Why don't we use reddit.com/r/frc

[TimTheGreat]

My opinion has definitely been swayed away from reddit, but I must ask the question "Is it possible that CD will improve its discussion format, at least in terms of replying to user posts?" Having a reddit-like reply where it becomes a discussion within the original comment

Comment A

Reply B

Reply C

would be improvement enough IMO.

[z_beeblebrox]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

My opinion has definitely been swayed away from reddit, but I must ask the question "Is it possible that CD will improve its discussion format, at least in terms of replying to user posts?" Having a reddit-like reply where it becomes a discussion within the original comment

Comment A

Reply B

Reply C

would be improvement enough IMO.

You can do that!

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/fa...b_threadedmode

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pr...do=editoptions

[TimTheGreat]

OMG THANK YOU THIS SOLVES ALL MY PROBLEMS!

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by Tungrus

CD is: of the people, by the people and for the people.

Anyways about the game hint and flood of ideas, there is nothing wrong with it, its just a place where young adults with hyper active ideas come and showcase them. Some ideas are plausible and others are outrageous funny. I don't believe anyone reads the thread to find anything close to real game.

Every now and then I think that chief delphi has been taken over by mentors. CD being purely techincal will never happen. It is just not the FIRST culture. If we start using Reddit I fear that the FRC community will become less fun, the personality of the community would change.

[Aroki]

Many of the previous post have noted the lack of anonymity and the close community on here as positives, but I feel that these are a double edged sword.

It can be extremely intimidating for a student, especially a new member, to post on the technical side of this forum, and the fact that many of the older members know each other gives off a cliquey vibe. The single biggest benefit of /r/frc, in my opinion, is the fact that new users can join very easily and slip into the conversations due to the anonymous nature of reddit.

Even as a four year senior on my team I am still hesitant to answer technical questions on this site, to avoid being torn apart by some 10+ year FRC mentor with 10 green dots and 1,000+ comments. Unfortunately, I have learned that some mentors on this site have no qualms about being the fourth person to pile on to a new member's "dumb" question with a page long response about how it was a stupid post.

The onymous nature of CD can make it very unwelcoming to new members for the very same reason that it makes it fun for veteran users.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

inb4 hivemind

This is honestly the main reason. r/FRC could in theory be a good community, but just happens not to be, mostly for historical reasons.

Originally Posted by EricH

Hah.

Ever watch someone's reputation bar turn red in under an hour? I have. Some folks have no trouble just dishing out negative reputation--and I'd be more than willing to bet that most of those folks would have no trouble just downvoting any thread that they felt was "in the way". No matter if the question was answered or not!

I'm honestly not so sure this kind of thing is bad. Some posters are real pieces of work, and I think they deserve to have that reputation follow them around for a while. Getting negreped is also a humbling experience, people who you know think what you said was really bad. I know getting negreped changed how I behave, and helped me be a better part of the community. I believe red dots can be a force for good, when sparingly (or sometimes not so sparingly) applied.

Originally Posted by Joe G.

Also, I'm going to go ahead and point out that of the top 25 posts of all time on r/frc, the breakdown is as follows:

• 9 mildly funny, but meaningless and tangentially related images (most being bad photoshop jobs)
• 8 memes
• A screencap from FRC Confessions
• A reaction GIF
• A joke CAD (Accumulating more than twice the votes of the highest voted legitimate CAD review post)
• A news item presented in GIF form
• A photo of another team's robot, with a title arguably making fun of it
• A post congratulating the 2014 championships winners (to their credit, top post of all time)
• A genuinely touching post about a user's FRC experience over the years
• A genuinely cool feat of engineering on an FRC robot

Interesting/funny? Maybe (I'd argue that various facebook pages are effectively filling this role). Comparable to ChiefDelphi in value? Not even close; I'm really only interested in three out of the 25. Increasing the community's size won't impact the kind of content that inevitably rises to the top with a voting system.

Others have also made excellent points about anonymity. On reddit, using your real name is frowned upon. Here, we can get to know each other as people.

This is another great reason why FRC type discussion wouldn't fit well on reddit. Reddit for whatever reason tends to be basically democratized clickbait, and although there are some great communities on reddit (looking at you r/surfing), they involve images or questions that generate somewhat random discussion. The feel to the site even across different subreddits is very different from CD, in a way I'd argue is largely negative.

That's annother great thing about CD, even if a user is anonomous (which almost none are), I still can "get to know" their username, and find out their rep, how many posts they have, how long they've been posting, etc. Usually, I know a fair bit about their team or region, and sometimes even know them personally. On reddit, I essentially never care about who posted what, unless they are a mod or something.

