text:
2020 Q3 Activity Support Proposals
There's been some discussion previously about how to make use of our quarterly Activity Support provided by TLG. Here's an excerpt regarding LEGO Online Community Activity Support for those who may not be familiar:

The purpose of RLFM/RLOC Activity Support is to provide Recognized
LEGO Fan Media (RLFM) and Recognized LEGO Online Communities (RLOC)
the opportunity to do online activities and reviews outside of the
marketing offerings of the LEGO Group. Any use of the support provided
is to be within the LEGO® Brand Values and requires the RLFM/RLOC to
clearly indicate that the products are provided by the LEGO® Group.
Examples of online activities

Reviews of LEGO sets or themes
Competitions where LEGO sets are used for inspiration and/or prizes
Live builds
Raffles
Token of appreciation to community members

The level of support One request can include products worth no more
than: 500 EUR
Please use your local Shop@Home as reference for products availability
and German Shop@Home for prices before you fill up the order document.
If you don´t have a local Shop@Home, please use German Shop@Home for
prices and assortment availability as reference. Discounted product
prices cannot be used for reference, it must be the full price.
Please note that products NOT available on your local Shop@Home cannot
be ordered. If you order a product not available, it won´t be
replaced. We also recommend you to not request products out of stock
or in backlog as we cannot ensure delivery.

If there is interest, I'd like to split up our Q3 Activity Support between a few members to create engaging and useful content for our community. This would be similar to what we did with our 2018 Annual Support, except we have control over which sets to select.
We can ship to up to 5 different addresses, and request up to 500 EUR of sets, so keep that in mind if you create a proposal. Proposals up to 100 EUR should be easy to work in, but more than that will need stronger justification, as you may be eating into funds that could have been allocated to another member.
I will be accepting proposals here until June 30th. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a users proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2020 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
The requested set(s) need to be prominently featured in at least one question. Your question(s) should be part of the proposal to receive your set(s). The question will likely be self-answered by you and should be tagged as activity-support. Alternatively, I'm open to other non-Q&A creative uses of these sets as well (social media campaigns, etc) as long as they serve the core purpose of our community.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work within 2 weeks of receiving your sets.

If inspiration is helpful, here's an example from one of our users who created some excellent content using support from TLG:
How can I motorize 42077 Technic Rally Car with LEGO Power Functions?
Update:
We're moving forward with these three proposals.

I know this community is US based, so I have to ask if this is limited to US only?

@Alex Great question. This is not US only. Most of the world should be fine, with the exception of countries where it wouldn't be legal for TLG to ship to due to sanctions or other legal concerns.

This is great! My interests are all in tinkering with spike-prime (+sensors) which I think are a bit out of the price range. Although I'd love to know how they can interact with each other over BTLE for larger systems.

I'd like to explore the internals, functionality, and potential hackability of the new Mario intelligent brick:

I would perform a teardown via a self-answered Q&A question covering the internals of this element.
If there are funds available, it would also be helpful to get a few of the Power Up Packs to determine how they interact with Mario.
Possible questions:

What is inside the new Mario intelligent brick?
How does the Mario intelligent brick sense and interact with its environment?
What sensors are included in the Mario intelligent brick?

Requested sets:

71360 Mario Starter Course (60 EUR)

Proposal Completed
'How does the LEGO Super Mario figure know which power up is attached?'
'Does the Mario Starter Course require a smart device?'

How the Mario brick works is certainly a question I might ask, because I really wonder how it can detect what it stomps on and if there are anti-cheats (if necessary) to prevent from continuously stomping on the same block over and over (and oher problems), but now that you've mentioned that question I'm afraid you're gonna beat me to it and ask the question yourself.

I've been thinking it would be cool to try to make a working LEGO glider using the sails in the 42105 Catamaran for wings.

Unfortunately they made the sails 2 different sizes, so I would need 2 copies of the set.

I could probably also do a question on a motorized speedboat.
Possible questions:

Can I make a glider out of the large sail pieces in the 42105 Catamaran Technic set?
Can I motorize the 42105 Catamaran Technic set?

