BIONICLE G1 Canon Contests Discussion & Questions

LEGO BIONICLE
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1135

Alright everyone, now that we’ve had a little downtime, it’s time to get the ball rolling.

We’ve been listening to your feedback over the last month on what we might be able to do better. We’ve discussed this thoroughly and have made a few modifications to some rules, as well as developed two new ones.

For modifications, we have made a change to portions of Rule 4:

Additionally, we received a great deal of feedback and a large number of requests to disallow “joke entries.” The issue is that no one has offered a clear set of criteria of which we can judge a “joke entry.” Even the words of the creator of “Hoseryx” have changed throughout the duration of this process, leaving many in a state of uncertainty as to the true intent of the creation.

As such, we are not going to be instating any rules against “joke entries.” We will, however, be instituting the following two rules:

This allows us the ability to maintain the structure of these contests, and do our best to keep the process civil and as focused as possible. Rule 11 is not one we had any intention of making, and to this moment we aren’t happy that we have it. Its reason for being is due to the great amount of feedback we received, and in part due to our great disappointment with a large amount of discourse we bore witness to.

In addition, we’ve posted the rules for the Art Contest. You can check those out in the first post.

And that does it. We’re going to give everyone until Wednesday to soak these in and provide their feedback. Thank you for your help and patience. We’ll be paying attention and awaiting your thoughts and opinions.

33 Likes
1136

What if the one breaking the brigading rules is not the entrant of the MOC?

5 Likes
1137

Does this mean that someone not part of the contest can get an entry disqualified by doing this?

2 Likes
1138

Then the entry stays, but the vote get subtracted.

No.

Clarified.

7 Likes
1140

(@Kini_Hawkeye I think it’s time to call a doctor)

Thank you so much for taking the time to go through feedback and trying to establish a set of new rules that will hopefully accommodate the wide majority of people. Y’all don’t need reminding, I know, but you’ve done a phenomenal job working on making these contests as fair and as accurate to the fans’ wishes as possible, and I respect that.

8 Likes
1141

I disagree with this inclusion, a lot actually, but I realize you guys have been fairly thrown through the ringer with all this so I’ll just leave it at that.

2 Likes
1142

I understand, and as I said, we never wanted to make it and we’re not happy we have it. It’s frustrating, and we’re going to hope we’re never forced to use it or put into a position where we’re pressured to use it… but it’s where we are now.

7 Likes
1143

Giving in to pressure is rarely good…

1144

I agree, however in this instance it wasn’t a matter of succumbing to pressure.

We weighed the pros and the cons, and we’ve been paying close attention to the feedback we’ve been receiving. Obviously, it was a lot of feedback to take in and we didn’t want to shoe-horn it in during the entry or voting periods. So this short break will do, and it helps us garner any further feedback we may not be considering before we move forward. It’s all very tricky and we’re trying to take care to balance as much as possible.

12 Likes
1145

I think there is a lot to be said about the issue of a vocal minority.

1 Like
1146

Maybe. But it doesn’t make any concerns any less valid, and still worth considering.

7 Likes
1147

Absolutely the right call to make. I understand the reluctance to implement it, but it’s a tool that was desperately in need of. And if I can be perfectly frank, I think a lot of the push-back to it will only be from bad actors. Yes, it is technically putting one’s faith into the competition runners to not abuse that power at their own discretion, but at this point, for the middle-ground, wishy-washy people who don’t know whether to trust you guys to make that type of call, if Greg supporting these contests through TTV wasn’t enough to prove your integrity, then the sole fact that Hoseryx at no point was officially disqualified by you guys should be more than enough to prove it. Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, it’s willful ignorance or malevolence.

11 Likes
1148

I (almost) apologize for the inanity that I’m about to lay before everyone here, but I’m too much of a perfectionist to let this slip away.

