Forums not used as much anymore

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

People are scared to death of posting on CD because they'll get torn apart for making unpopular opinions. I've heard this quite alot in the past few years.

There certainly could be a "greatest hits" collection of someone making an unpopular opinion and 20-30 different people make the same criticism with occasional sprinklings of other users telling the well-established "CD Hivemind" to cool it until the user is 5 rep-dots in the hole, half of the posts are deleted, and they are never to be seen again. If you want a refresher of what I'm talking about, searching ' "Greater Toronto" and "2013" or "2012" ' by titles only and going through the top 4 threads will yield instances where a poster may have posted something troll-ish or false, and the community tended to not leave it alone, but let everyone take their pound of flesh.

I should know, I did that more a while ago in an effort to be accepted by people on here...

In my personal opinion (not attached to any team or anything here) Chief Delphi's functions and attitudes since Chief Delphi the team merged has been stuck in a rut not unlike the "Eternal September". Essentially, events where a few key members from older days began making fewer posts here and an influx of new members happened at the same time. Some of the new members, it seems, formed into some weird collective of group-thought. While often shares widely-held beliefs of the community at large, can execute methods some would deem uncouth at its best and detrimental to community progress at its worst.

I am unsure if this thread is the proper place or if now is the proper time to have this discussion, but it's one that is probably warranted.

Try not to bust out the negative rep unless you honestly believe someone is not beginning or continuing in the vein of constructive discussion in the thread, or if they are obviously "trolling". Deal with attacks through reports for mods to take care of and handle disagreements through neutral rep or full-fledged PMs.

[KrazyCarl92]

I know that many of the students on our team use chiefdelphi as a resource to look at, but are hesitant to post in the forums. I often hear many of them talking about things they saw on CD or asking questions about stuff other teams were doing that they see on CD. Most of them either do not have an account or just very rarely post.

In some cases, searching CD to figure out whatever it is that you want is sufficient. It's simply possible that a certain level of technical information is already available through this forums that further technical discussion would be extraneous. I know there are plenty of times when I've had a question and thought about posting it only to find that someone else was wondering the same thing a few years back and already had the question answered.

[Madison]

CD opinion is the collective wisdom of nearly fifteen years of uninterrupted discussion on many topics. Think about that for a bit -- fifteen years. There's something to be said for the conclusions that have been drawn by this community and the topics that come up over and over again have been hashed out pretty thoroughly. It's rare for someone to offer a new wrinkle in these debates and our reluctance to entertain them again and again shows this.

How would the scientific community react to someone that wanted to argue against the existence of gravity, but provided no new, compelling evidence to support their theory?

I have a few thoughts about why there's less technical discussion happening today than in the past, but they're not fully baked. I think, generally, that there are fewer authoritative voices in the discussion today and that people posing questions do not adequately communicate respect for the authorities they're soliciting help from. That is to say that it seems like people are asking for answers before having done any research on their own; or that they ask a question and receive an answer, but never reply to acknowledge the help they've received. That makes people answering questions work harder and they receive less in return. That's lose-lose for everyone.

I don't know how you fix problems like these. They seem institutional; like there's been a great shift in the attitude of students in the last ten years or so.

[cmrnpizzo14]

There are less website posts now, but let's not forget what 1114 and 254 did earlier this year with their facebook and twitter campaigns to release a robot reveal picture and video respectively. I think if you included that in the data it might change things a little bit...

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

People are scared to death of posting on CD because they'll get torn apart for making unpopular opinions. I've heard this quite alot in the past few years.

I'd agree to this, I frequent CD extremely, I probably check it as much as I do my other social media. However after initially joining, I tend not to post as much for that very reason, or for being afraid to share my ideas due to them not being completely fleshed out in my head. I know several others that feel the same.

Originally Posted by ehfeinberg

. If you look at the members who actively post who are students, its like 5%. Doesn't make a very inclusive atmosphere. Tis a shame.

Couldn't agree more. I know and understand Chief Delphi is supposed to be for all members of the FIRST Community, but it does feel like it's a Alumni/Mentor based forum, and it does make it slightly more scary to post as a student.

Originally Posted by ehfeinberg

If you really want to make CD a thriving community, then you have to actively work to make it feel inclusive to new and younger members.

I must agree. I think seeing more student's views on topics we discuss here would be a great thing for the community.

[VioletElizabeth]

I know that I do not post unless I am absolutely sure that I am saying exactly what I want to and that it will not hurt anyone, even if I have a strong opinion.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Madison

I don't know how you fix problems like these. They seem institutional; like there's been a great shift in the attitude of students in the last ten years or so.

Different thoughts on why there might be fewer questions from students on CD now then there were in the past.

The makeup of the Internet has changed in the past 10 years. 10 years ago there was no Skype, Google+, or Facebook. Chief Delphi (and the little-used official FIRST forums) were perhaps one of the only places that members of the FIRST community could network online.

