A few thoughts on Teaser Pics

[Josh Hambright]

Lately it seems like everyone and their mother has a hot new teaser picture they want to post on chiefdelphi for everyone else to look at and reflect on and take a guess at what it is.

I love doing this, looking at a new and innovative subsystem and thinking "wow, what could this be for?" or "Woah why didn't i think of that". But then there are a lot of teaser pics which don't really accomplish anything, other then taking up space on the server, in our browsers and our time. The teasers i am talking about here are pictures of a blank frame with no components in it (for the most part, however if you've done something new and innovative with a frame, then by all means tease away!) or maybe a picture of a mounting bracket in inventor. How is that a teaser? What can i guess from that? To you it may make a world of sense what it is, and you may chuckle to yourself about how no one is going to guess what your robot does because of your tricky use of photo shop to hide your robots design. Honestly though what is this accomplishing for the goals of FIRST? You have to stop and ask yourself, "Is this picture worth my time to post, and the time of other people to look at, or is it just going to be wasting space?"

Now by all means am i saying, don't post your pictures, I'm just saying that you should use some common sense when you do this. Don't post a that is 90% photoshoped so you cant tell what it is, because what use is that to anyone? Don't post a spacer and some bolts. Is it really that vital that you post an image of your wheel? We all know where that wheel is going to end up, so unless your wheel is something new and impressive, don't label it a teaser, label it "Team #### Wheel" or "Killer 2005 Wheels!" not "Wheel Teaser..." unless your wheels look like this . What is the tease in posting the pictures of a kit bot with no modifications? We have seen pictures of the chasis, your not teasing us. Show us a picture of your amazing code or something that might actualy cause us to stop and think, rather then a closeup of your gear box, or maybe a picture of your arm system.

I am not perfect, i have been guilty of posting useless teasers, but after a few years of being a part of the CD-Forum community i have seem a lot of teasers and have learned that there isn't really a point to a lot of them.

Thats my little rant, thanks for listening and tease on my fellow FIRSTers!

*steps off soap box*

Jtosh