It’s polls all the way down!
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“They are a cohesive unit” does not logically lead to “they should be run at the same time”, there should be something between those statements. The more contests are being ran at the same time, the more chaos it causes, the more incohesivenes is there. What is a “different levels of priority”? Like Lego invents new pieces before 4th contest that were not available in 1st contest?
Running contest with ~350 entries and four entry topics and making the whole new formula of running a contest is an easier option? I don’t know, but I, personnaly, think that not, it’s not easier.
@ToaArcan single contest is: 2 weeks for entries (can be shortened for Hagah, as people can prepare them before the entry period, as all the rules are the same), 1 week for polls and results. Something like 6 more days for calculating the results and stuff and stuff. 80 days for 4 contests instead of 20 for 1 contest. The 2 months. If The TTV Cast is ready to make all 4 at the same time, I think they can pull it off without too big gaps between those (I don’t know for sure here though). I also have little bit more of such calculations in my origianl post (slighlty more optimistic).
Original post qoute
Wait, isn’t that the definition of “making Hagah cohesive” and our ultimate goal?
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After rereading your part 1 I think your logic is a bit funky. I get were you are coming from but I don’t think its gonna be mathmatically probable that we’ll get two of the same Hagah unless people more or less vote on hagah that only look similar. So far from the Hagah I’ve seen people post has been full of diversity I think I’ve seen 4 Hagah that are similar in colorscheme and 2 of which was very close build wise.
The problem with staggering the votes however is as I mentioned in my last poll that the first voted Hagah more or less decides the other contest results. Which means that i.e Pouks is first if I wanted to enter a Bomonga I had to design/redesign my moc to corespond with the winning moc if I want to even have a chance in the contest. Doing them simuntaneously allows everyone who wants to compete in the contest equal opportunity to win. By letting people weed out the least desirable designs.
Also by running them simuntaneously people will most likely chose individual Hagah with different qualities they want to see for them.
The problem though is that it excludes people with a different visions of the characters apperances. Ultimately making the contest inaccesible for everyone who’d like to enter. As A. people who don’t want to follow the established design by the first winner will be discourage to enter their Hagah and B. It limits a contest that is already very limited and makes for a less intresting contest overall
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I’d rather keep discussing than start these contests now, because I don’t see a clear enough consensus on the issue yet. And if there isn’t one after this long, I again raise the question of why the Hagah contest should be done now, if at all.
Here’s another suggestion for you: let’s pause the Hagah contests, jump into something easy like Lariska, then come back when people aren’t dying of boredom to get a contest up and running. The Hagah contests are clearly controversial, and I honestly think we need more time to get on the same page.
I didn’t want the Hagah contests, and I’m very patient in general, which is probably why I don’t care about starting the contests right this instant. If I’m in the minority, fine. But I’m also forward-thinking enough to know that simultaneous voting has a serious risk of disappointing even more people than the Helryx contest did. If nothing else, we need this:
If one Hagah’s appearance is decided before the others, then all of the following Hagah will be pressured to be based on the first Contest result (plus Norik and Iruini, obviously). And the decision of which Hagah to do first is completely arbitrary.
Here’s an example:
Say that the Gaaki Contest is run last, and the current metallic armour split is 2-2-1 between silver, gold, and gunmetal, respectively. Now, any silver-amoured Gaakis are at a huge disadvantage since them winning would wreck the colour balance.
But if the Gaaki Contest had been run first, then people would have no problem voting for a silver Gaaki.
So now the voting has been biased towards or against certain entries based on the arbitrary decision of which Hagah should go first.
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And you never will, as long as I defiantly hold to my belief that all of the Hagah wear masks shaped like noble Kirils. Even Iruini.
I disagree - at least three other people in the Bionicle group I’m in have made their own Hagah, and there are multiple instances where our designs share elements like staves. Besides, even if it’s reasonably unlikely, what are we going to do if it happens? We need precautions in place.
If there’s a really good Pouks by one person that has a certain staff, and a really good Bomonga by someone else that uses the same staff, you personally can vote for one of them but not the other to avoid both winning, but that doesn’t mean the votes won’t tally out to make both of them win anyway.
