SaperPL

How is the grip/traction on those sleek tires? Are those rubber like or are those more like plastic? I'm also wondering how this kind of surface will age on the rubber tire because if it'll go bad over years, then I'd think about stocking up on those :D

That would be true for the contests with public vote, in which I can accept that people do chose what they like, and that's why I keep talking about making contests with a fixed/defined size. But when I argued about the bigger models having more features being pay2win-like, there was response that it's not true for the jury vote and that there are multiple contests for where it wasn't true, and also for example TC20 in which I took part had entries removed from podium for not perfectly following some criteria despite being awesome and most voted. So my whining is about ambiguity of one contest being different to another when it comes to approach to handling same or similar criteria, even within one contest similar thing can be treated as disqualifying for one entry and acceptable for another. And for this specific contest, I actually did go through like all of Technic sets before I decided to go with that truck, while for example not going for extreme adventure because I assumed not being able to have the same color panels would be disqualifying similarly to how Samolot's tow truck was treated because he used panels, where in that contest it was really pedantic when it comes to going "as close as original" despite the rule of a thumb being stated in the comments that it just needs to be instantly recognisable, while in this contest it seemingly wasn't so pedantic since you could've had the different color scheme. And I think it's kind of understandable among community here that colors matter because of specific parts ability in specific colors. And again - this argument that I should already know that it works like this is not valid for me because for me it's not that I'm not winning, but I'd like more people to take part in the contests because in contests with a lot of entries, there often are multiple interesting ideas or building techniques that you can later get inspired from. But if the contests is strictly made around catering to the people that are already understanding how they work, it gets harder for the outsiders to get in and feel welcomed.

It also shows that the contests should be about specific scale size of the build - then it would be either that we are all building big models and don't expect premium quality of the model, or we are all building something small and it is required to do a good job if you want to win. If we make a contest in which both approaches are valid, then often the bigger the better wins despite being less quality because of the time. But here we come back to my old argument about it becoming pay2win-ish because you need more parts to do it. Of course you could find different weak points in some of my models, and I agree that going specifically into details of what type of implementation is not okay, what approach to looks etc, is again like going towards infinite detailed requirements. But we're not there yet. We have one word "build quality" in the criteria in most cases. For me it's not okay to make a model that has barely any turn angle on the steering, or wheels touch the wheel arches, so the steering function isn't made properly, using techniques like putting a piece of an axle in non-stud-based distances in a way that something barely holds on an axle or using other invalid types of connections. For example in my opinion front suspension on the arocs was an invalid technique as it either used pins in a way they were detaching from their corresponding pin holes when suspension was working, or the bars (rigid hoses cut down to size) guiding the springs and keeping the suspension in place where sliding in those pins which means they were either lubricated or modified in such way to not have friction anymore. But from the early photos it seems as it was the first one. I would define what quality is supposed to be for use in multiple contests, not the specific one. And I would definitely state that illegal techniques are low quality, low rigidity is low quality, just marked-up functionality is low quality (like steering barely working), having to crank 100 times for a function is low quality and also if you have to speed up to video 8 times to show how your crawler moves with RC, then it also is a low quality. Put the looks requirements into that and it would be enough where we'd end up with quality being defined by like 12 criteria for everyone to understand what the quality means for those contests. I don't know how else to put it: just winging some core feature including the build rigidity and techniques used shouldn't be ignored and should be equally penalised as some looks deficiency and smaller amount of functions for builds that are perfectly fine with the rigidity and building techniques. And it should be clear for everyone at the beginning of the contest that it works like this or that we're doing something like a redbull soapbox races where it's okay for the model to fall apart easily. EDIT: Also I think that it should be clear whether awesomeness/originality is treated as part of main checkpoints or on top just on top of that. For me it would be more fair if those would be used to decide between two entries that are equal in points scored on the checkpoints, while allowing awesomeness and originality into the base checkpoints means that you can ignore/compromise on some of the checkpoints if you have a plan to build something awesome and this is what creates ambiguity where historically in some cases entries were disqualified/removed from podium and in other cases it was allowed. So it should be clear how it works, at the beginning of the contest.

