Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigHickman
(I think teams need to shape up, and not mess with the high power team's hybrid/auton.)
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It's like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and handing it down to the peons, right?
Here's my contention - people can suggest you read every last bit of the Q/A and say that such rulings are official, but I live in the real world, and in the real world, teams and individuals barely have enough time to finish their robot, let alone spend hours reading hundreds of Q/A responses TO QUESTIONS THEY DIDN'T ASK and comparing them against the existing rulebook. Judging from this past week's events, I'd say the VOLUNTEER REFEREES also have difficulty finding time to perform such analyses. If someone feels a Q/A ruling is important enough that everyone and their brother should know about it, PUT IT IN A TEAM UPDATE, SEND IT OUT IN AN EMAIL BLAST - do what Woodie Flowers endorses and COMMUNICATE.
As far as I am concerned, NO Q/A response involving an important rule clarification is official until FIRST ensures it is properly communicated to everyone via appropriate and logical channels. Expecting everyone, including referees, to unearth the answers for themselves only unleashes the three-headed dog of inconsistency, confusion, and anger we are witnessing here in this thread.
Now I know there are teams out there that read this and go "Wah. We have Q/A Rules Compliance Officer Steve who spends half his life refreshing the Q/A every 2 minutes so we are always in compliance with every last response." You may feel pretty darn proud of this fact, and indeed, I commend thee for being so meticulous, but please don't stand up on your pedestals and look down with scorn upon other teams who may not be as efficient as yourselves or have the people or time to devote to such endeavors.
Thoroughly reading the manual and team updates is the responsbility of all teams. But sifting through the mass quantities of debris in the Q/A trying to glean the few true nuggets of gold among the miles of redundant and unimportant rulings is just asking too much.
Please, cut the teams some slack and COMMUNICATE with them. I think $6,000+ buys them at least that. A simple Team Update blurb and/or Email Blast would have alleviated all this controversy.
Once any official ruling on this matter is communicated to all, my team will abide by what is decided. Until then, since it was permitted in the *real* *world* at numerous Week 1 regionals, we will continue to use hybrid blocking at our discretion.