Wouldn’t it be fairer if entries on contests wouldn’t show info as in: likes, downloads, boosts until the end of the contest? People will be more inclined to print something that’s on top than something that never was downloaded.
I’m typing this with no I’ll intentions as I’ve only participated on one contest and didn’t expect to win as I’m a complete noob modeling.
I am not participating much myself and I kinda like the idea.
Entries are also models outside of the contest.
Hiding this information would penalise a model solely because it was added to a contest.
The judges are tasked with not using that information in judging.
Providing that information to the users doesn’t affect the judging by users as users don’t do the judging.
I like the idea too. In addition the default sort algorithm on the contest page should be “random”.
It’s not a difficult task to hide the mentioned information only on the contest page and not anywhere else.
I agree that an IF statement isn’t hard.
But, if the judges are the only ones looking at the merits of the models, why would removing this information on the contest page improve things, if it appears when they click the model and it is clearly shown?
I believe the goal is to achieve a less biased result in terms of user activity, rather than to influence the judges’ perception.
Then maybe we shouldn’t promote the fact a designer has entered a contest.
Well, the problem with that is:
Say I want to go fishing and I see that there’s a Bambu contest for fishing. Perfect! I’ll go on there and see… a bunch of random crappy models… so I download nothing.
I feel like that’s a given. If someone posted a Fishing model during the fishing contest it’s an entry for sure.
Nobody is stopping you from changing the sorting. By default, you currently see the latest uploads at the top - that doesn’t help either, does it?
I don’t know… I think the judges use the downloads as a major criteria when judging. Some people also get FEATURED MODEL status DURING a contest which is completely unfair imho (case in point: a design in the mouse contest had a big green featured badge was also coincidentally the 1st place winner later) Also after the mouse contest, BBL just featured a model on their social that they didn’t even give an honorable mention to, which coincidentally it was added on the last few days of the contest (the beautiful durian fruit mouse). That mouse had almost no downloads or likes vs the winners were all in the top 5-10 in downloads and trending. So they loved it so much they posted it to their socials but didn’t consider it worth of winning because… no downloads. 
I’d love to see a way to mark/flag contest entries that are off topic. I have a sense folks are putting models into contests only to boost the models visibility.
They finally added the category!!!
Amazing, I was about to download something and just realized how many entries are just not related to the contest, this is great!
Too many pokemon hueforges.
I like the retro 80’s theme, I’ve put a bit of time in making a couple of entries. One is kinda gaming related… One definitely is.
The amount of pokemon stuff is wild.
It should also be noted that Pokéman wasn’t born in the 80’s.
It would be nice if you could also take part in the contest with models that have already been uploaded. The ratings for the contest should of course start from zero and be independent of the model that has already been uploaded.
For example, I already have 2 Gameboy display stands and can’t take part in the contest with them.
Allowing existing models would make it harder for new models to become popular and limit the MW system to only those previously successful.
I also had several models that could have made it into contests as I uploaded them before any announcements. I will have many more that will not make it into yet-to-be-announced contests.
I take the view that the community is better for the rule.
It is broken every once in a while, to serve the contest, OpenSCAD for one. I didn’t agree with that as several entries had already been very successful and prevented others with similar solutions from being seen as successful.
I think it’s generally difficult for the uploaded models to become popular unless you advertise on social networks.
