Generic Contest Discussion

[Lipko]

In my opinion, this over-/under-specification conversation discussiom is the result of the contest theme. While these "recreate" contests produce awesome models, they are too swampy, as the source material is too diverse, so too specific and too generic at the same time. More diverse than generic themes, which were my personal favorites as there were many entries, many voters and not more debates than other themes.

 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Lipko

[Good old Lego builder]

After all the discussion I still prefer the F1 piblic voting. It is easy to undertand, easy to do and it really differentiates. I think it is important to have an easy way of casting votes because when too complex, people just won’t vote.

 

 

[Lipko]

I think there are 3 main groups of AFOLs.

engineer: prefers functions, but there has to be a minimum level of looks
artist: prefers looks, but there has to be a minimum level of functions
collector/Technic-layman: prefers looks, doesn't care about functions.

The arttist and the collector has a bigger common area, so a public voting (when Technic-outsiders can also vote) will always be in favour of looks.

Maybe we should try a contest theme that's not about the looks, or looks is forcedly "eliminated", say car chassis contest, interesting mechanism contest, whatever.

Sorry if I only say obvious things, but I like to think in diagrams.

[Saruzeufel]

10 hours ago, gyenesvi said:

But in case of public voting, I guess people might not want to consider all entries, only the ones they like, and just say nothing about the rest.

Exactly why I would dislike voting with a "make a list and rank all entries" approach. There is bound to be a few entries you do not really like and would rather say nothing about than having to assign a "last place" to it. to me it would be already hard enough to pick a selection of winning entries and assign points (to the point where I might not actually vote because of that) but adding extra difficulty by having to rank all entries would just end in shuffling the list around for ages until I abandon it allttogether or the deadline passes.

About the jury voting: I really liked the little feedback/ explanation why they ended on the podium. Makes you appreciate them even more

[gyenesvi]

4 hours ago, 2GodBDGlory said:

Well, that just seems like it takes a decent bit of thought! I think it's easier to just put my favorite six in order and call it a day...

1 hour ago, Good old Lego builder said:

After all the discussion I still prefer the F1 piblic voting. It is easy to undertand, easy to do and it really differentiates. I think it is important to have an easy way of casting votes because when too complex, people just won’t vote.

I'd really like to understand people's thought process on this one, because I just can't wrap my head around how ranking can be easier than scoring since for me ranking necessarily involves either a (fine grained) scoring or a sorting (pairwise comparing) of the entries I like, both of which are more complex than simple scoring.

So to recap, my proposal is as follows: for each entry you like, give them 1, 2 or 3 points, depending on how much you like them. For the rest, don't say anything.

How can ranking the first 6 be simpler / easier than that? How do you guys arrive to the best 6 and their ordering without at least deciding how much you like them? How do you compare them without that? Is it easier for you to do pairwise comparisons than to tell how much you like something on a 1 to 3 scale?

Or maybe the problem people have with scoring is that they feel like they don't get to explicitly say who they think is 1st, 2nd and 3rd, etc? Is that what people prefer in the F1 scheme? I understand that it may give people some sort of satisfaction, but I believe that's irrelevant, because in the end it's the crowd that will decide anyway by averaging out the votes.

My thinking is the following: in some contests, where I'm not so much into the theme, there are a few entries I like somewhat, but nothing special, I could give them a +1, maybe a +2, but that's it, and it is hard to pick the remaining ones in the first 6 (for example the space contest was like this for me). In other contests, such as the shrinking contest or the car transporter contest, there are lots of entries I really like, I could give many +3 and +2 scores, but I would have a hard time deciding which should be the 6 that I actually want to rank and which should be 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

[gyenesvi]

1 hour ago, Lipko said:

engineer: prefers functions, but there has to be a minimum level of looks
artist: prefers looks, but there has to be a minimum level of functions
collector/Technic-layman: prefers looks, doesn't care about functions.

That's an interesting categorization, I've heard others making that differentiation too! Some friends noted, and I agree that I am an artist-engineer, putting emphasis both on functions and looks, and was surprised to hear realize that there aren't that many people like that (as your diagram also implies).

1 hour ago, Lipko said:

The arttist and the collector has a bigger common area, so a public voting (when Technic-outsiders can also vote) will always be in favour of looks.

Good observation, I agree. Not only because a large group of people don't care about functions, but also it's much easier to get an impression by the looks than to understand the functions.

1 hour ago, Lipko said:

Maybe we should try a contest theme that's not about the looks, or looks is forcedly "eliminated", say car chassis contest, interesting mechanism contest, whatever.

