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Originally Posted by sanddrag
Before we go any further I just wanted to clarify that there are two types of people in the FIRST events.
Judges: Blue shirts, determine which teams to give awards to.
Referrees: Black and white striped shirts, give match scores and penalties.
Okay, carry on.  |
Don't forget about the white shirts: the volunteers who setup, reset, and take down the field before, during, and after the competition. There's also that long line of people sitting down the back side of the field who are trying their best to run things smoothly and get information out to everyone. I think everyone at the regionals are doing their best, and they are not the source of these problems.
I think the problem lies with the people who work on the software and the logistics of the competitions before the regionals start. I believe they need to find a system that works and stick with it. Have you ever helped setup and take apart an official FIRST field? I had the opportunity after the AZ regional to get close and see how the fields were built. I was amazed at how efficiently the field was constructed and able to be assembled/disassembled easily. There were many small touches you could tell were added because of lessons learned from previous years. If the computers and the software were as good as the field, then none of the problems mentioned would be happening. To me this suggests that the people working on the software aren't as experienced with it as the people who design and build the fields year after year. I predict that if the software doesn't change radically that in a few years they'll learn just like I'm sure the field designers have, but only time will amend the current software instability situation.
However, even if the rankings and scoring records were perfectly accurate, I believe that they are still inadequate. This year especially with penalties, I don't believe that the information provided in the rankings is valuable. They don't include penalties, they don't say which team was penalized (or what for), and they aren't accessible anywhere but at one end of the pit (at least at AZ anyway). Teams with limited numbers don't have the ability to scout the majority of the matches and can't choose good alliances based on the limited data provided. I wish FIRST would record more of this information and find more places to display it to make life easier on teams during the regionals. If not more screens on the field side of the curtain, I would love to see FIRST ensure a wireless internet connection at every regional and post information rapidly on the web.
I hope that FIRST listens to the feedback from teams this year like they have done in the past, because this year I think most teams will be expressing their concerns about the topics brought up in this post more than others. Maybe the reason for this is because FIRST has improved a great deal many other things so well in recent years.