Cheating in FRC

[aldaeron]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Every uncomfortable situation has 2 sides to a story.

I saw this post on Reddit too and remember there being a great comment about perceived cheating that was not actually cheating (since the Reddit OP was a first year). The Reddit reply had mentioned things like working on a practice bot, working on code or working on a mechanism within the WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE. To a new member these may appear to be "cheating" though are allowed by last year's rules. I did not see any replies and the thread is now deleted.

Over the years I have heard a number of things called "cheating" by students, parents and spectators who did not understand the rules well enough (let's face it, sometimes I feel like a lawyer reading all the Q&A and rules updates all the time).

-matto-

[XaulZan11]

For those suggesting the student should report to issue directly to FIRST, what do you think FIRST will do with that information?

I'm not sure FIRST is capable of launching investigations or have the desire to take away previous awards or removing 'guilty' mentors/students for every report of cheating. (The 2012 championship was very different than this). I like John's suggestion of reaching out privately to respective members of the community.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by aldaeron

I saw this post on Reddit too and remember there being a great comment about perceived cheating that was not actually cheating (since the Reddit OP was a first year). The Reddit reply had mentioned things like working on a practice bot, working on code or working on a mechanism within the WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE. To a new member these may appear to be "cheating" though are allowed by last year's rules.

In the reddit post he mentions that his head mentor countered the accusations of cheating by saying "as long as the kids are inspired and having fun", leading me to think that the head mentors knows it to be cheating. But you are right, we definitely don't know for sure.