LEGO Ideas Discussion

[Bricked1980]

6 minutes ago, Modeltrainman said:

Thanks! I've tried to request a new code multiple times, each with the same result. Will wait on a response from them. One question, though. Every time you go to login, if you're not remembering your password, do you have to keep doing this? It seems like a major hurdle to get passed just to vote. Especially if it comes up as invalid. 

When I've had a problem in the past and had to contact them, it took about 2 days before they got back to me. I bet if you don't hear back today though then it will end up being Monday at the earliest.

This is a major hassle to be honest, I wonder why they've even introduced this code system, it's just another thing that might put people off voting.

On most days I tend to get between 10 and 20 votes. Yesterday I had 5 votes though and today only 1 so far. Has anyone else has noticed a drop in votes since the update on Wednesday? If so I wonder if this is because people are struggling to log on to the site.

19 minutes ago, Modeltrainman said:

Also, beautiful traction engine, sir!

Thanks very much. 

[Modeltrainman]

1 minute ago, Bricked1980 said:

 

This is a major hassle to be honest, I wonder why they've even introduced this code system, it's just another thing that might put people off voting.

On most days I tend to get between 10 and 20 votes. Yesterday I had 5 votes though and today only 1 so far. Has anyone else has noticed a drop in votes since the update on Wednesday? If so I wonder if this is because people are struggling to log on to the site.

Thanks very much.  

 

I've noticed that before this, I was getting  votes sporadically. Now, I'm getting nothing. I guess my project needs to fail, and be redone. Either that, or there are more login problems than we're hearing, but to go from little to absolutely nothing, and in your case 5 votes to 1 makes me think this is more widespread.

[parsom]

1 hour ago, Bricked1980 said:

This is a major hassle to be honest, I wonder why they've even introduced this code system, it's just another thing that might put people off voting.

On most days I tend to get between 10 and 20 votes. Yesterday I had 5 votes though and today only 1 so far. Has anyone else has noticed a drop in votes since the update on Wednesday? If so I wonder if this is because people are struggling to log on to the site.

I've also noticed this... Seriously, Lego, maybe try to outsource IT services to Poland, I've never seen such problems here...

[JGuy]

After seeing an EXPIRED project on "Top" on the home page, I'm now officially convinced the old style of the website was infinitely better.

[Graupensuppe]

I've only gotten one new vote on my latest project since the update, which is very unusual. Maybe people are struggling to re-activate their accounts? Or certain projects somehow lost their visibility? (Or maybe the counter itself isn't displaying properly anymore?)

[Bricked1980]

I've also noticed that previous staff picks seem to be randomly appearing at the top of the homepage replacing the previous " "top" listing which I believe was implemented to try and give new projects a better chance.

My project has never been staff picked before and it's my first time on Lego Ideas so not really sure how they select staff picks. Are there certain criteria that have to be met and is there anything we can do to boost our chances of being picked?

[parsom]

1 hour ago, JGuy said:

After seeing an EXPIRED project on "Top" on the home page, I'm now officially convinced the old style of the website was infinitely better.

Confirmed. I just noticed it also. Good work Lego, good work...

More to say - mixing Ideas projects with Rebrick entries is very strange and confusing idea.

Edited September 7, 2018 by parsom

[JGuy]

13 minutes ago, parsom said:

Confirmed. I just noticed it also. Good work Lego, good work...

More to say - mixing Ideas projects with Rebrick entries is very strange and confusing idea.

I agree.  Product ideas on the site always seemed to have more of a professional feel (even if not all the projects are professional themselves), but contests just seem out of control quite frankly.  And I for one am not really into the contests, so it's a bit frustrating to see them invading every aspect of the site.  I hope this doesn't continue to get worse.

Honestly everything on the site is quite fixable, if only the moderators would listen to feedback.  It seems that they are so focused on getting contests up and running (which isn't even the original purpose of the site??) that everything else has taken a back seat, which is quite frustrating.

Edited September 7, 2018 by JGuy

[icm]

When I go to Ideas, the first thing I do is log in.  Then I click the "Discover" link on the left side of the page and filter "Type" to "Product Idea."  The result is close enough to the site layout prior to the redesign that it doesn't bother me much.

Edited September 7, 2018 by icm
Typos.

[Modeltrainman]

Is it just me, or does it seem quite difficult to get something through Ideas? I've noticed that even really good projects tend to get to about 1000, and struggle. I admit, my projects need more work, but it's rather surprising.

[Graupensuppe]

16 minutes ago, Modeltrainman said:

Is it just me, or does it seem quite difficult to get something through Ideas? I've noticed that even really good projects tend to get to about 1000, and struggle.

