2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[Tristan Lall]

FIRST used to be more explicit about the role of Q&A responses. In the mid-2000s (the last time they specified this), the general idea was that the rules were the rules, and that Q&As don't overrule them for any reason, and instead only interpret them. Only updates could do that (and updates were supposed to be incorporated ASAP to reduce confusion). E-mail blasts, blogs and other documentation were also subordinate to the rules.

Since then, I've operated under the assumption that if a rule flatly contradicts a Q&A response, the rule takes precedence. (In other words, for a Q&A response to be effective, the rule and the Q&A must be read together, and have a logically consistent interpretation.) When enforcing a rule against a team, the team should be entitled to rely upon FIRST's official statements to a very large degree—which leads to difficult decisions to bend rules according to principles of equity. That is never something undertaken lightly, but I strongly feel (and many other officials agree) that teams should not be placed in a Kafkaesque situation where even when they do what FIRST asks of them, they are still inconvenienced or harmed.

Note that the VRC and FTC Q&As operate differently from the FRC one, in terms of the degree to which the answers are directly binding.

As for the balls, I'm honestly not that concerned. Assuming that FIRST made only correct statements about the nature and source of the balls, they've satisfied their core responsibility, which was to use what they said they'd use. Of course, it would have been ideal (from the perspective of a shooter) for FIRST to have a more consistent ball supply...but they never actually said that the balls would be consistent to any particular degree (beyond the Q&A and manual information referenced above). The differences between balls might well be normal manufacturing variance, and as such could plausibly be the responsibility of the teams to identify and account for.