RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
All in all I've been okay with the badges and prusameter additions, but this new idea of "flash" contests feels—pardon my bluntness—stupid. Maybe it's just the buttons, another topic might not be as bad, but buttons? Every moron can design a round button with holes and post it. I sincerely hope future contests will be more exciting and not result in a slew of models that only serve to distort the signal-noise ratio of the site.
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!
Sometimes simple concepts bring out creative designs.
All in all I've been okay with the badges and prusameter additions, but this new idea of "flash" contests feels—pardon my bluntness—stupid. Maybe it's just the buttons, another topic might not be as bad, but buttons? Every moron can design a round button with holes and post it. I sincerely hope future contests will be more exciting and not result in a slew of models that only serve to distort the signal-noise ratio of the site.
Whatever you find to do with your hands, do with all your might!
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Sure. And sometimes simple concepts bring out — simple designs.
🙂
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
Buttons are the sort of thing you design, print, utilise and then delete the files. So simple that any newcomer should be able to manage it... I made some to my sister's specification just before Christmas for her knitting project; the design part took about two minutes.
I've no objection to flash contests but this one does threaten to flood the database with even more virtually identical objects.
Cheerio,
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
There are a lot of simple designs, but there are a few unique ones too. It's produced models that are better than some of the jinga pieces I've seen lately.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
To be sure, most of the entries so far are mind-numbingly simplistic & I have to wonder "why bother?" But there are some that took it on as a design challenge to do something unique, creatively & technically. Here's mine:
https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/123469-no-thread-show-hinged-octagonal-fashion-button
There are a lot of simple designs, but there are a few unique ones too. It's produced models that are better than some of the jinga pieces I've seen lately.
Whatever you find to do with your hands, do with all your might!
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
My speculation: The idea behind the flash contests in general, but this one in particular, is to try to get more people into the design aspect of 3D printing, as opposed to just making prints of other people's designs. One of the easiest ways to do that is to start with something pretty simple. Buttons are a universally understood concept AND have the advantage of being relatively easy to design (after all, the basic idea is a disc with holes in it). They are not necessarily expecting everyone to come up with something mind blowing or revolutionary, etc. What they are looking for though is people to say "Hey, you know what? I might actually be able to do that." These would be people who generally wouldn't think twice about trying to actually design something (for one reason or another). The hope then would be that once they get in and play around with the program for a bit they realize "You know, this isn't really as hard as I thought. I wonder . . . " Its a long game play to be sure, but I would think that the idea is that the more people you get designing stuff for 3D printing, the more great ideas you'll eventually get.
I think you have something similar with their thinking of giving out 10 prusameters for publishing a print, but limiting it to 10 total prints (for publishing purposes, not downloads). Again, they are trying to get more people to try the process of designing. Sure, they will get a A LOT of low effort entries, but that's why they also limited it to 10 total. Frankly, if you are only going to design for the purpose of getting the prusameters, I'm not sure its really going to be worth your time. After all, 100 prusameters comes out to less than $10. Even for really simple designs that's not much of a return.
Will it ultimately work? I don't know. Only time (a lot of it) will tell. I can say that there are almost certainly a lot of people like myself who simply look at it and say "Hey, designing probably isn't as difficult as it seems, but also probably more difficult and requiring of more time than I am really wanting to commit." I mean sure, I could throw up 10 low quality prints after playing around for a bit that won't generate any downloads and get my almost $10, but frankly, that's not really worth my time. To become truly good at it likely takes more time than I am willing to commit due to my other obligations/desires (work, family, hobbies, etc.).
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Yes 10 points isn't worth much. Approx. $1 basically. Few, if any, will get rich. No one is accusing of being a get rich quick scheme lol. I wish they'd change a few of the rules for earning, but it's pretty good in general. They're participation points. If you participate in any fashion, you'll earn points. That's driving even more participation.
Hosting this site can't be free, and I assume more users means more cost for Prusa. At what point will we start to see ads? Or membership fees?
RE:
For anyone curious about how it works: You check your points by clicking your spool in the top right corner, then go to REWARDS. Select the type of filament you want to get for your rewards and add it to your cart. When you confirm you want to redeem 350 points for a spool, they show you a discount code. If you lose this code, it also shows up in your Recent Transactions list.
Go to the estore and pick the roll you want to buy. Add it to your cart. At checkout paste the discount code and you'll get $30 off your cart. So you're just going to pay for shipping. Since shipping 1 roll costs the same as shipping 2 rolls, you might as well order 2 (and a spare nozzle).
