QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Hi, folks. Linson hinted that I might bring a few changes to COTM. While that's true, it's only true to a small extent. We both agree that the "open season" format is still working well, so that will stay in tact for the most part. If there is a popular call for a certain category then I am happy to throw that in the mix now and then (as long as it is very inclusive).

But the first subject I would like to tackle is improving the "second chance" process, and finding better ways to retry excellent cars that made the round but lost the vote. Why do that? Take a look at these numbers: Over the last 3 years there have been,

* 8 repeat COTM winners. That is 22% of all COTM events in the last 3 years.
* 81 entries that made the round but lost the vote.
* 56 (of the 81) never got a second chance


Here is how you can help: You guys have been knocking it out of the park finding great cars to compete for COTM. That has also left a huge pool of really good cars that would be great candidates for COTM if they only had another try. We still love to see new cars, but I would like to encourage some of you to browse the archives and re-nominate some of your favorites that didn't win the vote in the past. There are some killer cars in that list! I have provided links below to the last 3 years of nominations for easy pickings. (Please make sure they still own the car though!)

Here is how I will help: I am making a few process changes to give things a push in a direction to draw down the pool of awesome cars that never had a COTM honor. Here is what I am going to try out this year (2020):

1. More restriction on repeat winners (cars, not people). Up until now, past COTM cars become eligible again after 1 year (if my memory is right). That is being extended to 3 years. This is for the sake of making more space for others to receive a COTM honor.

2. Add a "Nomination Wildcard". If there are less than 4 nominations in a given month, then I will bring the count up to 4 by randomly selecting somebody from the last 2 years of COTM contests. I created a spreadsheet with all eligible names and a random number generator. Lady luck will decide! This rarely will happen so I'm not relying on this to make an impact. But it could be fun when it happens!

3. Redemption month. One month a year will be a special event where we nominate only past contestants that didn't win the vote. I haven't decided yet whether you all make those nominations, or I use the random number generator. Making this totally random might prove to be kind of fun by bringing together an unexpected group of cars to view!

4. Increase odds of winning "2nd chance COTM Wildcard". Right now the "2nd chance wildcard" is a 12 person shootout in December. It's always wildly unpredictable, which is a lot of fun to watch, but maybe not much fun to participate in. I'm thinking of breaking that down to smaller groups of 5 people, twice a year (mid-year and end of year). So throughout the year there will be 10 normal COTM events + 2 second chance events. It's all for the purpose of increasing chances of having COTM honor.

5. Nominee has option to advance to next month if too crowded. Sometimes (not usually) the group gets a little over crowded with a lot of cars. If there are more than 4 cars nominated in a given month then the first 4 nominees will stay in that round, but I'll give the other nominees a choice to stay or bump to next month. This has to be decided before the voting thread is created.


That's all for now. It's really not a big change, just a few tweaks to maybe draw down the pool of awesome cars that have never had a COTM honor.

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last 3 years of voting threads

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/auto...tm-voting.html
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dagwood

iTrader: (5)

I like your ideas! I am on board with you 100%

Bob88GTA

iTrader: (2)

Great ideas and tweaks to COTM @QwkTrip.
I wish there were a way to get more participation in COTM. It seems that out of approximately 50k plus members here, we only have 60-80 voter participation, and then it's usually the same people voting. I know you can't really help that, just wish the voting would increase.

vinny R

I did have an idea I ran by Linson a while back that might help this issue of getting more voters Bob.

Qwik, my idea was a "pop up" window similar to when you get a PM. Once the voting thread is open is there a way this appears when a member signs in, with the choice of being redirected to the voting thread or an option to cancel the window, they only see it one time and once the choice is made it no longer will be visible to that member.

chazman

iTrader: (4)

I'm generally against renominating previous COTM winners. Lets make the room for showcasing other cars.

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Agree. That's why I expanded the ineligibility window of a COTM winner from 1 year to 3 years. Crushed that like a bug.

Vinny, it's for sure not within my powers. That's a JT pay grade kind of thing. I see what you're getting at and why. Although, there are a whole lot of people on the forums that don't care about such things and may find it annoying because they're here for the tech content.

My personal point of view is that awareness is not an issue, but interest is the issue. I view this kind of stuff as 'recreation'. If it's not fun then people aren't going to do it. That includes both personalities, and activities. There is a core group here that controls the personality. And nominations kick off the activity because nothing happens without nominations.