[fb39ca4]

Originally Posted by Libby K

As a contrast, I posted the same sort of reminder you'd find here on Chief (a game hint isn't a game hint unless FRC explicitly calls it out as one) and I got downvoted for ruining the fun. "You must be fun at parties", etc. Classy.

I was the person who said "You must be fun at parties" on /r/FRC. Sorry about that, I guess it left you with a bad taste of Reddit. You have my apologies.

I think that incident is a good example of how people behave differently on different communities - I know I do.

On Reddit, people are more abrasive and quicker to call each other out. "You must be fun at parties" is a phrase that has been said countless times on Reddit in response to someone taking a joke/satire too seriously. People who get downvoted for making the wrong comment are expected to tough it out and not take it personally - it happens to everyone at times.

Meanwhile, on Chief Delphi and other similar forums, making a similar reply would obviously not be acceptable, because of the prevailing mindset that we are polite to each other so as not to drive each other away from discussion.

The two communities have different rules and social norms, and people observe and imitate them, perpetuating them. It's what makes Chief Delphi a better place for serious discussion.

[bduddy]

Reddit works better if you ignore the karma score for posts, and go to threads with the most comments. And it's not like CD is immune from the kind of behavior people are ascribing to Reddit - just take a look at any game hint thread...

I honestly think that a threaded discussion format is vastly superior for most of the kinds of discussions that take place here, and should be default, if not mandatory, here. The flat view generally used in CD means posts get lost incredibly easily, which is probably the best thing about Reddit - good posts get found, not buried.

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by bduddy

The flat view generally used in CD means posts get lost incredibly easily, which is probably the best thing about Reddit - good posts get found, not buried.

But I think one of the big problems everyone is pointing out is that the rationale for what makes a post "good" vs. "bad" is too shoddy and unreliable. There's ample evidence that most of the highest rated posts will just be the ones that are mildly humorous or unoffensive and appealing to the greatest number of people. This is what leads to that hivemind claim, because the best way to get noticed is to go along with the mindset of the populous.

Polite, respectful disagreement is what drives deep, thoughtful discussion. Reddit inherently suppresses that, and I could flip your statement around and say the voting system generally used in Reddit means minority arguments get lost incredibly easily, which is probably the best thing about CD - good discussion gets promoted, not buried.

[IronicDeadBird]

HERE WE GO!

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

You don't downvote because you disagree, you downvote "bad" posts. Like if someone posted a photo of a cat, you'd downvote that, not because you don't like the photo, but because it serves no purpose to FRC.

What I find insanely helpful about Chief Delphi is how easy it is for you to look at the quality of the poster. In this manner if I see a certain name next to a post I don't need to do a lot of digging and question or call out for citation to know its fairly trust worthy. You don't get mad green bars by posting cats on here its from HELPFUL INFORMATION or FANTASTIC MEASURES OF CHARACTER in this manner it is fairly accurate cause the standard for receiving this praise is high and the way it scales is done in a very smart manner.

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

My opinion has definitely been swayed away from reddit, but I must ask the question "Is it possible that CD will improve its discussion format, at least in terms of replying to user posts?" Having a reddit-like reply where it becomes a discussion within the original comment

Comment A

Reply B

Reply C

would be improvement enough IMO.

That format of commenting has this insane ability to make it easy to take a broad topic and filter out information. Comment A would be something worth noting and reply b and c are added onto it and it helps "control" the de-railing of a Thread. This being said I find it a very simple and intuitive way to streamline the process of finding relevant information.
But that is never what I want from this site. When I come on chief delphi I come in to start a fire (well not like a complete forest fire) but I want to fuel some thought and get some nice conversation going. A lot of emphasis on chief delphi goes into people not digressing which may for all I know just be coincidental. From my experience once you have the start of something in Reddits format it quickly breaks down to these side conversations based on random trains of thought but when I go on chief delphi when I say "I think there should be a mobile safety zone in this years game because of x, y, or z, then I know that due to the format of chief delphi what I will get is a discussion not side chatter about different points. Hope that makes sense!

[headlight]

Originally Posted by Libby K

...
I know it was joked about earlier, but there truly is a hivemind on reddit, and that's not really welcoming to someone new
...

The implication being that there isn't a CD hivemind?

By the way, congratulations on being made a moderator there, it seems odd to get involved in a format that you think isn't a great community platform.

I think r/FRC could fulfill a necessary and interesting role that CD doesn't. There is a RoboRIO Beta Test Team doing an AMA right now, and it has been very informative to read, they've answered questions that probably would have been ignored or answered with links.

