Mister Phes

Oh them were the glory days! Yer did fine all the same and thank you for taking the time to provide feedback! Ah yes, the challenge of making the contest accessible to those who may not be able to afford large quantities bricks. So rather than ban, would it be better to separate digital and physical builds into two different categories? With each category having its own prize? Another barrier to entry is time, so the Mini Set category allows people to enter who couldn't afford to spend many hours building a larger creation.

That is a massively awesome display! So yer had to rebuild yer collection as an adult? How many years has the collection to reach this size?

Well, at the current exchange rate 3,500 THB is $94.62 USD. However the eligibility threshold may vary from region to region, so while the threshold is the equivalent of $94.62 USD in Thailand, in other countries it may be different. So now we eagerly await the official announcement on that!

4 October, 2023 The set has been officially named LEGO® 40597 Scary Pirate Island. The new LEGO Creator set will be available from LEGO.com between October 13-22 with purchases (estimated) over US$100, although purchase thresholds and regional dates have not yet been officially confirmed.

Thank you for all your feedback regarding statistic and reporting! Well, that's the entire point of this topic. Not to dwell on the inadequacies of the recent contest, but to find solutions so I can avoid over exerting myself managing future contests. So to quote myself from the very first post of this topic:

And thank you for participating in the Creative Critic - your contributions were quite strong towards the end! Now, as a general statement to those who genuinely care; it appears the "I spread myself too finely across too many different fronts" descriptive failed to convey the monumental amount of time I spent managing this contest. After spending around 10 hours providing commercial services to clients, I'd then be up until 3-5 in the morning overseeing the contest. Every weekend I'd spend all day and evening, both Saturday and Sunday preparing everything for that weekend and the following week. Subjecting yourself to these hours for a prolonged period is not healthy - the contest wrecked me and towards the end I was severely burnt out. Furthermore, due to the vast amount of time it consumed, I've had to postpone other important aspects of my life. So when @F1stzz states"You've stated that final report is on its way — so let's finally bring it in, make the right conclusions out of the whole situation"; aside from mental exhaustion, I now must catch up on everything I've postponed because they have deadlines, and those deadlines are now looming. Not submitting your tax return by the due date time has unpleasant legal consequences for where I am! But I'm still not finished finalising the administrative aspect of the contest. I'm currently in the process of compiling the analytics report the LEGO Group requires so they can be assured their sponsorship is justified. I could go on, but I'm hoping that is sufficient supporting information to provide greater context to the situation as I do not feel obliged to divulge into every detail of my personal situation. Analyzing and reporting on the Creative Critic in further detail would make a fun blog post, but I can't think about that right now due to all the other things I must get done, lest I face those dire consequences!

Great find!

I'm not disputing that, but you've previously mentioned sporting organizations which generally have paid memberships, corporate sponsorship (beyond the prizes) and committees of people running them. An online AFOL community managed by a few volunteers in their spare time is in a completely different league and can't typically match the output of the examples you've provided. So pirates aside, please provide some general examples of AFOL contest reports so I understand exactly what is expected.

Ok, thank you for bringing this revelation to us So I can understand how this is done properly, could you please point me in the direction of reports from contests which other AFOL communities have hosted? Especially if they've hosted pirate themed contests. Observations based on the pirate themed contests I'm aware of: Brick Nerd's Pi-Rat contest winner announcement doesn't really provide much more elaboration than the Classic Pirates announcement and the LEGO Ideas 90th Anniversary Pirate Theme Celebration just says "Grand Prize" on the winning entry's page. While the Bricklink Designer Program provides no voting analytics nor any reporting on its review process to explain why those particular submission were selected for crowdfunding. Perhaps further information exists, I just haven't found it yet.

Thank you for your summation of recent events. This is the eight contest to be held in the LEGO pirate and contests are held in other Eurobricks forums regularly. We've never offered final reports before winners are announced and this is the first time there has ever been an issue - that I'm aware of. Yes, I could have provided a better response. However, I did not use the outdated calculations on August 21st to determine the winner, August 21st was the last opportunity I was able to update reporting. While I agree it doesn't do us any favours, often it's the only opportunity I have to reply. Otherwise, responses would need to wait until weekends and then things would move even slower.

