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Unread 25-03-2011, 01:42
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FRC #1197 (Torbots)
Team Role: Engineer
 
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Re: How To Use ChiefDelphi Constructively In Order To Reap And Sow Value

"Biting" someone who hasn't read the rulebook often takes the form of "Here's the rule (reference). Go read it." If that rule has an active discussion elsewhere, it'll also have a "search and you'll find this thread [link]" attached.

We also bite trolls and spammers much harder--something on the order of "hey, mods, we've got a spammer/troll here" via the report posts button. Once a spam report has been sent, common forum practice is to put a post in the thread that says "Reported" so that the mods don't get 47 spam reports on the same thing.

The spotlight quotes can also be interesting--some of them lead into threads that are very thought-provoking, partially due to the type of material they're discussing. I've followed those into discussions about eliminating the ship date and shipping, student vs. mentor, caption contests that I'd forgotten even happened, and other things of that nature.

Something that can tell a lot about the people that we value is to go into the gray bar on top, to the far right pair of boxes. The ones marked "Unsung FIRST Heroes" and "WFA", to be exact. There are some interesting stories in there.

Some things to avoid, as they tend to cause a lot of problems:
--Airing of team dirty laundry publicly. There is a place to do that sort of thing anonymously: FIRST-A-Holics Anonymous (FAHA). You can also get advice on sensitive topics where you don't want your team identified.
--Accusations of doing something against the rules or the spirit of FIRST without any evidence. It's happened before (student/mentor debates ensued, though that isn't the only thing to spark the "fun"). At best, there's a long, reasonably civil discussion. What more often happens, though, is a flame war, usually something like 20-30 backing up the team going against 1-3 backing up the accusation. Make it civil enough to start out with, though, and there can be a quite civil discussion on the relative merits and demerits of the complaint. There have been a couple of those lately.

Oh, right, one thing that can really be constructive: Be civil. Even if you're posting something that can really be a flammable topic, it often works best if you say it politely. It's a lot easier to have a nice debate on student vs. mentor coaches when someone states their opinion and the reasoning behind it, and what sparked their publicly posting said opinion and reasoning, instead of "Team X has a mentor-built robot, they shouldn't be in this competition because Y". (The latter, if posted publicly, is the #2 fastest way to red reputation dots. The #1 fastest? Accusations of bribery with zero evidence--which "evidence" was promptly refuted with other, actually existing evidence.)
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2003-2007: FRC0330 BeachBots
2008: FRC1135 Shmoebotics
2012: FRC4046 Schroedinger's Dragons

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