Penalty for Unaccepted/Overruled Protests

[ShaileneCCD]

Section 5.4 Protests

Proposed Amendment -10 points for any protest (not just the second protest) that is overruled or unaccepted. A decision to throw out the question does not necessarily mean a protest has been accepted. Example: The coach from Team 1 protests a quizmaster's ruling on a challenge. A quizzer was called incorrect, but Team 1 believes that quizzer should be called correct. A coach from Team 2 disagrees with Team 1 coach's reason for protesting. Team 2 believes the quizmaster made the right call on the challenge. No agreement is reached between coaches and officials. To resolve the issue, the meet director decides the question should be thrown out and redone. In this scenario, the protest of Team 1 was not accepted because the quizzer was not called correct, so Team 1 loses 10 points. No consensus could be reached on what the correct ruling should have been. This means the reason for Team 1's protest was not strong enough to be accepted. Therefore, it was overruled and the question thrown out.

Rationale 1) Numerous times during multi-district quizzing events (ex. Internationals, various invitationals), we have witnessed a protest occurring and resulting in aggressive conversations between coaches, and quizzers' morale being shattered. We have had coaches cry because of the way they were spoken to or ignored during the consultation process of a protest. Our quizzers have been so rattled by the aggressive nature of some protests, they struggled to regain the courage to jump and answer a question. This is not the goal of quizzing. We want to be competitive but not at the cost of emotionally and/or mentally harming our coaches and quizzers. An amendment of -10 points for all overruled or unaccepted protests, with the clarification that throwing out a question does not necessarily mean a protest is accepted, would cause coaches to rethink the necessity and validity of their protest. Ultimately, this would ensure the protests made are strong and enhance quizzing's competitive edge rather than create a culture where forceful competition outweighs friendly competition. 2) Spectators have approached me concerned with how the atmosphere of a quiz was negatively changed when an aggressive protest was made. Some of those spectators had never seen a high-level quizzing event before, and they were discouraged to see the negative effects had on quizzers and coaches by some protests. By implementing the above amendment and, hopefully, reducing the amount of weak or aggressive protests, the witness of quizzing to spectators will be strengthened. 3) CCD is implementing the above amendment in its district because we are seeing the beginning of aggressive protests being made and destroying the encouraging yet competitive environment we have worked hard to create. When this new rule was presented to our district officials and coaches, many encouraged me to share this amendment with the International Rulebook Committee because they were seeing the harm some protests were having at international meets, and they want it to be reduced.

[josiah-leinbach]

After the most recent Heartland Tournament, we discussed implementing this policy for the coming year, so I am in full support. (Interestingly, GLD has only had 2 protests/reviews in the past 25 years, and maybe longer, and they were both the same coach in the same season.)

As a statistical point, I went over the number of challenges/appeals and protests/reviews from Heartland and the past IBQ, and compared them with estimates for my years at Internationals (my family recorded all our quizzes). The comparison showed that recent tournaments have been averaging about 4-6x as many appeals per quiz as when I quizzed (2011-2016), and that the rate of upheld appeals has decreased from around half to less than a third. As for protests/reviews, in all six of my years quizzing at Internationals, I witnessed only 3 total in the whole of quizzing (including all quizzes I watched). The reason I can count them is because they were so incredibly rare, whereas now they are more frequent.

The reasons for this increase are certainly many and likely complex, but a rule like this would curb those trends.

[24RMiller]

I completely agree with the first part of that rule change. I have witnessed several protests and have been involved in one as a quizzer myself and have seen how they cause an entire day of quizzing to fall behind schedule. I have found that protests typically fall into one of two categories: either an obvious logistical mistake, or an extremely borderline judgment call. The former are typical due to either quizmasters failing to follow protocols or a distribution error. These are typically resolved rather quickly, and the potential loss of 10 points should not prevent these protests, as it is almost always an obvious mistake with very little risk. It is the latter that are the ones that slow quizzes down and almost always end up going nowhere until the meet director makes a final decision. Protests are clearly a necessity, as there are times when an issue needs to be escalated beyond the quizmaster and answer judge, but I would say they have been misused too often out of desperation. “Why not, it doesn’t hurt us.” The risk of losing 10 points would certainly limit protests to being used only on obvious errors, rather than because a coach disagrees with a borderline judgment call.

However, I am not sure I entirely agree with the second part of that rule change. I would argue that any change to the original ruling is a successful protest. In fact, I don’t really see any reason there should be any protests that aren’t either explicitly rejected or accepted. The meet director should almost always make a clear ruling, but if for whatever reason he/she decides to make no ruling and redo the question, a team should not be punished 10 points for this.

Thus, I support a rule change that any overruled protest is a loss of 10 points, but it should be limited to only those specifically overruled. Any change to the ruling means a protest was successful in some regard, so it would not be fair to punish a team for this. Of course, there would be other ways to prevent this middle ground indecisiveness such a more formal vote (which I believe was discussed in another thread already), and this might be evidence that a more thorough look at protests is necessary. If nothing else is changed however, I would absolutely say a loss of 10 points is a simple, yet effective way of limiting protests to obvious infractions without decreasing their usefulness.