Sounds interesting, though one tricky point about such a car chassis contest is that somehow it should be possible to demonstrate that a proper body/interior (of a given scale) can be put on each chassis, in order to avoid entries that pack a lot of functions by taking up a larger space but are kind of infeasible to complete into an actual car without blowing up the proportions in the end, and that's hard to see without actually making the body. Maybe something like a reference body could be provided to work with, but that sounds too restrictive.

[Lipko]

36 minutes ago, gyenesvi said:

I'd really like to understand people's thought process on this one, because I just can't wrap my head around how ranking can be easier than scoring since for me ranking necessarily involves either a (fine grained) scoring or a sorting (pairwise comparing) of the entries I like, both of which are more complex than simple scoring.

So to recap, my proposal is as follows: for each entry you like, give them 1, 2 or 3 points, depending on how much you like them. For the rest, don't say anything.

How can ranking the first 6 be simpler / easier than that? How do you guys arrive to the best 6 and their ordering without at least deciding how much you like them? How do you compare them without that? Is it easier for you to do pairwise comparisons than to tell how much you like something on a 1 to 3 scale?

Or maybe the problem people have with scoring is that they feel like they don't get to explicitly say who they think is 1st, 2nd and 3rd, etc? Is that what people prefer in the F1 scheme? I understand that it may give people some sort of satisfaction, but I believe that's irrelevant, because in the end it's the crowd that will decide anyway by averaging out the votes.

My thinking is the following: in some contests, where I'm not so much into the theme, there are a few entries I like somewhat, but nothing special, I could give them a +1, maybe a +2, but that's it, and it is hard to pick the remaining ones in the first 6 (for example the space contest was like this for me). In other contests, such as the shrinking contest or the car transporter contest, there are lots of entries I really like, I could give many +3 and +2 scores, but I would have a hard time deciding which should be the 6 that I actually want to rank and which should be 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

I think too simple isn't good either. Ranking the entires forces the voter to look at the entries more closely. If you can't rank then you can look at others' votes so you can compensate a bit. I agree that the F1 method was tested and worked okay, but I'm a test engineer/prototype engineer. So for me doing+testing is much preferred to working out every details up front if the problem is complex. And everything involving intelligent agents (voters in this case) is super complex. 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Lipko

[SaperPL]

4 hours ago, MangaNOID said:

@SaperPL should be on any next Jury as he has about the best eye for detail that I've read from anyone.

I'm not sure if that's that, but rather:

4 hours ago, MangaNOID said:

General kind comments should be banned

Critique of build quality, function quality comments should be encouraged

this - I feel like there's a cultural difference between east and west, where west is tied into giving only positive comments mindset because that's supposedly polite while criticising things is supposedly impolite - but that's not productive to not give any feedback.

Even when it comes to presentation - there are people who are making pretty interesting models, but because they don't feel like it's about how good the photos are, in popular vote there will be a fraction of people who will treat whole model as less quality one, as well as better photos meaning better chance of them being featured on the front page or by some external sites like TLCB. But you need to give those people feedback that they can and should do better with the photos and give them ideas how.

4 hours ago, MangaNOID said:

A voting system where you vote for the worst instead of the best and least points win

Comments on why you voted the worst to encourage better builds

This will again come down to figuring out who's the worst and places in the middle being a bit random if there is a clear winner.

If everyone were to score every entry between 0-10 points with instruction to look at 5 criteria and subtract 1 point if criteria is not perfectly followed, and subtract 2 points if it's way more than just imperfection, we could have an overall score. For Jury it could be more granular than 2 points each. If we don't add up, but state those criteria/categories for each entry, we could potentially have different awards for best looks, best mechanics, originality and so on.

But still there is a problem of community having to rate all entries that gets bigger the more entries we have, but I'm not sure if that is a bigger problem when given instruction on how to rate each separately instead of having to figure out which one is better. There's still the problem of those who will be lazy and just won't follow that, but maybe more complex rating of every entry is something that should make those more lazy ones not take part in the voting if they are not treating it seriously/according to criteria?

2 hours ago, Lipko said:

engineer: prefers functions, but there has to be a minimum level of looks
artist: prefers looks, but there has to be a minimum level of functions
collector/Technic-layman: prefers looks, doesn't care about functions.

