I wasn't referring to the AAFTA rule book which is why I put "(in general)" in there.
Rules are rules, if we take the AAFTA set for example, is it illegal to host a match indoors? There is nothing in the rules that state where a match is to be held. There is no gray area there, its not mentioned therefore it is unregulated by the rule set. To do it is not cheating even though some may "feel" that it is, there is nothing in the rules that says it is not allowed.
Cheating is breaking the rules, it is doing something that is expressly forbidden, if the competition rules don't cover things a competitor may think or do to gain an advantage then the person writing the rules has failed to some extent. The more complex the set of rules the more difficult it will be to cover everything a competitor may try to gain an advantage. It is difficult to do this well, very difficult. We see a lot of gray areas in competition because of how difficult it is to do this properly, more so when the sport is complicated.
When someone says "spirit" of the rules they are really saying "the rules are so poorly written we want to hold you to this ambiguous metric so we can penalize you because we feel this should not be allowed".
I believe rules need to be written well to reduce the ability for people to bend them (anyone can break them no matter how well they are written). And a broken rule is a broken rule. There is very little gray area under rules in general, its just that most rules are not based on being inclusionary or exclusionary so when something is left out its seen as a 'gray area' when in reality its because the rules are incomplete.
If someone finds a hole in the rules, admit it was a mistake (if it's needed) and remedy the situation, do not penalize them if they did not break a written rule.
For example, I started using a common air gun competition item for AAFTA field target. Because the rules are neither inclusionary or exclusionary if it does not say "this is not allowed" it is not against the rules. Now, its not like I was doing anything that changed how well or poorly I shot, it was a comfort thing. Some folks complained, I guess because they didn't want to make the meager financial commitment and a rule was added the next year. I didn't cheat nor was I accused of cheating and I was "well within" the rules since there were no rules saying I could not use this item. It wasn't even a gray area, there was nothing that covered using this air gun competition item in the rules, period.
If the rules were based on inclusion/exclusion I would have never even considered using that item and no new rule would have needed to be written.
