Refrain from the negatives

[Arefin Bari]

The past few days there have been a lot of threads which points out the negatives of past championship event. It also points our negative points about refs, volunteers. There are few positive threads too but the sad part is the negative threads have way more posts than the positive ones.

I am sorry to come out just like this, but please give it a break. It took many days of planning to pull together an event like this. I am sure reading all these negative points aren’t making the committee members very happy. Someone pointed this out earlier, but I would like to point this out again. All the judges, refs, and volunteers are students, mentors, teachers, engineers who took their time off from their schedule to work at the event so the teams can have fun. They tried to run it as smoothly as possible. So what if everything wasn’t perfect in your opinion. Keep in mind that there were thousands of people at the event and every single one of them has their point of view. Some may have liked what happened at the championship event, some may not. FIRST has done it’s best to give all of us a good time. Things can get frustrating a lot of times, but think about the positives.

It is very upsetting to see the first few threads are about the “negative” part of the event when I visit the forum. I would like to see one person come out here and say that they had a horrible time at the championship, because one way or the other, you enjoyed your time in Atlanta.

I apologize in advance if this thread upsets anyone…

-Arefin.

[B. Flaherty]

I believe the point of the Negative Thread was to point out things that you learned by doing something wrong for example. Something like "okay, we learned not to use this type of material for this reason, etc". I agree, it does bother me when I read the posts that seem to slander the volunteers, I simply just gave up reading that thread. Hopefully everyone can find some sort of positive outlook on the season, even in the negative.

[Mike]

In all fairness, and as others have pointed out, we are customers of FIRST. If the customers aren't happy, they complain in hopes of getting it changed. Yay capitalism.

With that being said, I had a blast at Championships this year.

[Joe Matt]

There's a difference between constructive criticism that some posts started off trying to do, and what eventually turned out. Even some non negative threads turned out to go south a bit.

I think we all should just calm down from AP tests, finals, and post-Champs stress and just relax a bit.

"Incase of a loss of cabin pressure, just relax, ok?" -Timekeeper

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think in some ways, highlighting a "negative aspect" could actually be a helpful situation, but I think I will expand on Arefin's great statement and say this:

Every complaint you write reaches someone's ears, but if you really want to make a difference, you need to change your gripes into suggestions, into statements with reason and suggestion, instead of leaving your audience with basic criticisms sans actual reason behind them.

[Jaine Perotti]

Originally Posted by Eugenia Gabrielov

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think in some ways, highlighting a "negative aspect" could actually be a helpful situation, but I think I will expand on Arefin's great statement and say this:

Every complaint you write reaches someone's ears, but if you really want to make a difference, you need to change your gripes into suggestions, into statements with reason and suggestion, instead of leaving your audience with basic criticisms sans actual reason behind them.

Genia makes a perfect summation of how I feel about this subject.

I also noticed that the negative threads had many more responses than the positive ones did. It has always been this way, throughout the two years I have been reading the forum. I think majority of the replies thus far have been civil, with a few exceptions. The exceptions have mainly been people with little experience postulating their ideas here on ChiefDelphi, and I don't think it is on a truly wide scale.

I think the main reason why there are more responses in the negative threads (as opposed to the positive ones), is the fact that human nature causes people to focus on the negative aspects of their experiences. Most of our most powerful memories are of bad experiences, for a good reason. People learn best by observing cause and effect (this method of learning is the basis of all scientific disciplines). When people see a bad effect, they naturally look towards the cause in order to garner an explanation, as well as a means of preventing that bad experience from occurring again. However, people tend to focus less on the positive/neutral experiences because they have less of an overtly noticeable effect on their lives.

The reason we see so much negative feedback here on the forums is the exact same reason that the majority of news reports focus on the bad news, and not the good news. We don't need to fix the things that are good, and so people feel less of a need to post about them here (because this forum exists as a means of improving the FIRST experience).

I don't feel a great concern about the amount of negative feedback posts that we are seeing now. I will only become concerned if those posts become disrespectful or non-constructive.

-- Jaine

[Beth Sweet]

Arefin,

Every year, teams get together to discuss regionally what was good and what was bad about the past season. The way that I have always viewed the good/bad overall and good/bad championship threads was as a way for FIRSTers who do not attend those forums to voice their thoughts. Those who read those threads may voice the thoughts posted there during the forums. Those notes go straight to FIRST.

[RoboMom]

I think constructive criticism is always welcome. I have said many times that the hardest part of FIRST is communication.

I facilitate our local team forum. I also send out a survey to all who came to the Chesapeake Regional. I have also been cut and pasting comments off the CD forums, taking off identifiers, collating into different subject areas.

I think it's fine to voice an opinion on how things could be better for the majority involved.
There are about 50 people at HQ. There are 45,000 volunteers and 25,000 students involved in FIRST programs. Things can always be better.

