Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 69: The Conclusions to Contests That Almost Never Were

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 69: The Conclusions to Contests That Almost Never Were

It is very common for an Automation forum contest to finish satisfactorily once it has been announced. This is especially true of the Car Shopping Round, where most rounds go to completion in the usual way - the host receives dozens of submissions, excludes any which violate the rule set, gives the rundown on all the rest, and releases the final results. However, on very rare occasions, none of this happens. In such situations, there is usually a contingency plan in place: every entrant votes for a single submission from that round (which must not be their own), and the user with the most votes wins. Only then can the host for the next round be determined as per the general CSR rules - if the winner declines hosting duties, they are passed down to the runner-up, and so on down the line. 

This failure to complete a round first occurred in CSR 20, but just four rounds later, it happened yet again, much to the frustration of all the entrants in those rounds. Fortunately, in both cases, the contest got up and running again thanks to the use of the public vote system described above. By far the most egregious example, however, was CSR 112, which was the most recent round as of this writing. The trouble started when the host announced that the reviews and results would have to be delayed due to unspecified physical and mental health issues. This wouldn't have been a problem if entrants had been forced to wait for just a few days, but after a week without any progress, the host reluctantly cancelled the entire round, having realized that he could not complete the writeups at all, no matter how soon he recovered.

The Morton Maxivan as originally submitted for CSR 112

Fortunately, a public poll based on screenshots and stats for certain entrants (who would only volunteer for consideration if they wanted to host the next round) was swiftly put in place, ensuring that there would be a winner after all. Whoever received the most votes for their submission after a period of time would win. Not wanting to miss out, I submitted a screenshot of my entry - the Morton Maxivan - once more. In the end, though, a variant of the MEN Urbvan took overall honors by virtue of receiving the most votes; its affordability and simplicity made it the most attractive opposition overall.

A pair of MEN Urbvans parked on a desert road. Custom car builders would often add a few letters and rearrange the rest to make the badge on the grille read "MENTAL" - which is slang for "crazy".

And so a contest that could easily have ended farcically for all involved ended up having the satisfactory conclusion it deserved. In the next post I will take a look at a thread where users are free to re-imagine other people's cars as they see fit.