Over the course of the season I have seen a growing attitude and tones of many of the posts on these forums. Much of it is rooted in true sentiments and logic. But a large portion is naive and, frankly, immature.
I'm specifically talking about the complaints about the rules this year.
Am I a fan of all the rules? No. I have been quite outspoken about at least one of them, and am one of the offenders of this post myself.
Could the rules be better? Always.
But, as a whole, are the rules bad? Absolutely not.
If you read these forums, you wouldn't get that impression though.
I don't mean to pick on anyone in particular, but
this post was what set me off specifically. That thread already had several comments that displeased me, but that one went further.
Many people on these forums have had experience with other robotics/design/engineering competitions. But a majority have not. Let me tell you, there are competitions with
FAR worse rules than FRC.
I'll enlighten you with an example out of my own experience.
Last year, I competed in an ASME student design competition. The basic premise was to create an automated window cleaning device.
Eleven schools registered for our particular event. Eight showed up with completed devices. Of those eight, only three passed the equivalent of "inspection." Of those three, two were later (after they had competed), ruled illegal designs.
To reiterate, of the eleven teams, only one had a "legal" design.
And this was not because of the team's failure to read, understand, and attempt to comply with the rules. The rules were poorly worded, the judges had a terrible understanding of them, and they were enforced differently at each event.
My team had based a design modification for our device on the team that had won a competition the weekend before. Our, however, was ruled illegal (only after we had competed, and registered the highest score).
If anyone thinks FIRST's rules are that bad, they are mistaken. A vast majority of FIRST teams will be have passed inspection by the beginning of qualification rounds. Of the minority who don't, I'm willing to bet almost 100% of them will make it onto the field by the end of Friday. And a majority of those violations will be things like weight and size infractions.
Is this a perfect scenario? No. But it is one of the best, easily.
Do we have a right to complain about rules we don't like? Yes, of course.
But when those complaints get out of hand, sometimes becoming borderline personal attacks, you have to step back and look at the big picture.