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#1
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
Fight to get 1 or 2 students into STIMS for awards, Per team. EVERYONE bring paper rosters this year. Make a statement.
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#2
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
I am an veteran volunteer and mentor. I could not find the following information:
(A) Volunteer for an Event. Goto FRC, click on 'volunteer' and you get a helpful message about volunteering, but no where is there a button that takes you to VIMS. Try typing 'VIMS' in the search box, and you get a bunch of links, but none are the VIMS website. I wound up typing FIRST VIMS into google. (B) Confirm that I am registered with my team for this season. Am I ? Who can tell. (C) Find the FIRST calendar. (google: USFIRST calendar) UI and UX designers test interfaces by taking novice users and giving them a task or two on an App. I defy FIRST to do the same (1) Find a team in my area for my student. (2) Volunteer with a team. (3) Volunteer for an event. If experienced users in FIRST cannot do it, how can we attract any new people ? |
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#3
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
Ok, I know I'm just as guilty of "venting" about STIMS/TIMS/VIMS/website/registration and everything but the kitchen sink... but maybe we should set an example and change the direction of discussion:
How can we help fix this? |
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#4
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
What if FIRST uploads the website code to GitHub and makes it open-source so whenever someone has some free time they can help out. And GitHub already has the owners vet each commit before making it a part of the website.
Also, some of the old game documents need to be easier to find. If you're trying to look through old KOP lists to figure out what something is, it gets difficult. And only some of the links on the archived site still work - so if you get to the right page, you still might not be able to get the files. IIRC, there was a Google Drive folder that had all of the game documentation going back to 1992. I don't remember where it was, but I saw it here on CD about 9 months ago. Really, we need to make the resource library more user-friendly. And make finding useful pages a lot easier. Maybe like the wpilib site. TL;DR - FIRST should make the website open-source and make historical and current non-game manual and non-KOP list game documentation easier to find. |
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#5
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
Technokats History Project. Speaking of which, if any of team 45 happens to read this, last time I tried to use it I couldn't get more than one layer into any given folder, so more publicly-available depth would be vastly appreciated.
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#6
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I think you have to realize that the website is not the highest priority at FIRST right now, you could argue that it should be, however, reality is reality.
Personally, I think it would best if we just created a list outlining specific issues, in order from most important to least, and let FIRST know, this could help alleviate some of the load. You have to realize that FIRST is a non-profit organization, they may be a tech-based company, but they don't have the resources of a multi-billion dollar company, but they have the needs of a multi-billion dollar company(a bit exaggerated, but you get the point). Yes FIRST's website is horrid to use, yes VIMS and STIMS and TIMS are hard to use, but I don't think that FIRST has the resources to make drastic changes to those workflows, they tried to modernize it, and it failed, but they don't have the resources to do it again. So if you really want to see changes, rather than say how terrible the website is, or complain about issues that can be annoying, start compiling them, list them by importance, maybe provide a solution, and meaningful feedback, then post it here, and email it off to FIRST, and maybe it'll get better, one small bit at a time. Also, you people complaining about searching through unorganized lists, simple quick fix would to just use Cntrl-F and search the page for whatever you are looking for, such as a particular name, or the location of an event. TL/DR We get it, FIRST website is bad, fix it by making a good list of issues, provide solutions and descriptions of the problems, and then submit it to FIRST. Plus some ranty stuff ![]() Just my 2 cents.... Last edited by jimbo493 : 29-10-2016 at 00:03. Reason: Fixing TLDR |
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#7
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
If someone has time to set up a web site that has reasonable search and navigation into firstinspires, and only send you to the backend when necessary, that might do it. Might.
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#8
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
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#9
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
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Thanks! |
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#10
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
A list of issues you say?
Some of the things from that thread actually have been fixed, but some issues still do remain. |
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#11
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
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I guess I must not be seeing what your seeing. I can a access every folder on the history project and the sharing settings appear correct. Certain folders have less content, such as 2002, but every folder should still be accessible. |
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#12
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
Might have been me not being used to the new Drive format. Seems to be working now. (I was, in fact, hunting up stuff from the first Game That Shall Not Be Named.)
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#13
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
I just sent the Chief Delphi link to a new team. I really hope they skip over this thread. This is not what we would want new teams to think of FIRST.
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#14
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
Disclaimer: THIS IS MY OPINION, so take it with a grain of NaCl.
FIRST as a whole may not have a lot of money being a non-profit (or the majority of their 50mil/yr budget actually going to teams), but they do have a whole raft of competent technical people willing to help. If FIRST was to partner with TBA developers, GitHub, Google, or basically anyone with decent knowledge of client-server development, they could either just clean it up in house or make it open-source and have contributions count towards Chairman's Community Service for all of FIRST teams might help, or at the very least incentivize it.The way I'd tackle it regardless is pretty straightforward. Rewrite TIMS / VIMS / STIMS from scratch, and import the existing data via a data dump. They started off as one system (as evidenced by a single piece of paper I found in 1257's file cabinet from 2004) and fragmented it. To clean up the legacy cruft everyone *knows* is there would fix a majority of the problem. On top of that, not having it written in ASP.NET would be a enormous improvement imho. Nginx and Apache are cheaper to host, plus you don't have to fight with Microsoft lisensing. I digress. If you don't have a way to register a team, students or volunteers, you don't have them at all. Technology should not be a barrier to entry into a *technology* competition. Best of luck to all, teams to register students, volunteers to do that awesome thing you do (sacrifice your personal time for robots), and to FIRST if they ever want to move away. It's getting more and more difficult... |
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#15
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Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
See, there's your problem. It Shall Not Be Named, so they didn't name it!
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