I understand the immediate reaction is to go on the attack and slam him but what purpose does that serve? Sure maybe he deserves it but wouldn’t it be better to just have a mod delete the thread and send the offender a note explaining why his actions are inappropriate and maybe help him learn something?
Who knows, with a little coaching maybe he could become a valuable member of the community. Lets face it, there’s almost zero chance of that happening now.
I must say Cory that your comments when closing the thread are absolutely inappropriate. You are basically saying OK boys lets get this guy. I think you deserve as many red dots for that comment as the OP.
It sounds like the student had a poor experience somewhere along the line. I also advocate contacting him and giving a chance to post a “sorry, I didn’t understand” message and delete the entire thread.
I agree with this. I happened to read the post, and while a little uncalled for, it was obviously of good intentions. The OP brought up a valid issue that anyone in FIRST has thought of at least once. However, he/she brought Buzz into it, and that’s where people began to bash him/her. I haven’t watched the video so I can’t say how many mentors were shown, however as we all know mentors are a huge part of FIRST. What the mentors do may have been misunderstood by the OP.
Personally, I think the OP was a good person who brought up a valid issue, but just worded it wrong. The people at CD are supposed to help others, not bash them so hard they not come back and receive the experience we have because of a silly first-time mistake. I understand the OP’s side, being once new and still very uneducated in some areas. Is it not our job on CD and FIRST to educate those who need it?
I agree with all of this but the one thing that EVERYONE on chiefdelphi needs to remember is something we hear so constantly. Gracious Professionalism.
I understand where the OP is coming from, but he could have handled it in a more gracious and professional way. We all should remember that what we say on CD reflects not just us, but also our teams. And yes Andrew, everyone needs a second chance. I mean I feel bad for the OP look at how many red bars he has…I have been in his boat before and it is a huge a learning experience…
Yup, should have been handled differently…and yeah, it’s that time of build season when a lot of us are pretty wound up! so it’s hard to put things in perspective.
I’m not happy by the OP’s position but again that is his position and he is entitled to it and I respect it. Even though some of us don’t agree with that viewpoint about mentors on a team a majority of teams do. I do understand where he comes from, I have seen several teams who appear to be all the mentors work but that is just me staring at a house saying it is ugly without going inside.
I’m also not happy with the reaction by CDers and the reaction to reactions. If you have things to say we have PM for that. Don’t air it out here folks! :mad:
I’d avoid deleting the thread unless the original poster really wants it deleted, and the ChiefDelphi community seems to agree. There’s no defamation there, especially not after the link was redacted.
I definitely think the person deserves the opportunity to respond (civilly and thoughtfully) to those who criticized them. A locked thread doesn’t serve that purpose very well, so I suggest they post here instead. (If they want nothing more than to throw insults, they’ll just get banned.)
If you want to be a jerk on the internet I don’t think you should be shielded from the consequences of acting like a jerk. I see nothing wrong with what I posted and stand by it. My intent was not to ostracize the kid or leave it there so people can ‘blacklist’ the kid or team. I simply think that in the real world if you say something you don’t get to take it back.
I’ll abide by that myself. If some think my posts are inappropriate and rude, that’s fine. They were my words and I won’t hide from them.
This is not an easy question. My opinion on this has changed as much as I have while posting on CD… And my opinion is just that. I know nothing about the moderation policy of Chief Delphi. Treat this post as a perspective from an individual, nothing more.
I believe the appropriate response in terms of community moderation to that thread would be a deletion and a temporary ban. In the particular incident we are now having a public meta discussion about, the reputation of the team is at stake. The poster’s identity is not persistent outside of Chief Delphi, but the team number is persistent, potentially long after the student leaves. People create permanent negative associations easily. A deletion and temporary ban allows the poster to “cool off” long enough to at least try and understand what happened.
I bet at least one person has now put that team on some kind of blacklist. And that’s not fair to everyone else who ever put any effort on that team, even if the student was claiming to speak for them all. I know some teams have all out policies against posting on Chief Delphi to protect their particular brand. Others do not go so far, but (correctly?) reinforce a strong culture of “act as if you’re always being watched” which serves them very, very well! It’s a healthy lesson to learn in professionalism. I generally see the teams that take such preventative action as teams that have their act together enough that they don’t “need” the help and support of places like CD as much as other teams, though.
