Dear WCA Community,

In the last 3 months the Disciplinary Committee has worked on many cases of cheating and inappropriate behavior. We have also onboarded some new members, enabling us to spread this work with more ease among the team. At the same time, the diversity provided by a large team helps analyze all the incidents from different points of view.

During 2023 we have opened 77 new investigations, a handful of which are still ongoing. In this last digest of the year we would like to discuss two of the cases that we have recently worked on.

The first of these two cases is related to events that happened back in 2020, when a competitor was banned for stealing a cube from a fellow cuber. The ban did not have a set end date, but was conditional on returning the stolen cube and responding to the questions posed by the WDC.

In 2022, the thief tried to evade the ban by signing up with a new WCA account. The delegates of the competition realized this only at the time of submitting the results, as the WCA website informed them of a possible clash of identities between the two accounts. The competitor did not reply to our questions about this incident.

Finally, in the fall of 2023 the competitor communicated to us that they had come to an agreement with the victim of the theft about the stolen cube. The WDC was able to confirm this, but we decided that the attempt of evading the ban deserved some punishment. Therefore, we set the end date of the ban to 6 months after the time the competitor came forward to us.

The second case is about a record-holding competitor being caught cheating by making moves in inspection in multiple events. We have been able to prove that this behavior has been going on for at least one year.

The competitor has been generally uncooperative, denying any wrongdoing until we provided them with complete video evidence. As such, we decided it was not possible to trust the competitor when they claimed the illicit behavior started, and we opted for disqualifying all of their results. However, we offered them the option of reinstating some of the results if sufficient video evidence is provided. We plan to share a public report of the incident in the near future.

In relation to the last incident discussed above, we unfortunately have to remark that there has been some public discussion on this case that may have had a negative effect on our investigation. For example, if a competitor is alerted that some of their YouTube videos contain proof of their cheating, they may be able to remove them from their channel before the Disciplinary Committee can watch them or download them. We would like to ask all community members not to interfere with any disciplinary investigation that they are aware of, and to limit themselves to reporting any incident to the WDC rather than bringing it to public attention.

To conclude this digest, I would like to give a final message as the leader of the Disciplinary Committee. In fact, my second mandate will be ending in February and I am not going to continue in this role after that time - the selection process for a new leader has already started.

My time as a WDC leader started during the COVID times, which was definitely an unusual period for our activities. But even ignoring this, the WCA has gone through constant change during this time - the size of the cubing community alone has increased considerably. This means that we - the WCA in general, and the WDC in particular - had and will have to keep adapting to these changes. I am confident we will be successful in this.

One thing that has not changed throughout the years is the desire of community members to step up and help the WCA with their energy and skills - something I had the pleasure to witness in the two calls for applicants that opened during my leadership. This is not something to be taken for granted, and I am delighted to be part of a volunteer-based organization as successful as the WCA. Thank you all for your help!

Best regards,
Sebastiano Tronto
On behalf of the WCA Disciplinary Committee