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I think the wording is quite clear. Anything placed on top the platform at the start must stay on the platform to satisfy condition 3. That requirement is quite harsh but it is not ambiguously stated.

hogger wrote:I think the wording is quite clear. Anything placed on top the platform at the start must stay on the platform to satisfy condition 3. That requirement is quite harsh but it is not ambiguously stated.

Unofficially of course, I agree I this. I think the wording is pretty clear.

I suppose it is, now that you mention it. I will confess that I only looked at the rules for the first time this morning and it seemed overly harsh, but it does say "all items" and not "all scored items."

A second question, based on something that came up last year. A student had a task that they clearly knew wasn't going to work, so they tried to get the task points anyway by a clever reworking of the TSL. They defined task completion as "task pulls string," and then added a nonscoring task "string flips switch" in between the nonfunctional task and the next scoring task, arguing that the first task was completed because the slack string moved a bit and the only task which failed was the nonscoring one. I did not give them the points because it was transparently obvious what they were doing, but I didn't feel like I had a completely solid rule-based rationale for doing so. Opinions?

Flavorflav wrote: A second question, based on something that came up last year. A student had a task that they clearly knew wasn't going to work, so they tried to get the task points anyway by a clever reworking of the TSL. They defined task completion as "task pulls string," and then added a nonscoring task "string flips switch" in between the nonfunctional task and the next scoring task, arguing that the first task was completed because the slack string moved a bit and the only task which failed was the nonscoring one. I did not give them the points because it was transparently obvious what they were doing, but I didn't feel like I had a completely solid rule-based rationale for doing so. Opinions?

I'm a bit confused by this example. The scorable tasks are clearly defined in the rules. So regardless of what the TSL says, if the task matches what the rules say then fine, award points, otherwise don't.

Well, but what the rules say is that the task must "cause the next action." It is permissible to have non-scoring elements in between scoreable tasks, is it not? I suppose my question is, if one scoreable task activates a nonscoreable mechanism which fails to activate the next scoreable task, requiring a touch, did the student earn points for the first scoreable task completion, or is the nonscoreable mechanism considered part of the previous task?

Flavorflav wrote:Well, but what the rules say is that the task must "cause the next action." It is permissible to have non-scoring elements in between scoreable tasks, is it not? I suppose my question is, if one scoreable task activates a nonscoreable mechanism which fails to activate the next scoreable task, requiring a touch, did the student earn points for the first scoreable task completion, or is the nonscoreable mechanism considered part of the previous task?

3.b.vi. pretty clearly says nonscoreable tasks get no points, and 7.j says scoreable tasks get points when they are completed as indicated in section 4.

Well, the problem is that the definition of "Task" is not entirely clear. The student had "lever pulls string" and "String flips switch" as two separate tasks. If the TSL were written that way, would you have given points for the lever because it did in fact pull the string? I didn't, because it seemed to me that a string is not a task.

Aha, that's the point of 3.b.v! Now I get it!

chalker wrote:

Flavorflav wrote: A second question, based on something that came up last year. A student had a task that they clearly knew wasn't going to work, so they tried to get the task points anyway by a clever reworking of the TSL. They defined task completion as "task pulls string," and then added a nonscoring task "string flips switch" in between the nonfunctional task and the next scoring task, arguing that the first task was completed because the slack string moved a bit and the only task which failed was the nonscoring one. I did not give them the points because it was transparently obvious what they were doing, but I didn't feel like I had a completely solid rule-based rationale for doing so. Opinions?

I'm a bit confused by this example. The scorable tasks are clearly defined in the rules. So regardless of what the TSL says, if the task matches what the rules say then fine, award points, otherwise don't.

At our regional, the scorer did not award points for tasks that we started ourselves or tasks that came after nonfunctional tasks.

That's double jeopardy, I think. You should lose points for the task which failed to complete, but not for the task you initiated with the touch.