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Re: YMTC: Your Thoughts
I'm sorry but I don't see the benefit of not discussing possible inconsistencies or controversies during the time we need to worry about them as robot designers. As Wetzel rightly pointed out, FIRST has its eye on these, and even if those who made ad hoc rulings and clarifications didn't directly follow chiefdelphi.com, the fact that the FIRST community is discussing issues that need to be addressed would be enough for them to issue such a clarification or ruling. Al Skierkiewicz mentioned an example in the most recent YMTC that under slightly different circumstances, a rule might have proven troublesome to Wildstang. Altering his example slightly, imagine getting to competition and finding out the inspectors interpreted the rules differently from you and told you your robot was overweight. To extend this, imagine three or four teams had this problem and hadn't thought to go through the arguably convoluted process of Q&A.*
In fact, if I were to ask Q&A eleven months ago what a ref would say if a human player threw a ball at the doubler being fought over by two robots, I would be told to refer to the rules or not responded to at all. I'm sure some of you would say, "But YMTC isn't official and can mislead people." I don't see how this could realistically happen. There are two things YMTC will do here, both good: first, it will bring to a team's attention that their interpretation of a rule might not be the right one, and second, it will place enough of a spotlight on the issue for FIRST to make a ruling. Suddenly that silly question in Q&A queue doesn't get dismissed so easily (yes I realize the example is pretty trivial).
I respect the motivation behind Steve's and meaubry's positions; the tapemeasure ruling of 2002 was probably not a good decision, but it was right to make a decision. Had there not been a ruling on this grey area, chaos would ensue, perhaps from regional to regional as Steve mentioned. Steve uses the word "consistency" to describe this situation, but I would say that FIRST was at least more consistent by making a globally binding ruling partway through the season. I have spoken with Steve and other members on my team about this particular one, and they hold the same opinion as I--that it was a bad decision. But a bad decision is better than no decision in this case. YMTC will help FIRST to not only make a decision when it is needed, but to make the right one.
* Any criticisms of the Q&A system you might have may be warranted, but the are not a reason to resort to YMTC. FIRST is trying hard to meet our needs, and the reasoning that because we can't get a "good answer" from FIRST we should discuss it on chiefdelphi.com is nonsensical, because as you (had better) know, YMTC is not official.
Last edited by jonathan lall : 18-12-2004 at 23:41.
Reason: that typo is killing me!!!
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