length of 9, and then we realized that was stupid, I don't think we should be stuck and never be allowed to lower the minimum. Rather, those cubers who competed under scramble filtering and had a low-move scramble removed were just unlucky that the WCA was handling things this way at that time (similar to cubers competing under the Rubik's-brand-only rule).

Looking at the long-term, we can't never change the way things are because of a ruling at one competition, it's simply unfortunate to cubers at that competition. Following this reasoning, I think that neither the case of throwing out a 2-move scramble nor the case of allowing a 4-move scramble for 2x2 set a precedent. I'm in favour of allowing all non-solved states to appear (where 1 move off is solved). This seems to be the most non-arbitrary course of action.


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## Julian (Jan 4, 2014)

Some thoughts here. I agree with zero filtering beyond removing 1-move scrambles for many of the reasons already outlined in this thread.


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## Sa967St (Jan 4, 2014)

Robert-Y said:


> Scramble filtering wont prevent all bad scrambles. Extremely easy scrambles, which do not violate the scramble filtering regulations, may still occur. You could still potentially get an F2L skip for 3x3x3, for example.
> 
> Is anyone going to suggest filtering scrambles in which at least two thirds of the puzzle has been solved?
> If so, what about one third of the puzzle? Is it okay to have a first layer skip? No?
> ...



Very short scrambles on certain puzzles require hardly any skill to get a fast time whereas partially-solved scrambles at least require skill and some knowledge to get a relatively fast time.

Hypothetically, if a 2x2x2 scramble had a layer solved and the last layer required the maximal number of moves, the faster and more skilled 2x2x2 solvers should get better times on it than new and less experienced cubers would. On the other hand, if a 2x2x2 scramble were 3 moves long, any cuber, no matter how experienced, can get a ridiculous time.

I don't think we should worry about filtering beyond move count for this reason. The reason we should have filtering in the first place is for fair sportsmanship. Do we really want the 2x2x2 WR single holder to be the person who is lucky enough to get a 2-move scramble? There needs to be some extent of skill involved. For those who say luck is part of the game, I agree since it's inevitable, but we should do what we can to avoid situations where WRs are solely determined by luck. Getting easy but not necessary short scrambles are part of the game.

I think the issue is how to fairly decide filtering limits. It's unfortunate that some of the current WR singles had scrambles that aren't defined by the current limits (how did the 6-move pyraminx scramble happen anyway?).


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## uberCuber (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Almost true (I believe I heard of at least one such person competing), but change Meth's remark to say _"somebody who's a beginner/intermediate at Skewb"_ and it becomes realistic. What's your answer then?



I gave my answer two posts below the one you quoted.



uberCuber said:


> Presumably such a person would not be able to start a stackmat timer, perform a move on their cube, and stop the timer in a faster time than every fast-ish cuber in the round. And if they did manage to, then good for them. Luck is inherent to cubing.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Julian said:


> Some thoughts here. I agree with zero filtering for many of the reasons already outlined in this thread.



I'm confused. Here you're for "zero filtering", but in the your post you link to in this same post, you're _"in favour of allowing all non-solved states to appear (where 1 move off is solved)"_...


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## Julian (Jan 4, 2014)

Sa967St said:


> Hypothetically, if a 2x2x2 scramble had a layer solved and the last layer required the maximal number of moves, the faster and more skilled 2x2x2 solvers should get better times on it than new and less experienced cubers would. On the other hand, if a 2x2x2 scramble were 3 moves long, any cuber, no matter how experienced, can get a ridiculous time.


I could do a 0.7x J-perm when I was an 18ish second solver. I think I would have just as much of a shot at getting a better time on that scramble than a top-tier 2x2er as if it was a 3-move scramble.


> I don't think we should worry about filtering beyond move count for this reason. The reason we should have filtering in the first place is for fair sportsmanship. Do we really want the 2x2x2 WR single holder to be the person who is lucky enough to get a 2-move scramble?


This is essentially what exists currently, top 3 2x2 single results.


> There needs to be some extent of skill involved. For those who say luck is part of the game, I agree since it's inevitable, but we should do what we can to avoid situations where WRs are solely determined by luck. Getting easy but not necessary short scrambles are part of the game.


I agree with the last line. But why are short scrambles not also part of the game?

EDIT:


Stefan said:


> I'm confused. Here you're for "zero filtering", but in the your post you link to in this same post, you're _"in favour of allowing all non-solved states to appear (where 1 move off is solved)"..._


Apologies, I'm in favour of filtering out only solved states. Editing.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Erik said:


> First of all: you know perfectly well that the chances of this are smaller than that I win the lottery 10 times on a day without rain in the Netherlands.



I don't know your lottery and rain, but I doubt this. We've just seen bad WRs being set (at that first skewb competition) and if you insist on the _"50 seconds"_ cuber, we've had that as well (one such cuber was the best at that competition). All it would take is a combination of these two and a one-move scramble. This certainly seems way more likely than your lottery+rain scenario.



uberCuber said:


> I gave my answer two posts below the one you quoted.



Oops, apparently I managed to skip those two posts. It's 7:42am, I should go to bed.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Julian said:


> Apologies, I'm in favour of filtering out only solved states. Editing.



Ok, thanks. Now you just need to change your vote accordingly as well


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## Sa967St (Jan 4, 2014)

Julian said:


> Sa967St said:
> 
> 
> > I don't think we should worry about filtering beyond move count for this reason. The reason we should have filtering in the first place is for fair sportsmanship. Do we really want the 2x2x2 WR single holder to be the person who is lucky enough to get a 2-move scramble?
> ...


Those three cubers at least had enough skill to see the full 4-move solution and were able to execute it relatively quickly. If it were a 2 move scramble, it could have been almost anyone's game.

FYI, I'm okay with the 2x2x2 scramble filtering limit as 4 moves -- I think it's a reasonable and explainable cut-off. I completely agree with Stefan's post on why.



Julian said:


> Sa967St said:
> 
> 
> > There needs to be some extent of skill involved. For those who say luck is part of the game, I agree since it's inevitable, but we should do what we can to avoid situations where WRs are solely determined by luck. Getting easy but not necessary short scrambles are part of the game.
> ...


"Short" as in ones that are filtered with the current limits.


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## Julian (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Ok, thanks. Now you just need to change your vote accordingly as well


Well, that might be a bit misleading, especially to someone who hasn't read discussion regarding 1-move scrambles. But I'm fine if someone wants to change my vote to option 2.


Sa967St said:


> Those three cubers at least had enough skill to see the full 4-move solution and was able to execute it relatively quickly. If it were a 2 move scramble, it could have been anyone's game.


I agree somewhat. _Most_ cubers would be able to see an optimal solution for a 2-move scramble. Less cubers would be to see an optimal solution for a 3-move scramble (scramble: R' U' F2. Especially if the cuber wants to solve on white, they would need to do at least some tracing to determine there is a 3-move solution). And still less for a 4-move scramble, etc. It's very subjective for us to just choose a number that _feels_ mixed enough to be the minimum. I think we shouldn't be arbitrary.

Also for skewb, because the puzzle is deep-cut and the pieces move in a way many are not used to, a decent number of cubers would find 3 or even 2 moves to be non-obvious. Enough, at least, to make them think twice about one-looking.


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## Sa967St (Jan 4, 2014)

Julian said:


> It's very subjective for us to just choose a number that _feels_ mixed enough to be the minimum. I think we shouldn't be arbitrary.


Arbitrary decisions are nothing new, and it's natural to not want/like them, but without a reasonable limit, WR singles would just go out to people who get the shortest scrambles ever generated (I know this is a bit of an exaggeration -- but regardless they would go out to those who have a certain relatively low amount of skill and get super lucky with a very short scramble). Deciding filtering limits based on what feels right is indeed arbitrary to a high extent, but out of sportsmanship I believe the filtering limit should not simply be >1 (i.e. ≥2).


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## qqwref (Jan 4, 2014)

We're definitely going to have arbitrary limits, but if we do filter things beyond 1 move, I'd like to at least have consistent reasoning across puzzles, as opposed to arguments about whether an N-move scramble feels easy or can be solved by a non-cuber or whatever. One possible way is as follows:
- Choose a constant k, much less than 1.
- For a given puzzle, let P be the number of positions.
- Let n be the greatest integer so that the number of positions solvable in at most n moves is no greater than kP.
- If computationally feasible, forbid any positions that are solvable in at most n moves.

For instance, if we let k = 1/1000, we forbid the following: 2x2x2 positions solvable in <=4 moves; Pyraminx positions solvable in <=3 moves (or <=5 moves if you include tips); Skewb positions solvable in <=4 moves; Square-1 positions solvable in <=6 twists; 3x3x3 positions solvable in <=14 moves. Unless I made a mistake, of course.


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## Erik (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> and one or two moves also just feels *"not scrambled"* to me. Even non-cubers can solve that easily. And wouldn't give it to us when asked to scramble.



2 points:

- it doesnt matter how you feel about a scramble. A scramble is no more than a random position of a cube in my opinion. This is the point where a lot of us just have a different opinion. Imho: If you dont like the fact that one of the random positions is 1 move (which is only considered solved because of our regs) then why bother with a sport-hobby-etc of where luck is a clear possible factor. A factor which, is already filtered by averages of 5.

- yes lets use non-cubers insight in cubes to determine what is a scramble or not...


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## tseitsei (Jan 4, 2014)

qqwref said:


> We're definitely going to have arbitrary limits, but if we do filter things beyond 1 move, I'd like to at least have consistent reasoning across puzzles, as opposed to arguments about whether an N-move scramble feels easy or can be solved by a non-cuber or whatever. One possible way is as follows:
> - Choose a constant k, much less than 1.
> - For a given puzzle, let P be the number of positions.
> - Let n be the greatest integer so that the number of positions solvable in at most n moves is no greater than kP.
> ...



I think that if we are gonna do scramble filtering (which I don't really want) then something like this is the correct way of doing it. 
Not just throwing some random numbers out of nowhere to different puzzles...


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## mark49152 (Jan 4, 2014)

I'm neither a competitor nor delegate so my opinion is a view from the sidelines, but for anyone who's interested in a sideline view, I find this whole discussion quite bemusing. Surely it's not the randomness that matters, it's the quality of the test. The whole point of random scrambles is to try to ensure a uniform test across competitors and competitions. Randomisation is only a means to an end, not the objective itself. If you allow lucky scrambles that degrade the test to the point that less skill is required to succeed, just because randomization can occasionally produce such scrambles, doesn't that undermine the competition?


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## Kirjava (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> one or two moves also just feels *"not scrambled"* to me



The only justification I see for this line of thinking is "because it does" though.

I understand why you think that, I just think you're wrong.



Stefan said:


> Maybe now you or one of the others who think we shouldn't even filter the solved position can enlighten me about that, cause that's something *I* don't understand. Do you consider a solved cube scrambled? Or do you think we don't need to scramble?



Nah, I can't. I think we should use actually scrambled states for scrambles.

People think that by introducing this filter they are solving a problem. Most people think that this is not a problem in the first place. 

However, the problem they are 'fixing' still exists, it just behaves slightly differently. You just need to look at the 2x2x2 single WR list to see the quirk of a single 4 move scramble happening.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Julian said:


> Well, that might be a bit misleading, especially to someone who hasn't read discussion regarding 1-move scrambles. But I'm fine if someone wants to change my vote to option 2.



How would that be misleading? The question is _"Should the scrambling procedure include filtering certain positions?"_ and if you're for 0/1 moves filtering (but not more), option 2 is clearly the correct choice. Saying "no", on the other hand, is not just misleading but also simply wrong. It would be wrong even if you were only for filtering the solved position.



qqwref said:


> We're definitely going to have arbitrary limits, but if we do filter things beyond 1 move, I'd like to at least have consistent reasoning across puzzles, as opposed to arguments about whether an N-move scramble feels easy or can be solved by a non-cuber or whatever. One possible way is as follows:
> - Choose a constant k, much less than 1.



How do you choose that k, though? Is that not guided by whether the resulting scrambles feel easy or can be solved by a non-cuber or whatever?



qqwref said:


> For instance, if we let k = 1/1000, we forbid the following: 2x2x2 positions solvable in <=4 moves; Pyraminx positions solvable in <=3 moves (or <=5 moves if you include tips); Skewb positions solvable in <=4 moves; Square-1 positions solvable in <=6 twists; 3x3x3 positions solvable in <=14 moves. Unless I made a mistake, of course.



I get the same numbers except for Pyraminx with tips, where I get <=6:
1+8+48+288+1728+9896+51808 < (1/1000)*933120*3^4


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 4, 2014)

Erik said:


> 2 points:
> 
> - it doesnt matter how you feel about a scramble. A scramble is no more than a random position of a cube in my opinion. This is the point where a lot of us just have a different opinion. Imho: If you dont like the fact that one of the random positions is 1 move (which is only considered solved because of our regs) then why bother with a sport-hobby-etc of where luck is a clear possible factor. A factor which, is already filtered by averages of 5.
> 
> - yes lets use non-cubers insight in cubes to determine what is a scramble or not...



What if one of the scrambles is a solved puzzle? Is that a possible scramble by your standards?



Julian said:


> I don't agree that how we've handled scrambles in the past should set a precedent. If skewb were to be introduced with a minimum scramble length of 9, and then we realized that was stupid, I don't think we should be stuck and never be allowed to lower the minimum. Rather, those cubers who competed under scramble filtering and had a low-move scramble removed were just unlucky that the WCA was handling things this way at that time (similar to cubers competing under the Rubik's-brand-only rule).
> 
> Looking at the long-term, we can't never change the way things are because of a ruling at one competition, it's simply unfortunate to cubers at that competition. Following this reasoning, I think that neither the case of throwing out a 2-move scramble nor the case of allowing a 4-move scramble for 2x2 set a precedent. I'm in favour of allowing all non-solved states to appear (where 1 move off is solved). This seems to be the most non-arbitrary course of action.



