No blame culture at Wimbledon
Posted by GodAtum@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 108 comments
I think it was unfair for the bloodthirsty media calling for who of who accidentally switched off Hawkeye during a match. It’s great to see the CEO of Wimbledon saying it’s not for public knowledge.
I do feel sorry for the tech guy and hope he gets to keep his job.
Mammoth_Judge_1288@reddit
Cricket has an interesting take in that you get a limited number of "reviews" so it adds an element of risk (ie referring a marginal call vs an absolute certainty). There have been occasions where teams are desperate, burn off reviews, have none left and then can't overturn a shocker. Headingley '19 springs to mind.
Roguepope@reddit
Yup, the error wasn't someone turning off Hawkeye, it was the fact they could do so, which is an institutional thing.
trail-g62Bim@reddit
I'd be curious if it was turned off pre or during match. If pre, then there should be some process to ensure it is on before the match starts.
TailorMedium8633@reddit
It wasn’t turned off. After each point the system needs to be reset by a human to begin tracking the next point. This didn’t happen. Presumably it’s not smart enough to know when the game has restarted. I imagine after a point when the balls are being setup, given to players to choose and delivered to the ends and suchlike it gets quite confused.
GodAtum@reddit (OP)
Interesting . I wonder why in the press releases Wimbledon didn’t just say that. The media have been saying the public have lost trust in the system because of lack of transparency
GodAtum@reddit (OP)
It was during
Chaucer85@reddit
For anyone like me who has no idea:
" The recent Wimbledon match between Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal was marred by a Hawk-Eye malfunction, leading to controversy and an apology from Wimbledon organizers. During the match, [Hawk-Eye] the electronic line-calling system, which replaced line judges this year, failed to register a shot from Kartal that landed out, and the umpire, following protocol, replayed the point. This incident caused frustration for Pavlyuchenkova, who believed she was unfairly denied a point and possibly a game win."
k_marts@reddit
They failed step one when dealing with technology... always have a backup since technology can and will break.
dontbethefatguy@reddit
I used for work for Hawk-Eye, admittedly within Goal Line Technology in football, but the principles of ball/line tracking are the same.
Certainly within football there are six tracking cameras focussed on each goal, and you only need (I think, it was a long time ago) two to have ‘eyes on’ to be able to calculate the XYZ position of the ball in relation to the goal line, which is all pre-mapped and calibrated before every match.
As people have said, the tracking was working, but the call wasn’t made. In football the refs have both watches which vibrate when the ball crosses the line, and an audio signal which plays through their headset ‘goal, goal, goal’ (that sound will be forever etched into my brain), so if one of those fails they can still rely on the other.
Everything is tested before a match, so it was probably something as simple as a key binding or a tick box mid-match which was accidentally pressed and disabled the audio alert.
They’ll stop it happening again, the devs are solid there and they push out fixes very quickly.
chartupdate@reddit
That is indeed what has happened, Hawkeye patched the software to ensure the audio alerts aren't disablable mid match.
GodAtum@reddit (OP)
Interesting . I wonder why in the press releases Wimbledon just say that. The media have been saying the public have lost trust in the system because of lack of transparency
thanksfor-allthefish@reddit
The system worked. It tracked the ball and on-court replay showed the ball out. It was the automated audio that called "out" which wasn't enabled.
The umpire only had to use the eyeball technology to update brain with visual information to take the decision, like in the thinking times of old, but instead only drooled in their seat to decide that they had to replay the point. As OP said, it was a human error.
Frothyleet@reddit
Then sounds like blame is squarely on the the umpire, although this contradicts the above poster's quote which says they replayed the point "following protocol".