And here is the really important part in my mind: People get interested by having some kind of connection to it. Some people like to watch, some people like to play, but everybody likes to be connected in some way. Maybe that connection is you know the person in a voting thread so you come vote. Maybe you did the nomination. Or maybe you are the person being nominated. Or maybe you're new to the site and browsing cool cars to figure what you want to buy next. Either way, everybody is brought in by the nomination process. So keep up the nominations to bring in people (and their friends). And once they're here (and find a connection) then maybe they'll stay for a while.

It really is as simple as helping to give people a connection!

Now one way I am helping that along is by Re-Nominations of long forgotten, and other very deserving cars. It's a great way to help our old friends find their connection again.

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

You folks might see some special categories this year to foster certain kinds of nominations with low representation in the past. Just wanted to lay out some data so you understand why. I know some of you are interested in this kind of info too.

In the last 3 years there were,

46 IROC nominated. 15 won (~30% win rate)
38 Z28 nominated. 5 won (~13% win rate)
50 Trans Am nominated. 10 won (~20% win rate)
16 Formula nominated. 2 won (~13% win rate)
12 Camaro RS nominated. 0 won. Seriously.
8 Camaro nominated. 1 won (~13% win rate)
4 Firebird nominated. 100% won. Apparently those Firebirds are dangerous.

Breakdown of nominations by vehicle year,

1982 - 6
1983 - 4
1984 - 11
1985 - 15
1986 - 10
1987 - 25
1988 - 12
1989 - 50
1990 - 4
1991 - 28
1992 - 12

Breakdown of wins by vehicle year,

1982 - 1
1984 - 2
1985 - 7
1986 - 2
1987 - 8
1988 - 4
1989 - 7
1990 - 1
1991 - 4
1992 - 1

And this is meaningless, but the rivalry is fun

Chevrolet wins - 21
Pontiac wins - 16

BizJetTech

iTrader: (3)

I agree !!!

chazman

iTrader: (4)

Hey man, where have you been!

BizJetTech

iTrader: (3)

Been on Hiatus

dagwood

iTrader: (5)

Holy crap! I am the only 1982 win, and the only 1990 win in the last 3 years! Wow!

KMK454

Exception: a previous COTM winner has significantly changed their car.

chazman

iTrader: (4)

Okay, that's reasonable.


And just to prove that I put my money where my mouth is, both of my COTM winners have been renominated, and I have respectfully declined to enter them. No one wants to see that same cars winning over and over again.

Bow_Tied

iTrader: (1)

Interesting stats! Zero '83's won in the last 3 years? Wow.

I like the random select idea. If randomly selected I presume they are out for future random selects?
New rules sound great.

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Man, you guys think of everything!

Yeah, I wasn't going to bring this up but since you brought it up.... it's not 100% random, more like 95% random for reasons like you pointed out. I do reserve some flexibility to manage the field.

For example, if you were a no-show in the past, then I can guarantee I will overlook you and choose somebody else. If you've had 10 tries in the past, then I will probably spin the wheel again. And in rare cases there are some COTM entries that didn't actually meet the standards, so I will put them to the side as well. But none of you guys would know this because it's all done behind the scenes.

Again, this only happens when you folks forfeit your privilege to choose by not bringing forward 4 nominees a month. That's the only time I will step in to fill the gap.

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Not only that, but zero '83's ever for all history of COTM since 2012.
It's the only model year that has never been represented by a winner.

There have been 10 nominated that I know of.

Bow_Tied

iTrader: (1)

WOW!!!!! Folks, I think we need to change this. I hereby proclaim 2020 as the year of '83 love!!

881SA

Would it be a good idea to have COTM as a direct link in the forums tab to possibly get more members to vote? If there are 50k members there has to be a lot of cars out there that have yet to be nominated. Pretty amazing to see cars like the 92 1le that just won 2019 COY, someone obviously knew what they were buying new!

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Hi, 881SA. Some would say yes, some would say no. I guess it comes down to peoples' browsing habits. What I can tell you is that the big boss has been baking on that idea. Ultimately it is his decision.

Personally, I'm in the 'no' camp and here's why:

Looking at post counts & view counts by forum, it appears like the Appearance forum is one of the high traffic areas. And from what I've seen, COTM is almost always sorted near the top. Literally can't miss it if you're there.