I also fear that we could be stuck with too low of a filter because of past filters. But I think he's saying the opposite of what I'm thinking. He's talking about not lowering the filter. I'm talking about being able to raise it, if need be, but I don't know how that would work fairly.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Erik said:


> it doesnt matter how you feel about a scramble. A scramble is no more than a random position of a cube *in my opinion*.



it doesnt matter how you opine about a scramble

(don't see how "opinion" is better than "feeling")



Erik said:


> If you dont like the fact that one of the random positions is 1 move (which is only considered solved because of our regs) then why bother with a sport-hobby-etc of where luck is a clear possible factor.



I don't know the name of that fallacy, but I'm sure it has one.



Erik said:


> yes lets use non-cubers insight in cubes to determine what is a scramble or not...



Indeed. For them it's really still a puzzle, they're not biased by too much knowledge. I consider that valuable and meaningful.

(yes, I do understand you disagree)


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## Erik (Jan 4, 2014)

I do think it is a really bad idea to take the opinion of non-cubers into account. I base my concept of a "scramble" on a random position of the cube -which is a *logical way*-, rather than on a *feeling*. It surprises me a beta/numbers guy like you doesnt do this as well.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> Stefan said:
> 
> 
> > one or two moves also just feels *"not scrambled"* to me.
> ...



Then you didn't see my two sentences right after that:



Stefan said:


> one or two moves also just feels *"not scrambled"* to me. Even non-cubers can solve that easily. And wouldn't give it to us when asked to scramble.



And another way I thought of it was with eggs (the only thing besides cubing that comes to my mind when thinking "scrambled"). If I order a scrambled egg, I neither want a raw one (zero moves) nor a sunny-side-up (one move), nor a "flipped sunny-side-up" (don't know a name for that) or a cut sunny-side-up (or whatever else I can imagine being two moves). None of those are acceptable when I want it scrambled.

I know it's not a perfect analogy, but the point is mainly that just because it's not solved/raw anymore, doesn't mean it's "scrambled" and sufficient.



Kirjava said:


> Nah, I can't. I think we should use actually scrambled states for scrambles.



So you're for filtering the solved position? Then why did you vote "No" when asked _"Should the scrambling procedure include filtering certain positions?"_?



Kirjava said:


> People think that by introducing this filter they are solving a problem. Most people think that this is not a problem in the first place.



Don't know about the "most people" assertion, but I've seen enough people unhappy with at least the current 2x2 and square-1 WRs to think that if they were beaten with two-moves scrambles, that "most people" assertion might become false.


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## Kirjava (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Then you didn't see my two sentences right after that:



I did and i don't accept them as justification.



Stefan said:


> So you're for filtering the solved position? Then why did you vote "No" when asked _"Should the scrambling procedure include filtering certain positions?"_?



I took the question to be asking if we should be filtering scrambles. I don't consider the solved position to be a scramble.



Stefan said:


> Don't know about the "most people" assertion, but I've seen enough people unhappy with at least the current 2x2 and square-1 WRs to think that if they were beaten with two-moves scrambles, that "most people" assertion might become false.



Either way it's not solving the problem.

There's no objective reason to set it anywhere other than two. You claimed we had precedent for removing a two move scramble in 2x2x2, yet the limit for Pyra is 7 after a 6 move scramble already appearing in competition? This is just inconsistent and if the poll is anything to go by this issue needs a serious look.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> I did and i don't accept them as justification.



It's distinct from and better than _"because it does"_, and you called that a justification.

Anyway, you might not consider it a justification, but please don't try to make it look like I didn't provide anything.



Kirjava said:


> I took the question to be asking if we should be filtering scrambles. I don't consider the solved position to be a scramble.



The poll question explicitly asks about "positions", not "scrambles". I wonder how many of the other "No" voters made the same mistake.



Kirjava said:


> There's no objective reason to set it anywhere other than two. You claimed we had precedent for removing a two move scramble in 2x2x2, yet the limit for Pyra is 7 after a 6 move scramble already appearing in competition? This is just inconsistent and if the poll is anything to go by this issue needs a serious look.



Earlier today in the "official discussion" about it, Sebastien wrote

_"People also pointed out that the Pyraminx Single WR was 6 moves which seems to be true while I thought it was 7 moves before. I agree that we should change Skewb and Pyraminx from 7 to 6."_



Erik said:


> I base my concept of a "scramble" on a random position of the cube -which is a *logical way*-, rather than on a *feeling*



It's only a still only "feeling" because it hasn't been measured yet.


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## KongShou (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> It's only a still only "feeling" because it hasn't been measured yet.



What are you trying to say? There is no verified scrambled state? We should filter one or two move scrambles because they dont *feel* scrambled? Man i respect you most of the time but please present your argument with some justification.


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## angham (Jan 4, 2014)

Lel, my official 3.61 pyra would never have happened


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## qqwref (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> How would that be misleading? The question is _"Should the scrambling procedure include filtering certain positions?"_ and if you're for 0/1 moves filtering (but not more), option 2 is clearly the correct choice. Saying "no", on the other hand, is not just misleading but also simply wrong. It would be wrong even if you were only for filtering the solved position.


Relying on technicalities to get more people to vote "yes"? That's just low.





Stefan said:


> How do you choose that k, though? Is that not guided by whether the resulting scrambles feel easy or can be solved by a non-cuber or whatever?


No, I don't care about whether the resulting scrambles feel easy or not - a sune plus AUF on the 2x2x2 feels easy, but that's already 8 moves, and no reasonable filtering method should remove that. k pretty much provides an upper limit on what proportion of positions we will exclude (so k=1/1000 has us exclude no more than 1/1000 of the positions for a puzzle) and thus guarantees the maximum possible effect our filtering has on the distribution. We should probably either choose a nice round number, or choose a number that gives us a desired amount of exclusion on one puzzle - as an example, if we feel like 4-move 2x2x2 scrambles should still be allowed but no easier scrambles should show up, we could choose a k that falls in this range, which is about .000104 to .000607. At least, once we have made one arbitrary choice, the rest of the limits follow naturally.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

KongShou said:


> What are you trying to say? There is no verified scrambled state? We should filter one or two move scrambles because they dont *feel* scrambled? Man i respect you most of the time but please present your argument with some justification.



The "feeling" part is where I *speculate* about what non-cubers would find easy rather than having measured it. In my opinion, if the majority of average-intelligence average-health non-cubers can solve the majority of N-moves-scrambles easily, then N-moves-scrambles aren't good enough. And that can be measured (not exhaustively, of course, but if you do enough tests, you can probably find the answer with enough certainty).


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## Kirjava (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Anyway, you might not consider it a justification, but please don't try to make it look like I didn't provide anything.



I'm not trying to do that, I'm merely saying that I think what you're saying doesn't hold much ground.



Stefan said:


> The poll question explicitly asks about "positions", not "scrambles". I wonder how many of the other "No" voters made the same mistake.



Probably most, I don't think many people at all would want to include the solved position.



Stefan said:


> _"People also pointed out that the Pyraminx Single WR was 6 moves which seems to be true while I thought it was 7 moves before. I agree that we should change Skewb and Pyraminx from 7 to 6."_.



This really just makes me feel like not much thought has gone into this at all.


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## KongShou (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> The "feeling" part is where I *speculate* about what non-cubers would find easy rather than having measured it. In my opinion, if the majority of average-intelligence average-health non-cubers can solve the majority of N-moves-scrambles easily, then N-moves-scrambles aren't good enough. And that can be measured (not exhaustively, of course, but if you do enough tests, you can find the answer with enough certainty).



A non cuber could easily solve it. So what? Why is that not good enough? This make it not scrambled? Is this your definition of a scrambled state?
A two move scramble is still random, albeit being easy.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> I'm not trying to do that, I'm merely saying that I think what you're saying doesn't hold much ground.



You did rephrase it to "because it does". That's not ok. But saying it doesn't hold much ground is alright.



Kirjava said:


> This really just makes me feel like not much thought has gone into this at all.



Maybe, though no amount of thinking will ever be able to prevent all mistakes.
(except maybe if you think of how to destroy the universe and all future and succeed in doing that)


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 4, 2014)

qqwref said:


> Relying on technicalities to get more people to vote "yes"? That's just low.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That was actually my intention when writing the choices for the poll. If I could redo the poll it would be:
Should the scrambling procedure include filtering certain positions?
Yes, the filters already in the regulations are perfect.
Yes, the positions filtered should be more than one move away for some puzzles, but not the positions filtered in the Regulations (changing Regulations 4b3b-4b3d).
Yes, the positions filtered should only be one move or less away (deleting Regulations 4b3b-4b3d).
Yes, the position filtered should only be the solved state requiring zero moves to solve (changing Regulations 4b3, 4b3e; deleting Regulations 4b3b-4b3d).
No.

Also I like your idea of a constant to make it more uniform.


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## Kirjava (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> You did rephrase it to "because it does". That's not ok.



When you're talking about how you /feel/ about it, that's essentially what it amounts to to me. I did not see this is misrepresentation, sorry if it felt so.



Stefan said:


> Maybe, though no amount of thinking will ever be able to prevent all mistakes.



Of course, but fact checking should be done for something as important as this.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

KongShou said:


> A non cuber could easily solve it. So what? Why is that not good enough? This make it not scrambled? Is this your definition of a scrambled state?



A random cube is random. So what? Why is that good enough? This make it scrambled? Is this your definition of a scrambled state?

Note that I didn't highlight Erik's _"A scramble is no more than a random position of a cube *in my opinion*"_ like that just for fun. He himself understands and acknowledges that it's only his *opinion* (and apparently it's also yours). I have a different opinion. Explain why yours is valid and mine isn't.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

qqwref said:


> Relying on technicalities to get more people to vote "yes"? That's just low.



Huh? All I want is that people answer *correctly*, as otherwise the results lose meaning, and I do want this to be usable. I really wish there were explicit options _"only filter the solved state"_ and _"only filter solved and off-by-one"_ and I'd like a new poll replacing this one so people could choose those options instead of answering incorrectly. *They* are the ones misrepresenting the situation, not me. Call *them* low if you want. How is me trying to get an accurate picture of what people actually want "low"?

Can you please stop throwing nonsensical insults at me?



qqwref said:


> I don't care about whether the resulting scrambles feel easy or not
> [...]
> choose a number that gives us a *desired* amount of exclusion
> if we *feel *like 4-move 2x2x2 scrambles should still be allowed but no easier



First you're against using feelings and then you suggest using desire and feel, evading the question how they're formed.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> I really wish there were explicit options _"only filter the solved state"_ and _"only filter solved and off-by-one"_ and I'd like a new poll replacing this one so people could choose those options instead of answering incorrectly.



Can a moderator/admin do this? Who could I PM to edit the poll and reset it?


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## Noahaha (Jan 4, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> Can a moderator/admin do this? Who could I PM to edit the poll and reset it?



I can do it. What options do you want?

In the future, you can use the report button in the bottom left hand corner of a post to get a mod's attention.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Btw, Michael, what about the people who only want to filter "solved" and who did correctly chose option 2 in the current poll? You can't tell from their vote that they only want to filter that little. Offering their actual choices as options would make their votes go much closer to _"no"_, and I'm all for that!



Methuselah96 said:


> Also I like your idea of a constant to make it more uniform.



How about filtering states solvable in three or fewer moves? For all puzzles. Also uses a constant to make it (more?) uniform.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 4, 2014)

Noahaha said:


> I can do it. What options do you want?
> 
> In the future, you can use the report button in the bottom left hand corner of a post to get a mod's attention.



Thank you.

Should the scrambling procedure include filtering certain positions?
Yes, the filters already in the regulations are perfect.
Yes, the positions filtered should be more than one move away for some puzzles, but not the positions filtered in the Regulations (changing Regulations 4b3b-4b3d).
Yes, the positions filtered should only be the solved state and one move away (deleting Regulations 4b3b-4b3d).
Yes, the position filtered should only be the solved state (changing Regulations 4b3, 4b3e; deleting Regulations 4b3b-4b3d).
No.


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## Carrot (Jan 4, 2014)

Sa967St said:


> (how did the 6-move pyraminx scramble happen anyway?).



Easy, a 6 move scramble including tips happens in 1 out of 415 solves. That's once every 83 round ^_^ without counting tips they had a 2 mover in Norway like 2 years ago. We used to not have a filter for pyra of 7 moves.


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## Noahaha (Jan 4, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> Thank you.
> 
> Should the scrambling procedure include filtering certain positions?
> Yes, the filters already in the regulations are perfect.
> ...



I had to change them because of a character limit. Tell me if I messed up the wording on any of them.


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## qqwref (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Huh? All I want is that people answer *correctly*, as otherwise the results lose meaning


My point was that people are answering according to the spirit of the poll: do you want filtering, yes or no? Just because (almost?) everyone thinks solved is not a scrambled position doesn't mean they should all vote yes. These kind of statistics are all too easy to misinterpret and I don't want someone making a wrong decision just because they see everyone voting "yes" on a filtering poll. I think instead of complaining about people answering wrong, you should complain about the poll being written in a way that doesn't conform to people's intuition of what scramble filtering means.

EDIT: I like what Noah put up there, it's clean and easy to interpet. Is there some way to clear the existing votes, though? It says I've already voted but all the counts are zero.



Stefan said:


> First you're against using feelings and then you suggest using desire and feel, evading the question how they're formed.


I'm not against the concept of modifying regulations based on what people want. I am against one person making a decision based primarily on personal feelings that may not be shared by others (e.g. "let's get rid of anything under 7 moves for pyraminx, those feel too easy to me"), and then making everyone else follow it because it's The Rule. If the consensus is that we should keep allowing 4-move 2x2x2 scrambles, then we won't use a k-value of 1/1000.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 4, 2014)

Noahaha said:


> I had to change them because of a character limit. Tell me if I messed up the wording on any of them.