TailorMedium8633@reddit
If you start deferring back to the umpire then you render the whole technology pointless. And then start introducing rules where players can request an umpire decision or a video replay for any call they don’t like done by Hawk Eye, which is the opposite of Challenge-based Hawk Eye last year where players were able to challenge any calls (which would just show the same results as live based Hawk Eye anyway)
Fratil@reddit
I don't know the exact fallacy, but it's some sort of fallacy to pretend there's no difference between letting an umpire override an automated call that's a close call (thus rendering the precision of the tool irrelevant), and letting an umpire correct as obvious error made by the automated system that everyone could see with their own eyes.
Maybe the rules don't support that system right now, but as we automate more and more things in society we need to get comfortable with that distinction and not completely blindly trust things that are obviously wrong.
Frothyleet@reddit
The technology is there to replace line judges, not umpires - there is always going to be a human able to override automate decisionmaking for any number of potential reasons.
altodor@reddit
Protocol could have been "defer to game umpire for decision"
CouldBeALeotard@reddit
This is such a non-issue. It must be a slow news day.
In the Australian Open "Bolt6" are replacing Hawkeye as a competitor, and their automated line calls failed dozens of times a day during the entire tournament. It's frustrating for the players and officials, embarrassing for Bolt6, but no one died. It's just something that can go wrong like any other factor.
aes_gcm@reddit
I remember listening to an interesting conversation between an Air Traffic Controller and a pilot, and the pilot's iPad had run out of battery, so they did not have access to any charts, navigation markers, radio frequencies, and altitude regulations. The ATC asked if they had a paper backup, which they are required to do (since it's, you know, a critical thing) and they did not. The controller was not happy about that, and it clearly made the controller's life 1000x harder, and of course they're not the only plane in the air.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
That's okay, I have a number for you to call once you safely land
iama_bad_person@reddit
Some pilots might prefer nosediving into the Everglades to calling that number 😂
coomzee@reddit
Depending on when this happened, paper charts are not carried on the aircraft. We have two EFBs on the aircraft.
TequilaCamper@reddit
How did sports ever survive before instant replay
whythehellnote@reddit
People would spend the next week arguing in person down the pub about whether it was a goal or not with no way to prove it one way or another
Drywesi@reddit
…so exactly what they do now?
twitch1982@reddit
The real answer here, is we didn't have high def TV either. So unless you were there, and had really good seats, you just went with the call of the judges and no one could argue it that much because we couldn't zoom into millimeter precision at 1/100th speed. This is my old man hill, it was better that way. The really dirty bit i think, is in a world of "engagement" theres no motivation for many sports to fix the things people complain about, because complaining = engagement.
lordjedi@reddit
You just made me hate sports more than I already do.
twitch1982@reddit
Though i may have made it seem this way, this is hardly a new phenomena nor is it exclusive to sport.
trail-g62Bim@reddit
They had judges, which I think they phased out for this.
Kinglink@reddit
They specifically did in this case.
I feel like having line judges and then going to Hawkeye for a challenge (limited challenge) would be more appropriate. This isn't even about "taking jobs" in my book, but I feel like the human element is a part of the game, as is challenging/arguing.
SartenSinAceite@reddit
The human element? You mean bribes? Cause thats all we get in football... All this hi tech fancy instant replay and instant recreations, but FIFA says that Team A paid more so Team A gets the advantage.
Kinglink@reddit
I mean FIFA is filthy, but if you think a robot can't be programmed to give one team an advantage.... I got news for you.
trail-g62Bim@reddit
I can't speak much about tennis but I can say that I never liked the "human element" argument when it comes to judging in other sports. We hear that a lot in baseball and it really translates to "we like it when umpires make mistakes that aren't fixed or follow their own rules without any recourse" and that drives me crazy.
nemec@reddit
MightySarlacc@reddit
Management is accountable?
Irverter@reddit
management is very different from enforcing sport rules
Jaereth@reddit
Exactly. Baseball being a huge one. Just let some computer decide if it was a strike or ball or not.
Players would adapt quickly because it would be wildly consistent.