The only reason to move COTM is for the purpose of increasing traffic and participation. In other words, you'd have to believe that COTM is so damn interesting that it can pull in more traffic apart from the Appearance forum than it does within. I just don't see that happening. I think COTM benefits by being in a high traffic area. That's the logic of it in my head anyway.

Regardless of all that, the real focus is for COTM to be enjoyable and people will participate.

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

More numbers for the geeks.

I keep hearing people say, Why are there so few people voting these days? Now I've not been around COTM for a long time so I wondered what they're talking about and looked back in the archives and dug up the numbers.

Breakdown of votes by year,

2012 - 1703 (full year)
2013 - 1488 (7 months voting)
2014 - 770 (8 months voting)
2015 - 1032
2016 - 870
2017 - 757
2018 - 764
2019 - 789

Breakdown of voting nominations by year,

2012 - 89
2013 - 79
2014 - 43
2015 - 67
2016 - 76
2017 - 62
2018 - 54
2019 - 57

I've got a big spreadsheet and broke this down every which way you can imagine. Types of car, voting categories, by month, rules changes, etc, etc....

The strongest correlation is the fewer number of cars nominated, the fewer number of voters. Basically if we nominate fewer people then fewer people show up to vote. --> You mean people like to participate and not just watch others from the sidelines??? Ya. They do.

The other thing I noticed is there were a lot more voting categories in the old days.

As far as a little history, I did notice in the first couple years that the whole COTM concept was very exciting to people. There was a lot of pent up exuberance for people being able to display and showcase their cars. And boy oh boy did people have incredible cars! Then in mid-2013 the program got shut down temporarily due to voting abuses. It was rebooted again (with same rules) but lost some momentum after that. Then around 2016 things slowed down to the pace we have now. And this is just my opinion, but I think that slow down is site-wide, not just COTM (we all feel it).

ThePain

I feel like internet forums in general are a dying breed. All of my favorite ones growing up are gone. Thirdgen.org and Fullsizebronco.com are the last ones I still frequent. (rarely)

Now a days it's all about FB and Reddit

BizJetTech

iTrader: (3)

[QUOTE] .........As far as a little history, I did notice in the first couple years that the whole COTM concept was very exciting to people. There was a lot of pent up exuberance for people being able to display and showcase their cars. And boy oh boy did people have incredible cars! Then in mid-2013 the program got shut down temporarily due to voting abuses. It was rebooted again (with same rules) but lost some momentum after that. Then around 2016 things slowed down to the pace we have now. And this is just my opinion, but I think that slow down is site-wide, not just COTM (we all feel it). [QUOTE}

You, sir, are doing an awesome job with this.
I for one really appreciate your time and efforts !!

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Thank you, much appreciated! I'm trying to learn from the past. The data diving has been a terrible amount of work, but that will taper off soon.

My perspective is quickly changing from when I made the first post a month ago. One example is that I realized two "2nd chance wildcards", plus a "redemption" month is too much of the same thing. That's being trimmed down. Learn and adapt, no big deal.

And most of you probably already noticed that I am bringing back more categories instead of straight up "open season". That's an about-face from my first post, too.

But the big experiment this month is with self-nominations. That's been taboo since day one of COTM. But I think it's critical to finding new cars. Lots of people with gems stashed away in their garages that we don't know about. Got to provide a way for them to show themselves.

And you know what, if something doesn't work then we'll scrap that idea and try something else, right?? Strap in for a wild year of experiments! LOL

BizJetTech

iTrader: (3)

Well done! Nice work....

WildCard600

I would be curious to know what the percentages of active board members are currently working on a project car as opposed to how many have completed projects/clean originals (ie COTM eligible stuff) at any given time.

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

I don't know but I just recently made signatures visible while browsing and I'm finding COTM material everywhere. I encourage anybody to give it a try. The stuff is in peoples' sigs and I never knew it all these years (because I had it hidden).

Just bought something from a guy here and saw his sig in the for sale ad. BOOM! COTM quality LS3 convertible pictured right there to see in his sig.

Which brings up another thing I discovered piling through the data. People like convertibles but the fact is they don't do well in COTM voting and need their own category now and then. That's something I'll do too.