Jim

Generic Contest Discussion

Contest Setup  

309 members have voted

  1. 2. Publish result list including...?

  2. 3. Preferred building period?

  3. 4. Preferred voting period?

  4. 5. Favorite voting scheme? (multiple answers allowed)

    • 20 points (distribute all, max 10 per entry)
    • 10 points (distribute all, max 5 per entry)
    • Old Formula One style (distribute 10, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points)
    • New Formula One style (distribute 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6 ,4, 2 and 1 points)
    • Eurovision Songfestival style (distribute 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points)
  5. 6. Public or private voting?

  6. 7. Should we allow digital entries?



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40 minutes ago, Thirdwigg said:

Me too! I'm looking forward to this contest.

The information topic is live!

Now is the time for you guys (and gals) to start asking silly interesting questions :laugh:

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Now that the contest is over, there's couple of things that I'd like to discuss about:

Firstly, there were 47 entries (incl. 1 disqualified one) and 57 voters (incl. I think 2 discounted ones), and as the entrant can't vote their own entry, it means that a significant number of entries were left completely without votes. Currently it appears that it's mostly the contestants who vote and only a few others, so I wonder if there's anything that could be done to encourage more people to participate in voting?

Secondly, as the deadline got nearer, I noticed a number of entries which were presented as complete or almost complete models, with no WIP photos or any feedback from other people. This, to me, feels like going against the spirit of having contest, which is (in my opinion) to exchange of ideas and discussion of concepts so that everyone could learn from each other and have fun. Just presenting a finished model (regardless of quality of the build) feels like skipping this important aspect of having a contest in the first place. So I wonder if others feel like I do, and if there's anything that could be done to fix this?

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@howitzer yes quite a few people (not just in this competition) don’t actually post a WIP thread as such and instead make a thread at the last minute when their model is complete. I think some are worried about people stealing ideas. I like reading the WIP threads as it shows you someone’s thought process and construction techniques and I think helps all of us learn to be better builders. You also get people making a WIP thread with no progress just an idea! I’d like some form of requirement to actually show progress in this thread.

as to the voting I think it’s always difficult. I’d say get it on the front page as soon as voting is open

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Concerning the number of votes, I wonder if the voting process is a little too complex, it requires some time to check the entries  / note the assigned numbers / give the points.

People generally are lazy!

Maybe we could add a visual summary chart (with the photos of the entries and the assigned numbers) in the voting topic, and not just a list, but I'm afraid this is against the task to encourage people to click on WIP threads...

 

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1 hour ago, Seasider said:

I’d like some form of requirement to actually show progress in this thread

I think @Jim stated this one in the information topic for the contest.

37 minutes ago, mpj said:

Maybe we could add a visual summary chart (with the photos of the entries and the assigned numbers) in the voting topic, and not just a list, but I'm afraid this is against the task to encourage people to click on WIP threads...

I really like this idea. But it struck me, that so little people voted in contrast to the entries. That's really strange... I even had the feeling that some people with a TC model didn't vote cause they couldn't vote for theirs? Don't want to go through the posts.

As for new contests:

We've seen that is really has been highly controversial discussion about the rules of this very contest. Maybe the next contest will be a little less optional regarding size/type/parts. Or will it be the long-discussed GBC-contest?

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1 hour ago, Seasider said:

@howitzer yes quite a few people (not just in this competition) don’t actually post a WIP thread as such and instead make a thread at the last minute when their model is complete. I think some are worried about people stealing ideas. I like reading the WIP threads as it shows you someone’s thought process and construction techniques and I think helps all of us learn to be better builders. You also get people making a WIP thread with no progress just an idea! I’d like some form of requirement to actually show progress in this thread.

as to the voting I think it’s always difficult. I’d say get it on the front page as soon as voting is open

I think the "stealing ideas" is actually one purpose of these contests, as they offer an opportunity to learn from other people. And even in this contest, nothing prevented multiple people choosing the same source model and we did see some very nice but distinct interpretations of the same sets. So I'd really like to see some form of enforcement of showing the WIP material, perhaps an "entry period" where all entrants must start their topic and show progress, and then closing the contest for new entries but allowing some more time for the rest to perfect their entries. Or would this create more problems than it would solve? I don't know.

It would be nice if each of the information, entry and voting topics would all be at the front page for the duration of the contest, as that apparently increases their visibility. This way everyone with the slightest interest would have the opportunity to see them and perhaps participate (in the voting if not in the contest).

31 minutes ago, Jundis said:

Or will it be the long-discussed GBC-contest?

As I understand it, the GBC contest will be made to happen as soon as people willing to moderate that contest are found, as Jim has stated that he feels not qualified to make up the rules and guidelines.

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2 hours ago, mpj said:

Concerning the number of votes, I wonder if the voting process is a little too complex, it requires some time to check the entries  / note the assigned numbers / give the points.

