[POLL] Why did you (or didn't you) vote?

[Horation]

Last year, there were nearly 70 votes cast for the entrants, this year, that number fell to just about 40 votes. So we're going to try and figure out what we can do to boost participation. 

If you voted, let us know what worked, and what could've been better!

And if you didn't, especially if you did so last time around, we'd love to know why.

If you have some reason not listed in the questions, comment down below so that focus is shifted towards that issue.

Edited September 13, 2024 by Horation

[zinnn]

I didn’t vote as I had a lot going on in my private life during the duration of the contest, so wasn’t around much here. That being said I did log in a few times, and the entries didn’t excite me as much as the previous contest. Some felt forced, ie they looked like “normal” MOCs, but with a brown bearded character thrown in at the end to tick the Steve box.

suggestion for the future- maybe we could have a dedicated sub forum for the contest only, where all the rules, entries etc could go so it’s easier to navigate the forum. Once the contest is finished the sub forum could be deleted and threads moved to MOC sub forum. Maybe that’s too much work, but I think it’d help a lot to have everything in one place.

also the amount of explainer / rules threads for this contest was way to high imho, at some point I found it overwhelming to navigate the main Pirates forum page to find what I wanted

Edited September 13, 2024 by zinnn

[Sebeus I]

My main reason for voting was a sincere sympathy for this kind of initiative on Classic Pirates.

[Murdoch17]

31 minutes ago, zinnn said:

suggestion for the future- maybe we could have a dedicated sub forum for the contest only, where all the rules, entries etc could go so it’s easier to navigate the forum. Once the contest is finished the sub forum could be deleted and threads moved to MOC sub forum. Maybe that’s too much work, but I think it’d help a lot to have everything in one place.

I agree with @zinnn on this point.

[BrynnOfCastlegate]

I liked the bonus points system, as it takes away the question of whether to vote for yourself or not. Last year, I got busy and did not vote right away. Then I realised my entry was in the top three, so all voting options became too tactical, which seemed a bit artificial to do, so I ended up not voting. That's why I made sure to vote right away this time. 

I agree that all the rules got a bit complicated this time, though.

[Horation]

Yeah, I agree with @zinnn, there were too many threads, next time I'd do only one thread, and make it a smaller scale thing, that way could be a little better for management of forum activity (aka our governor).

[Mister Phes]

1 hour ago, zinnn said:

suggestion for the future- maybe we could have a dedicated sub forum for the contest only, where all the rules, entries etc could go so it’s easier to navigate the forum. Once the contest is finished the sub forum could be deleted and threads moved to MOC sub forum. Maybe that’s too much work, but I think it’d help a lot to have everything in one place.

That's an idea I've been postulating myself!

 

4 minutes ago, Horation said:

Yeah, I agree with @zinnn, there were too many threads, next time I'd do only one thread, and make it a smaller scale thing

One topic would only work if the contest were significantly smaller on scale.

A rules book topic was created for the Infamous Steve Contest in an attempt to tie everything together, but look how long that turned out.  And it still doesn't cover everything.

 

[CaptainMoore]

I don't remember if I voted last year. Like last year tough, I did not have a lot of free time during the contest.

I have read the first post about all the categories etc, found it really big/time consuming and after that, I have decided to skip contest-related threads altogether. The more new threads appeared, the less I wanted to open them because it would require to know what happened in between.

I really want to thank anybody invested in organising it. I know this kind of stuff are demanding.

I agree about having a subforum dedicated to it, but more because there were too many threads to skip when I wanted to look for something else. That might bring less visibility to the contest though.

[Horation]

16 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

One topic would only work if the contest were significantly smaller on scale.

A subforum for the contest (or contests in general) could work well. Albeit we'd still have to promote it on the main pirates forum, or people might miss it altogether.

Agreed about the contest scale, having one big contest a year is tiring vs 2-3 smaller ones.

[Yperio_Bricks]

I am also a fan of subforums for contests, like Watto's Junkyard that is used for Star Wars contests. So everything contest related can easily be found in one place and does not interfer with the every day forum business.

BUT, from my observation, there is a hugh disadvantage when it comes to subforums. Most forum users visit theit favorite forums only and will never ever klick on a subforum (from an other theme). For example, all the RPGs suffer because of this.

[Mister Phes]

12 hours ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

BUT, from my observation, there is a hugh disadvantage when it comes to subforums. Most forum users visit theit favorite forums only and will never ever klick on a subforum

We already have a sub-forum for Pirate MOCs to separate them from the discussions - are you making the same observation between Pirate MOCs and Pirate discussions?

 

13 hours ago, Horation said:

A subforum for the contest (or contests in general) could work well. Albeit we'd still have to promote it on the main pirates forum, or people might miss it altogether.

This commonly happens with MOCs being posted in the main LEGO Pirates Forum, rather than the Pirate MOC Forum.

But we could slap a huge banner at the top of each forum to direct contest participants to where they need to go./

And then X% will still miss it anyway, but it's better than nothing.

[Yperio_Bricks]

3 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

We already have a sub-forum for Pirate MOCs to separate them from the discussions - are you making the same observation between Pirate MOCs and Pirate discussions?

What i wanted to say is that a random forum user only visits his favorite forum (Licensed, Technic, etc.) but will most likely never klick on a subforum (Watto's Junkyard, BOTBS, etc.) from an other theme. It's just my observation, but of course I could be wrong. In times of social media people are too lazy to make that one more klick Personally i would still prefer a contest subforum, so everything is in proper order.