FlyingBishop@reddit
Some rules can't be decided by a computer. You would need some kind of tensor model for certain things and it would likely remain somewhat unpredictable.
ghjm@reddit
That's probably true, but balls and strikes? Surely that's just the kind of thing a computer would be good at. Was it in the box or not?
lordjedi@reddit
What's the edge count as? Can the ball "touch" the outside edge and be a strike? I'm honestly asking since the box isn't a "hard" box. It's based on the height of the player. The width might be a "hard" line, but the height definitely varies somewhat.
ghjm@reddit
A modern computer system should have no trouble recognizing the height of the batter and adapting to it. That isn't even AI.
The rule is that if any part of the ball touches any part of the strike zone, it's a strike.
FlyingBishop@reddit
That requires AI, unless maybe you're putting a sensor in their cap and going off that, but then you still need something to do with the ball and I don't think you can put a chip in it. I guess probably you can paint it and the batter somehow and just use optics, but it still sounds a bit like AI. Not like, complicated AI, but there's a computer vision model in there doing something I think.
meeu@reddit
Players will be competing to out-slouch eachother to minimize the strike zone. We'll be selecting for short baseball players. A few hundred years and the MLB will be nothing buy pygmies.
anomalous_cowherd@reddit
I read a sci-fi book once that included various team sports like football or baseball. It was actually only two human players but the rest of the team were robots that were competent players but had no initiative, so what the humans did would drive the whole game for all players.
The key point here is that it turned out the robot officials were programmed to make on average one game-affecting wrong decision each game, because that made it more realistic...
TrueStoriesIpromise@reddit
That was a Piers Anthony novel.
Kinglink@reddit
Well there are exceptions (Angel Hernandez) I think the variable size of Strike zones and such add a level of complexity to Baseball, versus a very simple and straight forward strike zone that a computer adjudicates.
I'm not saying let the umpries make mistakes which aren't fixed (which is why I say having the challenge system is a good thing) or make up rules, but it feels a bit cold to have a computer mark something a strike or a ball, or have a human calling that off. It's the reason why a Baseball simulator really can never get the same feeling of a baseball game, but at best an approximation. The goal should be getting the baseball simulator to feel more like a real game, versus the game feel more electronic like a simulator.
Nik_Tesla@reddit
I dunno, I'd go the other way around. Hawkeye by default, but if it's a unique enough situation, revert to humans reviewing slomo footage.
scoldog@reddit
I suddenly feel like there's going to be a giant push for AI to be used in sports decisions going forward.
Pacers31Colts18@reddit
The hilarious thing about that is the tech didn't work, but the rules don't allow them to go to replay (at least that's what they said). For whatever reason, they replayed the point and the girl that had advantage ended up losing.
tdhuck@reddit
Some of the replay rules in sports are dumb.
This is all you need to see. MLB rules wouldn't allow a replay. That is just nuts. Someone needs to have the authority to say 'hold on, this was an absolute blown call that is being reversed.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfCfjT5BH9o
butteryasstreflip@reddit
this is reviewable now though
jaypeejay@reddit
I’m gonna guess before opening the link - it’s the blown call that ruined the perfect game?
tdhuck@reddit
Yup.
Rhythm_Killer@reddit
148 years in this case
moderatenerd@reddit
no jobs available yet: https://jobs.wimbledon.com/jobs?sort_type=relevance&query=&radius_location=&radius=8km&submit=Search&source=google.com
tankerkiller125real@reddit
If the dude prior got fired for a simple mistake it's not a job you want. I know a guy who made a multi-million dollar fuck up, he kept his job, and even got promoted later that year, he learned his lesson, and he'll probably never do it again, and he'll also teach every person below him about that mistake so they don't repeat it. On the flip side I also know people who were fired for $100 mistakes, most of the companies that fired them don't exist anymore, likely because they couldn't find employees willing to put up with their bullshit.
Kinglink@reddit
First question. Why do we have a system where 1 non-malicious action could cause a fuckup like that?
