RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Just assume that ANY model uploaded merely to gain Prusameters is unwanted and merely adds to the pollution of the database.
So you're saying that no one should upload a make that they wouldn't have printed and submitted a photo if the bonus system weren't in place. Seems counterintuitive to the assumed purpose of increasing user engagement with the website. It still takes a significant amount of time to earn points via make uploads. I've become a lot more engaged since introduction of the point system. I just don't want to be accused as a cheater.
Adding a Make doesn't pollute the database. If you're printing models as they were meant to be printed then you're probably legal.
Loading up a sla plate with 20 buttons should be illegal but you can probably get away with it once. I'd still frown on the practice but you're rolling the dice with the moderators.
I have never seen the point of uploading a make unless it was used in support of a tip, illustrating a potential pitfall or demonstrating an alternative way of printing a part. I have no need to know, nor do I care, that you can produce a decent Benchy along with nearly 3,000 others.
The Prusament bonus system has almost destroyed the database as a useful resource and the weekly competitions have compounded the issue.
Cheerio,
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
I'll print larger models from now on, but it would be nice to have a guideline on what counts and what doesn't.
Just assume that ANY model uploaded merely to gain Prusameters is unwanted and merely adds to the pollution of the database.
Don't do it.
Cheerio,
{sigh!} Just another reason to just bury this whole contest drek in the Chernobyl sarcophagus or something! Lots of junk in there now!
Hey, I get it! Yeah, you get a free $20 dollar roll of filament but the rest of us get a far less useful prints collection than we had! And the search seems to be much less useful after you started this contest nonsense! You can't find anything anymore!
Yeah I know, b*tch b*tch b*tch but you took away a real good thing for this competition fiasco!
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Wow. And here I thought it was fun. Silly me.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
the rest of us get a far less useful prints collection than we had! And the search seems to be much less useful after you started this contest nonsense! You can't find anything anymore!
Can you explain how that is possible? The increase in uploads has made a glance of new models more time consuming, however the collection of prints that was there is still there, there are just a lot more now.
The search function is much better. If "the rest of us" thought about adding a half decent collection of tags, perhaps that would help? I think problems with searching arise from poorly titled, untagged models and incompatible search terms, rather than from competition and posting makes, but I may be wrong.
For instance I've just searched "woodworking tool" and didn't get one button or halloween pumpkin in the result - what am I missing?
I enter contests because they push me to try new techniques either in design, drawing or in printing, and makes me think about making stuff that will be easy for others to print, so I consider them to be a really valuable resource in that respect.
Publishing "makes" keeps me on my toes too - it reminds me that the finished product from my printer is going to be on show.
I have never seen the point of uploading a make unless it was used in support of a tip, illustrating a potential pitfall or demonstrating an alternative way of printing a part.
From the designers point of view if the model works perfectly then the world needs confirmation of that too - not just criticism if it doesn't. I have a couple of models with a reasonable pool of successful "makes" and comments - when for whatever reason someone can't get it to work it's clear to others that it's not the fault of the model if there are positive comments as well - so there is a point in uploading even mundane things!
Cheers,
P
RE:
I do agree and admit that the Prusameters contest has, in general, reduced the utility of the Prints section for many users.
I also agree that the tagging of the prints and the category selection are poor.
If they ('they' meaning the Prusa powers that be) really want to develop Printables into a viable contender for the Number-One Go-To Prints Site on the Interwebs, they do need to give it a bit of TLC (TLC being defined as on-the-clock human attention), as to cleaning up the tags and categories, and yes, manually re-classifying prints that are poorly tagged or classified. I really think that would be far more effective than offering a spool of filament for so many posted trivial prints.
When I go to what used to be called the Prints section, 90% or more of the time I want something specific, as opposed to the prints that are most popular or most recently posted. Finding some items has been an exercise in futility.
For example, I gave up trying to re-find the little housing for the MMU2S disconnect switch, although I **KNOW** I got it here a few years ago. If anyone finds it, I would appreciate knowing the successful search term(s).