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
you might as well order 2
Unfortunately, one limitation they've imposed is, you can cash in only one coupon code per order.
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!
you might as well order 2
Unfortunately, one limitation they've imposed is, you can cash in only one coupon code per order.
True but if I've got to pay the same $15 for shipping one or two rolls, I might as well order two.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
True but if I've got to pay the same $15 for shipping one or two rolls, I might as well order two.
Sure, which is what I did as well. I was just hoping I could cash in two coupons and pay only the shipping. But hey, still a good deal.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards
I must be doing something right. I have gone from Lvl4 to Lvl3. Do I win something if I get to Lvl0?
Quality is the Journey, not the Destination. My limited prints->
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Ok, I'll go on record on this.
One thing I previously really liked about the Prusa Prints section was that the 'signal to noise' ratio used to be very high, and the quality and utility of the items posted was far greater than on the 'usual suspect' 3d download sites.
I used to check the Prints section every few days for new prints, and scrolling through the new ones was quick and fruitful, I would simply stop when I recognized those I had seen before. It was trivial to simply scroll through the prints that did not interest me.
Since this 'reward' craze started, however, yes, the quantity of prints increased, but the percentage of trivial and similar prints has also increased and it's now not as easy to casually scroll through new prints and quickly see what is of interest.
I might suggest something like spinning off the 'Reward' prints into a separate section.
Also what might help are some tools to filter the newest prints, such as the ability to ignore prints by keyword (such as 'button') or even, and I hate to suggest this one, by the user who posted them.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
@jsw I was going to suggest something along those lines already some time ago, but short of developing some AI system to recognize, catalog, rate,... a contribution, all efforts of filtering will fall short. How will you rate a button (substitute at will) and how will someone who needs a button rate it ? What names and keywords are provided and in what language ? The missing link to upgrade your project from just usable to great can be a clever but simple modification... will you filter that out based on number of faces ?
I would rather have Prusa commit their effort in printer hardware/software and take the fluff with it until the craze dies down... It does take some time and for now I'm forced to do it daily if I want to keep up... but I get you...
Having problems with bed adhesion every morning...
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
I don't have the answer.
I was just trying to point out that this 'rewards' program, while well-intended, has the consequence of making the Prints section less useful to some of us regular legacy users.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Filtering the flash challenge prints shouldn’t be too hard to implement as Prusa is already doing that themselves on the main site.
Next to the filtering options that are available for us an ‘exclude challenge prints’ could be implemented. Being able to make it default would be even better.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Next to the filtering options that are available for us an ‘exclude challenge prints’ could be implemented.
I definitely like that idea.
RE: Prusa Badges and Rewards... What you want to know!
Yeah it shouldn't be too difficult to sort out the flash challenges. Make part of the rules of the challenge that you have to use the keyword (Flash for instance) and then allow users to filter out anything with that particular keyword. The downside is that it eliminates all of the flash challenge entries from your view, but if you know you are not interested in say, buttons, no matter how creative, beautiful, innovative, etc., then that isn't a huge issue either.
Now that said, I know I said it shouldn't be too difficult, but I also don't know how their site is setup and how much actual coding would need to be involved. I know some companies have said its more difficult for them to add/remove certain things than it is for others based on setup, but I'm certainly not a programmer.
RE:
Yeah it shouldn't be too difficult to sort out the flash challenges. Make part of the rules of the challenge that you have to use the keyword (Flash for instance) and then allow users to filter out anything with that particular keyword. The downside is that it eliminates all of the flash challenge entries from your view, but if you know you are not interested in say, buttons, no matter how creative, beautiful, innovative, etc., then that isn't a huge issue either.
Now that said, I know I said it shouldn't be too difficult, but I also don't know how their site is setup and how much actual coding would need to be involved. I know some companies have said its more difficult for them to add/remove certain things than it is for others based on setup, but I'm certainly not a programmer.
That's the thing. After you upload a design you have to manually add it to the corresponding challenge to be able to participate. This effectively adds a tag to your design that tells the site that your design has to be added to the challenge pool. The infrastucture is already there. This also makes it possible for prusa to get all these prints in one page (this one for example) without having to sift through thousands of designs manually. That page is showing you a filtered result. Only the stuff that is part of the challenge. This can surely be used in reverse.
I see other (non 3d printing) sites being very effective with the way they manage tags and boolean search. A lot could be done over here to integrate this into a better way to include and exclude certain designs in search results. Let's say I filter the page on newest but add "-flash.challenge" in the search bar. This should show all recent designs but exclude flash challenge designs. Put a 'make default' tick box next to it and you get treated to a flash free page every time you log in.