FIRST website is an embarasment

[jimbo493]

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....

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

How can we help fix this?

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.

Originally Posted by maxnz

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.

In addition to the TechnoKats (linked above), there's also http://www.first-a-holics.com/ which has a good selection of game rules and such through 2004. Much of the more recent stuff (and overlapping) is on http://archive.usfirst.org/; this is the official first copy of the web site prior to the "upgrade".

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by jimbo493

fix it by making a good list of issues

A list of issues you say?

Some of the things from that thread actually have been fixed, but some issues still do remain.

[runneals]

So I was googling to see about an off-season event that I'm at for official rankings and I came across this site that I never remember seeing before! It's SUPER mobile friendly! Check it out: https://frc-events.firstinspires.org/

[DaveL]

I totally agree.
Thanks to all that provided links. I expect the one to the old site will be very helpful.

I'm trying to get a new programming mentor up to speed and was requested to send some links. I had a bit of searching to find code examples, wiring examples and kit of parts info. (This used to be easy stuff to find).

Recently I went looking to see what teams were going to attend the same district events as my team. I found the page but it only had 6 teams when I know there are at least 30 teams. Neither event had my team listed. If First cared about not wasting our time, they would have spent the money and fixed this a year ago!

Dave
Build Mentor in PNW

[Peyton Yeung]

Originally Posted by EricH

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.

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.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Peyton Yeung

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.

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.)

[catmanjake]

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.

[tjf]

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...

[Trying to Help]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

While I've suffered my own frustrations with the site, I have to ask... do you really think this redesign was about making the site better for mentors? When I look at it, the intent I see is to draw in those not already affiliated with the program - new schools, students, sponsors, volunteers. That's why it's so picture-heavy. For people already involved, you wouldn't need any pictures at all. Heck, just give me a sitemap so I can find the link to what I want and I'll personally be happy. But such an interface may not serve FIRST's overall goals with the website.

I think that it's clear that it's not aimed at mentors and I hope you didn't think that I was implying that mentors should be the primary focus for the website. But there are times when I do have to use it. And I did say that I'm using Google to search the site as a workaround when I'm not using a specific FRC database access point like STIMS within the site. I would have assumed that the site designers would have taken the needs of various stakeholders into account. As you've so clearly pointed out, the end product demonstrates their analysis of those needs and wants.

As so many other posters have also pointed out, it would be terrific if we could bring enough resources together to help.

[Eugene Fang]

I put this together over the weekend to help with searching for teams and events. It has some small bugs right now, but they'll get ironed out shortly.

https://www.thebluealliance.com/nearby

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Eugene Fang

I put this together over the weekend to help with searching for teams and events. It has some small bugs right now, but they'll get ironed out shortly.

https://www.thebluealliance.com/nearby

Eugene - does this mean that TBA has zip code/more granular location data for team? If so any chance that gets exposed in the API?

[Eugene Fang]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Eugene - does this mean that TBA has zip code/more granular location data for team? If so any chance that gets exposed in the API?

I've wrote something that gets more granular data and it's used for "Search Nearby," but we don't store it anywhere else yet and thus can't serve it in the API. I'm working on making use of it elsewhere in the site and will expose it in the API.

For those curious, to get granular location data I make guesses of what a team's location could be by combining city/state/zip/country with different parts of a team's full name (which usually starts or ends with the high school or title sponsor), hitting Google's Maps API to check for validity, and then making sure the results Google gives back have the same city, state, zip, etc. as what FIRST says the team's location is. Then the best result is normalized (To fix CA vs. California, typos in FIRST's database, etc.) by hitting Google again.

TLDR: Yes TBA will expose an API for detailed street-level addresses for most teams. Hopefully within the month.

[EmileH]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

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.

Does http://frclinks.com suffice?

[JB987]

Originally Posted by EmileH

Does http://frclinks.com suffice?

Works for me Thanks!