I don't want to drag this thread further off-topic, but I've always wondered what the difference is between 12/12/2012 and 12/12/1912, 12/12/1812, etc. They're all 12/12/12 :/ All of the "OMG 12/12/12 WE'RE GONNA DIE BECAUSE IT'S FREAKING 12/12/12" comments that I see everywhere always annoy me for that reason.
I always figured that all of this "end of the world because the Mayan calendar says so" business is just a result of the Mayans not calculating far enough into the future, and modern people just mis-interpreting that. I mean, come on, we can probably calculate into the 3000s with our fancy computers, but they didn't have any of that
Maybe they just gave up after that point.
Back on topic...
I don't believe that I ever really knew the "old" ChiefDelphi, because I joined in 2007. I wasn't really active until mid-2008, but I can still see a definite difference between now and this time last year. As someone has already stated, there seems to be a lot fewer "Hey guys, I CAD'ed a new swerve module, any suggestions?" threads and a lot more topics related to things that are occurring outside of the "shop", such as community service, cool robotics-related articles in magazines and papers, and A LOT of discussion on the items from Bill's Blog. I know that it's not always all about the mechanical aspects of the team, but it's nice to see what other teams are doing to improve their gameplay (after all, building the robot is kind of a big part of the team). I find a lot of the discussions on the chances for 2010/the blog entries to be really interesting, but it's not long before they end up going wayyyy over my head and start discussing logistics that I really don't need to know.
I think that this mightttt be because of the poor mentor/student ratio on CD. I see A LOT of mentors and college students making posts and having conversations, but I don't see a lot of students posting. I'm not really intimidated by adults that I don't know (well, okay, I am when I'm face-to-face with someone, but I'm the kind of person who opens up and talks a lot more when I have a computer in front of me), but I know a lot of students who are, and that may also be hurting the discussions. I cannot and will not speak for everybody, but people in general just have a natural fear of being wrong and being yelled at/scolded/told that they're wrong. Adults seem to get over a huge part of this fear at some point, but the students are still in school, and we've been trained to believe that being wrong is a bad thing. I know that a lot of kids are doing some really great things on their team, but I never see any of this being posted about, and I think that it's because of the intimidation factor.
Anddd I don't know where I'm going with this
I'm very bad at writing out what I'm actually thinking, and I'm not very good at communicating concisely. It all makes sense in my head...
Edit: Oh yeah...that's right. Negative comments. Negativity->fear of posting because of a natural feel of being wrong->downsized conversation->??
I feel like I just went really off topic in the other direction :/