Farewell, Chief Delphi.

[JoeXIII'007]

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

....Over the past two months I have been verbally assaulted and degraded by more than ten people in the FRC community that I used to look up to. I have attempted to provide a different perspective on many things, and as a result received a torrent of PMs and other messages that have both degraded my intelligence, and blatantly (and seemingly intentionally) misinterpreted the bulk of my ideas.

I hope to leave you all with a message: Just because someone disagrees with you, and has a differing opinion, does not mean they are "un-GP." Just because someone thinks differently than you or your team does not make them inferior. The issue of waving the GP flag at anything that was different has come up, but nothing changed. Consider this your first casualty of the FIRST cult mentality.

Having been kicked off a FIRST team by a student with power delusions, I hoped to be able to keep involved through CD. For a time, it worked. I was still a part of FRC, and I enjoyed it. But over time, the same issues that have bugged me for a long time, and have dug at me since I joined have not gone away, nor even diminished. There are many here who were not part of the problem, and I'd like to thank them. I could name names, but it wouldn't prove anything, nor further any goal.

So farewell, Chief Delphi. I applaud FIRST's goals, I just think many people here need to examine how they communicate with others. Sometimes it is worth it to stop and read what you've written before posting.

If I could point to the FIRST community's Achilles heal, it would be what you laid out here, and even after knowing about it in my gut for more than 3 years (oddly after 2004 this became evident, but not on CD so much), I could not at all put it better than you have right here.

That said, FIRST is not a battleground for anything and should never be treated like such, and seeing this sort of departure is plainly sad...

But, you gotta do what you gotta do. Good Luck out there!