Upcoming Site Changes

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Karthik

I'd be up for seeing some intelligent people cleaning it up, but if keeping the spotlight feature means there's even one iota of extra work to make the upgrade to the newest version of vBulletin, I say just scrap it entirely. I'm really looking forward to seeing the potential Twitter and Facebook integration, seems like a great way to further network the robotics community.

It would be interesting to see how many of the 5,000+ quotes survive the culling.

If they are going to go away, I assume it wouldn't be that hard to back them up in some other format? It would be cool if someone else could set up a separate spotlight page if CD doesn't want to be in the spotlight business anymore. Especially if the new spotlight was well curated.

EDIT: Well played cgmv123 for spotlighting a comment about pointless spotlights.

[cmrnpizzo14]

I would like to keep spotlights but since some (quite a few/most/all, whichever you would like to use for the hyperbola) are in fact inside jokes I would be in favor of restarting the spotlights. Archive these spotlights somewhere. Old-timers and procrastinators can spend their time perusing them to their content. Allow the spotlights to start from scratch though and start accumulating new quotes (and inside jokes that will be cleaned out again in 5 years). I think at the very least it is worth a shot.

[bardd]

I like the spotlights for the same reasons that were repeatedly mentioned here, but I see why you would want to scrap them.

Suggestion:
Many people stated they found some very interesting threads, as a result of looking through the spotlights, that they wouldn't have found otherwise. If spotlights do get scrapped, you could have a "suggested threads" section, which'll be a collection of links to threads that were noted by X users (I think 5 is a good number) as worth reading. You could also link a random one on top of the page where the quotes are now displayed. That way the spotlight functionality of introducing people to interesting threads won't disappear.

[KrazyCarl92]

A lot of times, searching on CD can help you find what you're looking for. However, occasionally clicking on an interesting spotlight can help you find things you didn't even know to look for, which can be even more valuable. It can bring you back year's in FIRST history to educate you about things that you wouldn't have ever heard of otherwise, inspire ideas from previous discussions that wouldn't have been thought of otherwise, and bring appropriate emphasis to a brilliant post that should be shared with the community.

I know I've stumbled across my share of threads containing valuable information that I wasn't actively seeking out because of spotlights. Just this morning I clicked on a spotlight about holding bots together and found a 3 year old thread about rivet implementation - something that our team has never done and will hopefully strive to do effectively in the future. I now know of a specific place I can turn for useful information on the topic when the time is right.

That being said, I do see the general problem with spotlights. The majority of them are utterly useless. Case-and-point, the one at the top of my page at the moment reads:
"What does code sound like going though a complier?"

[rsisk]

I love the spotlights! Please keep them.

And before culling them, can you at least preserve the current list in a thread somewhere?

[BigJ]

I'm with Karthik on this one. If it is blocking or hindering a vBulletin upgrade, we can live without the spotlights.

[Lil' Lavery]

Since this is becoming an impromptu poll of sorts, I'll chip in my agreement with Karthik and BigJ. It would be nice to keep the (good) spotlights, but it's a lower priority than upgrading the boards as a whole to the latest vBulletin.

On the topic of spotlight, it really depends if we can get the staff to upkeep it. If there are enough volunteers that fit moderation requirements to pick out the good spotlights, then the feature should definitely stay. I've learned a lot from helpful spotlight posts. Coincidentally this one which I think is very good advice is above me right now: .

However, I'd argue 90% of them are "this was funny once in that one thread" and wouldn't be of any valuable knowledge to those who see them (see below).

[JohnFogarty]

Are we upgrading to VB 4 or VB 5 connect?

[Pault]

Just for reference, I refreshed the page 10 times and copied the spotlights here:

FIRST cannot enforce Gracious Professionalism on the participants in this program, you will have to do it on your own.

Welcome to FIRST. You've never seen anything like this.

There was no real separation between who did what. "we" did it all and it was fun.

