My Proposal to Reform Lego Cuusoo

[LiamM32]

The concept of Lego Cuusoo is very great for the Lego fan community. I am sure that when it was first revealed, it would have appeared almost a dream for Lego builders to have an opportunity to have their brick-built pieces of art and other product ideas published as official Lego sets. However, there have been problems with the website recieving worthy criticism from Lego fans, which I think should be solved. Most of the projects that have achieved so far propose licensed products based on films, TV series, and video games. It is very difficult for an original project to achieve on Lego Cuusoo, even if it has a high chance of success on the store shelves. I am not suggesting that licensed projects should be forbidden, or to limit access to dedicated fans of Lego, as these offer a good opportunity for new Lego fans to enter or re-enter. The ideas that I propose are to make it easier for projects to achieve without a license, and to give a better chance to the projects liked by the people that see them. I will avoid placing my own taste preferences in the rules that I propose, but design them to react to the users of Lego Cuusoo or The Lego Group themselves. Some creators of good-quality projects express hopelessness, but I am optimistic for major changes in these tendencies if the website ever gets a reformation in it's structure. I have pondered about some ideas for some time, and I have thought of some ways of reforming the site to better support the praised projects that would succeed in sales.

This essay has been edited multiple times since first written, and I may further edit it based on responses to the proposals. I have tried to list the proposed features from best to worst.

Rating System:

This is a rating system for Cuusoo projects similar to the ratings for Youtube videos. There would be a set of buttons on the page of each project with options to give the project a negative, positive, or neutral rating. There would be a percentage bar set for each project of the average rating. These ratings would have a very large effect on the amount of advertising for the project on the website. Refer to the Improved Advertising System section for more information on how it would affect the advertising.

There would be some small prerequisites to use the ratings buttons; They must have logged-in to Lego Cuusoo on at least 7 separate days, they must have either had a Lego.com account for at least 2 months or made a purchase with VIP, and they must have supported at-least one project and posted a comment on at-least 2 projects. The reason for this restriction is so that when an external fan base rushes in to support a licensed project, than the ratings don't get skewed for the frequent users of Lego Cuusoo who like to browse projects directly on the site. When a user starts to meet the requirements, it would give them a short message explaining some of this information, and remind them that clicking "like" counts as support. Unlike support which is meant for people who are likely to buy the product themselves, it is recomended that the rating system be used based on how well the viewer thinks that it would work as a product, even if it's themed outside their main interests.

Some have suggested that the rating system could be misused for greifing or weakening competition if there is no mechanism to resist this. I personally don't imagine this happining very badly, but I have thought of a way to reduce it; After rating a project, the user would have to wait 5 minutes to rate a different project with the same rating or 3 minutes for a different rating. It should also require someone to stay on the page for more than 30 seconds before rating (unless if the project is bookmarked). It would then be difficult for people to go on a grief-rampage. It would take a bit of time to read a project anyways.

This would not replace the support system to decide which projects become products. It would just alter the amount of advertising on the website, as opposed to advertising the projects that already got many supporters. It would have little or no direct affect on the decision of what becomes a product and what doesn't, but just an indirect affect from due to advertising. It wouldn't flaw the goal of the website nearly as much as the current way of advertising.

Improved Advertising System:

Like there is currently on Lego Cuusoo, there would be multiple ways a project could get advertised for different on-site advertisements. The way it currently is on the website, it mostly advertises the projects that got the most total support. This is a flawed way to select them, because it means that it's giving more attention to to the projects that already got much attention.

The new most common type of project advertisement would be 'random-by-rating'; The advertisements would display randomly selected projects with their chance of being selected being based on their rating percentage. Every project would get some advertising (unless if their rating is 0%), but a project with a rating of 80% would be appear 4 times as often as a project with a 20% rating. The above rules apply to the projects that have not yet rated been rated by the user that sees the advertisement. After a user rates a project, then the advertising that appears on their account for that particular project would be based on their own rating, instead of the average rating. This is how the chance of adverting would be determined specifically to an individual user (based on their own ratings);

No rating + no support = community average rating, Negative rating = 0% relative chance (never appears), Neutral rating = 50% relative chance, Positive rating + no support = 100% relative chance, Support + Positive rating = community average rating, until they are allowed to repeat support in which it would reset to 100%

If my proposed "VIP award" system was implemented, then there could also be advertisements for those on the Discover page, which would display the text from the award. The most-supported projects would only be seen on a list on a dedicated page, to reduce unwanted tendencies.

This would more fairly distribute the amount of attention to each project. The New Projects advertisements (which already exist on the Discover page) would also be on the site, giving all projects a good start. There could also be an "Endangered Projects" section for projects at risk of archive (see section "Unsuccessful Project Deletion/Archive").

Variation in Supporters Required and Payment Given:

Unlike currently, not all projects would require the same amount of supporters to become a product. Some types of projects would also pay differently than others to the creator. The final number of supporters required would be judged by Lego in a shorter review when it reaches the minimum (I'll say 4000), based on factors such as initial cost to produce, business case, etc. The payment would vary slightly based on how much of the project is really an original creation. It is really up to the Lego Group to decide on these rules, but I will just write some estimations/examples in this section of what would happen to different types of projects here.

Original projects would probably have lower support requirements than a licensed project, because a licensed project has more initial costs and tends to get more "support"s then purchases. Licensed projects and projects about common generic ideas (like unicolour parts-packs) would have lower pay then original ideas, because the submitter didn't create as much of their own ideas, but just presented how to implement it. A series of products would take more support (especially if they propose 2 products to be released at once), because they would take more support so to reduce advantage over splitting them into different projects. If there is a presented model that looks so complete on their own, that the Lego Group barely needs to modify it, then it would pay more. If the Lego staff sees a project going "I really hope that this project gets more support. It would work great when it hits the shelves,", then it would take less support. For new part projects, it would probably be lower if they are deemed "useful" due to their tendency to attract less attention, but I can not estimate exactly. The most obviously implausible projects (like Dark Bucket) would get stopped immediately at the minimum. Of course these are just my estimations of what The Lego Group would want to do. I do not mean to place my own values on this. It would really be up to the Lego Group to decide what happens. But if it costs TLG more money to make, then it should cost the community more support on Cuusoo.

Improved Tag System

I have read people suggest that there should be a better way of finding projects that suit a persons interests than searching for tags. I have not come up with a way to replace tags, but I have thought of ways to improve and expand them.