Requested sets:

42105 Catamaran 38,98€ * 2 = 77.96€

Proposal Completed
'Motorized speedboat from Technic Catamaran alternate model?'

This looks great, and I'm happy to move forward with this. I've reached out via email with more details.

I would like to do an analysis of the differences between the new front fork suspension of 42107 Ducati Panigale V4 R and the existing lego shock absorbers (part 731c06). I might also be able to review characteristics of other shock absorbers produced by LEGO over the years.
Set cost: $60-$70 (US Price not yet confirmed)

Proposal Completed
'How do the various LEGO springs compare?'

And I promise to adhere to the timeline this year :)

Wait, what timeline?

See point 4 in the original post. My post from the last time we ran this was several months late :)


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Bricks self-evaluation: let's get critical!
You love your site and we love your site, but there is a whole world of people out there who might not even know it exists. When they do find it, their first impression will either scare them away or keep them around. Given this, let's take a hard look at the questions and answers here and make sure newcomers see the site at its best!
Below you'll find a few questions randomly selected from this site. What do you think about each of them and their answers? Are they the best they can be or can they be improved? Would they look interesting and inviting to an outsider or are they a little embarrassing?
Upvote the corresponding post here on meta when we're awesome. Downvote when our content just isn't quite up to par.
Oh, and do comment to let everyone know your thoughts and take part in this conversation. :)

There were only 3 questions that qualified, hence the shortness of this evaluation.

How does a question qualify?

There's an algorithm that picks these questions, with various criteria. Only three made the cut. :(

Thanks for your input, everyone!

What's the best way to link two (or more) LEGO Power Functions (PF) train motors together?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

I think this was a good question, with a good answer - I just forgot to dig out the example I'd found to add some more colour to the answers, thanks for the nudge ;)

I agree that the question itself is good, but the fact there's only one answer with a meagre 3 votes (and it's not even accepted) doesn't scream "good answer" too me. (Plus, the guy who answered was obviously lazy - seriously, is it that hard to add pictures?). The fact the OP only connected twice after asking this question and hasn't been seen for a month makes me think we disappointed him.

There we go, I've added my answer, thanks for the reminder ;)

Is it possible to build a full-size house with Lego bricks?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

One of the first questions on the site. I'm not a fan of this particular question and very few people are qualified to speak on experience. A good answer should highlight the challenges of building a LEGO home, like the financial and structural aspects. Anyone searching 'Life size LEGO house' is more likely to come across the James May news articles anyway.

Agreed on that, it's quite unlikely anyone would want to do that seriously apart from the one experiment which is indeed easy to find on the net. On the other hand, the answer isn't too bad, even if the whole "would it make sense" part of the question isn't even answered.

I've added more details based on the show, to make it a more canonical answer.

NXC Saturation algorithm for limiting motors?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

I think the question is interesting, but it shows one of our limitations: we don't seem to have much experts on robotics subjects if they're a bit deep (there are a lot of questions with that same issue). The one answer isn't even really one, so I feel we're failing the asker here.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
Promote the site on LEGO related sites
I'm not sure who takes responsibility for promoting Stack Exchange, but it would help a lot if they could organise shout-outs on well known LEGO fansites.
A well worded e-mail sent to the site's administrators could be just the thing we need to find potential target users.

Promoting of the site is a community responsibility - each user should do it as much as he can to the persons he knows.
That said, I'm personnaly holding off a little on publicity, for the following reasons:

I would like the "LEGO Answers" trademark issue settled first, so that we give a coherent image to other well known LEGO communities
I wouldn't mind building a bit more momentum before reaching out to high-profile communities.

I tried once to communicate something to Huw Millington (Brickset) about a way to scan minifig barcodes for Android (before you could find dozens of apps to do it), and while he did respond to a few mails, I had the clear impression I wasn't really reaching to him - presumably because he's got way too much junk to sort out. I'm not saying I won't try to push bricks.se to him too, but I still feel now is not the time.
However, if you happen to stumble upon a discussion on a topic which has been asked here... it's worth sharing a link. (I've seen someone on Facebook who had just noticed the stud in minifig heads had changed, for example)
Don't forget your local LUG and/or ambassadors, too. I'll probably post something to FreeLUG someday, and through Didier Enjary that should go further to RailBricks. But as you say, it needs to be well-worded, so I'm not rushing myself there either.