The second option could be worded better I think: let me think for a sec...how about: More than the +2 and solved positions, but not the ones in the current regulations


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Darn. I had several issues with Methuselah96's new option suggestions and was writing all about it, and in the meantime Noah rewrote them and pretty made much all my issues go away


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 4, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Darn. I had several issues with Methuselah96's new option suggestions and was writing all about it, and in the meantime Noah rewrote them and pretty made much all my issues go away



That's good. I didn't like the wordings of my proposed options either. I figured you or qqwref would set them straight.

Shouldn't the second option be more like: More than the +2 and solved positions, but not the ones in the current regulations
In case some people want higher filters for some reason?
For instance setting a 3x3 filter as well as an offshoot of qqwref's method for consistent filters: http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ing-(new-poll)&p=938759&viewfull=1#post938759


Also, option 2 could be interpreted that they want "Just the solved and +2 positions." as it is "Less than what is specified in the regulations for some puzzles."


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## Noahaha (Jan 4, 2014)

Methuselah96 said:


> That's good. I didn't like the wordings of my proposed options either. I figured you or qqwref would set them straight.
> 
> Shouldn't the second option be more like: More than the +2 and solved positions, but not the ones in the current regulations
> In case some people want higher filters for some reason?
> ...



Good point. Option 2 has been changed.


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

qqwref said:


> My point was that people are answering according to the spirit of the poll: do you want filtering, yes or no? Just because (almost?) everyone thinks solved is not a scrambled position doesn't mean they should all vote yes. These kind of statistics are all too easy to misinterpret and I don't want someone making a wrong decision just because they see everyone voting "yes" on a filtering poll.



It wasn't a yes or no question. There was another option in the middle and I sure hope people viewing the results wouldn't have ignored the "but" part of that "yes, but..." option and counted it simply as more "yes" votes. But ok, you're right, some might have, maybe even someone important. Suggesting that I'm trying to achieve that was mean, though. Btw, it was also easy to misinterpret all those "no" votes to mean that we should allow the solved state.



qqwref said:


> I think instead of complaining about people answering wrong, you should complain about the poll being written in a way that doesn't conform to people's intuition of what scramble filtering means.



I am, but admittedly I should have done earlier and more directly (but I might keep complaining if people answer wrong).



qqwref said:


> I am against one person making a decision based primarily on personal feelings that may not be shared by others (e.g. "let's get rid of anything under 7 moves for pyraminx, those feel too easy to me")



From the discussions I see on WCA mailing lists and GitHub etc, I firmly believe that no significant decision is done like that at all. I think not even a board member could/would do that. Looks like significant agreement from the rest of the board/WRC/delegates/organizers/community is always needed.


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## Tim Major (Jan 4, 2014)

Current AsR was 5 moves+tip

http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ingle-1-93-sec&p=619587&viewfull=1#post619587

Not sure about Odder's.

I know one thing for sure. Give a 5+ second solver 5 moves (lower than current WR) and it's extremely unlikely they'd beat 1.36 in comp conditions with a stackmat


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## Stefan (Jan 4, 2014)

Carrot said:


> Easy, a 6 move scramble including tips happens in 1 out of 415 solves.



I get 1 in about 414.3 (is there a more convenient way to compute this? didn't like typing it all out like that)


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## AustinReed (Jan 4, 2014)

Tim Major said:


> Current AsR was 5 moves+tip
> 
> http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ingle-1-93-sec&p=619587&viewfull=1#post619587
> 
> ...




Sorry to rain on your parade, but as a 5+ second solver, I can do it pretty easily. I don't think that's a good argument. Granted, it's not comp conditions, but I think there's a good enough margin that it's possible. Also, there are probably people with higher TPS than mine.


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## XTowncuber (Jan 4, 2014)

AustinReed said:


> Sorry to rain on your parade, but as a 5+ second solver, I can do it pretty easily. I don't think that's a good argument. Granted, it's not comp conditions, but I think there's a good enough margin that it's possible. Also, there are probably people with higher TPS than mine.



R B' L U' L gogogo
R L U B' R' gogogo
B' U' R U B gogogo

(I just typed out whatever I felt like)

I think it's a great argument. Really, I'll take whatever argument I can get to get my 6-movers back.


Tim Major said:


> Not sure about Odder's.


http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ge-2-96-(-Danish-Special-2013)-by-Odder/page2


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## AustinReed (Jan 4, 2014)

XTowncuber said:


> R B' L U' L gogogo
> R L U B' R' gogogo
> B' U' R U B gogogo
> 
> ...



He never specified moves/scrambles, so why does that contribute? I'm pretty sure we're on the same side of the argument here, but I don't think that the argument of "most cubers wouldn't be able to do it" doesn't work in a majority of cases. There are just too many unknowns.


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## Robert-Y (Jan 4, 2014)

This doesn't really matter but Yohei's pyraminx single AsR had two tips twisted in the solve. I even pointed it out in the thread...


----------



## XTowncuber (Jan 4, 2014)

AustinReed said:


> He never specified moves/scrambles, so why does that contribute? I'm pretty sure we're on the same side of the argument here, but I don't think that the argument of "most cubers wouldn't be able to do it" doesn't work in a majority of cases. There are just too many unknowns.


my point was that I doubt any 5+ second solver could execute 5 moves sub 1.36 (as Tim said). This means that if you lower the limit to 5 moves, it would still take some skill to get a WR. (as opposed to 2x2, where the WR single holder is 365th for average)


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## Sa967St (Jan 4, 2014)

Erik said:


> I do think it is a really bad idea to take the opinion of non-cubers into account.



Why? When it comes to the legitimacy of what we recognize as world records, I think it should be explainable to non-cubers. If someone got a 2-move 2x2x2 world record single and that person happened to not be very experienced with 2x2x2, but enough to get a fast time on that scramble, it would probably be very difficult to convince a non-cuber that these records are legitimate and fair. It would also make non-cubers question the integrity of the WCA if we allow scrambles that are ridiculously short.

FYI: I think the current 2x2x2 WR was fair, because it was 4 moves and not 2. In the end, the faster 2x2x2 solvers out of those who received that scramble achieved the fastest times.


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## uvafan (Jan 4, 2014)

Sa967St said:


> Why? When it comes to the legitimacy of what we recognize as world records, I think it should be explainable to non-cubers. If someone got a 2-move 2x2x2 world record single and that person happened to not be very experienced with 2x2x2, but enough to get a fast time on that scramble, it would probably be very difficult to convince a non-cuber that these records are legitimate and fair. It would also make non-cubers question the integrity of the WCA if we allow scrambles that are ridiculously short.
> 
> FYI: I think the current 2x2x2 WR was fair, because it was 4 moves and not 2. In the end, the faster 2x2x2 solvers out of those who received that scramble achieved the fastest times.


Ok, but what about the fast 2x2ers who weren't given that scramble? It's never going to be completely fair. Luck is an element in every sport. I honestly think scramble filtering is unnecessary. Single WRs for short event will be fast, but people will recognize that it is not even remotely based on who has the most skill. It has already come to that point with 2x2 and Square-1 - the person with the most skill doesn't have to have the Single WR, that is why we do averages.


----------



## Sa967St (Jan 4, 2014)

uvafan said:


> Ok, but what about the fast 2x2ers who weren't given that scramble? It's never going to be completely fair. Luck is an element in every sport. I honestly think scramble filtering is unnecessary. Single WRs for short event will be fast, but people will recognize that it is not even remotely based on who has the most skill. It has already come to that point with 2x2 and Square-1 - the person with the most skill doesn't have to have the Single WR, that is why we do averages.


Whether we choose to personally acknowledge certain single WRs, they are still officially recognized as WRs, and non-cubers can view them. Regarding the fast 2x2x2 solvers who don't get lucky scrambles, it's unfortunate and not preventable since luck is an inevitable element. I know it's impossible to be completely fair so that the most skilled cubers are the only ones who get the WRs, but what we can do is prevent WRs that almost anyone can get if they're just lucky enough. All I'm trying to get at is that we should not simply have >1 move as the filters (I've repeated my arguments several times).


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## Carrot (Jan 5, 2014)

Stefan said:


> I get 1 in about 414.3 (is there a more convenient way to compute this? didn't like typing it all out like that)



My result was rounded to the nearest 5 for convenience (sorry for the precision loss)

I feel sorry for you typing out all of that when you could just have done a single lookup earlier in this thread (there is a distribution table for pyraminx+tips)... http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ing-(new-poll)&p=938516&viewfull=1#post938516


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## Stefan (Jan 5, 2014)

XTowncuber said:


> my point was that I doubt any 5+ second solver could execute 5 moves sub 1.36 (as Tim said). This means that if you lower the limit to 5 moves, it would still take some skill to get a WR. (as opposed to 2x2, where the WR single holder is 365th for average)



It's not just the #1. Here's a comparison of the top 100 for single along with their world rank for 2x2 and Pyraminx. Pyraminx top 9 look pretty good. Wondering whether it's because of the puzzles, the different scramble filter limits, just random, or something else.



Spoiler: 2x2 and Pyraminx Top 100 Single with their Average World Ranks




*name**single222**avgRank222**name**singlePyra**avgRankPyra*Christian Kaserer0.69363Oscar Roth Andersen1.361Filippo Brancaleoni0.72199Brúnó Bereczki1.6111Matteo Provasi0.83272Jakub Wolniewicz1.697Feliks Zemdegs0.885Drew Brads1.712Yinghao Wang (王鹰豪)0.934Jules Desjardin1.844Pedro Henrique Da Silva Roque0.93380Yohei Oka (岡要平)1.935Vincent Sheu0.96507Riadi Arsandi2.026Erik Akkersdijk0.9642Irwin Arruda Sales2.1324Rowe Hessler0.9624Samuel Antônio Araújo de Jesus2.1918Jorge Castillo Matas1.0068Piotr Michał Padlewski2.19154Lorenzo Vigani Poli1.00460Felipe da Cruz Bueno2.3061Cameron Stollery1.0210Nobuaki Suga (菅信昭)2.41323Michał Pleskowicz1.036Trevor Petersen2.4443Edward Lin1.0627Yi Wang (王旖)2.4616Alexandre Carlier1.0626Boriss Benzerruki2.47103Lucas Garron1.06317Hendry Cahyadi2.5081John Brechon1.0630Piotr Kózka2.5014Louis Cormier1.0855Vincent Hartanto Utomo2.523Yu Nakajima (中島悠)1.0825Mateusz Cichoracki2.5410Tomasz Kaczorowski1.09213Adam Rotal Yuliandaru2.55177Asia Konvittayayotin (เอเชีย กรวิทย์โยธิน)1.0957Felix Lee2.557Marcin Zalewski1.11150Bence Irsik2.5928Erik Johnson1.11517Feliks Zemdegs2.65101Nicola Giordani1.13681Grzegorz Łuczyna2.6537Justin Jaffray1.1323Lê Minh Cường2.6666Cameron Almasi1.152105Milán Baticz2.66115Cameron Almasi1.152105Victor Bogatov2.6837Bill Wang1.1520Owidiusz Pryk2.6915Mitchell Lane1.16192Albin Xhemajlaj2.7148Nipat Charoenpholphant (นิพัฒน์ เจริญพลพันธุ์)1.1632Kim Jokinen2.7124Ting Sheng Bao Yang1.16272Marcin Jakubowski2.72213Christopher Olson1.161Niklas Spies2.7258Carlos Méndez García-Barroso1.1615Jorge Castillo Matas2.7569Rowan Kinneavy1.18113Alex Thielemier2.7785Mats Valk1.197Valentin Doussin2.7719Louis Sarthou1.191115Antoine Cantin2.7721Tim Major1.22290Yinghao Wang (王鹰豪)2.77102Daniel Wu1.22126Dmitry Kryuzban2.7813Antoine Cantin1.2281Sébastien Auroux2.7850Anthony Searle1.2237Bence Barát2.78184Anthony Brooks1.2237Jorge Ströh2.80125Alexander Lau1.2333Baramee Pookcharoen (บารมี พุกเจริญ)2.81399Brock Hamann1.25328Antonio Aranda2.8139Alberto Pérez de Rada Fiol1.25207Ramón Dersch2.8219Dmitry Zvyagintsev1.2762Tomasz Kiedrowicz2.8345Andrea Lo Sardo1.2770Erik Akkersdijk2.8464Auguste Olivry1.27135Fakhri Raihaan2.8635Syuhei Omura (大村周平)1.28157Daniel Sheppard2.8690Robert Yau1.3014Nils Feuer2.889Jack Johnston1.30299Edward Lin2.88281Weston Mizumoto1.3057Jakub Cabaj2.88292Simon Westlund1.3168Jakub Kipa2.9047Sławomir Kapka1.311256Willi Mickein2.9039Justin Adsuara1.31386Valentin Hoffmann2.91220Antonie Paterakis1.32185Barnabás Turi2.93271Kevin Guillaumond1.3344Dan Cohen2.9371Austin Reed1.3322Paulo Salgado Alvarez2.9486Dan Dzoan1.331597Simon Westlund2.9464Łukasz Ciałoń1.34143Bhanu Savan Kodam2.9433Richard Jay S. Apagar1.34161Luke Hubbard2.9426Evan Liu1.35119Alfrisa Diva Wandana2.96215Eric Limeback1.36101Claudio Müller2.97287Andy Bridger1.364426Karina Grandjean Beck2.97201Maxim Novikov1.38495Fumiki Koseki (古関章記)3.02426Marcin Jakubowski1.38237Henrik Buus Aagaard3.05292Edouard Chambon1.39143Vincent Julindra3.0635Ben Whitmore1.3918Jonathan Midjord Shapira3.0643Kailong Li (李开隆)1.40117Niko Paavilainen3.07118Loïc Petit1.40446Worapat Charoensuk (วรปรัชญ์ เจริญสุข)3.08105Oskar Åsbrink1.41288AJ Blair3.08290Uriel Gayosso Ruiz1.41925Amir Hossein Nafisi (امیر حسین نفیسی)3.0823Philippe Virouleau1.41104Corey Sakowski3.0991Lin Chen (陈霖)1.41420David Burany3.09140Qingbin Chen (陈庆斌)1.4117Ciarán Beahan3.09151Thompson Clarke1.43143Gaspard Leleux3.1149Parham Saeed Nia (پرهام سعیدنیا)1.43363Hippolyte Moreau3.11147Andy Smith1.4330Jiaxi Wang (王嘉熙)3.1171Michael Young1.43249Leandro Baltazar3.1284Andrew Ricci1.4489Daniel Wu3.1542Tim Reynolds1.44178Bowen Deng (邓博文)3.16199Javier Enrique Espinoza Grijalva1.44548Erik Engstedt3.16227Nguyễn Ngọc Thịnh1.46427Yannick Richter3.16162Sukesh Subaharan1.462561Evan Liu3.17138Cornelius Dieckmann1.4635Gustavo Arguello3.1759Antoine Piau1.46138Cyril Barigand3.19130Dario Roa Sánchez1.4765Daniel Waldir Rodrigues Rosa3.22382Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Fatemi (سید محمد حسین فاطمی)1.4736Ainesh Sevellaraja3.22121David Shi1.472822John Brechon3.2327Alvin Febrianth1.50985Jose Abanto Ortiz3.23148Frank Egan1.50363Mattias Uvesten3.25227Joon Cha1.50607Nathaniel Berg3.25138Mike Kotch1.52104Muhammad Sofyan Atsauri3.273243Michał Matczak1.52272Michał Pleskowicz3.30136Ravi Fernando1.52202Zhiyang Chen (陈至扬)3.30181Paolo Moriello1.52258Ole Nikolai Gjerset3.30317Steven Turner1.52161Marek Padlewski3.30148Dan Cohen1.5315Žiga Mazej3.30252Daniel Mazurek1.53411Michael Angelo Zafra3.3016Alfrisa Diva Wandana1.53150Andre Febrianto Jonathan3.3156Milán Baticz1.5329Takumi Yoshida (吉田匠)3.3134Vicente Albíter Alpízar1.552721Luis Javier Iáñez Pareja3.31123



