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WRC Operations
The WRC’s main purpose is maintaining the Regulations. The WRC also takes the initiative to start additional projects to make the Regulations fair and practical.
Please read the following (4 pages total):
- Motion 10.2021.9 — WCA Regulations Committee
- Motion 10.2022.0 — WCA Committees and Teams
- Motion 19.2021.1 — Competition Regulations and Guidelines
Per Motion 10.2022.0 (Regulation 4.2), the WRC Leader is ultimately responsible for most of the WRC’s work (similar to how a Delegate is responsible for a competition).
All WRC members are expected to share a roughly equal load of responding to incoming email. See below for details.
Every WRC member is expected to regularly take on specific responsibilities from the ones below, for a duration of at least a few months:
- Manage the process of incoming emails.
- Manage the process of making decisions.
- Manage the process of following up decisions with documentation changes.
- Manage the process of updating Delegates on important decisions.
- Manage feedback from the community.
- Lead important proposals or projects.
- See WRC Projects (Mid-2019) for current ones.
Most decisions will be about competition incidents, but they can be for anything the WRC needs to decide (e.g. questions from the public, whether to introduce a new Regulations change).
When communicating a decision via email, please write something like “The WRC decision for this incident is…” once we have a decision, and make it clear what action needs to be taken as a consequence (e.g. updating results).
If the decision for an incident or question is clearly documented (i.e. in the Regulations, Guidelines, or incidents log), any WRC member may cite the documentation and provide a definitive decision.
Example:
“Yes, we have had past situations where the judge forgot to hold up a sight blocker:
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/incidents/30. Since there is no sign that the competitor took any advantage, you may take it as a WRC decision that their result may stand.”
If the decision has a precedent with weak documentation, any two WRC members can use it to provide a definitive decision.
Example:
WRC Member #1: "I think we’ve had a past situation where we removed a duplicate scramble from “the Multi-Blind cube count. Please wait for a second opinion from another WRC member, though."
WRC Member #2: "Yes, that's right, I agree with WRC Member #1. WRC decision: the 17-cube attempt should be scored as 14/16."
If a new decision needs to be made, it should be agreed upon by a vote as follows:
- One WRC member opens the vote by saying in the report thread that the WRC will vote on the incident. They will referee the vote for this incident.
- They open an issue in the incident log, with the status as “pending”.
- They open a WRC thread by answering to the last email in the report thread (which should be them telling that WRC will vote), and deleting all recipients except the WRC.
- WRC votes on the decision (see next part for the detailed voting procedure)
- Once a decision is reached, the member who initiated the vote answers to the report thread with the WRC decision, asking the delegate to submit a change request if needed.
- If a change request was needed, the referee checks that that it was made.
- They enter the WRC ruling in the incident log, and mark the incident as solved.
Since not all members may be available at a given time, or have a strong enough opinion on each matter, we don’t require every member to vote. Here is the detailed vote procedure:
- Once the vote is started, every WRC member gives their opinion.
- After 48h since the start of the vote:
- If > 50% of WRC members agree, this constitutes official WRC decision. The referee posts it on the report thread, and updates the log, as described above.
- If ≤ 50% of WRC members agree, the referee may ping WRC again for new opinions. After the ping, the referee waits again until 48h after the last email, and the majority opinion is the official WRC decision, no matter how many members voted.
If you don’t have enough time when you read an email to properly express your thoughts, feel free to write it in a short email (e.g. “I think this should be DNFed, I’ll explain my reasoning when I have more time”, or “I have a few more arguments regarding this, but I don’t have much time right now”). This way the referee knows you want to participate in the ruling, and may ping you directly, and you won’t forget that you wanted to reply.
Any WRC member may escalate a decision from the “documented” process to “with precedent”, to “new decision”. They should explain why existing documentation and precedent do not sufficiently cover the case, or why a new decision should contradict it.
The WRC leader’s vote counts as a tie breaker, and the WRC leader has the discretion to override the normal decision process for any individual decision.
In general, every new decision about incidents should be added to the Incidents log: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/incidents
If it would make sense to update the Regulations or Guidelines based on the decision, this should be tracked in a new issue at https://github.com/thewca/wca-regulations/issues
(Even better: immediately propose a wording fix!)
- Refer to the Regulations, Guidelines, and Incidents log.
