Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonmw04
This is what is happening. Teams can still say the following:
we have started, 2 FRC teams and mentored 12 others. We have started 14 FLL teams and mentored 35. We have started 8 FTC teams and mentored 10.
what is going to stop a team from doing this again? nothing.
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Before if teams made a statement like that and were called out on it, they could fall back on the "oh, well by mentored we meant emailing them once during the season, and by started we meant we sent them a link to usfirst.org". Now that grey area is removed. Teams would have to straight up lie to make a statement like that, as opposed to just stretching the truth. Yes, you are correct, it's not going to stop the teams who are fully willing to cheat, however it is going to make a lot of teams pause, especially those who were making a habit of living in the grey area.
Couple this with the fact that winning Chairman's essays now need to be published, it would take a lot of gumption for a team to lie knowing that other teams may call them out based on these new definitions.
Is this a perfect solution? Obviously not. At the core of FRC is an honour system. Teams who blatantly ignore this honour system are always going to gain an advantage. I've seen teams make the elimination rounds at regionals with a robot they illegally worked on by taking it out of the bag and I've seen teams win Chairman's by claiming to start and mentor teams that they barely had any association with. However, these definitions will definitely collapse a lot of the grey areas of terminology that many teams have been exploiting (either intentionally or accidentally) over the years. Perfect? Nope, but a definite improvement.