Talking about promotion: I use the Share option under the question from time to time and this question (http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/1754/how-much-usage-can-a-lego-piece-take-before-it-loses-its-clutch-power) which I Shared over a month ago has exploded in traffic today.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Does the LEGO Answers site get credit for hats earned by the users that opted out of the "Winter Bash" promotion?
I was checking out the Hat leaderboard. We are currently holding 89 of them. Does the site get credit for hats earned by the LEGO Answers users that met the criteria to earn a hat, but opted out of the "Winter Bash" promotion?

At the bottom of every page, there is a button labeled, "I Hate Hats!"
  This will turn off all hat-related events on all sites for you. You
  won't see people wearing hats, you won't be alerted when you earn a
  hat, and you won't be seen wearing a hat by any other users.

I believe all the 'I Hate Hats!' button does, is disable the javascript that displays hats on the site. Your username is removed from the leaderboards but the total hats remain the same. Remember you can always opt-in and out whenever and as often as you like.

Thanks! Have a Fez on me.... ;)


text:
Winter Bash 2018 LEGO Prizes!
Happy holidays everyone! Bricks Stack Exchange is once again participating in the Winter Bash celebration with the rest of the Stack Exchange network!
While this is a "just for fun" activity, there are also a few different prizes available this year.

The user with the most hats will win #10263 Winter Village Fire Station. Any ties will be resolved randomly. You can track your hat progress on the Bricks SE leaderboard. Bricks mods are excluded from this portion of the competition for fairness reasons.

3 winners will be selected randomly from everyone who earns at least 3 hats. They will each win #10259 Winter Village Station.

A winner will be selected from the 2018 Winter Bash building competition. The winner will be selected by community vote. Ties will be resolved randomly. The winner will receive #10262 James Bond Aston Martin DB5.

All winners will need to provide me with a shipping address within 1 week of the end of the competition, or their prize will be forfeited. I'm willing to be flexible if winners would prefer a different set of equal value if they already have the prize.
The contest is not open to residents of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar/Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Syria, and any other U.S. sanctioned country and where prohibited or restricted by law. This is a legal requirement that is outside of both our control and The LEGO Group's control.
New users are welcome and encouraged to participate. You may even have a slight advantage thanks to the "Still Fresh" hat. :)
The goal here is to facilitate positive engagement on the site both to celebrate the holidays and because this is the time of year when we get a lot of new traffic from parents and others just getting into LEGO.
My hope is that providing prizes for this will facilitate meaningful engagement on the site. Please don't make useless edits to posts or participate in similar shenanigans just to earn hats. :) Your actions should still provide value to the community.
Go earn some hats, and have fun building!

Lost Fire Station with one position.

Here are the top users for this years Winter Bash

Winter Bash 2018 has come to a close! We had 376 users earn 552 hats this year.
Alexander O'Mara earned the most hats, and also won our building competition, so he will be receiving the Aston Martin and Fire Station.
The following 32 users earned at least 3 hats and were eligible for the prize drawing (excluding myself):
Alexander O'Mara
Ankit Sharma
Ambo100
Eran
zovits
jncraton
Rin Rio-Oki
LegoSonicBoy
chicks
David
Phil B.
Zhaph - Ben Duguid
Aziraphale
blockhead
John Slegers
Joost
connie
Craig
lee
Laura Prendergast
DRS
I NEED HELP
Larry
Peregrine
WELZ
TheBrickBlogger
Katie
X-27
Fulltime Mom
Glorfindel
Rory Alsop
Roger Hill

The randomly selected winners from that list were:

Rory Alsop
chicks
Aziraphale

They will each receive the Winter Village Station.
All winners have one week to reach out to me via email (my username at Gmail) with shipping details.
Congrats to the winners, and thanks to everyone for participating! Happy New Year!

It might be a good idea to ping the winners in chat or something, as they might not see this answer.

