Quote:
Originally Posted by DonRotolo
Really? He's been at a few events where I know you were, too. My advice: Find him. Good "kid"*
Yes, it does. 
OK, seriously: Ryan, CD has always had some bickering; what we are seeing today is just more of it. In the past, the 'trustees'** of CD would either PM, or negative rep, or outright ban someone who was practicing "Obnoxious Amateurism"***, or just a troublemaker.
Whats' changed is that we are seeing reduced involvement of the trustees. I am not trying to criticize Brandon Martus, but many in the CD community would be tickled pink to help him maintain decorum.
CD is not like other fora on the Interweb: We have a younger crowd here, and "Gracious" is a key word in our vocabulary. We can change it, but we need moderators who will do it and admins who believe it is the right way to run a forum.
Good post Ryan, thank you.
Don
*Kid to me, since I'm such an old fart. It's all relative.
**Mostly the forum moderators, but fewer and fewer are active these days. Possibly because the atmosphere is different.
***The opposite of Gracious Professionalism.
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Maybe I just have a far different memory of the old CD than most...
It was far harsher than the CD I see now. I see a lot of folks complaining at people being too harsh or disagreeing with opinions. But none of that is new.
A quick waltz through some threads found several of these "trustees" saying some pretty nasty things. I'm not doing this to call them out, merely to point out that it's always been this way and that saying "Let's go back to the old days" is at best a pointless thing to say.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...?postid=280908 Jumping on someone for asserting that you don't need a degree to be an engineer.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...336#post649336 Refusing to argue with folks about subjects
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...4&postcount=40 Grammar Police
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...227#post211227 Put up or Shut up!
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...804#post316804 Copious usage of sarcasm
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...415#post319415 Calling folks stupid
Why'd I pick these two? Well, because I recalled reading them and used Spotlight to find them. I could have found hundreds more threads but my coworkers were looking at me funny and wondering why I was giggling. Now, you could argue that I cherry picked my threads, you're right. I could also argue that the counterpoint would use cherry picked threads.
So, what am I saying here? The issue of being rude to each other has always been there. We need to work on it (heaven knows I need to sometimes not be such a... let's just say punk). But the big thing we're missing is that so many of the folks that made CD a great resource? They've stopped posting. And I get that, life gets in the way. The community is a lot darker without folks like Ken Patton, Andy Baker, Paul Copoili, Mike Martus, Dr Joe, and their ilk sharing their insights. Why? Because they were folks who, while having massive engineering chops, were also passionate about sharing that knowledge.
Want to bring CD back to how it was? Bring back solid technical discussion.
Designing a drivetrain? Post your calculations along with the CAD. Explain to me what variables went into your drivetrain this year and why you chose a 3CIM ball shifter? And I mean, more than, well, 3 CIMs for MOAR POWAH and Shifter for MOAR SPEED! What variables were you trying to optimize? How did you compute that?
Get rid of the BS political handwringing - Who the hell CARES if a company uses the patent system to make a profit? Take their money, say thank you, and then be inspired to go fix the patent system. Want more women in FIRST? Don't harass me about how my friends aren't diverse enough, help me recruit more women to STEM.