Second Planned Update to LEGO Ideas

The LEGO Ideas Team just announced the second of three planned updates to the LEGO Ideas site. You can read more about it below as it is posted on the LEGO Ideas blog.

Here are my thoughts on the changes:

• I am a really like the new filters on the Discover page. Generally, I prefer to support the "original" projects on LEGO Ideas better than the IP themed ones, so it is nice to be able to have this additional filter.
• The trending this week filter is a nice feature, though I am not sure right now how much I will use it. I guess that will be something that I will find out with time.
• It is nice to see the staff picks by date now instead of how they were formally organized alphabetically, which made is slightly annoying to find a recent staff pick.
• The new Discover page search engine weeks much better than the old search method, and it will make it much easier to find projects after they are no longer at the top of the display for the "recently added" filter option.
• The new member search (and new display method) is much more streamlined and seems to be much easier to use in addition to being much more aesthetically pleasing.
• I have never really paid attention to the tags on a project in the past, so I will have to explore the clickable tags option to see how useful it will be in the long run. Initially, it is a novelty to click on the tags and see what projects come up, but I am sure that will wear off with time.

Finally, the change that I am most excited about is the change to the project milestone timelines. New projects now have 60 days to reach 100 supporters before they expire. If a project reaches 100 supporters in 60 days, it receives 365 additional days (this is what projects used to start out with) and then the milestones for an additional 182 days remain at 1,000 supporters and again at 5,000 supporters.

This is a change that many of the more frequent LEGO Ideas users have been asking for for quite a while. The goal is that this will help reduce the projects that are of a lower quality or are not as popular by causing them expire sooner, allowing the better projects to rise to the top. I am looking forward to seeing how this change in particular enhances the LEGO Ideas user experience and how it helps shine the spotlight on some of the stronger projects.

Leave a comment below to share your thoughts on the second planned LEGO Ideas update.

Posted on September 8, 2016 on the LEGO Ideas blog:

Today marks the second of three planned updates to LEGO Ideas this fall, aimed at improving the experience by analyzing your survey feedback and comments, our user experience testing, and conversations with many of you at LEGO fan events.

Here’s a list of updates:

• New Discover page filter for Project Category lets you choose to view only “original” projects, only projects based on third-party intellectual property (IP), or both. Choose “Original” if you don’t want to see projects based on movies, games, brands, etc. Original will show you projects based on existing LEGO playthemes like Ninjago, Friends, or Classic Space, as well as all those completely original concepts by LEGO Ideas members. These are filtered based on how members classify their own projects when asked about IP before submitting. If you happen to see a project incorrectly categorized, let us know by email while we work our way through the new filtered lists ourselves to check for any mistakes.
• New Discover page Trending This Week filter. This works just like Trending this Month, but for the week.
• Discover page Staff Picks view now sorts projects by Staff Pick date. This should be more intuitive for frequent visitors. Before, this view sorted by the date the project was posted.
• Goodbye, Search page, hello Discover page. We “fixed” the search bar in the site header to load the Discover page which allows you to filter and sort your results.
• Member search moves to the Community page. We improved the Leaderboard so it now behaves like the Discover page; you can search for members and sort results by several parameters.
• Tags are now clickable! Open a project and scroll down to the tags. Click one and the Discover page will load with the tag added to the filter.

Changes to Supporter Milestones and Targets

The biggest change is a Guidelines update we’ve applied to all projects starting today.

We’re attempting to balance making LEGO Ideas as open as possible to members with a range of skill levels, with peoples’ desire to browse and support beautifully presented models. We consistently hear from people who want to see more projects they think are “high quality” and fewer they think are “low quality.” We say think, because quality is highly subjective. This feedback persists even when our moderators filter out the majority of submissions for not meeting our Project Quality Standards.

