is there any way to set up a fourum sedction specifically for team leaders as there is fodder for dicussion /concerns that should only be dealt with by team leaders that do not need to be dicussed by members at lager?
dahl
rugby prop: stomping on hands since 1987
I think this is a good idea, but… how are you going to know who should gain access to the forum or not? Most teams have members that visit the board, and with exception of a few, how do you know who is the leader? Also there are teams that do not have any adults that visit this website, but with some of the wierd posting names that people choose these days, you never know who is an adult or who isn’t. It seems like too much effort for one little forum. I just don’t think this idea is very feasible, but hey I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.
Anyway isn’t that what the FIRST forums are for? Discussing issues with the team leaders?
What kind of discussion/concerns are you thinking about?
The biggest problem I have with that isn’t that against the whole idea of a message board? Isn’t it so everyone can talk about a subject and everyone can voice their opinions. What makes team leaders any better at problems than other non-team leaders? I can name a few team heads who didn’t know jack-squat and the kids ran the team. Do you really think that by having a seperate board for team heads will make discussions better? For me, having 200 people in on a discussion that each know a little is better than 20 people in a discussion that know a lot, since each one of the 200 people has different experences, they can give info that is valuable to everyone.
Hey first of all i am a team leader for 1219 and i agree with JosephM. I find that the best ideas comewhen we discuss as a team. Tho i also must say that team leaders arent just made on their knowledge, it depedns on their communication, dicission making and administration. Emery boys(team1219) has a big team (about 70+ people) we cannot involve everyone in dicissions like who should goto tha kick off(canadian regional is allowing about 13 persons per team because of space limnitation) now we alsomight need to judge who goes in the box(tho this decision has to be made after the building is over, onlydrivers are chosen 3 weeks in) because positions in the box are “prize positions” and people who are most commited should get them. Tho team leaders are not the ones who might know the most. 
.
**Any ways lets get back on topic, now if you need a seperate thread or category or forum for you team leaders, make them signup first. You should get their usernames from them. In phpBB (www.phpbb.com) you have an option of user groups. Make a usergroup name TeamLeaders. Add usernames of team leaders in that group. Now you go to usergroup permissions under group admin(or something to that aspect) you can set the forum permission from there for the TeamLeaders group. As in which forum they can mdoerate, or which they can view or in which one they can post. After this goto forum permissions and set the secured forum permission to Private. **
Tho remember its not the team leaders team, its not the teachers team, its a team that belongs to all of you, and most decisions should not be made by the team leaders alone.
ps: ignore the Typos
I like the idea personally…
Everyone knows there are times when the “Big People” have to talk alone without all you pesky kids interfering, or about issues that don’t involve the younger crowd, but are still important for the overall cause!!
um…
i’d have to dissagree.
First, I really can’t see any topic that should only be discuessed by “team leaders”. Second, it would be very changleing (sp?) to know which members are team leaders, and even if that were possible, then there would always be people who just wanted to get in to the forum and would find some way to get themselves a team leader.
Personally, I’ve found that if you have something that only certin people can do / access, there are a lot of people who try very hard to spam, etc… to get whatever.
My $.025 
I can see the good side to that. I think that in any situation, some people may have certain privilages to take about topics without others getting involved. There are many good reasons to have a private forum for a certain group of people are allowed access and others do not. I would not be surprised if something like this was already happening on these forums without the knowledge of the “general public”. Heck, on the websites I run, I have private forums that others dont have knowledge of existance.
Some may not like it, but its the real world.
well, emery forums (which are based on ASP not phpBB) has something similar, but the good thing is that u can have the private forum without the others even knowing or seeing it.And giving access to team leaders shouldnt take more than 10 minutes. Get there usernames and increase their access permission. So no one even knows about the private discussion and its going on. I will give you a prieview of our forums once the Beta Testing is done.
I think we all understand that it’s very easy to restrict a forum to only allow certain people to either view or post in it.
