Quote:
Originally Posted by Madison
CD opinion is the collective wisdom of nearly fifteen years of uninterrupted discussion on many topics. Think about that for a bit -- fifteen years. There's something to be said for the conclusions that have been drawn by this community and the topics that come up over and over again have been hashed out pretty thoroughly. It's rare for someone to offer a new wrinkle in these debates and our reluctance to entertain them again and again shows this.
|
Part of that is almost certainly the internet-forum phenomena where a forum drifts towards one opinion or another, and becomes anchored there. Just because posts on a forum drift towards consensus on a topic doesn't mean that the forum's "opinion" on the topic is globally correct. There are conspiracy forums, misogynistic forums, and racist forums out there, whose memberships have converged on some pretty incorrect opinions over many years of discussion. If you jump onto a racist forum and try to convince them that they're wrong, you'll get shouted down too, in a manner similar to what happens on CD if someone says "I don't like that mentors built a robot". I'm not saying that CD's consensuses are as unpalatable as racism, but just pointing that simply because a consensus exists does not imply that the consensus is correct.
Since CD's posting membership is skewed heavily towards old teams, successful teams and rich teams, it is no surprise that CD's opinion on things like mentor/student ratios, spending, and competition also skews towards "let the successful/rich/old teams continue doing what they're doing". Maybe that is the correct opinion for optimal FIRST sustainability, but it's also the conclusion you'd expect a group of mentors from the most successful teams in FIRST to come to. But I know from my first couple years as a student then mentor on some poor teams, the official CD opinion can be extremely and widely unpopular among the rank and file of teams.
To avoid a debate: I must say that my own opinions have converged on the CD opinion over the years, but as someone who has been around for 10 years, I'm probably in an extremely small minority of all the mentors and teachers that have ever been involved.