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I agree with the comments that the internet is a powerful tool, and should be used to it's fullest extent. But there is one concern that I have heard that made some sense to me. I am not trying to say this is a good enough reason to not partcipate in discussions about rules, and IMO if you are one of the 5 members listed below that is one of your most critical jobs...making sure rule interps are made correctly!
But one concern that I have seen more than once personally! People hear what they want to hear, and remember want is favorable to their current situation. A local umpire and I went to a clinic where Henry Pollard was the clinician and 3 months later I was umpiring a game this other guy was coaching.....believe it or not he disagreed with a call I made, brought up something Henry had said in the conversation about it. Needless to say, as we all know, SB has some small differences that make a huge difference in the correct interp. He was looking at 2/3 of the situation and that part matched the situation Henry was talking about.....problem was the other 1/3 that he was conviently forgetting to take into account changed the situation all together.
I guess my point is (I know you have been trying to find it) softball rules have a lot of conditions, if A,B,C,D and E happen then "this" is the 100% correct ruling. Problem is it might be 3-6months (years) before you see a situation close to that where A,B,D and E happened.....and without C the interp is incorrect. Problem is a certain level of umpire / coach will remember that 2nd situation as 100% the way Henry, Julie, Jim, Phil, Larry or Kevin said it and they will have the wrong interp for that precise situation. The example I gave above was a conversation made in person face to face and the guy remembered the wrong interp.....we all know that there is a loss of communications when we go from verbal to written communications, no emotion in the typed word, so if these people did join these forums there becomes an even greater chance of having the "Henry, Jim, Phil, Larry, Julie and Kevin said....." running around incorrectly applied.
Now that being said I still think it is important to get information out to umpires like those on this forum that work hard to apply the correct interp to the correct situation! We can only do that if we know the correct, in this case, ASA interp to start with. Preface the reply with "in this case, with A,B,C,D conditions...." to me that is better than to not give info at all!
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