That's a good idea. I'll make some effort to reach out if I don't hear from everyone.

Congratulations to the winners!

Congratulations to the winners. It was fun nonparticipating even when I miss the mark :D

Wow, what a wonderful start into 2019. Happy New Year!

Congrats everyone, and double congrats to @AlexanderO'Mara

One more shout-out to @AlexanderO'Mara: he is one of 3 people to earn 30(!) hats this Winterbash, the most hats awarded to anyone on the entire StackExchange network. https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/01/04/adios-to-winter-bash-2018/?cb=1

Wow, that's so nice!  Thanks so much.  I hope everyone had a festive holiday.

Brilliant - many thanks! Alexander's rockin around the Christmas tree, well, rocked!

Few questions I have and they can be too much for a comment so asking in answer:

Any restriction for any country due to shipment issues etc.
New contributors will be considered?
only hat activity counts or other things will change the probability in the case of a tie?

Great questions. I've updated the original post to include a few restricted countries and explicitly state that new user contributions are welcome. What did you have in mind to resolve ties? I considered giving ties to the newest account. I don't like the idea of higher rep winning, as established users already have quite an advantage already due to knowledge of how our community functions.

@jncraton: What about shipping costs? Who will bear those? (Yes, I'm asking again, surprise surprise...)

@LegoSonicBoy TLG will be handling and paying the shipping.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Ideas for our Annual Support package from TLG
Some of you may be aware that as a TLG-recognized community we receive an annual support package. This is a box of LEGO sets that belong to our community to use for events, projects, promotions, and marketing. These are frequently used by LUGs and other communities for building events, prizes, or other giveaways.
Annual Support comes with a number of stipulations. The key ones are:

Any LEGO element or LEGO product (purchased or free of charge) acquired through the LEGO Ambassador Network Support Programs is offered solely for the use of the Recognized Community and its members and cannot be sold, resold or handed over to the public.
Support in any capacity, is offered solely for the personal use of participating RLUG/RLFM/RLOC members; discounted and/or free of charge items are under no circumstances to be resold or given to the public.

Many communities have several things that we do not that make it clearer what to do with these items:

In person meetings making it easy to use these items for group purposes.
In person events making it free and easy to give these items away.
A popular public-facing web space to use for reviews that drive traffic and interest for the community.
A budget that can be used for staffing and/or shipping to send out these items as contest prizes, giveaways, or other purposes.

Basically, I'm soliciting ideas for what to do with a box of LEGO sets that was given to us.
Update: Here are the sets we were given if it's helpful:

Ideas: Fishing Store (21310), Women of NASA (21312)
Architecture: Sydney (21032), Shanghai (21039)
Brick Headz: Rey, Kylo, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash
Technic: 42074, 42077
Creator: 31072, 31075, 31080, 31074
Classic: 10712, 10715

Update 2: We're going to run with Phil's suggestion. I've created a separate question for specific proposals here: 2018 Annual Support Proposals

First of all, your second point regarding what we don’t have in comparison with other groups is not valid, as the rules clearly stipulate that items are not to be handed out to the public (so we cannot use them as give-aways and neither can other groups).
My suggestions is this:

Offer the sets up to the top contributers/most active users (one per user)
Condition for acceptance is that the set (or its pieces) need to be prominently featured in a future question by that user on this platform. The question to be answered should be part of the request to receive a set.
You, as the admin, determine which users and which questions qualify, and distribute sets accordingly.
Postage is paid for by the person receiving the set
The question needs to be posted within a month of receiving the set.
The question can be self-answered by the poster (actually, it most likely will be and needs to be).

For example, good questions could be about the particular use of a special piece, or the differences between a current and past mold of a piece, or the compatibility of a set with another set, etc.

That's good clarification on giveaways. My understanding is that these can be used as prizes and given to members of our community, they just can't be given out to non-members. This was clarified by TLG on LAN: "We offer support on community level and then the community decides how to put it to good use within the rules stated above. As an RLOC I would assume you put your support up as prizes in competitions or raffle within your community and its members. Which is in line with the rules of use."

