2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Siri

I'm not really talking about Jared's opinion, just my own. (I happen to agree with what I think he said, but he's plenty capable of speaking for himself should he choose.) For myself, I'm curious about how you're measuring inspiration. If wildcards are ok, what's inherently wrong with, say, a points-based (a la districts) waitlist system? Why is getting rid of the list entirely better than inviting via performance rather than lottery?

Because I do think there is a lot of value in having a small "lottery" system to allow teams who did not qualify to experience championships, and I think railing against that with only the rationale of improving the robot quality-competition seed correlation for "elite" teams is a pretty lousy way to view FRC. From a competition-logistics perspective it may indeed be necessary, but that was not how I read his given rationale.

Moreover, robot quality has never been, for me, the ultimate end of FRC. It's certainly not what is celebrated by the Chairman's award. Waitlist judgments based on robot quality seem to me to violate one of the most crucial underpinnings of the organization itself.

And, finally, that particular passage just struck me as very ungracious. The implication strikes me as very much "if you are at championships with a robot that does not perform, you should not be at championships, and should feel bad about it simply because you might hurt the seed of an 'elite team.'" This strikes a nerve, for me, and it additionally bothers me that it seems few other people here have a problem with it.

Ultimately, I think we can all agree that there needs to be a line drawn somewhere on the number of teams that go to championships. We can also agree that certainly we want the competition at championships to be of a fitting caliber, so that the event does not seem like a glorified regional. I simply think, and I believe the existence of a waitlist at all is evidence that FIRST agrees, there certainly is value in allowing for a number teams which have not qualified to attend, and furthermore that if any judgment is to be made about waitlist teams attending, robot quality alone is not a metric which is wholly indicative of the type of team FIRST wants to see at a regional.