FRC Blogged - Invite to Decline Follow Up, and Thanks

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Peter Johnson

Not sure of the situation at SVR, but shouldn't the top 8 teams have the choice not to play in the eliminations, just like the non-seeded teams? E.g. the team's robot broke in their last qual match and they have no hope of fixing it?

In VEX in 2008, Team 294 withdrew from eliminations as a seeded team, but for a completely different reason. We had already qualified for the VEX championships by winning our first regional. In our second regional we were dominating and ended up as the #1 seed. Because in VEX only the seeded team of an alliance qualifies for championships (picked alliance partners do not) we wanted to give another team the opportunity to win the competition and get a seat at championships... so we withdrew from the eliminations! It definitely caused some consternation behind the scoring table as they tried to figure out how to drop us (I think the next software update added an easy way to drop any team).

In an ironic twist, we ended up winning the Excellence Award at that regional (also a qualifying ticket to championships). Not exactly what we had in mind..

They wanted to decline being an alliance captain so they could then get picked by someone. Presumably they were hoping to get picked in the 2nd round and form a better alliance.

Once someone chased them down, brought them back, and explained that if they declined they wouldn't play at all, they decided to not decline.

[Littleboy]

I believe it was Niles in 2011 (someone correct me it I am wrong) a team moved up into alliance captain position. They declined their spot. Tom Nadar seemed surprised.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Littleboy

I believe it was Niles in 2011 (someone correct me it I am wrong) a team moved up into alliance captain position. They declined their spot. Tom Nadar seemed surprised.

The team had already qualified for MSC, so they didn't have to play for points. They were seeded somewhere beyond 8th, but when there was interpicking in the top 8, they moved to an alliance captain position. While they weren't totally inoperative, they preferred to use the extra 3 hours pit time to correct some problems they had.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

So now that we have Frank instructing people on specifically what to say and what not to say during alliance selections, can we get him to comment on the fact that you cannot graciously accept. Nearly every student I see these days (including my own) graciously accepts and I cringe every time I hear it, which is about 14 times per event.

I disagree. Since one can accept arrogantly, one can conversely accept graciously. From a purely technical point of view, the language absolutely permits it. From a common use POV, though, one would be on more solid ground accepting gratefully.

That being said, if sanddrag starts a petition to outlaw graciously accepting, I will sign it. 1676 has outlawed it on the team.

[sanddrag]

So now that we have Frank instructing people on specifically what to say and what not to say during alliance selections, can we get him to comment on the fact that you cannot graciously accept. Nearly every student I see these days (including my own) graciously accepts and I cringe every time I hear it, which is about 14 times per event.