Refrain from the negatives

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Arefin Bari

I am sorry to come out just like this, but please give it a break. It took many days of planning to pull together an event like this. I am sure reading all these negative points aren’t making the committee members very happy. Someone pointed this out earlier, but I would like to point this out again. All the judges, refs, and volunteers are students, mentors, teachers, engineers who took their time off from their schedule to work at the event so the teams can have fun. They tried to run it as smoothly as possible.

-Arefin.

I don't see any reason why we should refrain from pointing out areas where FIRST should imprve. We definitely shouldn't refrain from posting constructive criticism to "not hurt people's feelings". The world doesn't work that way. If I were one of the people that organized Nationals, I would be glad to hear what people thought it's shortcomings were, so I could improve the event for next year.

Sure, it's annoying when all people do is harp on what went wrong, and not what went well also, but without suggestions for improvement, people will have the same negatives next year.

For example, many people have raised concern with how the WFA award was presented. If I were FIRST, I'd love to hear what the community of teams thought could be done differently next year to properly honor the recipient in the manner that they deserve. In no way would I view such criticism as whining, or an attack on people who put their heart and soul into running the event.

You do bring up a valid concern in that it's not necessarily the message that's inflammatory--but rather the delivery of the message. In the past many people have had legitimate concerns, but delivered them by blasting all the parties in question--obviously this isn't acceptable.

In conclusion, I say keep up the constructive criticism. Without it, FIRST won't know where it needs to improve.