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If a team builds their robot in an prohibited location, or keeps working on robot parts after the robot ship date, or engages in just plain unsportsmanlike conduct in the stadium stands, or builds the robot with an illegal part and intentionally disguises it so that it won't be found by inspectors, what should happen to the team?
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First, I think it is really up to FIRST to decide what the punishments should be for an infraction upon the rules. Nonetheless, I will share my opinions...
I think that the degree of the penalty should correlate to the degree of the infraction. I also think that FIRST should implement a rule system that allows for teams to fix what they have done wrong, depending on the infraction.
I think that teams should be given more than one chance to rectify their behavior. The team might not have known that they were in violation of the rules, and it would be unfair to punish then too severely for something that they might not have even known about. This should be applicable to most infractions.
For example, if a team builds a part that is illegal and uses it in a match, I think they should have the chance to remove the illegal part and receive a minor penalty. However, if they were discovered to be using the illegal part again, then they should receive a larger punishment, such as disqualification.
Giving people a chance to recognize that their actions were unacceptable …and then letting them graciously fix their mistakes… will teach a better lesson than enforcing a more severe punishment. If a team were to be DQed right away after making a mistake, they would walk away feeling frustrated and resentful, and way less open to changing their attitude about the competition.
And an aside on honesty:
Arefin brings up a very good point here:
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If you want to penalize a team for making parts and using them on the robot (which was build before season), Wouldn't you have to find out what they have built and what they are using? how would you do that?
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For some infractions of the rules, it may be just plain impossible to tell who broke them, and who didn't. How do you look at a robot and say... "oh that part was prebuilt. ...and that one wasn't"? As Arefin said, this
is where honesty comes into play... unfortunately, I don’t think FIRST will ever be able to come up with a way to accurately decide what was and was not prebuilt… all you can rely on is hearsay.
Hearsay is not acceptable in competition. I think that as long as human nature exists, there will always be dishonesty. I think that FIRST should do the best it can to prevent this, however, there is a limit to exactly how nitpicky FIRST will be. I think it is ludicrous to attempt to mete perfect justice to all competitors. However, it is important that we try our best.
-- Jaine