[Bongle]

I don't know what it was, but it seemed that everyone was in a worse 'mood' this season. The championship 'could be improved' thread is full of people saying it was not all that great, some saying it was the worst one for years. The drillpress-banning thread was full of people saying it was the last straw or that they are steadily getting more fed up with FIRST.

I'm curious if the root cause is that people are less enthused about something this year in general, that is making them gripe more. Maybe this winter was particularely cold or snowy (it sure was in the waterloo area). Maybe funding was harder to come by due to some cyclical downturn which made the whole build period more stressful.

If your entire season was consumed by being cold, snowed-in, and worrying about how you were going to pay for all of this, FIRST making a questionable ruling or your banebots motor breaking on top of it all will hit a lot harder.

------ More likely idea: -------
Another possibility is that this year there was just a spike of odd or poorly-received rulings by FIRST. If you think about it, every year there will be a few ill-received rulings or problems with the KOP, and the number and severity of these unhappy events will vary by year. Some years there will be 10 critically unhappy events, some years there'll be 2 trivial ones. We may have just been unlucky enough to have had a spike year, and next year it'll return to normal.