Thanks for the additional detail. I think we should use these gifts as a way to drive more relevant content/participation. A give-away is easy to do (even a contest) but it doesn’t really drive the usage/viewership of this site much.

That sounds reasonable to me.

I unboxed everything and added the set list to my question if that is helpful.

I could definitely come up with some questions re: 42077 ... but let me know if my suggestion is what you want to go with ....

This seems to be the way to go. I've created a separate question for specific proposals here: https://bricks.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/432/2018-annual-support-proposals

Reposted on proposal Q&A here
I have an idea for 42077 Rally Car, which I think LEGO would appreciate.

How can I motorize 42077 Rally Car with LEGO Power Functions?
The Rally Car set looks really nice, and even has a built-in steering system which can be controlled by a gear on the top. There's also a fair bit of extra room inside, is there a way to add Power Functions elements to make it remote controlled?

And then the answer would be instructions on how to rebuild the set to accommodate adding Power Functions, which I'm confident can be done fairly easily.
I have lots of Power Functions elements on hand, and would definitely be willing to write both the question and answer, and I could probably come up with some other Q&A's while at it. I also think this could potentially be beneficial to LEGO as it advertises a way to use both this set and their Power Functions elements (and a reason to buy them).

Assuming you mean 42077, not 42074, that was also what I had in mind :)

I've created a separate question for specific proposals here: https://bricks.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/432/2018-annual-support-proposals

I've added some details to the tag wiki for annual-support - feel free to edit/update as appropriate.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Addressing LLM Generated Content
There have been a number of flags raised recently regarding content that may have been generated by an LLM. It would be helpful to have a discussion about how these should be addressed in our community.
I find it difficult to determine whether content is LLM generated, and I prefer to assume good faith from users, but I also want to maintain the high quality of content in our community. Any interaction must adhere to our code of conduct and treat every user with kindness and respect.
Uncited use of LLMs is prohibited by our network-wide inauthentic usage policy. These tools should not be used in our community, but we still need to determine how to address potential use given that it is difficult to determine with high confidence when these tools are being used.

I'd say the source of a contribution normally shouldn't matter at all. If it's valid, relevant and correct: it's a good contribution - regardless of whether it was written by a top contributor, a newcomer, an LLM or a bunch of drunk monkeys throwing dice onto keyboards. The same (opposite) goes for bad content: it will get fixed or removed, no matter where it came from.
My proposal: so long as the amount of content awaiting moderation does not exceed the site's moderation capacity and the quality of submitted content does not fall noticeably, let us leave the status quo as it is. But if any of these happens, we should be ready to analyze the phenomenon and protect the community from its effects. For that case there are plenty (maybe even too many) online tools that purport to recognize texts generated by LLMs and larger sites must have more experience regarding this.

This makes sense to me. We'll plan for now to not take action regarding whether or not content is LLM generated as long as it meets our other quality standards.

I agree with Zovits, but wanted to add the team at SE had previously published their results around testing how good people and tools were at identifying AI content, and it wasn't good.
Lots of false positives, especially targeting people for whom English wasn't a first language. Their tests involved mix of older, pre-ChatGPT release content and newer content as a reasonable baseline.

Thanks for sharing those results. They provide very helpful context.


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Easter building competition
As you've perhaps already seen on other sites, TLG is running an Easter building competition that we are invited to be a part of:

Our colleagues creating global campaigns have asked us to ask you to
  particpate in this years #LEGOEaster campaign and share your amazing
  pictures online using the #LEGOEaster hashtag!
As a special treat the Community Managers have decided to add a little
  raffle chance to win for those of you participating. So we've created
  a flickr account where we would like everything to be pooled and also
  hashtagged. (The Flickr pool is right here -
  https://www.flickr.com/groups/3447329@N23/ )
Once we pass Easter, we will do a Lucky Draw between all the pooled
  images. We will pick 10 raffle winners, each getting a goodie bag with
  LEGO related Easter awesomeness and a medium sized LEGO set on top.
What's required?