[ShaileneCCD]

I can understand your reasoning for considering any change in a ruling meaning a protest is successful. My concern is that coaches will then start to push for questions to be thrown out and redone, rather than push for a new ruling. I don't think solely having the possibility of losing 10 points will be enough to subdue certain coaches' desire to protest. Whereas if they must have their exact protest accepted (not just a different ruling than what was originally made), the potential to lose 10 points is greater which would subdue the amount of hasty and desperate protests.

[TimMagwood]

Wanted to add a few thoughts after chatting with Shailene about this change. It seems like the two issues we are currently facing with protests are:

1. Delaying schedule for the rest of the quiz meet
2. Creating a toxic/unfriendly environment for quizzing

I think both of these issues could be improved (if not solved) by a more concrete procedure on top of an immediate penalty to anyone protesting without adequate evidence or for the wrong reasons.

I wonder if protests (appeals?) could take a similar form to challenges such that the protesting coaches speak first, then the other coaches have a chance to present rebuttals, then a decision is made by the officials. If the coaches are still unsatisfied, they can appeal to the meet director, a summary of arguments can be presented, and a definitive decision made by the meet director. This puts the onus on the protesting coaches to come with a comprehensive, evidence-based, rule-oriented argument to cause change and eliminates the discussion portion where a more vocal coach could insist on their opinion repeatedly or expand/retract their argument throughout the course of the conversation.

To the point of @24RMiller could we potentially create three possible outcomes from a protest (or maybe this makes it unnecessarily confusing):

1. Successful - The protest is made, agreed upon, and accepted according to the argument presented by the protesting coaches. The ruling is changed according to what the coaches argued for.
2. Overruled - The protest is made, declined (by either officials or meet director), and a penalty of -10 points is given.
3. Adapted? - Not sure what the name should be exactly, perhaps it can be lumped in with successful and we don't need the third option. A protest is made and not accepted but reveals an error in judgement/procedure along the course of the ruling/quiz. A new ruling is made to reflect correct procedure and no penalty is given to the protesting team. Their argument was not accepted but it did lead to an improved decision based on review of the rules.

I think the issue that @ShaileneCCD points out above with coaches just gunning for any change in ruling that they can think of throughout the discussion is solved by the amended procedure, allowing each coach to speak once and make their case, then a decision is made by the officials, based on the rulebook. If the coach still believes the officials are in error, the decision can be appealed to the meet director BUT their argument cannot be changed (enforcing this might be tough, perhaps via recording?). This would probably increase the number of protests that go to the meet director level (@josiah-leinbach historically speaking, what percentage of protests have you found are resolved by officials and coaches vs. how many go to the meet director?) but I think it would significantly cut down how long it takes to resolve protests (which solves one of the big issues of protests noted above in keeping the schedule on track).

[kclimenhaga]

Personally, I would love to get rid of protests altogether. I am hoping to get rid of them in our district next year. I don't remember there ever being a protest in our district before a year or two ago, but I have heard of several in the last few years. Most of the protests I have heard about fall into one of two categories:

1. A coach who used to be a quizzer and misses being able to challenge makes a protest on a ruling that is debatable either way
2. A coach reads the rulebook for the first time, discovers protests exist, and gets excited about trying out this fun new thing without fully understanding the rule they are protesting based on

I should clarify that I have yet to actually see a protest in person, so everything I hear about protests is second or third hand, but I have never heard of a protest that I believe should have happened. I can say confidently that none of our protests in district have gone to the meet director level in the last two years, but they still delay the quiz and the entire meet. I also agree that they can be discouraging for quizzers and that they go against the positive environment we try to create. I am strongly supportive of quizzers being able to challenge, because quizzers often know the material better than the table staff, and can therefore provide information the table staff didn't consider when making the initial ruling. I am opposed to protests, because the coaches don't typically have information that is not available to the table staff. I understand that there may need to be some provision for coaches to voice objections (e.g. "this quiz has too many INTs to be a legal quiz"), but I would like it to be more informal, along the lines of what happens if the coaches disagree with the scorekeeper's totals during a score check.

All this to say that I am supportive of anything that will cut down on the number of protests.

[ShaileneCCD]

I like the idea of having protests replicate the challenge process quizzers make. One captain challenges, explains how they want the ruling changed, and provides supporting evidence. Then the other two captains respond. Then the talking ends and officials deliberate. I think this would help alleviate some of the aggressiveness of protests since a coach can only talk once. It also ensures all coaches have a voice to respond to the protest.

[ShaileneCCD]

Sorry. I got interrupted and couldn't finish my thoughts.

I also would be in favour of eliminating protests all together. At first I wondered how we could have the informal conversation of tech or logistical things like a light not working. But Kristen made a good point that we have informal logistical conversations with scorechecks. I wonder if we'd need a list of things that a coach can informally talk to an official about (ex. the light malfunction) and clarification on what coaches may not talk to coaches about (ex. official mispronounces a word?).

Maybe we could start with the -10 points for all unaccepted challenges (with a clarification on what is an accepted/successful and unaccepted challenge) to see if that makes any significant changes to the use protests. Then, if we feel the need, we can revisit and discuss removing protests all together.

I can completely understand removing them at a district level. I just think removing them at an international level would be more challenging (even though I would love to see it happen...).