People generally are lazy!

Agree with this point. Going through all 47 entries, picking the ones I liked, narrowing that down to 6 and then putting those 6 in order took a fair bit of effort. Many times I had to go back and check I had the right number for the right model. I can see why some people wouldn't bother. 

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4 hours ago, howitzer said:

Now that the contest is over, there's couple of things that I'd like to discuss about:

Firstly, there were 47 entries (incl. 1 disqualified one) and 57 voters (incl. I think 2 discounted ones), and as the entrant can't vote their own entry, it means that a significant number of entries were left completely without votes. Currently it appears that it's mostly the contestants who vote and only a few others, so I wonder if there's anything that could be done to encourage more people to participate in voting?

We can do the 20 points voting scheme and see how that goes. I can do more promotion for the voting phase. However, we do need to be careful, because "outsiders" will simply vote for the coolest entry. Maybe that is something we should avoid by doing the jury voting first. Not sure if that wil solve the issue, but we can try.

4 hours ago, howitzer said:

Secondly, as the deadline got nearer, I noticed a number of entries which were presented as complete or almost complete models, with no WIP photos or any feedback from other people. This, to me, feels like going against the spirit of having contest, which is (in my opinion) to exchange of ideas and discussion of concepts so that everyone could learn from each other and have fun. Just presenting a finished model (regardless of quality of the build) feels like skipping this important aspect of having a contest in the first place. So I wonder if others feel like I do, and if there's anything that could be done to fix this?

Yeah, we need to enforce that rule in a better way. We do need to see some progress before posting.

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I think that there's always going to have some "problems".
Yes front-paging the voting topic will make more votes, but as Jim said, these person will probably vote for the coolest looking one… even if that's not the point of the contest…
 

3 minutes ago, Jim said:

jury voting first

I quite like this idea, this would allow to have entries that follow the rules more closely. Because in some cases, with two stage voting, a perfect entry according to the Jury might not end up in the top 10.

And one last thing too, concerning the WIP topic, as many have said, some finished project appear a few day before the deadline.
I feel that the presence of a WIP topic should be somehow mandatory. Because as I understand these contests, they are also here to make the forum live, so WIP threads allow for that.
But on the other hand, a WIP can be frustrating, if there little to no answers on it. This might lead some people to think that their model isn't good, and they might give up on it…
 

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5 hours ago, howitzer said:

Secondly, as the deadline got nearer, I noticed a number of entries which were presented as complete or almost complete models, with no WIP photos or any feedback from other people. This, to me, feels like going against the spirit of having contest, which is (in my opinion) to exchange of ideas and discussion of concepts so that everyone could learn from each other and have fun. Just presenting a finished model (regardless of quality of the build) feels like skipping this important aspect of having a contest in the first place. So I wonder if others feel like I do, and if there's anything that could be done to fix this?

I think i may fall into this category a bit, (with my entry in TC20 in particular).  In my defence i only had about just over a week to design, build and photograph my entry. So the lack of WIP pics suffered as a result.  And even then (whether you're working digitally or in real brick), it's sometimes hard (for me personally) to gauge when to take a progress pic, as my creativity comes on organically without warning sometimes. One moment i can be spending hours with no real progress to show, then the next moment i'm on a role and haven't even (digitally) saved the model i'm working on, (have actually lost work in the past due to not saving, only for my laptop to overheat and shutdown :wall:). 

 

I do agree though, it is really nice to see WIP updates from members, so i will try and implement more of them when i next enter a contest/or start a build thread.  Unfortunately (and i'm sure some members will agree), even when members share their WIP pics, they're not always met by other members commenting, or offering up suggestions and alternative solutions to problems/issues with the build.

 

[EDIT]

I agree with those who would like the jury select the entries first, before putting what they feel best fits the full criteria of the contest, up for public voting. 

I think that way it gives the voters a much more clearer picture, of how the jury would prefer we cast our votes, (fulfilling the criteria as they see it, rather than what the public most like and find visually appealing).

 

Edited by Dazzzy
Better turn of phrase

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34 minutes ago, Jim said:

We can do the 20 points voting scheme and see how that goes. I can do more promotion for the voting phase. However, we do need to be careful, because "outsiders" will simply vote for the coolest entry. Maybe that is something we should avoid by doing the jury voting first. Not sure if that wil solve the issue, but we can try.

It wasn't just the outsiders that voted for the coolest entry though. Given that most of the votes were from other contestants, a significant number of "insiders" also voted for the coolest entry as well, even though they were more knowledgeable and aware of the criteria they were supposed to vote by. I'll be honest - one of the reasons I didn't vote because I was constantly double-guessing whether I had adhered to what you & Milan had asked for in the voting.

