Stop The Madness

[Josh Hambright]

As i sit in my room, with a bad cold and a sore throat, and read these forums, I am stunned by the actions of some of my peers and my fellow FIRST participants. When did these forums go from a source of knowledge sharing and community unity and become a forum of complaining about not getting picked for an alliance at a regional or jumping down the throat of a volunteer trying to do their job? These forums are supposed to show off the most amazing part of FIRST, the inspiration to do great things. These forums are not about verbally assulting other teams or individuals, calling names, making accusations, and general negative attitudes.This season things have simply snowballed out of hand, with thread after thread, often times one for every regional, of someone who has a problem with someone or something that went on. And rather then putting it asside and moving on and not letting it get to them, or trying to work the problem out.

Instead, we are seeing mentor who post comments about how referees are making unfair rulings, and that they are ruining the game, and that they are breaking kids hearts, when infact 90% of the rules enforced by a referee are intended to protect the safety of those involved in the competition and ensure that the game is played in a graciously professional way. What does it accomplish complaining about a call against your team? Do you think its going to change the score? Do you think that someone at FIRST is going to read your rant full of insulting language and unconstructive remarks and pay them any attention other then writing them off as an angry rant? What kind of an example of gracious professionalism is this for your students? Now we see students arguing with referees at competitions, and posting their own threads on here saying that the referees did a bad job.
I think that Chris said it best right here:

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

And everyone needs to keep one thing in mind: teams that REALLY deserve to win will find ways to overcome a marginal officiating decision. Also, teams that REALLY deserved to win will try not to put themselves in that position.

Instead of people congratulating others on their wins and their awards, we have threads by people saying that they should have been picked, that they were unfairly cheats out of a win, that they were the best team out there but that no body liked them because they have a high number or they don't have a cool logo. We have kids blaming referees for crushing their dreams and preventing them from going to a championship event. What does this accomplish? What are you trying to do? Your not doing anything but making yourself less attractive and less likely to be seen as a team that someone wants in their alliance. Who wants to pick a team for an alliance that is going to shoot their mouth off and insult another team and make accusations against volunteers and FIRST? That makes the whole alliance look bad. Why would you want to make your team look bad, by making a post complaining about not being picked? By saying that all the other teams made a mistake by not picking you all that you are accomplishing is showing that your a bad sport and probably not a real easy team to work with.

Overall I'd say that the thing that I am seeing that is bothering me the most is just the general insults, name calling, and blaming of things on other people. Everyone needs to check themselves, think about what you are about to post, consider if its something that Woodie would say. If its not something you could see coming out of Woodies mouth, its probably not a very GP thing to say and probably not a good idea to post it. These forums are about helping each other out, and raising everyone up to a better level of competition, not all the negative stuff we have been seeing lately.

That is my 2 cents on the issue, I'll step off my soap box. But i know i am not alone in this feeling, others have seen this squabbling and end fighting, the needless complaining and the general attitude of disrespect for people who work very hard for everyone to make sure FIRST is the success that it is. I am not saying that no one is allowed to voice an opinion, or feel upset, or that there are not problems in FIRST that we need to fix, but i am saying that people need to check they way they are going about this. If you think there is a problem, come up with a solution and work to have the problem fixed. If you think you can do a job better, volunteer, do the job and help everyone out.

Josh Hambright



PS> The second half of this thread is coming from Karthik soon.