NYC Web Contest Problems & A Letter to FIRST...
 

Everyone by now probably knows the results of the NYC Web Contest - Team 19 won( http://bigredrobotics.com ). But was that the best NYC had to offer? No. A close inspection of the list reveals many quality sites, and one among them is the site of XHS Robotics-my team ( http://xhsrobotics.org ). Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems apparent that the rules presented in pages 26-29 in the Awards Manual and the Judging Ballot provided had not one thing to do with how the sites were selected. At the event, it was noted that only a few teams (possible even just one) had voted. Keep in mind that a team cannot vote for itself. It is also troubling that teams only handed in a ballot with one name-not the judging form-a far better inidcator of a good site. So all emotions aside, I think an Open Letter to FIRST is in order that at least aims to change the way things are done as far as the Web Contest. We've already had some realy comforting support from other teams in the NYC area. This has been very encouraging, to say the least. As one person said in a brief post on this topic, members of the team didn't acknowledge or mention that they had a website-even the coach.

Yes, I would agree that there are some problems. Re: my other post about GL, personally, I think that there were better sites than the one that won. (and not necessarly our team either)

However, this is the first year for the website award, and it's bound to be messy. One idea I have is for a site to win, they should have to submit a vote themselves.

don't know. I guess just a team haveing a site is cool.
Hopefully better next year.

PS: Is there a website comp for nats?

Yes, very true. But I would say that there are other at least reasonable acceptable sites in the NYC regional. But if say only one team voted - they would be forced to vote against their own interest. Also, I think that FIRSt Judges should have the ultimate say. I'm sure there are some great outstanding professionals who would love to judge websites. I find it highly ironic that an organization For the Inspiration of Science and Technology refuses to really recognize, take seriously, or put major effort into recognizing or promoting a form of computer technology. In many cases, teams put more work into their web sites than their robots! Certainly the student ballot system was the path of least resistance from FIRST's standpoint, but was clearly a terrible solution.

Count me in! I do believe we need to let FIRST know that the student ballot system failed.... I'm agreeing that it should be a judge's award, I said that as soon as i read about the award.

Yeah, I'd have to agree with you on this one.

I was curious as to what kind of website(s) can win an award like this so I logged on to team 19's website when I got home after NYC.

The first thing I noticed was that the last activity on the site, going by the updates on the right hand side, was after Nats. last year.

I was shocked and sort of dismayed to see a site that wasn't updated often win the award.
And the color sheme - Grey text on a black background... Ickk!!!

Oh BTW, nice site AugustF.
I'm also glad to know that one of my teammates helped bring your spirits up about this issue, thanks for the props for that one on your site! :)

I totally agree. The website award this year was mediocore, I'm sure in most cases there were only 1 or 2 votes for the winning teams, with no garentee the votes were counted or not forged.

I have not seen any of the rules of the contest being enforced by the judges, even seeing non-student built websites win at regionals. I'm sure some teams will agree with me when I say that there are only 3-4 websites worthy of this award at each regional.. and in most cases.. none of them won it.

It isn't fair.. and probably never will be... but that's what life is...

I agree that the Website award process needs to be looked at and improved before next year. I like Jack's idea about having to vote to be able to win.

Another idea (which could be used along with Jack's idea) is to have the teams vote, and then the top N sites get judged by the Judges at the competition. They would only have to look at N websites rather than every website.

Just an idea.

I am also on team #806, and I have to say that I am disappointed at the winning website. I have seen all of the websites for the NYC regional and there were at least a handful of better sites. I have also looked at a select few of other regionals and found that this was not the only disappointment. Many of the other championships also had crappy pages chosen when there were better ones. I have not fully read the rules, but I think that the web site award should be left entirely up to the judges. I mean, lets face it, if there were a vote, i bet almost all of us would be able to form a fake vote or something to help our own team, and i bet less than half would hesitate to do it. If a decision is made by a panel of judges, we would have little influence on the outcome.

------I know I am not the only one who feels this way------

We "won" (for lack of a better term) this award at Midwest, but I totally agree. I talked with some FIRST Staff and other long-time FIRSTers and they all agree that the website award did not pan out they way they hoped. :(

My suggestion of improvement to add to the list is have webmasters from, say, amazon.com, google.com, yahoo.com, etc... have the final vote. Isn't Dean good friends w/ Bezos? I'll bet the folks at amazon would participate.

Another idea is perhaps to only allow rookie and 2nd year teams to compete for the award. In all honesty, would anyone really be able to match CD for a website award?

KA-108

well, based on the rules i don't think CD is even eligable as it is not student desined, built, or maintained even though it is a great resource for first

You're right, we're just here for you guys, not an award.. We are not entered in the website competition this year. I do web development all day every day at work, so it wouldn't be fair.

I like that idea.

Another interesting twist to the competition could be that the site has to be 100% valid WC3 compliant html. ;) I'd fail; I'm messy.

nooooo... w3c?????

about that only thing i go for is:

lower case tags, proper nesting, and the <br /> and <input... /> instead of the <br> tags.

Yeah, I guess it would be a twist, but... you're killing all the guys that do codeing by hand. (At least i'd like to think that dreamweaver is w3c compliant and thus those sites would be cool.) Actually, most likely having to do something like that would be good for me but... remember:

webmaster == lazy; // :D

(Aside- Dean did say something about "fairness" at Kickoff.......)

Fishing for feedback here. Do we not qualify because sometimes we do, but sometimes we don't?

There is a lot of gray area on our site. Some pages are 100% student. Others were 100% student but they graduated and this year's kids (or myself) tweaked a little to make it 2003 compliant.

Also the ideas for the site comes from everywhere- students, engineers, alumni, CD Users, friends, visiting other websites, etc... But most times the StUDentS just dont have the technical background to put the page together (or not in a timely manner) so Mike or I (now engineers, but former students) do the coding, BUT, as best we can, do it in front of them or explain it afterwards so they learn for next time.

Also, web dev for us is two pieces: the SQL code to get the data and the HTML/CF to present it. The kids spent most of the time on the SQL and CF. Character %-wise that is very small compared to the HTML, so how do you rate that?

Also, some SOAP Pages are just links to movies. I did the CF for it, but the StUDentS are the ones spending mad hours of time at the regionals and back home digitizing and uploading them. So, again, more gray area.

KA-108 :cool:

Couple more ideas:

Keep the award, but
* make the trophy 1/2 size OR
* make it a certificate award and not a trophy award

In other words, try to de-emphasize any "team voted" awards.


KA-108 :cool:

I do think they only judge the websites that turn in the ballot. Because at Sacramento regional only on ballot was turned in i think. Which was by our team and the the award was tied between our teams website and the site i voted for. Persoanlly think that the website award should be looked by the judges a little bit more.

~ Akshay