Why it is sometimes hard to be a student on CD.

[Sperkowsky]

I am going to preface this by saying I love this forum but, sometimes it can be brutal. The big reason why I am making this thread was stemmed from series of comments on my F4 thread.

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

often enough, kids can't express how they really feel without criticism. This has the potential to help a lot of people better their own teams.
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Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Exactly! That is something CD definitely showed me over the time I have been active year. Having students in a comfortable discussion format allows for their opinions to be expressed without any fear.

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

Are you saying that CD is not a comfortable place for students to voice their opinions? I'd like to hear more about this and how that could be changed. Maybe you could use that as a topic for a future show.

So, yea....

I joined CD over a year ago while my team was in a cycle of failure. No one knew what to do and it was a place to gain FRC insight. Being I talkative person in general I jumped straight into discussion. Probably not the wisest idea being my knowledge level at the time. One of my first posts was completely out of line and was just an unnecessary statement calling a 254 robot mentor built. Looking back I can not fathom why I would put such a statement on the internet but I did. I got as I could now predict a swarm of red dots. Knocking me well below into negative points. Especially since one of the people was Karthik. After realizing how dumb my post was I pmed all of the people that redded me to apologize. Except for the people who threated me....

Originally Posted by Karthik

Hi Sperkowsky,

Apology accepted. The reason I gave you a negative rep was not because of your opinion, rather that your post insulted and demeaned the hard work of the students on 254. Having worked with them closely, I know that they are fully involved with their robot, and as talented as any other group of FIRST students. Yes, they do have amazing mentors, but a by product of this is that these students have learned so much from these mentors. This is why they can consistently perform at such a high level.

I'm sorry that people felt the need to threaten you. As much as you post upset me, there's no reason for anyone to stoop to that level.

Thanks for taking the time to apologize. Good luck to you and your team this season!

So, I was now a student with my team number in my BIO sitting with 4 red dots. Realizing how bad it looked to my team I contacted Brandon Martus who helped me out and brought me into green. It was a second chance.

From there I continued posting quite a bit. Often times my opinion was disregarded. It was not that my posts were always bad it was just that some mentors had a hard time taking advice or discussing something with a student.

Despite me also getting greened quite a bit I still had my fair share of red dots. Some from respected mentors some not so respected. Ironically with quite a lot of dots at this point only one red one came from a student and it was very recently and did not actually make logical sense. There were a few dots that made sense. I may have went a little too far or said something rude but the majority were just from angry people with a different opinion.

I sometimes make jokes that my RP page is Christmas themed with the Red, Gray, and Green dots. Luckily my green dots outweigh my red ones at this point.

You may have noticed by now the thread I quoted earlier was from months ago. The reason why I started this thread was after a long discussion with the F4 community of students. We found that many of felt looked down upon from mentors and that the RP system was abused by quite a few of them.

If you are a new member here my advice is to re-read your posts and make sure they are both factual, and respectful. Do not post when angry and make sure to follow FIRST ideals at all times.

Lets make sure to make this a safe place for both students and mentors. Lets simply be kind and take a second to understand the intent of a post before reacting. Also I urge everyone to only red dot someone if they are being blatantly rude, or disrespectful. Someone accidentally quoting the wrong page of a manual or disagreeing with you respectfully are not a reason for a red dot. That is what grey dots are for.

- Sam