Silicon Valley Regional 2008

Originally Posted by eugenebrooks

This comment is on the money. The teams will always study the rules much more completely than almost all referees. This is because the teams have much more at stake. A good solution to this problem would be to have a mentor from each team, or a subset of teams, who is very well versed on the rules form a committee that could be referenced when a question about the rules is encountered. One could subset the comittee when addressing something with respect to a specific match, so that no rep from the teams involved in the match speaks on that specific issue. This would go a long way to resolve the problem.

Ultimately, it is the head ref that decides given any available input, but a "rules committee" to refer to for learned advice would really help.

Eugene

I like this idea for a "Rules Committee" They'd have to be on hand for the head ref to ask for clarification, but having a group who's only responsibility is to interpret the rules would go a long way. In order to keep the committee fair, ref's wouldn't give team numbers, but only "If RedAbot did X" type questions. If something like this were in place, or if the refs had to go through more training and testing (I acknowledge that they do, but more might help a bit...), then we wouldn't have an issue.