- Follow Regulation 11d (“fair sportsmanship”)
- Follow the mission and spirit of the WCA: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/about
- When possible, do not penalize the competitor if:
- it was primarily someone else’s mistake, and
- they did not try to take advantage of it.
Every WRC staff member has an email for official work.
All WRC members are expected to check their WCA email at least once every 24 hours normally and respond to any active decisions with an informed vote as soon as practical. If a WRC member expects to be unavailable for at least 48 hours in a row, they should let the WRC leader know ahead of time. (See the “Communication of WCA Staff” in the Code of Ethics for more.)
Note:
- If there is an emergency, do not stress about WRC work. Deal with your emergency and let us know when you’re back.
- It is absolutely acceptable to take off extended time, or to state that you can only help with a reduced load — even a whole month at a time. Although we can’t keep you on the WRC while on indefinite leave, we can work around breaks (e.g. you can arrange to participate in important decisions) if you let us know ahead of time.
The WRC uses the WCA Regulation category in the WCA Forum as the main source of Community feedback and public discussions about the Regulations.
The Regulations and Guidelines are maintained at https://github.com/thewca/wca-regulations
WRC members are expected to have a GitHub account and:
- Participate in important issue discussions.
- Review proposed changes (“pull requests”) by fellow members within 48 hours.
They are also encouraged but not expected to go beyond this: file new issues based on new incidents, respond to incoming issues, help resolve the backlog of issues, or maintain the code behind the Regulations and the website.
The current official Regulations and Guidelines are at https://github.com/thewca/wca-regulations/tree/official
Upcoming changes are maintained at https://github.com/thewca/wca-regulations/tree/draft
In general, new changes should be made by two WRC members based on the arguments for/against. This can be either of the following:
- A proposal by one team member and approved by another team member.
- An external proposal approved by two team members.
Exceptions
- Typo fixes and minor cleanup (e.g. clarifications supported by past documentation) can be accepted/directly changed by a single WRC member.
- Important new decisions should be agreed upon by a WRC decision vote. For the sake of practicality, it’s acceptable for only two members to merge a proposal into the draft branch as long as the entire team weighs in before the final release process.
The WCA has a Slack form for quick communication. Members are encouraged but not required to participate there. It's fine to discuss any topic in Slack (use your judgment), but official decisions/actions and their reasons must be documented in a public place if possible, or in email if not.
WRC members are encouraged to be involved with competitions:
- Participate as competitors to stay familiar with what it’s like.
- Ensure that local competitions follow best practices.
- Advise on incidents.
- Be friendly to all competition attendees, and willing to take feedback about the WRC or the WCA in general. (Many good ideas have come from community members who were too shy to propose them “officially” without a WRC member reaching out!)
Although WRC members should be prepared to advise on any incidents, they have no official power at competitions unless otherwise arranged. The Delegate has final discretion over anything at the competition. In case of a disagreement, the WRC member should allow the designated WCA Delegate of the competition to make the decision, and bring up any remaining concerns in the email thread for the Delegate report. Keep in mind Regulation 11d (“fair sportsmanship”).
WRC members are encouraged to participate in any cubing communities they wish, especially communities outside English-speaking regions (since those tend to be more isolated, and harder to hear from).
- They should be identifiable as a WRC member and act professional.
- It’s okay to participate in jokes or memes, as long as those do not contribute to making others unwelcome.
- They should encourage kind, constructive discussion.
- They should bring fruits of such discussion back to the WRC.
- They should link the relevant Regulation/Guideline if it is relevant to answering a question, and encourage others to do so.
- They should be mindful that every community has a bias, and does not give a full picture of the experiences of all community members around the world.
- They must not make any new decisions on behalf of the WRC without consulting the rest of the WRC and documenting it.
- They must not give the impression that any place other than the WCA forum or GitHub is an official place to propose or develop Regulations.
- In particular, please do not join any Facebook groups or similar forums dedicated to discussing the Regulations. Consult the WRC leader if you're unsure.
WRC members are also encouraged to think about new ways to stay in touch with the community and learn what is best for the community.
WRC members should not use their position for personal gain (e.g. asking for special treatment during incidents). We have a Code of Ethics that guides this.
Members are encouraged to learn enough about each important topic to develop a “professional” opinion based on what is best for the community. It is acceptable for this opinion to match strong personal preferences, but WRC members should disclose and/or abstain from votes if they are uncertain they can be impartial.