[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

, the human player is given free reign over whipping balls at robots to cause penalties. In effect, by saying "the driver is guilty of goaltending whether he meant to or not," you are absolving the human player of all responsibility for any malicious action he takes.

I personally think it's a little silly for a human player to maliciously "whip" balls at a robot in order to get them penalized. Why would anyone want to whip a ball at a robot (w/ or w/o a 2x ball)? Seems like a waste of time and possible points to be made elsewhere, even if you had good aim over the 7ft wall to "whip" it. I guess it could be a strategy but not a very good one (imo). You could wait the extra few seconds until they uncap it for you, and start making shots.

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

You defined "toward" in the very next paragraph. So what if a human player intends to hit the robot which is not in the way of the goal (i.e. he could hit the goal but goes for the robot beside it)?

Well, taking all judge of "intent" out, if a robot is beside the goal, hp shoots the ball and it hits the robot, then I wouldn't really consider that as the ball going "towards" the goal anymore. You already passed the point of "toward" if it hit a robot sitting next to the goal, and you can either have a ball goal in the goal, or hit a robot sitting beside the goal, but not both. If the robot is just sitting there on the side minding it's own business, not impeding your ball's downward flight, and you throw a ball at the robot, how is that goaltending? That's called dodge ball, and the robot is out! That's like if a robot was behind the goal, you overshot the ball to the goal, and it hits the robot sitting behind it, that's not goaltending. This really is being over-thought when the rules are pretty simple.

As said many times now, you simply cannot expect the judges to call "intentions" of a team's action. This is not sports and you won't change it. The rules are there to be followed. The rules are there to help refs make good, fair calls that are equal for all teams. Judging intentions of a robot cannot be done by a standard set of guidelines, even though some sports try to do so. But especially in this environment and this situation, it's just not feasible.... Unless they can read minds, but let me bet, they can't. Even if they could, it's not based on intentions.

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

I think refs, having the final say and all, can handle judgment calls without fear of annoying high school students whining about their calls. I think in the same way that they are instructed to think of "toward" as you said, they can successfully be given a guideline to determine intent.

Yeah right.. if we let actions be judged on intent, we'd not only have the high school students "whining", but everyone else in the building. Again, that's why we have rules... rules are written as best they can to avoid relying on anyone's opinion of what happened. (no i don't know the background of why the rules were written, but I believe that's one part of it ) We have a rule that states "a robot cannot cross the diamond plate wall into the hp ball corral". Should a ref back down on that penalty simply because the driver said "I didn't mean to cross into the corral, really I didn't".
As for the situation described earlier, if two robots are fighting over a 2x ball, I can't really give an opinion on that, I'm not sure what happens. I haven't seen it happen, and really hadn't thought about it. But you cannot goaltend yourself. I think that was discussed early in the season too.

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

We have paraded around my bias; to you the rules are clear. To me, they are not. Maybe that means I'm too stupid to figure them out, but judging by the fact that this YMTC exists, I'd say that they may not be as clear as you might believe.

No, you're not too stupid. I just think that some of the rules have been debated over and argued about and twisted any which way they could be in order to have a debate. Not deliberately, but any little loop hole that can be found to dance around the rule, it'll be debated.

This thread started out as a "is it goaltending if you uncap a goal?" type situation and YES.. it's goaltending because the rule says so. But all the little misinterpretations or "but it could mean this" gets blown out of proportion and tend to snowball.

I do believe, although the rules are pretty clear on most/all subjects, it's good to have the questions and debates come about to a certain extent. It does alert those in charge of things that need to be cleared up and even sometimes clarified at events so that everyone is on the same page.

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

I actually don't mind the goaltending rules as they are that much, and yes I realize they are the rules. I said that already. That doesn't mean we can't debate them and possibly work toward reforming them, does it?