Take a Easter themed LEGO picture (inspiration can be
  found using an internet search engine or by taking a look at the work
  done by Stuck In Plastic and Toy Photographers or some of the other
  instagram communities we have here on LAN).
Upload and share the image online (Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook etc), using the hashtag
  #LEGOEaster
Share the image in the Flickr Pool "RLUG #LEGOEaster Campaign" as a raffle ticket for the Lucky Draw.
Add your first name
  and RLUG/RLFM affilitation along with the #LEGOEaster hashtag in the
  comment for the image to validate your Lucky Draw entry.
One entry
  ticket per picture shared in the Flickr pool - please note that you
  can only participate once with each image - taking pictures from
  different angels and uploading them does NOT give additional tickets
  for the Lucky Draw.

Once the Lucky Draw has been completed the winners will be contacted
  via Flickr Mail asking for their full name which the Ambassador for
  the given RLUG/RLFM then will be asked to approve as a member of their
  community before the prize ships.

Happy building!


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New recognition status with TLG
Lego has begun to roll out its new model for Recognized Communities.
The gist is that there are now two tiers of recognition and three categories (Traditional LUGs, Fan Media, and Online Communities). There was previously no tiers and no distinct recognition for Online Communities.
I received the following email regarding our status:

As a key component of this model, all Recognized Communities will be
  placed into two tiers to fit both the growth of the Fan Community as
  well as the different levels of ambition and desire. This tiered
  approach will allow us to better engage and support the individual
  needs of each community, in other words put the most effort where it
  has the biggest impact on the community.
By evaluating Bricks SE based on the activity report and the past
  records, we believe your community is more locally oriented and focus
  on a fair amount of activities, contents, or traffic to stabilize the
  members participation and development. Therefore, we recommend you to
  be Tier ONE.
Please note that we will have regular evaluations based on the
  criteria of Presence, Activity, Value Creation, Compliance, Structure
  and Engagement of each Recognized Community.
In addition, to embrace the trend of digitalization and support the
  increasing activities based on online platforms, LCE is opening a new
  category in the LEGO Ambassador Network called Recognized LEGO Online
  Community (RLOC). Based on the nature that your group is mainly
  operating on Facebook/forum/Flickr/Naver and has the focus of digital
  interactive activities, we suggest transferring you from RLUG/RLFM to
  RLOC to remain your strength and stay on where your group’s interest
  is. Also, by doing that, the RLOC will have the access to the support
  which aims at facilitating the online activities mentioned above.
If you disagree to our Tier placement or your new community type,
  please reach out to us via CommunitySupport@LEGO.com and explain
  carefully where, how and why you find the placement not to be aligned
  with your needs and expectations. We will then bring your feedback to
  the first evaluation during the first quarter of 2018 and reevaluate
  your placement.

The tier placement makes sense to me. While we are a successful community, we have about an order of magnitude less activity and traffic than some of the larger sites such as Brickset and Eurobricks.
I did want to get some feedback on the distinction between Online Community and Fan Media. Which do you think is a better fit for us?
While we are certainly an online community, at the core we have a small group of highly active contributors producing content that is consumed by a much larger audience (e.g. page views outnumber posts 1000 to 1). In addition, we actively discourage using this site as a place for discussion. Other sites exists for this purpose, and our focus here is on producing high quality Q&A content. Should I advocate for us to be recognized as Fan Media, or does Online Community make sense for us?

I think we fit into the RLOC category (see below) but what I don't get is the "local impact" part of the first two bullet points in the model. How can an online community have local impact? Is it because most members are from the US (are they)? Or is the impact local around each member?

Some online communities are based primarily in certain regions or countries although this site has a very international audience.

The distinctions stated in the document are not too big. However, bullet three in the LOC brick of tier one is what Bricks SE is about: "Forum traffic mirrors activities
and is perceived as valuable by
the Community".
We mostly don't spread press releases or other fan media related material. Therefore, the category chosen by LEGO is fitting, or the other way round, we fit into the category.
I am also glad that we are considered a stable community.

Thanks for the feedback. That's very helpful. I'm also encouraged that we are considered to be a stable community.

