An Observation about the Team Updates and Manual

[Ryan Foley]

Hi all
Today I read through team update 9, and something occurred to me. In past years, the team updates were full of rule additions and modifications. By this time last year there were about 3 different versions of the manual, 1 was as it was on kick off, 1 with team updates 1-4's changes included, and another with team updates 1-8's changes included. By the end of the season there were probably a good 6 or more rules added, and more than a dozen re-written or changed somehow.

Look at this years team updates. There isn't nearly the amount of additions and changes of past years. Out of the last 6 updates (4-9) there have only been 4 rule changes. In 2004, there were rule changes in almost every team update (including number 14, the last one of the season). Out of those 4 modified rules, only ONE is a Game rule (<G14> in Team Update 8).

I would just like to compliment FIRST on this, as it goes to show just how well they wrote this years manual, the obviously large amount of work they put in to make all of the rules as clear as possible, and the testing they must have done to spot any rules they should change before they released the game.

Great Job FIRST and everyone that helped write the manual!

[dlavery]

Hey! Somebody noticed!

[Venkatesh]

Was that something that you guys at FIRST focused on?

[dhitchco]

Dave et al,
You are to be commended on writing a very thorough game manual for FRC as well as very detailed drawings (field, loaders, goals, etc).

This is my first year as an adult mentor in the FRC. As such, I read and re-read the full manual several times. It is very well-done and I'm sure it helps to mitigate a lot of follow-up questions.

However, I'm also somewhat embarrassed by the teams that post "dumb questions" on this forum without consulting the manual first.

Just like any good hardware or software product, "insert foot before putting mouth in gear".....