Critical and picky - here I go again.

[Chris Fultz]

As I have looked thru some of the picture posts tonight I have seen some awesome robots and the efforts of great students and mentors that have produced a machine to play this game.

I have also seen some comments and criticisms of thise machines that are not constructive criticism or helpful - the machines are built - they are shipped - they are ready to compete - and the negative comments can do nothing but bruise a team.

Please Go back and read the first post in this series and apply the intent before you post about someones masterpiece.

Good Luck to all teams and I hope everyone's robots perform exactly as intended!

[Stina236]

Gracious professionalism... need i say more? lol

as long as we remember the words of woodie... what could possibly go wrong? but honestly, i think that as a majority the entire FIRST robotics "community" is kind, helpful, and supportive.

[kmcclary]

Good grief, I'd be <i>AFRAID</i> to criticize someone's strategy! Which team was it a few years ago with the simple bot in the "trough game", that had the ONE ball gripper and a chinup rig, but nothing else? Everyone laughed, because THEY all had big capacity ball handling machines, conveyor belts, giant container dumpers, etc... They stopped laughing when the little bot went over at round start, did a chinup, locked on, then proceeded to <i>steal every 10 point ball from their opponent's trough </i> and put it in their own...

IMHO, it's the most brilliant strategy I've seen to date... That simple idea swamped that game, by turning their opponent's efforts against themselves.

Similarly smart, was the tiny "ramp assistance/manager" machine that helped the other teams in Co-Opertition FIRST (a simple wedge, which held the teeter totter level, while other robots ran over it's back). Two years ago there were some VERY brave teams that said "to heck with QPs, we're owning ALL of the Zone Zeal goals and will just be CHOSEN for the Elimination Tournament".

Little things can have BIG effects, and NO ONE KNOWS until you see how the game WILL be played what IS smart, and what ISN'T.

Last year for Stack Attack, we built a "transformer bot" with wings and a stacking lift, that could fold into a 14" high package. We busted our butts to package our entire bot into a 30"x36"x14" package! What happened? We never had to stack one bin to score. We never went under the bar, not even once. Instead, those two light 8020 "wing sticks" we stuck on at the last minute just to push some bins around were the most valuable thing we had. In addition, our complicated forklift stacker turned into a "stack slicer / opponent bin stack size manager". It ended up maximizing QPs by karate chopping the opponent's stacks at a level of OUR choice, and helped to give our alliance a Top Ten Round score at one regional. That use was something that <i> never </i> occurred to us until we started playing others!

Yes, I definitely agree with everyone here that we learn from ANY feedback, even critical stuff. You bet I would bow down and kiss the feet of ANYONE that saved our bacon by pointing out something that would disqualify our robot! And yes, there's a difference between criticism, and put downs stated trying to make the commenter feel superior. (There's NO excuse for that!)

But we must all be CAREFUL about PRE-JUDGING a robot's APPROACH. This is a battle ground of ideas, and they ALL INTERACT. It'll all depend on what everyone ELSE'S image of the game. Had the little trough lockon robot been up solely against clones of itself, there would have been no one out there collecting balls to steal, and they would have been in an arm wrestling match over one or two balls!

THIS game has a LOT of "scoring zones". We asked for a Rock/Paper/Scissors game, and boy oh boy did Dean, Dave, Woody, and crew take a good shot this year at delivering one! I'm FASCINATED by the possibilities. WHAT will everyone be focused on? Will we see entirely different games at different Regionals?

But who knows? There may still be a "game swamping move". There are thousands of smart people out there working on this one! And, depending on their OPPONENTS' aproach(es), a "dumb machine with obvious design weaknesses" that CAN be beaten easily ("had we only known what they were planning") may turn out to be the STRONGEST one there, just because their approach was SO DIFFERENT from everyone they face, who didn't expect to have to counter it!

And THAT possibility is what makes going to the contests so much fun!

I can't wait until I see how this game is REALLY played. The arena will quickly show all of us how strategically smart or dumb we all actually were, and where our efforts truly paid off.

Bottom line: <i>The Field</> will be the ultimate judge of our efforts. Just learn what you can from the comments on your design. Don't sweat the critics and nay-sayers. Go out, and have some fun. After all, we'll soon see whose bot is going to be kicked... I can't wait to see some strategies AND designs out there that WE never would have thought of in a million years, and devices WE thought were dead ends made to work!

Good luck to ALL of the teams. May YOUR design be victorious, and all of your hard work richly rewarded!

- Keith

[Andy Baker]

People have good points on this thread. Gary and Matt's counter-points are excellent.

So... my plea to those of you who want to give advice or ask questions - follow the example that you see on these forums by having some tact and grace when you wonder if something works or if it is overweight.

It is tough to not put emotions into a design that you've worked hard on for the past 5 weeks. While being non-emotional about a deisgn is the correct thing to do, it is extremely difficult.

Andy B.

[RyanMcE]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

If you are honestly trying to point things out that you feel will help this team out, then save it for a PM.

I have to disagree with you here. One of the nicest things about a public forum is that people who don't even ever post get questioned answered just by reading becasue someone else took the time to ask the question already. So when something doesn't seem quite right with a design, or a question comes to mind, it makes much more sense to me write about it publically. Then everyone can come up with ideas to fix the problem or make the design better, and all the lurkers are enlightened as well. If we wanted to PM people all the time, then there wouldn't be much use of the rest of the forums.

As for your other comments about being tactful when critiquing, as you may all know by now I suck at tact. So, is it better for me to simply say nothing when I think something could be improved because I might offend someone, or is it better for me to go ahead and speak my mind, and hopefully somebody will learn or some robot will get better because of it?

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by RyanMcE

I have to disagree with you here. One of the nicest things about a public forum is that people who don't even ever post get questioned answered just by reading becasue someone else took the time to ask the question already. So when something doesn't seem quite right with a design, or a question comes to mind, it makes much more sense to me write about it publically. Then everyone can come up with ideas to fix the problem or make the design better, and all the lurkers are enlightened as well. If we wanted to PM people all the time, then there wouldn't be much use of the rest of the forums.

As for your other comments about being tactful when critiquing, as you may all know by now I suck at tact. So, is it better for me to simply say nothing when I think something could be improved because I might offend someone, or is it better for me to go ahead and speak my mind, and hopefully somebody will learn or some robot will get better because of it?

Ryan,

You have good points here. I regret some of my original post and people have pointed out mistakes in my logic. Their corrections and yours are legitimate points. I was reacting to people who were being downright rude to others at the time.

Thanks,
Andy B.