Spoiler: SQL code



select two.name, single222, avgRank222, pyr.name, singlePyra, avgRankPyra from
(select @ctr:[email protected]+1 ctr, name, round(s.best/100,2) single222, a.worldRank avgRank222
from (select @ctr:=0) init, RanksSingle s join RanksAverage a on s.personId = a.personId and s.eventId = a.eventId join Persons p on s.personId = p.id
where s.eventId = '222' and s.worldRank <= 100
order by s.worldRank) two,
(select @ctr2:[email protected]+1 ctr, name, round(s.best/100,2) singlePyra, a.worldRank avgRankPyra
from (select @ctr2:=0) init, RanksSingle s join RanksAverage a on s.personId = a.personId and s.eventId = a.eventId join Persons p on s.personId = p.id
where s.eventId = 'pyram' and s.worldRank <= 100
order by s.worldRank) pyr
where two.ctr = pyr.ctr;


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## Escher (Jan 5, 2014)

I don't understand the problem with just letting singles be singles? If we want to have some concept of 'adequately scrambled' then why not just say, make it God's number for any of the cubes and remove all scrambles with optimal solutions with lengths below that? We play a game that has luck built into it, why make some arbitrary rules to deny that? I really couldn't care less what the casual observer has to say about the game and what 'looks easy', and I don't see what is so unique to cubing that means that we should listen to the uninformed when thinking of regulations.

I really don't understand how it's so hard to adapt, is there some cognitive dissonance or something? Single times have always been basically meaningless; take my 7.71 which was placed 5th in the world at the time of setting and was a ranking I 'didn't deserve' if you consider it anywhere near as meaningful as average. It seriously means next to nothing and the only people for whom it is forgiveable to not know that are people who've never solved the cube before.


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 5, 2014)

Escher said:


> If we want to have some concept of 'adequately scrambled' then why not just say, make it God's number for any of the cubes and remove all scrambles with optimal solutions with lengths below that?



For a puzzle like Skewb, God's number would be 11. There are only 90 positions 11 moves away from the solved state on a Skewb. One could simply just memorize 90 algorithms.


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## cubizh (Jan 5, 2014)

Stefan said:


> It's not just the #1. Here's a comparison of the top 100 for single along with their world rank for 2x2 and Pyraminx. Pyraminx top 9 look pretty good. Wondering whether it's because of the puzzles, the different scramble filter limits, just random, or something else.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Even though I am more inclined to think that an arbitrary number set for each puzzle may not be the perfect solution, I think the data you show is interesting enough to see it as a chart that compares single rank vs average rank for top 100 people in both events. The people with ranking > 100 are put at the top so the chart can remain somewhat readable (even though it didn't turn out that clear overall).


Spoiler


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## Stefan (Jan 5, 2014)

Carrot said:


> My result was rounded to the nearest 5 for convenience (sorry for the precision loss)
> 
> I feel sorry for you typing out all of that when you could just have done a single lookup earlier in this thread (there is a distribution table for pyraminx+tips)... http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ing-(new-poll)&p=938516&viewfull=1#post938516



Thanks, I had actually typed much more because I made mistakes, and when I *almost* reached your number, I was paranoid enough that I wanted know whether I was still doing something wrong 



Escher said:


> If we want to have some concept of 'adequately scrambled' then why not just say, make it God's number for any of the cubes and remove all scrambles with optimal solutions with lengths below that?



Why would we want to throw out the vast majority of positions for obviously no reason?

Also, this would lead to only 32 possible scrambles for Pyraminx (ignoring tips), and even fewer if some of them are equivalent. Similar for Skewb. You could easily learn algs for all cases and recognize them during inspection, so the solve is just raw execution of a previously learned alg. Basically you're turning these puzzles into Magic.

Finally, we simply can't. For some cubes we don't even know God's number.



Escher said:


> We play a game that has luck built into it, why make some arbitrary rules to deny that?



If anyone is denying that luck plays a role, I'd say it's those who *don't* want to do something about it. Those who are trying to do something about it are acknowledging luck exactly by trying to do something about it.

Also, they're not attempts to rule luck out, only to mitigate it a bit. And don't say we shouldn't be trying to mitigate luck. We're doing it with the averages, and you do seem to like those.



Escher said:


> I don't see what is so unique to cubing that means that we should listen to the uninformed when thinking of regulations.



I don't see why you're talking about uniqueness. If you just want to ask why we should listen to the uninformed when thinking of regulations, I repeat my argument that they're still a measure for what's a puzzle. I haven't been puzzled by our regular puzzles in a long time. You?



Escher said:


> I really don't understand how it's so hard to adapt, is there some cognitive dissonance or something? Single times have always been basically meaningless



Not sure about "cognitive dissonance", but I do think you have an odd perspective. If people ask or are asked what the Rubik's Cube world record is, I believe they're more likely thinking about single than average. Even cubers. Even the WCA site is evidence of that, as the default view shows singles.


----------



## Stefan (Jan 5, 2014)

cubizh said:


> Even though I am more inclined to think that an arbitrary number set for each puzzle may not be the perfect solution, I think the data you show is interesting enough to see it as a chart that compares single rank vs average rank for top 100 people in both events.



Nice picture, thanks. I'd like to be able to do that as well.

I don't see the even-though-connection between the highlighted part and the rest you wrote, though. Please clarify


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## cubizh (Jan 5, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Nice picture, thanks. I'd like to be able to do that as well.
> 
> I don't see the even-though-connection between the highlighted part and the rest you wrote, though. Please clarify


Pardon my english. I meant to say that even though I don't entirely agree with your view, I think some of the points you give and data you show are interesting to look into and explore.


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## Stefan (Jan 5, 2014)

cubizh said:


> Pardon my english. I meant to say that even though I don't entirely agree with your view, I think some of the points you give and data you show are interesting to look into and explore.



Ah, ok. I could have maybe seen that. Your English was fine. But I guess I was only looking for a direct connection between the contents of the two sentence parts (I hope this makes sense, but doesn't matter if not ).


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## Lucas Garron (Jan 5, 2014)

Stefan said:


> It's not just the #1. Here's a comparison of the top 100 for single along with their world rank for 2x2 and Pyraminx. Pyraminx top 9 look pretty good. Wondering whether it's because of the puzzles, the different scramble filter limits, just random, or something else.



That's pretty interesting. However, data doesn't answer the question of whether we want/need the rankings to match.
That is, it doesn't answer whether we should be enforcing skill using a particular way of scramble filtering.


I find it interesting that this conversation is focused on filtering by number of moves when historically there have been lots of (unusable but well-intentioned) suggestions for fancier rules (e.g. number of moves for cross, number of pieces solved) -- including one for BLD that I remember posting on the Yahoo list a long while back. Has the current policy framed everyone's view, or does everyone accept that move count filtering probably the only fair way to do it?


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## Methuselah96 (Jan 5, 2014)

Lucas Garron said:


> That's pretty interesting. However, data doesn't answer the question of whether we want/need the rankings to match.
> That is, it doesn't answer whether we should be enforcing skill using a particular way of scramble filtering.
> 
> 
> I find it interesting that this conversation is focused on filtering by number of moves when historically there have been lots of (unusable but well-intentioned) suggestions for fancier rules (e.g. number of moves for cross, number of pieces solved) -- including one for BLD that I remember posting on the Yahoo list a long while back. Has the current policy framed everyone's view, or does everyone accept that move count filtering probably the only fair way to do it?



I would think it's the only possible way because it is method independent.


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## Stefan (Jan 5, 2014)

Lucas Garron said:


> However, data doesn't answer the question of whether we want/need the rankings to match.



It doesn't answer that question, but is that really a question? *Want?* Yes. Who would not prefer rankings to reflect well how good people actually are, in the sense of the single ranking "matching" the average ranking? *Need?* No, we don't "need" to do anything.

It might help answer the question of how to achieve matches, though. If the pyraminx top ten match so much better than the 2x2 top ten because of something specific, it *could* maybe be used for the 2x2 as well. Of course it comes at the price of doing this something, and if that's for example scramble filtering then there are people against it, so that's a disadvantage. So I'd say the real question isn't whether we want matches, but whether we want them enough to outweigh the possible disadvantages.



Lucas Garron said:


> I find it interesting that this conversation is focused on filtering by number of moves when historically there have been lots of (unusable but well-intentioned) suggestions for fancier rules (e.g. number of moves for cross, number of pieces solved) -- including one for BLD that I remember posting on the Yahoo list a long while back. Has the current policy framed everyone's view, or does everyone accept that move count filtering probably the only fair way to do it?



I did notice that as well. Indeed interesting. Probably mostly being framed by the current policy. And newcomers don't knowing the old discussions. I don't think it's about the kind of fairness you're thinking off, at least I simply didn't think of such other filters during this discussion and so I didn't think about their fairness implications at all. And as my stance is related to _"solvability by non-cubers"_, a case like a single T-perm as scramble for 3x3 is simply irrelevant to me, as non-cubers usually can't solve that.


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## Dene (Jan 5, 2014)

Everyone in this discussion should take a good long look in the mirror, and realise what is actually causing all the problems --> all the stupid little "puzzles" that are solvable in obscenely short periods of time. Instead of trying to deal with them, it would be so much simpler to either:
1) Remove these events
2) Stop recognising single solves as "records"


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## googlebleh (Jan 5, 2014)

Dene said:


> Everyone in this discussion should take a good long look in the mirror, and realise what is actually causing all the problems --> all the stupid little "puzzles" that are solvable in obscenely short periods of time. Instead of trying to deal with them, it would be so much simpler to either:
> 1) Remove these events
> 2) Stop recognising single solves as "records"



If at first you can't solve the problem, crumple it up and throw it in the toilet.

And don't forget, depending on what system we come up with, it may applied to 3x3x3 and 4x4x4 as well (see qqwref's thing).


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## AustinReed (Jan 5, 2014)

Dene said:


> Everyone in this discussion should take a good long look in the mirror, and realise what is actually causing all the problems --> all the stupid little "puzzles" that are solvable in obscenely short periods of time. Instead of trying to deal with them, it would be so much simpler to either:
> 1) Remove these events
> 2) Stop recognising single solves as "records"




I'm voting for #2. It would make everything so much easier.


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## keyan (Jan 7, 2014)

Regarding scramble filtering, there are actually two questions to discuss - preemptive filtering and retroactive filtering.

Preemptive scramble filtering:

Imagine a scramble that is widely seen as 'easy', but has a sufficiently long optimal solve to be valid under preemptive filtering. For example, superflip. Consider the response to the appearance of such a scramble at competitions in two parallel universes, one where scramble filtering occurs and another where it does not.

In the universe where there is no scramble filtering, the response need only be 'All cube states are potential scrambles, and everyone has an equal chance of encountering scramble states of varying subjective difficulty.' There needn't be controversy, as all scramble states are treated equally.

In the universe where scramble filtering does occur, the response is likely more complex. 'By filtering some scrambles, we presuppose that there are some scramble states that we find unacceptable. However, there are many, many more states that some cubers may be unhappy to see occur. Eliminating scrambles based on optimal solve length attempts to address these 'easy scrambles', but it is impossible to satisfy everyone. Any attempt to eliminate these cases will leave some people unhappy.'

Optimal solve length filtering is far from eliminating cases that would commonly be seen as trivial. It is impossible to define an exhaustive set of 'too easy' scrambles that all cubers would agree with. Scramble filtering serves to cause controversy by acknowledging that there are some scramble states that are unacceptable, yet being unable to prevent some of them from being encountered. I'd rather our position be that all scramble states are acceptable, than that some are unacceptable but unavoidable.