The most successful Ideas projects—those that reach 5,000 and 10,000 supporters—share one thing in common: every one of these projects posted since LEGO Ideas launched in April 2014 reached 100 supporters in their first 30 days. No project that has gone on to reach 5k or 10k supporters has taken longer. It could very well be that the “wisdom of crowds” is the best quality filter of all. We’ve decided to let you tell us which projects are high quality by doing what you do best: supporting your favorite projects.

Starting today, projects will have 60 days to reach their first 100 supporters before receiving time extensions.

• New projects will now have 60 days to reach 100 supporters. Once they reach that milestone, they’ll receive a one-year boost. The six-month boosts at 1,000 and 5,000 remain the same.
• Existing projects with less than 100 supporters have had their Days Left clock adjusted to 60. We’ve left an Official Comment on the affected projects letting them know.

While in the short term we’re adjusting the Days Left on some projects down, the change grants new projects an additional 60 days beyond the current two years to reach 10,000 supporters.



Why did you remove Days Left from existing projects?

We decided to put projects with fewer than 100 supporters on an even playing field with new projects. Otherwise, we would wait a year before seeing the full benefit of the new expiration deadlines.

How many projects were affected?

Approximately 58% of the 5,500 active projects have had their Days Left counter reset to 60. Had we set the threshold to 30 days, 66% of projects would have been effected. These percentages are based on a sampling of active projects as of July 24.

What happens if my project expires?

If your project expires before reaching 100 supporters, we encourage you to improve your idea, re-submit it, and sharpen your promotion skills to get the support you need.

Want 100, 1,000 or even 10,000 supporters?

As always, success is ultimately in your hands, which is why we always encourage you to focus on a high quality presentation and promoting your projects to a broad audience outside the online LEGO fan community. If you don’t know where to start, learn from the Ideas members who have done just that. Check out these tips on getting a project to 10k:

• Ghostbusters fan creator Brent Waller wrote a dedicated guest blog post with advice for an effective project.
• You don’t have to spend 10 years developing your project like Angus MacLane did. Watch a video interview with the WALL·E fan designer, and check out Angus’ interview on the LEGO Ideas blog.
• Focus on promotion. Doctor Who fan designer Andy Clark says it took as much work promoting his project to reach 10,000 supporters as it did designing.
• Glen Wadleigh and Ellen Kooijman (The Big Bang Theory) break down their promotion techniques in detail on this video, starting at 2:58.

On behalf of the team, we’re pleased to bring you this update and hope you enjoy the improvements to the LEGO Ideas site. We’re looking forward to the third and final planned 2016 site update coming next month.

Update and Ideas Logo curtsey of LEGO Ideas website.

Long Overdue Update to LEGO Ideas Guidelines and House Rules

LEGO Ideas recently updated their Guidelines and House Rules as well as their Terms of service. You can read the full update below as posted in the LEGO Ideas blog.

Here are my thoughts on the changes:

• I really like that projects based on LEGO Ideas sets that have a third party intellectual property (IP) license will not be allowed. This will help remove some of the clutter and a lot of the duplicate projects that are currently in the LEGO Ideas pipeline and are clogging things up for other projects.
• The piece limit is good, and long overdue in my opinion, but 3,000 pieces is still a very large threshold. Keep in mind that all of the Modular sets, many of the Creator Expert sets, and the larger Technic sets are all under 3,000 pieces.
• I don't feel that this was a huge issue, but it will clan things up a little bit.
• I have never tried to collaborate with anyone on a LEGO Ideas project, so I do not have any experience to base my comment off of, but this seems like a much simpler method of allowing collaboration.
• This update is essentially clarification on what was already implied in the Guidelines and House rules.
• Hopefully this will help make the project descriptions more useful. Many of the projects I see on LEGO Ideas have project descriptions that are either too long or too short, neither of which provide any benefit to the reader.
• Glad to see that projects reaching the 1,000 supporter mile stone will not be removed. This is a major mile stone, and should help give some credibility to the designer(s) for other projects they may post.
• Basically just updating verbiage making it clear that you can promote your LEGO Ideas project without infringing on any of LEGO Ideas property rights just as long as you do it for not-commercial reasons and in non-commercial ways.

