[BQuennell]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The thing is, "polite" is relative. In some contexts, it's considered rude to interrupt just to say "excuse me", and it's considered polite to quietly do something that doesn't interfere with what others are doing. If someone just wants to take a picture, I would be much happier if they just went ahead and did it than if they had to take my attention away from what I was doing at the time in order to ask for permission.

I still want to know why asking for permission to photograph a robot is something worth worrying about in the first place.

It's not the actual photo of the robot that is the pet peeve, it's the manner some people use to get the photo, if people are working on the bot, is it impossible to wait for them to be done, if you're taking photos of the bots, I'd be willing to guess there are plenty other teams and bots that you can get a snapshot of while you wait, plus talking to the team does usually helps with recon just as much as a photo can, asking about strengths and weaknesses, how things have been going. It works a lot better when you actually try to make contact with the team, at least from my experience.