Thonk Reacc
Sorry, I’m going to have to make a captain’s call on this to put a
big fat hold
on proceedings 
There are many users here who have only joined in around CSR70 or so. They’re less likely to appreciate that what’s happened in this round falls abysmally short of any expected standard when hosting this thing and requires censure, especially as while this is a place where you can fart out a car and submit about 10 minutes after the round opens, many regulars actually pour hours worth of meticulous effort into a promising premise only to find that everything has been mishandled. Would you prefer a system in which such effort is rewarded, or disregarded and disrespected?
If I had created this for anything kind of personal satisfaction other than making something for the community by the community, I would be insulted.
First, the entries were closed a day early without consultation or warning kind of like how the Discord used to be run. I don’t know how you guys were raised but in my books that’s just rude.
Secondly, the entry list was whittled from 54 entries to a shortlist of 6 with about half a sentence for each car. Now that’s a hell of a lot to go through and think about and goes above and beyond what one might reasonably expect “shopping for a car” so this is understandable. I’d also like to add that it was good that the entries were pre-processed for more timely results, so well done on that count. It wouldn’t have been as much of an issue if not for problem number 3.
Thirdly, as @NormanVauxhall pointed out, the spreadsheet on which the criteria for initial judging was based is actually broken. Not “somewhat inaccurate”, just broken.
The service costs in particular, which are an important criteria, yes, but when they influence the outcome of your scoring by a factor of ten compared to the rest of the important criteria, you’ve messed up.
I’m therefore calling into question the validity of the results of this round. Vri and I both agree there is an issue; however there’s no easy fix for this. The issue of Vri abandoning the actual write-up part of probably the seventh consecutive attempted challenge is a separate issue but probably one you can take into your own consideration in future. The issue of Vri abandoning the actual write-up opens a whole new can of worms. Using a spreadsheet to narrow things down isn’t unheard of, and sometimes actually enhances the round. In this case since there were well above expected numbers for the round (a record 54 entries), I’d say it was almost essential. But because we can now clearly see that since the outcome was solely determined according to the scoring, we can conclude no element of the host’s actual opinion was formulated in running this round.
This is therefore not a CSR round.
That’s my take on it. However I’m just one person here. You’re free to disagree but we’ll need some semblance of consensus before moving on. There are a few options as per our usual provisions as stated in the rules:
- Accept the results as given and move on (though this one is pending universal understanding to my satisfaction at spelling out exactly why this is problematic)
- Hold a poll and let the community decide (not recommended for a round of over 50 cars)
- Do a countback from the previous round instead (safe, but leaves a sour aftertaste)
@Leedar to be honest we’ve already gone back and forth about the provisions of not hosting if one can’t do it kind of thing multiple times. It happens every time somebody fucks up. I’m not going to air my personal opinions here knowing what I do, beyond saying that it should no longer necessary for us to extol upon the dangers of biting off more than one can chew though in some cases this appears to be due to a chronic lack of foresight and insight so maybe we should just bar certain users from hosting.
Finally the one thing we can revisit is the idea that hosts are well within their rights to put a cap on entry numbers EDIT: though it would be unwise to put an actual hard cap on entry numbers because then people will rush to get it in and you’ll just get a lot of random click shit and 3 fixture wonders. In fact to smooth things over it might be a good idea to say something like “well if I get this many entries I will only be able to meaningfully blurb on this many”. In my previous rounds I and several other hosts already tiered things depending on entry numbers, sometimes even going through three or more rounds: these entries were instabinned because x, these entries did not fit the brief because x, these entries were ok but these other entries did x better so I put them into a short list. And then go from there. It just takes a bit of planning.
21 Likes
OMG 1st place!
This is very good news to me, specialy as my first CSR.
By the way, I do understand the time crunch of yours, please take your time on your priorities, especially your education. I and other person here in this thread can wait for your review of the 6 finalists.
And for the sake of all person, as I’ve got the 1 st place, I’d like to post my entry “.car” file for downloading.
(if any collaboration of modification, special edition to my car or my work, please PM to me for my consent, then I shall put in my lore topic)
CSR82-z2bbgr - SBA Cdx. (Mk.III) 4.0 Prestige.car (35.5 KB)
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I think we should roll back and re-do CSR82 with a new host. Whether that’s the next in line from CSR81 or a fresh pick, I’m not sure but for what it’s worth I’d give the CSR81 winner another go before holding an election for a brand new host…
As for the controversy, well, it wouldn’t be CSR if there wasn’t SOME drama or kerfuffle. Just remember; there’s always next round if you didn’t win this one!