"We let people touch prod".
"We didn't run a sanity check"
"No QA tested the feature"
If there's a situation where a guy can fuck up that bad, there should be a better process, not trust another guy who might also fuck up.
sagewah@reddit
Have you seen the latest jurassic park movie? You'll be twitching and swearing and wanting to walk out in the first few minutes.
Kinglink@reddit
Nah I stopped at the World movie, because they felt like they just repackaged our original movie into a dry hollow shell of the former self.
But umm yeah, How did Jurassic World happen after Jurassic Park? Also "Let's bio engineer an even worse ve..."
You know what let's just say they're awful.
antihippy@reddit
So there are these entities called banks, and on multiple occasions simple typos have caused everything from multimillion pound fuck ups to entire banking systems going offline. And these banks have a process for everything. Old coders have been brought back out of retirement just to fix typos.
Kinglink@reddit
So they never ran these "Simple typos" against a test database?
Are you arguing that fuck ups happen? (Because I'm not disagreeing with it), or are you arguing we can never catch some fuck ups and shouldn't attempt to improve our testing because of that?
tankerkiller125real@reddit
Exactly, unfortunately far too many companies though don't think like that.
Kinglink@reddit
For sure, and you illustrate a great point, if your punitive against small mistakes (or big mistakes) it tells people "take less risk" which might be ok in QA, but can be awful in research and development.
There's a reason startups have said "Go fast break stuff". There's a reason why they succeed at times when the old guard struggle, because failure isn't punished in Startups the same way.
Cadoc7@reddit
You're never going to catch everything. And at large companies there are dozens of systems where every minute of downtime costs millions or tens of millions of dollars in either lost revenue or SLA credits.
Kinglink@reddit
This is true, but you analyze the reason for it going down. Did you push a bad build? Why? Did someone see a button that said "Update" and not realize it would cause a downtime. Or there was no confirmation on it that said "This is going to prod, are you sure?"
Sometimes someone will ignore those prompts, and we can say is that a personal fault or should there be something beyond a simple click yes to get there.
Like there's very few fuck ups that can't be mitigated in some way. It'll be more expensive for sure (have your manager/QA verify the system is on, takes some of my manager/QA's time but it's worth it)
The point is I work at one of those large companies and every time there's a major outage, there's more than a few documents written how to avoid that in the future. It's also why MORE QA should be included in most product.
Sadly the goal for many companies is less.
219MSP@reddit
Don't follow young people pickle ball, whats Hawkeye.
RoaringRiley@reddit
A quick Google search revealed that tennis has existed way longer that pickleball. What is this even supposed to mean?
219MSP@reddit
Is a joke…
Brraaap@reddit
I'm assuming the Hawkeye VSAT until someone says otherwise
whythehellnote@reddit
Really isn't, that's a satellite communication system
jreykdal@reddit
Sony owned computer vision thing.
https://www.hawkeyeinnovations.com/
kellyzdude@reddit
Used in a lot of sports, not just tennis, where tracking of Things is of value either for broadcast/instant replay, or just for officiating - in/out, on-side/off-side, etc. Even when it isn't mentioned there is a good chance it is being used.
clef75@reddit
Yeah this post seems to assume we know about a lot of things
glisteningoxygen@reddit
For Americans in the thread - the rest of the world has sports which are played by multiple countries and can be articulated without three letter abbreviations.
This one is called "tennis"
Habreno@reddit
What, it's not called TNS?
ispoiler@reddit
Im not quite sure I understand. Is this one of those sports like soccer where it's always been called soccer and at some point ya'll changed the name to football and are pissed at us because we still call it soccer since we already have a football?
ispoiler@reddit
Im not quite sure I understand. Is this one of those sports like soccer where it's always been called soccer and at some point ya'll changed the name to football and are pissed at us because we still call it soccer since we already have a football?
terzaghi10@reddit
Coco just won the French open a few weeks ago..
terzaghi10@reddit
10s
Connect_Hospital_270@reddit
Tennis is everywhere in the U.S.
