Poll: Role of Political Advertisement on ChiefDelphi

[Steve Howland]

I am one of those who voted for no political advertisement threads.

ChiefDelphi is a very valuable and important resource and gathering place for tons of FIRST participants from practically every team. Nobody should have to risk their privileges of participating because of a heated political debate.

Many times people at my school have argued endlessly about elections and political parties, and the only results are hurt feelings and added frustration. Although our moderators are very good and I do not find that political debates get out of control when a close eye is kept on them, if one erupted when no moderator was there to stop it somebody could lose their CD account (or all credibility on the site) due to rash behavior on a topic for which these forums were not fully intended.

There are plenty of places to discuss politics, such as in chatrooms or other forums, however ChiefDelphi is just too terrific and precious a place for people to lose. If we could all be gracious and professional all the time, we could have these threads. Unfortunately that is not the case and it would be a shame if anybody was unable to be a part of this community just because of a different political belief that they failed to express in an acceptable way.

It was mentioned earlier that political discussion and attacks are hard to distinguish from one another sometimes, and to avoid attacks I believe it is necessary that political stances not be taken on a robotics-based site. We all are entitled to our opinions, I am just afraid that they will breed anger or cause the loss of use of these forums to even a single person.

-Steve Howland