By your reasoning, you’ve concluded that simultaneous voting is better than staggered. That’s fine. But that doesn’t mean simultaneous voting is good. It’s just the best option you’ve been offered.
Yee because this contest is suppose to foster inclusion in the community. I can’t see how you could run something for the community and let it result in discouraging its members.
Maybe because you’ve been inspired by each other and built on each others ideas. Which isn’t a bad thing but it means there is a reason for them being similar.
So if you want cohesion there is bound to be another equally good/slightly better/acceptable option to chose from. Especially if it is as you say that people are building very similar mocs. Then you can vote for the near identical Bomonga or Pouks that has a different spear tip.
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I’m no longer arguing about staggered voting being better than simultaneous. This is about whether simultaneous voting is good enough, which I’m arguing it isn’t.
Maybe, but I doubt it’s deliberate in most cases. Anyway, you could say the same about anyone who makes one of the Hagah after they’ve seen other peoples’ entries.
Probably not when you get down to the finals. And the point still stands: voting simultaneously doesn’t give voters enough power to say “I want this Bomonga, but not if he has to be paired with this Kualus.” They just have to hope two entries that look cool but don’t work together for whatever reason don’t both win.
Maybe but those people are also taking inspiration from a larger pool size of different variations. I don’t think its super likely that 5 people completly unconnected to each other would end up with 20 near identical models if each of them built 4 hagah each.
So staggered does this better how? by enforcing more and more rules/guidelines on people for each succesive contest?
Anyhow I’m gonna leave this conversation for today. I think I’ve gotten my stance across
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I’m not talking about near-identical models. I’m talking about if someone doesn’t want certain Hagah being paired together in the winning team. E.g. two of them having the same stave, or all of them having silver and gold armour and one having metallic pink. These are all statistically quite possible.
I repeat: I’m not arguing for staggered over simultaneous voting in this instance. I’m arguing for a completely different method, whatever form that might take.
I really like your idea where the artists pick the Hagah from the finalists of individual contests.
Thanks. I do too 
After I’ve consumed sustenance for the evening, I’ll return and outline all the alternatives people came up with. I was hoping to do that anyway.
Okay before I go let me rephrase myself, How would an alternative method go about this? and What would it specifically do to be better than simultaneous voting?
Ah, I see now.
Quick clarification: since it’s not staggered voting, but a bigger separation, entrants will have chance to repaint Gaaki’s armor into gunmetal, to fit better. Just to exclude misunderstanding.
But I see that it would lead to a different armor and color distribution between Hagah from the one that could’ve been if ran simultaneously.
It is:
- Simultaneous: Wide creativity opportunities, Chaotic chesion
- Consecutive: Close-to-excellent cohesion, limited creativity for later contests
@Tarkur I see same things in your answer, thank you.
Thank you for your answers! I am now not so sure about consecutive contests being so good. I need to think about it.
And why the Hagah need to be the most cohesieve Toa team in all of Bionicle…
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One potential voting method I know is letting people vote on more than one entry for each toa. In theory the winning entries with this method would average out as the ones people are “most ok” with.
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It was never not gold.
Someone asked Greg if it was gold, and he said “I dunno.”
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I’ve brought this up a few times, but I’ll go into detail on it now: Run the contests individually until the finals, but then don’t pick a single winner. Once you get to the finals, have the final-canon-artwork artists pick one entry from each finals to build a team of Hagah.
It gives a balance between individual quality and team cohesion that I have not seen from any other methods:
Simultaneous voting ensures high-quality individual Hagah, but relies on some degree of luck to get any amount of cohesion.
Staggered voting certainly promotes team cohesion, but has an arbitrary impact on the entries to the later contests, and still doesn’t guarantee good cohesion.
Full-team submission voting would have excellent cohesion since all four were made by the same person or group, but could lead to compromise on the individual builds.
This new, fourth method (artist’s pick) has none of these problems, or at least greatly diminishes them. The team cohesion will still be good, since there is a single person (the artist) picking the Hagah to match each other, rather than relying on all voters to hopefully vote for roughly the same things. There might still technically be some compromise on the individual level, but it would be between entries that were already good enough to make it to the finals on their own; a compromise between the six best individual entries is far better than a compromise between first-round group entries.
