Rules - to follow or not to follow, that is the question

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

Yes, my original question was more about when (and how) should you say something if you see something that is illegal in your opinion? What is the ethical and proper method for different issues:
Here are some of the ways I've seen it suggested/done:

Don, thanks for the clarification on your question! I wish I had a clear answer on how to handle such situations. This issue comes up at nearly every tournament I attend, and I'm also looking for the community's perspective on what to do, too.

My personal approach is to always talk to the team as the first step. What to do next depends upon what happens when talking to the team. As a particular example of this, I would like to relate a true story from this year at Championship that I now think I probably should have pursued a little further by directly talking to the team leadership. I'm curious to hear what the rest of the CD community thinks about both your general questions and any specific examples posted herein.

Now on to the specific situation I encountered this year...

On one of the evenings that we were working in the pits, (I'm not sure if it was Thursday or Friday) two students of another team dropped by asking if we had a spare of a motor that they needed to replace a broken one on their robot. They held up the broken motor to show us what they needed, and it was a globe motor. I said to them something like, "Um, we don't have any of those motors with us, because that motor is a globe motor and isn't a legal motor this year, as it wasn't in this year's kit of parts." The students said, in a mostly-surprised sort of way, "Huh, another team told us that, too!" They then proceeded on their way down the line of pits looking for another team from which to borrow a motor.

From the first instant they left, I wasn't sure exactly what to do. I had clearly let the team know that they were in violation, which I personally feel is an important first step in "reporting a rule violation" against another team. However, it wasn't clear to me whether or not the team would do anything about it -- when these students returned to their pit area would they tell their team leaders that the motor was illegal? If they did tell the team leaders, would the team leadership do anything about it?

I didn't know the team number, but later that night I wandered around the pits to try to find the team with the offending robot. The team wasn't in our division, but was instead in a different division (Curie, I think). A quick look revealed that there was clearly a globe motor on their robot. I then looked up at the standings board to find out where their team was listed. They were listed somewhere around the bottom quarter of teams. From the combination of where they were placed in the standings and a visual assessment of their robot's capabilities, I speculated that they were not likely to be charging up the standings. In the interest of leniency and trying not to make enemies with a team I didn't even know, I ended up deciding to carry the issue no farther. I stopped by the robot inspection station (which was empty at that time) to confirm that the robot was inspected according to the whiteboard, but didn't do anything further. For all I know, the problem was found by the inspection team and the team was working on fixing the problem.

Now, particularly in light of this discussion, I wonder if I really did the right thing. I now feel that I should have talked to some of the team leadership to let them know about the problem. If nobody else ever ended up noticing the globe motor on their robot, this team might end up using a prior KoP motor on their robot next year, in which case my having not let them know about the problem more explicitly could make things very difficult for them next year!

How would others suggest handling this kind of thing?