The Meaning of FIRST

[Ivan Malik]

As many other threads on this subject have described, very Very VERY few teams exist on either extreme (all student vs all mentor) and if they do then they won't last long. I think all of us here on CD (and the FIRST community) can agree that the issue is one of "many shades of gray" instead of a black and white one. So why on earth do people attack the other side using arguments that assume a black and white answer?

Use your brains and actually think about what someone means by their statement. "Mentor built" may not mean that mentors are actually building/programming the entire robot. It could be meant that they are designing the whole thing, dictating what is done, heavily influencing its design through suggestion, building the tricky components, doing the majority of the machining, etc. The same for the flip side with "Student built." I know for a fact that my personal definition of "mentor built" does not match many people's definition and it has caused a lot of friction in the past. Think about the possible differences in perspective before you post! It will turn this into less of a trench war and more of a conversation!

This issue is as much an issue of a failure of communication as it is an actual issue. This debate had quite a few flame wars before I was even aware of FIRST, so I choose to suspect that some ancient history is the culprit for this chasm of assumptions between the two sides. None the less why is the argument stuck in the same spot it was when I was a high school freshmen? We should not be arguing the same things, but rather setting community-wide definitions so that future arguments are actually worth something.