Hell, even my working class HS in the rural Midwest had and has Tennis courts with state tournaments involved.
thejimbo56@reddit
We have tennis here, dawg.
You may have heard of Agassi, McEnroe, Sampras, Connors, Williams, or Williams?
TYGRDez@reddit
I know who Williams is, but who's Williams?
thejimbo56@reddit
The other one
sexybobo@reddit
Americans know about tennis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_at_the_Summer_Olympics#All-time
glisteningoxygen@reddit
Fake news.
Burning_Eddie@reddit
Fault!
purerddt2025@reddit
ATP? ITF?
Frothyleet@reddit
Do you think Americans don't play tennis? It's not even called something different.
I enjoy poking fun but that's a pretty weak shot
jamesaepp@reddit
Ludicrous display last night.
CouldBeALeotard@reddit
I've got a pony on Pavlyuchenkova, so I'll probably never see that again.
joshghz@reddit
The thing about Wimbledon is they always try to walk it in.
fahque@reddit
What was Wenger thinking?
Fantastic_Estate_303@reddit
Have they tried turning it off and on again?
Nik_Tesla@reddit
I mean, it's pretty normal not to name names publicly when a tech makes a mistake (recipe for a lawsuit from that employee). Management can send out a decision maker to jump on the grenade, but I've never heard of a company naming a specific grunt level worker before, unless what they did was illegal and it lead to charges.
terzaghi10@reddit
As someone who made a career change from the tennis world to IT, I never thought I'd see a Wimbledon post in sysadmin.
KAugsburger@reddit
I initially thought this was r/tennis as well. It wasn't until I saw some comments on the more technical details when I realized it wasn't.
bschmidt25@reddit
There have been a lot of people who don't like the new automated system because it replaced humans with machines and allowed them to fire all of the line judges, and some UK politicians have weighed in on it, so this is a political thing in addition to the media playing the hot hand. A lot of tennis traditionalists / purists don't like change when you're talking about Wimbledon. The US and Australian Open already made the move to an automated system - only the French Open has human line judges now. Basically, the argument the purists make is that they don't care if computers are more accurate. They just want things the way they always have been, and they resent that all of the human line judges were made redundant.
Optimaximal@reddit
As an IT manager, you should be all too aware of a) the prospect of people replacing job roles with machine learning or automation and b) how bad it is unless you hold its hand or refine it to within an inch of its life...
bschmidt25@reddit
I don't disagree at all
whythehellnote@reddit
I've caused my fair share of headline events. Its very rare to be an individual's engineers fault. I did have one time when someone de-routed main, TX switch to reserve, then they de-routed reserve. Probably the closest I've seen to a specific individual at fault, but even then there was legitimate confusion about why it happened.
Ultimately though nobody died, and although many teeth were gnashed, life goes on.
If someone needs to fall on their sword, it needs to be someone with a job title starting "Chief".
vCentered@reddit
The funny thing is the media doesn't even care about the story, they just want blood in the water to draw their audience.
Doesn't matter whose blood or why.
DopeFlavorRum@reddit
What a smart and useful comment. Big brain.
vCentered@reddit
That's awkward.
DopeFlavorRum@reddit
Go fuck yourself retard.
YodasTinyLightsaber@reddit
"Give us blood, bread, and circus!" - All civilization ever
reserved_seating@reddit
All media*
Jkabaseball@reddit
There should be some kind of status the chair judge can refer to. The fact it can manually be turned off and no one would be the wiser is not a great look. Bad calls are just part of sports though. Human judges have been wrong a lot more than Hawkeye has been. Before this, Hawkeye was used as a review/challenge system. Seems like they wanted to save some costs, so they swapped the production and backup systems, then cut the backup systems.
Likely_a_bot@reddit
The first casualty of AI.