A purposal to all posters: an organized structure for discussion

[Ken Leung]

Originally posted by KenWittlief
you make it sound like having a 100 posts in a thread is a bad idea?! thats what the forum is HERE for - so people can talk about things, maybe get something off their chest

a little venting on a forum might help someone get over their anger or frustration, and stop them from doing something else, like quitting the program.

communicating with one another is part of what makes us human - if we had to put our ideas into a fixed format before posting them, this forum would be dead within a month.

Nope :-). I am suggesting the 100 posts in a thread can be better organized so everyone can follow it easier, and have a clearer understanding of what's said.

I am totally for the venting that people make when they feel frustrated or angry about some rules FIRST made. A lot of times people can be too critical of those venting, saying "the rules are made, deal with it." All of us understand that FIRST are ran by people, and because of that, the decisions made won't be perfect from time to time. It is the valuable input from the people who voice their opinion in this forum that make FIRST better every year.

I value this forum a lot, that is why I would like to see it getting better and better every year, not unlike those who want to see FIRST better and better every year. :-)

I do understand what you are saying about making the forum less alive if everything is in a fixed format. That is exactly why I ask for feed backs.

However, consider this:

Wouldn't it be nice to have a "clarification" section under the CE qualification thread so people can ask questions in there, and not cut off the flow of discussion in the main thread? Wouldn't it be nice to have individual section for Pros and Cons so people can focus in one thing at a time, and understand that voicing concerns of Con's is just a healthy as recognizing the Pro's?

Also, consider this:

At FIRST's team forums, as well as any other group discussion aiming to understand and learn something, isn't it unusual if the discussion is free for all with random comments here and there about different things? I believe what usually happens is there is an agenda clearly showing what topic will be discussed at what time. I also believe that a lot of people attempt to organize themselves so FIRST gets to hear their frustrations as well as compliments, so the discussion will not turn into a deadlock of different sides arguing with each other.

Another example:

Say you are designing a part for your robot. When reviewing a paticular component, you want to organize the review into looking at the Pro's and Con's of the design, and then look into each of them to see why the Pro's are good, and why the Con's are bad and how to fix them. Again, you do so in an organized manner instead of everyone shouting comments at the same time.

I've violated the rules of keeping posts concise, so I will end it here. Please consider what I said. I would really appeciate any more feed backs base on the discussion happening in this thread so far.