Alright CD members. I, like everybody else who has been paying attention, have noticed an unusual amount of flaming, unconstructively criticizing, and otherwise ungraciously professional behavior in the past week. I can pick out many many times where this occurred, but I don’t want to waste time. I think that the key issue is that people are criticizing FIRST in a rather terse manner. So… this post has two points.
1.
How to criticize
There is a difference between criticizing FIRST and constructively criticizing FIRST.
For example, I have seen numerous posts (some have even drug head refs onto CD) looking like this:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by example poster
We lost the regional because of the refs call! They don't know the rules! They are biased!
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How does this help? This post can be considered flaming. It may present a problem, but it doesn't present a solution.
Constructively criticizing may look something like this:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Better example poster
There was a call today at Magnolia regional that may have cost our team the regional. I realize that the regional is over, and head ref is human and he may have missed something, but that is okay. In the future, we can fix it by (add idea to make things better here)
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I'm sure FIRST does not mind something like this; 1. Because it is constructive and 2. Because it is Graciously Professional.
It is constructive criticism, from people like Travis, which has led to these rule changes. We should embrace the fact that FIRST cares about us enough to pay attention to us. If we were in a sport, they would say something like "Forget them!" We are truly lucky to have a dedicated staff that will respond to us.
2.
Your input
People here on CD are more that willing to hear your opinion on issues. The issue is again, unconstructively criticizing and acting just plain un-GP. There has been flaming, to FIRST officials even, and that has got to stop. People have better things to do with their time than to read a tirade about how a ref screwed up. This paragraph has been sort of a circular ramble, so I’ll get to the point. I want you to say how things can be better. I am not in any sort of position to change things, but hopefully somebody will stumble across this thread and see what they can do to help the people who feel that they need to be helped.
(Note to the mods: This is being posted in the moderated forum for a reason. Of course, if you feel that this thread is getting out of hand, or off topic, delete posts or close the thread).
Keep things civil please
-Daniel