Now, on a daily basis, there is a ton of FIRST interaction and discussion on Facebook on dozens of pages and groups. Teams can help one another via Skype or Google+. Teams have better websites than ever with more resources. There is a higher number of experienced mentors in general, and events like "kit bot build days" are more common, helping bring new teams up to speed with greater success than before.

I don't think it's a change in the attitude of students, more a change in how this interaction occurs.

I know students on our team are never hesitant to post on Chief Delphi when they have a question, but often the problem gets solved another way first.

[PVCpirate]

Originally Posted by Madison

CD opinion is the collective wisdom of nearly fifteen years of uninterrupted discussion on many topics. Think about that for a bit -- fifteen years. There's something to be said for the conclusions that have been drawn by this community and the topics that come up over and over again have been hashed out pretty thoroughly. It's rare for someone to offer a new wrinkle in these debates and our reluctance to entertain them again and again shows this.

How would the scientific community react to someone that wanted to argue against the existence of gravity, but provided no new, compelling evidence to support their theory?

I'm not trying to pick apart your post or your opinion, just providing a counterpoint.

Many of the issues that the controversial threads are about are unlike gravity because they are very much grey areas, like mentor/student built, team organization, etc. People who are new to the program, of which there are THOUSANDS each year, are not familiar with the nuances of these issues, much like a freshman physics major is not familiar with the nuances of quantum physics. Both of these things are very complicated matters. If a student had a new or different angle on the topic, should the entire physics department run into the room and each repeat the same explanation of why the student is wrong? By the same token, if someone has an unpopular(but thoughtful and respectful) view on this forum, does it need to spawn a 200 reply, mostly redundant thread? If you ask me, the student and the poster have one thing in common: they both get discouraged and find something else to do.

[Jon Stratis]

I think a lot of good points have been made so far... but I think we've almost ignored one HUGE possible reason: there was a new control system in 2009 that no one knew how to use. It was a massive change for everyone, and there was a ton of discussion about it as we all learned what was going on. As that first year with this control system progressed, teams figured it out (through their own trial and error and through threads on here). Since then, teams have had a good idea what to do and how to do it. New teams have had nearby local teams mentoring them, telling them how the control system works. And if someone has a question, if they use the search feature they might find an answer.

As a result, technical questions on the forums would naturally be expected to decline a bit. And yes, there will always be questions in other technical areas... but rarely do we, as a community, have a brand new technical area we all have to explore and figure out at the same time.

It'll be interesting to see how things go with the new control system. I would expect to see an uptick in discussions once it comes out.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Madison

I have a few thoughts about why there's less technical discussion happening today than in the past, but they're not fully baked. I think, generally, that there are fewer authoritative voices in the discussion today and that people posing questions do not adequately communicate respect for the authorities they're soliciting help from. That is to say that it seems like people are asking for answers before having done any research on their own; or that they ask a question and receive an answer, but never reply to acknowledge the help they've received. That makes people answering questions work harder and they receive less in return. That's lose-lose for everyone.

I don't know how you fix problems like these. They seem institutional; like there's been a great shift in the attitude of students in the last ten years or so.

I think this is probably reflective of a change in team composition. I would wager that the average team today has less technical talent than the average team 10 years ago, which is partially enabled by the barriers to entry being lowered. Think of how hard it was to just build a moving robot frame in 2003 vs. today. In my rookie year (2004) we did not move until week 4, and our drill motor gearboxes had a nasty tendency to fail every third match. Today there are rookies that leave their kickoffs with basically bulletproof moving robots!

I would agree with what others have pointed out, most of the posts on CD consist of hive mind or hero worship, neither of which are productive. On an individual level, I would think the most productive thing is to simply not post in threads you don't find productive.

CD's reputation for being a potentially hostile place is not new, I was aware of it when I signed up over 8 years ago.

I actually thought early on there was more technical information being shared than usual. Whether it was Ri3D, #thebucketalliance, or the small wheeled shooter thread, I think there was much more to be gained by perusing CD in Weeks 1 and 2 than has historically been the case. During the competition season there is always less technical stuff being shared as people get caught up in the rush of competition and comparing minutia of the OPR of top tier robots.

[Steven Sigley]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I think a lot of good points have been made so far... but I think we've almost ignored one HUGE possible reason: there was a new control system in 2009 that no one knew how to use. It was a massive change for everyone, and there was a ton of discussion about it as we all learned what was going on. As that first year with this control system progressed, teams figured it out (through their own trial and error and through threads on here). Since then, teams have had a good idea what to do and how to do it. New teams have had nearby local teams mentoring them, telling them how the control system works. And if someone has a question, if they use the search feature they might find an answer.

As a result, technical questions on the forums would naturally be expected to decline a bit. And yes, there will always be questions in other technical areas... but rarely do we, as a community, have a brand new technical area we all have to explore and figure out at the same time.

It'll be interesting to see how things go with the new control system. I would expect to see an uptick in discussions once it comes out.

This guy knows what he's talking about

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I would agree with what others have pointed out, most of the posts on CD consist of hive mind or hero worship, neither of which are productive. On an individual level, I would think the most productive thing is to simply not post in threads you don't find productive.

