I am absolutely paranoid about making sure that all rules are being strictly followed. (1551 was one of those teams with a ball-handling mechanism that *could not* possess more than one ball... And unless something really weird was going on, a ball could not pass more than three inches inside our bumper perimeter anywhere.***)
I'm not an engineer. I have a BS in Physics and an MS in Deaf Education. The physics degree helps with this whole building a robot thing... sometimes... I know a lot more about quarks and neutrinos than I do about evaluating why a speed controller is acting funny, if it is fixable, and how. But aside from being a theoretical physics and sign language guy (and beekeeper), the other major thing I have been all my life is a gamer.
Tabletop war games, board games, card games... I love them, and I always have. One of the things I really, really love about FIRST is the challenge of the games themselves (I think we nailed the combination of strategy and robot functionality this year, and really missed badly last year), and one of the things I really, really hate about FIRST is the inconsistency with which rules are enforced. And the changing of rules -- such as ball penetration this year -- makes me want to set myself on fire.
It is my opinion that the rules should be clarified as necessary during the build season, but should not be changed, and should be enforced to the letter, across the board, regardless of the consequences to a team. From bumper rules to motor usage to restrictions on robot functionality to what penalties are given for what actions, there should be no pity passes for anyone, ever. Enforcement should be to the degree as to render the discussion in this thread entirely moot.
But on that note, the inspection checklist should be in the manual when it is released at kickoff, and only changed if a rule clarification makes it necessary. Checklists are easy to follow, and are a great way to make sure you don't have a serious problem five weeks in to the build season. (Well, let's be realistic. It's a great way to make sure you don't have _this_ serious problem. Your robot could still run amok and catch fire when you enable it.
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Unenforceable rules -- the 'on your honor' rules about prototypes vs. complete designs, for example -- should be stated as exactly that. We all know teams that use the exact same drive train or the exact same frame design based on the same CAD drawings every year. Even if they re-build it from scratch, it's not legal. But it's also not meaningfully enforceable either, because inspectors can't be expected to know the design specifications of every team's mechanisms from year to year. It's also trivially circumventable in letter if not spirit. ("No, no, it's not the same... The 1/4" hole we don't use for anything is 1/8" higher this year, see?") Rules that are not enforceable regarding the build should be explicitly stated as 'on your honor' (or GP, if you prefer).
Rules enforceable during inspection should be enforced in a draconian and unforgiving manner. (In Rack and Roll, robots should have to have demonstrated their mechanisms inside an appropriately-sized box to demonstrate that they did not exceed the size limitations, for example).
Rules that are enforced in-game should be easily enforceable by a good ref crew, and should be enforced as consistently as humanly possible. (I watch football. I understand that officials make mistakes, and that they can't see everything all the time. But they make sure they have enough refs to catch everything that should be caught, and they generally do a good job. The same is true for FIRST in my experience -- the ref crews are stunningly good, IMO.)
In-game or inspection-based rules that cannot be enforced (either because there is no way the refs can possibly keep track of whatever it is, or because it would be too big a delay or too big of a logistical hassle in the inspection process) SHOULD NOT BE WRITTEN.
But at the end of the day, it is not the refs' -- or the inspectors' -- job to be nice. They have a duty to perform, and they should perform that duty to the best of their ability.
That's my two cents.
Patrick
***The one place I saw ball penetration happening a WHOLE LOT was when robots were going over the hump if a ball was in the way. We wanted to make sure that we would not incur these penalties even in this situation, so we designed our robot to not incur such penalties -- and in doing so, we could go over the hump, slowly, on the FLR practice field, and on the actual field, and yet couldn't do so at Championship... We think a very small difference in the hump construction was all it took. A lesson learned about engineering things too closely! But the point being that there was a rule we took very seriously, and doing so served us very well at FLR... And then it was changed in such a way that we could have been a bit less conservative with our hump-climbing design parameters, and been more successful in that area.