Have some respect

General Yo-Yo
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This is in response to some of the anger and outcry I have been seeing on facebook and elsewhere by some certain yoyoers over the 1A preliminary round judging, semi final judging, and finals judging.

Nothing makes me more angry than seeing people complain about worlds judges and how “blind” they are, when the people talking weren’t the ones who had to sit through 180 + preliminary freestyles. 20 + preliminary freestyles, and 20+ final freestyles.

I watched all those freestyles happen, and I can see how the judges are scoring, lots of people didn’t make it who many thought would, but take an honest look back, seriously analyze what you are looking at, some big names messed up, and to the untrained eye, maybe it looks like they went clean, but look closer.
there are little misses here and there that judges can see quite well, some more blatant than others, some of the “big names” had some significant ones, no other way around it.
Looking at the top players on that list, while some may not have had the most interesting tricks, they went much cleaner.

MISTAKES COST YOU POINTS. No other way to say it, and no matter how great of a player you are, no matter how much hype you may have had around you, nothing will change whether or not you had a good day or bad day.
It is how it is.

And for people to talk bad to judges as if they aren’t doing their job right is plain disgusting, as its one of the most difficult jobs in the entire yoyo world and so many don’t even know.
Just be happy for those who made it, and look forward to some interesting new names in the finals.

I was shocked to see some people going as far to say that the judges were “autistic” to place players in the finals where they were. That is downright offensive, and makes me embarrassed to be part of community where people would say such things. People need to understand that the worlds judges have an extremely trained eye, an eye that many of the players complaining might not have as they have not developed it yet.
Those who take a serious look back, can find exactly why the judges judge as they do.

Also, on the note of respect.

I was very saddened by the amount of people who “booed” and groaned when they announced that they were going to announce the spin top winners.
How do you think that feels? For a player to prepare for a whole year, a perfect top freestyle, working long hours, going up, doing well, getting ready to hear the big names announced, and a large percentage of the room groans when they say that the results are going to be announced. Disgusting, and again, a total embarrassment to the yoyo community.

Anyways, something to think about.

Carry on.

bark!

Haru

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If I could thank this 50 times I would.

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THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!

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Thank you

People get caught up in their favorite player rather than how they actually performed on a contest aspect

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True

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Thank you. Couldn’t have been said any better. So true.

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Mmhm, yoyo players aren’t “freestyle immortal”

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All my favorite players didn’t do as well as I had hoped. But, looking at their performances, I honestly can’t blame the judges for where they ended up.

I guess people don’t realize how hard judging is. It’s not something I intend to get into. Ever. I don’t care to be on the stage or in front of the stage. Side of stage running sound? That’s my proper place!

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I felt like this year a lot of great players did not have their A game… A lot of mistakes by great players IMO

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It is all a conspiracy so that a European player can take the crown as a way of ushering the new Worlds next year in Budapest.

(Let’s see how many tin foil hat conspiracy nuts glom on to that one in the coming days) ;D

Thanks HaruRay for this post. Anyone casually throwing out that someone is autistic cause they don’t agree with the judging needs a good smack upside their head.

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A lot of great players made mistakes, but I don’t think that means they didn’t “bring their A-game”. Nobody takes the time to prepare and practice for a competition like this and intentionally does half a job. Mistakes happened, but I doubt it’s for carelessness.

I think it’s more accurate to say, “We didn’t get to see the best of ______”, which is probably true. But the phrasing makes all the difference… it’s not like anybody went out there to put in a less than perfect performance.

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Easily not only the Best post of the year in any board category, but the Most relevant.

Please, anybody, correct me if I am wrong, but I think 'most Yoyo Contest Judges pay their own way to Contests.

And… And, incredibly they Work for FREE. Sitting for hours and hours for free. And are most likely Tortured by the majority of oddball freestyle music selected by the contestants.

At a Major Event like Worlds, the guy that empties the trash cans, gets more respect than the judges.

People have to realize a few things. First, when you see several ‘Judges’ sitting behind a table watching freestyles, you can draw an instant valid conclusion. They are very experienced Yoers that are well versed in what they are looking at and what they are looking for. Contests don’t pick Judges by calling numbers on raffle tickets. The Judges are ‘known’ people and trusted to sit in on the Most Thankless Job in the Yoyo World.

I am in no way saying that the Judges don’t screw up here and there. But unless the BooBirds want to try out as unpaid contest judges, they should either Mastermind an alternative method of contest judging or just suck it up.

Anybody that follows this board, knows I’ve jumped into threads here and there, to give Haru some Heat about some of his unusual posts. But even though I think Josh is a little different in the head, I know he is not only a very bright guy but he is a very Knowledgable player and could easily Judge in any yoyo contest.

I don’t mess with Facebook, so I had no idea who was whining about what. But for Josh to come out and post about it, makes me realize that more than just a few whiny babies were talking Trash.

what ‘if’ all current contest judges just decided to give up their thankless roles and become Spectators?

Then what?

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Not to whine, but I have a family member who genuinely has autism and honestly object to autism being used as an insult. Yes, I have done it, I am not SAINT Philthelizard, but I still want to make it clear that a significant disability that affects the lives of so many people should not be taken lightly or used as an insult. Thanks for such a good post Haru! I honestly disagree with some of the judges rulings, but they are experienced throwers, many of whom are world yoyo champs themselves. For all you disrespectful guys, go win a world yoyo contest and then come back and complain about the judges again. Someone intelligent enough to diagnose such a serious disability by simply looking at the way someone scores a yoyo contest should be able to come up with some preeeeetty crazy tricks.
Ps. I am sorry for ranting but this is appalling and deserves to be ranted over.