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Just so that everyone’s hard work into the existing CSR didn’t go to waste, I wonder if we could simply have another user take over the reviewing and judging duties? Let them decide based on the existing criteria what they think would make the best 90s GT in their own opinion. With the caveat that they are not allowed to review or rank their own car in the finalists.
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Damn this was suggested on the Discord but gosh that’s a lot to get done for a redo. As we all ask, who the heck wants to attempt that?
for the sake of moving things along I’m inclined not to take z2bbgr’s win away since that was taken in good faith.
There is only one who has the skill to rise to this occasion… abg7 
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CALVINATOR IS THE KEY !
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Here are some more observations I have about hosting a large CSR:
-
Relying entirely on objective values, like driveability, sportiness, etc. is an important part of judging a car’s worth, but it also means you cannot effectively judge your entries until they all arrive, which can leave you with a huge job of judging (and writing!) everything at the last minute. Not ideal. Let’s be honest here anyway; when you go out shopping for a car in the real world, looks are the first impression you get of a car. If it looks ugly to you, you’re not going to give it much consideration, even if it does have better whatever than something you look at and go “oh wow that’s real nice!” Nobody in reality bases their car purchase solely based on some mathematical formula; emotion is important, arguably the MOST important thing, whether you admit it or not.
-
This might come across as harsh, but just because you get 50+ entries into the competition, doesn’t mean you have to write about all of them. Instead of using a two-tiered result, where the host reviews the full field of cars, then reviews the finalists in more detail, I would suggest moving to a three-tiered system; eliminate a group of cars right off the bat and don’t review them - just post a list at the end of the challenge saying, “the following cars were received but did not merit review”, or something like that - then continue on with the brief reviews of the remaining cars, and a more detailed review of the finalists.
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not gonna lie, I love insta 
The key is, if you’re gonna do that to someone, at least make it hilarious. Unless it simply disregarded the rules.
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If we’re really serious about the idea of a judge redoing 54 cars, we should do it the proper way and at least do a countback from the previous round to see who is eligible. Horrendous idea that I think this is notwithstanding.
First though before you all get ahead of yourselves, vri has already left all the discord channels and I very much doubt they’ll be checking these forums for at least a month. How are you going to get your hands on all the cars? Hmm?
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Might as well move on to the next round somehow. Get people working on a new car so they can forget this mess. 
I agree. We are currently floating an idea that will allow us to proceed in a timely fashion. 2Z actually has a ruleset being worked on at the moment. Seeing as he’s new, we can pre-assess to see if it’ll work out and if it does my recommendation would be to go with that. We can find another judge for this round later.
1 Like
Even though I wasn’t able to enter, from what strop said about Vri having left the Discord and probably not checking the forums, I agree that the best idea would be to move on and return to the judging of this round at a later date.
54 cars is a high number of entries and the way Vri handled things is totally understandable to try and get the reviews out in a timely manner, so to keep CSR running. However, this forms a criticism of this challenge. The fact that she made short reviews for the first part meant they were very generic, often times repeating parts of previous reviews. Along with the fact that service costs had a much higher weighting than the rest, meant the scoring was very broken, whereby someone could enter a car with very low service costs and compete with (maybe even beat) cars that were focused to the other stats.
In my eyes this round did not fulfill the high standards of previous rounds. I can understand Vri was overwhelmed by entries, but no notice was given to cut them short. These above reasons are why I feel we should move on and leave judging to someone else, at a later date.
On a side not, congrats to z2bbgr for taking the W. I know this round wasn’t the best, but congrats, nonetheless.
3 Likes
Drama aside, @z2bbgr you’re first in line for hosting CSR83 but if you can’t, I already have something in mind.
I’ve posted CSR83, after opinions and suggestions in Discord.
I need to say that this round s*cked up. The only resemblance to a review that has been seen in this round, has been the first part, and flojea everywhere (is done with reluctance, is very superficial, the final part is very short and do not argue anything), in addition to not be the first time that you commit to perform a competition, and then you abandon it for supposed lack of time (if you see that you will not be able to, because it passes to another person the round).
Not to mention that the fact some of us who wanted to enter a car late during the entry period were given the middle finger, or at least the rushed deadline change felt like a huge middle finger.
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Oh yes keep shooting at the ambulance please.
So er…are we getting a solid conclusion to this or what?
1 Like