New Q&A

VEX V5 Robotics Competition VRC > Turning Point (18/19)
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I support this message.

22

What does this mean for decisions that were made on the old Q+As forum? For example, not everything is ever spelled out in the game manual, and over the years people have gotten answers to questions about very specific items being allowed or not. I have printouts of various questions from the old Q+As that I keep with me at tournaments in case there is doubt about the legality of various parts, etc. Are these old decisions relevant any more or must we start from scratch?

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With all due respect to RobotEvents and the coordinators of the VEX Q&A, I really dislike this system. While I understand the intent is to improve the quality of posts, this hinders a lot of people from asking their (possibly game-changing) questions. I know of quite a few referees, students, and even general people involved in VEX that would be unable to post simply because they either do not compete anymore or don’t have 24/7 communication with their mentors. Then you have the matter of Summer/breaks in general. While I wish we all had mentors grateful enough to take time off of their breaks to answer a quick question, the fact is that many mentors are not like this. So a student would have to wait until the break is over to ask their mentor to ask a quick clarification that, in the old system, would have been answered pretty quickly.

I do like, however, that the GDC and RECF are taking initiative to fix systems (I really like the “Download All” feature). I just don’t think that this is the best way to do it. I would have suggested making a Q&A a 2-stage process, with many trusted community members the 1st reviewing board to check if a question is a duplicate or if it is just spam. Then, after approval, the question be sent to the GDC for further review. That solution, in my and others in the community, feels like the best available fix for the Q&A System.

24

+1

And also +1 to this too
I agree with everything here. I especially feel that students should be:

  1. Capable of making posts
    There are a very many times when I would like a clarification of a rule or the legality of something, and it is not super easy to get in contact with my mentor immediately. I do like the attempt to increase quality but @B-Kinney 's point 4 should help with this
  2. Forced to make posts
    I’ve always seen huge upside to forcing students to communicate. Not to generalize, but many kids that I know in robotics are not as socially comfortable as would be necesary in a future work environment. Forcing them to communicate (on the forums, with referees, with judges, etc.) will help develop these skills that will be very useful in their future job environments
25

This new Q&A system looks cool, and I particularly like the tagging and sorting functionalities.

However, I agree with others above that there should be some means for non-teams to ask questions. As a frequent referee not affiliated with any teams, I spotted some potential loopholes and questions reading the game manual the first time through. Most of them seemed pretty obvious to me, and it’s probable that registered teams will ask about them within the next few weeks anyway. But, some may not be immediately obvious questions from a team’s perspective.

Even if submission of Q&A questions is opened only to other particular groups, such as EPs, approved/verified referees, etc., I think this would go a long way towards getting questions answered that aren’t immediately obvious to registered teams.

26

I understand your concern and don’t intend to diminish it, but I have a suggestion: People with questions about the game can ask them on the vexforum. That is to say, here. Nothing in the new system prevents or precludes that. Of course that won’t get an official answer, but most of the questions from last season were officially answered by pointing to the manual, a dictionary, or an existing Q&A. People with those kinds of questions will get them answered quickly by asking on the open forum.

What you describe already occurs when people ask a question on the forum. After knocking it around, if no satisfactory answer is reached, the question gets put to the official Q&A. That’s already been going on for years in an informal way. Nothing will prevent that from working now.

[Edited to replace missing half of the message.]

27

IMHO, this goes against the ethos of VRC. While none of the volunteer resources for the new game are available yet, I expect that they will mirror past years in indicating that this is a STUDENT CENTERED game. If we take the power of asking questions (which is how science happens) away from the students, we have removed an element of the student centered nature.

Yes, students can still come here for general questions, like always. And volunteer referees, judges, etc. can also still come here (although, unofficial answers are generally useless if you are in an official’s role).

Many above have mentioned that not all students have easy access to their coaches/official adults during the summer, or during school breaks. Beyond that, there are many programs where the “official adult” is simply not present or helpful. In my immediate metropolitan area alone there are at least two schools with VRC teams where the coach simply doesn’t care. The students are the primary drivers of the program, their parents are the ones who arrange transportation to and from tournaments, and the coach may or may not actually show up. Students on teams like this are being denied access to the Official Q&A.

This also highlights the kids that have been listed as secondary or financial contacts for their team: they have access! So some kids will have access and may continue to ask questions through official channels, but others cannot. And almost none of this has anything to do with the individual kids or things that within their control.

I’m sure that REC was trying to solve the problem of an unwieldy and redundant Q&A. They have implemented some things I’m absolutely wild about (tags! download all!), but they have also created a “privileged” class of students and a “disadvantaged” class of students.

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I was thinking the same thing. As a person that can ask questions on the Q&A, if I saw something discussed on the forum that had merit and needed clarifying, I would post on behalf of someone that was not on my team. If you have a question, post it on the forum, there are plenty of people on here that can ask questions. You may move one into action.

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I really have to question is theme that there are coaches that don’t care. If the coach is the only one that can get into robotevents - who signs your teams up for events? (rhetorical question) your coach. Your coaches care enough to sign up for events. They care - perhaps not in the way you want or need - but they do care.
And coaches aren’t unavailable all summer - there are things like email, phone, IM, social media. No one is ever completely out of touch. Please try a little harder.

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It doesn’t even have to be the coach of your organization.