If the user’s post was deleted, the permanence would be less daunting. If the user was temporarily banned, with clear reasoning and an opportunity for a private discussion with their team leadership, if any, before posting again - that would help prevent the permanent damage to the team’s reputation that posts like that would cause.
Now with damage control and moderation out of the way… I think the intent of this thread was to discuss how to react to people that basically don’t “get it” - “it” being the general values of tolerance and respect for team structures different than one’s own. That’s… quite difficult. I’ll get back to you guys on that one.
I’m with Cory,
i tell my students to “man-up” all the time. All that means is stand up the the consequences regardless of how severe. If you are upset about something, talk it out and come to a resolution - after all, that is what we are here to do. Help young ones grow into solution finding useful people. If you do not know how to act, personally and professionally you will learn by fire.
No one forgets the first time they bust up their finger in the shop, I’m sure this similar analogy applies.
I don’t know if it is fair to call him a jerk right away… I think what we have here is a something that we have all been, a kid. He saw what he views as a problem, which I think we can all agree can be a problem to different degrees with some teams, and his method for recognizing it was good until he went the extra step and crossed a line, or two, well maybe three.
I also don’t think that it is fair for us to say that he doesn’t understand FIRST either. Personally I feel that a kid will be more inspired (the true goal of FIRST) by learning how to make something and then actually making it, rather than just learning the process by watching someone else make it or by sending it off to a shop to be made. Does that mean that sending something out to be laser cut is a bad practice? Of course not, it happens in industry all the time. But does sending it out directly involve the students in the process from start to finish? More often than not I doubt it.
I am not saying I agree with his method, or his idea completely, but I can see where he is coming from and I feel that it is a legit concern that should be addressed in a friendly and compassionate way. Maybe by reminding him that the issue could be handled differently and seeing how he responds to the idea, rather than immediately saying that he is reported for doing something wrong.
We still have to remember that everyone makes mistakes, sometimes the results are just more visible and affect more than just the individuals involved…
Well said Mr. Basse. Everyone makes mistakes, in fact everyone still makes mistakes, although they occur less frequently with experience, something us who are somewhat new to FRC can lack sometimes. If it were a 30 year old mentor, then the results/reactions would have been very different. But this is a kid, probably around 16 years old. If a students gets something wrong in class, the more experienced and educated teachers teach them how to do it right.
If a student busts a finger after being given safety instructions, I totally agree. If this is strike 2 for this student, I also agree. Was that the case here? Did the student have any idea what FIRST is about? Hard to know I reckon…
I suppose the older (and hopefully wiser) one gets the more tolerant - right up to the point where one is being ignored or taken advantage of - then the hammer must come down, maybe literally ;o)
Wait, you locked a thread because you found it in poor taste, yet you leave it visible so he has to face the “consequences”?
Slow down for a second. The original thread involved a student posting about how he does not agree with the philosophy that many teams/mentors/students hold that mentors should work equally with students, or perhaps even do most of the technical work. That in itself, I think you’d agree, is not worthy of a lock because it is a very valid point of contention within the FIRST community.
I think the quote that got everyone’s attention was the following:
“If you think you are some cool old guys because you own a bunch of high school kids, get a grip and go start your own robotics organization.”
Many mentors would take offense from that statement, and rightly so because it stereotypes all mentors in a negative way. However, that doesn’t change the fact that there are a few teams (which we are all aware of) where the mentors may be accurately described by this statement. While this is a minority, that part of the student’s point, while poorly delivered, stands as an open issue in our community.
To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with how other teams run, it’s up to each team to decide what works best for them. I’m just not sure how I feel about the overall response to the original thread.
This is hardly a consensus. I used to think that there was a problem with this but came to realize a long time ago that it doesn’t matter how anyone else runs their team, so long as it works for them.