CD's reputation for being a potentially hostile place is not new, I was aware of it when I signed up over 8 years ago.

Often, newer members (such as myself) feel compelled to add their own opinion to the topic, even when they aren't adding much of substance. Since their opinions are usually formed by reading CD, they aren't all that different from everyone else on these forums. This type of feedback loop is what generates those 200 post long bashing the n00b/praising the elite team threads, full of regurgitations of the same hive mind consensus. Not to delve too deeply into hero worshiping, but I'd like to remind the community that some of the most respected posters don't post very frequently.

I think this community has far too strong of a knee jerk reaction. I hate to bring up the whole mentor built thing... But it's kind of illustrative. There's always that one thread every year (or three months) where some new poster says that they dislike the fact that some mentors have very active roles in building the robot. The rest of the thread (all 10 pages) is flaming of the OP and worshiping of the team that the OP mentioned in their first post. If we really all agree...why do we need to spend so much time saying so?

After seeing how much time the community spends on this type of thread, should we really be surprised that this is what CD is increasingly all about? Do we think that it's really necessary to create and enforce some hostile and rather superficial hive conscience, at the cost of having a forum for used for real technical discussion? Perhaps I'm being either inflammatory or cynical, but I really dislike the fact that most CD discussions are so formulaic and devoid of real discussion.

I didn't join to have people call me out on my opinions, or to annoy other people with them for that matter. I joined so that I could become respected in the community after adding to technical discussions and answering technical questions. However, I seem to spend a lot of my time putting out fires created after I disagree with what the CD community wants to believe.

Sorry for rambling, just one of my "I felt like I needed to say it" posts.

[Kimmeh]

Originally Posted by VioletElizabeth

I know that I do not post unless I am absolutely sure that I am saying exactly what I want to and that it will not hurt anyone, even if I have a strong opinion.

I want to highlight this post as it's one that I'm sure many share, myself included.

It's fine to make sure that your post says exactly what you want it to say, but as long as the post is constructive to the discussion at hand you should never hold back a post for fear of upsetting someone. To quote Winston Churchill "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
Granted, I'd hope that posts don't create enemies, but the sentiment still stands.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Madison

CD opinion is the collective wisdom of nearly fifteen years of uninterrupted discussion on many topics. Think about that for a bit -- fifteen years. There's something to be said for the conclusions that have been drawn by this community and the topics that come up over and over again have been hashed out pretty thoroughly. It's rare for someone to offer a new wrinkle in these debates and our reluctance to entertain them again and again shows this.

Part of that is almost certainly the internet-forum phenomena where a forum drifts towards one opinion or another, and becomes anchored there. Just because posts on a forum drift towards consensus on a topic doesn't mean that the forum's "opinion" on the topic is globally correct. There are conspiracy forums, misogynistic forums, and racist forums out there, whose memberships have converged on some pretty incorrect opinions over many years of discussion. If you jump onto a racist forum and try to convince them that they're wrong, you'll get shouted down too, in a manner similar to what happens on CD if someone says "I don't like that mentors built a robot". I'm not saying that CD's consensuses are as unpalatable as racism, but just pointing that simply because a consensus exists does not imply that the consensus is correct.

Since CD's posting membership is skewed heavily towards old teams, successful teams and rich teams, it is no surprise that CD's opinion on things like mentor/student ratios, spending, and competition also skews towards "let the successful/rich/old teams continue doing what they're doing". Maybe that is the correct opinion for optimal FIRST sustainability, but it's also the conclusion you'd expect a group of mentors from the most successful teams in FIRST to come to. But I know from my first couple years as a student then mentor on some poor teams, the official CD opinion can be extremely and widely unpopular among the rank and file of teams.

To avoid a debate: I must say that my own opinions have converged on the CD opinion over the years, but as someone who has been around for 10 years, I'm probably in an extremely small minority of all the mentors and teachers that have ever been involved.

[lukedude43]

As a new lurker on Chief Delphi I guess I should pop in with my opinion. My team and my rookie year was 2012 and I can honestly say CD scared me. This was mostly for 2 reasons, I knew next to nothing (like most rookies) so CD seemed like a giant monster instead of the wealth of information I see it as now, and the layout was incredibly cluttered and confusing. The second point has nothing to do with the current discussion so I'll focus on the first.

As a rookie team we were lucky enough that our head mentor bad been a mentor at another school for 3 years so we were luckily not in the position o f everything being new. That being said obviously some of the students wanted to try and get as much extra information as they could. At kickoff I heard about CD and thought that it would be the place to learn but as soon as I had heard about it I also heard about its reputation. So last year I got on once spent 10 minutes trying to find the forum finally did saw a million subforums got scared and never gave it a second thought till a year later.

So during our rookie year any question I would of asked on CD I just waited and asked another team directly through a friend or through facebook. This year when I came on CD and got acclimated it seemed fairly dead so I end up using it as an archive rather than an active forum.

*typed on my phone on 4 hours of sleep so I'm sorry for any typos and the rambley nature of this post