There should be something about building techniques (some originality of that?) and quality of the build in terms of reasonable robustness, as well as playability: do you have to crank 100 times to lift something or change the position of an excavator arm or is it just something "poseable"? I feel like those values get lost in the contests because we got used to youtubers (not only the ones doing Technic, but also building PCs, model/3d printed aircraft etc) doing projects that look awesome, but are not of the same quality as you'd expect from a product, simply because they are building those just for the sake of the video/making content. They don't need to be on par with whatever type of actual product they are being compared to, because they are just for the sake of content.

And so here's the question - should we apply different metrics of build quality between contest entries and lego sets or premium instructions? The fact that there are entries where someone makes a build for the contest first with approach to fit specifically the spirit of the contest while rebuilding it in different approach for the instruction shows that there is something wrong here.

If someone makes a compromise like that for the contest to have the best looks because he will score the best there, he should also be penalised for not being able to deliver the full build quality, the same as my model should have been penalised for not delivering full functionality. OR it should be clear that this kind of approach to build quality is not part of the contest criteria, so at the start we would know that either it's not a contest for us, or we would have better understanding on what to pick and where are the risks to not deliver on the quality criteria.

[Lipko]

16 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

There should be something about building techniques (some originality of that?) and quality of the build in terms of reasonable robustness, as well as playability: do you have to crank 100 times to lift something or change the position of an excavator arm or is it just something "poseable"? I feel like those values get lost in the contests because we got used to youtubers (not only the ones doing Technic, but also building PCs, model/3d printed aircraft etc) doing projects that look awesome, but are not of the same quality as you'd expect from a product, simply because they are building those just for the sake of the video/making content. They don't need to be on par with whatever type of actual product they are being compared to, because they are just for the sake of content.

It's on the "looks" axis in the graph, but I forgot to inculde in the text summary. I agree with you generally, though I don't think the problem is that huge. If that's what you value, just stick to it and accept that it's not the most popular thing. As I did, because that's what I value also. It was hard to stomach, but I only moan about it if I'm not building. If I'm building, I can forget that I honestly feel vastly underrated.

And for photo quality: It's a bad excuse with nowadays technology. There are some threads about how to make acceptable photos. Just some quick hints: take the photos from a proper distance, at least from 1 meter to minimize perspective distortion. Get a free image editor and apply auto-color/auto contrast. Make your photos outdoors because ambient lighting is the best. See my portfolio photos. All done without dedicated expensive equipment and experience/interest in photography.

My videos are crap, yet I won contests. One hint: never go above 3 minutes.

[SaperPL]

4 minutes ago, Lipko said:

I agree with you generally, though I don't think the problem is that huge. If that's what you value, just stick to it and accept that it's not the most popular thing. As I did, because that's what I value also. It was hard to stomach, but I only moan about it if I'm not building. If I'm building, I can forget that I honestly feel vastly underrated.

well, mainly my point is that it should be clear what is supposed to be valued in the contest and what not. Especially when you need to pick a set or some type of vehicle to recreate which means you should decide what is okay to not deliver perfectly in terms of contest vs what will be penalised if you don't deliver on that specific quality/criteria. Since we do all treat quality differently, then it should be clear in the terms what the quality is supposed to be in the specific contest. And also it's okay if each contest would have different approach to quality/value different things. But if those are only clear after the contest is voted on/judged, then it's always going to be (and not only feel!) unfair to those getting the shorter end of the stick if that wasn't clearly laid out.

8 minutes ago, Lipko said:

And for photo quality: It's a bad excuse with nowadays technology. There are some threads about how to make acceptable photos. Just some quick hints: take the photos from a proper distance, at least from 1 meter to minimize perspective distortion. Get a free image editor and apply auto-color/auto contrast. Make your photos outdoors because ambient lighting is the best. See my portfolio photos. All done without dedicated expensive equipment and experience/interest in photography.

The question is - maybe the contests should have requirements for quality photos then? That you have to reserve time for yourself to make them good enough? Or clear indication that in popular vote you may be judged worse simply because of lower quality photos.

12 minutes ago, Lipko said:

My videos are crap, yet I won contests. One hint: never go above 3 minutes.

Your videos are not that crap, they have poor resolution/bitrate and some light settings could be better, but you have the shots stabilised having camera on a stand. A lot of people make off-hand videos where focusing on a details is hard. You also have a good background for photos and video.

[Lipko]

48 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

well, mainly my point is that it should be clear what is supposed to be valued in the contest and what not. Especially when you need to pick a set or some type of vehicle to recreate which means you should decide what is okay to not deliver perfectly in terms of contest vs what will be penalised if you don't deliver on that specific quality/criteria. Since we do all treat quality differently, then it should be clear in the terms what the quality is supposed to be in the specific contest. And also it's okay if each contest would have different approach to quality/value different things. But if those are only clear after the contest is voted on/judged, then it's always going to be (and not only feel!) unfair to those getting the shorter end of the stick if that wasn't clearly laid out.