However, what you aren’t thinking about is getting their usernames… how in the world are you going to determine who is “a team leader” and who isn’t??
hehe, well there are only atmost 5-6 team leaders or something. Either you can ask them to use their realnames or when u goto school ask them to give you their usernames. It shouldnt take much to get them.
Emery forums have different access levels for public members(non school) private members(school). And in our case we have a field Named Real Name and the in school people are supposed to give their first and last name. Then the admin has a list of their real names and he can check the names and give the respected access levels. Our forums will have about 150 private members and it take about 2 hours to give them all private access so it shouldnt take you long to do it.
the concerns that I had were:
money: how the bills get paid
people issues- problems between students and others
deciding who goes on what trip (money concerns)
discipline for studetns who break rules (school and team)
dealing with school/county admin
security issues
and just venting- the team does not to see this but we also have much biggers commitments to this than most of the students becuase of out other involvmetns of all the adminstrative duties along with living our lives
these are thing i feel do not need to be addresses by the team at large
Very True, if the above issues were to be decided by the whole team there would be a lot of unhappy people, lots of cross arugments and well no final decision. Specially things like deciding who goes on what trip (money concerns)
discipline for studetns who break rules (school and team), these things have to be looked over by someone who is non bias, and deals with each student fairly. .
Thats my opinnion anyways.
I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. First, these are not issues that need to be discussed among multiple teams, and one team can communicate amongst its members in an easier fashion than by CD forum. Second, I believe adults should not hold secret little meetings for adults only whether it is in person or on forum. If the kids are old enough to handle FIRST, they are old enough to handle what comes with it.
What the heck does that mean?
You honestly believe every single participant of this program has the maturity level to express themselves intelligently in a roundtable discussion on the merits/potential pitfalls of a topic of import in the FIRST world?
Do you believe that everyone is capable of stopping to listen, before calmly and succinctly voicing an opinion that is driven by logic, and rational thought?
Ummm raises hand Have you READ these forums?
C’mon man… I can’t believe this.
Everyone involved in this program is not created equal. We have the full spectrum of intelligence, and maturity represented in this program, and on these forums.
You honestly don’t believe some of the engineers wouldn’t want to step back to the “adults table” every now and then?
If they wanted to, I wouldn’t hold it against them.
Shrug
Better that than leaving these forums altogether.
John
edit: Sorry for getting wound up. When I started posting here, I was a moron. Everyone grows up, until then… why should they be allowed at the “big boy table”?
I have been giving this topic a lot of thoughts, that’s why I haven’t said anything until now.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but what Andrew ISN’T suggesting is to limit the chief delphi forum so that only team leaders can read/post in it. As far as I can tell, Andrew’s idea sounds more like an private e-mail list, or a small private chatroom.
Imagine the regional competition, or an off season competition. After a long day of competition, an engineer, or team leader might want to invite some other mentors/engineers and talk about FIRST stuff. Yes, everyone deserve to talk about FIRST stuff, but they wouldn’t want to invite everyone at the competition. When it is the next day again, EVERYONE goes back to the competition and have fun again. That goes along the same line with the chief delphi forum. Sure, people might PM each other for a little bit, but the next day they are posting in CD forum again.
So, let’s not keep arguing about who deserve to express their opinions or not. As far as I am concerned, as long as the Chief Delphi Forum exist, EVERYONE will get a chance to share their opinions and knowledge. That’s the best anyone can ask for. Anything more than that is just helpful additions.
Learn to PM the mentors/engineers/team leaders more often, or learn to structure your disucssion better so they are more constructive and easy to read. Chances are, if your discussion is really good and organized, good stuff are going to come out of them. I bet you the mentors/adults/engineers/team leaders will jump right in and join in the discussion if they find it interesting. In the end, that’s what we want to do in the CD forum right? To meet other people, learn from what they say, and be better off than when you came in here the first time.