When a user is editing a project that they submitted, it would recomend tags to add to the project (which they do on YouTube, but not in this advanced system). Many of the recomended tags would be "special tags", which should also have a tutorial on the Lego Cuusoo blog. Special Tags would influence the advertisements and search results in more ways than just causing the project to show up when the user types the words. There could be recommended age special tags, which makes the project more likely to be advertised to people around that age (or with children of that age). There could be a "New Elements" special tag, which means that the project focuses on new part molds (mainly for categorization purposes), and a "Generic" special tag for projects based on a common idea (like unicolour parts-packs) rather than an original creation. The major category-based special tags should have their own filters on the search settings. It could also recommend (non-special) tags of official Lego themes (or common MOC themes, such as Steampunk). For licensed projects, it should also require a tag of the official brand name (in correct spelling). Users should also be able to add a tag to someone elses project. There could often be cases when a different user recognizes a potential audience or appeal to a project that the submitter didn't see.

Users should also be able to edit their "Favourite Tags", a way to list their personal interests to affect advertising on their own account. It should recomend tags based on the projects that they supported. This is similar to something done on Facebook, where they select advertisements to show to a user based on the interests that they listed or "Like"d.

Linking with Lego ID and VIP program:

Lego Cuusoo users would have the option (and only as an option) of linking the Lego Cuusoo account to an existing Lego ID or VIP card, which could be done either at registration or in the settings for existing accounts. Of course, this would only be an option, not a prerequisite. There would be a few website features that are only accessible to users that have linked these accounts. Any user would still be allowed to support any project after signing-up.

There should be a small fee of VIP points required to submit a new project. This would make it harder for people to submit an excessive quantity of projects with little thought, and make it more difficult for underage people to submit projects.

Repeating Supporting:

An idea that I have to give more power to the more dedicated supporters is to allow people to repeat supporting projects after a given amount of time, implying dedication to the project. After the first time supporting a project, it would give the user 6 months before they are allowed to support it for the second time. Every additional waiting time to support a project would be 6 months longer than the previous time, so it would be a year for the third time and so on. It would only count the months when the user either logs into Cuusoo, Lego.com, or makes a purchase with VIP. They cannot repeat supporting if the last project that they supported was the same one.

Every time a user repeats supporting, the support form could be slightly different. It may ask about the projects secondary set, ask how the idea should be modified, or repeat asking why they support to see if their opinion has changed. There would be no email notifications, but users can see previously supported project from a list when logged into the site. If 6 months (maybe change it to 3 months to 1 year) goes by without the user visiting the project page, than they would automatically lose 1 support. They should be notified a few weeks before on the website.

A user may willingly remove their support from projects if they please.

A flaw that I have clearly noticed myself in this section is the supporters that come less than 6 months before achievement, especially for the projects that grow quickly. You are encouraged to write an alternative solution to automatically remove abandoned supporters, or I could simply remove that part.

Posting Projects and Images

For someone to post their own project, they would have to pay a small fee of VIP points. This would limit how many projects a single person can post (quality over quantity), and reduce the chance of underage users submitting projects.

Posting images would not be as limited as it currently is. They could allow 2 to 4 images when the project is first submitted. As the supporter count increases, it would allow them to post more images. Support count shows interest in the project, making it worthy of showing more detail. There would only be a small fraction of projects that get many supporters, so it wouldn't cost to much to store the images in the database.

They should also be able to post GIF images to show things such as Technic Functions. Also allow 1 YouTube video per project page.

Support Form and Polls:

The support form would be slightly customizable to make them more appropriate for the particular project. For the "How much would you pay" part, the creator could label what exact product it is, if the project covers a series of products. There could be an alternative question for projects based on a range of new parts.

Creators could also make optional polls that supporters could answer such as "Which model should be released first?" or "What colour should this car come in?". There would be 2 check boxes; "Make support visible to project creator" (on by default) and "Make support visible to public" (off by default).

The support form should be slightly different for the repeated supports (and possibly slightly smaller). It could ask how much they would pay for the second product, and updated questions (from either the creator or TLG). I have not figured out this part entirely yet, so you can give suggestions to help out.

Lego Digital Designer Files:

Projects that propose new element molds should be able to have file downloads of LDD add-ons, so that users can test how they can build with them. There must be an update to LDD to add features to support this; Allow 3D model imports of custom elements, have a built-in feature to search Lego Cuusoo for unofficial elements, and rate or support them within the program. This would really benefit projects about new elements; They don't attract much attention with the current structure, because they are more practical than fun.

VIP Awards:

Here is the idea I have come up with to give extra power to VIP members (which proves that they are actual customers), while not entirely excluding the people without a VIP account: Members of Lego Cuusoo who link their VIP accounts could spend points on giving "awards" to projects that they support, which increases the adverting of a project on the dedicated "VIP awarded" advertisement spaces on the website, and also adds one "support" without affecting the waiting time for repeated support on that project. There would also be a tab on project pages to view all awards. They would give the award a title, and type a description which would be publicly visible. Here are the VIP awards that there would be;

• Copper Medal: The more unique supporters there are for the project, the more points it would cost to award it a copper medal. This would allow Lego fans to speak-out about good projects that have not yet gotten much attention. The chance of this award showing-up on the advertising spaces is divided by how many months-old the award is.
  
• Silver Medal: A VIP member could spend more points to upgrade a copper medal to silver. The price of this award would be cheaper if the project has better ratings. The chance of showing-up on the advertisements is divided by how many multiples of 2 months ago the award was given.
  
• Gold Medal: An upgrade from silver. The price would be determined by how long it has been since the user first seen the project. The chance of showing-up would be divided by how many multiples of 3 months ago the award was given.
  
• Staff Picks: Projects recommended by Lego staff members, which they would like as Lego products. They already have something under this title on the Facebook page. This is just a way to label it on the page, and give it more effect within the website.
  

If someone adds an award to a project after supporting it multiple times, then it would adjust the number of times that they have supported it, and how much wait time they have left as if they gave the award when they first supported it. The "VIP-Awarded" advertisement spaces would appear with a randomely-selected VIP award with title and description, appearing below the project title and image.

This would give a small extra boost to the projects that are favourites of dedicated Lego fans. I do not think that it would significantly harm the "cult-follower" projects, not even over-power them much. In fact, it could even help them if the projects do appeal to Lego fans. VIP points suit this purpose; they better ensure that the user is willing to buy the product by showing that they have spent money but not having to spend money specifically on the project.

Unsuccessful Project Deletion/Archive:

I have heard a few people suggest a feature that automatically deletes projects that rarely get a new supporter. Here is my idea of how this should work; Once every season (near the quarterly-review deadline), each project would be automatically counted of how much the support count has increased in the past 3 months. If the number of years that the project would take to reach achievement at that rate of increase is more than the rating percentage (as a whole number) divided by 5, then the project would be labeled as "endangered" for the following month. If the support does not improve, than the project would get archived.