That's why I said these "recreate" type of contest, while being very popular (honestly it was not appealing me at all, so I'm in the minority in this topic too), it is swampy (I don't know the proper term). I would have not entered even if I had the time.

I will be blunt: awesome entries have chance to win. If you can't decide what's awesome, then contests are not for you. You have to "feel" it, it's simply too complex to explain what is awesome for each contest. If you don't have this "feeling", than you will have a hard time making good models, and I honestly don't know why you are doing it at all. If you are doing this because you love solving engineering problems or recreate interesting machines, than that's fine too, but don't expect to do well in a usual contest, even if you pass all the checkpoints. Because with a very detailed and clear list of "values", the other contestants will also pass all the checkpoints and you'll end up with a tons of entries that perfectly fit the descriptions. And at the end, awesomeness will be the only distinctive factor again.

And of course awesomeness can't be defined, so there will always be personal infuences, that's why I agree that a public voting is better than a jury voting. 

To sum it up: these contests are not about solving particular engineering problems, these are about seeing awesome models. Maybe solving engineering problems whould also be worth making some contests about.

I wish I could be concise, this is clearly a major issue I have.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Lipko

[Good old Lego builder]

2 hours ago, gyenesvi said:

I'd really like to understand people's thought process on this one, because I just can't wrap my head around how ranking can be easier than scoring since for me ranking necessarily involves either a (fine grained) scoring or a sorting (pairwise comparing) of the entries I like, both of which are more complex than simple scoring.

So to recap, my proposal is as follows: for each entry you like, give them 1, 2 or 3 points, depending on how much you like them. For the rest, don't say anything.

How can ranking the first 6 be simpler / easier than that? How do you guys arrive to the best 6 and their ordering without at least deciding how much you like them? How do you compare them without that? Is it easier for you to do pairwise comparisons than to tell how much you like something on a 1 to 3 scale?

Or maybe the problem people have with scoring is that they feel like they don't get to explicitly say who they think is 1st, 2nd and 3rd, etc? Is that what people prefer in the F1 scheme? I understand that it may give people some sort of satisfaction, but I believe that's irrelevant, because in the end it's the crowd that will decide anyway by averaging out the votes.

My thinking is the following: in some contests, where I'm not so much into the theme, there are a few entries I like somewhat, but nothing special, I could give them a +1, maybe a +2, but that's it, and it is hard to pick the remaining ones in the first 6 (for example the space contest was like this for me). In other contests, such as the shrinking contest or the car transporter contest, there are lots of entries I really like, I could give many +3 and +2 scores, but I would have a hard time deciding which should be the 6 that I actually want to rank and which should be 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

Most of the times a make a list of the entries I like. (top 6 or 8). Based on the WIP-threads / final result. Then I look closer to put them in de right order to allocate the points. So honestly, in most contests not all entries appeal to me. And sometimes something appeals, because somehow it strikes a chord, even though maybe it is not a technic marvel, but just appeals. (for example, in TC25 I really appreciate the little Unimog, which apperently did't score that much points)

I think most of us deep down know that a particular entry is a winner for them.  I think we are over overcomplicating things. 

 

[SaperPL]

11 minutes ago, Lipko said:

Because with a very detailed and clear list of "values", the other contestants will also pass all the checkpoints and you'll end up with a tons of entries that perfectly fit the descriptions. And at the end, awesomeness will the only distinctive factor again.

Yes, but then it would be clear cut outcome. And for me the bigger problems than who wins are the problems of either seeing that you misunderstood what was okay to do and what was not, only after results are out, and also that for some they may not understand why their entry was so low in the rating. Both of those create a feel that whatever you do in the next contest, you may fail again without understanding what you did wrong, and without control/choice about how to approach next contest, not specifically to win, but to get better at this.

If we have more of those checkpoints that are clear to everyone, it should be clear for everyone if those with awesomeness factor win in the end, and it should be also clear that going against specific checkpoints should be penalised. The problem situation comes when some compromises are acceptable while other are treated as low quality and it is not clear before the contest is judged. It gets even more tricky when originality or awesomeness is involved - going for original/awesome should not mean you can disregard the checkpoints and it will feel unfair for someone to be judged better on the awesomeness/originality scale and winning despite skipping core checkpoints.

