Is Q&A official?

[The Lucas]

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.

Actually it is more like this:
FIRST HQ>Head Ref>Team Update>The Manual>Q&A


The Q&A's primarily purpose is to provide official insight and interpretation about the rules in the manual (it also is good feedback among other things). It does not make new rules or overrule existing rules, only a team update can do that. The Q&A occasionally has contradictions and does get updated without a team update (sometimes after a good follow up question). The most notable update this year was the early 54" cylinder questions where the answers completely reversed and Team UPDATE - 2013-01-15 was released. The Q&A should provide good guidelines for Refs, RI and teams to interpret the rules involved any decision, but it still is a judgement call by the parties involved.

The Q&A is not specific enough to judge an actual match or robot. Consider it a small (in comparison) set of official rule interpretations that does not overlap with the much larger set of official rule interpretations at competition. The goal is for these two interpretations to be as similar as possible through communication & training, but the only thing they truly have in common is the same set of rules. As Peter pointed out, it is inherently difficult to write these rules, and we will always need judgement to enforce them.

Originally Posted by 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.

A G27 violation does not require a Red Card, only a Technical Foul. A Red Card is only required if an opponent's Climb is affected, in which case that opponent should also be credited for a Level 3 climb (moot in an elim match where a Red Card is already issued). Also, if an opponents Climb is affected, then the cited Q&A probably isn't very useful. The better initial question to ask in the ? box is if the opponent's Climb was affected and proceed from there.