31

I have mixed feeling on this issue.
On one hand, I think it is great that students could come to the Q&A Forum and ask their questions. I think it is important that referees and event partners that may not be affiliated with teams in any other way have access to the Q&A Forum as well for access to the latest rule interpretations.
On the other hand, it was also frustrating to wade through questions on the Q&A Forum that could have easily been answered by either reading the Game Manual or searching to see if the question had already been answered. I am sure it could get particularly frustrating for the GDC to have to deal with those questions.
What is the solution? I am not sure. There are problems with both the old Q&A and the new Q&A. I would like to see the following, if possible. On this forum, a sticky that is the compilation of the questions and answers from the new Q&A along with a sticky of student’s questions about the rules that those of us with access to the official Q&A could attempt to answer or post to the official Q&A. Not sure if this can be done, but if it can, then this is my suggestion.

32

Here’s my suggested solution that could solve all problems:

If they are concerned about posts that ask a question that was previously answered, I think it would be more beneficial to have some sort of button that reports a Q&A post that has been previously answered, and you can provide a link to the Q&A that has the answer. Then, an admin would delete the post and send a private message to the user who created a question that has been previously answered before.

This way, it would prevent un-needed Q&A’s as well as there would be no problem bringing the Q&A back into the forum.

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Just in a dollars and cents perspective. If the GDC is paid $50 per hour and the same question gets asked 4 time and it takes one hour to devise a response, coordinate it with all the other GDC members, make sure it is consistent with past rulings - that is $200. Having a free-for-all Q&A could really add up in terms of dollars and cents. So, you don’t feel like reading the game manual and ask a question that could have easily been answered by looking in the rulebook? CA CHING $50! I have a brain fart about some possible way I can stretch the rules? CA CHING $50! I don’t like the answer that was previously provided on a question? CA CHING $50. It adds up. There are real costs to running and maintaining the Q&A.

I think that’s the issue their trying to solve. Access should not be the same thing as unfettered access.

Maybe this isn’t a perfect solution, but it can be made better with feedback like this. However, I can’t imagine they’ll go back to the way it was.

Edit: oops, I thought I had a double post and deleted it and it disappeared!

34

I see two problems with this approach.

  1. It would effectively increase the workload beyond what it was in the old system.
  2. From the standpoint of readers of the Q&A, questions would disappear without comment, leading to confusion and potential calls of the GDC deleting questions they didn’t like.
35

Good point, I didn’t realize that. Plus as what @Gear Geeks said, it just becomes more money that VEX has to spend as well.

36

I agree and I do not think they should go back, I would like to see EP’s given access.

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For some of those teams, even getting signed up for an event is a monumental struggle. One of the teams I’m thinking of, the coach couldn’t even be bothered to correct a team’s grade level until the end of the season when another coach pointed it out to the RSM (after emailing the coach didn’t work, having students talk to the coach didn’t work, and having parents talk to the coach didn’t work). There sure are coaches who don’t care enough.

I know plenty of educators who drop off the map during school breaks - just because your coach (or you if you are the coach) is available, doesn’t mean that you encompass the entire breadth of experience for other teams.

This still gives SOME kids direct access while others are restricted.

The kids on teams should have the same agency that they have at tournaments! Student centered robotics.

ETA: FWIW, I have access because a coach offered to make me a secondary contact. I’m not fighting for myself. My motives are purely egalitarian.

38

That is a very strong argument, and a very good point.

The question is how to accommodate the issue while somehow limiting the questions put to the official Q&A to those which really require GDC attention.

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Here are some interesting statistics on the Q&A: VexDB | Q&A Database

Looks like there were 493 questions asked last season with 456 of them being answered.

That’s less than I thought. Using my very conservative estimate of $50 per hour and one hour per question - it would have cost $22,800 to answer all those questions. However, if the GDC is paid closer to market rates for experienced robotics engineers, they might earn $100 per hour and that would put the cost at $45,600. That’s not chump change.

I get making teams student centered - but can an 11 year old really understand the fiscal impacts to submitting multiple Q&A questions? Being able to just submit questions is like giving them unlimited access to a money machine. Yes, the teams are student centered, but as a coach, I still have to make sure they are safe, get to where they need to be, and don’t waste money and supplies. Using the Q&A kind of falls into that category. I’m not going to hand my car keys to my 8th grade team and tell them to drive themself to a tournament. So the teams are not completely student centered.

40

@kypyro

Agreed!

Looking at the root causes of the problem may be helpful. There are two that I can see are obvious, which means there are probably at least 4 more that I haven’t noticed.

  1. The forum, even the Q&A, is not easy to use. If you are looking for an answer to a rules question, you have to read through ALL of the previous posts, and subject lines often poorly state what the subject is. You may never find the answer you are looking for, or never with the particular nuance you are inquiring about.
  2. This is almost really a subset of issue 1. Many people would rather have instant gratification over spending the time reading the rules first, then the reference materials (like the judge guide and ref guide), and then the lengthy forum posts. So questions that have been answered end up showing up over and over.

REC has implemented a new feature (yay!) that will address some of this: tags. From what I can see, the tags are user-defined (boooo!). (I haven’t tried posting yet, please correct me as needed.) User-defined fields creates a sloppy, problematic system that only temporarily alleviates the original issue. System (i.e. GDC) defined tags would be significantly more helpful: users select the tags that they think are relevant (perhaps based on rule numbers), and as the GDC reviews questions, they can quickly switch an incorrect tag for the correct one. This way the tagging system is useful and relatively easy to maintain.

Ease of use should take some of the pressure away from issue 2. While there are kids who don’t bother to read the game manual, there are also some coaches (yes, really, I’ve seen it first hand). So let’s just call them (the kids and adults) ‘lazy users.’ Lazy users exist within every system, you cannot purge them entirely so you must simply accept a small percentage of lazy questions.

There isn’t a perfect solution. However, we can use some of what Vex and REC teach to solve the problem. An iterative engineering process can be applied - define the challenge, brainstorm solutions (especially bad ones), assess the options, make a change, measure the results, define the newly discovered challenges.