a few minor things...

[Brandon Martus]

Hello. Got a few things to go over.

Email Notifications
I added a few non-preference based email notifications. They are in the Ventures System. Only one shows up now, because the event has opened & closed. But, you can be e-mailed when the results are calculated & the winners are paid. This is a per-event notification, so you have to set that up on each event you want to be notified about. These are in addition to the ones I added to your control panel a few weeks ago.

Thread Rating
I want to encourage everybody to use the Thread Rating drop-down when replying. (or if you arent going to reply, theres one on the thread page, at the bottom). This will help you spot good & bad threads, based on the # of stars showing up on the thread list. This can be good if everybody truly uses it and doesn't just give 5's every time, or 3's every time. If its a good, helpful discussion -- give it a higher mark. If its something that really isn't worth looking at if you're busy building a robot but want to keep up to date w/new threads -- give it a lower score. Thanks.

Weekly Community Bulletin
There is a weekly community bulletin that goes out Sunday nights. It contains a bunch of stats aobut the previous week, including top visited threads, most replies, etc. If you don't get it -- you can sign up in your control panel.

Picture Galleries
The 2003 galleries have been added to the picture gallery. We encourage you to upload your robot pictures at any point during the build process, and especially on/after the ship date. Remember -- try to include your team # or name when uploading a picture of your bot. One day I will make this searchable, so having good data is something to keep in mind.

The usual hub-bub.
See the post(s) below about forum etiquette & the rules. Thanks in advance for making this place a good resource for FIRST teams to come & talk robotics.

Good luck this season. Woo.