But I agree with your sentiment - so far those contests are about seeing entries that are looking awesome and originality has a higher chance of winning than just making a solid design perfectly covering all bases including quality on par with the sets/premium instructions.

28 minutes ago, Lipko said:

 I wish I could be concise, this is clearly a major issue I have.

This is a complex topic, so I wouldn't expect arguments in few sentences to cover all the bases.

[Lipko]

34 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

But I agree with your sentiment - so far those contests are about seeing entries that are looking awesome and originality has a higher chance of winning than just making a solid design perfectly covering all bases including quality on par with the sets/premium instructions.

You can't expect premium quality in a contest, simply because of time. For me it takes at least 200 hours to design a big (say 1:8 car) premium-ish quality model (without instructions and polishing buildability). That hardly fits in a 2-3 month contest. Okay, I'm not the buidling-speed etalon, but I doubt the same quality model can be built in less than say half the time, which is still a lot for a contest.

You talk a lot about building quality, but I bet if others would look at the models you call good quality, they would find their flaws and weak points. So even that is not an exactly definable thing. For example you may call perfect suspension geometry a must for making good quality, but I cannot care less about the same thing. I'm making a Dakar car at the moment. By far the biggest challenge was (and still is) fitting the spare tires.... I ditched adjustable suspension and detialed engine bay in favour of fitting the spare tyres. Which feature is more characteristic than the other? For me the tires, someone else would have ditched spare tires in a heartbeat (like TLG did for their model). Oh, and I ditched the on-board fire distiguisher for a sequential gearbox and sturdy chassis. For someone else a fire estinguisher is simply a must, just like a working cockpit steering wheel for me.

How would you specify these for a contest? It's only feasible if there would be a "build a C2b buggy class Dakar rally car that fulfills the following 50 points" contest. A a very specific theme, and those are usually contests with 6 entries at most.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Lipko

[SaperPL]

47 minutes ago, Lipko said:

You can't expect premium quality in a contest, simply because of time. For me it takes at least 200 hours to design a big (say 1:8 car) premium-ish quality model (without instructions and polishing buildability). That hardly fits in a 2-3 month contest. Okay, I'm not the buidling-speed etalon, but I doubt the same quality model can be built in less than say half the time, which is still a lot for a contest.

It also shows that the contests should be about specific scale size of the build - then it would be either that we are all building big models and don't expect premium quality of the model, or we are all building something small and it is required to do a good job if you want to win. If we make a contest in which both approaches are valid, then often the bigger the better wins despite being less quality because of the time. But here we come back to my old argument about it becoming pay2win-ish because you need more parts to do it.

47 minutes ago, Lipko said:

 You talk a lot about building quality, but I bet if others would look at the models you call good quality, they would find their flaws and weak points. So even that is not an exactly definable thing. For example you may call perfect suspension geometry a must for making good quality, but I cannot care less about the same thing. I'm making a Dakar car at the moment. By far the biggest challenge was (and still is) fitting the spare tires.... I ditched adjustable suspension and detialed engine bay in favour of fitting the spare tyres. Which feature is more characteristic than the other? For me the tires, someone else would have ditched spare tires in a heartbeat (like TLG did for their model). Oh, and I ditched the on-board fire distiguisher for a sequential gearbox and sturdy chassis. For someone else a fire estinguisher is simply a must, just like a working cockpit steering wheel for me.

Of course you could find different weak points in some of my models, and I agree that going specifically into details of what type of implementation is not okay, what approach to looks etc, is again like going towards infinite detailed requirements. But we're not there yet. We have one word "build quality" in the criteria in most cases.

For me it's not okay to make a model that has barely any turn angle on the steering, or wheels touch the wheel arches, so the steering function isn't made properly, using techniques like putting a piece of an axle in non-stud-based distances in a way that something barely holds on an axle or using other invalid types of connections. For example in my opinion front suspension on the arocs was an invalid technique as it either used pins in a way they were detaching from their corresponding pin holes when suspension was working, or the bars (rigid hoses cut down to size) guiding the springs and keeping the suspension in place where sliding in those pins which means they were either lubricated or modified in such way to not have friction anymore. But from the early photos it seems as it was the first one.

47 minutes ago, Lipko said:

 How would you specify these for a contest? It's only feasible if there would be a "build a C2b buggy class Dakar rally car that fulfills the following 50 points". It would only work for a very specific theme, and those are usually contest with 6 entries at most.

