[gblake]

Originally Posted by pabeekm

I’d argue there's a definition of "competitive" that we can all agree with; it’s a drive to always do things better, gain more experience, and meet new personal bests. I don’t care how many banners a team has: if they have that drive, they are a terrifying and inspirational competitor who will eventually earn any measure of success they want.

It's worth noting that extra time on the robot can make a team more competitive in that respect, whatever their on-field goals are. It's an opportunity to put extra passion to work and learn more as a result. Practice bots aren’t necessary for teams to succeed on the field, but they can push a team’s experience and performance to levels they couldn't reach otherwise. That may sound cheesy, but it's true and awesome.

That's an admirable suggestion, but I'll bet you a lunch that 90% of the folks using the word "competitive" in this thread, mean "builds a robot that has a strong chance of doing well during tournaments".

I doubt many use it to mean what you just described, or to mean simply "able to compete". Able to compete is probably the more correct definition (if a dictionary was consulted, or if we focused on the etymology of the term).

If I won my bet, the definition of "doing well" would still be a big source of fuzziness, but it is definitely tilted in the direction of participating in the eliminations.

In my experience, "competitive" is a notion that means so many different things to so many different people that I have learned to avoid it. Using it creates waaaay too many opportunities for talking past one another. Parts of this thread are good examples of that.

Blake