The reddit community can be more abrasive, but I choose to believe it is more lighthearted as well. To me CD often feels like dinner with my parents, everyone is uptight and smiling until it devolves into accusations and reputation comparisons.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by headlight

The implication being that there isn't a CD hivemind?

By the way, congratulations on being made a moderator there, it seems odd to get involved in a format that you think isn't a great community platform.

I think r/FRC could fulfill a necessary and interesting role that CD doesn't. There is a RoboRIO Beta Test Team doing an AMA right now, and it has been very informative to read, they've answered questions that probably would have been ignored or answered with links.

The reddit community can be more abrasive, but I choose to believe it is more lighthearted as well. To me CD often feels like dinner with my parents, everyone is uptight and smiling until it devolves into accusations and reputation comparisons.

As you mentioned, /r/FRC has the potential to reach a niche of users who don't necessarily feel comfortable posting on ChiefDelphi. That's why I offered to become a mod - to help /r/FRC grow as a forum and to help ensure that it upholds the standards and values that FIRST, and our community, are proud to stand for.

Anonymous, passive-aggressive swipes at individuals are not one of the things we should be proud to stand for.

[Jon K.]

I know this post is long, and tends to ramble, but if you read nothing else, read the last paragraph.

I have only ever been on reddit a few times, and found it rather confusing, I can see both sides to this story. Having had some of my own first posts on CD be negative, and having been called out by one of my own team members, I know what it can be like.

Also, it was mentioned that these forums seem like they are all mentors posting at times, I would like to point to Andy Grady's amazing Ri3D blog post today. http://www.robotin3days.com/our-legacy/ Most of us mentors were you at one point. This is a point I make sure to mention at every drivers meeting I hold, and most students who I interact with know this as well.

We have met each other over the years, and I consider FIRST my second family. I talk to FIRSTers on a daily basis, and no, it's not just because I work for AndyMark now. I choose to maintain the friendships I have grown with people from various regions across the country and world!

When Libby originally started posting on CD, I had no idea who she was, and I honestly thought she was a spammer account. Then I got to know her as a person, and she truly is one of the nicest people in FIRST. I hate seeing friends bashed here, and in other places, when no one bothers to get to know who they are bashing. That's why I like CD. It is personalized in that way. I encourage anyone who wants to, follow me on Twitter, come say hi at a competition. This is how you meet the people you are afraid of on the forums.

While it had been a long time since I have been truly active here, and they may still exist, the web hugs were a fantastic place to meet everyone you only knew by profile picture and their posts. That said, I encourage every student to get to champs at least once in your student career, even if not with your team. You will get to see and meet some AMAZING people who will be more than willing to talk to you if they aren't super busy with a robot at the time.

If you can't do that, start volunteering! I had some students on my team last year make friends with other students because they were volunteers together and wouldn't have met otherwise. Volunteering has changed my life. I have volunteered for FRC, FVC(throwback I know), FTC, and FLL in some capacity since 2003(where applicable). That is where I met people like Libby, Billfred, Dave Lavery, Dr. Woodie Flowers, Dean Kamen, Will.I.Am, and more. While I may not stay in constant contact with Dean, I have stayed close friends with a lot of my fellow volunteers. Competition season is near and dear to my heart because it is my family reunion time every year.

Basically, the point is, CD is only what you make of it. I encourage everyone to make the most, and if you think you will get bashed for a dumb question, then find someone you respect, tell them flat out that you are worried about it, and ask them in a private message. If they give you a good response, maybe ask the community at large, but still, ask someone. That is how you learn, and that is how you can gain your confidence even amongst the biggest names on ChiefDelphi.

[headlight]

Originally Posted by Libby K

As you mentioned, /r/FRC has the potential to reach a niche of users who don't necessarily feel comfortable posting on ChiefDelphi. That's why I offered to become a mod - to help /r/FRC grow as a forum and to help ensure that it upholds the standards and values that FIRST, and our community, are proud to stand for.

Anonymous, passive-aggressive swipes at individuals are not one of the things we should be proud to stand for.

I completely agree with your last statement, I'm sorry you read sarcasm or otherwise took offense to my previous statement, your position simply didn't make sense to me. I'm not the best at phrasing.

Why is anonymity the first thing you took offense to?
I've seen that response on here before, does this community put that much stock in doxing yourself?

[droswell]

As a Network Administrator at a school, I can tell you we block Reddit but not CD. Most work environments have a similar policy. From a strictly access point of view, CD is much less likely to be filtered by most organizations.

Not that we CD at work anyways, right mentors?