Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
In particular, the statement "Nothing is perfect, even the judges." really saddened me. Whether intended or not, I read this as "The judges have given awards to the wrong teams." Which is either ludicrous or reprehensible.
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I really don't understand how you can come to this conclusion. I think it's a 100% certainty that the judges have given awards to the wrong team. No question in my mind whatsoever that it's happened before, and will happen again. I think it'd be naive to pretend otherwise, that some judges don't have preconceived biases, known or not.
When I was a student in high school I was with a group of people from another team that was flat out told by a judge that this particular group of judges doesn't like to give awards to teams who always win them, to "give the little guy a chance".
I don't see that it's any different than insinuating the referees aren't perfect, which we all know is 100% true. Why is it suddenly taboo to say the judges aren't perfect?
Most of these people probably don't do this every year. They don't know much about FIRST. They come in on Thursday, learn how to do their job as best as they can, spend two days trying to subjectively choose between 30-60 different robots/designs/teams/etc that they probably don't *really* fully understand, no matter how good the students are at explaining them. Obviously they'll get it wrong from time to time.
You think teams don't embellish? Of course they do. The judges don't know any better. If the robot is marginally effective on the field, and a team gives a good story about how sensors control their robot to do so and so really innovative functions, and their drive has xyz innovative qualities, how will they know the difference? They don't see this stuff everyday like we do. It may not be obvious who's full of BS and has a robot that really doesn't do what it says it does, or if they've really done the outreach things they say they have, etc.