Administrative and Game Manual updates - 2/11

[Daniel_LaFleur]

To start with, I agree with some of your sentiments regarding the 6 1/2 week build schedule and the withholding allowance (I hope for a year with 0 LBS withholding). That said:

Originally Posted by fox46

I should have known this would spin off into a "who art more gracious than thou" debate. Face the facts- there are individuals in FIRST who do not follow the rules or intend to bend them to their advantage. People like us who abide by them cannot implicitly expect everyone else to. If so, then why even have a bag? Why not just agree that everyone will stop work on a specific day? The fact is that not everyone is 100% honest, gracious and rule/law abiding. If you debate this then you are in for some serious disappointment later in life outside the protection of the FIRST community.

1> Gracious professionalism should be a look inward not a measurement outward. It is not for me, or anyone else, to say whether another has been gracious and professional.
2> What difference does it make what other people or teams do? What difference does it make to you and your team if they are not 100% honest. Remember, this is NOT about winning a competition, it's about inspiring others and winning the game of life.

Originally Posted by fox46

I've been involved for well over a decade in FIRST and have yet to win a regional. You think you need to tell me this?

This is my 13th season, and I have won a regional. Are you trying to say something about me being (or not being) Gracious and professional?

Originally Posted by fox46

It is however, about preparing students for their futures and lives. I can assure you that as a high school student struggling to get a drill motor to power a wheel I learned a lot more than one would when they are given a kit chassis. It taught me about every facet of machine design. The environment in which we are currently operating is breeding a flock of catalogue engineers who are completely dumbfounded when their solution doesn't exist on a website. You cannot deny that it squelches innovation - why would a team build a multi-speed gearbox when they can buy one off the shelf? (This of course is not a generalized statement- obviously).

Perhaps we should go back to the PIC processors from IFI or, better yet, tether our robots because we don't want Wi-Fi.

Yes, some things are easier. All that means is that we can (should) do more. This years game is both easier and far more difficult than previous years. If designing a multi-speed gearbox gives me a significant advantage then, yes, I should design and build my own ... if it gives little to no advantage then why reinvent the wheel. Wasting valuable time/resources is NOT good engineering.

I do disagree that it squelches innovation. Innovation, many times, is putting a new twist on existing technology. Most real innovation did not start with a blank sheet of paper.

Originally Posted by fox46

With respect to the liberties with stop-build-day, you remove some of the challenge of the entire process. No longer is there a brick wall at the end of build season. This is very unlike the real world! It is no longer representative of if a company misses a delivery date they lose the contract. Instead teams could entirely legally continue building all the way up until their competition, disassemble their robot and walk in with a 45lb frame and pre-cut wires and assemble their entire machine. Why even have a stop build day?

The process is not about the challenge. The challenge is about inspiring.

... I also disagree that this does not mimic, at least in part, real world. Design iteration, even after the product has hit the market, happens all the time and any company that stops innovating/iterating their designs will soon find itself out of the marketplace.

JM(NS)HO

[fox46]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

This is my 13th season, and I have won a regional. Are you trying to say something about me being (or not being) Gracious and professional?

JM(NS)HO

Daniel, please re-read my post and the quotation which it cites. This statement had nothing to do with you.

What difference does it make what other people or teams do? What difference does it make to you and your team if they are not 100% honest.

It quite frankly devalues the experience. It cheapens the result. If the playing field is not level, the hard work performed by one team is not transferrable or equitable to that performed by another. The teams that work hard are no longer rewarded accordingly in their performance.

Why do the Olympics have drug testing?

The FIRST teachings to be gracious to your opponents is wonderful. I wish our world adopted this thinking far more however, you cannot negate the underlying purpose of building a good robot... it's called FIRST Robotics *COMPETITION*. Competition is what drives our innovation. You look at any of the modern technology we have today and none of it would have existed without competition- world wars, cold wars, space race, apple vs Microsoft, capitalism. It isn't pretty and it involves some deplorable events in human history but you cannot say that "winning doesn't matter". It is a statement that paves the moral high-ground and to claim it is to be blind to the reality all around you. If we teach kids that "winning doesn't matter" and being the best isn't valuable then what sort of a future are we setting up? What drives innovation if not to improve? What is the purpose of competition?

