I will clarify, when I say “public forum” I mean any situation where your words are not a private conversation. Talking in line at the grocery store is a public forum. Posting here is a public forum. A student run discord for a specific community is a public forum. Posting on facebook is a public forum.
No one really needs your concent to hold you accountable for your words or actions.
That being said, context is critical, and words and actions taken out of context can have their meaning twisted beyond recognition.
I am totally on your side with the second half of your discussion. If the RECF wants to ban “despicable human beings that think others dont have rights or deserve live” that it there prerogative. That is clearly not what is being discussed here. Disrespecting RECF employees and their decisions is completely different than encouraging violence.
If those members are being homophobic, or sexist, or racist or transphobic they can be punished. If a member is threatening violence against a member of the RECF, they can be punished. This is about not treating the RECF like a god once a student leaves the RECF’s domain.
Got it. Perhaps an extreme example. My point was that people can be punished if their values do not align with an employer or organization they are representing.
Please choose your words wisely, nobody here ever said that and it tends to lean towards a very aggressive and negative tone. Perhaps you could word it differently to give a better tone to it. We are all having a discussion here and there are a lot of valid points on both sides, lets contribute in a nice and friendly way.
(By the way I am not assuming you are being negative, just saying the words make it come off that way.)
In general, I have agree with most of the things mentioned so far, e.g. holding the teams accountable to their words and actions (even outside the venues), see things in context, etc.
But I am not so sure this is the definition of public or private domain.
If I am not wrong, the law is still grappling with where the line should be drawn. e.g. in Singapore, there is a lawsuit between the government and one person over his post in his closed FB group, and the point of contention is whether the closed group is considered public or private.
I would side with listing discords as private domain… since it is by invitation and anyone without invitation will not be in the group.
Posts in vexforum is definitely a public domain, as you don’t need to register to view the content.
But I do understand the counterpoint to this argument as well… anything online is never truly private.
Still it is a scary thought if we extend the line into our private lives, e.g. a comment that I mentioned to a student in private, but the student audio-recorded the comment and post it online against me.
Should I be punished?
The point is that - there is no real and easy line to draw.
And I hope one thing the students will learn from this incident is that you can’t trust everyone even in a closed group. Someone might just copy and paste the comments and use it against them.
I’d say the Discord is private for those who aren’t involved in VEX, but close to being public for those within the VEX community (especially students).
The Discord is private in that you need to join it to view it, but the link to join is publicly available (although you’d need to create a Discord account, which is easy and free), and once you join, it’s easy (unless I’m mistaken) to receive permission to view all the main channels (where the discussion would be).
The Discord also includes a large percentage of the teams competing around the world, so if you say something on the Discord, it could easily spread throughout your region (through the teams in the Discord reading it, and teams mentioning it to their friends who aren’t in the Discord).
Because of this, a Discord comment can easily have some of the same effects as a public comment, such as making other teams suspicious (although it won’t be discovered by people outside of the VEX community unless someone tells them).
On the other hand, there’s so much activity in the Discord that most people probably don’t read everything that gets posted.
Very true. Anything that you do in public you need to know is likely going to be preserved forever on the internet. You can’t delete your actions, you aren’t a time traveler.
I’ve seen instances where a boss interviewing a candidate rejects them because they looked up their name on Twitter and saw an angry or argumentative person depicted. There are real life consequences, good or bad, for all words and actions, there is no age to early to learn that.
One point that I have noticed about the competitions run by the RECF is that they are meticulously careful to apply the rules as written (at least based on these forums and the Q&A forum). My son just finished a season in FTC this past year and I will say that the precision and transparency in rule interpretation is a large part of what I find appealing about VRC and look forward to him competing this next year.
With that being said, I do not see how a fair reading of <G1> and the REC Code of Conduct can apply outside of the scope of officially sanctioned events. I think a strong argument can be made that formal communications about events (complaint emails to / from RECF officials or EP’s and Judges) may be considered for action as needed.
I do not want to see the RECF try to police communication outside of these venues. While it may be unseemly for a student to criticize the way an event was run on Facebook, Discord or a letter to the editor, I do not think those should be grounds for disciplinary action.
Finally, I do not know if any outside communications were considered in the 448X case, so I am not passing any judgement in that case. I agree with those who say that that specific controversy should die a natural death.
I admire your passion and enthusiasm towards helping our next generation. I look forward to getting to know many of you going forward. Thank you all!
I am not sure that this is specifically what many of us are talking about. If it were simply disagreements and criticism I would agree with you. What I have been talking about is very horrible attacks on others students, teams, volunteers and EP’s. We are talking about online bullying basically. The whole point of the code of conduct is to try to make sure that everyone treats each other with respect and I think that is just as important online as it is in person. I think it is absolutely ok to question a call or to disagree with a ref, there is just an appropriate way that it can be expressed without attacking them personally and calling them names.
A good example is if as a team you think you deserved to get an award at an event and you say something like “I really thought I did well and I don’t understand why I didn’t get an award, it seems like there is something wrong with the process” vs. “I can’t believe that team XYZ got the Design award, they sucked the whole day, the whole event was rigged.” The second comment is targeting some one specifically and tearing them down. (By the way this is a very sanitized example because I don’t want to use the language that was used in a lot of what I saw on the discord).
