I think it is great that Makerworld encourages model and profile uploads with the points system.
The problem I see is it rewards quantity over quality and usefulness, Models which only a few people would be interested in will receive almost no reward even if those few people find the model extremely useful.
I would like to see a feature for users to be able to thank model uploaders with a donation of some of their points. Possibly even a scheme to buy points for that purpose.
A model which is useful to me and was posted about 3 months ago without reaching 20 downloads to earn any points being an example of what I am talking about.
What a great suggestion @ZiggyP.
Some models never get ‘discovered’ and are lost in a muck pile.
It would be nice to be able to tip designers when you appreciate their work.
You must be talking about useful or practical models. Yes, it’s hard for useful models to gain visivility. There isn’t a specific category for them, but they are spread among different categories. For example, a useful modle for kitchen can be burried inside the Household category which has a large number of decor, festivities etc. A useful model for outdoors/sport will be under Hobby&DIY → Sport&Outdoors and burried among decorative items there. (not that there is anything wrong with decorations, I love them, too )
I think there are sustantial interest in useful models, and there are a lot more designers who are interested in desiging such models. However, because of the low visibility and low download counts, less are willing to spend too much time and energy on them. The growth of useful models are artificially stunted.
I understand that Makerworld is building up some advanced filtering capabilities, but I am not sure if it will solve this problem. "Advanced’ typically are for people who are experienced in search and filtering, while a cacaul user may not be aware of such features.
I once suggested making a high level filter for users to select to only show useful models. This can be implemented as a choice (radio buttons or dropdowns) at the top corner of the Models page, or some other ways. I think giving useful models more visibility aligns with Bambu Lab’s vision of making 3D printing accessible to the masses. There can be people out there who don’t own a 3D printer yet but are interested in printing useful things, in addition to decorations/trinkets, or some maybe only interested in useful things. Makerworld can be the platform known for useful model friendly, and attract such designers and users, in addition to being known for one-click printing.
)