YMTC: Your Thoughts

[seanwitte]

I think people should actively avoid the gray areas in the rules, making the YMTC threads unnecessary. Is it really so hard or restrictive to clearly stay within the bounds of the rules? Does a bad rule mean that people are obligated to push it? The first few weeks of the season make me cringe sometimes because theres this inherent need to nitpick everything. I think the YMTC threads advance the idea that its ok to push an edge case as long as you can justify it.

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by seanwitte

I think people should actively avoid the gray areas in the rules, making the YMTC threads unnecessary. Is it really so hard or restrictive to clearly stay within the bounds of the rules? Does a bad rule mean that people are obligated to push it? The first few weeks of the season make me cringe sometimes because theres this inherent need to nitpick everything. I think the YMTC threads advance the idea that its ok to push an edge case as long as you can justify it.

As long as this is a competition teams will push the limits.Those that succeed are those who can push the envelope and still stay within the lines. Everyone always looks for the little something that will make them just that little bit better. One example was a ruling that came out last year about blocking 2 ball chutes by one robot. If it had of come out any later we would have been into heavy design to make it happen. It would be much better to have at kick off then we would not have even been considering that option.

[meaubry]

Perhaps I should clarify what I posted earlier. YMTC is one way to discuss and debate issues relative to things like "what would you do if ...". For rule interpretation during the 6 week build cycle, it would be appropriate to post a question about rules that may be ambiguous in hopes that the discussion may bring clarity to the community of FIRST users of this site. There are better defined ways to communicate with FIRST directly for rule clarifications than by the YMTC threads. It is one thing to discuss a rule in hopes of better understanding what is meant by it, and it is another to post opinions about exactly what FIRST means. The folks that create the rules are the only ones that really know what they mean - if one is not clear, give them the proper respect by allowing them to respond before speaking for them. Because YMTC seems very situational to me, sometimes it is difficult to put into words enough to avoid posts that stretch the bounds of the situation being discussed.Some of the past YMTC threads, start off in one direction and then get tweaked by someone else adding a "what if, that wasn't included in the original YMTC. Often, posts turn towards the dark side - when someone takes offense or can't understand why another person doesn't understand the obvious (which matches that persons opinion). During the 6 week build cycle - try to stick to really high value thread discussions - otherwise it is really hard to sort through the 100's of posts each day. Our website looses its effectiveness when people don't come here because there is just too much clutter and noise to sort through. In order to respond to user complaints about the quantity of new posts each day during the most important time of the year, I'm considering asking Brandon to shut down Chit Chat for the 6 build cycle also.