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Hey now! Have some respect for massive outcriers!

This is the first I’ve spoken on it and I feel satisfied with my verbal freestyle.

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I’m a bit removed from worlds this year so since I wasn’t there… Take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I think there should be and needs to be a safe place for suffering a few differing opinions - this is vital for community development.

As someone who has judged around 30 contests, competed in at least that many more, and has even managed to place well in a few, I have a few thoughts:

I don’t have any real disagreements with the world contest placings/results per se… I think the judges were AMAZINGLY consistent over such a large number of contestants. But I think it’s not hard to see why differences of opinion arose.

With everything I saw this year, trick originality and construction took a back seat (although obviously were counted in significantly) to pure speed/string hits. Even Janos’s freestyle (which was amazing by the way and was full of creativity) was laced with speedy combos. Or how about Tyler having way more trick creativity/variety than Takeshi? But… Given the judging style at worlds, it’s not surprising why Takehi won, and I wouldn’t even necessarily disagree with the results - because I know what kinds of tricks are deemed “valuable” at worlds.

Different contests historically have different judging criteria and different judges judge differently…

While I think this can be good and healthy, it can be frustrating for a player who tries to attune his or her play style to meet the demands of the present contest.

Case in point: at the risk of sounding like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite going on about my glory days and what could’ve been if coach had just put me in the game… Eric Tranton delivered an amazing 1A freestyle with great trick construction that deserve to place as highly as it did.

But a couple months ago, I beat Eric by a large margin at MWR. Now… I’m not about to say that I’m gonna be top5 in the world anytime soon. He didn’t play any differently just two months ago… And he was just as good then. So why did he “do so poorly” results wise at MWR but get 4th in the world at the WYYC? Easy. Different judging styles. I think the judging at MWR was incredibly consistent with its own style, and likewise for world’s - but the fact remains both contests valued certain types of tricks more highly than others. But I think this is okay too and it has its place.

If players don’t know what to expect from a contest until they get the results… You can expect some people to be rightly frustrated by this.

Now… Will some people complain who don’t know what they’re talking about? Yes. Welcome to humanity. But if a high-level player is expressing frustration out of not knowing what’s expected when being told one thing but finding the situation to be another… I think that’s okay. And should be encouraged when shared respectfully.

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I should make a thread about you Josh! I’m disgusted with your blatant disrespect towards myself and my love for the cheeseburger.

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Yeah, I agree. Same with ‘retarded’. And using gay/fag as an insult too, always irks me a bit (not to imply that homosexuality is a disability, just that they’re both terms that shouldn’t be insults, and using them as insults is unfair to those who wear the title with pride or acceptance, wow I’m getting offtopic).

Couldn’t agree more with the OP. I think it’s a testament to the will of the judges that they don’t get ‘sucked in’ to the bigger names, I have a hard time not doing it myself. If Chia does a trick, I almost view it as more impressive than if some no-name does the same trick.

I’ve read about ‘celebrity’, and how it clouds judgment, even to those who feel immune to it. It’s only blatant in some people (teenage girls with pop icons being the most blatant example), but it’s an evolutionary trait that we hold certain people of elevated status in high regard.

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I don’t think Josh is saying “hey, everyone, don’t ever disagree with the judges, they’re always right.” I think he’s saying “hey, these people work incredibly hard, show a little more respect for their rulings.” At least that’s what I got from his post.

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I think I’ll chime in on this… I’ve said it a lot and will continue to say it – I really appreciate all the work the judges do and respect them tons. However, I think that yoyo judging needs to be a bit more standardized. Without that, we end up having players competing who don’t know what they’re being judged on. It should be clear to everyone what the criteria are. I’m even okay if the criteria are different for different contests, but players have to know that up front. How can you make up a freestyle if you don’t know how it will be judged? That’s why teachers share their scoring rubrics with students BEFORE they take a test or create a project.

I think that we should think long and hard about how to judge yo-yoing and try to make the best system possible. I’ve heard too many people say things like, “Well, of course he did well, someone from his team was judging him.” If the system is clear and transparent, no one will be able to say this.

Oh, that and string hits still seems nutso to me – some of my favorite players don’t hit the string that much because they’re going for flow and beauty. You shouldn’t have to be mad fast to do well in yo-yoing. How about we add two judges who determine level of difficulty multipliers and use that rather than string hits? We could fold string hits into that (because speed is difficult).

Just my $0.02. I welcome your feedback!

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This also applies to /every player ever/, and judges make up an amount of that population. Just because a spectator holds something/someone valuable, no matter how hollow or genuine, doesn’t mean everyone agrees with them. Most of the whining on the internet about could-have-beens that I have seen only communicates “BOY IF I WAS IN CHARGE-!” or “IF THESE PEOPLE IN CHARGE LIFTED MY IMPRESSIONS INSTEAD OF THEIR OWN” as if their pseudo-qualifications will fix everything in a finger snap.

For the people that are making yoyo contests /a thing/, for the fellow players that have opinions /just like us/, some of you sure treat them like trash.