This section may be too complex. I might edit it later to simplify the rules to propose.

Easier Collaboration:

It would be good if it was easier for users to collaborate on projects. This is especially true for common ideas for Lego products that multiple users propose. I have not figured out how this would work, so I encourage you to help me fill this in.

Parent-Child Accounts:

They would start to allow accounts shared between a child and their parent, which would be good because children are the demographic the Lego group gets the most money from (or parents that buy them for children).

Of course, this would only be for children to support existing projects, not submit their own (for legal reasons). Those two rules already apply to users ages 13 to 17. They would need parental permission to submit each project support form (which could be by email, or by typing in a parent's password). They should also disable comments for these accounts, as I believe that there are legal restrictions for online communications for people under 13.

User Communication:

I once read that TLG wanted the project comments to only be used to say things about the project, but that the rule is frequently broken because it is the only way to communicate. I will take some inspiration from YouTube to propose more ways to communicate;

On YouTube users can post comments on the page of a video, post a comment on the users channel, or send a private message. It would be nice to have messaging on the users profile page, similar to the channel comments on YouTube. While the comments on projects would be about the project itself, the comments on user profiles would be more free.

Delayed Projects:

If there are problems faced with immediately putting a Cuusoo product into production (often license-related) that will not apply in the future, then the project page would be put to "hibernation" until the reason no-longer applies. When it is reactivated, some or all of the supports would be removed. My idea would be to remove one "support" from each supporter (with the repeated supporting system that I proposed). All supporters would be given a notification on the Lego Cuusoo website, to remind them to resupport.[/size]

This appears to be the most criticised section of the essay. I have changed it to avoid problems. Now it only covers projects that have things such as licenses getting in the way, not people who are too young to get paid (who would have to wait until 18 years to post their project). I will delete this section if it continues to be criticised.

So that was my long essay filled with ideas of how I think that Lego Cuusoo should change to let the better projects succeed. It was many weeks ago when I started this. I wanted to get it complete before posting it, but I decided post it not-entirely finished so that I could get feedback from others on it. I realize that there are still some missing details of how some features would work, but you could help me to fill them in. I encourage you to constructively criticise my essay, and suggest your own ideas. But please stay strictly on-topic. There are already 2 chatterish topics in this forum about Lego Cuusoo. In this topic, I want you to just specifically address problems and explain how you think that they should be solved.

I will probably send this to The Lego Group later on. I posted it here to see if other Lego fans agree to the ideas, and let them modify and add proposals. The letter should be more affective if it is known that it was written with the help of multiple people, rather than being entirely by a single person.[/size]

Edited September 20, 2013 by LiamM32

[Faefrost]

There are some good ideas in there, and also some that are sorta kinda very very bad. I mean really bad.

The top of the list for bad is the Registration mechanism. Let's be honest. This is a mechanism to filter out "niche" supporters. Those non Lego types who come charging in to flood their favorite niche project like (/shudder) Purdue Pete. At a glance this seems like a good idea. It's obvious the Lego community hates this sort of thing. But the truth is these, more than anything else, are the people that CuuSoo really is here for. CuuSoo is at its heart an AFOL creation tool. It sparks fan interest. Both actual Lego fans and fans of things other than Lego, and connects the two things. As I said in the main CuuSoo thread. Virtually every AFOL was once a single subject niche fan. Something brought them back to Lego. Something caught their eye and reminded them of the fun. CuuSoo is an excellent mechanism for doing this. The last thing it needs is to put up artificial barriers to entry. You don't want a VIP card to be a prerequisite for CuuSoo. You want CuuSoo to be a lure and a reason for someone to find themselves suddenly having a VIP card. For the benefit of our hobby and our community long term, it means that we have to tolerate the various niche groups on CuuSoo. In the end it works out as a worthwhile sacrifice. (Note how fast the BttF set sold out at the factory yesterday. This is NOT a bad thing. Long term this is a very very good thing.)

You make one clear mistake, which is attempting to associate CuuSoo voters with clear Lego customers. It isn't really that simple, and trust me TLG bases none of their evaluations on any such assumptions. (See the other thread for some of my rambling posts on "customer conversions"). Voters to purchasers do not have a 1 to 1 relationship nor have they ever been expected to. In fact in Lego's view, those single project voters, the niche supporters that everyone complains about? They are a better thing than you or I or any of the regular Lego fans. We are pretty much a captive customer base. As you say anyone with a VIP card they know they can make a sale to. And guess what? They already know exactly how many of us there are, what our Lego purchasing habits are, and they can make a fairly educated guess as to who or how many of us will buy a given product. What is valuable to them is new interest. New eyeballs. New people looking at a Lego set or Lego project for the first time.

Delayed Projects and Payments would most likely open CuuSoo and TLG to an unmanageable degree of legal exposure. How long can they sit on something? What claim does any designer than have on future Lego projects? It's likely that the straight short term up/down assessment is the only way that the corporate lawyers will even begin to tolerate CuuSoo. There really is no other way. About the best we can hope for would be some mechanism for CuuSoo to pass a project off to an internal group in some manner. But I am sure that even that has quite a few pitfalls.

There are some good ideas in there. I personally would love some sort of thumbs up thumbs down rating system to help find good broadly liked projects. So long as the mechanism cannot be exploited or used for griefing. Better categorization would be good, although I don't think splitting the categories into separate review subjects or using varying standards for them would work. Some mechanism to cut down on children and what I lovingly refer to as "Little Billy's first LDD" would be great, but I don't see a non cumbersome or draconian way to do it. A simple up/down vote mechanism would probably do more good for this than anything else. Other than that CuuSoo is well policed for language and content so there really is no reason to tie or separate Adult or Child participants.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Faefrost

[Bamos]

The age requirement is needed for legal reasons. You are contracting your services to Lego and need to be sufficient age to sign a contract which in most cases is 18.

As for voting systems they can be abused by having competing projects voted down to eliminate competition.

Bill

Edited August 3, 2013 by Bamos

[BrickG]

I can't support this and frankly find it a bit insulting. I'm too lazy to go into detailed reasoning and have an argument atm.

First off I see no problem with the "cult-followers of outside sources such as films, TV series, and video games".

Then you seem to suggest they're squashing the "true Lego fans".

I just get a sense of elitism, entitlement and other negativity.