Which leads to the next issue. Retroactive filtering:

The problem caused by preemptive scramble filtering potentially lead to retroactive filtering. The issue here is the disqualification of solves that were done on properly generated scrambles and were conducted properly following all regulations, on the grounds that someone finds the result unsatisfactory. That is, disqualification of otherwise valid results because someone feels that a properly-generated random state scramble resulted in an undeserved result.

Consider again an 'easy' but otherwise valid scramble, like the superflip. In the case of preemptive filtering, where it is acceptable to not allow some scramble states on the ground that they are 'too easy', it is not hard to imagine some people being very unhappy with a differently 'easy' scramble, and demanding its removal. In a world where there is no scramble filtering, there is no controversy, as all potential states are valid.

The last time I brought up this issue, I asked the regulations folks to add language confirming that all solves on properly generated scrambles that otherwise follow regulations are final. This was rejected because one board member insisted that the power to invalidate previously recognized solves be reserved as a personal privilege. (I say personal, rather than board privilege, as the other board members weighing in at the time were also opposed to after the fact filtering.)

The argument that these short scrambles are so rare as to make it not worth arguing about filtering them seems to me to rather work the other way. As short scrambles are very unlikely to occur in a random-state scramble generator, filtering prevents something that will almost certainly never happen in the first place while at the same time causing problems by suggesting that some scrambles are unacceptable and opening the door for arbitrary after the fact disqualification of results.


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## jfly (Jan 10, 2014)

I just read through this thread, and I'm pretty sure I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said. I would like to say that nobody involved in making or implementing these filtering decisions has been trying to sneak anything past the community.



qqwref said:


> I told you guys! If the way scrambles are generated is defined by a bunch of code rather than by the regulations, changes will happen and you won't even know until someone feels like telling you, because the regulations will stay the same...



I'm not sure what you're getting at here. If you're suggesting that changes to TNoodle drove the board/WRC to change the regulations, I want it to be clear that that was very much not the case. Filtering rules always come from the WRC/board to TNoodle, not the other way around. Originally, the WRC asked us to filter out states that are considered solved or solved without filtering, and so we did. At the time, it was a ton of work I would have rather not done (this is not a reflection on how I feel about filtering, it is just a complaint that it was a ton of work). It's unfortunate that the regulations were not immediately updated to reflect this, but I'm positive that was only because everyone involved is a volunteer and has other priorities, not because anyone was intentionally being secretive. In my experience, documentation always lags behind reality, not just for software, but for anything.

I encourage anyone who wants to stay informed on discussions about TNoodle to join the wca-scrambler group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wca-scrambler. There's also the github repository here https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/, which I would love to see more members of the community contribute to. I would like to emphasize that TNoodle is not necessarily the right place for debates about whether filtering should exist, or how much of it we should do. It is a place to discuss how best to fix TNoodle bugs and add new features, many of which come from the WRC or the board. If anyone is confused about TNoodle's role in the cubing community, or has any suggestions about how to better open things up to people, feel free to start a thread on the wca-scrambler group, or contact me personally.


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## keyan (Jan 11, 2014)

jfly said:


> It's unfortunate that the regulations were not immediately updated to reflect this, but I'm positive that was only because everyone involved is a volunteer and has other priorities, not because anyone was intentionally being secretive.



Unfortunately, whatever the reality, the appearance is that Sebastien wanted to, if not outright hide, at least bury this information in scrambler documentation that attracts much less community attention than the regulations.


Sebastien in WCA Scrambler Team email said:


> I think that these limits should not appear in the regulations (4b3a-4b3c in the current draft). There is absolutely no use in that for anyone and for documentation, the TNoodle documentation seems absolutely sufficient to me.


https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wca-scrambler/3x_hN9Y4HCM

Additionally:


> we had agreed on filtering 0 and 1 moves from solved, or so i thought; then Sebastien says "Oh hey btw Board wants 4 for 2's and 8 for Pyra"
> Tyson: We agreed on that? I wasn't aware we had discussion


The above is a direct quote from a conversation I had with a WRC member. I confirmed with Tyson that this was an accurate representation of the events prior to posting. 

I don't like that we have regulations enacted unilaterally without proper consideration (see Thom's comment #75) and, if this (admittedly non-representative) poll is any indication, against the desires of the community.


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## qqwref (Jan 11, 2014)

jfly said:


> If you're suggesting that changes to TNoodle drove the board/WRC to change the regulations, I want it to be clear that that was very much not the case.


No, it's a different complaint entirely. I'm saying that any changes in TNoodle are effectively changes in the regulations (since scrambles are defined by what TNoodle does), but they nevertheless bypass the normal regulation process. The scrambles and method of scrambling can be (and are) changed without any change in the regulations as written, and separate from the normal regulation-change discussions and schedule.


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## Lucas Garron (Jan 11, 2014)

qqwref said:


> No, it's a different complaint entirely. I'm saying that any changes in TNoodle are effectively changes in the regulations (since scrambles are defined by what TNoodle does), but they nevertheless bypass the normal regulation process. The scrambles and method of scrambling can be (and are) changed without any change in the regulations as written, and separate from the normal regulation-change discussions and schedule.



... which is why I insisted on making them part of the Regulations. Should something be changed about that?


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## Dapianokid (Jan 11, 2014)

My only concern is that the people responsible for handling the inner workings behind TNoodle are basically responsible for large portions of the regulations.

The numbers behind the probablity of any kind of "bad" scrambling are abysmally small. That being said, the chances of "getting a last layer skip" are just as "unfair" to people as a 4 move 2x2 WR solution.
What if somebody came along and couold optimally solve puzzle near maximum depth?
A method is a method, and it solves the cube, and speedcubers like to do this fast. The "luck" they may get is part of that, and it's kinda depended on. But we still respect fast cubers even if they get what we consider "easy" scrambles (or we SHOULD respect them) in a competition becuase they are FAST. Nobody would be complaining if they all got "easy" scrambles. We wouldn't go so far to compete if we didn't at least want to get lucky, we'd just upload averages and be happy with what's out there.

I like the idea of filtered scrambles, and it's well implemented from what I can tell. I have read a lot of the debate and If anything, people should be happy that the playing field has been leveled out an almost unrealizably small amount by filtering.


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## qqwref (Jan 12, 2014)

Lucas Garron said:


> ... which is why I insisted on making them part of the Regulations. Should something be changed about that?


No, insisting on making scrambling regulations part of the regulations is a good thing. I don't know why we stopped doing that.


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## Kirjava (Jan 12, 2014)

Dapianokid said:


> people should be happy that the playing field has been leveled out an almost unrealizably small amount by filtering.



1 in 12 is not small. 

L4E skip vs L4E is not level. 

It is not possible to 'level the playing field'.


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## Sebastien (Jan 12, 2014)

keyan said:


> Unfortunately, whatever the reality, the appearance is that Sebastien wanted to, if not outright hide, at least bury this information in scrambler documentation that attracts much less community attention than the regulations.



It is always the easiest to assume bad intentions, right?

Here are some true alternatives:

- leaving out information that well just confuse not so experienced WCA members, seen how many problems we already have getting those to read our regulations.
- leaving TNoodle and the regulations as disconnected as possible to not complicate changes. As a matter of fact, the Board has already decided to change the limits for Pyraminx and Skewb down to 6 moves, based on the community's feedback in this thread. We cannot make this change in TNoodle 0.8.0 (which will be released at the beginning of next week) though, because we would violate the regulations otherwise.




keyan said:


> Additionally:
> 
> 
> > we had agreed on filtering 0 and 1 moves from solved, or so i thought; then Sebastien says "Oh hey btw Board wants 4 for 2's and 8 for Pyra"
> > Tyson: We agreed on that? I wasn't aware we had discussion





> Me: I want to know where this conversation should have happened
> chris: I was told second hand, so I don't know that.



This is just defamatory on the lowest possible level. I managed to find the refered conversation in my mail archive and what Chris presents here as quote is not even roughly corresponding to that conversation's actual content. I forwarded the original conversation to the WDC.


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## tim (Jan 12, 2014)

keyan said:


> Imagine a scramble that is widely seen as 'easy', but has a sufficiently long optimal solve to be valid under preemptive filtering. For example, superflip. Consider the response to the appearance of such a scramble at competitions in two parallel universes, one where scramble filtering occurs and another where it does not.
> 
> In the universe where there is no scramble filtering, the response need only be 'All cube states are potential scrambles, and everyone has an equal chance of encountering scramble states of varying subjective difficulty.' There needn't be controversy, as all scramble states are treated equally.
> 
> ...



I think this is a very strong argument against scramble filtering. We have created this artificial world in which some states are considered "acceptable" while others (potentially just as fast to solve) aren't. This is inconsistent, leads to longer regulations and seemed to be a headache for TNoodle's developers (at least for some puzzles if I interpreted the discussions correctly).

In my opinion no filtering would be the best solution for everyone involved. We as a community should just accept (fortunately most of us already are) that single solves can be heavily influenced by luck.



jfly said:


> There's also the github repository here https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/, which I would love to see more members of the community contribute to.



I think it would help attracting more developers if TNoodle wouldn't be that huge. Looking at the Github page is very intimidating when you except just a _simple_ scramble generator. There are a dozen projects crammed into that repository which don't seem even slightly related to each other (cubecomps*, git-tools, quercus**, a timer, ...). What do you guys do if you have several issues related to different projects? Tag them differently? Prefix the titles? In my opinion most of these projects (if not all) should be moved to separate repositories.

* hasn't been updated for 9 months, so it's just a copy of some old source code?
** it's empty.

Don't get me wrong: I have huge respect for the work you guys have done in the last couple of weeks (have been reading every mail) and everyone involved seems to know exactly what he's doing. It's just the project organization which seems a bit off in my opinion and might discourage new developers taking part.


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## Kirjava (Jan 12, 2014)

Sebastien said:


> the Board has already decided to change the limits for Pyraminx and Skewb down to 6 moves, based on the community's feedback in this thread



When you say 'the Board' you mean solely you, right? Changing Skewb from 7 to 6 on what is essentially a whim reeks of a lack of justifiability for this. You say it's based on community feedback, but that's misleading because it's actually because you fu​cked up and thought the WR scramble was 7 moves and not 6.


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## Tim Major (Jan 12, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> When you say 'the Board' you mean solely you, right? Changing Skewb from 7 to 6 on what is essentially a whim reeks of a lack of justifiability for this. You say it's based on community feedback, but that's misleading because it's actually because you fu​cked up and thought the WR scramble was 7 moves and not 6.



And most of the "community" didn't say they wanted 6 moves. They said it should be at MOST 6 moves. It's like Sebastien is trying to compromise compared to most of the other posters in this thread.


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## JustinJ (Jan 12, 2014)

Sebastien said:


> As a matter of fact, the Board has already decided to change the limits for Pyraminx and Skewb down to 6 moves, based on the community's feedback in this thread.



I still don't quite understand what the motivation is for making it so high. While I am against scramble filtering in general, this seems to me not to line up with the original arguments made in favour of filtering (eliminating trivial cases). I'd say a 5-6 move scramble is certainly *easy*, but definitely not *trivial* on the level of a 2-3 move 2x2 scramble.


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## tim (Jan 12, 2014)

Another argument against filtering: No one would waste his time arguing about (seemingly) arbitrary limits.


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## jfly (Jan 12, 2014)

qqwref said:


> No, it's a different complaint entirely. I'm saying that any changes in TNoodle are effectively changes in the regulations (since scrambles are defined by what TNoodle does), but they nevertheless bypass the normal regulation process. The scrambles and method of scrambling can be (and are) changed without any change in the regulations as written, and separate from the normal regulation-change discussions and schedule.



Sorry for getting pedantic here, but I would like to distinguish between someone like me making random changes in TNoodle and the official TNoodle release process. Neither I nor anybody on the wca-scrambler team has control over this page: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/scrambles/. The version of TNoodle pointed to on that page is the only version of TNoodle that may be used for competitions (anything else must be explicitly approved by the board, which has happened so far for every competition in 2014 with skewb). I hope that in the future, as the WCA recommends new official scrambler programs (new version of TNoodle, or something else entirely, who knows), that those programs will either follow the regulations, or the regulations will be changed to reflect the behavior of those programs. Again, everyone involved is a volunteer, and mistakes happen, especially when we're all ignoring our families during the holidays and rushing to finish stuff by an arbitrary deadline. I should have pushed back harder when I knew (admittedly a while ago) that TNoodle was not going to be ready for the 2014 regulations by the new year. Nobody involved wants TNoodle to diverge from what the regulations ask for.



tim said:


> I think it would help attracting more developers if TNoodle wouldn't be that huge. Looking at the Github page is very intimidating when you except just a _simple_ scramble generator. There are a dozen projects crammed into that repository which don't seem even slightly related to each other (cubecomps*, git-tools, quercus**, a timer, ...). What do you guys do if you have several issues related to different projects? Tag them differently? Prefix the titles? In my opinion most of these projects (if not all) should be moved to separate repositories.
> 
> * hasn't been updated for 9 months, so it's just a copy of some old source code?
> ** it's empty.
> ...



You're right. For a long time, Lucas has been trying to convince me of how important this was, and I've only recently started to realize this. Keep in mind that when I started TNoodle, it was just a personal project, and I had no intention of it becoming the official wca scrambler. There are a lot of vestigial projects in there, some of which should be removed from the face of the earth, and others which should be moved to separate repositories. It is just a lot easier to create a few more files as opposed to creating a new repository and setting up git modules or git subtrees, or copying code or binaries around (all of which have their own special downsides).