I postulate that if you took the competition out of FIRST- took "winning" out of FIRST, gracious professionalism would not be what it is. There would be no accolade for bowing to your opponents and working together. There would be nothing special about it without anything tempting you to gain by not practicing it. http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/gracious-professionalism

Recently, in the men's cross-country sprint, Canadian coach Justin Wadsworth rushed out onto the course and replaced the ski of Russian competitor Antov Gafarov. This was a true act of gracious professionalism. But lets say that they weren't from different countries, in competition with each other. Had they both been from the Russian ski team would you call it gracious professionalism? No- it would be called doing your job. Winning may not matter but it's a nice reward for your hard work. http://globalnews.ca/news/1141984/wa...ro-after-fall/

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by fox46

It quite frankly devalues the experience. It cheapens the result. If the playing field is not level, the hard work performed by one team is not transferrable or equitable to that performed by another. The teams that work hard are no longer rewarded accordingly in their performance.

Why do the Olympics have drug testing?

The FIRST teachings to be gracious to your opponents is wonderful. I wish our world adopted this thinking far more however, you cannot negate the underlying purpose of building a good robot... it's called FIRST Robotics *COMPETITION*. Competition is what drives our innovation. You look at any of the modern technology we have today and none of it would have existed without competition- world wars, cold wars, space race, apple vs Microsoft, capitalism. It isn't pretty and it involves some deplorable events in human history but you cannot say that "winning doesn't matter". It is a statement that paves the moral high-ground and to claim it is to be blind to the reality all around you. If we teach kids that "winning doesn't matter" and being the best isn't valuable then what sort of a future are we setting up? What drives innovation if not to improve? What is the purpose of competition?

I postulate that if you took the competition out of FIRST- took "winning" out of FIRST, gracious professionalism would not be what it is. There would be no accolade for bowing to your opponents and working together. There would be nothing special about it without anything tempting you to gain by not practicing it. http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/gracious-professionalism

Recently, in the men's cross-country sprint, Canadian coach Justin Wadsworth rushed out onto the course and replaced the ski of Russian competitor Antov Gafarov. This was a true act of gracious professionalism. But lets say that they weren't from different countries, in competition with each other. Had they both been from the Russian ski team would you call it gracious professionalism? No- it would be called doing your job. Winning may not matter but it's a nice reward for your hard work. http://globalnews.ca/news/1141984/wa...ro-after-fall/

I try and avoid throwaway posts like this one, but I feel this needs to be stated: This is the best post I've read this entire season. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by fox46

It quite frankly devalues the experience. It cheapens the result. If the playing field is not level, the hard work performed by one team is not transferrable or equitable to that performed by another. The teams that work hard are no longer rewarded accordingly in their performance.

While I agree that cheating at FIRST cheapens the experience, I'm not convinced that it cheapens it for anyone but the team doing the cheating.

Save one mindblowing exception, in my 12 years of playing this game, in my experience, most cheating at FIRST involves things like pulling parts off an overweight robot and trying to sneak them back on when the inspectors aren't looking, or continuing to build after stop build day, or other things that only affect other teams in a relatively minor way.

Yes, ok, I agree, the field is no longer level when you do that, but the field already wasn't level -- and it was never meant to be. Those superstar FRC teams that are at the top every year, with the huge budgets, and the full-size practice facility, and the multiple carbon copies of their robot? They can do those things primarily because they have access to more money than most teams. Thats OK though, because those teams inspire more people than just the members of their teams. My robot being a few ounces overweight isn't going to make your robot or FIRST experience tangibly different. Teams with more resources continue work after stop build day by having a carbon copy of their robot. A low-resource team cheating to do the same with their competition bot? Doesn't really change what happens at competition any, except possibly to raise the competitiveness of the low resource team. There just isn't anyone gaining a massive advantage by cheating here, save the one exception, so for the most part I don't think its worth worrying about too much, as the cheaters are really only cheapening it for themselves.

So, in short, I agree. Teams SHOULD follow the rules. If you're not going to follow the rules, you should seriously look at what you're hoping to get out of this program. BUT. I don't really care if other teams cheat in comparatively minor ways that in the grand scheme of things don't really impact me.