I consider myself a pretty good Lego fan. I wouldn't say "true" because that implies that my opinions are the only valid way and I don't want to be a jerk like that. Suggesting that those of us who disagree with you aren't true Lego fans is.... jerky. Even for the people who are voting that aren't super into Lego (maybe voting out of nostalgia for their childhood or they just think it's neat) I think this whole post screams "snob"...

I'll be honest. I stopped reading after the first few paragraphs that I found absolutely absurd. I think discounting the masses even if they're not all hardcore Lego fans would be the stupidest Business decision Lego could make. I find your request (for what little I read) to be unreasonable and unsympathetic to casual fans who you seem to think for some reason deserve less influence. They're trying to SELL to the masses. Cuusoo is a great marketing tool and do you think it would be wise to really limit that marketing by limiting the votes? Or by rewarding people unevenly? Or by releasing sets that only the much smaller market of these "true Lego fans" would be interested in (btw still insulted)? Should they sacrifice a lot of profits to appease these "true Lego fans" you speak of and screw everyone else (you know, since they're not TRUE fans...)?

Everything is wrong with your post. Well, of what I read of it.

[Faefrost]

The age requirement is needed for legal reasons. You are contracting your services to Lego and need to be sufficient age to sign a contract which in most cases is 18.

As for voting systems they can be abused by having competing projects voted down to eliminate competition.

Bill

Good point on the age issue. I had forgotten that, so yes you do need to require an adult somewhere. As far as exploiting up/down votes, there are mechanisms that can dilute of soften that, but yeah it has its nasty evil Internet downside.

[LiamM32]

There are some good ideas in there, and also some that are sorta kinda very very bad. I mean really bad.

The top of the list for bad is the Registration mechanism. This is a mechanism to filter out "niche" supporters. It's obvious the Lego community hates this sort of thing. But the truth is these, more than anything else, are the people that CuuSoo really is here for. Virtually every AFOL was once a single subject niche fan. Something brought them back to Lego. CuuSoo is an excellent mechanism for doing this. You don't want a VIP card to be a prerequisite for CuuSoo. You want CuuSoo to be a lure and a reason for someone to find themselves suddenly having a VIP card. For the benefit of our hobby and our community long term, it means that we have to tolerate the various niche groups on CuuSoo.

You make one clear mistake, which is attempting to associate CuuSoo voters with clear Lego customers.

Some mechanism to cut down on children and what I lovingly refer to as "Little Billy's first LDD" would be great, but I don't see a non cumbersome or draconian way to do it.

Thank you for the feedback. I immediately edited the first 2 sections after reading your post. I am going to edit it further, I just didn't have the time for all of it. It is good that I posted it now and asked for help rather than stressing on having it complete before posting. I appreciate your honesty, admitting both good and bad points.

I could try to make it less exclusive to the less dedicated users. It is a good point that you stated that it will flow in new/returning Lego fans. I should erase most/all of the mechanisms to filter out other fan bases. Just the fact that it is a website about Lego and a concept for a Lego set would naturally make it tendent for the people that sign-up to have some interest in Lego. I wanted to put a bit of resistance on the licensed projects and make it easier for the originals. But because I suggested that the licensed projects would take more supporters, that would do it minimally without kicking-out the individual members of other fanbases and therefore preventing new fans. Like I explicitly stated, the VIP card is just an option and not a prerequisite for joining. It would mainly give access to a feature to give projects better promotion. I am pleased to hear that you support the idea of the rating system. The reason that I gave minimal restrictions to that feature is so that even if thousands of fans from some movie or game rush in to support the project, then the ratings of those few projects don't rush-up with it.

I did not believe that there is a 1 to 1 ratio between Cuusoo supporters and customers, or that any feature will successfully achieve that (accept for pre-orders, but I won't recommend that). If it was 1:1, than my idea of repeating supporting would not work.

Now I am confused about that last sentance of yours that I requoted. Just what does that mean? Another question too; Do you also think that my proposed rules are overall too complex?

I can't support this and frankly find it a bit insulting. I'm too lazy to go into detailed reasoning and have an argument atm.

I just get a sense of elitism, entitlement and other negativity.

I consider myself a pretty good Lego fan. I wouldn't say "true" because that implies that my opinions are the only valid way and I don't want to be a jerk like that. Suggesting that those of us who disagree with you aren't true Lego fans is.... jerky. Even for the people who are voting that aren't super into Lego (maybe voting out of nostalgia for their childhood or they just think it's neat) I think this whole post screams "snob"...

Everything is wrong with your post. Well, of what I read of it.

Like I said in my reply to FaeFrost, I am going to edit it to make it easier on the lesser fans, or former fans, etc, making it more open to new members (as it already is). I think that you're right; I probably did go to far with resisting other fanbases. I think that what I will try to make it now is so that anyone who would have the interest to bother signing up and supporting projects can do so (accept for children if there is no way around the legal barrier), give a minor extra boost to the more dedicated (without completely excluding the casual ones), and alter the tendencies (through means that don't involve exclusion of people) to make the higher quality projects have a higher chance of success (which may be licensed or original). I am sorry if I got a bit insulting.

It is supposed to be updated by now. But I got directed to a different page while typing, so I am to sick of that to restart now, so I will do it tommorrow. Damn, this problem really must be solved.

Edited August 3, 2013 by LiamM32

[Thego]

Surely the fact that "true LEGO fans" aren't taking these projects to 10,000, it means they aren't commercially viable? By narrowing down the audience, you are making them even more niche. LEGO is a business, and being able to get "cult-followers" from outside interested and buying LEGO is one of TLG's masterstrokes here. They are widening their audience. You want to narrow it.

Remind me never to invest in your business. ;)

[GregoryBrick]

. . . I have thought of some ways of reforming the site to better support the better, fan-appealing projects.

. . . So that was my long essay filled with ideas of how I think that Lego Cuusoo should change to let the better projects succeed.

Hi. It seems you're operating on the assumption that the better projects don't succeed on CUUSOO - how did you figure this out? Is there some independent metric of 'better' which we can use to evaluate how well or how poorly CUUSOO identifies the better projects? If not, then it just means the projects you like don't get the recognition you would like them to have.

I don't see why self-identified LEGO fans warrant a greater voice than others, for the purposes of CUUSOO. If there are people interested in a set, there are people interested in it, period.

Also, CUUSOO isn't zero-sum. If you reduce the ability of particular fanbases to participate, then CUUSOO won't be as popular, and that's all. Marginal non-licensed sets will still sit in obscurity. It's not like Purdue Pete supporters would allocate their approval to another proposal, because firstly, they can already do this if they want, and secondly, if Purdue Pete wasn't an option, they just wouldn't visit CUUSOO to begin with.

