There are two fundamental truths behind this.
First off, the complaint that these FOLS is absolutely true, the reason is that FOLs don't drive Cuusoo, Special Interest Groups do. 64% of every user supporting a project on Cuusoo only vote for the one project that interests them. 82% support 3 or less. These are people who really like a singular concept like Purdue Pete, ATLAS, Curiosity, or the Wizard of Oz or like a specific theme of projects like Real Space, Buses from Poland, and Batman. The idea that it is made out of Lego is secondary to their love of the subject.
Secondly, FOLs also have special interests. Any FOL can appreciate a well made MOC, but they are really drawn to the builds that fit whatever niche subgroup they really like. Some FOLs are into accurate recreations, some into Trains, others into sci-fi, some share their fascination equally between comic book heroes and Lego. I know one AFOL that is singularly into building in the style of Classic Space. FOLs, as a community, share a love of the medium for creation, not the subjects created by it.
So, that brings us here. I am under no illusions that FOLs will exceed the overall voting power of the special interest groups that come to Cuusoo in pursuit of their favorite subjects, nor is there a point in doing so , but I would certainly like to see what we can accomplish.
What I have done here is created a survey listing the Cuusoo projects I have showcased on Brickset that emphasize the skill of the project creator while not having an extremely popular IP or organized audience to boost its ratings.
To show your support for great Lego Crafters, despite any opinions you may have for Cuusoo, please vote for your favorite MOCs in the list. The project with the most votes in two weeks will be freely promoted on Brickset and my own site. I also ask every other FOL site to post this project as as a service to the community.
Now I also ask that we as a community support all of these projects through Cuusoo as well to help highlight great builds on Cuusoo and show solidarity for our fellow AFOLs who are trying to make their mark on the Lego Group.
Yes, I know a lot of these projects have issues that will prevent them from reaching production. Please put that aside for a moment and let Lego deal with the complexities.
If you have no other reason to support these projects other than to show this solitary within the AFOL community then please consider voting for the project and using the following feedback when Cuusoo asks "why you like this project"
I am supporting this project because I want to see unique creations from the AFOL community get supported on Cuusoo.
If you want to make a stronger statement consider this alternative:
I am supporting this project because I want to see unique creations from the AFOL community get supported on Cuusoo and I am committed to purchasing any Cuusoo set that is inspired by AFOLs.
Will this bring any change to Cuusoo? That is really up to you. If 100 FOLs respond to this. No, just an unusual blip in Cuusoo usage. If 1000 FOLs, hm...maybe. IF 10,000 FOLs put these and every other cool, unique, FOL inspired build in the review box, how could it not? So please, help get the word out on this campaign: tell your local LUGs, post on forums, tweet to your followers, face your bookers, and red your its, or whatever other way you got to spread a message.
For those of you complaining about Cuusoo to other FOLs on forums, you are accomplishing very little other than ruffling the feathers of other FOLs. Supporting a movement on the other hand can potentially accomplish something very interesting! If nothing else, it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Glen, my preferred solution would be for Cuusoo to introduce a voting system that involved giving the design marks out of ten - weighted as +-5 with the review threshold reached if/when the score reached a cumulative total of 25,000. This would keep out designs like ATLAS since, given the option to do so, many FOLs wouldn't rate that design very highly.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, maybe TLG's aim is to cultivate and develop sets for niche interest groups with narrow appeal. If so, they've succeeded.
You got some very interesting points, but where did you get the data in paragraph one?
ReplyDeleteBests,
Hi Sussi,
ReplyDeleteI get the raw data from The pages available to everyone and use a series of scripts I have authored to illuminate interesting data.
The most common usage is this page and the links you will find there:
http://www.brick-hero.com/cdd.php
If you are interested I can dig up the code I used to generate the data. But I can assure you that it was very accurate at the time it was stated. It is not an approximation but an actual map of projects supported for each user at the time.
I would be happy to discuss it in greater detail if you wish.
Hi again,
ReplyDeleteI didn't expect you to have made it up, I just couldn't find the source myself.
Thank you, I'd really appreciate that.
I'm a thesis student looking into how knowledge is shared in crowdsourcing, and cuusoo looks very interesting.
I had not considered you were questioning the validity of the source. I get the question a lot. And you are not the first thesis writer who has contacted me.
ReplyDeleteI am a bit of a Crowdsourcing/wisdom nut....I got a lot of projects in the works on that...
But I am constantly poking at projects and interconnecting them...
Cuusoo is an interesting avenue because it is open ended. Kickstarter gives a limited time frame for the message to get out but with Cuusoo...well, I digress...
The key ingredients determining the speed of sharing of an idea are: Quality of the Idea, Passion of the target Audience, Strength of preexisting Communicating Population, and the presence/absence of popular events/personalities.
This article may help better than this: http://blog.brick-hero.com/2013/06/24-hours-of-tweets-start-to-end-of-road.html
as well as the charts I make showing progress of projects to 10k...which I will need to talk about later
Here is a link to a few of the charts: http://blog.brick-hero.com/2013/08/three-project-heading-for-10k.html
DeleteNote the macross and ghostbusters did not lunge to multithousands on the first day, that is just the first day of my automated data gathering.
Oz however is fully mapped, each huge lunge in that project correlates to a trusted source (official Facebook oz page) using its strong preexisting channels of communication (oz followers) to promote the project.
Two other factors I failed to mention are perceived viability and originator of the project.