[Tristan Lall]

I'm right with you, Bob and Ike.

Ordinarily, the inspectors need to lean toward the most lenient ruling that still follows from a strict interpretation of the rules. (In other words, a conscientious team may have followed the rules in a way that was not intended. Ideally they should not be inconvenienced, as long as they are in strict compliance with the text of the requirement, and irrespective of FIRST's unstated intent.)

In exceptional circumstances, there can be deviations from this, but they are difficult to justify systematically, and end up driven by equity rather than by parity. (This crops up when FIRST or its quasi-representatives send mixed messages; the team was not in compliance with the rule, but was in compliance with what FIRST represented to them. Unfortunately, in this case, without the strict support of the rules, there are definite issues with unbalancing the competition to a small or large extent.) These are the most complicated special cases that require inspectors to not only know the rules, but also be familiar with FIRST's inner workings and the reactions of the community. What passes for equity at one event is not necessarily equitable across an entire season's worth of events—and this degree of inequity can't even be said to be predictable. The more we depend on this kind of ruling, the further we depart from consistency among events.

This minibot switch began as the former case—manageable, with a sufficiently lenient definition of "common household light switch"—and devolved into the latter with the Q&As and updates that offered several interpretations of the rule's meaning.

And while I realize that neither case is really what FIRST wanted—I presume they initially wanted a strict interpretation based on the GDC's intent—the rule was not written in a way that supports that method of enforcement. The credibility of the competition suffers even more when teams are asked to comply, not because of what the rules say, but because of what FIRST intended them to say.

As for intent statements, FIRST has managed to phase them into the rules in a couple places (in the form of blue boxes), but those are presently quite inconsistent in usage. A real intent statement needs to be something that aids in the interpretation of the meaning of the rule (e.g. specifies which meaning of a word to use), without adding any necessary elements of the rule itself—several rules and definitions in the 2011 manual fail on this account.

What we really need to see is strict and clear specifications for the things that are actually critical to the competition. Then, for everything else, impose as few restrictions as possible.*

*First stop: pneumatics. Although these rules were significantly improved with the permission to use a variety of actuators and reservoirs, there's really only one universal failure mode that must be avoided at all costs: explosive failure. As for game considerations, flow rate can be controlled with pressure and orifice specifications. Given pressure, we can set capacity (if air is intended to be scarce as a part of the game challenge) and actuator size (if force is a concern). Apart from that, do we really need any pneumatics rules? Does it matter that we're using Ø0.160 in ID pneumatic tubing instead of Ø2 mm ID tubing? If a device will fail non-catastrophically (not with a bang, but instead with the whimper of a rubber gasket being overcome), is it really FIRST's problem that the team didn't read the spec sheet?