Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 48: The Ten Commandments of CSR Hosting

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 48: The Ten Commandments of CSR Hosting

CSR has been the longest-running and most prestigious recurring contest on the Automation forums, with 82 rounds already having been completed and an 83rd round now underway. There have been many ups and downs, but having followed the contest from the start of the very first round, nearly three years ago, I have noticed that there are 10 very important guidelines for hosts to follow. Each of them are shown below.

1. Choose an appropriate theme for the next round. Specifically, when launching a new CSR round, make sure that the theme you chose has a sufficiently compelling premise to draw in a large number of other users. Also, make sure to take into account the themes of the most recent rounds prior to the current one: if, for example, the last two rounds had a utility focus (as happened with CSR72/73 and again in CSR76/77), it might be best to and switch things up for the next round with a rule set that places less of an emphasis on utility.
2. Set realistic requirements for the round you are about to host. This involves determining a set of priorities (based on objective and subjective criteria) which would be most appropriate for the "customer" of the round, along with defining a suitable budget in terms of price, production units, and engineering time. Having an overly vague rule set can be detrimental to the entry rate of a round, as CSR64 showed. That round left many potential entrants confused about what to do due to the vague rule set, and ultimately, they ended up not submitting anything at all.
3. Respond to other users' feedback if you are unsure about certain parts of your rule set. If someone else requests that you revise your rule set, then think carefully about the consequences of implementing the revision, and even then, only do so if you consider it appropriate given the theme of the current round. For example, CSR83 (the latest round at the time of writing) was originally intended to launch with a budget of $8500, but after complaints from several other users who felt it was insufficient, the budget cap was increased slightly, to $9000.
4. Notify entrants of rule violations when appropriate, and always state the cause. Occasionally someone will submit something which does not meet the requirements of the current round for some reason. It is up to you to decide whether you would rather ignore these entries altogether during the review phase or ask the user to revise and re-submit their entry for the sake of compliance - assuming you have allowed the entrants to do so only in the event of a violation. Taking CSR74 as an example, I was faced with so many violations in my "inbox" that I reluctantly told the users that I would not accept their entries unless they fixed the fault which caused the violation - and they all did so before the deadline.
5. Ensure you can complete the round in a timely manner before hosting. It is generally agreed that a CSR round must be completed within 72 hours of the deadline for entries having passed. That 72-hour time frame should be reserved for writing, editing and publishing reviews for each of the entrants' submissions. Thus, if you feel that you cannot fulfill this obligation adequately, you should let someone else host the next round instead. Again using CSR74 as an example, I explicitly told the entrants that the reviews and results would all be completed and posted within 72 hours - and true to my word, I did just that.
6. Give each entrant's submission a succinct, fair and unbiased review. When reviewing cars which have been submitted to you, never forget to tell the truth about it. There is no place for misleading information in any phase of CSR, especially this one. And make sure the reviews are neither too long nor too short; you may be on a time crunch, but make sure to include all the important facts about each submission you received.
7. Plan out the review phase correctly. Often, this means starting out with a brief summary of each submission, before moving on to a shortlist consisting of several entries (between six and twelve should be sufficient in most cases). If necessary, make at least one more round of cuts, until you have determined the list of finalists for the current round.
8. Make the right choice regarding the winner of the current round. Choosing the car which best fits the imaginary client's requirements is mandatory for any CSR round, but it must always be the correct one 100% of the time. Otherwise, you could find yourself the subject of protests from disgruntled entrants.
9. Use a fair and balanced scoring system when judging submissions. In any CSR round, try not to give too much weighting to a particular stat when scoring entrants' submissions. This is especially glaring if the overly weighted stat has little relevance to the rules of the current round. CSR82 was a case in point. The host unintentionally (and unexpectedly) made service costs much more of a factor in the judging phase than would have been considered desirable, given the high-budget theme of that particular round. Hence, cars which cost less to service, even if they fell short in other criteria, ended up placing higher up the order than they should have, which is quite unrealistic to say the least.
10. Above all, enjoy your turn as the host, and have fun. What's the point at taking control of CSR for a week or so if you end up losing interest within a few days? You could end up taking so long to finish the reviews that the entrants would end up losing their patience. So make sure to approach the challenge of hosting CSR with a can-do attitude if you get the chance.

There are many other bits of advice which are useful, but these ten tips shown above are the most useful of all. As long as you heed them, you will not go far wrong when hosting a round of CSR. In the next post, I will examine what happens when a CSR round goes awry - and the results aren't very pleasant.