Let’s take a look at MOC/Art Contest Rules 6e-6g, governing the use of custom pieces in 3D renders of a MOC:

From these rules, we can ascertain a few important points:

  • An entrant using a 3rd party‘s custom piece must provide a link to the free source for that piece.
  • An entrant utilizing a custom piece of their own design must provide a link to the free source of that piece at the time of entry (emphasis important), or within three days of entry.
  • An entrant utilizing a custom piece of their own design agrees to make that custom piece freely available under a Creative Commons license for perpetuity.

All very cool points, obviously laid down with the intent of open-sourcing custom pieces in the interest of making a winning design accessible to the fanbase. I like that.

However, there’s a snag that I’ve found, that perhaps is covered elsewhere (though I couldn’t find a close for this loophole in the rules themselves). The agreement to bind custom pieces to a permanent Creative Commons license only applies in the case of an entrant submitting their own custom piece. If I were to win the contest with a 3rd party’s custom piece, that 3rd party can, after the contest is won, decide to close the source for that piece.

Maybe this is separately covered in the agreements made by third-party modelers when they agreed to lend their parts to this contest (or more specifically, when they will agree to lend their parts to future contests, as I believe this is being handled on a case-by-case basis). Maybe I didn’t read the rules thoroughly enough. Either way, I figured I should say something about the loophole I perceived.
(Kids, take note: this is what happens when you stay up too late for too many consecutive nights.)

4 Likes
1149

This rule should’ve existed from the day one. We trust you with holding the contest so we should trust you with keeping it from falling apart.

2 Likes
1150

Astute observation, and one I can help explain… though the answer likely won’t satisfy everyone.

Many 3D modelers have taken a swing at creating their own versions of any given mask, be it Helryx’s, or Tuyet’s, etc. Since it’s been now over 10 years since the story ended, and well over that since some of these characters were introduced, there has been plenty of time for 3D modelers to attempt it. As such, many of these mask designs and pieces have already been made.

The distinction here is that if you’re entering the contest with something you made yourself, specifically for this contest? That’s brand new and designed with the intent of winning at some point down the line. It has never existed before now and may never have until this prompt. (Note: We are aware that there is some overlap here, since we had 3D modelers who had mask designs made, but also created MOCs and entered them with those pieces. So this rule would apply to them in these instances).

As such, the level of control we have (I say this loosely, since we really can’t “control” people or their actions) is greater than if the design existed previously. If they’re entering it into the contest specifically for the contest, they have to abide by our request to leave it open so long as they want their entry to be eligible.

However, that only goes so far. Because if at any point that person opts to restrict the mask behind a paywall, via Shapeways or some other means… there’s really nothing we can do. We’re only able to enforce our rules here. Which is why we managed to make the arrangement that we only require a free source, but that doesn’t stop anyone from putting their models up for sale as well.

TL;DR: If a 3rd party closed the free source for a piece that won in a contest, there is nothing we can do about it.

All that can be done is to encourage downloading it. It’s why we asked for links to the file be made free and public - to allow individuals to print the files themselves, and/or to archive them in the instance of the source becoming a paid source again.

It’s a balancing act of catering to those that are concerned that creators will monopolize pieces, but also trying to respect the creators right to monetize them.

Hopefully that makes sense and answers the question.

And we trusted the community to conduct their discourse in a respectful manner that would avoid such a situation. This is a two way street, and clearly we had a lesson to learn.

We have a lot of opinions on this rule and how we feel about it, and I’m eager to share those thoughts after the contest is over. But for now, I want to wait.

10 Likes
1151

Understandable and pretty much exactly the conclusion I’d arrived at when I posted it. Thanks for the confirmation and clarification.

4 Likes
1152

Well, this isn’t your first day on the Internet, right?

1153

The new rules look pretty water-tight. (Minor point: Is “photos” the right word in the art contest rule 4?)
Hopefully the presence of rule 11 will discourage people wasting their time with bad-faith entries in the first place, so that power won’t have to be used.

Are there any updates to the voting system at this time?

1 Like
1154

It doesn’t matter.

Not currently. I want to do some public testing before the art contest voting begins, just to have the visual before we implement anything.

7 Likes
1155

Are there any rules for the art contest yet?