Anonymous/Burner Accounts and CD Etiquette

[gblake]

Folks

My point earlier was emphasizing the difference between being a member of, or affiliated with, an organization, and being the authorized voice of an organization.

No one needs to educate me about the logic behind a team wanting every member to always be on their best behavior. That's obvious.

What I am recommending is that we, as observers, don't over-emphasize it.

If there is little room for well-founded disagreement, protest, or boat-rocking in our mental image of what a good team's members should do/be, then I think we make a mistake.

When someone wants to (or does) express something controversial, worrying about team image should take a back seat to worrying about the strength of the argument. If the argument is strong/sound the person advancing it should feel confident that their team image will be enhanced, not harmed.

I hope that ethos permeates all of STEM robotics activities outside of CD, and CD. Except in situations where entire team populations are explicitly supposed to be judged, let's stop nagging people about their individual actions reflecting badly on their team. Let's choose to judge teams by the actions of the members authorized to represent the whole team, and let's judge individuals as individuals.

Doing this should reduce the number of anonymous accounts a little bit. Maybe a lot.

Still sweeping back the ocean,
Blake