These are people who, again, aren’t here. Complaining about them on anywhere except TV does nothing and, much like the other unofficial poll here on the site, TTV is going to disregard Dag’s results.
If people want to make a difference in decision-making they can come here and have a voice because this is an open forum. If they want to complain everywhere else, nothing will change.
This is something I’ve mentioned before in regards to the anti-contest crowd. If you read these canon topics, it’s usually the same handful of faces over and over. As divisive as the contests may seem, the average fan isn’t going to spend their time arguing on a specific board days on end. Most of the community just shows up to build mocs or vote, assuming they engage with the contests at all.
Remember, the discussion in the initial contests poll was pretty divisive but the polls themselves showed overwhelming support. Like, if I wanted to know how many people in my community eat meat but I only talk to vegans, that will skew the data quite a bit.
Average fan doesn’t even care what’s going on, he just submits moc and votes. If contest wasn’t about canon that wouldn’t make a change really for them
I can guarantee that some of the most active people in these contests, either in just the discussions here or actually entering, voted against.
They have been, and they’ve been ignored for supposedly not being “a statistical majority or even large group of people.” I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but again, the only sure way of knowing that is with a poll.
In Japan, there are many BINICLE fans like me, who form a unique BIONICLE community, and most of them want the contest to continue.
Some persons say they are not interested because they love LEGO as a whole and BIONICLE is not special, but even they do not deny the contest itself.
Yes.
If I were to hold a poll in “my community”, I am confident that the result would be overwhelmingly a desire to continue - because they (we) wanted the continuation of the BIONICLE world, not Gundam or Evangelion. And because there is hardly anyone out there who would deny the headcanon of others. Because we are not employees of LEGO.
But that’s probably not going to happen anymore, and even if BIONICLE does come back, it will most likely be a new story.
Therefore, we hope that the canon contest will continue as a new page in the history of the great G1 as we know it.
canon will never attack your wonderful headcanon. If they did, we Japanese fans would probably already be out in force criticizing TTV.
I have to admit, I hesitated once to write this. Because as a result of me saying this, I would be a complete conspiracy theorist lunatic if @Dag had properly held the Poll without doing anything improper.
But I really, really had to have my doubts, so I write this with determination.
@Dag’s Poll was very interesting, but I had one doubts - the number of BIONICLE fans on this tiny little island called Japan is far more than 1000 that I could verify.
(Furthermore, this 1000 people is the number in the community that I am aware of. If you add in the number of people I don’t know very well or don’t get along with personally but who same BIONICLE fan, the total is definitely over 2000.)
Even if only 1/10 of them answer, or even lower, 1/20, the number is still at least 50.
In other words, the number of votes cast by those who answered Poll must be more than 50 (either for or against).
On the other hand, the number of polls organized by Dag is so low that even if each site did its own poll, the number of votes would still be too low.
Remember, most of the BIONICLE Fan sites are English speaking. This is different from our community, where we don’t use English much and talk only in Japanese. There are just too many people there who can communicate normally.
And yet, the number of Vote published by Dag is far less than what is expected.
I don’t know if Dag didn’t provide enough time or if he deliberately manipulated the Poll results to attract the naysayers. I have no right to claim such a delusion.
But ironically, being in Japan, an environment that had not been blessed with BIONICLE’s product development, I have to admit that I have great doubts about Dag’s data.
Regarding Dag’s numbers:
One needs to be aware that in the poll determining whether there should be contests at all only a total of 490 people voted:
Dag’s sample size of 76 people is thus more than 15% of that.
Are you in any of the Discord servers that I polled in? I listed all of their names and individual results. If not, you have no frame of reference for what numbers are excepted. The Great Archives server, for example (the one with the highest percentage against the contests), has 67 members, and I would say less than 1/3 of them are really active. 12 people from the TGA server voted in total, which is expected for that server. Similar things happened in the rest.
And to reiterate, I have never once said that my poll confirms that the majority of the Bionicle community in it’s entirety is against the contests. What it does show, however, is that despite repeated claims by Eljay and others, there appears to be a slight trend against them outside of the TTV boards, which should be enough for TTV to do a poll themselves, and hopefully after the Hagah.
So why are you suggesting it? Just to cast doubt on my integrity even though you have nothing to base it on?
This is a good point that I’d never considered before; if there’s all these people against the contests, why is it only ever the same two people arguing against them here?
Thanks for the explanation. I’m still wondering, but 50% of my concerns have cleared up with your answer.
(I don’t think it’s a bad thing for TTV to schedule another Poll after the Lariska contest. If the voice that doesn’t want to continue the contest wins there, it’s correct to cancel. Which is a shame for me personally, but it doesn’t matter to the BIONICLE community around the world.)
Because if I didn’t deliberately declare this in advance, there’s a very high probability that someone would suspect me that way.
Again, I once hesitated to write this pure question. This is the reason.
(And I thank you for doing Polling, even though we have different opinions. In any case, I salute you again for you’ve decide to do something for the BIONICLE community.)