"You know, a robotics regional is the only place where you can walk in and see two people in chicken suits and not be confused."

I continue in FIRST because I'm not looked down upon for not knowing how to do something, but held up because I want to learn.

FIRST doesn't end after your last year within a team. It's never going to end.

10:56 p.m. EDT, July 20, 1969.

In most cases on FIRST robots, we have more material than in we need in some places and less than we need in others. That single phenomenon is the leading cause of robot failures.

Antimatter.. It will help us in the never ending quest to build the bot under the weight limit.

Is any robot ever actually done?

In that list, I see some pointless quotes. But I also see a lot of interesting and meaningful ones. I don't really mind if I have to put up with "10:56 p.m. EDT, July 20, 1969" (which I ashamedly had to look up what that was) in order to get "FIRST cannot enforce Gracious Professionalism on the participants in this program, you will have to do it on your own."

Another thing to note: look at the join dates of the people who want to keep the spotlights versus the people who don't care about them. It's generally the newer folk who like spotlights. To me this is solid evidence that one of the major reasons people like spotlights is because they provide a glimpse into the past.

[Jon Stratis]

There are certainly some great quotes in the spotlights... but unfortunately a lot of stuff that, as has been pointed out, isn't that great to anyone who isn't "in the know" on what was going on 5 years ago, or to the various personalities on this site. Additionally, There are many great posts out there where spotlighting a single line isn't appropriate, but spotlighting the whole post (which is too long to spotlight) would be.

I would be in favor of doing away with the spotlights while providing another method of highlighting good posts. Another forum I frequented in the past included a "Thanks" button on each post - you could select it to highlight something you felt was great. Including something like this, with a way to list posts sorted by the number of "Thanks" (a couple of top-100 lists - ever, past year, past month) could serve the same purpose, and over time the posts with inside jokes would slip down while great posts about teams or technical advice would filter to the top, ideally.

[Gregor]

Hey did you know 1114's robot went up in smoke in 2006? I did.

As a 2012 rookie, people are often amazed about how much I know about FIRST history.

95% of things I know about FIRST history come from spotlights. People who've been active on these forums for 10 years have little need for the spotlights, but it is an invaluable resource for newer dedicated (read: obsessed) members of the community. Progress is great, but anything that can be done to preserve spotlights would be fantastic.

I would argue that you don't even need to weed out the inside jokes. I only click on spotlights that I find interesting. If you don't want to click on it, it's only 1 line at the top of the page taking up space.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Hey did you know 1114's robot went up in smoke in 2006? I did.

As a 2012 rookie, people are often amazed about how much I know about FIRST history.

95% of things I know about FIRST history come from spotlights. People who've been active on these forums for 10 years have little need for the spotlights, but it is an invaluable resource for newer dedicated (read: obsessed) members of the community. Progress is great, but anything that can be done to preserve spotlights would be fantastic.

I would argue that you don't even need to weed out the inside jokes. I only click on spotlights that I find interesting. If you don't want to click on it, it's only 1 line at the top of the page taking up space.

I picked up quite a lot of FIRST history the same way...ten years ago. I'm certain some motivated freshmen could glean a lot today from going through them. And let's not even talk Valentine's Day.

If it poses a significant code hurdle, I understand (it's not like I'm trying to maintain it!)--but it would be the feature I'd miss the most from the trim-down*.

*No slight to the UFH and WFA areas; they've just collected dust for so long that it's easier to let them go.

[PayneTrain]

I guess a good middle ground to losing spotlights would be some way the site could spotlight threads outside of build/competition season.

I know I'm not the one maintaining something like this, but maybe spotlights could come back in the form of a Twitter bot that pulls a part of a good quote and links it there?

I don't know. I like it, but progress is key.

[dcarr]

+1 for the vBulletin upgrade! Thanks Brandon!

For now, maybe just archive the spotlights somewhere (would be easy for anyone to do, in fact) and consider reviving them later once the upgrade dust has settled.