It's probably not so important to talk about how TNoodle go to be the way it is. I am pretty proud of the current state of the code, but as you pointed out, the structure can be something of a mess. I also very much regret that we don't use a standard build system (it was originally Ant, and I moved away from it when it just didn't let me do what I needed to). The fact of the matter is that stuff does work the way it is right now, and while I would like to switch to a standard build system (gradle looks interesting), I don't have enough experience with anything else (I know I hate Ant, and we use automake and autoconf at my job) to make a good decision about where TNoodle should go next. I would like to have a discussion about possibilities on the wca-scrambler group, and hopefully come to a consensus about what to do. I think for any such discussion to be productive, someone is going to have to start out with a concrete suggestion, rather than a simple "stuff kind of sucks right now, we should make it better". If you have any ideas, please feel free to get the ball rolling by sending out an email to the wca-scrambler group.

Upon proofreading this post, I realize I've ignored all of your questions, if you really did want answers to any of them, let me know and I will answer as best I can.


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## Sebastien (Jan 12, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> When you say 'the Board' you mean solely you, right?



This is just getting ridiculous. If I say that "the Board" has decided something, that means that the majority of the Board members has agreed on a specific outcome. Your assumption that I'm abusing this term is, again, a personal insult. And I'm seriously fed up of being targeted personally, just because I'm the only board member who is stupid enough to face the angry mob on this plattform. 

PS: Your assumption that the filter limit of 7 moves for Pyraminx was based on Odder's WR is simply wrong. This decision is even older than Odder's solve and based on Oka's 1.93 (having less moves than Bruno's 1.61) and was implemented in the first TNoodle release at the beginning of 2013 already. As I learned from Jeremy way later, the first implementation for Pyraminx filtering has been faulty, otherwise Odder's scramble would have never been generated. Have your fun blaming me for not knowing the move count of our current Pyraminx single WR, but I'm just one of many and at least I stepped up immidiately after getting to know about it to fix this inconsistency.


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## XTowncuber (Jan 12, 2014)

6 moves is still too many, but it's better than 7.


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## Kirjava (Jan 12, 2014)

Sebastien said:


> This is just getting ridiculous. If I say that "the Board" has decided something, that means that the majority of the Board members has agreed on a specific outcome. Your assumption that I'm abusing this term is, again, a personal insult. And I'm seriously fed up of being targeted personally, just because I'm the only board member who is stupid enough to face the angry mob on this plattform.



The majority of the WCA board ok'd 7 moves without researching anything? No one checked?



Sebastien said:


> PS: Your assumption that the filter limit of 7 moves for Pyraminx was based on Odder's WR is simply wrong.



*At no point did I say that you based the limit of 7 on odder's world record. You are outright lying.*

I said you changed the limit based on his world record, I have no idea where you initially pulled 7 from.



Sebastien said:


> This decision is even older than Odder's solve and based on Oka's 1.93 (having less moves than Bruno's 1.61) and was implemented in the first TNoodle release at the beginning of 2013 already. As I learned from Jeremy way later, the first implementation for Pyraminx filtering has been faulty, otherwise Odder's scramble would have never been generated. Have your fun blaming me for not knowing the move count of our current Pyraminx single WR, but I'm just one of many and at least I stepped up immidiately after getting to know about it to fix this inconsistency.



So the only reason the limit is 6 is because of a programming error. This is just nuts.


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## tim (Jan 12, 2014)

jfly said:


> It's probably not so important to talk about how TNoodle go to be the way it is. I am pretty proud of the current state of the code, but as you pointed out, the structure can be something of a mess. I also very much regret that we don't use a standard build system (it was originally Ant, and I moved away from it when it just didn't let me do what I needed to). The fact of the matter is that stuff does work the way it is right now, and while I would like to switch to a standard build system (gradle looks interesting), I don't have enough experience with anything else (I know I hate Ant, and we use automake and autoconf at my job) to make a good decision about where TNoodle should go next. I would like to have a discussion about possibilities on the wca-scrambler group, and hopefully come to a consensus about what to do. I think for any such discussion to be productive, someone is going to have to start out with a concrete suggestion, rather than a simple "stuff kind of sucks right now, we should make it better". If you have any ideas, please feel free to get the ball rolling by sending out an email to the wca-scrambler group.



Thanks for your answer! Unfortunately I've no experience with the Java build ecosystem either, but know the language pretty well.

Since I hate these messy mailing lists/google groups, I've opened an issue on GitHub to get the discussion started: https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/issues/160 Everyone seriously involved with the project should be on there anyway.



jfly said:


> Upon proofreading this post, I realize I've ignored all of your questions, if you really did want answers to any of them, let me know and I will answer as best I can.



They were just questions floating around in my head when looking at the repository. Their answers don't matter.

\edit: Reading your response more carefully, I noticed you pretty much insisted on using the wca-scrambler mailing list. Sorry. Maybe you could link to the GitHub issue in a post?


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## qqwref (Jan 12, 2014)

jfly said:


> The version of TNoodle pointed to on that page is the only version of TNoodle that may be used for competitions


That doesn't help me out at all. I'm not a developer on TNoodle and I certainly haven't been following the discussions enough to know the difference between version 1.7.12 and any other versions. And because of that, all I see is, TNoodle is the official scrambler and you guys are doing your own development on it, perpendicular to regulations.

Also, while it's true the regulations specify some info about what a scramble looks like (e.g. which puzzles are purely random state, what the notation is) (although they didn't in the version used for the last ~6 months of 2013), TNoodle is still the ONLY allowed scrambler. If it scrambles in a way that's inconsistent with the regulations, either you can't generate scrambles, or you are effectively following TNoodle's definition rather then the regulations' one.



jfly said:


> Again, everyone involved is a volunteer, and mistakes happen, especially when we're all ignoring our families during the holidays and rushing to finish stuff by an arbitrary deadline.


Here's the thing. From my perspective, most of the changes in the actual scrambling algorithms that I've seen in the last months (and I may have missed some) resulted in an ending product that was either worse, or different without being better. Our scrambling methods were good enough a year ago. As for changes not having to do with scrambling algorithms, I don't see why they are required for regulation compliance, as opposed to being stuff you guys wanted to do to be helpful. I'm sorry that you spent your free time this way instead of being with your families, but we didn't ask or demand for you all to do it.

It's the same thing I was thinking about the regulations group - they're putting in a lot of time, but ending up mostly with things the community doesn't care about or really doesn't want. I don't want you guys to work harder or put in more time - if anything, I want you to work better, and look before you leap.


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## jfly (Jan 12, 2014)

tim said:


> They were just questions floating around in my head when looking at the repository. Their answers don't matter.
> 
> \edit: Reading your response more carefully, I noticed you pretty much insisted on using the wca-scrambler mailing list. Sorry. Maybe you could link to the GitHub issue in a post?



Ok, that's what I thought (about your questions).

While I do really like having everything in my inbox (easier for me to search for), github issues are fine. I don't have a good sense of when something is better suited for one or the other.


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## jfly (Jan 12, 2014)

qqwref said:


> That doesn't help me out at all. I'm not a developer on TNoodle and I certainly haven't been following the discussions enough to know the difference between version 1.7.12 and any other versions. And because of that, all I see is, TNoodle is the official scrambler and you guys are doing your own development on it, perpendicular to regulations.



I'm not proud of the current state of TNoodle's documentation, but it's certainly not intentionally obscured. Again, we're volunteers, and when we get something working, that's when we stop and catch up on all the other stuff we've put on hold to get it done. I understand that you might believe that the things we're doing are not necessary or even worse, and I'll get to that later.



qqwref said:


> Also, while it's true the regulations specify some info about what a scramble looks like (e.g. which puzzles are purely random state, what the notation is) (although they didn't in the version used for the last ~6 months of 2013), TNoodle is still the ONLY allowed scrambler. If it scrambles in a way that's inconsistent with the regulations, either you can't generate scrambles, or you are effectively following TNoodle's definition rather then the regulations' one.



If TNoodle doesn't follow the regulations, then that is a BUG, and it needs to be fixed. I have put a lot of effort into writing automated tests for TNoodle, and Lucas worked to get us running on travis ci: https://travis-ci.org/cubing/tnoodle. We try hard to make sure things work, and follow the regulations. That said, I would never claim that TNoodle is bug free. In my mind, there's no way around the problem you're referring to. It's simply a fact that software does what the code says, not what humans want it to =). I believe that adding more official scramblers would only make this worse.



qqwref said:


> Here's the thing. From my perspective, most of the changes in the actual scrambling algorithms that I've seen in the last months (and I may have missed some) resulted in an ending product that was either worse, or different without being better. Our scrambling methods were good enough a year ago.



You've brought up some good points here. (Putting on my official hat here) As the leader of the WCA Scrambler Team, I do not believe it is our job to push back when the WRC/board asks us to do something we might not agree with. These guys deal with enough **** as is (don't get me wrong, I do strongly believe that community feedback is critical to the continued success of the WCA), they don't need more of it from us (the scrambler team). They need to know whether what they want is possible, and how long it might take to do. Our opinions don't matter here.



qqwref said:


> As for changes not having to do with scrambling algorithms, I don't see why they are required for regulation compliance, as opposed to being stuff you guys wanted to do to be helpful. I'm sorry that you spent your free time this way instead of being with your families, but we didn't ask or demand for you all to do it.



If you're referring to changes to TNoodle that aren't in direct response to a regulations change, then you must be referring to one of 2 things:

1. Historically, generating scrambles for a competition was a pain in the ass. It's not only TNoodle's job to follow the regulations, it is also TNoodle's job to make it easier for organizers to run competitions (by providing a nice UI for generating scrambles, and giving people (password protected) pdfs/zips/json, and by doing some crazy **** with a built in webserver to make this all just work on any desktop os anywhere). There are lots of changes and improvements there that do not reflect the regulations at all. https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/issues/159 is a great example of something we might do for 2014 that is completely unrelated to the WCA regulations.

2. If you were referring to garbage like https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/tree/master/jsracer, https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/tree/master/quercus, https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/tree/master/timer, https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/tree/master/cubecomps, or any of a number of other things, then I accept full blame for that mess, and I'm sorry for the cruft. TNoodle has always suffered the growing pains of being a personal project of mine that just turned into the official scrambler. Since forever, Lucas has been annoyed with me for not fixing this up, and Tim just reinforced those reminders. https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/issues/160 will be a high priority item for 2014.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to take https://github.com/cubing/tnoodle/issues/160 even further, and separate all the "nice helpful" things TNoodle does for organizers away from the bare bones scrambling code? That way, people who care about the regulations could watch this new repository, and they could legitimately complain whenever non bugfix changes occur without a clear change in the regulations. We could call this new project something super straightforward like "wca scrambler" (I know you were never wild about calling the wca scrambler something like TNoodle), and then TNoodle would become a useful tool/wrapper for the wca scrambler project.


----------



## keyan (Jan 12, 2014)

keyan said:


> Additionally:
> _we had agreed on filtering 0 and 1 moves from solved, or so i thought; then Sebastien says "Oh hey btw Board wants 4 for 2's and 8 for Pyra"
> Tyson: We agreed on that? I wasn't aware we had discussion _
> The above is a direct quote from a conversation I had with a WRC member. I confirmed with Tyson that this was an accurate representation of the events prior to posting.


Please note that I've updated my previous post, as above.


----------



## keyan (Jan 13, 2014)

For anyone interested, I've made a formal proposal to the WCA to change the regulations, eliminating scramble filtering for states with optimal solves of two or more moves* and making properly generated random scrambles final, disallowing retroactive filtering. 

*Not an endorsement of counting a cube unsolved by one move as solved, but just reflecting the other regulations as they currently stand. 






Sebastien said:


> It is always the easiest to assume bad intentions, right?


You'll notice I was talking about appearances and said nothing of intentions.


Sebastien said:


> - leaving out information that well just confuse not so experienced WCA members, seen how many problems we already have getting those to read our regulations.


Are you similarly in favor of eliminating 12c, 12d, 12e, 12g and 12h, as they have even less bearing on a regular competitor?


Sebastien said:


> - leaving TNoodle and the regulations as disconnected as possible to not complicate changes. As a matter of fact, the Board has already decided to change the limits for Pyraminx and Skewb down to 6 moves, based on the community's feedback in this thread. We cannot make this change in TNoodle 0.8.0 (which will be released at the beginning of next week) though, because we would violate the regulations otherwise.


See Michael and Lucas's exchange above.


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## Kirjava (Feb 25, 2014)

keyan said:


> For anyone interested, I've made a formal proposal to the WCA to change the regulations, eliminating scramble filtering for states with optimal solves of two or more moves* and making properly generated random scrambles final, disallowing retroactive filtering.



Did anything come of this? It seems we came to the concensus that the majority do not like filtering the way it is and want it changed, yet nothing seems to have come of it. 

I hope a personal agenda isn't hampering everyone else's progress.


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## Lucas Garron (Feb 25, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> Did anything come of this? It seems we came to the concensus that the majority do not like filtering the way it is and want it changed, yet nothing seems to have come of it.
> 
> I hope a personal agenda isn't hampering everyone else's progress.



My personal agenda is "don't focus on the WRC right now because I have some other priorities".

It's hard to get an agreement with such a strong no-filtering policy, and even if we adopt it with clear reasons the discussion will flare up again every time an easy 2x2x2 scramble comes up.

(Yes, the vote as it is currently structured shows a consensus towards it, but how many people would become indignant and take out their pitchforks 
at a 2x2x2 scramble that can be solved with R U R'?)


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## Kirjava (Feb 25, 2014)

Lucas Garron said:


> My personal agenda is "don't focus on the WRC right now because I have some other priorities".



I wasn't referring to you, sorry if it seemed that way.



Lucas Garron said:


> It's hard to get an agreement with such a strong no-filtering policy, and even if we adopt it with clear reasons the discussion will flare up again every time an easy 2x2x2 scramble comes up.
> 
> (Yes, the vote as it is currently structured shows a consensus towards it, but how many people would become indignant and take out their pitchforks
> at a 2x2x2 scramble that can be solved with R U R'?)



