[EricH]

Originally Posted by Speedfiend

Out of curiosity, do other teams have the position of "rule guru?" I've had the idea (can't be original, someone has to have thought of this!) before of letting an interested student be the team's rule guru, and be in charge of knowing the rules to the detail, and being very familiar with said rules should a question arise. That way, during build, any sub team can just ask the rule guy if their idea is legal or not.

(That being said: It's still incredibly important that all build or competition members have at minimum a general understanding of can and can't be done.)

Some teams do, and it is recommended by FIRST. Now, I would actually suggest two. Here's why.

The first guru has the responsibility to track the Game Manual. Their job is to read the manual, read all the updates, and maintain a current copy of the manual in some form. Twice a week or so, the rules may suddenly change slightly for clarity or to stop something that wasn't intended. Guru 1 needs to track that.

The second guru works alongside Guru 1. Guru 2 knows the manual well, but not necessarily as well as Guru 1. Guru 2 tracks the official Q&A. Guru 2 has to filter through the mess of questions that could have been answered in the manual and finds the relevant information. Interpretations made in Q&A are passed on to Guru 1 as needed. Guru 2 may also be the team's authorized Q&A poster, so they can ask questions that haven't been answered yet that will affect the team.

Both of these are "full-time", as in, the Q&A updates daily or faster (Guru 2) while Guru 1 gets questions from the team. I can do both, but it does help to have another.

I guess what I'm saying is that one guru takes care of team-related/general rules questions and the other deals with interpretation/how is this going to be called situations. (And for the latter, the YMTC sub-forum in Rules/Strategy can be pretty helpful in figuring out what rules will soon be clarified. The Rules/Strategy forum can also be handy in general.)