Originally posted by Mark Mason:
Bryan, can you say a little more about this conclusion. I see you shared it on July 8th, about a week before the announcement moving GPTs from Competitive REL to the JAR. Were you already thinking about that change?
I ask because my sense of the “penalty” system as described in the IPG is the importance of near universal application of the penalties is to ensure the appearance of impartiality and to generate as consistent a judging outcome (regardless of the judge) as is possible.
Do I have this wrong?
I was not thinking about GPT changes. I would give the exact same ruling at FNM or the Pro Tour. Since asked, I feel that the KP answer for this scenario is incomplete. But that's to be expected, they painted themselves into a corner with this scenario by creating a player who did get upset.
The scenario they gave is much like “What is the value of PI?” Now, saying 3.141592653589793 is very accurate and very precise. Its what NASA uses for interplanetary calculations. However most of us, when asked the same question, are going to say “3.14” because most of us are not doing interplanetary calculations. We might be cutting a circle for a cosplay costume or a shelf we are making.
That's the difference here. KP is having to give the NASA answer, but its really unnecessary for the scenario presented. As I said in my original thread on here. Its overkill. This situation isn't one that calls for interplanetary levels of calculations. Just tell the dude to watch his language and move on. If you found yourself in a situation where the penalty was necessary, give it and move on. In my opinion, this scenario was closer to cutting a circle for scrapbooking than crashing a probe into Jupiter. And Im pretty sure in the real world, “hey, watch your language” is going to be the actual answer more often than not.
As far as the universality of the USC-Minor penalty, you are going to find that's near impossible. All other penalties are lists of things, or concrete actions. USC-Minor though, is intentionally more vague. Lets look at two of the examples:
“A player uses excessively vulgar and profane language.”
“A player leaves excessive trash in the play area after leaving the table.”
Whats excessive here? Clearly its more than a single “fuck” or pack wrapper left on the table, or the word ‘excessive’ isn't necessary. So we are talking something more than ‘one’. So where do we hit the line between ‘something’ and an excessive amount of it? That's going to be variable depending on the judge and the environment. In both cases, we are dealing with humans and context and too many variables to codify exactly what is worth a USC-Minor and what isnt and keep short enough to learn. It allows us to interpret whats going on, and the impact to our events. Unlike any other penalty, USC-Minor gives us a lot of flexibility and room for judgment. I think the penalty we have is wonderfully simple and sufficiently detailed that way.
The issue is in the interpretation of the definition:
“A player takes action that is disruptive to the tournament or its participants. It may affect the
comfort level of those around the individual, but determining whether this is the case is not
required.”
First off, what is considered disruptive? Again, different people are going to have different lines. Shouting across a tournament floor for your friend is disruptive. Is that USC-Minor? Playing music loud is disruptive, is that USC-Minor? So already “disruptive” is in the eye of the beholder.
Now the second line is actually the line that I think people misinterpret. Too many people look at it and create a very sensitive fictional person, and say “This is something that this fictional person *could* be upset by” In reality, that sentence is there because you dont have to prove that someone *is* offended, just that its reasonable that someone would be. The difference here is subtle. The key here is that when creating your fictional person, that persons sensitivities are often unreasonable. You are looking at what happened and saying ‘Is it possible that a person exists that would find this upsetting?’ If the internet has taught anything, its that the answer to that question is always ‘Yes’.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, if you took a very hard line, refusing to shake someones hand after a match is potentially disruptive, and could affect the comfort level of that player. So, by a strict definition, that USC-Minor. But its not. So clearly there is some interpretation and some reasonableness that factors in.
Now in the KP scenario, we actually had a player who looked uncomfortable. Having an uncomfortable player is a great sign that you need to step in and do something. You no longer have to construct a fictional person. You have a real person. So lets look at what happened. A dude called his opponent a bad word, one time, in a friendly way. Is it reasonable to not like that? Yes. That's why we step in. Is it reasonable to be upset by it? Eh…and thats where the debate really should be. Unfortunately as a society, we really shy away from telling people they are being unreasonable about a feeling. If someone is upset, the person who upset them is to blame. Again…Eh…
Again, if you look at the action, its not angry, its a mis-targeted attempt to be friendly. And its easily correctable.
I feel in this KP scenario, you arent giving the player USC-Minor for what they did, you are giving them USC-Minor for how their opponent reacted. You penalize people based on their actions, not other players reactions. Reactions can be very important in alerting you to a problem, but they aren't the only relevant bit of information.
So let me re-iterate what I said in the original post: Under no circumstances is this to be interpreted as “do nothing”. Yes. Step in. Tell the player to watch his language. If he slips up again, sure, hit him with awarning for USC-Minor.