You have no idea, so why would you even suggest that this would be the case when the statistics point to otherwise?


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## Lucas Garron (Feb 25, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> You have no idea, so why would you even suggest that this would be the case when the statistics point to otherwise?



The statistics show that people *say* they think otherwise. (At least, of those who bothered to vote.)

However, the 2x2x2 WRs have shown that people feel it's unfair when someone gets an easy scramble.
*Some* of that is due to the fact that Delegates were filtering inconsistently, which we've worked to fix. But I don't have any illusions that people will *feel* much more comfortable about easy scrambles even if every competitions scramble has (a priori) the same chance of being easy.

Should I care? I'm not sure. But I'll have to deal with it either way, and I don't have the time to consider all the aspects of this right now.


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 25, 2014)

Why such a disbelief of other people's stated opinion? 

In the 0.69 thread people are making *the same complaints* about easy scrambles, so what does this filtering even achieve?


----------



## Lucas Garron (Feb 25, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> Why such a disbelief of other people's stated opinion?
> 
> In the 0.69 thread people are making *the same complaints* about easy scrambles, so what does this filtering even achieve?



That's a fair point. *Any* change to the filtering requires careful consideration.

But it is at least *my personal concern* is that lowering the limits will result in people being more upset when easy scrambles come up.
That makes me reluctant to put in a lot of time to evaluate and push for such a change right now, even if I think scramble filtering isn't really a good idea.

(Why such a belief? Because sometimes people are terrible at expressing their actual preferences in a coldly logical setting, and I think this might be such a time.)


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 25, 2014)

Lucas Garron said:


> But it is at least *my personal concern* is that lowering the limits will result in people being more upset when easy scrambles come up.



I think the same people who get upset now will still get upset and the people who are not upset will still not be. How much more annoyed can you be at 0.52 than 0.69? 



Lucas Garron said:


> That makes me reluctant to put in a lot of time to evaluate and push for such a change right now, even if I think scramble filtering isn't really a good idea.



Does it have to be you that does it?


----------



## Stefan (Feb 25, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> It seems we came to the concensus that the majority do not like filtering the way it is and want it changed



How about a weighted evaluation, where the votes are weighted by how upset their voters can get?

Person A votes for high filtering but we implement no filtering and then a two-mover WR happens.
Person B votes for no filtering but we implement high filtering and a two-mover is filtered.

Who will get more upset?


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 27, 2014)

I don't really think resultant mood is a large enough aspect to even bother factoring into this. Event integrity should take precedence.

A lot more people were upset when magic was removed than the people upset that it still existed. 

I know you were largely joking but this made me realise how invalid that point is.


----------



## Stefan (Feb 27, 2014)

Well, I wasn't really requesting that, but I wasn't joking, either. I picked the wrong term, though, as your magic example demonstrated. But that same example also demonstrates that the majority shouldn't necessarily get its way, that not all votes have to have equal weight.

I do feel that a two-moves WR happening hurts the event integrity (thanks for the term, it describes better what I actually wanted, I just tried to measure it in a wrong way) much more than a two-moves scramble getting filtered, partly because I think we can always go lower but not higher (than something that has already occurred and accepted). So I would indeed give more weight to votes for higher filtering.


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## Stefan (Feb 27, 2014)

Just because I was curious and like coding...


```
votes   mean/median/all membership ages in days
Option 1:     8   1106  995  [SIZE=1][2137, 2013, 1205, 1059, 932, 794, 378, 331][/SIZE]
Option 2:    23   1261 1106  [SIZE=1][2867, 2854, 2728, 2263, 2180, 2069, 1661, 1645, 1351, 1336, 1120, 1106, 956, 828, 789, 698, 689, 650, 338, 323, 320, 140, 94][/SIZE]
Option 3:    47   1109 1041  [SIZE=1][2904, 2895, 2457, 2429, 2089, 2045, 1978, 1708, 1680, 1647, 1597, 1432, 1407, 1345, 1325, 1250, 1237, 1216, 1215, 1207, 1147, 1106, 1098, 1041, 1041, 1017, 944, 920, 907, 875, 802, 796, 774, 690, 659, 591, 439, 408, 365, 326, 314, 211, 172, 116, 100, 98, 89][/SIZE]
Option 4:    10   1345  978  [SIZE=1][2654, 2167, 2158, 1738, 1026, 930, 884, 777, 697, 419][/SIZE]
Option 5:     6    931  450  [SIZE=1][2831, 1557, 519, 382, 215, 81][/SIZE]
```


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 27, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Well, I wasn't really requesting that, but I wasn't joking, either. I picked the wrong term, though, as your magic example demonstrated. But that same example also demonstrates that the majority shouldn't necessarily get its way, that not all votes have to have equal weight.



How are you sure what the majority wanted?



Stefan said:


> I do feel that a two-moves WR happening hurts the event integrity (thanks for the term, it describes better what I actually wanted, I just tried to measure it in a wrong way) much more than a two-moves scramble getting filtered, partly because I think we can always go lower but not higher (than something that has already occurred and accepted). So I would indeed give more weight to votes for higher filtering.



"We won't be able to go higher again" doesn't seem like a good counter to "we don't want it to ever be higher".


----------



## Stefan (Feb 27, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> How are you sure what the majority wanted?



I just went with your _"A lot more people..."_. Did I misuse it?



Kirjava said:


> "We won't be able to go higher again" doesn't seem like a good counter to "we don't want it to ever be higher".



It's not supposed to be one. It's something to consider when making a decision.


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 27, 2014)

Stefan said:


> I just went with your _"A lot more people..."_. Did I misuse it?



You can have a preference for removal without being upset about the circumstance.



Stefan said:


> It's not supposed to be one. It's something to consider when making a decision.



I'm trying to take it into consideration. Is the gist that filtering will allow us to not filter in the future? Seems like an odd justification. 

Surely if you think that not filtering is absolutely a bad idea this is moot.


----------



## Stefan (Feb 27, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> You can have a preference for removal without being upset about the circumstance.



Right, sorry. I really shouldn't have brought up 'being upset' in the first place.



Kirjava said:


> Is the gist that filtering will allow us to not filter in the future?



Half of the gist, yes. The other half being that *not* filtering possibly will *not* allow us to *do* filter in the future. Filtering leaves a choice, not filtering might not.



Kirjava said:


> Surely if you think that not filtering is absolutely a bad idea this is moot.



Why? Can't I change my mind? Or maybe I won't be around anymore in a couple years and then I don't count? Same for everybody else. Who knows who of us will still be around in the future, and what the cubers who will be around will think?


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 28, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Half of the gist, yes. The other half being that *not* filtering possibly will *not* allow us to *do* filter in the future. Filtering leaves a choice, not filtering might not.



With the stance I take, not being able to add filtering in the future isn't a disadvantage.



Stefan said:


> Why? Can't I change my mind?



Well, yes. But if you think you have to stay with this option because it allows change, that kind of stops you from changing anyway.


----------



## Stefan (Feb 28, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> With the stance I take, not being able to add filtering in the future isn't a disadvantage.



Ok, but it's still something to consider for people who are undecided or who don't think they're infallible.



Kirjava said:


> But if you think you have to stay with this option because it allows change, that kind of stops you from changing anyway.



Only as long as I think being able to change/choose is desirable.


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 28, 2014)

Do you think the current idea you're championing is a strong reason?


----------



## Stefan (Feb 28, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> Do you think the current idea you're championing is a strong reason?



The idea of leaving a choice? I'd say low to medium strong. Not as strong as the main reason of finding a let's say two-or-fewer-moves record undesirable, but I find it stronger than the reasons against filtering that I remember (which admittedly is pretty much none... maybe someone ought to summarize them and put that somewhere where it can be easily found? I checked the first two pages of this thread and didn't find any).


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 28, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Not as strong as the main reason of finding a let's say two-or-fewer-moves record undesirable



I consider 3 and 4 moves ostensibly the same. What makes you completely fine with 4 moves but suddenly having 3 bring a complete loss of integrity?


----------



## Methuselah96 (Feb 28, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> I consider 3 and 4 moves ostensibly the same. What makes you completely fine with 4 moves but suddenly having 3 bring a complete loss of integrity?



Where did Stefan say that 4 moves is completely fine? You might consider 3 and 4 moves ostensibly the same, but others might not.


----------



## Sa967St (Feb 28, 2014)

Stefan said:


> [...] the reasons against filtering that I remember (which admittedly is pretty much none... maybe someone ought to summarize them and put that somewhere where it can be easily found? I checked the first two pages of this thread and didn't find any).


I believe that that part of the discussion is mostly in from an email thread in the delegates mailing group. It's from January 12 and it's entitled "WCA regulations proposal: elimination of scramble filtering". It's somewhat long and the last time I read it in full was over a month ago, but IIRC the gist of the main argument is that filtering scrambles by number of moves does not filter all scrambles we believe are "easy", and hence there should be no filtering in order to achieve fairness. (Please correct me if this is incorrect.)



Methuselah96 said:


> Where did Stefan say that 4 moves is completely fine? You might consider 3 and 4 moves ostensibly the same, but others might not.



Here's the post.


----------



## Stefan (Feb 28, 2014)

Sa967St said:


> IIRC the gist of the main argument is that filtering scrambles by number of moves does not filter all scrambles we believe are "easy", and hence there should be no filtering in order to achieve fairness.



Which is completely nonsensical, as not being able to find a 100% perfect solution pleasing everyone doesn't mean we have to give up and do nothing. We should do the best we can. Find some middle ground.

Inspection for example has the same problem. It's unnatural, it's inappropriate (recognition+thinking is part of solving but inspection time is not included in the solve time), the length is arbitrary, and there are people who'd like no or reduced inspection. There is no perfect solution, so why don't we give up and don't do inspection? Why aren't the same kind of people who are against filtering also just as much against inspection? 

Cubes as well. Some cubes are clearly ok, others are clearly not, and people have different opinions about what exactly should be allowed. There is no perfect solution, so why don't we give up and don't restrict anything?



Sa967St said:


> Here's the post.



I'd say Thom's _"completely fine with 4 moves but suddenly having 3 bring a complete loss of integrity"_ is an exaggeration of what I said there or anywhere else.

And I'm puzzled why he asked what makes me think so, as that exact post of mine already explained it and we also talked about it in subsequent posts.


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 28, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Which is completely nonsensical, as not being able to find a 100% perfect solution pleasing everyone doesn't mean we have to give up and do nothing. We should do the best we can. Find some middle ground.



This is not to do with pleasing everyone.



Stefan said:


> Inspection for example has the same problem. It's unnatural, it's inappropriate (recognition+thinking is part of solving but inspection time is not included in the solve time), the length is arbitrary, and there are people who'd like no or reduced inspection. There is no perfect solution, so why don't we give up and don't do inspection? Why aren't the same kind of people who are against filtering also just as much against inspection?



I don't think this is analogous as I see inspection and no inspection as two completely different events.

I'd be fine with holding both, I would prefer to not (stop holding the inspection && hold the no inspection instead), but that's just because of my personal preference for inspection due that being the event I practise.



Stefan said:


> Cubes as well. Some cubes are clearly ok, others are clearly not, and people have different opinions about what exactly should be allowed. There is no perfect solution, so why don't we give up and don't restrict anything?



That appears to be what we are moving towards.



Stefan said:


> And I'm puzzled why he asked what makes me think so, as that exact post of mine already explained it and we also talked about it in subsequent posts.



Yeah, it's based on how you feel. The post really feels like like you're creating justification to fit the circumstance. 

I can't help but wonder if the limit was 5 moves that you'd agree that 4 is too trivial.

Also, as I said before, many (most?) people for filtering already think 4 is too trivial anyway, as seen in the 0.69 WR thread.


----------



## Stefan (Feb 28, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> This is not to do with pleasing everyone.



It does have to do with that, as it's not perfect if it doesn't please everyone.



Kirjava said:


> I don't think this is analogous as I see inspection and no inspection as two completely different events.



Even if you do that, it doesn't justify the 15 seconds, and there are people against 15 seconds. It remains imperfect, so apparently we should give up and not do it.



Kirjava said:


> That appears to be what we are moving towards.



Moving towards, but never going to reach.



Kirjava said:


> The post really feels like like you're creating justification to fit the circumstance.



I certainly do base my opinion on all circumstances. Who doesn't?



Kirjava said:


> I can't help but wonder if the limit was 5 moves that you'd agree that 4 is too trivial.



Maybe I would. We'll never know.

But note that I didn't vote for _"The ones specified in the current regulations"_, so it's not like I just blindly adore and defend the current limits. And I've been in favor of filtering <4 and allowing >=4 for 2x2x2 for years, long before it was implemented in the official scrambler and regulations.



Kirjava said:


> Also, as I said before, many (most?) people for filtering already think 4 is too trivial anyway, as seen in the 0.69 WR thread.



Yeah, I know there are people who think so. You can't please everyone. Hence the _"find some middle ground"_ thingy. Also, those people are what makes 4 some middle ground.


----------



## Stefan (Feb 28, 2014)

Sa967St said:


> IIRC the gist of the main argument is that filtering scrambles by number of moves does not filter all scrambles we believe are "easy", and hence there should be no filtering in order to achieve fairness.



Besides what I said above... yes, filtering let's say <=3 doesn't filter all "easy" ones, but aren't those it does filter "easy"? Put differently: I believe there are scrambles considered "easy" by everybody, scrambles considered "not easy" by everybody, and the remaining "unclear" scrambles. I see the argument you mention as _"We can't draw a line in the unclear region, so let's not draw a line at all"_. Ignoring the fact that we already have a line, between the easy and the unclear regions, and could draw other lines inside the easy region, all of which would be better than not drawing a line at all.


