New contest in the works! "Mod of the month"
 

Was talking to Ben & Tim today, and decided EM is going to start a "Mod of the Month" contest to recognize & reward the best stuff that members are posting.

(Not to be confused with "Moderator of the Month". They're already recognized with that photo plaque in the lunch room.)

Still mulling over specifics, but we were thinking that throughout the month, members can nominate threads that document projects or tests, and we'll vote on it at the end of each month. "We" could be the mods, or the members at large via a poll (with mod or admin veto, haha :D).

Prizes!

Yes, prizes too. Or prize (singular). Haven't decided, but something decent, like a *duino kit, EM t-shirt, tire pressure gauge...

Acceptance speeches! Red carpets! Awards galas!

OK, maybe not that complicated.

While we're noodling the details (meaning Ben ignores my ideas, so I make some decisions and then he complains about them later), your input is welcome.

Are you a Mod or a Rocker? "I'm a Mocker." -- Ringo

I guess my question would be what constitues a MOD? Also there are only so many that can be done. I think it would be hard to keep giving the award.

How about best improved for the month over EPA?

Nah, I want to see people's projects.

You're right. We're not likely to see a flood of brand new ideas that nobody's thought up before.

We wouldn't be judging on novelty (though if anyone can think of more ideas that aren't in the 60+ Efficiency Mods list, that would be great too).

They could just be particularly slick implementations of well known mods, or kick a$$ tests that haven't been done yet.

akashik: OK, OK, or they could be British musicians. But they have to be members to win anything.

Eco-mode/Eco-project of the month.

I like the idea.

One vote per person?
X votes per person?
Vote as often as we like?

Weighted Voting - Prior winners have more weight than "normal" voters, maybe?

- voting can be a function of:
* Quality
* Elegance/implementation
* Attention to testing practices
* Documentation
* Novel?

Personally, I rank implementation and quality over novelness. I'd rather see a "B" idea implemented well than an "A" idea implemented like crap. And of course, documentation documentation documentation :D

Oh, is mod of the month too much? Maybe a quarterly thing? Setting longer deadlines may result in striving for higher quality. I'd rather see completed mods entered than in-progress prototypes.

Yes, I know all of our mods are prototypes...

I'm guessing that we would be voting on mods that are new for that month? Or our favorite mod of all time?

That's a great idea!

How about choosing a specific type of mod and have the members submit their efforts? Something like "Best Rear Wheel Fairings". Announce the featured mod in advance and give a final submission date for pics + narrative, with voting to follow. This gives the members time to finalize their efforts and avoids trying to weigh relative complexity of different mods, thus simplifying comparison.

The Scion club I am part of Scikotics ... has a monthly Ride of the Month.

Here is how it works;

Members submit their entry for the month, the moderator chooses the top 4 and then the top 4 are submitted to public voting through a thread poll open for a specific amount of time.

In that thread each entry submits their best photos plus a description of their vehicle to the best of their abilities. The winner get recognition at the home page of the website.

A similar format can be used here for this. Previous winners cannot re-enter for 1 year, however we can reduce that time based on participation, etc ...

Sounds like fun .. I look forward to entering my finished front end .. someday ..

Super: that's a good idea too. Except, probably 50%+ of the membership can't mod during the winter, so it'd be pretty thin pickin's for half the year! Still worth thinking about though.

I also think trebuchet has a point: going monthly might be stretching a little.

Sean: yes, the idea was to reward a particularly good NEW thread. But there's no reason we can't also have "all time favourites" as well.

Or we can have a Sulfuric vs. akashic BATTLE ROYALE!!!

We both recently started a thread with a number of mods completed within a week or two.

I like that mpguino prize :D

OK! Why don't we give this a try?

Let's begin by taking nominations.

Feel free to nominate your own stuff, (if it's worthy!). Any mod or test, regardless of when it was started, that has had any significant new development in the last 3 months is eligible.

Then we'll vote via a poll in a couple of days.

Depending on how this goes, we'll likely tighten up the nomination criteria for February, and/or decide whether we'll go with monthly/bi-monthly/quarterly etc. I suspect in northern hemisphere summertime, we'll have more to choose from than we currently do.

I'm going to quote treb's words here. I think they serve as a good gauge for what qualities make a mod/test "worthy":

I'm going to start by nominating these 3 projects:

dcb's (& company) open source MPGuino fuel economy computer

Paul & Sabrina's open source motor controller

jomelmaldonado's load sensitive cruise control hack

More nominations!

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...-a-5462-5.html

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...kamm-5976.html

Tim (Daox) just pointed out that there are actually quite a few good candidates to choose from, so if we get a lot of nominations, we may award more than one winner for this first round.

How could I forget the now road legal electro metro! One more for the list.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...hread-848.html

I think there have been so many good ones thus far; perhaps for the first round we could do a "top 12" - signifying the first ~year of EM, then new ones monthly or quarterly.

Sorry; I didn't see the age of this thread.
In that case, the Aerocivic project, based on the willingness to go to extreme lengths to pioneer/test radical aero ideas.

~subscribe~

I nominate
Drumroll Please
CoyoteX and the Tube frame Metro Convertible.
Yay, cheers all around,
S.

Has CoyoteX done anything with his car in the past 3 months? I haven't seen any updates in a long time.

Its about time to get the poll up. Any last minute nominations? I'll be posting the poll later today.

Hmm. Not as much interest in the subject as hoped. The motivation behind the idea was simply to highlight the quality stuff people are doing here. Maybe some other way to do that will work better, but let's at least vote on what's been nominated by the end of today.

Perhaps a new thread with a poll listing the items that we're voting on would help? :thumbup: That gives us an easy way to tally votes and see what our options are.

I wish I could nominate my Clear Kammbach, but it's not anything of a new mod, it's just a change on an existing idea.

Aw, what the hell... I'll nominate my '03 Tacoma Prerunner, since everything was done in the last 2 months, and it's not like I'll be doing much more!

OK! Nominations closed.

Tim posted a new thread with voting options, here:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...onth-7014.html