I felt Lorne raised a great point with this query, but it was not responded to. Any chance, Will?
Will Christopherson I just find that any rule requiring us to know the intentions of other players is a bad rule. As far as I know, there are no other WFDF or USAU rules that require me to judge what the other player is thinking, whether they PURPOSEFULLY fouled me, or traveled, or otherwise broke the rules.
I can only find one instance of “inadvertent” in the WFDF rules, “It is trusted that no player will intentionally violate the rules; thus there are no harsh penalties for inadvertent breaches, but rather a method for resuming play in a manner which simulates what would most likely have occurred had there been no breach.”So, the irony here is that, by making a call under this rule (violation of 2.5.2), I am calling my opponent a cheater. I am not calling that they moved the tape. I am saying, “You moved the tape on PURPOSE, which is cheating.” Again, I can’t think of any other cases where I have to call the other player a cheater to make the call.
This situation is quite a bit different from, for example, “I assume you didn’t initiate contact with me on purpose, of course, but it is nevertheless a foul because the contact materially affected my play on the disc.”So, yes, your example, where the player looks down and purposefully shifts the tape. Is that what we are looking for? We make a call only if we believe the other player is intentionally cheating? I mean, I guess that’s a clear directive, but it seems to me that it will only lead to bad blood and that’s why it’s a bad rule.