Posted June 21, 2016

Today we've updated our Guidelines and House Rules and Terms of Service to clarify the range of submission we're able to produce as LEGO Ideas sets. This includes new limits to project size, scope, and subject matter. We’ve also simplified guidelines for collaborative projects. Here's a summary of the updates:

• Once we produce a LEGO Ideas set based on a third-party property, we will not accept more Ideas submissions based on that property. This sharpens our guideline on follow-up products based on LEGO Ideas submissions. Once we approve a licensed project for production through LEGO Ideas, we’ll archive other projects based on the same property and not accept new submissions based on the that property.
• Projects must fit in a single product box, so we’re setting a part count limit of 3,000 pcs. While we can’t count the pieces in your photos, if your model looks too big we’ll send it back and ask you to submit a smaller model at our own discretion.
• Projects must focus on a single concept or third-party property. This essentially expands on the “no playthemes or series” rule and also rules out “mass customization” projects (e.g. custom mosaic or minifigure makers) as well as combining more than one third-party property into a single project. (e.g. a project containing both Porsche and Ferrari cars).
• It’s now simpler to collaborate on projects. We’ve removed the requirement to email us declaring your collaboration. You must still receive explicit permission from someone else before including their original work in your project. All new collaborative projects must mention collaborators’ LEGO Ideas usernames in the description, and state that their original work is included with the member’s explicit permission.
• New restrictions on project contents
  • No iconic elements referencing third-party properties we find inappropriate for the LEGO brand
  • No large or human-scale weapons or weapon replicas of any kind, including swords, knives, guns, sci-fi or fantasy blasters, etc.
  • Projects may not propose LEGO Dimensions expansion packs
  • You may only use logos that belong to third-parties in the context of your model, similar to LEGO logo guidelines. You may not display logos that do not belong to you in your artwork, since this can imply endorsement from the logo owner.
• New guidelines to help improve project descriptions
  • At minimum, please write your description to include a description of your model, why you built it, and why you believe it would make a great LEGO set.
  • In some cases, moderators may make basic grammatical changes on your behalf so we can speed up the approval of your project. We will never change the nature of your project and we’ll notify you by email if we make any changes.
• Terms of Service now preserves projects that gain a significant following. While we understand you may occasionally want to delete a project with only a handful of supporters, to either re-submit with improvements or clean up your project portfolio, once a project reaches 1,000 supporters it will not be removed.
• Terms of Service revises language regarding assignment of rights. We’ve worked with our Legal department to clarify how you assign us rights when you submit a project, and reassure you that you may share and publish your submission to promote your project online, in media, your portfolio, and other places for non-commercial purposes.

We introduce these guidelines with the following steps:

1. New Guidelines and moderation responses
2. Archiving projects based on third-party properties commercialized through LEGO Ideas, including Hayabusa, Minecraft, Back to the Future, Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, Ghostbusters, The Big Bang Theory, Doctor Who, WALL·E, Caterham, Adventure Time, Beatles, and Apollo missions.
3. Removing projects that don’t fit our new appropriate content requirements such as life-sized weapons or references to inappropriate third-party properties
4. Other guidelines will be applied going forward and not retroactively

Why these updates now?

We write our Guidelines to help you submit projects that have a reasonable chance of being selected as a product in our LEGO Review. The paradox is that we can only learn what is possible to produce through LEGO Ideas by evaluating a wide range of projects and identifying project attributes that fit our capabilities over time.

You’ve also shared opinions and suggestions about how to make LEGO Ideas an even better experience. We feel fortunate to have a passionate community that strives for this as much as we do. While we can’t accommodate every wish, your collective feedback has been incredibly valuable in making these changes to improving LEGO Ideas for as many as possible.

Throughout the rest of 2016 and beyond, our team is working to improve the way we engage on the platform and social media, improving our internal LEGO Review process, and working on the overall long-term growth of the LEGO Ideas experience.

Update and Ideas Logo curtsey of LEGO Ideas website.