[Richard Wallace]

My concern is that any non-compliance gives the offending team a potential advantage -- the non-compliance generally saves weight or size or time or cost, or makes a robot function more effective, or worst of all lets the team avoid thinking just a little bit harder to find a rules-compliant solution.

As Woody keeps repeating, FIRST wants us to think until it hurts. Non-compliant robots almost always got that way because someone didn't think hard enough.

Of course, sometimes the rules themselves are poorly constructed -- such rules usually disappear next season after someone has had time to think harder. Maybe we should only avoid whistleblowing over poorly constructed rules? But then who should decide which rules need changing and therefore which ones we can choose to ignore? Oh, yes, that would be the GDC!

So there are no silly rules, no rules that we can just choose to ignore. The only sensible course is to try to follow them all.