Yes, but then it would be clear cut outcome. And for me the bigger problems than who wins are the problems of either seeing that you misunderstood what was okay to do and what was not, only after results are out, and also that for some they may not understand why their entry was so low in the rating. Both of those create a feel that whatever you do in the next contest, you may fail again without understanding what you did wrong, and without control/choice about how to approach next contest, not specifically to win, but to get better at this. If we have more of those checkpoints that are clear to everyone, it should be clear for everyone if those with awesomeness factor win in the end, and it should be also clear that going against specific checkpoints should be penalised. The problem situation comes when some compromises are acceptable while other are treated as low quality and it is not clear before the contest is judged. It gets even more tricky when originality or awesomeness is involved - going for original/awesome should not mean you can disregard the checkpoints and it will feel unfair for someone to be judged better on the awesomeness/originality scale and winning despite skipping core checkpoints. But I agree with your sentiment - so far those contests are about seeing entries that are looking awesome and originality has a higher chance of winning than just making a solid design perfectly covering all bases including quality on par with the sets/premium instructions. This is a complex topic, so I wouldn't expect arguments in few sentences to cover all the bases.

well, mainly my point is that it should be clear what is supposed to be valued in the contest and what not. Especially when you need to pick a set or some type of vehicle to recreate which means you should decide what is okay to not deliver perfectly in terms of contest vs what will be penalised if you don't deliver on that specific quality/criteria. Since we do all treat quality differently, then it should be clear in the terms what the quality is supposed to be in the specific contest. And also it's okay if each contest would have different approach to quality/value different things. But if those are only clear after the contest is voted on/judged, then it's always going to be (and not only feel!) unfair to those getting the shorter end of the stick if that wasn't clearly laid out. The question is - maybe the contests should have requirements for quality photos then? That you have to reserve time for yourself to make them good enough? Or clear indication that in popular vote you may be judged worse simply because of lower quality photos. Your videos are not that crap, they have poor resolution/bitrate and some light settings could be better, but you have the shots stabilised having camera on a stand. A lot of people make off-hand videos where focusing on a details is hard. You also have a good background for photos and video.

I'm not sure if that's that, but rather: this - I feel like there's a cultural difference between east and west, where west is tied into giving only positive comments mindset because that's supposedly polite while criticising things is supposedly impolite - but that's not productive to not give any feedback. Even when it comes to presentation - there are people who are making pretty interesting models, but because they don't feel like it's about how good the photos are, in popular vote there will be a fraction of people who will treat whole model as less quality one, as well as better photos meaning better chance of them being featured on the front page or by some external sites like TLCB. But you need to give those people feedback that they can and should do better with the photos and give them ideas how. This will again come down to figuring out who's the worst and places in the middle being a bit random if there is a clear winner. If everyone were to score every entry between 0-10 points with instruction to look at 5 criteria and subtract 1 point if criteria is not perfectly followed, and subtract 2 points if it's way more than just imperfection, we could have an overall score. For Jury it could be more granular than 2 points each. If we don't add up, but state those criteria/categories for each entry, we could potentially have different awards for best looks, best mechanics, originality and so on. But still there is a problem of community having to rate all entries that gets bigger the more entries we have, but I'm not sure if that is a bigger problem when given instruction on how to rate each separately instead of having to figure out which one is better. There's still the problem of those who will be lazy and just won't follow that, but maybe more complex rating of every entry is something that should make those more lazy ones not take part in the voting if they are not treating it seriously/according to criteria? There should be something about building techniques (some originality of that?) and quality of the build in terms of reasonable robustness, as well as playability: do you have to crank 100 times to lift something or change the position of an excavator arm or is it just something "poseable"? I feel like those values get lost in the contests because we got used to youtubers (not only the ones doing Technic, but also building PCs, model/3d printed aircraft etc) doing projects that look awesome, but are not of the same quality as you'd expect from a product, simply because they are building those just for the sake of the video/making content. They don't need to be on par with whatever type of actual product they are being compared to, because they are just for the sake of content. And so here's the question - should we apply different metrics of build quality between contest entries and lego sets or premium instructions? The fact that there are entries where someone makes a build for the contest first with approach to fit specifically the spirit of the contest while rebuilding it in different approach for the instruction shows that there is something wrong here. If someone makes a compromise like that for the contest to have the best looks because he will score the best there, he should also be penalised for not being able to deliver the full build quality, the same as my model should have been penalised for not delivering full functionality. OR it should be clear that this kind of approach to build quality is not part of the contest criteria, so at the start we would know that either it's not a contest for us, or we would have better understanding on what to pick and where are the risks to not deliver on the quality criteria.

