Quote:
Originally Posted by boomergeek
ORIGNAL POST: (but I embolded key phrases):
"I know this is nothing more than speculation, but it's extremely fishy. While our team was at the Finger Lake Regional in New York, several teams had their robots suddenly act erratically during teleop, sometimes in a very suspicious manner."
Curiosity is one thing: casting aspersions as to a significant likelyhood of intentional unfairness perpetrated by someone is something else. It calls into question the fairness and the legitimacy of the entire competition.
I thnk Brandon no longer thinks such sentiments are appropriate to a large public forum without greater evidence.
The gracious thing is to assume a team's problems are it's own fault and to ask for help isolating them and not assume someone associated with FIRST or attending FIRST is out to get them by nefarious means.
The volunteer field crews work very hard. I know from personal experience that if a robot "misbehaves" on the competition field but does not misbehave on the practice field or on tether, it can be very frustrating. Isolating the cause of the difference of behavior can sometimes be very hard.
As demonstrated in Update #17, the technical staff is working quite hard to help teams identify issues with their robot prior to connecting to the FMS.
Teams should also know how and be ready to reset their robot if it "bricks" on the competition field.
We weren't.
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If you read my post (instead of just looking for something to be annoyed about) you'll see I also stated he should learn from this is regards to how he wrote the post. I believe he also understands he approached this thread the wrong way, and that is a valuable lesson to learn. However, another, incorrect lesson, that is being pushed here is that uncomfortable topics need to be tiptoe'd around and those who dare to confront them are wrong strictly because it's an uncomfortable topic.
Yes, he jumped to conclusions, and yes he made a mistake. And yes, he acknowledged that. That doesn't mean broaching the topic was a bad idea, just that next time, be a bit more careful how it is done, and I'm sure he will be.
Nobody ever did anything great by playing along and not making waves, sometimes waves need to be made. As far as your teams troubles go, I'm sorry you had them and I'm sorry you were unprepared. Personally, I don't think there's any shame in getting caught by something you didn't know was a problem, now you learned your lesson and you'll watch out for it next time. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate someone coming on CD and ripping in to you for not thinking to check your robot for a problem you weren't aware existed.
Matt