I would define what quality is supposed to be for use in multiple contests, not the specific one. And I would definitely state that illegal techniques are low quality, low rigidity is low quality, just marked-up functionality is low quality (like steering barely working), having to crank 100 times for a function is low quality and also if you have to speed up to video 8 times to show how your crawler moves with RC, then it also is a low quality. Put the looks requirements into that and it would be enough where we'd end up with quality being defined by like 12 criteria for everyone to understand what the quality means for those contests.

I don't know how else to put it: just winging some core feature including the build rigidity and techniques used shouldn't be ignored and should be equally penalised as some looks deficiency and smaller amount of functions for builds that are perfectly fine with the rigidity and building techniques. And it should be clear for everyone at the beginning of the contest that it works like this or that we're doing something like a redbull soapbox races where it's okay for the model to fall apart easily.

EDIT: Also I think that it should be clear whether awesomeness/originality is treated as part of main checkpoints or on top just on top of that. For me it would be more fair if those would be used to decide between two entries that are equal in points scored on the checkpoints, while allowing awesomeness and originality into the base checkpoints means that you can ignore/compromise on some of the checkpoints if you have a plan to build something awesome and this is what creates ambiguity where historically in some cases entries were disqualified/removed from podium and in other cases it was allowed. So it should be clear how it works, at the beginning of the contest.

Edited September 1, 2023 by SaperPL

[Lipko]

31 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

For me it's not okay to make a model that has barely any turn angle on the steering, or wheels touch the wheel arches, so the steering function isn't made properly, using techniques like putting a piece of an axle in non-stud-based distances in a way that something barely holds on an axle or using other invalid types of connections. For example in my opinion front suspension on the arocs was an invalid technique as it either used pins in a way they were detaching from their corresponding pin holes when suspension was working, or the bars (rigid hoses cut down to size) guiding the springs and keeping the suspension in place where sliding in those pins which means they were either lubricated or modified in such way to not have friction anymore. But from the early photos it seems as it was the first one.

I can agree with those, I have very similar values. And I know very famous builders who pretty much gave up on the hobby (partly) because he felt the same way. It brings me down too.

But be honest to yourself. You already knew all this if you didn't live in a cave, so all of this comes off as whining instead of real complaint. You went for building quality instead of empty awesomeness not because you didn't know building quality is not interesting to most, but because you value it. You knew already that bigger is better, prettier is better and "licenced" is better, but you didn't go that way. Because you have strong values or because you were coward and didn't dare to go for looks, because you may have failed. And you might learn that going for looks may be equally hard, if not harder.

I'm in a very similar situation, and I have to admit, I could never reach the sculpting level of BrunoJ or TLego or Erik Trax even if I would gave up on every value I have and would make an empty statue. I rarely do "lincenced" models not because I have some ethical consideration, but simply because I'm afraid I would just fail. The current Dakar project is "licenced", but I have no idea how I will succeed, and it's more likely that it will turn out to be a generic model instead. Even though I gave up on many things, including functions and building quality. I don't care if the model is perfectly in system, not all panels are fully fixed, etc. (There are some things I will never do... but you get it)

 

EDIT: and someting I always forget: I did win (okay one second place) contests and the models were worse quality than TLG sets. I guess that makes me a "pro" in a way, I can adapt to the task and I have a good conceptual sense, I can choose models that would look good in Lego, but are also a bit uniquie. Or the opposite, not unique at all, so it stands out from all the strange unique models. Many entries fail because being too unique, awkwardly unique.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Lipko

[Mr Jos]

6 hours ago, Lipko said:

I think there are 3 main groups of AFOLs.

engineer: prefers functions, but there has to be a minimum level of looks
artist: prefers looks, but there has to be a minimum level of functions
collector/Technic-layman: prefers looks, doesn't care about functions.

The arttist and the collector has a bigger common area, so a public voting (when Technic-outsiders can also vote) will always be in favour of looks.

Maybe we should try a contest theme that's not about the looks, or looks is forcedly "eliminated", say car chassis contest, interesting mechanism contest, whatever.

Sorry if I only say obvious things, but I like to think in diagrams.

Oh my..! That graph explains the non-existing replies to all my MOC's, I need to become a collector instead of an engineer!

[SaperPL]

1 hour ago, Lipko said:

But be honest to yourself. You already knew all this if you didn't live in a cave, so all of this comes off as whining instead of real complaint. You went for building quality instead of empty awesomeness not because you didn't know building quality is not interesting to most, but because you value it. You knew already that bigger is better, prettier is better and "licenced" is better, but you didn't go that way.