If you take a look at TC20, which had public vote first and jury afterwards is an interesting case of community choice vs what jury "disqualified" and thus so what ended up on podium. The main voting criteria was replicating studded sets as close as possible with studless Lego Technic, so just from the rules you could figure out that the point of it is to recreate those frame/edge built models with holes, just with liftarms, which effectively could be boring replacement of beams with liftarms. But once the discussion and questions about the rules went on, you could figure out that you are supposed to go with modern approach with panels and rule of the thumb is just that the model should be instantly recognizable. Because of this ambiguity, quite a few people went on to build models in modern standard where the holes and gaps are supposed to be closed, and the model winning by popular vote by most amount of points, was removed from podium because of the modern approach with panels, but once you'd check it against others who used panels, it's like it was disqualified for using panels in just one spot on both the sides of the tow truck. So one thing is that criteria not being fleshed out could mean completely different perception of what the contest is supposed to be about between contestants and jury, second thing is that contest shows that people may also vote completely different than jury. Finally note that since there are different outcomes between jury vote and public vote, if the method is decided at the beginning, your approach to picking out what to do and how to do it may differ. And therefore changing the method of choosing who ends up on the podium after the beginning of contest may not be right if there was ambiguity in the criteria, and such change happened when jury vote was added on top of public vote. If popular vote winners not being on the podium because of how jury voted isn't an example of jury picking "wrong winners" as you said it in context of what majority of voters picked, then I don't know what is...

For two entries that are similar quality it can happen the same way if they alternately land on similar spots. For three that alternately land on similar spots it can also be the case and so on. It's easier to get to that situation if scoring criteria are not that clear or when we have community voting and you so people don't want to be too harsh on overall good entries. The more specific criteria for penalty are, the faster the first pass will be. With a clear outline of what should the points be subtracted for each criteria, first pass could be like running a checklist for each entry. Actually having to decide which entry is better or worse against multiple of them is really hard until you've listed yourself specific quality scores. If you already do that in the jury vote or community vote that everyone scores on each criteria, and then it's translated into the positions - there's a room for gerrymandering-like translation of results in this approach and some of the entries will be misrepresented. If you don't do this criteria scoring internally before translating it into the positions, then jurors are just picking what they like, I guess? So it's similar to community vote but maybe more organised and quicker. It still is hard to choose the order without preparing clear data. If it's clear what the penalties are going to be for, what is supposed to be judged and how, and then we end up with multiple entries taking spots on the podium because all of them are close to perfection and having same scores, it is only then that it becomes a problem of the second pass of rating just those that are fighting for the podium. At that point jury could start adding rules for penalties increasing the quality bar this way. Depending on how clear criteria and penalties are in the first place at the start of the contest it will better or worse when it comes to resolving issue of entries having same score. The more vague the criteria are and more room they leave for interpretation, the more room there is for quality entries scoring same max amount of points. It's the same when you have to pick entries in order and not just pick what you like more but adhere to the criteria that are not clear enough for you to easily penalise entries.

I beg to differ on that, the internal structure of chassis / steering isn't something that would be acceptable build quality for Lego as a set and also Akkasin did state that he wants to make a separate improved build for instruction, while the one submitted for contest was with implementing everything as close to original as possible, which he did. I guess I have a different standards for build quality, and so does Lego btw... Anyway congrats to the winners, and hopefully more of the entries will be preserved in form of instructions.

Well, there are different people and they have different motivation when it comes to taking part in a contest. If you're only taking into account this point of view that it's about having friendly community build challenge and it should by only about fun of building etc because that's how most of the consecutive contestants view this and not taking into account potential views of people outside this group, then it might be a survivor bias if that's the base for deciding whether current approach is good or not. Also if you react in a way that this point of view is only the correct one as this is how contests were envisioned to be, then you may not have a lot of people even consider stating their point of view that is different. If we want contests to have more participants and quality entries, then maybe we shouldn't limit ourselves to the views of the people who already are taking part in contests consecutively? @Jim After the ruling of this contests, I have two questions hoping that you'll explain it: The requirement for having a discussion topic with some actual progress. My perception so far was that in the spirit of the competition we should be able to see side by side what kind of build everyone is making. Of course it's not there in the rules, so now after how this contest podium looks, is it okay to not show anything throughout whole contest period and drop everything ready with some historical steps of how the build came to be, in last day before the deadline? You noted in the results that being last in this exact contest doesn't mean the entry was so bad as all the entries were really high quality and it was tough to decide between each other. Wouldn't it make sense to have jury score each submission on each criteria and give out like 0-5 or 0-10 points for each criteria and then this would be summarised between jurors? In both cases of how you scored it currently and in case of giving a specific score for criteria, there is a chance that we'll have two entries with same amount of points, with higher possibility of it happening in the scheme proposed by me, and so requiring second step of ruling which one is better, but the current used approach requires every juror to decide specific order which seems really hard. With scoring, I would expect results in the current contest ending up with 4th place being populated by multiple people and then 5th place being populated by multiple people, but it'd represent the quality of the entries reasonably well. This would work as long as we're not stuck with many people on the first place in the score.

