The question has arisen: "If protests are so rare, and weenie protests even
rarer, and _successful_ weenie protests rarer still, then why does Team.Net
spend so much time discussing the subject, scaring all the newbies in the
process?"
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I guess I'm one of the chief offenders
when it comes to wasting bandwidth on this subject.
I find the concept of the weenie protest personally offensive. I am disgusted to
think that there are amongst people who I concider friends and collegues those
who would display such a blatent lack of sportsmanship, professionalism, and
good old fashioned humanity and common sense as to protest a car for trivial
(and I mean _trivial_) rules infractions in order to advance their own placing,
or to take down a rival. To me, a weenie protest is evidence of a small and
petty human being, and that the rules structure may in some way encourage the
weenies to me is just plain wrong. The engineer/computer geek in me, whenever it
sees something "wrong" wants to fix it, and so I waste bandwidth seeking that
solution. It's in my nature. :)
As you may be able to tell, there's a lot of passion and emotion in a statement
like that. People tend to discuss things they are passionate about, and
sometimes all that emotion can cloud thinking or mask the real intent of the
message, both for the author, and the audience - generating more passion and
emotion, and so on in a vicious circle.
I suppose it can get awfully melodramatic at times, but hey, melodrama sells. :)
Team.Net is a lot like a newspaper. When was the last time you saw a headline
like "Everything was just nice today" instead of "Woman goes bezerk at local
Clinique counter, cold creams 8 bystanders"?
The best way to reduce (IMHO) the dead-horse-flogging is to lead by example. If
you want to see more discussion on car setups, driving techniques, and so on -
ask. Offer opinions, seek feedback, create your own discussion. I think you'll
find people here more than willing to participate.
In the meantime, don't let the protest and rules discussions scare you off.
Autocrossers are by and large very friendly and open people, and I think you'll
find that a lot of the folks who come off as assholes here are completely
different people in person.
As a final point on the "weenie" discussion, I think the officials are given
short shrift when we talk about protests. The officials aren't robots who
automatically follow the exact written letter of the rules, they're people who
can and do exercise judgement - both good and bad - on any given protest. It's
probably safe to say that any outrageously obvious weenie protest would be
obvious as such to the official, and would be treated accordingly.
DG
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