With that in mind, I would be in favour of a jury selection first, it will be the best way of ensuring whatever spirit the rules were meant to convey (depending on the quality of the entries). Of course, deciding how to do so is another topic entirely! Related to this, unfortunately it's not hard to see arguments over the jury selection; the "spirit" of the rules would need to be communicated clearly throughout the entry process. No, it won't stop all complaints, but at least there will always be something to refer back to when somebody argues about the interpretation of the rules.

About the points, I do think it's time to expand on them. The old F1 (10-6-4-2-1) points scale was made for a time when you would expect ~15 cars to actually finish the race. If we're going to have more contests with such a large number of amazing entries, then it makes sense to have more points to be awarded to more entries. Again, one of the main reasons F1 shifted to its current points scale is because many more cars could be expected to finish the race.

Edit - Credit to @Gray Gear for this from the results thread - an expanded jury would also be worth considering. There'd be less pressure on the jurors with more people involved in the selection process.

Edited by Jay Psi

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Whilst this wouldn't make a massive difference to the number of people who might have voted in this contest, in future would it be possible to allow all entrants of the contest to vote regardless of their post count? As a relative newcomer to the forum, I was able to enter the contest but couldn't vote (or at least have my votes counted if I did vote) for my favourites as my post count isn't high enough.  I appreciate the minimum post count requirement is there for a reason, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that anyone that's gone to the effort of submitting an entry themselves probably doesn't have any ulterior motives when it comes to voting :classic:

(Apologies if this has been suggested before, but 63 pages of this thread is a lot to check!)

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I think the Jury should be vetting the entries against the rules they prepared and not voting which ones are better, in the first phase. Then there should be some kind of short period where disqualified would try to appeal and present their stance/interpretation of the rules and change the decision which could happen if rules were not precisely stated and thus left something to interpretation. After that popular vote would be a fair game.

For making more people take part in the contests - I would consider making separate size classes for each place, but I know this is a double edged sword where it could've been unfair if there's objectively better entry that didn't get to the podium as second place because it was in bigger size class. Food for thought though as I think some people would try their strength in the contest if they weren't necessarily competing against people who can spend unlimited amount of money for specifically coloured bricks. The number of votes would decide the order of the prizes between the classes' winners.

For more people voting - I'm not sure that complicating the voting process is a good idea - maybe just picking 5 entries you like (each one point) would work better to get bigger amount of people voting if people still vote on what they like and assuming initial Jury vetting against the rules? 

Allowing contestants to vote without 50 posts seems like a good idea.

Also I'm in for some leniency towards submissions that had the image hosting failed in the entries thread while the topic had them working. There may be situations where a hosting site from the other side of the world won't work for us and the original creator doesn't know about it until it's too late.

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52 minutes ago, RiGi said:

Whilst this wouldn't make a massive difference to the number of people who might have voted in this contest, in future would it be possible to allow all entrants of the contest to vote regardless of their post count? As a relative newcomer to the forum, I was able to enter the contest but couldn't vote (or at least have my votes counted if I did vote) for my favourites as my post count isn't high enough.  I appreciate the minimum post count requirement is there for a reason, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that anyone that's gone to the effort of submitting an entry themselves probably doesn't have any ulterior motives when it comes to voting :classic:

The reason we have a treshold is that on some occasions there were a lot of votes from "new members". Which were basically fake account. To prevent this, we use the 50 post treshold. We have talked about exceptions, like yourself. When you participate in the contest you should be able to vote. I think that's fair.

11 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

Allowing contestants to vote without 50 posts seems like a good idea.

Nope it is not.

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10 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

Allowing contestants to vote without 50 posts seems like a good idea.

I'd lower the post limit but no restriction would lead to 1 post voters gathered on Facebook. Since contest here are not Facebook popularity contests, I think it's good to let only "real" members vote.

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11 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

Also I'm in for some leniency towards submissions that had the image hosting failed in the entries thread while the topic had them working. There may be situations where a hosting site from the other side of the world won't work for us and the original creator doesn't know about it until it's too late.

People need to use a reliable hosting service. We have ran over 20 contest and we seldomly run into these issues. Bricksafe is free and can easily be used to host your images. If Bricksafe is down and we can't see most of the entries, we will be lenient, but otherwise people need to stop using unreliable hosting services.

16 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

For making more people take part in the contests - I would consider making separate size classes for each place, but I know this is a double edged sword where it could've been unfair if there's objectively better entry that didn't get to the podium as second place because it was in bigger size class. Food for thought though as I think some people would try their strength in the contest if they weren't necessarily competing against people who can spend unlimited amount of money for specifically coloured bricks. The number of votes would decide the order of the prizes between the classes' winners.

We had contest with multiple categories in the past. Like a Pro category for contestants with a medal. And one for the other members. But I am not in favor of making multiple class sizes. Let's not try to make things even more complicated. 

