Look at the Big Picture

[EricH]

Sean, I know kind of what you've been through with ASME. I compete in the SAE Collegiate Design Series, specifically the Aero Design Competition.

There, the 60 pages or so of rules are pretty clear. (No comment on the number of questions that could be answered by simply reading the rules. Ratio is probably much higher than here.) However, this year, for the annual rule change, the rule changed was: No carbon fiber or fiberglass. Several teams went for basalt fiber as an alternative. After a few months, a team that was making sure that basalt was in fact legal managed to get clarification on what counted as fiberglass. Basalt counted. Teams had already made parts out of basalt and had to redesign.

Here, in FRC, the rulebook is what, twice that length? There are really only two--now three--rules that have people scratching their heads/annoyed. The bumper rule, <G14> (mainly for the reasoning behind that), and now the ruling that a battery with leads isn't exempt from the withholding allowance are the rules that are most annoying/least clear.

Could FIRST have done better? Possibly. 8-10 people with inside knowledge of intent can't fully anticipate 15,000+ people without that knowledge, though. No matter how hard they try, they can't make the rules completely, 100% clear for the large group. That's why Q&A exists. In effect, ALL of the FRC teams that post questions are GDC advisers. They tell the GDC, through questions, what isn't clear. The GDC then has a chance to make their intent clear, and change/clarify the rules accordingly.

Will they learn from this? Probably. We can expect that they won't make the same "mistakes", if such the annoying rules are, again. They may even fix the one they can before competition. Remember, they're human. Humans have a tendency to learn. In fact, it's often the case that a "failure" is a bigger learning experience than a success.

Let's all take the rest of the weekend off. Chill out. Come back Monday or Tuesday and talk a bit more.

(BTW, this post is written by someone who is under some minor stress due to having 4 R/C planes to complete in 11 days, plus making their payload plates and the molds for said plates. And no, the planes aren't close to done. Maybe 50%.)