No need to argue about who deserve more to share their opinions. I know all of you care really much about your right to express your opinions, most are even passionate about it. That’s why I keep coming back into this forum. There are a lot of great folks around here who aren’t afraid to say what they mean. Sure, some could be a little more considerate of others, but all in all, I am proud to be part of this community. As long as the Chief Delphi Forum community exist, everyone can have a say in it.
Now sit straight and organize this thread into Pros, Cons, constructive criticisms, suggestions, and analyze the method of the way you organize it. Oh wait, that’s forcing my opinions onto others… Never mind. 
Ive been involved with FIRST since '97. I dont think its any secret that the adults onthe teams DO hold leadership meetings without the students present.
This is not so we can get together and talk about the students behind their back - or to make decisions that involve the students without giving them a chance to voice their opinion.
There are many aspects of a FIRST team that the students are not involved with: the responsibilities and liabilities to the sponsor corporations, travel, primary fundraising, lining up mentors and sponsors for next year, problems with mentors (yes! sometimes mentors need a talking to)
and sometimes the adults just need to get their act together, and need to hobnob with their fellow mentor wizards :^)
Our team has always had (adult) leadership meetings a couple times a month -believe me, if students were forced to attend they would think they were being punished. And there have always been meetings of adults of the teams in our area, to find ways to sponsor new teams, to find ways to work together cooperatively, to share major expenses.
Lots of stuff goes on behind the scenes that the students arnt fully aware of, and to be honest, they would not want to participate in 99% of the time.
If you want to be a part of the exclusive group know as ‘FIRST mentors’ - when you get into college or land your first job, join a team and be a mentor.
my repsonse to the above post- that excatly what i was asked (its called reading for content)
just a litte niche here that the faculty leaders can learn from each other on how to run the day to day operation of a team and a job and a family life while doing this FIRST thing
as for the ad hom attacks by email (you will be dealt with shortly)
and which pretty much reinforce the fact that we are not aways dealing with repsoinsible enities and that why i brought this subject up
I deeply resent the fact that it is portayed that i wanted to exclude people from knowing whats going on with the team
i just think that not everyone of the team needs to knwo what goes on witht eh dreary day to day stuff- because they in most cases dont have the whole picture nor do they have the experince of dealing with it
the niche fourm place was for the vetrans to share with the rookie leaders how to cope and still maintain a modicum iof a life outside of school
i like this idea … personally there are certain topics that i would like to address to team leaders alone and get advice from the team leaders without having any of my team’s members reading about them … i realize that htis can be done through pms and emails, but that would be a lot of pms/emails to send and even then, you are only getting a limited amount of opinions and advice because you cant possibly send it to everyone …
and deciding who gets access to this forum … i would love to say use the honour system … if you are a team leader, etc. maybe send a pm to brandon or something and you will be granted access … however i do not think that this will work becuase some will always lie to get access (not to put anyone down …) …
So I admit my first thought when I read Andrew’s post I didn’t really like the idea. However, after thinking about it, and then reading the rest of this thread i changed my mind. Especially after reading Andrew’s post about possible topics, I realized that our team has issues with nearly every one of those, and even if they can’t really do a lot to help it would be nice just to have someone I can talk to with out having to risk hurting anyine’s feelings.
About what sanddrag said, these things don’t need to be discussed with multiple teams, well I don’t have anyone else on my team I can discuss them with. There’s just me and the kids. And it doesn’t help half the time I still feel like I should be one of the kids. It was kind of a shocker going from being one of the kids last year on 226 (goofing off and sword fighting with meter sticks) to being the only adult (finally understanding that although meter stick battle are highly entertaining, we need to get stuff done) and the one that every expects not to mess up. It’s not that I want to exclude the students and have a private little adults meeting, but that I don’t want to hurt their feelings in discussing some of the things that Andrew mentioned earlier. And ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. And it would really help if I had someone to talk with about them.
Allison