Is Q&A official?

[pntbll1313]

I was under the impression that the Q&A was an official source of rules. Does anyone know if that is the case? I may be wrong because I had printed out some Q&A's and we sent a student to the question box to challange a call that we thought contradicted a Q&A. When we showed the head ref the Q&A we were told they are not official.

[z_beeblebrox]

Yup. Official.

[Jimmy Nichols]

I would suggest contacting FIRST. There has been times when Q&A answers have been reversed and its possible this is the case. If not then the feedback needs to be brough to the attention of those in charge of ensuring the refs are up to speed.

[Jon Stratis]

Out of curiosity, which Q&A were you citing?

[pntbll1313]

This may sound like lawyering but I promise it was not. We send a student to the question box because we had a question based on what we had read in the Q&A and how it was called on the field. To set it up this was in the elims. A robot was climbing on the front of the pyramid. Our robot drove to the feeder station to refill. As it turned the corner it touched the far back corner of a pyramid with its bumper (about 8 feet from the climbing robot). Because we touched the pyramid we were assessed a penalty per G27, and given a red card, and our alliance forfeited the match. We asked the head ref why that was considered “consequential contact”. And referred the Q&A below where it states “For example, if a ROBOT contacts the opponent's PYRAMID as it drives past it, and no opponent ROBOTS are nearby or affected, the action would be considered inconsequential.” It is completely justifiable for the ref to say in his judgment it is consequential because touching any part of the pyramid as someone was climbing must be affected and is worthy of a red card. And he did say something similar. However he also said that the Q&A is not official so the below did not matter. We won the match and I am not bitter I am just wondering how to proceed in the future if a situation comes up that is more clearly addressed in a Q&A to show a ref. (I understand that G27 is a little arbitrary and not cut and dry enough to probably ever get overturned)

Q190
Q.What determines "inconsequential" contact with an opponent PYRAMID? Is consequentiality based on the consequence of the whole action, or only on how the itself pyramid is contacted? e.g. Is it legal to touch an opponent's pyramid while hitting climbing/shooting opponent (not contacting its pyramid)?
A.The determination of if an act is consequential or not is determined based on what happens because of the action. For example, if a ROBOT contacts the opponent's PYRAMID as it drives past it, and no opponent ROBOTS are nearby or affected, the action would be considered inconsequential. If a ROBOT contacts the opponent's PYRAMID and blocks an opponent's attempt to CLIMB, it would be considered consequential. Contacting an opponent ROBOT who is contacting its PYRAMID is illegal per [G30].

[rsisk]

According to the game manual und Referee Interaction, the referee has ultimate authority In the ARENA, so I assume this means he could overrule a Q&A ruling? Or better said, the head refs interpretation of the Q&A is final?

Referee Interaction Game Manual
The Head Referee has the ultimate authority in the ARENA during the event, but may receive input from additional sources, e.g. Game Designers, FIRST personnel, and technical staff. The Head Referee rulings are final. The Head Referee will not review recorded replays under any circumstances.

[pntbll1313]

Correct. The head referee is always has the final decision. It is up to him/her to interpret the rules the way they want. It will always be the referee's judgement call as to what is "consequential". Since the head ref wasn't the one to make the call on the field and we questioned him in this case it is a completely acceptable answer for him to say how he interprets that rule. I don't think anyone disputes that. I was more curious as to whether his statement about the Q&A not being official was correct. Which as I'm getting from you guys it was not.

Thanks for your responses everyone.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by rsisk

According to the game manual und Referee Interaction, the referee has ultimate authority In the ARENA, so I assume this means he could overrule a Q&A ruling? Or better said, the head refs interpretation of the Q&A is final?

A ref should not be allowed to overrule a Q&A response. In my mind, that is tantamount to changing the rules on a whim. Only NH gets to do that :/

I remain naively optimistic that FIRST will, someday, write rules that are not ambiguous and do not rely on any sort of subjective judgement by the officials.

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by Madison

A ref should not be allowed to overrule a Q&A response. In my mind, that is tantamount to changing the rules on a whim. Only NH gets to do that :/

I remain naively optimistic that FIRST will, someday, write rules that are not ambiguous and do not rely on any sort of subjective judgement by the officials.

I'm no game theory expert, but I'm not sure if you could ever cover all the possibilities of a real life game in a meaningful way without human judgement. That's what makes D&D with a group of friends way more fun than say, Halo

[pntbll1313]

One of the things I dislike about this particular rule (if it was called the way the game makers had wanted it to be) is that if we were to have smashed right into their robot mid climb, it would have been a technical foul per G30 and we would have won the match. Since we grazed the back of the pyramid it is a red card, and we lose the match.

[orangemoore]

It seems like there may be some misinformation about what should be regarded as fact. I don't think that it is the refs fault for what happened and to me it is unclear exactly what each rule is meant to do and is interpreted differently.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by BigJ

I'm no game theory expert, but I'm not sure if you could ever cover all the possibilities of a real life game in a meaningful way without human judgement. That's what makes D&D with a group of friends way more fun than say, Halo

I'm no expert, but I've dabbled, and have some limited professional game-writing experience...

Pretty much every game in existence (save Calvinball) is permissive: you can do exactly what you are given permission to do, and you may not do anything in-game that you are not explicitly allowed to do. This is true for everything from football to Monopoly. (Football has a bit of proscription-flavor in the realm of human physiology, but not much.)

FIRST games are not permissive, they're proscriptive: by their nature, anything you aren't prohibited from doing is legal.

Proscriptive rules sets are much, much harder to write than permissive rules sets, and I daresay that it might be impossible to make a proscriptive rules set that is both judgement-free and accessible in terms of length, usability, and so forth.

[Grim Tuesday]

I believe the general order of things in the case of a disagreement:

FIRST HQ>Head Ref>Q&A>Team Update>The Manual

Of course, the head ref is supposed to follow all Q&A, updates, and manual entries but for interpretation he or she is the ultimate authority at an event.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I believe the general order of things in the case of a disagreement:

FIRST HQ>Head Ref>Q&A>Team Update>The Manual

Of course, the head ref is supposed to follow all Q&A, updates, and manual entries but for interpretation he or she is the ultimate authority at an event.

It's a funny thing about officiating. What referees say is final (unless the rules of the competition specify some kind of appeal, which FIRST doesn't); however, in theory, they are required to enforce all of the rules, and considering that FRC Q&A is considered "official", they are also required to enforce those. This is a quote I like from a website about soccer refereeing:

As the referee, you are the sole judge of facts, but still at the mercy of the rules. So if you say that a defender grew an extra arm out of his head to deflect the ball away from the goal, your league will stand behind you (though possibly not very close in this case). But if you then award a throw-in for handling the ball, you've broken the rules and your decision can be contested, especially if it affects the outcome of the game.

More on-topic, hopefully FIRST will clarify to all its referees in the future that the Q&A is official, and hopefully make it (or selected parts of it, at least) required reading.

[dtengineering]

The Q&A is intended to provide guidance on the interpretation of the rules... but the responses are not rules unto themselves.

The head ref was entirely welcome to take the advice that inconsequential contact need not be called, however they may still interpret this contact as sufficient to call.

What you, as the team receiving the DQ, view as inconsequential may have appeared to the ref, at the time, as having consequence... or potential consequence.

Or the ref may have completely blown the call. Either way is perfectly irrelevant to the fact that they call was made and it doesn't sound like it was necessarily a bad call.

Jason