I think that what I have always loved most about RECF and the VEX competitions is that the students have to learn how to work together and communicate. They are encouraged to help each other out and it is truly amazing getting to see what these students can do and how much they can support each other. I think that this shouldn’t stop once they are online.
By the way I am not advocating for “policing” either but I think that if a team or person feels like they are being bullied and complain to RECF they should be able to be involved because if not them then who.
It is kind of like when a student is getting bullied online by another student at a school, should the school get involved to get it to stop… yes I believe so.
I guess, based on my own experience of having had a comment on line used without my permission, my question would be was the entire conversation read? Was the comment seen in its full context ? It seems this might be hard to do given that the forum in question was not available to the public. What had been said in the days, weeks leading up to the comments in question? Context really is important. Again, what concerns me is not the current team in question, but the precedent that is being set. As the old proverb says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” And sadly, now that the precedent has been set, it would seem that someone will need to take on the task of reviewing/monitoring student statements online (FaceBook, Instagram, Discord, etc) with regularity so that the precedent remains consistently applied across all teams and platforms. Consistency of application is important so that rules do not have the appearance of being selectively applied. It would also be a tragic turn of events if this were seen as a new , useful tactic - sharing others comments in hopes of removing competitors. At any rate, that will be a huge job to regularly monitor all those forums/platforms for all the teams in VEX, for sure, and should probably include monitoring the parent’s accounts as well.
There are EPs, Mentors, and Volunteers on the Discord. These statements were not sought out by RECF, they were referred by concerned third parties. Whether the entire context was taken in to account or not, i don’t think anyone could ever verify, but i do trust the RECF and its representatives to be mindful of this. The more independent first hand reports made, the less likely it is that statements were taken out of context.
RECF is not combing over the internet searching for incriminating statements. 99% of the time, you will probably be able to say whatever you want, and no one will ever know or care. This is not the first step in an authoritarian regime, censuring every word spoken online. This was one instance where a team’s behavior as reported to RECF from outside was deemed unacceptable. RECF will not be hiring a social media police department, sending digital spies into private chat rooms.
I fully support the RECF holding teams accountable for any of their words and actions that are reported as concerning, so long as the team is actively associated with RECF, the subject matter is related to RECF, they are speaking in a public forum, and the actions are in context and merit a punishment.
As laid out before, RECF has only a few levels of punishment they can deal out at their discretion. That comes down to a warning or a disqualification, and can be levied against an individual team or an alliance, and can span a single match, a tournament, or a season.
Dan has said, he will work to ensure a more clear process and set of guidelines for what and when these are applied.
This is a reasonable stance that I respect, but why is it only applied to 448X? A lot of people in vex have committed some violation of the RECF code of conduct at some point in their lives, so why aren’t they all banned?
So yeah, I think it’s fine to ban people for extreme ethical violations outside of a competition. But I’m talking sexual harassment, committing a felony, getting into a fistfight with another vex person, or something else really extreme. Basically just common sense. It’s pretty petty to go so far as to ban someone for speaking out against event staff online. In fact, G1 is explicitly worded so it only applies at competitions.
“Treat everyone with respect. All Teams are expected to conduct themselves in a respectful
and professional manner while competing in VEX Robotics Competition events.”
Like I said, everyone would respect everyone in an ideal world. But given that the world is far from ideal, we need to figure out how to fairly apply G1.
As I said in my statement above, my concern is not the current team/circumstance in question. But rather, whether we like it or not, precedent is set by decisions that are made. So, I am concerned about how and in what way this new precedent that has been set will be applied in the future so that it is consistent across all teams and platforms. As I said in my very first post (after a 2 year hiatus) I am not seeking to cast aspersions on anyone at all. But precedent is a tricky thing that must be handled carefully. And I guess I would ask too, if the rules are going to be applied as stated (“while competing in VEX Robotics Competition events.” ) or are there other unwritten rules/interpretations of which we should also be aware? In order to obey the rules, or be held accountable for them, I believe it is reasonable to say that we need to understand, going forward, what the rules are exactly and how they are applied. Especially since what constitutes “offensive speech” can vary greatly from person to person, region to region, and even country to country.
I just want to note that Dan said specifically that the actions by team memebers and their adult coaches AT the event were the main issue that lead to the DQ and the comments online were more supporting information.
As I said, I wasn’t trying to pass judgement on the 448X situation. I wasn’t there and I don’t know anyone who was there. Any unprofessional behavior at the event falls very clearly within the purview of <G1> and the RECF Code of Conduct.
I was commenting on the discussion of expanding the scope of RECF oversight to include comments and behavior outside of RECF events.
While I agree that unprofessional behavior in other venues is unseemly, I do not think RECF is the correct authority to address it.
I hope that RECF will continue to enforce the rules as written. RECF’s decision to rely on the plain text of rules is one of the things they have done very well. I would recommend we focus on robotics and decorum at the events and leave the rest of the internet alone.