Quote:
Originally Posted by hzheng_449
Just as an observation: I noticed in this thread that there really seem to be two different perceptions of FIRST as an organization. On one end there is a "the small town" or "small company" perception of FIRST, where people feel a real give and take with FIRST HQ and see FIRST HQ in a very personal light. On the other end there is a "big city view" or "corporate" of FIRST. The relationship with FIRST is much less personal. This view sees FIRST HQ as the organization that releases the game rules, runs worlds, and that's about it. I wonder where the position on this spectrum of an "average team" is and where it will shift as FIRST continues to grow. Again, this is pretty irrelevant to the main topic of the thread (though so is much of the debate on this thread anyways). It's just something I noticed, and I was wondering if anyone else noticed it as well.
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Fasten your seatbelts, it's philosophy time!
This is a very apt observation, and it has more to do with the original topic than you may think. What i have seen in this thread leads me to think that there is a large portion of CD that subscribes to the "big city" perception. This perception, to some extent, seems to attribute some godlike, infallible poperties to HQ. Many people may think of FIRST as this magical overlord, a "big brother" overseeing teams around the world in the pursuit of a perfect robot. As much as we say it ironically, it seems some may take the concept of "FIRST is love FIRST is life" to the literal extreme, and to this I would like to extend a friendly "get real." We make robots, but we are not robots, and neither are the people at FIRST. None of us are perfect, and neither are the people at HQ. Somebody screwed up and that's alright; the fact that this is the first time in many years that a mistake like this has occurred is truly amazing. When we choose to support the "big city, big brother" pereption of FIRST by hiding their occasional mistakes, we lose one of the most special things about FIRST. It's a community. Every team, every student, every administrator and developer and brilliant mind in FIRST is an independent, yet connected member of this community. This connection, in many ways, is also shared between teams and the FIRST organization, and it is this bond that allows FIRST to work by fostering excitement for engineering through the inspiration that comes with being involved in such a massive, connected organization as FIRST. However, by creating an image of HQ as an Orwellian overlord we distance ourselves from the humanity of FIRST and the incredible binding force which it has created.
Nevertheless, privacy of information is important. Screwing with it with malicious intent is a stupid and shameful thing to do, but the end fact is that somebody messed up and spreading of the information was bound to happen, because people do dumb things. It's been stated multiple times that the entire leak began as a mistake, followed by a misconception in the form of a CD post, followed by some innocent sharing of the mistake, followed by malicious sharing of the mistake. The fact is, people make mistakes, and other people like to take advantage of those mistakes. End of story.