What I believe, and what I plan to do

[gcanyon]

What I believe:

• - I believe it isn't important whether any one person's times in the rankings are legitimate or not.
  - I believe it is important that people have reasonable confidence in the rankings.
  - Therefore it is important whether or not a substantial number of people cheat or not.
  - I believe this applies to all people on the rankings, not just to the elites.

What I plan to do:

• - After the March Madness but before the marathon challenge, I plan to attempt a new PB at the 2K.
  - I plan to video tape my effort. Whatever the result, I will post the video online.
  - The video will be one continuous take; the video will start and end with a closeup of the PM3, showing the starting setup and the final result.
  - Obviously videos can be faked. Several dinosaur movies demonstrate that. This is an unavoidable, but I think unlikely, weakness in the plan.
  - Over time, I will video PB attempts at other distances and post them as well. I may not always have video, but I will always be willing to video.

Note that I plan to do this even though I am nowhere near elite. I would be thrilled to break 7:30. I consider this to be doing my part to ensure overall that people can have confidence in the rankings.

I encourage anyone who agrees to do the same.

Geoff Canyon
M43 HWT
Current PB for 2K: 7:44.1

[PaulS]

What I believe:

• - I believe it isn't important whether any one person's times in the rankings are legitimate or not.
  - I believe it is important that people have reasonable confidence in the rankings.
  - Therefore it is important whether or not a substantial number of people cheat or not.
  - I believe this applies to all people on the rankings, not just to the elites.

What I plan to do:

• - After the March Madness but before the marathon challenge, I plan to attempt a new PB at the 2K.
  - I plan to video tape my effort. Whatever the result, I will post the video online.
  - The video will be one continuous take; the video will start and end with a closeup of the PM3, showing the starting setup and the final result.
  - Obviously videos can be faked. Several dinosaur movies demonstrate that. This is an unavoidable, but I think unlikely, weakness in the plan.
  - Over time, I will video PB attempts at other distances and post them as well. I may not always have video, but I will always be willing to video.

Note that I plan to do this even though I am nowhere near elite. I would be thrilled to break 7:30. I consider this to be doing my part to ensure overall that people can have confidence in the rankings.

I encourage anyone who agrees to do the same.

Geoff Canyon
M43 HWT
Current PB for 2K: 7:44.1

How about those that care just choose to believe you? Wouldn't that save a bunch of trouble?

[gcanyon]

How about those that care just choose to believe you? Wouldn't that save a bunch of trouble?

Just choose to believe me if you must

The thing is, I have a video camera and a computer to digitize with. It's not hard. There are video posting sites (youtube, for example) that are easy and free. So it takes very little effort to post a video.

Doing so does two things.

First, it provides everyone with some assurance that at least one person's times are valid. Because you know I have my doubts about all of you.

But seriously, if more than a few people do it, it would go a long way towards convincing people that in general the times posted are accurate, and anyone called out would have that much more incentive to provide video documentation.

Second, anyone who chooses to look at the video might tell me what I can do to improve my time. See? An ulterior motive. You shouldn't trust me so easily.

[PaulS]

How about those that care just choose to believe you? Wouldn't that save a bunch of trouble?

Just choose to believe me if you must

The thing is, I have a video camera and a computer to digitize with. It's not hard. There are video posting sites (youtube, for example) that are easy and free. So it takes very little effort to post a video.

Doing so does two things.

First, it provides everyone with some assurance that at least one person's times are valid. Because you know I have my doubts about all of you.

But seriously, if more than a few people do it, it would go a long way towards convincing people that in general the times posted are accurate, and anyone called out would have that much more incentive to provide video documentation.

Second, anyone who chooses to look at the video might tell me what I can do to improve my time. See? An ulterior motive. You shouldn't trust me so easily.

So you think my trusting of you has to do with a benefit to you? Hmmm...

Even without any video proof I'm sure that 99.9+% of "the times posted are accurate". Come on, you want to go 7:30, but bad enough to lie about it?

Of course we are at a point in history where making false claims on a resume' (i.e. LYING!) is going to be legally actionable. Must be a product of outcome based education where if you feel good about your answer, that's all that matters. That never seemed good enough when I was in school, and we only got to feel good about answers that were actually correct. What a country!

[NavigationHazard]

Unfortunately video posts are impractical for longer rows. Even if you can find a free site to host 3 hrs or so of video stream, which I doubt, who's going to scrutinize someone erging a marathon on the off chance they may be cheating?

However for shorter rows I think they go a long way towards addressing the verifiability issue.

[gcanyon]

Unfortunately video posts are impractical for longer rows. Even if you can find a free site to host 3 hrs or so of video stream, which I doubt, who's going to scrutinize someone erging a marathon on the off chance they may be cheating?