[YellowFrog]

55 minutes ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

Personally i would still prefer a contest subforum, so everything is in proper order.

 

17 hours ago, Horation said:

A subforum for the contest (or contests in general) could work well.

 

On 9/14/2024 at 1:30 PM, CaptainMoore said:

I agree about having a subforum dedicated to it

I agree with seemingly everyone else: a subforum for contests is better. Perhaps some system where every entry is somehow also in the MOCs subforum, but when you click on it, it takes you to the contest forum? (This might be a lot of work or unachievable, but I think it works well as a concept).

There was also a ton of rules, I probably spent longer reading rules than I did building MOCs (this might be a bit of an exaggeration). I felt the rules were a bit repetitive, and some of them were self-explanatory, and the Q&A sections can be gotten rid of (replaced with people asking actual questions underneath if they are confused).

With the issue of people not voting, I don't know what could've changed from last year to this year. Has there been an overall decrease of site activity, or are users simply not voting and choosing to scroll onwards?

 

[Yperio_Bricks]

1 hour ago, YellowFrog said:

Perhaps some system where every entry is somehow also in the MOCs subforum, but when you click on it, it takes you to the contest forum?

Wouldn't that contradict the attempt to keep contest related stuff seperated from the regular forums?

[Mister Phes]

2 hours ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

In times of social media people are too lazy to make that one more klick

You are correct!

And that's why it's important to link directly to where you want to send people.

[NOD]

The pirate era is my favourite theme! 

I understand if someone is disappointed when no one votes for their build. Maybe in the next competition we could have two categories for the Large Entries, MOC and Classic Pirates? Because I mainly voted for elaborate MOCs.

[Mister Phes]

@Horation, there seems to be a slight error in this poll.

If I select "No" in question 1, I am still required to answer question 2... which is counterintuitive because I voted "No"

 

[Wes]

I wanted to vote, but it simply seemed like way too much effort to visit multiple threads, post multiple times, and sort through the rules. It was not only too complicated, it was absurdly too complicated. I was expecting a link to a single page where the entries were summarized (maybe with a "see more" link for each to the individual entry thread). Basically after a moment of attempting to vote I was like "I don't have time for this" and closed the tab and moved on to something else. If you want to see what I mean, I suggest listing the amount of steps it would take to visit every entry and every voting thread in every category and I speculate you'd have over 100 required actions listed.

[Horation]

12 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

@Horation, there seems to be a slight error in this poll.

If I select "No" in question 1, I am still required to answer question 2... which is counterintuitive because I voted "No"

I don't know how to make a question optional, if you read the answers, you'll see there's an option titled "other reason/I didn't vote"  or "other reason/I did vote", and understanding the data then simply requires a little substraction, for instance :

10% voted for the prizes, while 80% did so because of their interest in the contest, and half did so for the bonus points (obviously, some people did so for multiple reasons), so we can see the prize didn't work, while bonus points likely had some sort of impact.

Meanwhile, 83% of those who didn't vote said one reason was the complexity of the rules, so we do need to make them simpler.

 

[Mister Phes]

11 hours ago, Horation said:

understanding the data then simply requires a little substraction, for instance :

Ok, if you're happy with that extra calculation disregard my comments.

I didn't vote for because I was managing the contest and it was necessary to remain impartial.

 

[Horation]

18 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

I didn't vote for because [...] it was necessary to remain impartial.

That's what I guessed. Maybe next time a different system could allow you to vote (ex: a few judges pick a number of entries and the voters then pick the winners, you'd only have to be neutral until the time of the final vote).

[YellowFrog]

On 9/15/2024 at 8:27 PM, Yperio_Bricks said:

Wouldn't that contradict the attempt to keep contest related stuff seperated from the regular forums?

I would've thought that it would simply collate them all in one place for easy browsing, whilst allowing access to them from the MOCs forum.

[Mister Phes]

On 9/17/2024 at 10:41 PM, Wes said:

I was expecting a link to a single page where the entries were summarized (maybe with a "see more" link for each to the individual entry thread).

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback!

Your expectations were met as there was a topic named the Building Entries Index which existed as soon as the first entries were submitted.

And at the top and bottom of that topic were "Vote Builders" and "Vote Critisc" buttons (redacted after voting closed)

 

So it should have been possible to browse this topic, see all entries, then navigate to the respective voting topics for both Builders and Critics.

And that's all the topics that were required to Vote.

 

1) The Building Entries Index topic was pinned to the top of the LEGO Pirates forum (unpinned after voting closed).

2) Had an announcement above the forum content on all Eurobricks forums and sub forums.

3) Had an announcement in the sidebar on desktop view

4) Had prominent "View Entries" buttons in all the administrative topics and announcement posts, on both the Eurobricks frontpage and Classic Pirates blog.

With the frontpage presenting summaries like:

 

The basic voting mechanics were available at the top of both Builder and Critic voting topics, so in conjunction with the the Building Entries Index, there should not have been any need to visit other topics to understand how to vote.

 

That said:

On 9/17/2024 at 10:41 PM, Wes said:

I wanted to vote, but it simply seemed like way too much effort to visit multiple threads, post multiple times, and sort through the rules. It was not only too complicated, it was absurdly too complicated. 

Agreed there were far too many topics... and that was a formality of introducing new initiatives like the Featured Threesome and First to 25 Challenges.

Every time new initiative is introduced, it needs to be explained; but the explanations are often too large to fit in a single topic.

So to mitigate that issue, future contests will need to be significantly simplified and downsized so a minimal number of topics are required.