I'm kind of surprised that no "mutual aid threads" seem to have formed yet, where everyone would be allowed to post his best project and in turn pledges to support all other projects in the thread.

[Modeltrainman]

We should have one! Where would we put it? Can we put it here, in the Embassy? I've read EB for years, but still getting a feel for it.

 

Edited September 7, 2018 by Modeltrainman

[Bricked1980]

Just wondered. Does anyone have any decent methods they use to promote their Ideas projects? I use Instagram to show pictures of my mocs. Have only had an account since July but now I've started to gain more followers I've noticed I get a few extra votes every time I post a pic of my Traction Engine on there.

I've tried posting on Reddit with mixed success and people don't seem to like it if you post about the same thing more than once, so Reddit, in my experience can only get you so far.

I've also been using Twitter but I'm finding it hard to build up a big enough following for my tweets to have enough impact.

The only obvious thing I've not tried yet is Facebook. I don't have a Facebook account and not sure I want to set one up purely to promote my Ideas project.

Can anyone recommend any other good methods? I was thinking about trying Imgur or Pinterest but I've no experience at all with either of these. Does anybody here use those sites and do you think these could be good places to showcase Lego Ideas projects?

[Modeltrainman]

34 minutes ago, Bricked1980 said:

Just wondered. Does anyone have any decent methods they use to promote their Ideas projects? I use Instagram to show pictures of my mocs. Have only had an account since July but now I've started to gain more followers I've noticed I get a few extra votes every time I post a pic of my Traction Engine on there.

I've tried posting on Reddit with mixed success and people don't seem to like it if you post about the same thing more than once, so Reddit, in my experience can only get you so far.

I've also been using Twitter but I'm finding it hard to build up a big enough following for my tweets to have enough impact.

The only obvious thing I've not tried yet is Facebook. I don't have a Facebook account and not sure I want to set one up purely to promote my Ideas project.

Can anyone recommend any other good methods? I was thinking about trying Imgur or Pinterest but I've no experience at all with either of these. Does anybody here use those sites and do you think these could be good places to showcase Lego Ideas projects?

I've tried Twitter, Reddit and Facebook, but on all 3, if you post the same thing too often, users get bored,  especially on Reddit, where they seem to be a bit hostile, sometimes. So far, Brickset and EB seem to be the most welcoming, but if it doesn't have a license attached, or an obscure one, Reddit doesn't seem interested. I've heard 'Go outside of LEGO communities, " but that seems to backfire, I've seen.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Modeltrainman

[Laura Beinbrech]

9 hours ago, Modeltrainman said:

I keep getting 'The activation code is not valid, please try again.' What could I possibly be doing wrong?

Yeah, I've been having the same exact issue, and despite chatting with two different customer support people, both Wednesday & Yesterday, I still can't get in, no matter what method I used to enter the exact activation code number they send me in my email.  The CS person I talked with yesterday said that they'd get back in touch with me via email, but so far no word from them yet... 

If they haven't got this fixed by Monday, I will be back on the customer support chat again, and I'll keep bugging them until they get this sorted out, because this is seriously getting ridiculous!  I have to jump through less hoops & generally have less issues getting into government sites I need to access at work than a simple site to vote on user submissions for toys!

[Modeltrainman]

13 minutes ago, Laura Takayama said:

Yeah, I've been having the same exact issue, and despite chatting with two different customer support people, both Wednesday & Yesterday, I still can't get in, no matter what method I used to enter the exact activation code number they send me in my email.  The CS person I talked with yesterday said that they'd get back in touch with me via email, but so far no word from them yet... 

If they haven't got this fixed by Monday, I will be back on the customer support chat again, and I'll keep bugging them until they get this sorted out, because this is seriously getting ridiculous!  I have to jump through less hoops & generally have less issues getting into government sites I need to access at work than a simple site to vote on user submissions for toys!

Thank you! Still waiting on a response myself. I guess maybe Monday.

[Blondie-Wan]

7 hours ago, Modeltrainman said:

Is it just me, or does it seem quite difficult to get something through Ideas? I've noticed that even really good projects tend to get to about 1000, and struggle. I admit, my projects need more work, but it's rather surprising.