I can relate to this very well! It's quite difficult to keep track of everything that's happening. It wasn't because he asked for the results, it's the way he approached the matter. In the first post of this topic, I provided a lengthy rationale as to why the contest eventuated the way it did and concluded there could be improvement. Yet he's completely disregarded those circumstances in favour of continual scrutiny, even though I've agreed with many of his criticisms and stated the information will become available when time permits. So I labelled him as self entitled due to his constant persecution rather than demonstrating the same patience others have. Perhaps I've misinterpreted his posts, but he seemed to be inferring because my efforts haven't met his satisfaction I should drop everything and provide the final Creative Critic reporting immediately. Maybe you agree with his approach and disapprove of how I've responded so I respect if you wish for no further interaction.

There's nothing wrong with asking, and I've told you why the information has not yet been made available yet you keep heckling me - if you just waited patiently there wouldn't be an issue. But your question was "So the votes for the entries is publicly available but where are the scores of the critics? I'm sure the critics would love to see some feedback for all the many hours of reviews and feedback that they gave to everyone" rather than how the results were calculated. As I've stated, it's the way you've approached the issue. I've already acknowledged the Creative Critic could have been better executed, but wasn't due to insufficient time and resources, yet you persist with further scrutiny. "Without feedback from the judges or explanation justifying the winner, I leave feeling like I wasted my time and am unlikely to participate in the future. [...] For me it is not a question of if I won, but instead would help me gauge if I want to participate in another such competition in the future. I would use the amount of effort I put in to help me gauge the amount of effort I would need to put into future such competitions to help me improve my efforts." Yes, I'm aware of that - it's not that I won't provide the final reporting, it's because I still haven't had time. I've explained this in multiple posts, but your refusal to accept the reason makes you seem entitled, as though you're expecting me to drop everything and provide you with the information ASAP. This discussion would have progressed very differently had you wrote something like; "When might final reporting on the Creative Critic be available?" Instead you make presumptuous statements like: "If it is too much work to do a complete analysis AND report on it, I know that future critic contests probably won't happen and have my answer." "But if the winner was selected with a statement like, "the leaderboard didn't change much after that point"? what confidence can one have in the integrity of the competition?" In regards to you request for feedback that was meant to be an analogy to describe your sudden departure, not an attack for requesting further information. Perhaps it wasn't the best choice of words, but I reply to these topics at 3 in the morning when the best choice of words often escape me. I agree with you. But as I'm repeatedly stating, there wasn't sufficient capacity to do this effectively for this particular contest, hence why this topic exists. And that's the recurring problem here. I agree with many your of criticisms and have explained why the contest eventuated the way they did... yet you seem to be ignoring that reasoning in favour of further criticism, rather than moving the discussion forward to find solutions for future contests. So despite what either of us has said, is it impossible for us to find common ground? To recap: I've explained why the Creative Critic eventuated the way it did and there's a lengthier explanation in the first post of this topic I've agreed that the reporting should be more transparent I've agreed there should be a deeper analysis and reporting on how the recent Creative Critic winner was selected And will provide that information when time permits.

This is why the Mini Set building category was introduced, and had I more preparation time, I would have introduced this category at the contest outset. But again, to make this work we'd need to divide the prizes accordingly. Instead of first, second and third place in a single category, we could have three categories with a prize valued corresponding to the part limit For example: Open - 215€ prize Medium 70€ prize Mini 35€ prize Final report has not yet been published, what was shared last weekend was just the winners announcement.

Aye, making contests accessible to those who can't afford bricks is imperative! Maybe we should separate digital and physical builds by category. But ultimately it comes down to prizes... under the current arrangement we're able to allocate prizes to a maximum of 5 winners, which is a limiting factor as to how categories can be structured.

That's not accurate; the votes from a couple of the dubious accounts were disqualified and I followed up directly one of the voters and can confirm he is indeed a real person who is not the builder that submitted the entries. I agree with this statement and now we've done the experiment by allowing votes from newly registered members, I confirm it is not worth the complications that arise. I also agree there should be a minimum post requirement to vote. I was thinking 10 posts minimum if the account was registered prior to the contest announcement, or 20 posts minimum after the contest has been announced.

How about to get started we grant you access to The Shipyard so we can help you find your true calling I agree there should be one clear goal, however there wasn't supposed to any branches, I assumed I was offering a simple "creative choice" with some flexibility. I.e. Either remake an existing classic pirate set or invent an entirely new pirate set in the classic style So in my mind remake a classic set = improve a set and create a classic set = create an original set But yeah, there's a lot more nuance there and confusion did arise with some assuming there were two separate Main Building categories.

You sure showed them!

