Not wanting to put any pressure on the controller, I didn't mention this before, but I think the NUL open league depended on his decision.
No DQ - NUL Winner = meatmarket
Mass DQ - NUL Winner = Paul Watson
Time penalty for DQ - Winner, er, graeme
Like i said, Steve Buckley made the right decision, and Paul is the deserving winner. You've got to be in it to win it!
It does depend on some subtleties, and tiebreakers. Roger will no doubt tell me if I've not quite got the maths right. But it was a story too good to check when the results weren't up! and I could have won if I wasn't lumbering round like a pregnant hippo and blundering about trying to get out of the castle
Penrith Urban
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Re: Penrith Urban
WOC2024 Edinburgh
Test races at SprintScotland (Alloa/Falkirk) and Euromeeting (near Stirling).
Test races at SprintScotland (Alloa/Falkirk) and Euromeeting (near Stirling).
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graeme - god
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Re: Penrith Urban
Helen's bloke wrote:I spoke to the site staff here and the gate is always open
Which is differant to what's been said on here And put's a completely different slant on the mapping / planning / cpntrolling position
Never a dull day in Urban O
Go orienteering in Lithuania......... best in the world:)
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Real Name - Gross
http://www.scottishotours.info
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Gross - god
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Re: Penrith Urban
Given the nature of the 'terrain', we will never be able to solve the gate open/gate closed conundrum, nor will any amount of taping or marking prevent outside interference or accidental or intentional transgression (although this doesn't mean we shouldn't do it).
We can enforce the DQ rule, which is in our control. As implied earlier, ISSOM is not altogether helpful about mapping gates and similar openings. Perhaps we should invent a new symbol (a filled purple circle?) to mean an uncrossable gateway/doorway/opening. It would also prevent liberal interpetation of the meaning and thickness of black lines!
We can enforce the DQ rule, which is in our control. As implied earlier, ISSOM is not altogether helpful about mapping gates and similar openings. Perhaps we should invent a new symbol (a filled purple circle?) to mean an uncrossable gateway/doorway/opening. It would also prevent liberal interpetation of the meaning and thickness of black lines!
- dustytoo
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Re: Penrith Urban
There have been a number of comments on this thread about how newcomers to Urban may be put off the sport if breaking the rules gets them disqualified. I'm struggling to sympathise..
How about those (and I include myself here) who are distinctly put off Urban by the cheating - deliberate or otherwise - they witness at every event?
I applaud Steve Buckley's decision and hope it now becomes the norm.
How about those (and I include myself here) who are distinctly put off Urban by the cheating - deliberate or otherwise - they witness at every event?
I applaud Steve Buckley's decision and hope it now becomes the norm.
- Darwin
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Re: Penrith Urban
Taping is not always a solution even to a known inadmissable route. We had one such at Lossiemouth. removing the possibility altogether would have spoiled the course considerably. Taping was absolutely impossible as you cannot put a taope across someone's drive.
So the mapper extended the olive green to an inaccurate but unmissable size and competitors were thoroughly reminded of the forbidden nature of olive green. Not having the manpower to marshall it throughout the house owners were informed and had my phone number to report any they saw and I made forays to have a look.
It seems that the exaggerated mapping plus the rule reinforcement worked as no-one was spotted cheating and no-one's split time suggested anyone cheated.
So the mapper extended the olive green to an inaccurate but unmissable size and competitors were thoroughly reminded of the forbidden nature of olive green. Not having the manpower to marshall it throughout the house owners were informed and had my phone number to report any they saw and I made forays to have a look.
It seems that the exaggerated mapping plus the rule reinforcement worked as no-one was spotted cheating and no-one's split time suggested anyone cheated.
- EddieH
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Re: Penrith Urban
In the JK Sprint this year I crossed an easily crossable fence marked as crossable, but it had a little inconspicuous strip of olive green on one side of it, so it was in fact forbidden to cross (or perhaps you could hover above it!). The planner had placed red and white tape on it, presumably to show that it was forbidden to cross. Unfortunately, in the heat of battle, I took the red and white tape to mean you could cross it (it often does mean that), and, because I hadn't noticed the olive green, I crossed it, subsequently disqualifying myself when I realised I'd transgressed. You can't win
- Gnitworp
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Re: Penrith Urban
Darwin wrote:How about those (and I include myself here) who are distinctly put off Urban by the cheating - deliberate or otherwise - they witness at every event?
