Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Little League wants all your information

honeypot.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 193 posts

Re: Little League wants all your information

#111

Post by Teever »

topkai22 wrote: post #77
yTh0rly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything? Why not just get kids together to play baseball? Why capital Little capital League? Why do we have to normalize towards an organizational system? Academically it all makes sense; our scientific truth must be rigorously vetted. This all just feels like busy work for no gain for most people. I really…

>> Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others? Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from developme…

> Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from development.

How did people coordinate this before the invention of all these digital communication devices that we now find our selves so desperately dependent on like we're stuck in The Matrix?

Re: Little League wants all your information

#112

Post by snapetom »

dragonwriter wrote: post #76
yTh0rly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious since you actually went through the effort to be a part of the org: why do we need to formalize everything? Why not just get kids together to play baseball? Why capital Little capital League? Why do we have to normalize towards an organizational system? Academically it all makes sense; our scientific truth must be rigorously vetted. This all just feels like busy work for no gain for most people. I really…

> Why not just get kids together to play baseball? You can, if everyone trusts everyone involved, and you just want some casual fun. But beyond that... Some of the developmental/training issues have been mentioned, as well as some allusion to safety. Also related is liability; do it enough and there are going to be injuries, some of them serious. And if you haven't planned for this, it's quite easy for someone to une…

Let's be honest. Safety and liability issue is a convenient excuse and in reality, a small part of the reason.

The developmental aspect is the real reason. When you're talking about the 7/8/9 grades, the point of Little League is to get the attention of scouts for professional organizations and colleges. When you introduce millions in signing bonuses to an 18 year old or athletic scholarships, you're begging for adults to poison the well. Little League has a history of cheaters and the organization, at best, is frequently overwhelmed in dealing with them.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#113

Post by neolog »

Retric wrote: post #94
GeneralMayhem wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely can find recreational leagues that are less rigorous - although for safety reasons they'll still tend to be particular about ages. Baseball is a relatively dangerous sport if there's a massive imbalance. It's important that pitch speed, bat speed, reaction times, and overall mass scale up smoothly and roughly uniformly. The reason why it's so formalized beyond that is that travel ball at 11-12 years ol…

Why not cover the safety aspect with simple height and or weight ranges like boxing etc? That seems like it would work better and is much easier to check.

There is probably some risk of incentivizing kids to mess with their weight.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#114

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

Teever wrote: post #111
topkai22 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Is it so hard to set up a game between your kids and others? Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from developme…

> Yes. Yes, it is actually reasonably hard to coordinate 18+ kids and thier familes (thats the minimum size for two baseball teams), have an experienced adult coach them, and hire a referee (if that is judged to be necessary), coordinate field usage, advocate for local governments to set aside sports and play space and protect existing space from development. How did people coordinate this before the invention of all…

>How did people coordinate this...

I think you might be referring to a time when kids could play unsupervised and before independence-building play was replaced with wall-to-wall no-trespassing signs and overseen by a system that makes sure each minor transgression is forever leveraged into multiple, life-harming punishments.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#115

Post by kstrauser »

chrisseaton wrote: post #97
throwawayboise wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are we scared of here? People coming over the border to steal Little League coaching for their children? Yes, exactly this. It happens. It really does. In all sports. And not just parents seeking out "good" teams and coaches, but coaches recruiting kids to play. It gets to the point where parents put their kids in online schools, or private schools operated by a travel sports organization, so that they can get…

But what’s the problem? Child illegitimately getting to play sport doesn’t seem like the crime of the century to me?

Here’s what happens when you don’t have residency rules:

Suppose you have suburb A next to suburb B. B has an awesome Little League local organization, but A’s is awful. Parents from A all send their kids to play ball in B. The problem is that B’s resources are finite, too: there are only so many baseball fields available for practice at a time, or batting practice cages, etc. And since the kids from A that are coming over tend to be the more skilled ones, if B has too many kids apply than they have the resources, they’ll likely end up dropping the kids who actually live in B.

This is much, much more likely than you’d expect if you’ve never been directly involved with kids’ sports. You’d be amazed how many parents think their kid would be the next MLB rookie-of-the-year.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#116

Post by kstrauser »

Taniwha wrote: post #57
SkyPuncher wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played soccer in HS. There were rumors of aspiring players parents renting apartments in different districts to make them eligible for a certain league or district. I'm guessing this takes aim at parents who are trying to easily forge eligibility of their child.

Yeah but: I volunteered in a High School in East Oakland a couple of decades back - the school football team won the state championship, people were so proud, then they were disqualified because their star player was living in a car with his mom .... didn't have a fixed Oakland address even though he lived there. Some people don't have the luxury of an address, much less 3 forms of address .... but every kid should b…

For sure. Out of curiosity, do you know of a good compromise that would allow the kid to play while still keeping the rules mostly in place for other kids?

Re: Little League wants all your information

#117

Post by pieno »

Spooky23 wrote: post #13
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Oh hey, Hacker News! This is my post. I’m not strictly allergic to proving that I live in a certain place, so long as the evidence is securely deleted afterward. I’m very opposed to the idea that they can share all of those records with any of their partners or sponsors as they see fit. For example, “proof of residency 3” includes financial or medical records. Suppose that Large Corporation donates $1,000 to Little L…

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

You’ve just written an excellent foundation for a privacy policy. It clearly explains most of what data you need and what you’ll use it for - that’s exactly the fundamentals of a good privacy policy. Add some stuff on where/how you store and secure it, when you delete it, and who to contact to update/delete info or complain, and you’re 99% done.

I think it’s lazy and bad form to ask for extremely broad catch-all consents to personal data usage, which basically become meaningless as a result. Those remind me of a famous “meme-ified” scene from Parks and Recreation where Ron shows a homemade ‘permit’ to an inspector that says: “I can do whatever I want. /s/ Ron.”

At least in the EU there’s the GDPR mandating that consent be specific and freely given. If only data collecting organisations would stop focussing so much on the cookie consent nag screens and take their compliance with the rest of the GDPR equally serious...

Re: Little League wants all your information

#118

Post by TylerE »

saagarjha wrote: post #83
Spooky23 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference being Linus knows what he’s talking about.

1. Not always he doesn't and 2. I fail to see anything wrong with that comment.

It's typical self-righteous tech elitest drivel. What's not wrong with it? About the only thing missing is a reference to how anyone with two braincells uses Brave browser and buys bitcoin.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#119

Post by Tempest1981 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #70
Spooky23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just poorly written, or written to fit all use cases. There is a lot behind little league, and it’s not obvious until you get into it. I was on a little league board. In my state, we had pretty strict background check requirements, and those providers were the “trusted partners” that were given sensitive information. Now, little league volunteers are mandated reporters in New York, so the government g…

> Age is very important for leveling kids appropriately and keeping them safe Size/strength and emotional maturity might be, age is at best a very loose proxy for those which fails quite often.

They have tryouts, to get into the more advanced leagues. Maybe they need the opposite, to prevent skilled kids from staying in the beginners leagues.

Re: Little League wants all your information

#120

Post by ketamine__ »

TylerE wrote: post #118
saagarjha wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Not always he doesn't and 2. I fail to see anything wrong with that comment.

It's typical self-righteous tech elitest drivel. What's not wrong with it? About the only thing missing is a reference to how anyone with two braincells uses Brave browser and buys bitcoin.

Actually, Brave gets a lot of hate here.
Post reply on HN