Ignoring activity outside the TTV forum is a very bad idea. Just because this is where the contests are held doesn’t automatically mean the only people who have a valid opinion are active here.
Considering TTV are part of a board of community representatives that includes people from BS01, Maskposting, etc., there’s no reason they should be ignoring the discourse outside of their immediate sphere. I don’t imagine they’re doing it deliberately, but it is noticeable.
This argument works both ways. And for the record, this is me arguing for diplomacy and transparency first and foremost. I imagine there will still be at least a small majority in favour of seeing the contests continuing.
This is certainly true, and ideally we’d want as many people polled as are voting in the contest polls (which is about 200, I think). But his numbers are statistically significant enough to call into question TTV’s logic of there not being that many people against the contests. If you polled even more people, I don’t think the picture would look that much more optimistic.
It’s partially a matter of stamina, and partially a matter of perceived majorities. The people that are still here arguing contrary to the perceived popular opinion obviously haven’t gotten tired of doing so (no rhetoric intended with that); and secondly are probably more comfortable with being in the perceived minority.
To give you an anecdote: I recently got into a discussion in another community where there was a strong pro-contest sentiment. Coupled with the fact that there was comparably little off-limits in the way of swearing or insulting, the vitriol towards people who spoke contrary to the popular viewpoint (including from mods) was enough to drive me and others away. Obviously, the message boards have far less of an issue, but people who perceive themselves to be in a minority will be driven away over time if they feel like they’re alone in the way they feel, and gravitate towards communities where like-minded people can be found.
You mean the contest polls or the cancellation polls? If the former, that doesn’t really indicate much. If the contests are already happening, people will still want to see a certain design win over another.
If people want to end the contests … maybe they should come to the place where they could make a difference and vote in the cancellation polls? Complaining about the contests offsite does nothing.
roughly 78 people voted against the contest in the original poll, which is about the same as Dag’s sample size. It could be a coincidence, but it’s my guess that there’s definitely some level of overlap.
I mean the cancellation polls. The users I mentioned are all people I’ve seen around on the boards during the contests’ duration. My point is that it’s not as if TTV boards members aren’t part of any other platforms, and there’s bound to be overlap between people voting here and people voting offsite.
I said anyone in the Discord servers I polled can see who voted. It was done through Discord’s reaction feature, which isn’t at all private. My not wanting to post who voted for what here was simply a courtesy, and one I wish could be kept. But as long as people are going to doubt the results, this is best proof I could offer.
What cancellation polls? The last one TTV did was after Helryx. And I even voted for the contests in that one. My reasoning then was, despite how poorly I thought Helryx went, I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt for being the first one, and hopefully Artakha would go smoother. While it certainly did, I now would prefer the contests fully stop.
What TTV seems to not understand is that opinions change.
Oh, from what I’ve seen and heard elsewhere they definitely would visit the TTV Message boards if there were cancellation polls. Same as they do for voting during the contests.
I would definitely encourage people to do that. My point is that TTV should be asking around to see what the other community representatives are saying about the discourse in their communities, because it seems like they’re getting stuck in a bubble.
Also, I know a few people who post occasionally here that are against the contests but don’t say so publicly. Maybe they should, but some people just won’t do for whatever reason. The two reasons I offered were that they can’t be bothered or don’t have time (considering how long discussions have been going on, I don’t blame them), or they don’t feel safe voicing their opinion (some people don’t like conflict or being contrarian).
Honestly, I don’t think anyone was doubting you. They were just skeptical about whether the results were indicative of anything.
That’s … not true. TTV is utterly capable of using common sense. Just because they aren’t bending to the desires of the handful of people in this topic and setting up a separate poll every contest doesn’t mean that they’re ignoring the people who want them to end.
I mean, TTV has already promised another poll. They can’t be blamed for wanting to at least get something positive out before having to slow things down with more polls.
Thank you, Hazash. This is correct.
At least I didn’t have any think like that.
But I know Dag’s reaction also correct, so I apologize him again. I’m sorry, Dag.
To be fair, they technically haven’t. They said they’d probably do one after Lariska. Might set a few minds at ease if they set it in stone, though.
I think what Dag means to say (however bluntly) is that TTV has used the argument that support was overwhelmingly in favour of the contests in the original poll as justification for not holding another cancellation poll, which isn’t a sufficient argument on its own.
Thank you for the apology.
I was about to say exactly this, going back to Eljay’s wording:
More of a possibility than a promise.
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean (and yes, I can be rather blunt).
We’re all guilty of it sometimes, but it’s not always necessary to get the point across. You make good points, so I’m just conscious that people won’t be convinced by them as readily if you’re not polite about it.
I am still asking for a poll immediately after the Hagah contest, though.
3 contests are more than enough to warrant that.
Furthermore, Greg’s answer on whether more contests could happen was the following:
“If the community was okay with this, I would be willing to do it.”
Therefore, it’s in the hands of the community to decide about each contest. Which means the community should also have the option to stop each contest. Which is not the case at the moment and TTV is going over the heads of the community by not giving that option.
How such polls will end up is to be shown, but withholding them is an injustice in my eyes.