That would be true for the contests with public vote, in which I can accept that people do chose what they like, and that's why I keep talking about making contests with a fixed/defined size.

But when I argued about the bigger models having more features being pay2win-like, there was response that it's not true for the jury vote and that there are multiple contests for where it wasn't true, and also for example TC20 in which I took part had entries removed from podium for not perfectly following some criteria despite being awesome and most voted.

So my whining is about ambiguity of one contest being different to another when it comes to approach to handling same or similar criteria, even within one contest similar thing can be treated as disqualifying for one entry and acceptable for another.

And for this specific contest, I actually did go through like all of Technic sets before I decided to go with that truck, while for example not going for extreme adventure because I assumed not being able to have the same color panels would be disqualifying similarly to how Samolot's tow truck was treated because he used panels, where in that contest it was really pedantic when it comes to going "as close as original" despite the rule of a thumb being stated in the comments that it just needs to be instantly recognisable, while in this contest it seemingly wasn't so pedantic since you could've had the different color scheme. And I think it's kind of understandable among community here that colors matter because of specific parts ability in specific colors.

 

And again - this argument that I should already know that it works like this is not valid for me because for me it's not that I'm not winning, but I'd like more people to take part in the contests because in contests with a lot of entries, there often are multiple interesting ideas or building techniques that you can later get inspired from. But if the contests is strictly made around catering to the people that are already understanding how they work, it gets harder for the outsiders to get in and feel welcomed.

[Seasider]

@SaperPL you keep on going on about TC20 and entries being removed from the podium. Looking back at the competition if you read it the public voted on a top 10 and from that a jury decided on the podium. At no point did it say that the Jury would effectively do nothing and leave the public vote top 3 as is. It said the jury would review the 10 chosen entries from the public and then rank them separately. So technically there was no podium for entries to be dismissed from. It just ended up that from the top 10 the jury for that completion chose a different top 3 to the public. I was honoured to be placed 2nd which truly amazed me.

But what I find more interesting about your moans and whines about TC20 and voting in general, because being blunt and straight to the point this is how the many pages of your long messages are now coming across (and I assume many others are skim reading like me) … is how you’re moaning about the second ranked model from the public being removed from the podium but you’re obviously pleased that the model the public put in the top spot you haven’t made a comment about. Yes it should never have won TC20 as it didn’t hit many of the requirements but it was a very impressive model.

[SaperPL]

12 minutes ago, Seasider said:

@SaperPL you keep on going on about TC20 and entries being removed from the podium. Looking back at the competition if you read it the public voted on a top 10 and from that a jury decided on the podium. At no point did it say that the Jury would effectively do nothing and leave the public vote top 3 as is. It said the jury would review the 10 chosen entries from the public and then rank them separately. So technically there was no podium for entries to be dismissed from. It just ended up that from the top 10 the jury for that completion chose a different top 3 to the public. I was honoured to be placed 2nd which truly amazed me.

Do I have to remind you that the contest was supposed to be a public vote in the first place and the jury vote was added in the meantime? Yes, before the public vote. But my point is again and again that it's about the terms not being clear to a point where multiple people made the same "mistake" and that was the reason stated by the jury for not picking that specific model that was one of two with most points in popular vote. Making it a jury vote that could ignore what people voted on by picking favourites out of selected group halfway through the contest was not cool despite the rules stating that rules can change - still as few times other stated, there's a different approach when you're making a model for jury vote vs public vote.

Yes, the second one, the moon buggy was impressive, but it was actually clear that it wasn't in the spirit of the contest. And back then I discussed that there should be a jury vetting to disqualify such entries that go completely in a different direction, but before voting. The clear move would be for jury to come in and disqualify those who clearly went against, and for example there was a one 8880 which was really cool as well, but it wasn't so clear that it was that because of the panels while original set was just the frame/outline style. If those were to be disqualified before the voting, the voting outcome might be different as well, not to mention that it would be nice if someone from moderation would come to their topics and tell them that it's not in the spirit of the competition and that they would be disqualified.

19 minutes ago, Seasider said:

But what I find more interesting about your moans and whines about TC20 and voting in general, because being blunt and straight to the point this is how the many pages of your long messages are now coming across (and I assume many others are skim reading like me) … is how you’re moaning about the second ranked model from the public being removed from the podium but you’re obviously pleased that the model the public put in the top spot you haven’t made a comment about. Yes it should never have won TC20 as it didn’t hit many of the requirements but it was a very impressive model.

