mentors, please help to prevent forum abuse

[Solace]

This is a plea to all of the teams that use chiefdelphi as a scouting resource.

I realize that many teams start their scouting early in the season, and that CD is sometimes the only way to do that. I have nothing against that, nor do I blame the students who start threads asking for scouting info that everybody has to read. The problem is that these scouts have often had little to no experienece using CD, and the offending threads asking for information are often the first posts that these students make. As a result, they can't truly blamed for not knowing about the various search functions that make the forum more manageable.

and so I make my request. If a time has a pre-season scouting program, one in which students are required to look up other teams and/or contact them for information, these students will invarianbly come to CD (as it is really the only place that has the information). I would ask that the mentors of the scouting program make sure that their students are aware of the forum rules and functions. If the scouting system on a team is organized enough to assign certain teams to certain students, then it is easily organized enough to show kids the rules before they go off creating annoying threads.

This is not a life or death situation. Even if the problem persists, it is not going to serious disrupt the way CD operates, nor is it so annoying that it will make coming here a tedious affair. Rather, this is just a simple request for mentors to help this forum to run more smoothly. Please consider this request - it only takes a moment of your time, and it will not only improve the effectiveness of your scouting but the effectiveness of Chiefdelphi as a whole.

[KenWittlief]

is there a single thread into which teams can enter and snarf scouting info?

if not, is someone going to start one?

[Solace]

that's an idea, but trying to keep everything within a single thread manageable would be quite a challenge.

an alternative solution would be to create a forum entirely for scouting purposes, but I don't think that the problem is big enough that we need to make brandon make changes to the forum itself. if mentors just make their students aware of how to use the forum, then the problem dissappears.

this is a gracious professionalism kind of thing. There are no rules against it, and it doesn't pose an enormous problem, but with just a little effort we can make CD a more streamlined and enjoyable forum.

[Ryan Albright]

or maybe its own forum

[MikeDubreuil]

Perhaps a forum be created called "Robots 2004". In that forum, you create a thread for each team number. If you want information on a team you talk about it in the appropriate thread. Seems a simple way to keep things organized.

[Greg Needel]

i think that most teams have members on this fourm and contacting a member from the team through the members menu is better then having around 1000 posts (1 for each team)

[AmyPrib]

I thought there was a thread/forum called Scouting.. If you go to the Rules/Strategy forum off the main page, there's Scouting within there.... Although I haven't seen much posted in there recently, but that's where I'd assume scouting info/questions should go...

[Bharat Nain]

Just a thought.. In the Picture Gallery.. Where teams upload their robot pictures.. if they are willing enough.. they can add their own robot and team information in detail(whatever a scouting form requires) and if additional information is required, they can PM the user who posted the pictures.. Again... This is just a thought...

[Solace]

I agree that these are all possible solutions, but they ignore the problem to a degree. the scouters often have no experience with CD, otherwise they wouldn't be doing what they do.

[Ken Leung]

Originally Posted by Solace

I agree that these are all possible solutions, but they ignore the problem to a degree. the scouters often have no experience with CD, otherwise they wouldn't be doing what they do.

The only way to fix the problem is to come up with something else as a solution for scouting info. Then once that's up, we will delete all post from people who are asking for contact info. Until then, we cannot do anything except to keep it in one place and keep it away from portal.

[Ken Leung]

Here is what I thought about this a long time ago.

Instead of havng a forum for people asking for contact info, we should have a bulletin board or some sort, so people can go there, say that they request contact info for a certain team. Then teams can go in there and see who is trying to contact them or ask for scouting info, and reply to the right people. Teams who signed up for the bulletin board, they will get an e-mail message or PM saying "this person is trying to contact you".

Having a forum section dedicated for this is really really inefficient and a waste of everyone's time. If we have such a contact info bulletin board, we will delete ALL post on CD forum regarding asking for contact info, and have all of those happen there.

To build on top of this idea, there can be different sections for teams to ask for contact info of a certain state, regional, or city.

[ngreen]

Yeah, a bullentin board of sorts would work way better.

Another solution I was thinking of outside of CD is for more veteran or at least more wired teams to get in contact with website-less teams and offer to host either a) a full web site, b) a team information page ie yearbook page with contact address, or C) even as simple as a contact for that team. They could give that space to the team and allow them to type it into TIMS as their web address. This would let teams contact hard to contact teams better. It would give un-wired teams the chance to put stuff online. It would give the hosting team attention, ie people coming to look for other teams info going on to look at your site. I am always suprised at the amount of teams that don't have a simple web page with contact information and I think if you got rid of the numbers of teams that have no website or contact information you would rid the forums of these types of threads and everyone would be better connected. What do you think about that?