I don't see any benefit to increasing the participation costs (e.g. questions about identifying elements, having to log in multiple times, having different evaluation options for different users, having to understand how 'repeat' support works). I think this would drive traffic away from CUUSOO, or would cater to highly dedicated users which wouldn't reflect what sets meet the business case.

The negative/positive/neutral rating system is particularly problematic - why would TLG care about people who don't like or are disinterested in a product, if there are enough people interested to make it profitable?

Also a problem is setting different criteria for how many supporters a project requires for review. How do you know that they didn't set the bar low, with 10k supporters the minimum for any project to receive initial consideration?

[glenbricker]

You have some good ideas. I agree with them to the point that I have sumbitted a few of my own, very similar ones directly to Cuusoo. Make sure to submit your ideas to the knowledge base so that they see them as they are technically your primary audience.

If you want to make a stronger case though you should delete your arguement for why the changes are "needed". That sounds like illogical advice but the argument is just your opinion and it distracts from the discussion of your changes. As you can see, comments are about your initial argument instead of about your content. Fact is, Cuusoo is not broken. It is designed to allow people to submit ideas for Lego sets and for some of those ideas to inspire actual Lego sets. Figure out what your actual goal is and write it goal positive rather than opposition negative. It sounds like your goal is to add structure and make certain projects more visible. Few are going to argue with you against adding structure. Of course granting more visibility to any one project, or type of project, is inherently a statement that it is more worthy which again, is your opinion so be careful there.

As for projects being shelved for later, well, yes, there are huge problems with at and there is an alternative. Resubmitting the idea. If the community really likes it, they can keep sending it to 10,000. This is really just something that Lego users are going to have to live with if they want a system like Cuusoo to exist. Lego plays with its cards lose to the chest. So they can't say "you can't submit a project about "X" because we are working on it." So some projects are going to get to 10,000 and fail. Here is the big issue. Why can't you shelf a project for later? Well, have you ever seen anyone not buy a product "today" because they "know" a "better" product is coming out "tomorrow." It is a common economic force. Certainly overwhelemed by instant gratification but there you have it. Any indication of future product has a pressure on current product.

Again, you have some good idea, some need some work. I would remove the part about various levels of support because that is, again, putting your own value system into the argument which weakens the document as a whole. Of course we are not the audience for this, Cuusoo is, so like, I said, make sure you send a copy to the knowledge base.

Good luck.

[Faefrost]

Surely the fact that "true LEGO fans" aren't taking these projects to 10,000, it means they aren't commercially viable? By narrowing down the audience, you are making them even more niche. LEGO is a business, and being able to get "cult-followers" from outside interested and buying LEGO is one of TLG's masterstrokes here. They are widening their audience. You want to narrow it.

Remind me never to invest in your business. ;)

Part of the problem is exactly how deep does anyone think the greater and engaged AFOL community is? As an example look at the total of registered users here at Eurobricks. Just eyeballing it puts it some where in the neighborhood of 25,000 or so? And this is one of the larger and more active Lego based comunities. To pass a project on CuuSoo just using the most Internet engaged adult Lego fans would require at a minimum 30-40% of this community. And that's some rough math. Further compounded by the fact that as a community Lego fans tend to be about as cooperative as a bag of cats, and often leave the outside viewer with the sneaking suspicion that we work with Lego because of court orders barring us from sharp objects.

[Aanchir]

Part of the problem is exactly how deep does anyone think the greater and engaged AFOL community is? As an example look at the total of registered users here at Eurobricks. Just eyeballing it puts it some where in the neighborhood of 25,000 or so? And this is one of the larger and more active Lego based comunities. To pass a project on CuuSoo just using the most Internet engaged adult Lego fans would require at a minimum 30-40% of this community. And that's some rough math. Further compounded by the fact that as a community Lego fans tend to be about as cooperative as a bag of cats, and often leave the outside viewer with the sneaking suspicion that we work with Lego because of court orders barring us from sharp objects.

Another thing to keep in mind is that die-hard AFOLs often have more discriminating tastes than adults who like LEGO as a more casual interest. An average adult who is looking at a set based on their favorite franchise will judge it according to its authenticity and its novelty. And even the authenticity requirement is subject to the viewer's expectations. An adult who isn't used to thinking of LEGO as much more than a box of blocks won't be too knowledgable about just how much authenticity is possible, just as we AFOLs weren't back when the LEGO Star Wars line was new and we put up with some remarkably clunky and inaccurate builds.

An AFOL's purchasing decisions, on the other hand, have a lot more factors. AFOLs tend to look closer at what parts and building techniques a set uses, and how applicable those parts and building techniques are to certain themes they collect. This makes AFOL support on Cuusoo an especially tough thing to earn, considering that voting for something according to its parts and building techniques is unreliable when those features of a model are liable to change during the final design process.

This makes it a lot harder to vote for things based on their "AFOL appeal", even for AFOLs! Other than the "cool factor" of the concept itself, some of the only things that can really reliably be expected to stay the same between a LEGO Cuusoo proposal and a final set based on that concept are its size and its functionality. For this reason, there's very little reason why an AFOL's idea of what would make a good set is any more valid than any other adult's insights.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Aanchir

[Laservampire]

I'd just like to see a weeding out of the "crap an 8 year old made on LDD" projects. And all of the extraneous Minecraft stuff, it's already a theme!

[Aanchir]

I'd just like to see a weeding out of the "crap an 8 year old made on LDD" projects. And all of the extraneous Minecraft stuff, it's already a theme!

How do you propose to do that, though? Prohibiting LDD-based images would be overkill. A submission drawn in pencil is just as valid as one built with real or digital bricks. After all, the purpose of the images is simply to demonstrate the concept.

Realistically, there shouldn't be any need for that kind of thing, because crappy projects are supposed to simply get buried by more successful projects and not get in anybody's way. The point of LEGO Cuusoo is that users determine which projects are good, well-presented concepts and which are not — placing that responsibility on LEGO Cuusoo staff defeats the purpose. Anyway, what exactly are you viewing or searching for that is turning up these kinds of entries?

As for the Minecraft projects... it's a bit of an enigma. Creating ANY project to fit into an existing theme, unless it's radically different in concept than the existing sets within that theme, is a risky endeavor. A Ninjago chess set or pinball machine might stand a chance of success, but a Ninjago playset is riskier because it might conflict with the sets TLG already intends to produce within that theme. Add a license and you complicate things even further.