The issue of 'cheating' comes up regularly. I think we really need to put the nail in it once and for all.
In the Shorter Oxford Dictionary 2 of the 6 definitions are relevant here:
2. Act fraudulently, practise deception, play unfairly
3. Deprive by deceit; defraud; deceive; trick
It is thus very clear to me that cheating requires the individual to do the action deliberately. I would strongly suggest that the vast majority of people who transgressed here were definitely not cheating, and indeed the vast majority of people who transgress in other races are not either. It's perfectly possible to make mistakes and break the rules as a result and with the limitations required and variations possible in urban orienteering, this discipline is quite vulnerable to that.
So, can we cut out this expression unless we know that someone has deliberately tried to gain an unfair advantage please? And to do that, we also need to recognise that disqualification isn't necessarily because someone has done something deliberately wrong, but simply because they have not fulfilled the technical requirements of the course - a 'technical disqualification' perhaps?
As to being put off urban because of cheating? Well, some maybe, but I've seen a fair bit over the years in 'forest' based orienteering too. You get it any sport in all sorts of forms, and all one can do as planner/controller etc is try and create a race where the opportunities are limited without spoiling others' enjoyment.
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awk - god
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Re: Penrith Urban
Here's an off the wall idea (the puns are coming think and fast now aren't they?)
Supposing uncrossable barriers (in urban terms - not to be crossed) were a thick solid line of a different distinctive colour to black? In the way olive green and pink or black striped lines mean out of bounds so that the linear feature stops being "not to be crossed" but becomes "out of bounds". would that make a difference to people's perception of the uncrossable feature?
Supposing uncrossable barriers (in urban terms - not to be crossed) were a thick solid line of a different distinctive colour to black? In the way olive green and pink or black striped lines mean out of bounds so that the linear feature stops being "not to be crossed" but becomes "out of bounds". would that make a difference to people's perception of the uncrossable feature?
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Mrs H - god
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Re: Penrith Urban
Mrs H wrote:Here's an off the wall idea (the puns are coming think and fast now aren't they?)
Supposing uncrossable barriers (in urban terms - not to be crossed) were a thick solid line of a different distinctive colour to black? In the way olive green and pink or black striped lines mean out of bounds so that the linear feature stops being "not to be crossed" but becomes "out of bounds". would that make a difference to people's perception of the uncrossable feature?
In some circumstances a different symbol might help.
But what about the six foot wall that you don't expect most people to be able to cross, but some joker decides to climb over? You'd still map it as a uncrossable/not-to-be-crossed wall surely?
It certainly wouldn't help to have buildings, walls and fences all mapped with the same new out-of-bounds symbol!
- IanD
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Re: Penrith Urban
IanD wrote:But what about the six foot wall that you don't expect most people to be able to cross, but some joker decides to climb over? You'd still map it as a uncrossable/not-to-be-crossed wall surely?
It certainly wouldn't help to have buildings, walls and fences all mapped with the same new out-of-bounds symbol!
Why not?
A couple of you have suggested to me privately that i should address this in my compassSport column - but I already have - and just to bore you here is the article in full - i still stand by it:
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss.
The Law says Ignorance Is No Defence, and the same, it seems, is true in orienteering. Despite “cheat” being a very ugly word, its one we readily use about anyone who breaks the rules for what ever reason, and there may be many reasons and some of them do not involve any dishonesty.
There are the perennial chestnuts of following, collusion and asking the way, and what about the passing on of information in the assembly field. Only at major events are maps collected so do people show maps to those yet to compete or even utter the words: ”go carefully into number 3”? Of course they do. Mind you that old favourite of taking the controls out of order has now mostly fallen by the wayside thanks to the wonders of new technology.
One of the most common ways of cheating is going out of bounds either deliberately or accidentally. I well remember one of my first orienteering events at Haughmond Hill where a big area of dangerous quarry (well that’s what it said on the map) intrudes on the area like an accusing finger. As I rounded a corner outside the perimeter fence I was astonished to see an experienced orienteer climbing out of the quarry obviously having taken a short cut across it - but I didn’t do anything about it – and that’s part of the problem isn’t it? People mutter “cheat” under their breath but rarely do anything about it. I’m struggling to think of a single occasion when I recall anyone being disqualified by event officials for cheating although I do know of several occasions when a competitor, on subsequently realising they had broken the rules, did the honourable thing and disqualified themselves. I think new technology may have resulted in the muttering getting even louder in recent years. People scrutinise the splits and pick out improbably similar sets or unfeasibly fast ones but how often does anyone actually say anything out loud let alone do anything about it?