Aye, a hidden forum for special contributors. A News Scout posts Pirate MOCs from the Pirate MOC Forum on the Eurobricks frontpage. Captain Braunsfeld posts a MOC every Wednesday, but we could use another News Scout to post one over the weekend. News Scout is a great entry level position because it doesn't require that much work. We don't have a graphic designer besides myself but just look at any graphics relating to the recent contest - that kind of thing.

Aye, but it wasn't intended to be a snarky remark, rather a statement of fact. But circling back to your initial question: In what capacity would you like to contribute? Just an assistant for contests or an ongoing role? I can certainly introduce you to The Shipyard and we can see where that leads...

Most of them probably won't but that's to be expected. Or am I wrong? How many have stuck round since the contest has ended? Some of them are posting in this topic. Regardless, the Creative Critic is a promotional activity and like all promotional activities, participation will be higher during the promotion. And the same can be said of building entries because we don't usually experience an influx of Pirate MOCs outside of a contest.

A lot of great ideas being shared! Frontpage recognition is something we already offer to volunteers. But we did have a far more incentivised approach extent 12-15 years ago when economic conditions were more favourable. eBay ads provided a generous income which we used to purchased reasonably priced classic sets and the 2008 sets were still retail price. So any time we wanted something done, we'd make a mini contest out of it. The first person to complete << insert task >> won a $5.00 8396 Soldiers Arsenal and BANG! We'd have 30 people rushing round to get the thing done. But times have changed and it's not financially viable to do that anymore, so maybe an exclusive monthly or quarterly raffle is feasible.

There seems to have be a miscommunication because I never interpreted your posts as making such a claim. I just clarified why you didn't win. That's certainly not the case, I was not inferring the judging critic competition concluded on August 20th, rather an update was intended on September 3 but preparing to publish the building entries consumed all the time. It was literally 3 in the morning and mental exhaustion had set in from working on collateral all day, so I had to call it night and weekend was over. But you have proclivity for twisting my words, whether this is deliberate or caused by factors like language barrier, I'm not yet certain. It's the way you approached this. Many of the contest participants have expressed gratitude and appreciation, while some have offered their support for future contests, whereas you've communicated from a place of entitlement. I.e. you expect a personal assessment because you're owed that for your time. Yet you've shown no empathy or understanding towards the many hours I've had to spend running the contest, and gone as far to downplay the efforts I did make selecting the critic. And I agree there should be a deeper analysis and reporting on how the Creative Critic was selected for the benefit of the critics who dedicated themself... and hopefully I can do that when time permits. But the problem is you seem to be inferring your time is more valuable than my time. Especially when you mentioned wasting your time, despite only participating on 4 of the 80 days. Time wasting works both way. Is it a wise to invest time in on someone who may disappear without warning? However, I have provided you feedback twice but I seem to keep missing the mark... so let's try a third time: Improve your sportsmanship and then we can start thinking about providing feedback on your critique. Thank you for your summary! The purpose of the Creative Critic is to stimulate forum engagement so the contest doesn't result in a forum filled with entry posts that only have 2 or 3 replies. As is typically the case with Eurobricks contests. Whether the builders engage with the critics is more of an added bonus. So the Creative Critic very much fulfilled its purpose and the LEGO Pirates Forum has not been that active since the early 2010s.

The LEGO Group provided the prizes for this contest as part of ongoing arrangement with Eurobricks. @Clone OPatra may have some insight into how often we can hold contests. And that is why it seemed important to lead by example! Which entry be that?

The map led our heroes to a mysterious island where Cortez's people hid a wonderful treasure 🌴👑 Only no one mentioned that this island was By Pata Lego Pata

Incorrect. This topic was intended from the very beginning. In fact, the entire contest has been somewhat of an experiment for the purpose of acquiring feedback for future contests. Due to the hap hazard nature of The Return of the Classic Pirates Contest I did not want to repeat the experience again. Therefore, better preparation for future contests was a priority and the shortcomings of this contest seemed like the perfect launchpad for discussion. Thank you - it nearly killed me several times, but I'm still here. Yes, I agree and I certainly wouldn't repeat that theme for a future contest any time soon. But in this scenario, Eldorado Fortress was being released and it seemed fitting to demonstrate to the LEGO Group and AFOLs how other classic LEGO Pirate sets could be modernised or conceptualised. I wanted stir nostalgia and excitement for the official sets and reactions like when @Yperio_Bricks expressed dissatisfaction regarding the upcoming LEGO Creator Pirates GWP 40597