Upcoming Site Changes

Announcements
1

How many people remember this version of ChiefDelphi.com from 1998?

The site started out over 15 years ago providing a system for the FIRST community to discuss anything and everything about their experience in FRC. Many things have changed since then – new social media and online community sites Facebook, Google, Twitter, Flickr, etc., have all come along.

In the next few weeks, we are going to be streamlining and simplifying the ChiefDelphi.com experience. This involves combining and removing some forums that aren’t used that much, removing some custom features that aren’t used much, making it easier to maintain the forums – mainly keeping them up to date and secure.

CD-Swap has already been removed … If someone needs something / wants to give away something, they can just start a thread about it.

CD-Events was never really completed or used to its full potential, and will be removed. The vBulletin calendar functionality will remain, though.

Unsung FIRST Heroes – there have been many attempts to revive this; and with the addition of the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award at the regional level, it has been even more difficult to get started again. This, along with the special WFA area, will be removed as well.

Spotlights - There are a bunch of great quotes in here, but if you look through the thousands of quotes there are a lot of inside jokes and random things that really start to outweigh the useful quotes. These will also be removed.

CD-Media, FRC-Spy, CD-Spy will remain as-is, for now.

We know some people will be upset that these features are being removed, but these changes will help simplify the maintenance of the site and allow everyone to focus on what brought everyone to this site many years ago: the discussion. Once these changes have been made, this will allow us to easily upgrade vBulletin which has some new features which may be useful and provide other valuable features (Facebook/Twitter integration, blogs, groups, etc.).

2

Instead of removing the spotlights entirely, would you be willing to accept some volunteers to help clean it up of random posts/inside jokes that were submitted?

3

One thing about the spot-lighted posts.

Many a time, I have been lead to a wonderful thread, where I learned many great things, from reading these spotlighted posts. If I am bored, I will often spend much time clicking through these. They will often bring you back to points in FIRST history, a random regional, some cool design, etc. That you would not find any other way. Often times they will lead to some good discussion points. I know they are a bit full of inside jokes, but I agree with Akash, we should keep the useful stuff, and clean out the junk.

4

I third the request to keep Spotlights. Perhaps cleaning them up or reformatting the way they are done is in order? I like to sometimes read the spotlit posts and get a laugh or see some truly inspiring material. On the other changes, i thought CD Swap was kinda convenient, but no one used it much so I suppose removing it is in order. Is there going to be any UI changed or is the UI going to stay the same minus a few links on the top nav bar?

One thing that I think does need to be fixed is the rep system. I don’t know how many users are aware of its existence, but you either have no rep or full rep as it is. Not sure if we want to just ignore it or get rid of it alltogether or what.

5

I add my signature to the petition to not remove spotlights. I’ve actually found that the good quotes far outweigh the bad, and I have gotten many good laughs and learned so much through them. I would take spotlights over Facebook/twitter integration any day.

Besides that, I love to see that your going to be removing some of the excess features on this forum.

EDIT: I can help out with removing bad quotes if you want me too.

6

In regards to CD-Swap, anyone who is interested in purchasing/selling/trading parts should join up this group on Facebook:

7

I also sign the petition to keep spotlighted posts. There are some seriously good (and/or funny) quotes in there!

I agree with Stogi at the top of this thread, maybe some volunteers could go and weed out some of the posts that weren’t meant to be spotlit. I wouldn’t mind helping out.

8

I agree with keeping the Spotlight…and who doesn’t love the Valentine’s Day Spotlight?

9

I too really enjoy the spotlight posts. Sometimes I’ll see an interesting one, find it thread, read it and learn soemthing. Or, I’ll just browse through the list getting a little inspiration and amusement. I agree with Akash, maybe it should be cleaned up. (I’d help, if needed).

And would the UFH entries still be available to read?

10

I know a lot of people have already chimed in on this, but the spotlights are awesome. Most of the time they lead to useful threads, and I have learned quite a bit of things from referencing them.

If needed I can help sift through some if you want to cut down on the inside jokes and random things.

11

I can’t comment on the original intent of spotlights, but as-is from purely a user perspective I think they’re great-- I’ve gotten many laughs and discovered so many interesting perspectives and people that I wouldn’t have seen the best of if it weren’t for those spotlights. Plus they can be an excellent index of perspectives and important posts that a user has made throughout their time here.