Of course cheating is notoriously hard to prove. Take the accusation of following for example; two people on the same course travelling at roughly the same speed are, on occasions at least, likely to choose the same obvious route between controls – give them a mass start like in a relay and the appearance of following is inevitable. Personally I find the situation so distracting that I actually start looking for the less obvious route to get away from other people, fortunately, travelling rather slowly, I usually don’t have company for long. More and varied gaffles are the answer – preferably not all meeting at an inadequate number of boxes at the third control.
The advent of urban racing has opened up a whole new can of worms when it comes to cheating and one which is making a lot of people mutter. The main problem is that some of the new mapping practices are different to the old established ones and hinge on what must not be crossed as opposed to what appears to be crossable – it’s all to do with permissions and health and safety and tedious stuff like that but it is absolutely crucial for the continuation of this burgeoning branch of the sport that the rules are adhered to. I think the case here is not Ignorance Is No Defence but Ignorance Is The Offence and on occasions even Arrogance Is The Offence as a lot of established orienteers are not bothering to bone up on their ISSOM specifications before taking part in events. If you don’t think you know it all, and more especially if you do think you know it all, take another detailed look at last edition’s excellent article Forbidden Features by Adrian Zissos. I am trying to school myself to pick out the olive green areas and solid thick black lines at the very start of my route choice process now in the hope that avoiding them will become instinctive. Unfortunately there may be some orienteers out there who don’t actually read CompassSport and for them I think the only answer is to hand out cards with the various ISSOM uncrossable and OOB symbols at the start and physically make people look at them before they are admitted to the start boxes.
Now, although the law says that ignorance is no defence, it also, somewhat paradoxically to my mind, acknowledges the importance of Criminal Intent in sentence if not conviction, for which I’m grateful as I think it is an important distinction. An honest mistake is not punished in the same way as a crime.
I wonder whether the stigma of appearing as “Dsq” in the results actually stops some people owning up when they realise they have made a mistake or been so lost they didn’t know they were breaking the rules, because it sounds intrinsically dishonest. I would like to see some tightening up on the actual reasons why people don’t complete their courses – mp, rtd, dnf – fine but in addition to Dsq I would like to see the option of Withdrawn – which would be an honourable state. Someone comes to you after a race and says :”Did you know that the wall you climbed was marked as uncrossable on the map” and you look in horror and realise they are right, then you can go and tell the download team you wish to withdraw your result. It might also be quite a useful deterrent to those who knew the wall was uncrossable but didn’t realise they had been seen doing it as obviously too many withdrawals from this goodwill account will soon make you appear morally bankrupt. It also makes it easier for someone to actually accuse someone of cheating by giving them the benefit of the doubt over whether they did it deliberately or not.
While we have to hope that all events are planned to minimise the benefit of as many kinds of cheating as possible, I would also like to be sure that event officials know how to deal with an accusation of cheating and not just at major events (I’m making the rather large assumption here that there is a protocol at every level of competition).
I foresee that at some time in the future technology will once again come to our rescue and Version 20 SI cards will have integral GPS trackers which will reveal at download whether anyone has been somewhere they shouldn’t. Ahh! GPS there’s an interesting can or worms yet to be fully opened!
You can only consciously obey the rules if you know what they are – but the onus is on you to find out what the rules are. The Law says Ignorance is No Defence so whether you think The Law is an Ass or a Pons Asinorum will largely depend on whether you know you can cross that particular bridge before you come to it.
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Mrs H - god
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Re: Penrith Urban
I think hazard tape is better for a forbidden crossing as red and white tape is so often used to identify compulsary crossing points at fences etc on cross country o as gnitwarp says, although a thick black line and olive green should be enough, assuming you know where you are and aren't hopelessly lost.
- frog
Re: Penrith Urban
Personally, I think the current symbol set is perfectly adequate: a thick black line means that there's a fence or wall you mustn't cross. OK, so there may be gaps (called gates in some instances) on the ground, but the line is still pretty obvious. Nobody, so far, has said that they didn't know they were crossing through a gate, the arguments to date all being some variation on not knowing that they weren't meant to cross through it, which means they simply misread the map.