We had over 60 entries in one of the previous contests and over 40 in this one. People are having fun. There's no need to go changing everything. We can tweak some things, but let's not try to re-invent the wheel.

1 hour ago, Dazzzy said:

I agree with those who would like the jury select the entries first, before putting what they feel best fits the full criteria of the contest, up for public voting. 

I think that way it gives the voters a much more clearer picture, of how the jury would prefer we cast our votes, (fulfilling the criteria as they see it, rather than what the public most like and find visually appealing).

I am in favor of trying this as well.

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4 minutes ago, Lipko said:

I'd lower the post limit but no restriction would lead to 1 post voters gathered on Facebook. Since contest here are not Facebook popularity contests, I think it's good to let only "real" members vote.

Related:
What is the reason behind showing the country of a member in general? There's some bias in voting if the contestant is from the same country as the voter. I remember getting maximum points from many Hungarian members in contests. Maybe just coincidence...

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1 hour ago, Touc4nx said:

I quite like this idea, this would allow to have entries that follow the rules more closely. Because in some cases, with two stage voting, a perfect entry according to the Jury might not end up in the top 10.

Exactly. We can do top-10/20 by jury and then public voting using old F1 style (like we do now).

Just now, Lipko said:

Related:
What is the reason behind showing the country of a member in general? There's some bias in voting if the contestant is from the same country as the voter. I remember getting maximum points from many Hungarian members in contests. Maybe just coincidence...

The country is shown when you fill it out in your profile. This is a forum wide setting and I do like it. I love to see where people are coming from. Does this result in biases voting?! Maybe, possibly. Like the Eurovision Song Contest :laugh:

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7 minutes ago, Jim said:

Exactly. We can do top-10/20 by jury and then public voting using old F1 style (like we do now).

The country is shown when you fill it out in your profile. This is a forum wide setting and I do like it. I love to see where people are coming from. Does this result in biases voting?! Maybe, possibly. Like the Eurovision Song Contest :laugh:

Man, I was exactly thinking of Eurovision :classic: Finns always vote on the Hungarian contestant (sadly the opposite is not true).

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If the voting was the same as Eurovision then us Brits would never get any votes! :laugh:

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I understand that certain traditions have been living here. But as a relatively new member of the EB, I will share my thoughts on the ratings:

Alternatively, to put separate assessments according to several criteria. Design score, functions score, difficult score (each competition has its own criteria and their significance). Because if I had 50 posts, it would be extremely difficult for me to compare a beautiful car with a functionally complex excavator. Also, it would be interesting to see the ratings of each work. And by the amount of points, it is already possible to determine the candidates for victory.

 

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1 hour ago, Jim said:

Exactly. We can do top-10/20 by jury and then public voting using old F1 style (like we do now).

The country is shown when you fill it out in your profile. This is a forum wide setting and I do like it. I love to see where people are coming from. Does this result in biases voting?! Maybe, possibly. Like the Eurovision Song Contest :laugh:

 

55 minutes ago, RiGi said:

If the voting was the same as Eurovision then us Brits would never get any votes! :laugh:

Yes us Brits wouldn’t get anywhere

@Jim tv programmes often use judge voting to thin the entrants and then the final decision is public

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1 hour ago, Jim said:

Bricksafe is free and can easily be used to host your images.

There were times were Bricksafe literally didn't load for me while I didn't have issues with other hostings. It's not always that it doesn't work for everyone, just saying.

1 hour ago, Jim said:

We had contest with multiple categories in the past. Like a Pro category for contestants with a medal. And one for the other members. But I am not in favor of making multiple class sizes. Let's not try to make things even more complicated. 

Making a special category that is exclusive to people who already won previous contests doesn't make sense if you want more people to take part IMO. As for separate classes making things more complicated - that's true, but whether it's worth it or not matters - if you can bring lots more people to participate by making it slightly more complicated then that could be a win.

1 hour ago, Jim said:

We had over 60 entries in one of the previous contests and over 40 in this one. People are having fun. There's no need to go changing everything. We can tweak some things, but let's not try to re-invent the wheel.

That makes sense, the sole part of building your entry is fun, but it still comes to mostly just entrants voting, that's why I'm thinking about bringing more people to participate.

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26 minutes ago, SaperPL said:

Making a special category that is exclusive to people who already won previous contests doesn't make sense if you want more people to take part IMO. As for separate classes making things more complicated - that's true, but whether it's worth it or not matters - if you can bring lots more people to participate by making it slightly more complicated then that could be a win.

It made sense. People liked it, because they had a chance "not to complete to the pros".

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The idea is good and exactly my point, but seeing the amount of high quality builds or bigger sized models that did not win in this contest, you can clearly see that outside the pool of people who already won there still are people who will build big high quality models that are going to discourage others from competing. But it somewhat makes sense to not have same people scoring the prizes, so it also makes sense this way.

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