[beyondinspection] Website Release
 

We are proud to announce the public opening of a new website:
beyondinspection.org

The goal is to provide articles on various topics that may be of interest to our fellow FIRST participants. Currently the website has ~16 articles with plans to continue to post twice a month (or more often, depending on content availability). The site is currently split into the following categories:

[RP] Robot Profiles – Profiles of robots past and present supplied by teams
[HL] History Lessons – Letting the past help us now
[PR] Product Reviews – Candid reviews about products on the market
[EA] Editorial Articles – Catch-all for other articles
[EC] Event Coverage – Some photography and event reviews
[SA] Statistical Analysis – Letting the numbers speak for themselves
[PP] People Profiles – Profiles of mentors and volunteers

Special thanks to A. Schreiber and S. Lipscomb for behind the scenes work and website development. Additional thanks to our initial group of contributors: we appreciate your support of the new project and hope you like what you see (and will continue to support us).

Please take the time to read through the articles and let us know what you think.

We are always looking for new articles and contributors.
If you are interested in supporting the website you can reach us via: Facebook, Twitter or directly via email.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Foss, Sam and Schreibs,

The website looks great. Thanks for letting me have an article up for launch day. Congratulations, I look forward to seeing where this goes.

-Nick

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Very nice website guys. Good job guys. I love how the website is set up. Keep it up!

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

This is pretty cool! Great job y'all, and I look forward to what's in the future.

Do you guys have a schedule of when articles are coming out?

-FOR

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Thanks for the kind words so far.

The tentative schedule is the 15th and 30th of each month based on our current content backlog.
More input will allow us to provide content more often.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Looks like a fantastic resource for any team to use.


If you wanted mean words....
Well
I dunno someone might find the background image distracting I seriously got nothing...

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Nice looking site. Although I have an idea of who wrote many of the articles, I think it would be nice to include the author for each article.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

This. Especially for the editorials.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

That was an intentional decision. Esp on the editorial ones. One of the things I've had happen in the past is an unpopular opinion resulted in very negative and derogatory comments directed at me. Wanted authors to be able to state opinions without fear of retribution.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Would be nice to have something to help distinguish between articles written by different people, though, especially for things where there's lots of reasonable room to disagree (see: editorials).

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Then disagree with the article. There's comments right there. It is not that hard.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

I don't think it's so much about personal disagreement, as it is how people perceive the validity of the articles themselves. Knowledge of the experience, knowledge, and authority of the author is important when analyzing sources, to determine their validity and assess any biases that may be present. For example, I am highly inclined to respect and value the information in the MC-ing article because I know who Andy Grady is, and I know that his experiences mean he knows what he's talking about. I don't know who wrote the Ariel Assist retrospective, how their direct experiences with the game may have colored their view of the game (for better or for worse), and I have little reason to take a second look and go "huh, maybe this guy knows more about this than me" on sections of the article that I disagree with.

I think the site has potential as a platform for well thought-out views, even when they conflict or go against the norm. If the articles are anonymous, they inherently carry less power for generating positive change in the FIRST community.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

I strongly agree. Even if the editors of the site are willing to vouch for the content they publish, that's nothing compared to actually knowing who those authors are. It also allows the authors to build their personal reputation (which is not a worthless thing). Further, while flaming is not nice, there's nothing wrong with maintaining some external accountability for the authors.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Pretty much this.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

A proposal: Allow authors to request anonymity (or publicity). Default is to make the author's name public, but author can request to be anonymous. "Sensitive topic" articles can be flagged as such, maybe, to indicate that it's a topic "about which honest persons can disagree" and hopefully keep the flames down, or even invite a counter-article from someone on the other side.


I like the site layout, and on reading some of the articles, I like the content too. Might have to think about submitting from time to time if I have time.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

I for one loved reading the articles on this site. My favorite part was the 3 articles pertaining to specific teams and their robots (A little biased here since they were all NE teams that we competed with/against)

I'm always looking to find out more about robots, how they were imagined, built, and ESPECIALLY problems that occurred and how they would improve the whole robot. You delivered this exactly and MORE.

It was very obvious that the articles were very thoughtfully created, with A LOT of research and help from the actual team. Also obvious was the fact that the author(s) loved the topic they were writing about

THANK YOU

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Or simply allow for people to write under pseudonyms or anonymous usernames, if they are kept consistent. This allows a reputation to develop around the name, provides greater context to individual articles, and will hopefully give flamers some pause before attacking a name that they generally find insightful, while protecting the identity of those who wish to do so. See Looking Forward for an example.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

This, I think, would be ideal.