But many of the Minecraft projects were created before people knew that that was going to become an ongoing theme. And besides a few which are identical on a conceptual level to the already-announced sets, they haven't completely lost hope of being viable products. Again, user activity should be what decides how prominent these projects get. Ideally, people will stop creating and supporting as many new projects based on the Minecraft set template now that they've seen how risky that has become. There should be no need to "purge" projects that fit this template any more than to "purge" projects based on the Modular Building template or based on other existing licenses: they should eventually disappear into the background as newer and more promising projects are created.

Remember Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crap". It should not be a surprise to anyone that there are a lot of crappy and hopeless LEGO Cuusoo projects, because the platform is designed to invite input from as many sources as possible. The purpose of the Cuusoo platform, then, is to give the general public the opportunity to say what is crap and what is not.

If the LEGO Group were intent on making that decision all on their own, then they wouldn't need to open up product idea submissions to public supporters at all. They could just have an e-mail form where you send in ideas, and they read and judge each and every one independently. Naturally, this would be extremely inefficient, but that's essentially the direction you have to move if you expect Cuusoo moderators to be the judges of project quality. It's much more efficient to just put up with the negligible burden of ignoring crappy proposals and let them filter into the background organically.

[glenbricker]

If you want projects to be sorted by type then you will probably like my new system, it is still in beta, but all projects above 200 have now been cataloged into at least one category.

I will be adding better search and exclusion features as time goes on but here is the early "draft"

No IP Projects

Popular Media Projects

"Real" Subject Projects

Lego Properties Projects

[LiamM32]

I didn't have much time to post in the past few days because of my cousins wedding. I'm back now, so I will try to respond to some of your posts.

Thank you for your constructive criticism. You made me realize that I was going to far on resisting licensed projects, and restricting the site to Lego fans. I have edited the essay now. Now it is more focused on promoting the projects that are liked by the people that see them. Those are the most important parts of the essay. The more difficult registration is an idea that I thought of later to further resist those projects, which is probably more unfriendly than helpful.

You have mostly stayed on topic as I stated in the first post. The only thing that I want to read a bit more of is more specific suggestions of rules for how to solve the problems.

Hi. It seems you're operating on the assumption that the better projects don't succeed on CUUSOO - how did you figure this out? Is there some independent metric of 'better' which we can use to evaluate how well or how poorly CUUSOO identifies the better projects? If not, then it just means the projects you like don't get the recognition you would like them to have.

I don't see why self-identified LEGO fans warrant a greater voice than others, for the purposes of CUUSOO. If there are people interested in a set, there are people interested in it, period.

The negative/positive/neutral rating system is particularly problematic - why would TLG care about people who don't like or are disinterested in a product, if there are enough people interested to make it profitable?

Also a problem is setting different criteria for how many supporters a project requires for review. How do you know that they didn't set the bar low, with 10k supporters the minimum for any project to receive initial consideration?

You appear to have misinterpreted some parts, which I should try to clear up.

When I say that the "better projects" are not succeeding, I don't mean it entirely on my own judgement of the projects. Yes, a small part of it may be from looking at the projects that I like, and predict success as products. But it is more about reading other FOL's complain about the lack of "quality projects" achieving. Even by my first-hand judgement, I think more of how well it fits as a Lego product, not my own interests. Many Lego products on the shelves would probably fail if they were on Cuusoo, even though people buy them in the stores. However, the failure of good projects is simply my reason to propose this. The actual rules that I propose do not specifically promote the products that I like, but the projects that are liked by the users of Lego Cuusoo that see them. If it turned out that not as many people like Vampire GT than I thought, than my evil plan to make Vampire GT achieve would fail.

So you don't like the Rating System as Faefrost did, but you may have misinterpreted the purpose of it. It would not replace the supporting system as a way to decide which of the countless projects achieve. The rating system would primarily be used as a way to determine the amount of advertising a project would recieve on the website. The way it is currently, the projects that have already been supported the most get advertised, making it more difficult at the beginning. If advertising was based on the rating system, than the idea would be that if the people that saw it liked it, than show it to more people and see if they support. The quantity of people supporting would still be the basic requirement for projects to achieve.

One last thing about the different requirements for supporters to become a product. The rules on this part have since been edited, but I will still comment. Some projects would be more expensive for TLG to make a product out of. Some projects may be predicted by TLG to be more successful on the store shelves than on Cuusoo. As I said above, some retail Lego products would probably fail if they were ever on Cuusoo. Part projects have never achieved (as they are less exciting, even if useful), even though many would work well for building.

You have some good ideas. I agree with them to the point that I have sumbitted a few of my own, very similar ones directly to Cuusoo. Make sure to submit your ideas to the knowledge base so that they see them as they are technically your primary audience.

If you want to make a stronger case though you should delete your arguement for why the changes are "needed". That sounds like illogical advice but the argument is just your opinion and it distracts from the discussion of your changes. As you can see, comments are about your initial argument instead of about your content. Figure out what your actual goal is and write it goal positive rather than opposition negative. It sounds like your goal is to add structure and make certain projects more visible. Few are going to argue with you against adding structure. Of course granting more visibility to any one project, or type of project, is inherently a statement that it is more worthy which again, is your opinion so be careful there.

As for projects being shelved for later, well, yes, there are huge problems with at and there is an alternative. Resubmitting the idea. If the community really likes it, they can keep sending it to 10,000... Well, have you ever seen anyone not buy a product "today" because they "know" a "better" product is coming out "tomorrow." It is a common economic force. Certainly overwhelemed by instant gratification but there you have it. Any indication of future product has a pressure on current product.

Thank you for the suggestions. I have taken some of them when I edited the essay last night. I want to send this to The Lego Group when it is finished. I just forget to mention that when I first posted. I posted it here first to make sure that I was actually reflecting other peoples opinions, to make sure that it doesn't strictly follow my own interests.

I didn't entirely delete the intro, as you can see. I just heavily edited it to make it less negative (as you suggested), and more respectful. I might delete it entirely later if it still doesn't work.

I have edited the section on Delayed Products and Payments. It is difficult for me to write that section well, as I am not very knowledgeable on that part. It is a good point that you made about people choosing to buy a newer-but-similar product instead of an older one that they used to want. I wrote it so that it would be automatically returned to the website at the right time. There should be something to give it a boost at the start. With my Repeating Supporting system, they could remove one "support" from each supporter. Alternately, they could put an advertisement for it on the frontpage when it returns, and put a notification on the website for previous supporters of the project.