You know those are two different situations/issues despite both scoring the same first place in popular vote. And you're trying to turn it into something as I didn't like jury removing invalid entries at all. If it was true, then I wouldn't suggest vetting the entries before the voting back then, and I would straight go to being fully against jury deciding anything, which I did not. Should I explain it with an axis analogy again? Disqualifying clearly out of the scope of the contest entry was a valid move, disqualifying those that were made according to the rule of a thumb stated in the comments that it must be instantly recognisable, was not.

Also don't read my comments if you don't want to. Noone is forcing you. But try to be civilised and don't talk about me moaning and other lowkey attempts to insult me.

[aminnich]

Personally I am tired of reading through this crap…  Let the contest moderators design how to vote for a winner and be happy with it. After every contest there seems to be something to complain about… can we just stop complaining and just build LEGO? 

Thank you 

[2GodBDGlory]

13 hours ago, gyenesvi said:

I'd really like to understand people's thought process on this one, because I just can't wrap my head around how ranking can be easier than scoring since for me ranking necessarily involves either a (fine grained) scoring or a sorting (pairwise comparing) of the entries I like, both of which are more complex than simple scoring.

So to recap, my proposal is as follows: for each entry you like, give them 1, 2 or 3 points, depending on how much you like them. For the rest, don't say anything.

How can ranking the first 6 be simpler / easier than that? How do you guys arrive to the best 6 and their ordering without at least deciding how much you like them? How do you compare them without that? Is it easier for you to do pairwise comparisons than to tell how much you like something on a 1 to 3 scale?

Or maybe the problem people have with scoring is that they feel like they don't get to explicitly say who they think is 1st, 2nd and 3rd, etc? Is that what people prefer in the F1 scheme? I understand that it may give people some sort of satisfaction, but I believe that's irrelevant, because in the end it's the crowd that will decide anyway by averaging out the votes.

My thinking is the following: in some contests, where I'm not so much into the theme, there are a few entries I like somewhat, but nothing special, I could give them a +1, maybe a +2, but that's it, and it is hard to pick the remaining ones in the first 6 (for example the space contest was like this for me). In other contests, such as the shrinking contest or the car transporter contest, there are lots of entries I really like, I could give many +3 and +2 scores, but I would have a hard time deciding which should be the 6 that I actually want to rank and which should be 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

Wow, lots of discussion! This has broken my resolve to check everything on Eurobricks...

Anyways, I'll at least respond to this response to me!

I'd say that ranking a top six is easier than scoring each model precisely because it's only six models. Effectively, I'll look through all the entries, choose out a handful that I think might be contenders (maybe ten or so), and then work that down to my final ranking of six. Based on that, I only have to do any meaningful consideration on ~ten of them, and the rest can be ignored. With scoring, I have to look critically at every single model, even if there's many of them that I immediately know aren't contenders, at least in my opinion.

[Jim]

16 hours ago, aminnich said:

Personally I am tired of reading through this crap…  Let the contest moderators design how to vote for a winner and be happy with it. After every contest there seems to be something to complain about… can we just stop complaining and just build LEGO? 

Thank you 

[gyenesvi]

17 hours ago, aminnich said:

Personally I am tired of reading through this crap...

Skip it if you don't want to read it. You have a choice. And let others discuss on a discussion forum ;)

23 hours ago, Good old Lego builder said:

Most of the times a make a list of the entries I like. (top 6 or 8). Based on the WIP-threads / final result. Then I look closer to put them in de right order to allocate the points. So honestly, in most contests not all entries appeal to me.

11 hours ago, 2GodBDGlory said:

Based on that, I only have to do any meaningful consideration on ~ten of them, and the rest can be ignored. With scoring, I have to look critically at every single model, even if there's many of them that I immediately know aren't contenders, at least in my opinion.

I knew there would be a misunderstanding somewhere :) In my system, you'd only have to score the entries you like, 8-10 in this case and ignore the rest. The ones that don't excite you automatically get a score of 0, without mentioning. In case of the top 6 ranking, while you select the 6 out of the 8-10 ones you like, you are effectively scoring or comparing those ones in some way. That's why scoring the ones you like seems easier than ranking the final 6, because to arrive at the final 6, you probably already had to consider all the ones you like. And my system simplifies the opposite case as well: if you only have 3 contenders to start with, you only have to score those 3, and don't need to think hard to pick another 3 uninteresting models to get a total of 6. Does that sound simpler?

 

[letsbuild]

On 8/30/2023 at 1:17 PM, Ngoc Nguyen said:

Random contest idea: Pneumatic-ify a set

Man, that would have been a good idea if I continued the AMS contests