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Great idea, I see this becoming a great resource for teams of all walks. I also agree that author names should be shown (discretion left to the author of course), it's nice seeing familiar faces on these articles and knowing where they are coming from and what experience they have.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

If an author wants their name attached to the piece, they can put it in. I'm just giving the logic behind defaulting to anonymity. I would think you could draw credibility from the fact that it's being published on here. I know Foss, he won't publish something that isn't adequately researched or an opinion by someone who he trusts.


The main reason the Robot posts appear to be written with the team is simply because they ARE. If you're interested in publishing a Robot Profile for your team's robot (historical or current) feel free to ping Foss or I and we'll get you the questions (for consistency reasons there's a ROUGH format) same with the People Profiles (Obviously, it helps if you're a known name for that one.)

Personally, I'd love to see Zach Orr do a profile...

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

As Andrew stated we'd love to have more people submit articles, just email the site or contact me directly if you'd like.

You'll notice that I went ahead and made some updates to the site, including adding the authors names to those article which the authors approve. We reserve the right to withhold authors names based on their requests and our own choices as site managers. I have also added a note to the top of the editorial article and will continue to do so on "controversial" content.

We hope you are enjoying the other content on the site.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Lots of great information here, I'm looking forward to future releases. Keep up the good work!

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

While that is all true, you don't see any news source, magazine, online newspaper, etc. have the default be anonymous authors. I guess it is really just my opinion but I really don't see much logic in having the default be anonymity. The first thing that popped into my head after reading the first article I went to was, who wrote this? In my head it automatically didn't hold as much value because I didn't know who wrote it.

Of course Foss will only publish quality articles, sometimes (often IMO) it is good to see who wrote it to be able to think about the perspective they came from when writing it, not just credibility and accountability (although those are important as well).

Anyway, the site is fantastic. We immediately thought of it as kind of an online version of the design books that were made in '06 and '07, except the site has even more information about other things. Great job guys.

-Nick

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Thanks again for all the feedback, please keep it coming.

With 2nd event registration right around the corner we put together a post on initial registration (the first 12 hours) and some general data on registration up to this point. Special thanks to Mark McLoed, and his thread: Registration 2015.

[SA] Registration 2015: First 12 Hours

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

It's the 30th, so as promised a new article for your reading pleasure. It seems fitting that this weeks article is about passing inspection. Special thanks to the author, Nate Laverdure (FRC2363 Mentor), for taking the time to write it up for us and the community.

[EA] How to pass Inspection

Please keep the offers for articles and the feedback coming.
Without the support of the community it will become difficult to provide value added content.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

With the 15th falling on a weekend, we have chosen to release the new content a day in advance. This week we are releasing a double feature, two new articles from FRC1538 The Holy Cows. We appreciate their support. Please take some time to read about one of their successful previous robots and a mentor that does work with the team.

[PP] Holy Cows' PR Mentor: Cathy Schulz
[RP] Bringin' the Thunder - FRC1538 (2013)

If anyone is interested in being featured on the site or providing content, please send me a message or directly email the site. Thanks.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

I think the articles on specific robot design and methodology are really great. Seeing examples of successful techniques is incredibly useful.
The only thing I would like to see in addition to that though it maybe detailed pictures or CAD of the robots being described. For instance, I would love to see how the "motor inside roller" was set up and what that phrase actually means. The article on team 78 does a great job of this.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend, while you were out there eating your fill and visiting family we were thinking about some interesting robots from the past. Below is our new article about "Flop Bots", while not legal in recent years, they are a glimpse into alternative thinking in robot design, and in many cases it payed off.

[HL] Four Famous Flops

As always we'd love to hear what you think about our content, and please do not hesitate to send us ideas or volunteer to provide content. Thanks.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Wow, this article was a great trip down memory lane. I'll take flop bots and side-shields over sail bumpers and octagonal chassis any day! :D

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/25346 Nothing new under the sun.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

I suppose that is true, heck I even built one back in the day :)

http://trinityrobotics.files.wordpre...arbook-pic.jpg

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

For anyone who tried to access the site yesterday but was unable, it appears we had some intermittent DNS issues. If you are still seeing them let me know.

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

Hey guys, hope everyone is enjoying the last month before kickoff. We're releasing a new post from another famous drive coach, Kyle Hughes.

[PP] Coach’s Corner with Kyle Hughes

As always we'd love to hear what you think about our content, and please do not hesitate to send us ideas or volunteer to provide content. Thanks.


(Posted for JWFoss as he has intermittent network connectivity right now)

Re: [beyondinspection] Website Release
 

And our final post this year covers our friends on Team 67 and their 2012 entry.

[RP] Ultimate Utility - FRC67 (2012)


We hope you're enjoying the content. We've got more in our backlog and are prepped to provide some content during build. If you have any comments or suggestions about what that content should look like please shoot Foss and I a PM on here.