Hey there,
Some of my colleagues are ultimate players. And they explained to me that they are no refs on site. Even at world championship level.
I couldn’t believe it at all! But it is true. Everything is self referred. Every situation is discussed between the 2 players concerned.
I dream so much of bike polo to be at this level of consciousness.
Some explanation Here
Very inspiring no ?
For that to work, players would have to know the rules.
I have heard of this and share your hope that we could have polo follow a similar path. It feels like most of this woes we worry about could be solved if we took a different approach to accountability. Not saying it needs to be the same but a model based off the base that Ultimate has made seems doable. I think it would be more than worth to workshop how it would work and get down to the brass tacks.
@Cleftintwain You could have some sort of EULA you have to sign before tournaments 
That inspires me!
I think I will try to attend a ultimate game see how it works.
Clefty has a point. However I think it is the case already now, otherwise you can’t play on the thin line between freedom/faulty and are either too careful or too dangerous. Plus, we use to know the rules to argue with refs (but we shouldn’t, or reasonably)
So I think the player’s knowledge is a point in both case.
Main point I have difficulty with, is linked to game format. Ultimate has the time (75 to 90min games) to settle thing. Main reason for having a ref in bike polo is to settle thing quickly in a ~15min game.
But in my case I think it could be a good spirit for our club’s pickups, that are today not even reffed.
Hey Lucas, have you guys tried this approach for the pickups? If so, how did it go?
I think this is an absolutely worthwhile thing to try, one we kind of apply in our club, given a few conditions:
Other than that I mostly see the upsides - people get to know the rules better and ride/play more respectfully, and there’s hopefully less tensions.
One downside or rather a challenge I see in general is that Ultimate is also a comparatively much more static game, and continuing the game with an appropriate resolution is easier in all three cases (agree on a team A opinion, agree on a team B opinion, disagree), and stopping the play to discuss the call is breaking up the game dynamics a lot.
I agree that this needs to be play tested, we could work out the kinks and see what works. I feel the biggest challenge is the perceived disruption that it would have to a pick up game. Although I think in reality it would be much less or around the same lost by out of bounds balls. Not to mention the lag between games.
I could see a system of challenges, like you see in professional sports. Maybe each player gets two? If we are all trying to be honest, we could just believe when foul is called, and put a price on challenging the majority.
I would hope what happens by us all contributing to calls is that false calls(flops) become less of a thing and people strive for truth and accountability. Fair is more fun. With people being more engaged and a part of the play I could see us coming to better rules for gray areas that still need ironed out, and rules that shape the future of the game.
Graham from Alaska wrote a ruleset trying to work with the Ultimate philosophy and we playtested it at a tournament in DC. It did not go great and there were a lot of bad feels and negative feedback. I could probably dig up the document if people want to read it.
A big difference is that Ultimate is not a contact sport