Another thing to keep in mind is that die-hard AFOLs often have more discriminating tastes than adults who like LEGO as a more casual interest. An average adult who is looking at a set based on their favorite franchise will judge it according to its authenticity and its novelty. And even the authenticity requirement is subject to the viewer's expectations. An adult who isn't used to thinking of LEGO as much more than a box of blocks won't be too knowledgable about just how much authenticity is possible, just as we AFOLs weren't back when the LEGO Star Wars line was new and we put up with some remarkably clunky and inaccurate builds.

An AFOL's purchasing decisions, on the other hand, have a lot more factors. AFOLs tend to look closer at what parts and building techniques a set uses, and how applicable those parts and building techniques are to certain themes they collect. This makes AFOL support on Cuusoo an especially tough thing to earn, considering that voting for something according to its parts and building techniques is unreliable when those features of a model are liable to change during the final design process.

This makes it a lot harder to vote for things based on their "AFOL appeal", even for AFOLs! Other than the "cool factor" of the concept itself, some of the only things that can really reliably be expected to stay the same between a LEGO Cuusoo proposal and a final set based on that concept are its size and its functionality. For this reason, there's very little reason why an AFOL's idea of what would make a good set is any more valid than any other adult's insights.

Well, the reason that I wanted to put more trust into more dedicated fans when I originaly posted this was because I thought that the true fans would be more likely to buy the products that they support. Now I have changed it so that most features (including supporting) would be accessible to anyone that would already be allowed on Lego Cuusoo as it is, but just a small restriction for the rating system and a larger restriction for the VIP Awards feature.

Yes, there are going to be some changes made to what is presented as a Cuusoo project when it becomes a product. But I think that this might be the reason for asking "Why do you like this project" in the support form; So that TLG knows which aspects should be kept and which ones they shouldn't hesitate to change. Under this theory, the product wouldn't be changed as much if there is a greater variety of reasons that people like the project.

For example, if CrowKiller's Vampire GT car got these answers in the support form, than the final product would be kept the most similar:

James answers "I have always wanted to see a large Technic model that utilizes all the space available for manual functions."

Kira answers "I like the chrome red colour that this set would add to the pallette, and the wheels look good in it."

Kim answers "This is asthetically and structuraly the best Technic car front design that I have ever seen."

Darci answers "I would like a good large Technic set with a good price-per-piece, and a decent unmotorized model."

I'd just like to see a weeding out of the "crap an 8 year old made on LDD" projects. And all of the extraneous Minecraft stuff, it's already a theme!

For the crappy LDD screenshots, refer to the sections Rating System and Unsuccessful Project Deletion/Archive. People would often give these projects negative ratings the rating system, which would reduce advertising and put them at risk of deletion. In the Project Deletion section, it proposes a rule that would delete all the projects that didn't get enough supports multiplied by the rating in the past season. I might simplify the way that that section works. I also briefly mentioned in the Linking Lego ID/VIP section an idea to put a small fee of VIP points to submit a new project. That should assure that projects would only be submited if the creator is confident about it, limit the quantity of projects per person, and reduce accessibility for the little guys.

As for the Minecraft part. I have not yet written a rule that would help much with that (unless if the Unsuccessful Project Deletion feature would kill 'em off). I just thought of 2 new ideas to solve that though;

The first one is something that could be a good section to add to the essay. Each user would be allowed to list their favourite and least favourite project tags. You could then list "Minecraft" as a least favourite. It would then remove those projects from the advertisements that you view, remove them from searches unless if you search "minecraft", but that would only affect you and other people who put that as a tag.

The second idea would apply more to Minecraft than most other licenses, but it would affect the whole website for all users. I know Minecraft from hearing my obsessed 2 friends and brother talk about it. I think that on Minecraft, mods are more popular than on other games. "Mods" are modifications that users make to the software, that many gamers like to put up for download. The idea for the rule that I have on this is to put a limit of 2 degrees of separation between the final product and source material. This would ban projects based on modifications to games, because that would have 3 degrees of separation;

Video Game > Software Modification > Cuusoo Project > Lego Product

[Faefrost]

Please don't assume that I like your proposed rating system for any logical or beneficial reason. I am for the most part an evil hearted bastard, and would approve of any system that lets me lob virtual fruit at the small children or completely clueless fanboys. It's petty and evil, but heck, what else is the interwebx for?

Honestly the others are probably correct and it would serve little real function beyond allowing mean people like me to throw rocks. (A noble goal in its own right, but probably counterproductive in this circumstance.)

[LiamM32]

Please don't assume that I like your proposed rating system for any logical or beneficial reason. I am for the most part an evil hearted bastard, and would approve of any system that lets me lob virtual fruit at the small children or completely clueless fanboys. It's petty and evil, but heck, what else is the interwebx for?

Honestly the others are probably correct and it would serve little real function beyond allowing mean people like me to throw rocks. (A noble goal in its own right, but probably counterproductive in this circumstance.)

Well, that is a surprising thing to read from you. You came-across as sensible, rational, and fairly respectful by what I have read from you before. I have edited that section to add a mechanism that I figured out to stop grief-rampages. So then you only get one "grief" a day, before it gets too slow and boring. You actually suggested that as a good thing in your first post, so I am again surprised. Ratings would only appear as a percentage, so it wouldn't have much potential to insult the creator. But the main reason for the ratings is to make a less flawed way of advertising then to select the currently most-supported projects.

There are some good ideas in there, and also some that are sorta kinda very very bad. I mean really bad.

There are some good ideas in there. I personally would love some sort of thumbs up thumbs down rating system to help find good broadly liked projects. So long as the mechanism cannot be exploited or used for griefing... Some mechanism to cut down on children and what I lovingly refer to as "Little Billy's first LDD" would be great, but I don't see a non cumbersome or draconian way to do it. A simple up/down vote mechanism would probably do more good for this than anything else.

But I don't think that it would work as badly as some (including you) suggested. Users would be meant to just rate it down if they think it's a bad idea, rate it up if they think it's a good idea, and neutral if they approve but don't endorse (which tends to be the least common rating). If you think that "Little Billy's first LDD" is a poor project, then rating it down is just what you should do. I don't see it happening much for competition. The creator of a project may downvote a competitor, but they would only be one person out of many users of Cuusoo. Competing projects are projects with the same target audience; If a user is a fan of Ghostbusters, then they would be unlikely to upvote their favourite and downvote the less interesting one. If they are acceptable quality, then they would most likely upvote both of them, as their main goal would be for any Ghostbusters project to become a product.

[AndyC]

I just don't get why I would want to "like" a project as well as supporting it. It just seems like a fundamentally pointless duplication of things.

Being able to say "I don't like this project, don't show it to me again and adapt your choice of promoted projects that I see based on that" would be preferential to showing numerical "dislike" counts too. Why shouldn't the CuuSoo projects I see be based on my personal preferences, rather than some universally fixed selection?