[Rick TYler]

May I just suggest that if you have a constructive criticism to make about FIRST on CD, please make it once and then shut up about it. I get tired of post after post repeating the same argument in slightly different forms. Repeating these things increases the negativity quotient without adding anything new to the dialogue.

[dhitchco]

Speaking of CONSTRUCTIVE criticism for 2007 season, I have yet to see any forward progress in the following areas; we are empowered to make the changes ourselves...not just complain:

1) Who is going to propose changes to the section 7 of the rules to clarify and fix the wording about 'seat saving'?

2) Who is going to propose better rules for robot carts including clarification about safety lights while in motion and about music on the carts?

3) Who is going to propose better rules about fix-it sessions so that those times & dates are "squeaky-clean"

4) Who's going to suggest a new timetable/schedule for the escalators in the GWCC so that it optimizes the up/down traffic flow.....ha, ha, ha....a really big issue isn't it?

I'm sure the list goes, on but this powerful forum can be used to develop positive ideas to steer the ship in new directions next year!

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by dhitchco

1) Who is going to propose changes to the section 7 of the rules to clarify and fix the wording about 'seat saving'?

No need to fix the wording -- the teams just need to agree to abide by the rules. Just because there are criminals doesn't mean the law is bad. I don't even believe it should require enforcement. For all the yammering we FIRSTies do about "gracious professionalism" a whole bunch of us are all in favor of violating rules that we think are inconvenient. If we walked the walk like we talk the talk this wouldn't be an issue.

[Pat Chen]

Originally Posted by Eugenia Gabrielov

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think in some ways, highlighting a "negative aspect" could actually be a helpful situation, but I think I will expand on Arefin's great statement and say this:

Every complaint you write reaches someone's ears, but if you really want to make a difference, you need to change your gripes into suggestions, into statements with reason and suggestion, instead of leaving your audience with basic criticisms sans actual reason behind them.

Eugenia is right. There is a difference between complaints and constructive criticism....complaints are gripes or whining fest whereas constructive criticism coupled with suggestions...allows for the possibility of exchanging ideas which will cause changes .... which will negate the cause of the "complaint" or problem.

Pat Chen

[Conor Ryan]

Atlanta's over, Off Seasons don't start for another week, take the time off and get used to life again. Atlanta came, and went, yes it was a lot of fun, and yes it will happen again whether you liked it or not. FIRST knows that they can always improve and I've yet to see a time where they didn't take an opportunity to improve.

So take a break, take a breath, and take some time off and relax a bit. We all need to unwind from the Season long caffeine overdose before any long term side effects occur. Remember, it just keeps getting better and better around here.

Yes, I do think we all need to relax, it's been a long season

[Tristan Lall]

It's a given that the vast majority of us who attended the Championship enjoyed it. But that doesn't mean that we can't legitimately find fault with certain aspects of the event.

We don't exist to placate anybody. By refraining from airing our concerns, we are relying upon individuals to catch all of their own mistakes. While this might be ideal, it's also unrealistic. So it isn't a matter of attempting to offend—the motivation behind most of the so-called negative posts has been a desire to improve upon what has come before. Yes, people take their feelings too far, on occasion; but we shouldn't let that stop us from offering reasoned criticisms of those things which merit improvement. As long as we avoid libel, and keep the criticisms civil in tone, I don't think there's really a need to put an end to those threads.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

I am sorry to come out just like this, but please give it a break. It took many days of planning to pull together an event like this. I am sure reading all these negative points aren’t making the committee members very happy. Someone pointed this out earlier, but I would like to point this out again. All the judges, refs, and volunteers are students, mentors, teachers, engineers who took their time off from their schedule to work at the event so the teams can have fun. They tried to run it as smoothly as possible.

-Arefin.

I don't see any reason why we should refrain from pointing out areas where FIRST should imprve. We definitely shouldn't refrain from posting constructive criticism to "not hurt people's feelings". The world doesn't work that way. If I were one of the people that organized Nationals, I would be glad to hear what people thought it's shortcomings were, so I could improve the event for next year.

Sure, it's annoying when all people do is harp on what went wrong, and not what went well also, but without suggestions for improvement, people will have the same negatives next year.

For example, many people have raised concern with how the WFA award was presented. If I were FIRST, I'd love to hear what the community of teams thought could be done differently next year to properly honor the recipient in the manner that they deserve. In no way would I view such criticism as whining, or an attack on people who put their heart and soul into running the event.

You do bring up a valid concern in that it's not necessarily the message that's inflammatory--but rather the delivery of the message. In the past many people have had legitimate concerns, but delivered them by blasting all the parties in question--obviously this isn't acceptable.

In conclusion, I say keep up the constructive criticism. Without it, FIRST won't know where it needs to improve.