[Ken Leung]

I've always thought that people shouldn't tell others what to do when they are not willing to do the same thing. Since you feel so strongly about everyone's opinion, I wonder why you are judging other's opinion so critically and calling them stupid? Do you truely believe people want to listen to you when you are using words like "hell", "stupid", and "hate"? That sound very emotional to me. I cannot understand how you can tell people to "chill out and lighten up a little" when you are not doing that yourself.

Putting aside the way you wrote your message (because I believe people's attitude and facts should be considered seperately), it is my opinion to disagree with your statement that there is no need for moderation in the thread you are talking about. If you pay attention to it, you would notice there were a lot of posts calling others cheaters, and a lot of claims that are simply untrue, and have no evidence to back them up. I would like to quote Stevek from 254 in his message:

"When looking at some posts of those assigned the “con” side of the proposed “debate” – we realize that many statements have been for neither discussion nor debate, rather they have been statements of assumption, attack and accusation that unfairly slander our teams. As all our actions and intentions have been within the exiting FIRST rules, it troubles us that these people have used words like “cheat”, “broken rules”, and have implied our teams have “not been straight” about our goals. This is not only hurtful to us mentors, but more importantly to our students. Statements like these show very little knowledge of our teams, are unfounded, unfair, and ungracious – and clearly show us that continuing a “debate” would mean we would either need to lower ourselves to that level or defend ourselves against baseless and incorrect claims."

It is my opinion that this forum serve the community best when the discussion is constructive. In this case, I do not believe the discussion was organized enough to serve that purpose.

A lot of time have been spent writing messages in this thread when the teams really need to spend that time to finish their robots. That's why we should respect the teams' request to not participate in the debate. When build period is over, maybe we can consider opening up the debate again so everything can benefit from a constructive discussion by both sides, and form their own opinion about this topic base on facts and objective discussion.

This website is created to help FIRST participants connect with each other through the internet, but it is not the only place to do so. If you truely believe there should be more discussion you truely feel passionate about, then maybe you should start your own forum/e-mails and invite others to participant in that discussion with you.