I really don't know what Prusa's goal is here. I do, however, know that their changes have resulted in less utility and a lot of frustration and complaining.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
I should preface my comment by saying that I'm not a friend of these flash competitions either. I mean, how many buttons or door handles does the world really need? However, I think the (real or perceived) drop of quality is more driven by the influx of people that used to post their "designs" (which is given many of them more credit than they deserve) on Thingiverse but have now come over because TV has become such a piece of …. And with all the complaints we all may have about Printables, all you need to do is to go to Thingiverse, Cults, etc., and very quickly you begin to realize that Printables is actually really good and that the team working on it has done an admirable job. Could it be better? Sure. But it is WAY better than the alternatives, me thinks.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Yes, I must admit that almost all of the prints I've downloaded here have sliced and printed properly without any hassles.
Thingiverse, on the other hand, is notorious for wonky .stl files, particularly in the model railroad categories.
What does concern me about Printables was the recent thread about posting models without ever having successfully printed them.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
For example, I gave up trying to re-find the little housing for the MMU2S disconnect switch, although I **KNOW** I got it here a few years ago. If anyone finds it, I would appreciate knowing the successful search term(s).
At the risk of repeating myself (and I apologise for that) I cannot see any connection between print competitions and badly titled or described models with no tags.
A search for "MMU2s Switch" does bring up thirty odd results, many vaguely MMU2 related as they are intended to be printed with that device, however the first one is a misdescribed switch panel (presumably not tagged housing or bracket or enclosure?) Since the text is written in German the search did a fine job of pulling that one out.
Surely if the author of a model wants it to be discovered it is that person's responsibility to give it a logical title and to provide tags which are logical alternative search terms?
I agree that many models are very difficult to re-discover. My work-around for that is to "like" them and search my collection of "likes", but it would be good to be able to add my own label to make future discovery easier. On the other hand I don't understand how well the search engine can search parts of words. I have observed lots of instances where tags comprise multiple words run together; "wedding, cake" is tagged as "weddingcake" for instance. Is that a legitimate tag, or will only a search for "weddingcake" turn it up?
Cheers,
P
Print competitions trigger a slew of designed-for-competition prints. There is not time enough properly to test and refine entries, there is not time enough properly to test and refine build instructions. The judges presumably do test print the shortlist entries but they don't have time to test them properly either. As a result we get winning entries that are rarely fit for purpose and yet are lauded as the finest examples of 3D printing...
A good functional design should be tested for at least as much use as a reasonable user would expect it to sustain, say a year of normal operation as minimum.
And now we have the ridiculous one week competitions.
Oh, and it's not possible to exclude competition entries from search results.
Surely if the author of a model wants it to be discovered it is that person's responsibility to give it a logical title and to provide tags which are logical alternative search terms?
Unfortunately the database structure doesn't really support any sensible structured metadata and the search function is somewhat lacking. You searched for woodworking tools upthread: did you find all the bench saw parts, chisels and planes? Did you try searching for carpentry tools? Were the results even similar?
My work-around for that is to "like" them and search my collection of "likes",
But to avoid missing them in the first place that requires you to scroll through several hundred postings a day, perhaps four or five thousand a week ... probably twenty thousands per like.
Cheerio,
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
A good functional design should be tested for at least as much use as a reasonable user would expect it to sustain, say a year of normal operation as minimum.
And now we have the ridiculous one week competitions.
Every week of my working life was a one-week design competition in one form or another.
How about we compromise?
One week competitions are not ridiculous.
Testing a funnel for a year would be.
However, at the very least, printing a model before publishing it should be compulsory!
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
The competitions themselves don't bother me. The judging of the competitions has been questionable at times, possibly even corrupt. It's been better recently.
The search capabilities are constantly improving. They're not perfect, but I don't spend a bunch of time searching for things. If I don't find what I want within the first 5 pages or so I'll design it myself. The good designs eventually float to the top, but there are still shitty designs getting massive downloads and good designs getting few. Maybe my opinion of which designs are good is slightly biased though.
Prusameters are like participation points, if you don't like it don't participate.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Without a doubt!
RE:
The connection is that they are both annoyances which reduce the utility of the Printables section.
If I were calling the shots at Prusa and wanted Printables to be a highly-regarded outward-facing vehicle of the company, I would devote some human and system resources to maintaining it as a first-class endeavor.
Such things as cleaning up the chaff, normalizing and editing the tags, and reassigning and expanding categories as needed.
Also a good review of the (failed and successful) search terms would be an insight into what the users want and if they are or are not finding what they want.
