weeding out the spotlights

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Brandon Martus

So, if you look near the bottom of the posts, next to the 'report to moderator' link, there is a 'spotlight' link. When you see something worthy of attention, (FIRST-related, of course) you click that, narrow the post down to the 1-sentence blurb you would like, and then eventually it will appear somewhere. [yet to be determined, most likely randomly in the upper right of the screen in the blank gray area].

This was what was posted about the spotlights when they were started.

Now that the spotlight database has gotten to be quite large (396), I thought it might be a good idea to do some "spring cleaning".

One thing that I've noticed is that some things are not related to FIRST. For example, "Did I really just say AOL did something good?" by tkwetzel. Now, I think that is quite funny, but it isn't related to FIRST, and i don't think it needs to be spotlighted among the other great quotes.

Another thing I've noticed is spotlights that are quotes of something, without attribution. One example is this quote: "We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals." by HuskieRobotics. Now, not only is this not related to FIRST, but it isn't an original quote by HuskieRobotics. When you click on the thread, you notice it is a quote from "The Mentor" (whatever that is). I definitely don't think we want quotes which plagiarize being spotlighted (Of course, it isn't HuskieRobotics's fault that the quote seems plagiarized but rather the person who spotlighted it).

However, if I were weeding out the spotlights, I wouldn't allow the above quote even if properly attributed in the spotlight, because it doesn't directly apply to FIRST.

I'd even go so far as to say that quotes such as this one: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein by Edward Debeler shouldn't be spotlighted, because, while it does apply to FIRST, it isn't really original, and with as many original quotes as there are, I think it's unnecessary to go to outside sources.

I even have a problem with one of my favorite spotlights "After the norovirus outbreak at VCU, we had our entire team sterilized. Oh, wait, that doesn't sound right... -dave" by dlavery. Why is the -dave in there? The quote is quite clearly by dlavery, and so the -dave is wasted space and should have been removed when the quote was spotlighted.

Other simple things that I don't think deserve a spotlight are "We'll fix that in programming" (who hasn't heard that before?), "I'm looking forward to the challenge!" (aren't we all?), and "Texas! Here we come!" (was it that interesting then, and what about now that the championship isn't in Texas any longer?).

I hope I didn't offend anyone by picking on their spotlighted posts. In fact, I think that the only one that spotlights me probably shouldn't be spotlighted. One thing that I noticed was that I liked almost all of the newer ones, it's just some of the older ones that I don't think live up to the same standards.

Any chance we could come up with some type of process to weed out the spotlights?