Keep up the work on the F4 show. It shows lots of promise, as a mentor it is a bit hard for me to watch as the show get lost in individual off topic chats, but that is the nature of passionate young adults.
My experience as a mentor on joining CD.
I was a lurker on CD for well over a year, more like two, before creating an account.
As a rookie FRC mentor I was very hesitant to start posting, I felt that I wasn't in the position to post due to my lack of FRC knowledge. There are, as you know, so many talented and knowledgeable people on here that I didn't want to embarrass myself, or worse, my team.
Searching through CD was more cumbersome due to the image verification, but I pressed through because all the vast knowledge hidden here is well worth it.
I have been doing competitive robotics for several years before we created our FRC team. Mostly FLL, MATE-ROV and Vex.
Even with the experience of competing at the Internationals in ROV with easily the youngest team ever to compete (middle school) for four straight years, I was still very hesitant to join and post.
I was convinced by the students to start showcasing our designs. Crude and mostly functional they were, but I wanted to support their achievements. Since there were only 3 teams on this side of the island (big island) all started at the same time,(Thanks Waialua!), and never posting, it was time to step up.
The reputation system I just ignore for the most part. Partly as I didn't really understand it very well and I didn't feel qualified to give rep.
Yes it would be nice to have lots of green dots, but is that the reason to be posting? No way..
In the beginning of my road to posting on CD I just wrote and submitted. Bad idea, thankfully you can edit some mistakes, but if you hurt someone's feeling no editing will repair that.
Learning to write your post in a text editor and proof read, and if heated, taking the time to cool off and reread and edit is crucial.
Yes being the first to answer a question that you actually know the answer to can be a great feeling, like you are actually contributing.
Taking the time to verify your post is contributing, pro or con to the topic, in a respectful and meaningful way, is what earns your CD reputation, dots or not..
Aloha!