This is an argument that has been rehashed a hundred times on Chief. Go find comments made by Dean, Woodie, Dave, etc. All of them have said in different ways that a huge part of FIRST is mentor involvement with students. Nowhere will you find guidelines saying what level is inappropriate.
I’m in agreement with IndySam’s suggestion, of deleting the thread entirely, PMing the poster with the reason it was taken down, and give the poster a second chance to state his or her opinion on CD in a more appropriate matter.
The community that doesn’t have Mod status should do one of two things: Respond to the posters question (if there is one) or ignore it. “By giving attention to it, we’ve managed to make the situation bigger than it was.” Why do we always have to defend our hive like bees and then turn into the bullies? Just ignore the thread. Or, if you can find a question or issue posed by the original poster, answer it. The topic the poster proposed in the end, is a valid one. If you have an answer for it, answer it, or if you want to debunk the question, debunk it. But we should not just simply sit there in the thread and act like fools mocking the poster and his post.
It then is the job of the Mod and forum supervisors to act on the thread in a way that corresponds with the rules of the Chief Delphi community. In this case, immediate deletion of the thread and notification to the poster should have been the proper course of action.
In this case, I feel that the actions taken in this situation is akin to bullying another poster simply for a lack of judgement. The poster had less than 10 posts; don’t expect someone to just easily mold into the community at large instantaneously. It should not be up to the moderation staff to openly mock someone for their posts, nor accuse them of being a “jerk” openly.
Also, negative rep is never an appropriate response to ANY situation.
No offense to anybody here, but thinking that giving the kid a chance to apologize is being fair to the post does not resolve the issue. I did not see the original post, but the student at least showed some courtesy by removing the team’s name and trying to address it as an issue instead of calling people out.
If I’m that student, I still don’t think I did anything wrong because the “consequences of my actions” is currently several mentors (that I think do everything for their team as it is anyways) discussing how best to deal with me.
As for the actual issue - I have been involved (as a student or as a mentor) with three different teams that have radically different views on roles of students, parents, and mentors. It really is a culture-shock seeing how different teams can be set up.
A team in which the student’s do all of the work often has the students wondering how it could possibly be better for the mentor’s to be as involved as they are in other teams, but when they post about it (whether it be in a rather insulting post as it was in this case or in one of the other discussion posts), its always called jealousy, arrogance, or just plain ignored by the mentors having their adult-discussion on what they do for their teams on the forums.
Teams have a wide variety of how involved mentors are and there is no one “best” way to do it. However, some teams treat their students as adults and give them the responsibility of an adult. So on CD, especially if we are going to force students to “face the consequences of their actions” like an adult, the least we can do is respect students’ opinions the way we would an adult’s.
It wasn’t that the thread discussed a sensitive issue, to me. It was that it was an attack post, in tone as written, though I don’t know if it was intended that way. This sort of post has the severe potential for a flame war. It wasn’t just that one sentence, it was almost the entire post, and the followup posts.
To be honest, part of the best way to respond to posts like that can be found in the one post I made to the thread, of the three I started. When I see a post like the initial one, I get really mad. I’ve found that it works better if I wait a bit, to cool off/organize my thoughts, and present a cohesive, non-attacking post.
This particular issue is by no means dead. However, it is also by no means an easy one to bring up without causing a flame war. As such, we as a general group, prefer to quell the flame wars and refer people to the prior, closed threads on the topic.
As many have said, this has been hashed and rehashed over again. The debate won’t die, except the results… that is when students see a wicked awesome robot built by mentors - it doth not inspire nor encourage.
There are Mentoring guidelines. I like section 8 a lot:
I Do, You Watch
I Do, You Help
You Do, I Help
You Do, I Watch
I come from a world of FLL, which is still FIRST. In FLL, students do all of the work - emphasis mine. Mentors and Coaches encourage and provide the process; keep everything including sanity in check. In FRC, we encourage the engineering process, learn the technical knowledge, and at some point, we as mentors do need to start turning the keys over to the students - as much as they can manage. The idea behind FIRST isn’t just to inspire, it is to build leaders… They can’t learn to be leaders having to take the backseat the entire time.