paper: The Penalties will continue until Morale Improves

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Dan, how did you forget minibots? Those sensors worked flawlessly too.

I love your "Do I look like an idiot?" rule.

I thought about that, but it didn't neatly fit into my narrative, & I didn't pay enough attention that year to be able to analyse it carefully.

There need to be at least "DILLaI" rule in FIRST each year.

Originally Posted by cglrcng

Hope to see you back officiating in the future

Doubt it. The Return on Investment is definitely not worth it this year, & I'm having much more fun doing www.TheRoboShow.net. Out of the problems in FIRST I have the abilities to fix, I rank them as 1) New Media, 2) Regional Planning, 3) Inspecting, 4) DJs, 5) Refs.

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

Despite the improvements, there are still too many vague bumper rules.

I think the bumper situation can be fixed with one little statement:
"Any deviations to these bumper rules that are deemed by the LRI to be more rigid or a higher quality than the written rules can be allowed on a regional to regional basis."

This would mean a team that has a superior bumper configuration doesn't have to scramble to recreate bumpers in a lower quality, but still indicates this is a temporary solution & protects LRI's from the criticism "The last regional let me do it"

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

This is what happens when Engineers try to design a sport. Engineering is all about strict rules and controls, sports are all about fair play, motivation, balance. There are lots of grey areas in sports, and this is why we need refs. Not for black and white, we need them most for the grey.

This either makes me a really good engineer or a really bad one, because I don't try to control what I design, I try to work around and anticipate alternatives. I design with the assumption that I will have to change the design quickly at some time, and so try to make things easy to adjust to.

The inherent reason FIRST has so many rules is to take the inconsistency out of the officiating. When issues are black & white, there's no room for interpretation, and therefore you have a more consistent result, regardless of the quality of that result.

The reason why the officiating is that the officials are inconsistent. In Major League sports, you have an official who's job is to critique the other officials, insure they're doing their job correctly, offer improvements. As the head ref gets more & more responsibilities lately, you don't have enough time or eyes to do enough critiquing of the referees under your command. From the regionals I have seen around the country, I've seen certain referees consistently calling penalties wrong, or sometimes even blatantly calling things in favor of their own teams. These usually concern defensive strategies.

But instead of improving volunteer quality, or designing a game that discourages defense (such as the past few years, IMHO), they go with more rules to micromanage teams & referee calls.