Team Update 14 (2016)

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Please do give up at finding loopholes.

The reason rules like these have to exist isn't because bag day or the GDC, it's because teams try to find ways around the rules. For a long time, the culture discouraged "lawyering" the rules instead of following the intent. Teams that try to find the loopholes to gain an advantage rather than following the intent is what causes rules like this to be necessary.

This is certainly an old argument, but I continue to disagree with this outlook. Most fundamentally, teams frequently do not, and in many cases effectively cannot know the intent precisely. Every uncertainty begets the concern that another team will more accurately gauge FIRST's intent, and get away with a more rewarding strategy. The nature of competition therefore fundamentally induces teams to seek the limit of what's legal.

Similarly, when officials have to weigh the intent of the rulemakers against the conduct of a team, they find themselves also having to confront this uncertainty. How can an official know how to draw the line between permissible and impermissible conduct if they aren't willing to entertain and compare different interpretations before settling on a definitive answer?