After my last post, I decided to peruse the Printables section and look at the new postings, something I have not done for some time, mainly because of the clutter of prints in which I have zero interest.
I found several newly-posted spheres, as in simple spheres, you know, the first object that you place in your workspace in those introductory drafting classes. This would be a good example of trivial print clutter, since anyone wanting a 3d print of a sphere can easily make one with one right click in PS.
Several of those spheres show 200-some downloads (count within 1-2 of each other), while other prints posted at about the same time show at most downloads in the single digits. I find it hard to believe that there is really an inordinate demand for sphere models. Something does not add up here.
And yet another alphanumeric font, spread out in 26 (I did not count to be sure) posts for the letters and (I assume) 10 for the numerals, posted by the same user as the spheres, and again, with just over 200 downloads, at least for the W, I did not check them all, while other nonrelated prints in that timeframe had zero or single digit downloads.
Those are good (???) examples of the clutter and chaff that I am referring to, along with the obviously-inflated download counts.
At the risk of repeating myself (and I apologise for that) I cannot see any connection between print competitions and badly titled or described models with no tags.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Did you report this user?
I have just checked and now all of the spheres if that's what they are really, and all of the letters have 205 downloads give or take so yes I did report it.
Curiously the lucky guy has the same number of followers too, and they must religiously download one of every model he uploads.
Several of those spheres show 200-some downloads (count within 1-2 of each other), while other prints posted at about the same time show at most downloads in the single digits. I find it hard to believe that there is really an inordinate demand for sphere models. Something does not add up here.
At the risk of repeating myself (and I apologise for that) I cannot see any connection between print competitions and badly titled or described models with no tags.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
I had a quick look at recent prints (all categories) and while one can debate the usefulness of many, no obvious scam entries caught my attention. There was a single sphere called "smooth planet" but it was actually really printed and part of some harmless planet objects (some with craters and whatnot). I do agree on the minimum criterium though that entries are only allowed if an image of a print out is included. Of course, it is complicated to enforce this entirely but if users report or during occasional check ups those should be also taken offline.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
It appears that somebody in authority has nuked the spheres with the high download counts as well as the alphabet with the similar inflated download counts.
Here's a screen scrape showing two of the letters and their alleged download counts plus some others uploaded yesterday at about the same time with much more realistic download counts.
RE:
So the database gods seem to be listening, sometimes at least 😉
Apparently that ended with an account ban.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Big security flaw to allow a user to increase the number of likes and downloads at will.
ps: I'm the one who was punished because i printed small pieces just to score points 🙂
I too looked at the recent uploads to confirm the numbers for my post upthread.
I did report those spheres, the 'designer' account and the hundred or so other accounts controlled by the same abuser.
The scammers and spammers are resorting to ever more complicated procedures in attempt to 'authenticate' their efforts. Prusa must be investing manpower to clearing out this dross. It would be simpler and easier and much more worthwhile to discontinue the Prusameters rewards system and the weekly competitions and to redirect the effort to curating and facilitating the database.
@matt-boyer said:
The search capabilities are constantly improving. They're not perfect, but I don't spend a bunch of time searching for things. If I don't find what I want within the first 5 pages or so I'll design it myself. The good designs eventually float to the top, but there are still shitty designs getting massive downloads and good designs getting few.
And so we get yet another soap_dish/chess_board/ammunition_case when there are (probably) better designs buried in the database. The only 'quality' indications we have are social media metrics; likes, downloads and (almost instant) ratings. These are inherently self reinforcing: The first model of a class to get any rating is displayed first, is most likely to get a 'like' is downloaded first, is rated the day after, but a far better one uploaded a few weeks later is almost never encountered in the first few pages of a search so never has a chance to catch up.
Prusameters are like participation points, if you don't like it don't participate.
But it's the Prusameters that are attracting the scammers who are generating most of the dross.
@peter-h said:
Every week of my working life was a one-week design competition in one form or another.
Likewise, in season I can get a series of 'can you fix/adapt/replace this' requests and usually they take only one or two iterations to fulfil - but those prints are not of publishable quality. Within a couple of years a few will have come back for improvement or replacement and the others, the true successes, I might never hear of until the customer wants to reprise the job elsewhere. They remain unpublishable as I frequently don't know how they are used.
Cheerio,