[LiamM32]

I just don't get why I would want to "like" a project as well as supporting it. It just seems like a fundamentally pointless duplication of things.

Being able to say "I don't like this project, don't show it to me again and adapt your choice of promoted projects that I see based on that" would be preferential to showing numerical "dislike" counts too. Why shouldn't the CuuSoo projects I see be based on my personal preferences, rather than some universally fixed selection?

Well, it is not a duplication. Advertising them based on how many total supporters is flawed. The quantity of supporters is not only affected by how people that see it like it; it could also mean that it has somehow simply gotten more attention. And then it is given more attention because it already got attention. This is why we need to have the good in ratio with the bad votes. With this new rating and advertising system, it would advertise them based on how well the people who already have seen them liked it.

In the second paragraph, you have suggested a very helpful idea that I have somehow missed. That could encourage people to use the rating system honestly. It would also help the user by hiding the projects that they have already seen and didn't like. I have was already planning to add a section to the essay about advertising projects to the user based on their favourite tags and least-favourite tags. I also like your suggestion, so I should add it to the Rating System section.

Edited August 15, 2013 by LiamM32

[AndyC]

Well, it is not a duplication. Advertising them based on how many total supporters is flawed. The quantity of supporters is not only affected by how people that see it like it; it could also mean that it has somehow simply gotten more attention. And then it is given more attention because it already got attention. This is why we need to have the good in ratio with the bad votes. With this new rating and advertising system, it would advertise them based on how well the people who already have seen them liked it.

I can see what you're trying to say, but I think you just end up replacing "supporters" with "likes" and don't actually solve the problem, in fact you make it worse because now it's confusing for end users.

Consider what choice you are giving somebody who sees a project they think it good:

1) They can "support" it

2) They can "like" it

3) They can do both

How do you explain to them what the difference is? Why would I, as an end user, care about whether a project is getting advertised more or not? All I want to be able to say is "this is something I might buy" but now it isn't clear how I do that. In fact you risk good projects losing support because people are "liking" them rather than "supporting" them.

[LiamM32]

How do you explain to them what the difference is? Why would I, as an end user, care about whether a project is getting advertised more or not? All I want to be able to say is "this is something I might buy" but now it isn't clear how I do that. In fact you risk good projects losing support because people are "liking" them rather than "supporting" them.

In the section about the Rating System, it says that a user would require a Lego ID linked and would have to log in to Lego Cuusoo on 7 days before they are allowed to rate projects. The original reason for this was so that those cult-followers who sign-up to support a single project don't skew the ratings. The ratings should be controlled by people who typically discover projects through Lego Cuusoo, not other websites.

But this will also prevent the possible confusion that you mentioned, of people thinking that the positive vote counts as support. By the time a user qualifies to use the rating system, then they would already be used to clicking the support button. Just in case, it should give users a message the first time that they try to use the rating system, to briefly explain what it is.

To everyone reading this thread, please don't be shy to share your own suggestions. I could then add your ideas to the first post. If I send this directly to The Lego Group, a collaborative suggestion should be more affective then one written entirely by a single person. Although my own solutions are not as well-recepted as I hoped for, there are still some problems of Lego Cuusoo that bring it short of the Lego fans dream that it has the potential to be. Go ahead and present your own specific ideas to get around these barriers. You may also post an edit of a section of the essay if you have a way to improve it.

We don't yet have a reply on this topic from a Lego group Embassador, but it would be appreciated to hear back about how well the proposals would work from a Lego employee perspective.

[AndyC]

By the time a user qualifies to use the rating system, then they would already be used to clicking the support button. Just in case, it should give users a message the first time that they try to use the rating system, to briefly explain what it is.

But what motivation do I ever have to rate a project? I can see a point in supporting it (it makes it more likely to be made into a real product), but rating it just makes it more likely to appear on the front page. Except at that point if I've already supported it, I don't actually care if it's on the front page because I've already supported it. In fact, I actually would prefer it didn't show up at that point (for me) so that when I go to the home page I see new stuff that I might like to support. And if I don't like it enough to support it, well then I probably don't want it on the front page either because it just isn't good enough to attract my attention.

This is the fundamental problem with have two "positive" mechanisms, they work against each other. And given that the whole purpose of CuuSoo is to attract support for projects, having any other kind of rating alongside it just gets in the way.

Focusing on a more personalised approach, rather than arbitrarily trying to add a ratings mechanism, would massively improve the CuuSoo site. Let me hide things I don't want to see. Don't show me projects I've already supported (but do give me some way to see how support for them is progressing). Show me things based on what other people who've supported the projects I supported have also supported. And then produce an overall aggregate of everyone's preferences to show to non logged in users (which should, in theory, highlight widely supported projects).

[Aanchir]

If you want projects to be sorted by type then you will probably like my new system, it is still in beta, but all projects above 200 have now been cataloged into at least one category.

I will be adding better search and exclusion features as time goes on but here is the early "draft"

No IP Projects

Popular Media Projects

"Real" Subject Projects

Lego Properties Projects

These are pretty good sorting mechanisms. At first I wasn't convinced they would be useful to me, since usually when I'm looking for projects I don't care whether it's based on an IP, a LEGO property, real life, or the builder's imagination. I will usually search using terms directly related to things I like, such as "Hero Factory", "The Legend of Korra", "School Bus", or "Steampunk".

At the same time, narrowing things down definitely was surprisingly helpful. I found this project, which is maybe the coolest non-set concept I've ever seen on LEGO Cuusoo! I think every AFOL should be supporting this project!

I think it would be cool to add additional sorting mechanisms: for instance, one that concerns only new parts projects versus product concepts, or one for non-part, non-set concepts like books and software. There hasn't been a project of either type to reach 10,000 yet, and until one does we can't really know if the mechanisms in place currently will be enough to get one of those projects to pass review.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Aanchir

[AndyC]

At the same time, narrowing things down definitely was surprisingly helpful. I found this project, which is maybe the coolest non-set concept I've ever seen on LEGO Cuusoo! I think every AFOL should be supporting this project!

Wow. That's a fantastic idea. Whoever made the proposal really needs to be doing a better job of promoting though.

[Bobskink]

Whoever made the proposal really needs to be doing a better job of promoting though.

Isn't that the whole Cuusoo Problem? I'm not following this way to long discussion.

But so far, I have the impresion that Cuusoo idea's get votes based on the hype and promotion surounding them. Only after that comes the quality of a project. It's sad, but inevitable these days.