Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 26: Contingency Plans for Getting Stuck

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 26: Contingency Plans for Getting Stuck

A number of CSR rounds in Automation have not been concluded in the normal method of the host giving reviews for each entrant’s submission, making a series of cuts, and then announcing the winner, whose creator then becomes the next host – unless they decline the opportunity, in which case the next best entrant takes the reins, and if he/she also rejects the offer to host the next round, the next entrant takes over hosting duties, and so on. In these rounds, the contest simply ground to a halt. However, there is a measure in place designed to determine a winner in the event of this very unlikely occurrence: the user poll.

The user poll for CSR allows users to vote on a winner based on a car's stats along with several subjective criteria, such as aesthetics and advertisements. The voting period usually lasts for a few days, but it may take a week in some cases. Once this period ends, the users' votes are tallied up, and the entrant whose submission receives the most votes wins. This concludes the current round, allowing the next one to begin in short order

As I am writing this, us Automationeers have been in this situation exactly three times so far. The first instance was in CSR20, which was themed around high-end luxury cars built for a very discerning client. When the deadline was followed by a seemingly interminable wait, nearly every entrant was filled with an unfamiliar feeling of suspense. Eventually a poll was held, and the clear winner was the entry from the user which had won the previous round – making this the first time that the same user won two consecutive rounds – a feat that has only been repeated once since then.

It was not until CSR25 that the contest again ground to a halt. In contrast to CSR20, this round had a more down-to-earth theme, which required entrants to build and submit an affordable, yet exciting, used car, but with one condition: it had to come with a manual gearbox as standard. Once again, the community had found itself in the same situation it had faced just five rounds earlier. This time, the creator of the winning submission declined to host the next round, causing the second-placed user to take his place. At least the host of CSR25 went on to host at least a few rounds thereafter, and was able to finish them with the expected set of reviews and results.

And now here we are at CSR57, where the problem of an incomplete round has reared its head for the first time in over a year. This was the round in which the task was to submit an affordable, easy-to-drive performance car, from 1990 to 2000 inclusive, with low running costs. It should have been a simple task for the host of this round, but unlike his previous turn as a CSR host, he never got around to reviewing any of the submissions that were sent to him during the submission period. So it was inevitable that a poll had to be held. And, as expected, the car with the best presentation (and, more importantly, the best balance of performance and affordability) accumulated votes more quickly – and in greater numbers – than its competitors. It was not surprising, therefore, that it won the round with ease.

Polls such as this are certainly a viable backup measure to keep CSR going if the reviews fail to materialize, but given their nature, they can at times seem at odds with the contest’s original premise, in which exactly one user decides the results according to his/her priorities for the current round. In fact, the creator of CSR has just proposed for the results of latest poll to be ignored altogether, in the mistaken belief that doing so would ensure that the spirit of CSR would be preserved without being unnecessarily diluted.  Fortunately, this plan was scrapped, much to the relief of Automationeers like us, and CSR58 commenced without any further delays.

One final note: in CSR52, the contest nearly got stuck yet again, with the delay pinned on unforeseen personal issues, but thanks to timely intervention on the host’s behalf (specifically, finishing all the reviews and results before the deadline), the round concluded satisfactorily, with no need for a poll at all. And as expected, the winner of that round decided to take over hosting duties for CSR53. But given that polls are only intended as backup measures if a round stalls, I expect most, if not all, future CSR rounds to conclude as intended - with a set of reviews and rankings based on a variety of objective and subjective criteria as the round host sees fit.