Hey now, as someone who has made a lot of posts critical of volunteers and that have been called “unGP”* I’ve never had a post deleted that I didn’t request deleted. They don’t moderate to remove a side of the story they don’t want heard. They moderate to follow the rules we agreed to when we signed up.
When it comes to leaking the game early (which seems to be what’s being discussed, even though the OP doesn’t say so specifically) and “censoring” the information on CD, I think everyone needs to think things through a bit.
The FIRST community is really an awesome one. From what I’ve seen, most people in the community, if presented with the game early, wouldn’t try to gain an advantage by it. I know I, personally, would be super excited but wouldn’t tell my team - they need to go through the experience the same as everyone else, on a level playing field. However, there are some people (and maybe even some teams) who would take advantage to get started early. And frankly, we would probably never know unless they said something.
So if someone comes across non-public material (or material that is supposed to be non-public) about the game, they need to stop and consider how they want to handle that material. They could look at it, get excited, and bask in the knowledge that they know something everyone else doesn’t for a few days. They could use it to get started working early. They could simply pass it up. Or they could try to share it with as many people as possible.
The OP’s position seems to be that such information should be leaked to as many people as possible so everyone has the same opportunity to cheat. In my opinion, that’s wrong. The odds that someone will take the information and get started increase with the number of people who know such information - keeping it to yourself and not sharing helps ensure that fewer people know about it, and less cheating occurs.
Personally, I support the mods using their power on the forums to help ensure we preserve the format, intent, and purpose of the game and program. What are mods for, if not to actively moderate the discussion and keep us all in check? They aren’t glorified babysitters who are here to only delete spam posts.
The posts in question at this point in time may not have been by the choice of the moderators of this forum. If what was in the posts was credible FIRST may have contacted them telling them to take it down or face legal action. It sounds extreme but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what happened.
If you have ever dealt with the folks at first, you’d be EXTREMELY surprised if they threatened that sort of thing.
Okay so my point may have been extreme but they may have asked for it to be taken down.
I will not go into detail about what happened, but does anyone know if it is too late for them to possibly change the game, with that large of a leak?
The only possible reasons it would stay the same are
If this happened, say, two weeks ago, do you think they would have brought out the backup game?
There were certainly Chief Delphi moderators involved. Threads can only be removed by moderators. Additionally, my post in the game hint thread was not deleted by me, but by a moderator. Whether they were acting on their own initiative or at the request of FIRST or Andymark is hard to tell, and probably not worth speculating about.
All this transpired within 10-20 minutes, from initial discovery to cleanup.
Don’t be surprised. All GDC, FIRST Employees that work in the “Game Design Dungeon” and remote Kick Off sites have to sign a NDA and I would assume there are legal ramifications if there is a leak.
I’d still be surprised if FIRST reacted that way. I’d think it more likely they they dealt with it on a professional level and simply removed that person from the process. After all, look what happened when their biggest event was hijacked - the way it was handled didn’t involve lawyers at all. But it’s all speculation. I like to think the best of everyone until proved wrong 
I think it’s already too late. More and more people are seeing this thread and other posts discussing the deletion, and they will get curious and sooner or later, someone is going to repost the leaked information and it will blow up.
I’ve been dealing with NDAs for 35 years. In cases like this, the NDA exists to make it clear how information about the game should be handled. An NDA signer who leaked information about the game would never be trusted again.
If a student member or mentor on our team came across undisclosed information that would effectively compromise the integrity of the game, my expectation would be that they would keep the details to themselves and let FIRST know immediately. Choosing to act on or publicize the information would reflect poorly both on the person and our team.
Finally, the OP (a mentor) should think carefully how future employers might react to his posture on this question. This post already ranks second on Bing when searching for his name.
Let’s be realistic. More and more constitutes less than 1% of the FIRST community. Yes this might make some people curious, but with kickoff only a few days away this will blow over shortly.
You have a freedom of speech to post what you want and most likely homeland security will not come knocking at your door, but the private owners of this site have the freedom to limit the content and its users if they so choose.
The information was pulled from reddit.com/r/frc too.
I don’t know if I saw the full extent of the “leak”, which was one element of the game, but I’m not convinced it’s real, and if it is, I think it was an accident.
If somebody has the leaked information and wants to share it, they WILL be able to do it. They can post it on facebook, youtube, or some other website that isn’t moderated.
CD has been consistent with game leaks. There have been leaks in the past, but there have NEVER been any discussion threads about them. To remain in good standing with FIRST, CD should do the right thing, and take down the leaks.
Not arguing that it should be posted here, just saying in the end it might not make a difference.
Agreed 100%. Google already has a cached copy of a certain thread in the rumor mill…
What is the probability that one or more of the mods is involved with a current team?
Second if the game has in fact been leaked there is a better than average chance that the team has already started design, prototyping, and build, but how are we to know what teams have the info??
This is FIRST. Should we assume the best in these people, or the worst?
If you go to http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15 and scroll to the bottom of the page, you can see the moderators involved in the Rumor Mill. If you look at the profiles of these moderators, there are some affiliated with FRC teams and others not.
(If, of course, the posts we are talking about were in the Rumor Mill.)
Edit : After checking, out of the 11 mods, there are 7 of them which are involved with an FRC team (based on their profile).
The supposed “leak” was not of the game. Even if it (the “leak”) were true, no one would know how it worked in with the game as a whole.
Another Mod checking in…
We have always deleted and removed content which was not in the best interest for the community. Sometimes that is a person who writes hateful things and sometimes (very infrequent in the last couple years) we have deleted leaks about a game.
If you remember that FIRST is a k-12 program and most of the active members of the community are still students, we have a responsibility to remove content which is not appropriate or keeps within the mission of FIRST. There are lots of uncensored parts of the Internet that you can talk about or discuss everything and anything you want. If being totally open is your goal, I suggest that you seek out one of those outlets.
Specifically speaking to game leaks, many people view kickoff like their version of opening a present. That feeling of excitement when there is a new game challenge is something FIRST and many people in the community hold sacred (just look at the game hit threads and the excitement build up).
Additionally in terms of fairness only a fraction of teams (my guess would be less than 20%) have multiple active people on these forums and if people here got an inside advantage early how would that look?
I find it interesting that most of the people in this thread are mentors. It is our job to make sure that the current students in the program continue to have the amazing experience that many of us did when we were on teams. Yes this is extremely fun for us aswell, but the student experience should always come first in FIRST. Maybe look at things from that perspective if you are still questioning why we (the Mods) do what we do on Chiefdelphi.