Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
But what is that point? When presented with specific questions about it, you seem to be unwilling to answer directly. It sounds like you want to add restrictions in order to increase competitiveness and reduce "friendliness". I have to assume that you're putting the word in quotes because you have a specific meaning in mind, and I will guess that you are referring to teams picking their friends as alliance partners.
My basic problem is that I can't follow your argument to a conclusion that makes sense to me. It would help me if you could clearly state what your ultimate goal is, so that I can appropriately fill in th.e blanks in what you're saying in order to align what I'm reading with that goal. Then if I agree with the goal, I can better form my questions about how you are trying to reach it. Of course, it's possible -- or even likely -- that I disagree with the goal, in which case I will simply say so.
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Here's the argument (sorry for restating it for those who have followed what I've been saying--one poster said "Specifically Mr. McCann, I believe that I and the majority in this thread have read your posts and understand what you are arguing for." Apparently some still don't follow and are asking for further clarification.):
I'll start with my premise, which I think many of you may have missed (and I was remiss in addressing earlier). I haven't yet seen a counter argument to what I've proposed other than saying "I want to do what I want to do." That's not a rationale position that states how what's happening now promotes the objectives of FIRST. I don't accept status quo bias--that what we've stumbled into so far is the best outcome. Make your case, don't just say that we should just stick with the status quo. To be honest, the attrition rate of FRC teams, which I've seen discussed in other threads, indicates that there are problems that we need to address. Lets' start fixing them. Come up with some good ideas. I've put out mine. Instead of shooting them down, propose something else.
So here's my principals:
1) A preferred way to encourage participation in the FIRST program, and thus in STEM education, is to allow all teams the broadest level of participation in elimination alliances.
2) As a corollary, less experienced and less competitive teams learn a tremendous amount from being able to ally with more experienced, competitive teams through a series of elimination matches.
3) Teams drafting their own second bot creates an insular environment which degrades the atmosphere of coopertition. A team doing so appears to be implying, even if that's not the intent, that it is better than any other team, that it is not interested in learning from other teams that might in in other alliances, and isn't interested in sharing its expertise and resources with other teams.
4) With these objectives in mind, I suggest these changes to be used by event organizers (I can understand the concern about event autonomy, but FIRST can issue guidelines):
a) Offseason event should decide the intent of their event as to the level of competitiveness. IRI and Chezy Champs stand as the most competitive. Others like the Rookie Rumble will decide that maximum participation among all teams is the objective.
b) in the less competitive events, to maximize the interaction among teams and the ability for the greatest possible number of teams to play in the eliminations, alliance captains would not be allowed to choose their own second robot unless there are no other 'bots running.
c) Another great option is to require alliance captains to teams other than other alliance captains. I specified rule changes above that would dissuade teams from losing late matches to avoid become an alliance captain.
5) If teams tried to do these on their own they would be unilaterally "disarming" because other teams would choose more competitive drafting strategies, and a deep literature in political science and economics shows that few will choose this approach. If you really, really don't believe this, I can start sending you citations from the literature. I know of no studies that say otherwise.)
6) Hal Varian (1986) [now Google CIO] showed that we will underprovide a preferred level of charitable contributions or cooperative giving if we avoid compelling everyone to participate and leave the provision to individual choice. This means that if we want to encourage meeting the first two objectives, the event organizer needs to compel all teams to follow these rules so that everyone gains greater benefits and reaches a higher level of satisfaction with the outcome.
Yes, this does limit individual freedom of choice. But the sequential draft already restricts a team's ability to choose whichever team they want, and the selection refusal rule adds even more of a restriction. We often limit freedom of choice in many situations to improve overall societal benefits. The speed limit is just one example.
An important difference in offseason--for almost all teams, moving on the World Championships is at stake in the Regionals and Districts. That is never the case in the offseason, so it has a much different competitive flavor. Think of the NFL preseason games vs regular season and the level of competitiveness.
As to contacting event organizers, I am encouraging other teams who see the benefits of this approach to contact their chosen events and persuade those events to use these rules. It is not my place to be the event "police" and monitor what each event is doing. I used the Fall Classic as an EXAMPLE of a situation and I don't feel its my responsibility to follow up with them. (I follow up with events that we compete in where I think that changes would be beneficial.) So please do not ask me to contact anyone about this comment.