However for shorter rows I think they go a long way towards addressing the verifiability issue.

Agreed, that is an issue, and I should have thought of it earlier, as I favor longer rows over the 2K.

Of course, if I have a valid 2K video up, and my 10K time is in line with my 2K performance, that tends to support my 10K time.

But let's set that aside for a moment: YouTube takes videos up to 10 minutes, and an unlimited number of them.

So there is nothing to prevent me from uploading six videos to cover an hour. Actually, I'm so slow it would take me 8 ten minute videos to row an hour. (joking)

That wouldn't be as clear a verification as one continuous video, of course.

Perhaps a better solution would be to start at regular speed, then do a time-lapse on minutes 2 through 58, then back to normal. That would be more convincing to me, really.

As far as watching it goes, if my times were ever in question, I'm sure there are some here who would watch every second looking for the second rower

[johnlvs2run]

Distance would not be a problem as you could just set the video to take 1 frame each 6 seconds.

Then it could be played back at a faster rate.

[mumbles]

I dont own a video camera? Am i to be considered a cheat/liar/suspect/ignored?

Owen

[TomR]

Just show up and race once a year.

Meet other strange people who race by staying in the same place, and eliminate all doubts that you are as fast (or slow) as you claim to be.

Tom

[gcanyon]

I dont own a video camera? Am i to be considered a cheat/liar/suspect/ignored?

Owen

I don't think it should be taken that way. I'm just hoping to encourage other people in general to be willing to prove results. I don't think there's anything Concept2 can do that will come close to what a video demonstrates.

Just show up and race once a year.

Obviously this is the best (and in the final analysis, only) way to be sure. I think video is about as good as it gets short of an actual race.

Meet other strange people who race by staying in the same place, and eliminate all doubts that you are as fast (or slow) as you claim to be.

Since you put it this way, I now think I am as fast as the fastest people here. After all, I'd be right next to them through the entire race, right?

[Godfried]

Just show up and race once a year.

Meet other strange people who race by staying in the same place, and eliminate all doubts that you are as fast (or slow) as you claim to be.

Tom

I have been to EIRC ( european ), NKIR ( dutch ) , OBIC ( belgian ).

Never had my ID checked , so who is to say I am who I say I am?

[mumbles]

Just show up and race once a year.

Meet other strange people who race by staying in the same place, and eliminate all doubts that you are as fast (or slow) as you claim to be.

Tom

I do race, just thought I'd bring up the point that not everyone has a video camera. Comment was not supposed to be offensive! Very sorry if it seemed that way!

Owen

[TomR]

Mumbles--

Your comment wasn't offensive. My apologies if I seemed to be challenging you.

I simply was trying to suggest that more racing is part of the answer to what ails us. One gets to travel, meet good people, and have a chance to do the best one can. And as gcanyon pointed out, even if you lose, you finish right next to the winner.

Tom

[NavigationHazard]

Another point worth making re video is that it can help demonstrate that one and only one rower rowed the piece in question on an unmodified erg. Probably it also can go a long way towards establishing the gender of the person claiming to have done the row. But I don't see how it can establish whether a rower claiming to be a LW actually was for the row.

Competition rules for Crash-Bs allow weigh-ins to start 2 hrs before the individual event, and close them off 1 hr beforehand. Unless you videoed a weigh-in and left the camera focused on a clock and running for an hour until the actual row, you'd have no way of knowing for sure that the weight was met within the temporal boundaries of the rules.

Time-stamping the video and shooting the weigh-in and row separately wouldn't help, I think. AFAIK, all you'd need to do to manipulate it would be to reset the camera clock between one and the other. Time-lapse shots might not help either, unless you could prove definitively how often you were taking them and that the frames were continuous/unedited....

And then there's the problem of how accurate the scales actually were....

Quite frankly, I don't see any unimpeachable way around the LW weigh-in problem except to have people weigh in and row record attempts under the aegis of trustworthy, sanctioned observers. Alternatively, we could simply trust that people who claim to have been LW actually were ....

[seat5]

What I believe, and what I plan to do

1. I plan to row each ranking piece as hard as I can and post the time honestly, like always. I'm lucky enough to have the PM3, so I'll use the V code. If that isn't good enough for some folks, I don't give a darn. If people think everyone can assemble a lineup of willing dupes to do a relay for them on every ranking distance to get good times there will be no convincing them of the validity of the rankings no matter what one does.

2. I plan to believe all the times in the rankings, like always. If they are faster than mine, I'll try to beat them.

3. I plan to try to remember to say a row was ON SLIDES (most of mine are) if I post about it on the forum..of course, in the rankings, it's already there, if anyone cares to look.

Isn't that simple?