The one issue where I do think there is a problem occasionally, is working out what shade of green one is dealing with, and that does need addressing.
The one issue where I do think there is a problem occasionally, is working out what shade of green one is dealing with, and that does need addressing.
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awk - god
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Re: Penrith Urban
There are a number of viewpoints on this clearly and not all are compatible with each opther or the current rules.
My overriding concern is that I feel the map should adequately represent what is on the ground. (The farce at the WOC sprint where the public open grassy areas in one specific part were mapped as OOB is a fairly good example of this not happening).
In my view a solid black line between two open areas does not adequately represent a fence with an open gate, regardless of who (if anyone) you consider is to blame. This is not a criticism of the organisers who did I feel the correct action under the current rules by enforcing DQ by implication of the leg times.
Despite the fact that my result signficantly benefitted from the exclusion of some faster runners (I was going to say better orienteers but I suppose thats a different discussion now - I went from 18th finisher to 21st under the leg void to 12th after the DQs) I think that there should be a further option open to organisers that differentiate betweeen this type of circumstance, which surely cannot be considered to be the same level of misdemeanor as climbing over the said fence, but would attract the same penalty. I'd be comfortable with some sort of time penalty if the organiser feels the there are mitigating circumstances such as there were on Saturday.
As an aside, I am fairly certain that if a course was voided under these circumstances and I hadnt made an error I would feel very very aggreived.
My overriding concern is that I feel the map should adequately represent what is on the ground. (The farce at the WOC sprint where the public open grassy areas in one specific part were mapped as OOB is a fairly good example of this not happening).
In my view a solid black line between two open areas does not adequately represent a fence with an open gate, regardless of who (if anyone) you consider is to blame. This is not a criticism of the organisers who did I feel the correct action under the current rules by enforcing DQ by implication of the leg times.
Despite the fact that my result signficantly benefitted from the exclusion of some faster runners (I was going to say better orienteers but I suppose thats a different discussion now - I went from 18th finisher to 21st under the leg void to 12th after the DQs) I think that there should be a further option open to organisers that differentiate betweeen this type of circumstance, which surely cannot be considered to be the same level of misdemeanor as climbing over the said fence, but would attract the same penalty. I'd be comfortable with some sort of time penalty if the organiser feels the there are mitigating circumstances such as there were on Saturday.
As an aside, I am fairly certain that if a course was voided under these circumstances and I hadnt made an error I would feel very very aggreived.
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Re: Penrith Urban
andypat wrote:My overriding concern is that I feel the map should adequately represent what is on the ground.
As Graeme has pointed out this is not always possible. For the Brighton map I'm using a control site where there is an uncrossable wall and an uncrossable fence 1-2m apart. Both can not be mapped so the map has been simplified to show a single uncrossable boundary. What would you suggest should be done here since perhaps it doesn't adequately represent what is on the ground?
In the case of Schrödinger's gate then the officials have to decide whether it will be open or closed as far as the competition goes. If open map it as a gate, if closed then as a solid boundary. Other solutions (purple lines, crosses etc) are likely to be inelegant. For those that are unhappy with this perhaps they could draw up their proposed solutions and post them here (at actual scale) for us to debate.
- NeilC
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Re: Penrith Urban
NeilC wrote:andypat wrote:My overriding concern is that I feel the map should adequately represent what is on the ground.
As Graeme has pointed out this is not always possible. For the Brighton map I'm using a control site where there is an uncrossable wall and an uncrossable fence 1-2m apart. Both can not be mapped so the map has been simplified to show a single uncrossable boundary. What would you suggest should be done here since perhaps it doesn't adequately represent what is on the ground?
I think for urban that you need adequate consultation between the planner and the mapper (or a third party if both are the same) to meet the needs of the proposed course. In your example I dont suppose this is an issue unless there is a way of getting in between the two "not to be crossed" boundaries. I assume your control site isnt in between them in which case I would suggest you think again!
But in some cases the solution may be to plan to avoid areas/route choices where the map cannot accurately depict the ground - otherwise I think you have an issue of fairness and will invite complaint. I have a high respect for Graeme's opinions on orienteering and on urban races in particular, but I know he feels differently to me on this one. Doesnt mean we cant both get on with mapping planning and racing - I am pretty sure we both take constructive feedback on our events and often seek it out beforehand.
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