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I think I would prefer simultaneous voting still but add a layer akin to what @Monarth suggested, so that in each contest there are several finalist and out of maybe lets say a number of 24, six Hagah designs each where a final vote for the top four will take place. Where each member is allowed to just vote on four Hagah each. One for every character.
So first round of voting percedes like normal for each character.
Round 2 the usual amount of votes and so on
until there is six finalist for each Hagah.
Then finally combine those 24 entries into one final round and let everyone vote for the best team of Hagah out of those 24. So each person have 4 votes each divide among four characters.
Thusly the top 4 Hagah will be picked and hopefully a satisfactory cohesive unit will be meet. I rather not have the votes be at different times to avoid discouraging entrants.
Alright. As promised, here are some of the alternatives for how to run these contests with less potential controversy. Some of them have been suggested prior, and some of them I just came up with. I’m by no means confident in all of them, but I personally feel #1 is the best option.
#1: Group-shot artists decide which finalists to use
This method allows both artists and voters some power to pick their favourite team, rather than being stuck with what they get.
Issues raised so far regarding this one are pretty minor, e.g. artists get a bit more control over which design wins. However, if we have enough artists entering the group portion, the designs which get drawn most will probably be the ones which were more likely to win anyway. The desire for consistency will be reflected in how many artists and voters pick a more consistent team, but people who are indifferent about consistency aren’t disadvantaged.
#2: In the finals, vote for the best team
I still haven’t figured out the specifics of how this system would work. The only issue I see here is a logistical one:
Edit: I provided a suggestion in my post below this one.
The issue I mention above can be reduced (but not totally avoided) by having fewer finalists. 6 per Hagah gets you 1296 possible teams, whereas 3 per Hagah gets only 81 - the latter is much more likely to result in a significant majority emerging.
Edit: again, see my post below this one for a solution. If we can make this one work, I don’t see any reason not to do it as it doesn’t require any drastic changes to the simultaneous voting system.
#3: Simultaneous-staggered hybrid
#4: Group entries required in phase 1, but collabs are allowed
Essentially, Hagah must be submitted as a group, but people can team up to complete their set, and then submit together. E.g. if someone has a Pouks, they can offer it to people who don’t have a Pouks in their lineup. This allows people to enter a consistent team if they want to and know that it’s an all-or-none whether those designs win.
I’m including this one for the sake of completeness, though it certainly has its problems.
#5: Give group-shot artists more freedom to modify the winning entries
Just as identical masks can be changed if the original designer allows it, artists can change other things about the winning designs, such as spear piece or colour. Such changes can only be made in the interest of getting better consistency (you can’t just change something because you don’t like it), and there’s a limit on the number of changes you can make to each Hagah.
#6: Fewer entries in the finals
Either have the finals have 3 entries per Hagah instead of 6 (the usual amount), or do an extra round of voting, where the number of entries to choose from goes from 6 to 3. This is a very minimal and imperfect solution, but it just makes it a bit more likely that people will be able to vote on the basis of what the team will look like, because there’s less uncertainty about which ones will win. I would do this one in conjunction with #5.
#7: Blacklist voting in the finals
I’m playing devil’s advocate with this one, but perhaps some version of it could work. When we reach the finals of the individual contests, people vote for which designs they don’t want to win, instead of (or as well as) which ones they want to win. This is sort of in the spirit of the video @Monarth linked, where the design that wins will be the one that the most people are ok with, rather than the one that is loved by some and hated by others (like Hoseryx, I guess). This is also imperfect, and should be done with #5. But people will be more able to look at the cool but potentially inconsistent entries and vote against them if they wish.
#8: The minimalist, diplomatic option
Do nothing in the first half of the contest and risk getting a Toa lineup that people don’t like. Then, run a poll to ask if people are satisfied with the result, and if there’s anything about the team they’d want changed. E.g. identical spears, colours that stand out, etc. The results of this feedback will decide if any additional rules or allowances are implemented to the rules for the group art.
Ideally we should know what options could be on the table before we get the winners of the first half, or people could get annoyed about post hoc changes to how the contest works.
If anyone has any other ideas, or if I’ve missed any that have been suggested before, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.
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