I get that they may have strayed from the original intent, but I think they’re something wonderful as it is.

12

When I read the post on the front page, my initial thought was “Finally, they’re getting rid of the spotlights. I’m sick of seeing ridiculous inside jokes up there.”

I’d be up for seeing some intelligent people cleaning it up, but if keeping the spotlight feature means there’s even one iota of extra work to make the upgrade to the newest version of vBulletin, I say just scrap it entirely. I’m really looking forward to seeing the potential Twitter and Facebook integration, seems like a great way to further network the robotics community.

13

Another vote to clean up but keep the spotlights. I’ve found some great stuff, and links to great older threads, browsing through them. At the very least, maintain an archive of them somewhere.

14

I like the spotlight posts, I hate to loose notable quotes from some of CD’s top brains. I also think it’s interesting on how they come up to match a relevant time.

I’ll sign up to help trim them down to pull some of the inside CD quotes out of the rotation.

15

I’ll add my vote to the pantheon of users who appreciate the Spotlight posts at the top. It sometimes provides insights into the community and the way things are/were. As a relatively new member of the CD community, the value of the spotlights cannot be overstated. It’s like a window into the CD community’s psyche.
I rarely see items I consider “inside jokes” and even then, if it doesn’t make sense to me, I’ll click on the link and investigate the context, discovering what was awesome/cool/neat/groundbreaking in past years. It’s like an item out of a time capsule.
I’ll also add my name to the volunteer list to clean up.

All that being said, I understand the need for progress and update. I have no idea how much custom coding is involved in putting the quotes at the top of every page. Certainly, the effort that Brandon and others who work behind the scenes on CD is much appreciated, and I wouldn’t want to waste their time on little-used features. I disagree with Karthik’s assertion that zero effort be put forward in keeping this feature. As stated in the original post, the intent is to bring focus back to the discussion. Without the highlighted posts, past discussions will wane into irrelevance, and gems of wisdom will be lost to all but the few who read old forums for the fun of it.

16

It would be interesting to see how many of the 5,000+ quotes survive the culling.

If they are going to go away, I assume it wouldn’t be that hard to back them up in some other format? It would be cool if someone else could set up a separate spotlight page if CD doesn’t want to be in the spotlight business anymore. Especially if the new spotlight was well curated.

EDIT: Well played cgmv123 for spotlighting a comment about pointless spotlights.

17

I would like to keep spotlights but since some (quite a few/most/all, whichever you would like to use for the hyperbola) are in fact inside jokes I would be in favor of restarting the spotlights. Archive these spotlights somewhere. Old-timers and procrastinators can spend their time perusing them to their content. Allow the spotlights to start from scratch though and start accumulating new quotes (and inside jokes that will be cleaned out again in 5 years). I think at the very least it is worth a shot.

18

I like the spotlights for the same reasons that were repeatedly mentioned here, but I see why you would want to scrap them.

Suggestion:
Many people stated they found some very interesting threads, as a result of looking through the spotlights, that they wouldn’t have found otherwise. If spotlights do get scrapped, you could have a “suggested threads” section, which’ll be a collection of links to threads that were noted by X users (I think 5 is a good number) as worth reading. You could also link a random one on top of the page where the quotes are now displayed. That way the spotlight functionality of introducing people to interesting threads won’t disappear.

19

A lot of times, searching on CD can help you find what you’re looking for. However, occasionally clicking on an interesting spotlight can help you find things you didn’t even know to look for, which can be even more valuable. It can bring you back year’s in FIRST history to educate you about things that you wouldn’t have ever heard of otherwise, inspire ideas from previous discussions that wouldn’t have been thought of otherwise, and bring appropriate emphasis to a brilliant post that should be shared with the community.

I know I’ve stumbled across my share of threads containing valuable information that I wasn’t actively seeking out because of spotlights. Just this morning I clicked on a spotlight about holding bots together and found a 3 year old thread about rivet implementation - something that our team has never done and will hopefully strive to do effectively in the future. I now know of a specific place I can turn for useful information on the topic when the time is right.

That being said, I do see the general problem with spotlights. The majority of them are utterly useless. Case-and-point, the one at the top of my page at the moment reads:
“What does code sound like going though a complier?”

20

I love the spotlights! Please keep them.

And before culling them, can you at least preserve the current list in a thread somewhere?