Discussion: Forbidden Features

I wrote a really boring article about Forbidden Features in orienteering. It is published in the recent ONA, plus possibly in upcoming Compass Sport & Australian Orienteer. Boring stuff - but if you read it then you might avoid an upcoming sprint DSQ ;-) And if you're course planning any Sprints then you should for sure read it.

You can find it online at www.barebones.ca

Yeah, I was more than a little pissed that not only did a bunch of folks fail to notice the uncrossable feature on the map at last weekends Hawn sprint, but they tore down the flagging tape I had put up to prevent people from climbing over the locked gate. If you're going to cheat, do it discretely.

BTW, I read the article in ONA and thought it was great.

Yes, I thought it was good too. Recommended reading for all sprinters.

I agree. Nice one.

Particularly in sprint orienteering the organizer has to hit the heads of the participants over and over again to drill in to them that uncrossable features are NOT TO BE CROSSED with possible sanction of disqualification. Use the pre-meet notes on the website, again on the bulletin handed out at registration and even with signs at the start. We North American orienteers are just not yet used to the idea that something we can cross may actually be uncrossable in competition terms.
There are two good reasons for designating a feature as uncrossable. 1) It could be dangerous for the participant to do so. 2) the property owner who has given permission for the meet to take place does not want the participants to cross that feature. As far as the first - tough luck to anyone who enters and finds himself in trouble. As far as the second this we must all police together or an area where a club has invested a lot in working with the owner and creating a map could find that investment lost in the blink of an eye.

I thought the article was great and we are going to discuss it with the Juniors at the 2010 NE Juniors Training Camp next weekend. I think it is a great teaching tool for orienteers but especially the juniors who lot of times don't read all of things Event directors post or put out about the event. I hope that is is ok that we are going to copy the article and hand it out to the kids while discussing it. Thank you for writing it. I found it to be very informative and useful as a teaching tool.

We have lots of troubles with flower beds in Australia. People crossing them that is.

Really well written - not even remotely boring. I've made it headline news on the Orienteering Ontario website.

Thanks for all the nice feedback - I'm happy people find it useful. Please feel free to copy it for the kids.

A good article. However, even with all the knowledge it is difficult when up to 50% of our participants in Sprint orienteering within our metropolitan areas (not forest maps) are non-members or irregular orienteers. They barely know what a legend is let alone remember the myriad symbols but are often quite competitive. Admittedly their knowledge evolves and they become purer and fairer orienteers, but that does not stop unintentional and totally unaware infringements occurring. Course setting can take this into account in some way, but often at the expense of a technical course for the better orienteers.

Before our weeknight sprints, I always go over the forbidden features rules. I also make a point of listing the uncrossable features separately from the rest of the legend (e.g., here). As you can see from that course, I agree that using the uncrossable features is a good way to make an otherwise trivial course more interesting.

I didn't think such pre-race instructions would be necessary at an A-meet, but I was obviously wrong about that. Lesson learned.

That's a great idea, Eric. I think I'd go one step further and change "Uncrossable" to "Uncrossable (forbidden to cross)". When this has been an issue in meets I've attended, it sounds like some people interpret the word "uncrossable" as a challenge. "Sure, that fence might be uncrossable for *you*..."

Similarly, we put a purple box around such features in the legend with the title "These features must not be crossed or entered."

These days we attract a fair number of Adventure Racers to our events. Those who are new to Orienteering certainly seem to see such things as a challenge rather a hard-and-fast rule.

I know of only 3 ways to prevent crossing of uncrossable features at sprints: marshals, marshals, and marshals.

And I assure you, it is not just newbies, even when the mapping and terrain are unambiguous, and the rules are well known.

You reckon you *are* allowed to cross the settlement-green ISOM symbol? I never knew that! Don't suppose there's much point in asking where that rule isn't written down :(

Meanwhile, is the mapper meant to decide what the landowner will subsequently decide is OOB? Or is the planner meant to update the map?

I think there is a misprint under 203: should be "ISSOM", not ISOM. What horrible acronyms these are.

Regarding the olive green ISOM-527 Settlement symbol:

The ISOM does not specify this as a forbidden feature. The text of the ISOM description is: Houses and gardens and other built up areas. Roads, buildings and other significant features within a settlement must be shown. If all buildings cannot be shown, an alternative symbol (black line screen) may be used.

However in the USA and Canada, and possibly other places, the national rules specify that private areas are forbidden.

So, to be pedantic, these areas probably are forbidden - but not by the mapping specification. What mappers could do to avoid any ambiguity is overprint these areas with the black or the purple out-of-bounds symbol.

Regarding the "misprint under 203" - I'm not sure what this is referring to (is it a nice way of saying that I screwed something up in the article?)

Regarding who should decide what is OOB (mapper or planner):

The ISSOM calls for collaboration between mapper & course planner, with an entire section (2.6) dedicated to the topic. An excerpt:

Both mapmaker and course planner should consider all possible route choices and make decisions on impassable features and out-of-bounds areas.

Well, I get confused between what ISOM and ISSOM actually mean - one is [normal] O maps, the other Sprint maps. In the 2nd box down in discussing the 203 (Passable Rock face) symbol, under the ISOM column you have written "Same as ISOM definition". I take it that should read "Same as ISSOM definition". Otherwise I'm more confused than I actually thought I was.

Right - that was a typo on my part. Thanks for pointing it out. I've updated that file.

Fantastic piece of valuable work Adrian. Thanks. Amoung other things, it makes me think - with the various rules, interpretations, confusion like this, is it any wonder it is hard to attract/keep people in the sport, compared to say, table tennis?

The way we write our rules is not the best.

The IOF rules (on which most countries pattern their national rules) contain a huge amount of stuff that relate to organisers' obligations. If you as a participant are looking for the "rules of the game" it is really difficult.

And there are next to no "rules of the game" in the ISOM - only the five (?) OOB symbols mentioned above. How many orienteers (apart from mappers) do you suppose have ever looked at it? We learn on the ground with a map in our hands.

Then with sprinting they introduced all these additional OOB symbols - and the only place they exist is in the (separate) mapping specification! Against a background of the rules being unfriendly, and the mapping specifications not seeming relevant, why would you read the ISSOM?

We need a straightforward "Rules of the Game" document. The rogainers do this a lot better, with separate parts of the rules aimed at organisers and participants.

Gordhun made a very good point in his post. He wrote:

"There are two good reasons for designating a feature as uncrossable. 1) It could be dangerous for the participant to do so. 2) the property owner who has given permission for the meet to take place does not want the participants to cross that feature. As far as the first - tough luck to anyone who enters and finds himself in trouble. As far as the second this we must all police together or an area where a club has invested a lot in working with the owner and creating a map could find that investment lost in the blink of an eye."

Point #2 is very important. One person can cost a club a huge investment and equally important ruin the future enjoyment of our sport by many. Perhaps the potential DSQ is not a harsh enough penalty especially if the resulting action costs a club a huge investment. Perhaps in addition to the straight forward "rules of the game" we also need a 'code of conduct' (or perhaps it already exists).

I agree, there should be tougher penalties and it should be more clearly advertised at the start.

I think though, that organizers must be careful not to load on the runners with the entire burden of staying out of forbidden areas. Runners can inadvertently enter forbidden areas - either by making mistakes or by using "map simplification" (i.e. not even noticing there is a forbidden feature).

So if an area is especially sensitive due to land-holder issues then I think the course planners should consider keeping courses far away from that area, or mark it in the terrain with tape, or even have marshals in the area (to prevent infractions, by the way, not to penalize them ;-)