"In The Know" - One Page Reader!

[Tristan Lall]

Remember, this document is not comprehensive. It appears to be only a summary of general trends and expectations. The rules, the updates and the Q&As are the only official documents, and even then, unfortunately for us all, sometimes these contradict each other or lack crucial information, and force the officials to adopt unpublished positions on controversial issues.

Case in point: there are time-outs and rematches. Time-outs only exist in elimination rounds, between matches, as explained in <T04>, but may be used for any reason, including to prolong a scoring dispute (whether the officials will put up with you for the extra six minutes is another matter); rematches only occur when a field fault occurs, per <T11> (and never only because of a scoring dispute). The document is informing people that time-outs and rematches are not intended to be used for a scoring dispute, rather than saying that these things cannot happen.

[KenWittlief]

I think its great that Dez went to all the trouble of creating this one page summary, esp for rookie teams

Im a little concerned, that if this is not an official FIRST document some teams will think it is, and might be mislead, make a wrong decision, get really upset "I was told there are no time-outs...."

Maybe Dez should add a disclaimer that it is only a generalized summary and not an official FIRST document?

[RoboMom]

It's an official FIRST document. Came in an email blast.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

It's an official FIRST document. Came in an email blast.

This is a real problem with the format of this year's rules--they don't spell out what's official (as in, canonical and enforceable), versus what's informative (but not a valid basis for a ruling).

From communicating with a FIRST representative (Mr. Jost, of the Engineering dept.), we've established that the latest rules .pdfs (e.g. Section_3_The_Arena_rev_A.pdf) are official, as are the latest team updates, e-mail blasts (if any exist dealing with rule changes), and the most recent Q&A responses. Things like summaries, the 2005 FIRST Pneumatics Manual and the Guidelines, Tips and Good Practices don't constitute FIRST's official position, and inspectors and referees will not act upon them. (Mr. Jost says, "The Pneumatics Manual, and Tips and Guidelines documents are not official rules. They are only guidelines to help teams.") Similarly, the supplementary documents (layouts, drawings, etc.) are only official if they are referenced in an official source (e.g. 3.1.1 references the field layout drawings).

Basically, as this relates to the summary in question, even though FIRST wrote it, officials should not consider its contents when making a ruling.