[Ian W.]

While it'd be nice for a change if everyone read the rules, I don't think that's needed, at all.

Many rookie teams, and even freshmen on vetern teams, may not understand how FIRST works. I know the first year I participated (2002) I didn't go all out to learn the rules until a few weeks in, after reading Chiefdelphi and realizing, "wow, all these smart people seem to know the entire manual by heart, that seems like a smart thing to do."

If someone comes on the forum and asks a simple question, something that can be answered by copying a few lines from a PDF, what's the big deal? If several people ask the same simple question, well, yeah, then you can get mad because Bradon has told people to search, oh, about thirty times when they register :-p.

I think the best thing to do is impress upon people the importance of learning the rules, and hope that they learn quickly. If someone refuses to learn the rules, because "someone else on my team does that," well, we can't force them to make their own lives easier. In any case, I'd much rather have a question that can be answered quickly in black and white then some long, several hundred post thread about the legalities of some stupid little detail.