This post seems rather hypocritical. First you accuse Taran of sending screenshots of Discord chats to the RECF, condemning the idea. Then you send a screenshot of a private conversation. At least what Taran shared was in a public conversation. By the way, he says “I got the concept from”. His robot is obviously not the exact same, hole for hole. Therefore, neither can the lock be. He may have used a similar structure of pieces, but ultimately he would have had to think of a way to implement it on his bot on his own. By no stretch of the imagination is this conclusive proof of holecounting or the like. Really the only difference between what he has been doing and literally every team with a tray bot is that he is being open with the community and sharing ideas. That doesn’t mean that the ideas were completely original, but hear me out. Learning is the goal of VEX. Not competition. Yes, it is in the form of a tournament, competition, etc, but that is to motivate people to learn and work. The skills I have learned, and will continue to learn by competing are infinitely more valuable to me than any of the trophies. Taran was helping people to learn by example.
Popularity and competitiveness? Not the goal of VEX.
As for “parallel innovation” I do not believe that he though of these ideas while living under a rock. Neither do I believe that he cadded it while sitting next to the robot he allegedly “copied”.
The team whose slide his was similar to (as far as I know, please inform me if I’m wrong) has not actually gotten involved with the accusations. All you trolls migrating from the discord are doing the same thing. You think Taran should be able to handle his own problems without going to someone else? Fine. Then so should “Team A”
I agree @Connor. I believe that the competitive teams who have a problem with Taran’s actions are afraid that more people will have the ability to steal their nice, shiny trophies that will eventually get put up on shelves and gather dust. Well, I’ve got news for you. There’s a finite amount of trophies in the world. Boo hoo. There’s no limit to the amount of knowledge and experience that can be shared, and somebody getting more will not detract from you.
And if you just aren’t going to accept that competitiveness is less important than learning, here’s an example of somebody doing both: @LegoMindstormsmaniac. (AKA Jordan from 24C a long time ago) He literally shared his entire bot’s cad all the time, and that didn’t stop him from being one of the best teams at worlds.
Examples
24C's Motor Control Value Remapping
Team 24 S^3 CAD Library Inventor 2013
Team 24 Super Sonic Sparks VEX CAD Library
24C 2.0 "The Vacuum" Build Reveal
24C "Omnomnom 2.0" Post-REX Tournament Reveal
24C 2011-2012 "Reveal"
Team 24C Super Sonic Sparks 2011-2012 Gateway Robot Reveal
24C Round Up Code
24A, 24B, and 24C Super Sonic Sparks Robot Revealing
To everyone striving to keep your ideas a secret for fear of losing competitiveness, look to Jordan as an example.
I will now share VEX’s mission statement:
The world faces an unprecedented need for new innovators, thinkers, and problem solving leaders. Our goal is to create engaging, affordable, and powerful solutions that immerse students in STEM through the excitement of building and programming educational robotics kits.
Notice the absence of phrases like “determine who is the best team” or “give shiny awards to the team who scores the most points”
@Sylvie , you are a great guy. Thank you for sharing ideas when seemingly the whole world is telling you to be selfish.