This is how it supposedly works like now when you end up in situation where all entries are high quality according to the voting criteria/base theme/topic of the specific contest. What happens then is that submissions with more features/bigger will win against the smaller ones, when both "score" 100% on all other voting criteria, despite in theory competition theme not being about who can build something bigger with more functions. So it's not necessarily problem of it being fair as long as it would be clearly stated that in such situation where everything else is on par, the jury will pick a more complex build with more functions which often means a bigger model - the problem that I'm picking the fight about is the clarity of that situation and effectively contest inclusive for newcomers. It's like making a race open to casuals only to allow professionals to take the lead anyway for example because they have sponsors and better cars and you're just entering with your everyday family car - a lot of people simple won't bother participating in something like that. That is why I'm picking a fight with rules of some of the contests (not all) being precise enough to be inclusive to people who don't have the same amount of time and spare bricks to build bigger things. Yes, but also are there any art competitions without specific rules of what the theme and format is supposed to be? I'm curious if that reference even makes sense here. Someone has used car shows as a reference, but we're like making casual contest about car show where most of people thing they are supposed to bring a car, and then there's few guys that come in with trucks and excavators and people just love it for being so unique on a car contest. I think the best way to make the competitions fair and clear is to specify a size - this way if an entry needs to be bigger, those who don't have time will know it doesn't make sense for them to participate, and they won't feel like they're wasted their time after participating if they lose to bigger entries. But making it this way would make those people ask for contests in specific size requirement they are okay with next time.

The will still be compared to each other if both recreate the original to the same degree... Yep, the specific scale, not necessarily small (although it seems to have shown good results with TC18 and few others) is something that works well.

Since you're already dropping ideas for future contest: Fixed size requirement doesn't necessarily need to mean a small model. A 1:8 or 1:10 supercar-sized contest could be interesting as we have some experienced builders doing those here from time to time. From my perspective it would be clear how big your model needs to be to compete against others this way. Such requirement might mesh well with RC-based contest as well :)

Yep, I'm blind, thanks! . It's like with the saying that goes: The Best Place To Hide A Dead Body Is The Second Page Of Google :D

I think I ate "all" in my sentence. My point was is there a thread listing all previous contests that is pinned... Can you point me in the right direction? I may be blind/not knowing where to look for it. I don't see anything like that pinned in this section. Unless there is an index thread for whole forum will all sections/themes contests? I did try looking for it through search function assuming that it will be a topic that has technic and contest in its title, but I didn't notice anything like a list of contests.

@Jim is there a place where are previous contests are linked? If not, wouldn't it be good to have a pinned post with all previous contests where you could reach the contest description and entries? I remember someone posted a compiled list from the beginning to a specific contest some time ago in this discussion, but it's not the same as some pinned access to historical list of contests.

Well, in context of this contest we could still try to convince do so in this contest since there's a lot of high quality entries here :) Well yes, but should this be a proper approach? If someone followed thread to see the final result and the final result is posted in separate thread and not in the original one? Also you can simply update the opening post like I usually do when the project is finalised. I get that it can get under radar of moderation and not be frontpaged because of that, but is there a reason that old thread that was showing a progress to not be front paged? Like an actual advantage of having a fresh topic without many comments or disadvantage of topic already having more than one page? For me this is the best part of this forum that people are making WIP threads here and this way you can see some ideas being analysed and tested, some pitfalls where others already failed and so on. The best part of the adventure is the journey and not the destination if you know what I mean :)

But that could be the contest completion reward and additional motivation for people to participate and do good in the future contests. Also this is something that is counter-intuitive for me with frontpaging the topics against work-in-progress topics - it feels to me that if you come in with a complete MOC with great photos right when creating a thread, you have a big chance of it being frontpaged, but for topics that were work in progress and were updated with great photos when the project is finished, it's harder to be front paged since they are not new threads and so it's harder for them to be spotted by moderation. What is counter intuitive in this for me is that it's a place where people do WIP threads and especially when you require doing them for the contest and then you're not frontpaging those feels like additional penalty for them being part of the contest if they didn't win, when it could've been a reward. You will be judging those and it's not like in other cases where someone from moderation has to specifically spot that an existing WIP thread was updated with good photos. I'm not talking about frontpaging every entry, just the ones that are up to the quality to be front paged. I feel like the WIP threads that come out with great models and quality photos in the end are something that the forum should be proud of, and also frontpaging them is additional opportunity for those checking out what's new through front page to notice them and share them to other sites/communities, which effectively brings more people to the forum. But I guess that's just my opinion here...

