Top 25: Week 1

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

Tell me when and where to submit a list and I will. As far as I know there was no open thread asking for people to submit their lists. If someone makes an open invitation for people to submit lists more people will.

In his first ever thread, it was asked that people PM the OP if they wanted to be included in voting. Feel free to PM joshsmithers with a simple "I would like to vote next time"

[Tottanka]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

Also, if this list has nothing to do with performance, then what criteria is being used? The Championship Chairman's Award is given to the "best" team, but many of those teams are not frequent competitors on Einstein or in regional finals. Which definition of "best" are you using? The definition applying only to robot performance, or the one applying to the team's impact on FIRST as a whole?

You can read the first post in this thread, it includes the exact directions that were given to each of the voters, saying each one decides his factors for considerations.

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

Assuming that you are using the former definition, are the people submitting these lists from various regions? People tend to always think that their region is better, due to both familiarity with the teams in question, as well as general regional pride (a quick example--when watching college sports, I always root for Big East in nonconference games). Since I'm from NJ and was at that regional, I'd probably tend to rank teams like 2753 higher than other teams from other week 1 regionals because I watched them perform firsthand.

Yes, the people are from various regions, i for one, am from Israel, and have no preference of any US team, and yet my list includes no Israeli teams, although there is at least one who deserves it.

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

I know you said that this list was "just for fun," but you can't expect people not to question the integrity of the list. We don't expect anybody to be all-knowing, but we'd at least like to see some fact-based evidence for the placement of the teams on the list.

That is all based on personal opinion. My opinion is that team 71 is the best team in FIRST, and that's why they are my number one. Other people may rank 1625, as they won a regional and it's CA. Obviously, our definitions of 'best teams' are different and that's the whole point of this thread - to get the image of the average FIRSTer. If you have any problem with the rankings as a whole you are more than welcome to submit your own list when week 2 ends. I am just defending the whole idea of this list, not it's rankings.

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

Also, a side note, you may want to reconsider your thoughts on 2753. They are a rookie to FRC, but not to FIRST. They won the FTC championships last year. There is nothing in your explanation of this list indicating that rankings are solely based on FRC involvement.

I am not involved at all with FTC and considering the list based on FRC only. The youngest team in mu list is 2056 - and even with them i had a difficult time deciding if they are 'old' enough to be there. Their many regional wins gave them this placement. If 2753 win another regional this week, or even perform nearly as well as they did in NJ, expect them to be in the top 5 teams.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Just to throw a monkey wrench into the gearbox...Teams that don't field a robot in a match will throw off the statistics. There should be some way to adjust for that. In Chicago many alliances went out with only one or two robots on Friday. Even if you are one of the teams at the top of the list, the records get skewed by these matches.

[Taylor]

Five of the 25 teams listed will be at the Boilermaker Regional. Are there any other regionals that are as stacked?
Bear in mind these rankings are based off one week's worth of play. There are many, many teams who won't even be visible for another couple weeks. Also, this is in chit-chat. An area of CD meant for fun, off-topic conversations. I'm all about improving the process, but there's no need to make this personal.

[Cory]

This thread is getting far too much attention considering what it is.

If people are actually getting bent out of shape out of some list made by some random people who may or may not have any clue about what they're talking about, don't you need something better to do with your life?

This is a popularity contest. Nothing more, nothing less. The only thing that matters is how you do out on the field and your position on this list will have no bearing on your performance on the field. I know that 254 being voted #1 this week will not make our robot any better than it always has been when we play next week. Nor will it make any robot who's not listed, or not highly listed any less good than it actually is.

If it really does bother you that much, then:

a) don't pay attention
b) submit your votes to create a larger sample size
c) work harder so that your team does better and more people vote for you.

-$0.02

[joshsmithers]

As far as voters go, here's my opinion: the more, the merrier. PM me! (And thanks to those that have...) For the critics of this poll: if you want it to be better, do something about it. I would LOVE to submit my own poll, to help out those teams on the list that deserve a higher ranking, but that's completely unfair to the other voters.

I'm still trying to figure out how to factor in OPR.... The problem with doing that is then this Ranking is based more upon how the teams so on the field. When I first envisioned this ranking, I wanted it to reflect the best teams in FRC, not necessarily the match-winners, but also the award winners.

It turns out that was a stupid idea. This ranking is gonna need to be based on one thing: winning. So, if anyone has any ideas to make this less subjective...

One idea I had: simply multiply the number of votes a team gets by that team's win percentage.

Maybe offer "bonus points" to teams that win regionals, or are finalists? The way this would work is you would give, say, 111 "10 points*number of people that vote."

I'll keep thinking..... Next ranking won't be til after week 3. (Sorry guys).