It’s always been tough. As of this moment, there are 26,387 projects showing up on the site - stuff submitted anytime from when LEGO CUUSOO began way back in 2008 all the way up to a day or so ago, gathering support, expired, in review, approved, not approved, everything (minus perhaps a few dozen that were archived for one reason or another and don’t show up in site searches, but which can still be found via Google). Of those, 159 have gotten fully supported and made it as far as the review stage or later (including all the projects that have been approved and become sets and all those that were declined, as well as the twenty projects that have achieved support and/or are currently in review). (Note that includes two projects from the very early days of CUUSOO, when it was limited to Japan and projects needed only 1000 votes to be evaluated, so only 157 of those 159 actually went all the way to 10,000, though that also omits one or two projects which got to 10,000 but were then archived before formally entering review.)

In other words, only about 1 project out of every 166 gets fully supported and enters review - and then most projects are declined in review, too. So far, just 23 projects have been approved from those 26,387; that’s about one out of every 1,147, though that ignores the fact there are two batches of ten projects each currently in review. If we assume one project from each batch will be approved, the average improves slightly to about 1 out of every 1,055.

Granted, the total number of submissions there also includes 1,748 that are currently gathering support, and we can reasonably expect some of them to eventually make it, but by the time they do there will undoubtedly be many more submissions. As far as I’ve been able to tell, for a few years now the average chance of any given submission going all the way and becoming a set has held steady at around one in a thousand, or slightly worse. It’s hard, but not impossible.

[Modeltrainman]

1 minute ago, Blondie-Wan said:

It’s hard, but not impossible.

All those stats!  I had no idea! Thank you, sir!

[Bricked1980]

@Blondie-Wan those stats are very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing that.

10 hours ago, Modeltrainman said:

We should have one! Where would we put it? Can we put it here, in the Embassy? I've read EB for years, but still getting a feel for it.

I noticed you have set up a topic about this in the Embassy. How will it work exactly. Is it simply a case of anyone can post their projects on there but in order to do it you have to vote for all other projects in the thread as well?

I can imagine this would work ok to start with but if loads of people started adding their projects then it would be quite painstaking to sift through the entire topic voting for every project one by one.

I wonder if it would be possible to create a list of all the projects in the first comment in the thread. It could be updated every time somebody adds a new project.

[Graupensuppe]

4 hours ago, Bricked1980 said:

How will it work exactly. Is it simply a case of anyone can post their projects on there but in order to do it you have to vote for all other projects in the thread as well?

That was the plan. Voting for, I don't know, 100 projects doesn't seem so bad if one really gets the same number of votes in return.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Graupensuppe

[Modeltrainman]

3 hours ago, Graupensuppe said:

That was the plan. Voting for, I don't know, 100 projects doesn't seem so bad if one really gets the same number of votes in return.

Exactly!

[Elysiumfountain]

Hi everyone, I'm back! (It's been months since I've been here, everything's just too busy). 

I'm not sure what to think of the redesign, as I'm kind of just letting all my projects die a slow death. I do wish though that LEGO had included the option to resubmit. Like when your project expires, on your profile it could have a resubmit button that just allows you to change whatever you need and then resubmit the project.

[Bricked1980]

After some detailed research I have managed to isolate the key factor that will guarantee a successful and swift rise to 10,000 votes for any LEGO Ideas project. So I have therefore adapted my project to reflect these findings.

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present "Elon Musks' Space X Traction Engine".

I'm expecting 10,000 votes by this tomorrow please guys!  https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2a2ec583-9836-4868-8dc7-6b3bb0a2fe80

Edited September 10, 2018 by Bricked1980

[MAB]

On 9/8/2018 at 9:00 AM, Bricked1980 said:

@Blondie-Wan those stats are very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing that.

I noticed you have set up a topic about this in the Embassy. How will it work exactly. Is it simply a case of anyone can post their projects on there but in order to do it you have to vote for all other projects in the thread as well?

I can imagine this would work ok to start with but if loads of people started adding their projects then it would be quite painstaking to sift through the entire topic voting for every project one by one.

I wonder if it would be possible to create a list of all the projects in the first comment in the thread. It could be updated every time somebody adds a new project.

If LEGO saw something like this going on, I'd hope that they shut down all the projects involved. If you see a project you like, then vote for it. If you don't like it, then don't vote for it. Trading your vote isn't really going to work. 100 extra votes will do nothing. You'll need to get 1000-2000 or so to even be noticed by anyone looking for "good" projects sorting by the number of votes. But even if 1000 of you all vote 1000 times across 1000 projects, then that is 1000 of you on 1000 votes. So many that none will get noticed.

[parsom]

37 minutes ago, Bricked1980 said:

After some detailed research I have managed to isolate the key factor that will guarantee a successful and swift rise to 10,000 votes for any LEGO Ideas project. So I have therefore adapted my project to reflect these findings.

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present "Elon Musks' Space X Traction Engine"

Sad but true...