----------



## Kirjava (Feb 28, 2014)

Stefan said:


> It does have to do with that, as it's not perfect if it doesn't please everyone.



I don't think a requirement for 'perfect' has to be that it pleases everyone. There can be rules that are 'objectively' correct yet people will be unhappy about.



Stefan said:


> Even if you do that, it doesn't justify the 15 seconds, and there are people against 15 seconds. It remains imperfect, so apparently we should give up and not do it.



My argument for not filtering doesn't rely on the fact that we cannot find a method of filtering that everyone is happy with. 



Stefan said:


> Moving towards, but never going to reach.



Besides, the point is folly to what I said above.



Stefan said:


> I certainly do base my opinion on all circumstances. Who doesn't?



I was more saying that I wonder if you'd argue for this if it wasn't already in place. You covered that below though.



Stefan said:


> But note that I didn't vote for _"The ones specified in the current regulations"_, so it's not like I just blindly adore and defend the current limits. And I've been in favor of filtering <4 and allowing >=4 for 2x2x2 for years, long before it was implemented in the official scrambler and regulations.



That's completely fair, but were you doing this before it was pseudo-official? Delegates have been acting as if this rule was official and filtering <4 since forever.



Stefan said:


> Yeah, I know there are people who think so. You can't please everyone. Hence the _"find some middle ground"_ thingy. Also, those people are what makes 4 some middle ground.



I don't really feel like there can be a real middle ground against no filtering. Sure, 2x2x2 filtering is less extreme than skewb, but it's still completely unwanted. Any kind of filtering is bad.



Stefan said:


> _"We can't draw a line in the unclear region, so let's not draw a line at all"_



It's not like this. I think you can draw a line and you've chosen an appropriate place for it. If I wanted filtering, I think I would be happy with the line you have drawn (maybe even higher).

But it doesn't really matter where it is, I think it shouldn't be drawn because I don't think we should filter, not because of the question of its location.


----------



## Stefan (Feb 28, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> I don't think a requirement for 'perfect' has to be that it pleases everyone. There can be rules that are 'objectively' correct yet people will be unhappy about.



And how are we going to find this 'objectively' correct rule? Ask god?



Kirjava said:


> My argument for not filtering doesn't rely on the fact that we cannot find a method of filtering that everyone is happy with.



What *is* your argument?



Kirjava said:


> but were you doing this before it was pseudo-official? Delegates have been acting as if this rule was official and filtering <4 since forever.



Well, when did it become this "pseudo-official"? I suggested this exact filtering in 2008, apparently right after learning about filtering for the first time, and with the exact same reasoning I'm still using today:

"I think I'd vote for either no discardings or *only trivial ones, let's say "scrambles solvable in three moves or less", which even non-cubers could solve*."

At that point I knew that Erik thought a 3 had been filtered and that his 7 had been allowed, and that apparently "face done" had been allowed somewhere and rejected elsewhere. So looks like accepting 4 and drawing the line exactly there was in fact my own idea. Maybe I *caused* that "pseudo-official" rule? (at least the "allow >=4" part, if you didn't mean to include that)



Kirjava said:


> I don't really feel like there can be a real middle ground against no filtering.



_"middle ground *against no filtering*"_ doesn't make sense to me (maybe explain what you mean?). Middle ground "on filtering" I'd call it. There's a spectrum from "no filtering" to "filter easy ones" (including stuff like superflip), and filterings like <=1, <=3 or the current regulations are middle grounds.



Kirjava said:


> Sure, 2x2x2 filtering is less extreme than skewb, but it's still completely unwanted.



Unwanted by *you*. Not by everybody. So actually it *is* wanted (as it's wanted by someone).



Kirjava said:


> Any kind of filtering is bad.



Why?



Kirjava said:


> It's not like this.



Well I'd say the one Sarah presented, the one I was responding to, really is.



Kirjava said:


> I don't think we should filter



Why?


----------



## Tim Major (Feb 28, 2014)

As a small sidenote, I could do 2flip on pyra (8 moves) faster than 3 random moves and 2 tips (5 moves) yet the slower and less trivial scramble filtered. 

It's also more likely to be seen by a nub (2flip is a basic alg that most people use. 3 random moves isn't immediately obvious)

The same exists for skewb.


----------



## uberCuber (Feb 28, 2014)

Tim Major said:


> As a small sidenote, I could do 2flip on pyra (8 moves) faster than 3 random moves and 2 tips (5 moves) yet the slower and less trivial scramble filtered.
> 
> It's also more likely to be seen by a nub (2flip is a basic alg that most people use. 3 random moves isn't immediately obvious)
> 
> The same exists for skewb.



Lol I legitimately have difficulty figuring out a 2-move scramble on skewb.


----------



## Tim Major (Feb 28, 2014)

Yet you could probably sub 2 8 moves (pure pi)

So why filter 5 move scrambles that no one will see, and not 8 movers that EVERYONE would see.

To me, filtering makes no sense purely for this reason.


----------



## kcl (Mar 1, 2014)

uberCuber said:


> Lol I legitimately have difficulty figuring out a 2-move scramble on skewb.



I'm decently fast at skewb and it's slightly embarrassing that this is true for me too. I've missed one looking 3 movers :/


----------



## qqwref (Mar 1, 2014)

Personally, I think anyone who makes the argument that "well, this filtering scheme would not prevent against this easy scramble, so filtering is no good" is kind of missing the point of filtering. It is not to get rid of easy scrambles - I think almost everyone would agree there is no practical and universal way to list all scrambles people would find easy. And really, I like easy scrambles, and expect the best singles to be on scrambles that are noticeably better than average.

Instead, I want to filter scrambles that are short, precisely because those positions are too close to solved. Such positions do not guarantee ridiculous times, but they have the potential to result in ridiculous times, even for people who do not know a decent method (e.g. Bob Burton method on Pyraminx) or who are turning nearly randomly. I don't like the idea that someone who does not know how to solve a puzzle (from all positions) could get a time that is unmatchable by many skilled cubers.


I suppose, if we don't filter, someday the world record single for some puzzles will be 0.00. I'm not necessarily against that; we're already there in some simulator puzzles. But I don't like the idea that the record will then belong to whatever people happened to be at that competition. Imagine the situation of Christian Kaserer, but even more extreme. Perhaps someday statistics such as sum-of-singles can just not count rankings like that.


----------



## Kirjava (Mar 1, 2014)

Stefan said:


> And how are we going to find this 'objectively' correct rule? Ask god?



We don't have to find it. It feels like you're deliberately misinterpreting me.

The point is that we don't have to please everyone. Some people will want to remove easy crosses.



Stefan said:


> What *is* your argument?



Variance and randomness are fundamental aspects of Speedcubing. Attempting to eliminate them compromises the integrity of the event.



Stefan said:


> Maybe I *caused* that "pseudo-official" rule?



You monster 



Stefan said:


> _"middle ground *against no filtering*"_ doesn't make sense to me (maybe explain what you mean?)



Yeah, sorry - I wasn't too clear. I know that you can choose places between no filtering and 20f* positions only and some of them can be closer to no filtering than others. I'm not saying that we should give up and not filter because we have to draw a line, I'm saying we should not filter because it's the right thing to do. From my perspective 'low' filtering doesn't feel like middle ground at all since the integrity of the event is still being harmed.



Stefan said:


> Unwanted by *you*. Not by everybody. So actually it *is* wanted (as it's wanted by someone).



Unwanted by people that do not like filtering. I thought that was implied.



Stefan said:


> Why?



My explanations earlier in this post reply to both of these questions.



Stefan said:


> Well I'd say the one Sarah presented, the one I was responding to, really is.



This view has been projected by you onto me multiple times to defend, it must be made clear that I do not hold it.


Thanks for asking me to reply to your post. (Moderation has requested we stop posting - I don't see how this discussion negatively affects anything and would like to continue it)


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## Stefan (Mar 1, 2014)

Kirjava said:


> Variance and randomness are fundamental aspects of Speedcubing. Attempting to eliminate them compromises the integrity of the event.



Nobody wants to eliminate them. Just reduce them a tiny little bit, and only at certain bad cases. Less than we're doing by removing best+worst from averages, and I don't see anyone lamenting that. Also, I see your point as rather theoretical, harming noone, compared to the practical issue of undeserved records/ranks taking away from more deserving cubers, which I think compromises the integrity of the event more.



Kirjava said:


> Thanks for asking me to reply to your post. (Moderation has requested we stop posting



Well, I take the _"cool it down"_ as _"stop posting soooooo much"_ (for others: when we were asked, I had had the last long word and I didn't want Thom getting cut off, so I asked to let him reply however he wants).


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## Sa967St (Mar 2, 2014)

Out of curiosity, has anyone's opinion on the matter been affected by any of the posts in this thread? I get the impression that one's opinion on whether to filter or is difficult to change once formed, and probably won't change any time soon for almost all people. I don't think we're getting anywhere with this style of discussion; the same points are being brought up again and again, with no break-through. Rather, I think we ought to get a good summary from both sides, and form a strong pros and cons list, if we want to have any kind of impact on filtering any time soon.


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## Mollerz (Mar 2, 2014)

My opinion follows the line of Kirjava's and Tim Major's, and has done all along, I am just very bad with putting my point across so I never really delved into the discussion when Kirjava is saying exactly what I want but better.



Kirjava said:


> (Moderation has requested we stop posting - I don't see how this discussion negatively affects anything and would like to continue it)


I don't understand why moderators ask people to stop discussion on a controversial topic that still has not been resolved. The discussion fuels other people's input so without initial discussion, there would not be a discussion at all. The only way for this to be resolved at all is with discussion so why halt it?


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## Stefan (Mar 3, 2014)

Mollerz said:


> I don't understand why moderators ask people to stop discussion



Does _"cool it down"_ really mean _"stop"_? I really don't think so.


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## Tim Major (Mar 3, 2014)

Sa967St said:


> form a strong pros and cons list, if we want to have any kind of impact on filtering any time soon.



Let's do this then, except, don't reject any pros/cons offered by the other side. Just compile a list.

For devil's advocate, 

Pro: reduces chance of slower solvers getting ridiculously lucky and undeserved solves.


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## Methuselah96 (Mar 3, 2014)

Tim Major said:


> Let's do this then, except, don't reject any pros/cons offered by the other side. Just compile a list.
> 
> For devil's advocate,
> 
> Pro: reduces chance of slower solvers getting ridiculously lucky and undeserved solves.



I'll keep a compilation of these on the OP if people post more pros/cons.


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## Mollerz (Mar 3, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Does _"cool it down"_ really mean _"stop"_? I really don't think so.



I was quoting Kirjava and he clearly says "Moderation has requested we stop posting". I'm taking information I'm given.


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## Dene (Mar 3, 2014)

Sa967St said:


> Out of curiosity, has anyone's opinion on the matter been affected by any of the posts in this thread? I get the impression that one's opinion on whether to filter or is difficult to change once formed, and probably won't change any time soon for almost all people. I don't think we're getting anywhere with this style of discussion; the same points are being brought up again and again, with no break-through. Rather, I think we ought to get a good summary from both sides, and form a strong pros and cons list, if we want to have any kind of impact on filtering any time soon.



Personally I am still undecided, and find compelling reasons to go for both sides. I find this discussion productive and I am following it (although Mr. Pochmann and Mr. Barlow have at times been unnecessarily pedantic, I would do the same  ). 

In saying that, an extensive pros and cons list would be very helpful. I think it would be good if Ron and Chris Krueger agreed to have their inputs in the delegate e-mail thread put in here too.


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## Kirjava (Mar 3, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Nobody wants to eliminate them. Just reduce them a tiny little bit, and only at certain bad cases.



I see this reduction as an attempt to eliminate extreme variance.



Stefan said:


> Less than we're doing by removing best+worst from averages, and I don't see anyone lamenting that.



That only affects statistics we take, and it doesn't impact the scrambling/solving process in any way - it's not relevant here.



Stefan said:


> Also, I see your point as rather theoretical, harming noone, compared to the practical issue of undeserved records/ranks taking away from more deserving cubers, which I think compromises the integrity of the event more.



I don't see that as an issue at all.

Events that are affected by this quirk of Speedcubing are treated as an anomaly. 

Take it for what it is and stop trying to make it something that it is not.


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## keyan (Mar 15, 2014)

Stefan said:


> partly because I think we can always go lower but not higher (than something that has already occurred and accepted).


We already have cases of "going higher", cases that were allowed at one point no longer being allowed at a later point - solved angle, inspection time, requesting orientation during BLD. 



Sa967St said:


> I believe that that part of the discussion is mostly in from an email thread in the delegates mailing group. It's from January 12 and it's entitled "WCA regulations proposal: elimination of scramble filtering".


As well as other places. There's an email thread from about 13 months ago, title has something to do with groups for finals. Some discussion was with the delegate group there, unfortunately the pro-filtering arguments that filtering has nothing to do with solves and is meant to keep records to certain individuals wasn't public. 



Stefan said:


> Why aren't the same kind of people who are against filtering also just as much against inspection?


I actually would support removing inspection, but at a much lower priority than filtering. 



qqwref said:


> Instead, I want to filter scrambles that are short, precisely because those positions are too close to solved.


Waiting for your proposal that cubes unsolved by two or three moves count as solved (with penalty). Seriously. 



Stefan said:


> undeserved records/ranks taking away from more deserving cubers


That's what I find so confusing. Did the person solve the cube or no? What makes someone more 'deserving'? Was Christian Kaserer more deserving than any of the many cubers who could have gotten an equal or faster solve on that scramble? That's why I find the arguments for retroactive filtering so disturbing, explicitly intending to keep records for certain acceptable cubers. 



Dene said:


> I think it would be good if Ron and Chris Krueger agreed to have their inputs in the delegate e-mail thread put in here too.


I don't think that's something that should need to be agreed to, but yeah, delegate discussion should be open unless discussing certain discipline issues or whatever.


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