I’d like to echo some points.
Top teams know the rules to a similar extent as the best referee’s, but make up a very small percentage of total teams. Saying “this rule is fine because it’s fine for this top percentage” ignores the majority of teams who don’t make it to worlds, and maybe don’t make it to their regional championship.
I find the biggest reason new students quit robotics is they get unmotivated early because they haven’t learned how to use failing as motivation to work harder to get to their goals. For the teams SG3 is affecting the most, its important to not contribute to demotivating them from continuing robotics, especially when it’s a silly no tolerance rule. Most other violations are ruled on a match affecting basis, it’s reasonable that these teams would assume SG3 would follow.
I’ve seen that newer teams will violate SG3 because they don’t realize how no tolerance it is, or they don’t have the driver skill to safely execute a yoinky sploinky and accidentally contact the opponents platform.
And we haven’t talked about forced SG3-B violations.
Yes, these teams should read the manual. Blaming these teams for not fully understanding the manual for whatever reason (not caring as much as the top teams is a valid reason, especially when the rules aren’t intuitive), or not having the practice to execute certain maneuvers is unfair. There are other ways to discourage play in areas of the field beyond no tolerance rules that make the game unenjoyable for referee’s, competitors, and spectators.
I agree with @Sidoti here. But on the contrary, making simple mistakes shouldn’t be penalized.
[edits for grammar]