Batteries Carried Into Competitions

[Corey Balint]

Originally Posted by Cory

To all those saying "well teams backed the GDC into a corner", I say not so. The GDC backed themselves into the corner when they chose to introduce a manual that was woefully inadequate in how it explained major portions of the rules. When this many experienced mentors cannot even agree on what the rules actually say, something is wrong. The Q&A should have solved that. Instead it made it worse-Q&A rulings that conflict with one another and make no sense, rulings like this, etc. Each new Q&A response further muddles both the letter and intent of the rule and teams are forced to ask further questions about everything under the sun to make sure they are in compliance with the rules.

I agree with most of what has been said. Cory's post basically sums up exactly how I felt on all fronts. The problem I see is that this is an annual thing. Each year the Q&A has had muddled answers that have only further confused/complicated the rules.

-Aside- I remember a question from 2005 that was referred to the triangular HDPE from the Automatic loading station. The question asked if we needed to be touching the plastic (or some other material) of the triangle in order to lift the tetra.
The response was something along the lines of "The triangle is made of HDPE, not plastic". -Aside-

Yes, we probably ask too many questions.
Yes, we lawyer the rules.

Why shouldn't we though? If we show up at an event, and they tell us this is illegal per rule XY, how do we fight that if we didn't ask a question about it. Yes we can plead ignorance, but will that benefit us in any way? We will be told that we should have posted it to the Q&A, and that we will have to redesign to compete. No one should take that chance, unless they have a simple redesign in mind already, and they know they could pull it off.

The Q&A does not seem like it is working to its potential right now. It can be a great system, if used properly.