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Ok, let's assume lowering your score in the eliminations is winning in a backhand way. Teams which engage in this "ungrasious and unproffesional backhand" strategy are at no fault of their own, rather it is FIRST's fault, because they leave the possibility of it helping teams? I find this difficult to believe. It is the responsibility of all teams to practice gracious proffesionalism, and to follow the spirit of the rules, it is not FIRST's responsibility to make it impossible for teams to act ungracious and unproffesional.
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You must not have received a copy of 'The Memo'.
1. Teams with numbers of 150 or less are qualified to interpret the definition of 'Gracious Professionalism'.
2. Teams with numbers less than 200 are qualified to interpret 'the spirit and intent of FIRST'.
3. Teams with numbers less than 250 are qualified to interpret what Dean really intends the goals to be.
4. Teams with numbers less than 300 are qualified to rule on the role of engineers and mentors during the design and construction process.
5. Teams with numbers less than 350 are qualified to define the appropriateness of massive funding versus the challenges of running a team with a minimal budget.
6. Teams with numbers less than 400 are qualified to interpret the scoring system and define the concept of competition vs cooperation.
7. All teams are qualified to blame Battlebots for whatever reason.
8. People who have not yet graduated from college are allowed to construct messages without capitalization, punctuation, or spelling considerations.
9. Adults are not allowed to post humorous messages.
10. All messages should be taken way to seriously.
11. Teams with numbers less than 275 are allowed to reminisce about how great it used to be before all these new teams showed up.
12. ...
There are many dichotomies that we learn about over time. Things like the interaction between 'people who create' and 'people who count things', or 'people who make things stable' and 'people who change things'.
Much of this debate is the interaction between 'people who make rules' and 'people who play the game'. How many of us have been involved in a competition where the game starts out with one page of rules? If it is highly competitive, and allows multiple solutions to the challenge, the rule book will grow to 50 pages within 4 years. Simply put, it is very difficult to document in extremely clear language what the intent truly is.
When you add human judges into the mix, you add the element of interpretation and personal bias. This becomes very frustrating to people who are passionate about how they believe the game should be played, or how teams should behave.
FIRST is fortunate to have many people involved that are passionate about the fundamental issue of allowing students to interact with people of technical background on a project that is so challenging. Forums are a collections of opinions. We need to respect that many of these opinions come from passionate people, all trying to shape this activity into what they believe is the correct experience.
If the FIRST officials feel that the competition has taken a bad turn, then they need to clarify and enforce the rules accordingly. As participants, we play the game according to our interpretation of the rules. We can make proposals to FIRST that may shape next years game. Seems to me the concept of qualifying points might be an appropriate discussion.