With the continued discussion on forums about the quality of referees, what is the community’s opinion on referee accreditation?
This could be something as simple as an online test written by GDC for all referees at events with qualifying spots to the World Championships. My understanding is that some other robotics competitions have something similar. Having this test would also require referees to ‘register’, thus giving RECF an idea of how many referees there are floating around in the world, and help them assess capacity for events. Registered referees get entered into the RobotEvents system for each event, and if there are no registered referees for an event, then the event loses its qualification spots. It would help with standardisation of refereeing between competitions, and would be updated yearly for each game (so referees have to take the test again).
Personally as one of the head refs for the Northern Virginia region, I believe this would be an excellent idea; however I don’t believe a online test is good enough to accredit a ref; so much of the ability comes down to the ability to adapt and make the calls on the spot.
This would be the method I think would be the best…
Each official event must have a head referee who has completed the ‘online test’ and in addition has served as a ref at Nationals/Worlds, where they received more training and were familiar with the GDC way.
Local assistant refs are suggested to take the online test; but should be trained by the head ref at each event; similar to the way Worlds worked this year.
This is so critical with the move to the new model here in the USA and Canada; if ref quality is not the same level throughout the state you will run into issues; perhaps some sort of database of refs that event hosts can reach out to have volunteer to help and to ensure certain standards.
This is a fantastic idea. I have no idea how to do it, what’s involved, or if VEX has any interest at all. But as a participant, I think that some sort of accreditation for Refs would be nice.
And I (personally) would use it to make sure every student on the team understood the rules before we ever went to a competition. That way, I would know that they (and I) wouldn’t bring complaints to the Referees that are obviously wrong.
If they were interested in doing acceredadation; it would be something that the RECF would take on, with guidance from the GDC in creating scenarios that could test the takers. I’m not sure whether it would be entirely practical to have regular students taking the scored version as it could mess up records; but I’m certain that another version could easily be made that wouldn’t send a note about qualified Refs.
Does it really matter if it is a questionair? I was a Master SCUBA instructor for many years and the tests the students did
were the same for many of those years. What we wanted was to know that the students had read the manual.
I am not sure we need to go down the road of making our refs accredited as all that would be gained is a reduction of the volunteer pool. We would still have people moaning about refs. Look at other sports that have accredited refs and teams still moan. Sore loosers just look for someone to blame instead of just making sure they never do anything that is not straight down the line.
I for one would like to avoid going down the accreditation path.
Refs at “entry” events are supervised by someone that has done this before (prior season) JVN, Kartik and the IFI interns put a great video out on how the game is played. Refs should watch that. Refs should read the rules at least once.
Matches during elims get 2 refs, on on EACH SIDE OF THE FIELD. Quals are fun, we are all “nice - nice” In the elims “take no survivors” Teams have turned the knob to 11, the refs need to do the same.
To ref at an event that has worlds slots, you need to have done XXX matches. (Should be at least 2X the number of events at the smallest entry event. ) Experience matters. Matches during elims get 2 refs, on on EACH SIDE OF THE FIELD. Hey, you ran 4 refs for the day, run 4 refs on your semi and finals fields. All four sides, all four corners you pick.
Long story: TLDR: Ref consistently
I have a boat and I let anyone drive it. And I stand next to them thinking “Umm Drifting too far, Ok, so if they go over that point I’ll say something”. Sometimes the driver sees it and corrects.
I taught my oldest child to drive. I’d sit in the car mentally saying “Umm Drifting too far, Ok, so if they go over that point I’ll say something” And the other voice going “Have you lost your mind!?! You are going 50 MPH they can kill you!!! SAY SOMETHING” :eek:
If a team is doing something wrong, either call it or grab them after the match and talk to them. Don’t wait until the second match of the finals to say “Thats a DQ” for something they have done all day (and you watched or saw for 5 matches and didn’t say anything. )
Not so much for a control over this, help is hard to find, ref is the next hardest job there. (You could not pay me to be a queue manager)
I think the concept is fabulous, I agree with the posts, the implementation would be challenging, but at least it is a start.
There is one school here in Northern California where the last two years has had really unknowlegeable refs. This last year, was the worst, the students ran it, but you couldn’t tell who was a ref or student because they all had on the same shirts. There were obvious field errors that they didn’t hold a rematch for (poorly placed tape), at least 5-6 robots fell over and they let people repeatedly pick up their bot. I have heard many teams say they won’t go back because it was so poorly run this last year.
That said, I completely understand the massive task it task to put on a tournament and I salute them for trying. But at least some guidelines should be set, if they aren’t already. For example - refs will be clearly identified - wear buttons, vests, hats, etc…
I don’t know how the ref quality in your region is, but I have been to far too many tournaments where the refs had not read the manual, or were blatantly biased (i.e. wearing their team’s sweatshirt while they are refing, and making many biased calls, cough).
For example, at one Round Up tournament, we scored a higher number of points than our opponent in the 2nd match of the semifinal, but the ref scored the match incorrectly, and we “lost.” When we asked the ref about it, he said “We are only scoring by which alliance owns more goals. All other points are not being counted.” This was a qualifying tournament, and forgive me for being blunt, but I find it sickening that the tournament was being run in such a lazy and uninformed manner. And I’m not just saying this because we lost; there were bad calls made at that tournament and others that had no effect on our team, and I was still disgusted by them.
I think that the idea expressed in the OP is brilliant, and that testing the refs on their knowledge of the rules would vastly increase the quality of the referees at the tournaments. I don’t think that it would decrease the volunteer pool too much, as its biggest effect would be informing the refs that they need to know the rules in detail to do a good job (not all of them seem to know this). Many refs seem to resent hearing this from students, but I think they would respond better if the requirement came from the GDC and RECF.
It also might be useful to have a rule in the manual that says something to the effect of “When making a call, referees must always be prepared to justify their calls using the rules in the VEX [insert game here] Game Manual as they are written.” This would help eliminate bias and blatantly incorrect calls in a tournament, as refs would be making calls based solely on the rules.
I have been very blunt in this post because this is a very important issue and I have very strong opinions on it. I don’t want to sound like I am bashing refs or being condescending; I appreciate the time that all referees put into supporting the VRC and helping to make it possible.
Thanks for the conversation here. While “Referee Accreditation” has never been an avenue we’ve decided to pursue, mostly for reasons already stated in this thread, it has always been our intent for refereeing to be at its highest quality possible at events. Maintaining/improving quality while at the same time growing in event numbers and, thus, need for more event staff, is a challenge we take seriously.
Through the combined efforts of the GDC, VEX, and the RECF, we will continue to consider the referee job and its difficulties during game design, we strive to write clear rules for referees and teams to follow and apply as consistently as possible, we provide the official Q&A for BOTH teams and referees to use, we publish referee training guides, we hold periodic training calls for referees, and we produce referee training videos (we concluded shooting these videos on Tues for the Toss Up season and they are currently in post-production).
Through feedback each year we learn from the community (teams, events, and volunteers) and seek to improve all aspects of our events, including refereeing, as we move forward.
Thank you very much for the response Rich. I can understand that it would be difficult to implement, and there probably isn’t enough support for it at this stage, but as the competition grows and quality control becomes more of an issue I hope that the RECF and VEX will begin to consider referee accreditation as a possible solution to some of the growing pains.