@Jim is there any chance that after the results are out, to have all those quality entries that won't fit the podium frontpaged? Not all at once, but maybe spread over some time?

This is an interesting angle here because if I were to give it a go at shrinking down the crane, I would probably try to go with separate knobs for separate functions right away, like I did with my tow truck - the original model had the function switch on gearbox parts as well. This trade off decision between playability / rigidity and fully remaking the original functions is a challenge for more complex and more interesting sets like this one.

Can't the last design, the one on the bottom, be used here though? It looks like you could have that LBG pin on the left side of that sticking out pin hole riding on the middle axle if you only have just one connector there on that yellow axle.

Does it have to be rigid? does the sticking out pin hole need to be a pin hole, can't it be an axle? Is there any clearance around this sticking out pin hole? If that's supposed to be fixed, then I'd assume you could use at least one stud beside it to reinforce it. Here are my attempts, I'd put a bet that the last one is something that could be useful, unless the other two pin holes in black connectors on the sides are important:

Yes, it could mean that, but still - we have a single line with few sentences where each voting criteria is stated as single or few words. And I already stated that it would make a lot more sense to me, for a contest with 4 criteria to make a 5 sentence paragraph for each explaining how they will (by jury) or should (by popular vote) be judged. It means that it would grow from few sentences in one line to few paragraphs and total of 20~ish sentences. The defense of single line of criteria with the argument of going to infinity is like if we add anything more, we keep adding more and more, which is not true, because it will depend on how well the criteria are outlined in those paragraphs. Of course if there would be a more interesting topic where criteria would be more tricky to explain, it could require more explanation, but it would either mean that we should do it for that specific contest, or the idea of the contest having to rely on something needing so much explanation may not be a valid one. About stifling creativity - exactly more precise rules make it so that you need to be more creative to tackle the challenge. Yes - too much would be stifling, but I'm not asking for too much, but for good enough so each contest topic is not mostly about asking for interpretation of criteria. Don't use the argument of infinite detail where I never asked for infinite detail. Also don't prove a point because someone may get offended doesn't work on me. You extrapolated to Infinity to prove a point which I wasn't fighting against to begin with - yes, if you go to Infinity with detailed requirements, it will be paralysing for the contest, I agree, but that is beside the point.

There was a strict rule about the size which I already argued that it's good to not make the contests about who can build bigger, so you're just confirming what I said, while there's some who say with open rules being able to build bigger model because of more time and bigger repository of parts is like genetics in sport... TC18 is indeed a great example of having clear rules that are open, but not every contest was clear like that. Again with the extrapolation to infinite. You're simply not right here and it's not a valid argument. You're defending one line of voting criteria and putting infinity as the opposite option. Do I have to draw an axis proving there are numbers like 5 or 12 between number 1 and infinity? As I stated multiple times - there is an example of a contest (TC20) where entry winning by popular vote was then disqualified by jury through the interpretation of the rules that wasn't obvious despite being asked about and answered differently at the beginning of the contest. I already suggested that long time ago that the process should be jury vetting the entries against criteria first and then choosing those who were accepted into contest by jury by popular vote. This is something that also gives community a moment to respond and discuss the jury's interpretation of rules and maybe if someone would be unfairly disqualified, the bigger community would decide before popular vote. But I guess this kind of system stretches out the contest in time and means double the work on choosing the winner... Also I actually went over the criteria with a spreadsheet in both previous contests where I took part and wanted to be fair in casting a vote, but I get that not everyone will go this far. Thanks for explanation. But looking at that thread, it kind of makes sense to me? Unless you edited it out in the opening post, you didn't really have much explained what is your initial plan in digital model until you've shown your first video of a chassis. As Jim explained, the number of views and replies has nothing to do with how people vote. On a side note here, there's also a freshness effect, where if people looked at something for a long time, simply a newer thing is better for them, so finishing the build or just digital design early on may work against you in a popular vote...

Looks really good, but what blows my mind is that cut into the telescopic gear rack assembly between two gear racks. Why not ensure that gear rack ends won't be directly matching plate ends there? Wheels are sometimes touching the wheel archers when turning and I've also got a feeling that it's not by design, but because how weak some of the chassis structure there is. I wish Lego would already acknowledge that we should have proper steering hubs with input for this scale. I didn't know that this set had just one motor and so many gearbox switches, that's insane. And that's a lot of cranking in your model, but I guess can't do anything about it if you want to stay true to the original.