I think it's right for where we are currently - we don't really have "Activities [that] extend far beyond their circle of members/subscribers potentially with a global impact" for example - and our members here who do exhibit at events tend to do so under their LUG rather than as Bricks I think.
Interesting that we get/had access to LUGBULK - although that would be more of a nightmare to organise than for a LUG I imagine ;) However we will lose the Fan Media days, which is a shame.

That makes sense. I was thinking more along the lines of the bulk of our traffic not coming from members (e.g. 85% of traffic is from search engines).

I'm very pleased with the tier we have been assigned. I think it's a fair assessment of the current state of the site.
Bricks Stack Exchange is in an unusual fit as it is neither primarily journalistic (fan media) nor a traditional discussion forum.
I think Bricks SE is closer to the definition as a LEGO community as the content is driven very much by the community, even the less active users do contribute with voting, editing, commenting, etc...
We very rarely have articles written on this site (Events, LEGO Meetups) and they only make up a very small amount of our content.

I don't disagree that the content is driven by the community, but I wasn't sure if we were in a different place than a community like Eurobricks. It at least feel different to me, as our content is primarily consumed via search traffic and non-members.

I think from the point of view of TLG, they want to give RLFMs the chance to interview set designers and review unreleased sets. When we do rarely post articles on Meta we don't have nearly as many views as even the smallest LEGO blogs. My trip report from Billund for example, has been viewed 45 times over the past six months.

Although I wonder how Brickset and Eurobricks are categorised when they can be both be considered to be big online communities as well as fan media.


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2018 Annual Support Proposals
It's time to divide up our Annual Support from TLG as discussed here.
Here are the sets that we were given:
Ideas: Fishing Store (21310), Women of NASA (21312)
Architecture: Sydney (21032), Shanghai (21039)
Brick Headz: Rey, Kylo, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash
Technic: 42074, 42077
Creator: 31072, 31075, 31080, 31074
Classic: 10712, 10715

I will be accepting proposals for using these sets for Bricks.SE purposes here until June 8th.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must be in good standing with Bricks.SE and must have earned at least 125 rep in 2018 or 1k rep total.
Shipping costs will be paid by you to me via PayPal. I'll ship USPS and invoice you the actual shipping cost including anything I spend on shipping materials.
Sets may never be resold or given to non-members. This is a TLG requirement. Sets will be shipped unboxed to further discourage resale.
The requested set(s) and/or elements need to be prominently featured in at least one question by you. Your question(s) should be part of the request to receive your set(s). The question will likely be self-answered by you and should be tagged as annual-support. Alternatively, I'm open to other non-Q&A creative uses of these sets as well (social media campaigns, etc).
Depending on the number of proposals we have, I may be including some of the "leftover" sets in your shipment. These will not be required to be used directly for answering questions, but they certainly could be.

I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over who gets what will be at my sole discretion.

Hmm I'm a little worried if the shipping costs would add up depending on the size of the set (not that I'm interested in any of the bigger sets), as well as where I live (Singapore). I hear shipping sets unboxed reduces that a bit, is that true? Also, if costs can only be ascertained by preparing the shipment, I'm not sure if I'll be prepared for it.

Shipping would likely be quite expensive to Singapore, unfortunately. USPS has a shipping cost calculator if that is helpful: https://postcalc.usps.com/

Thanks, sadly it does look like it'd cost as much if not more to get a set like 31080 or 10715 shipped than it would to just buy it locally (and boxed) :(

Have all the sets been sent out?

@Ambo100 They've all been sent out, except for the handful of Creator and Classic sets that I'm using.

@jncraton I have finally posted my annual support question and given an answer as well. Apologies for the delay.

I would like a chance to review 21310 Old Fishing Store and answer the question:

How big is the color inconsistency problem of Sand Green colored LEGO bricks?

Sand Green has historically been a color with significant color shade differences, and since Old Fishing Store has a lot of these bricks and tiles, it will be a good set to review this.

I like that. Would I be correct in assuming that you have older sand green parts hanging around so that you can compare consistency over time as well as within a single large set?

My LEGO collection only goes a few years back, but I will try. I can also ask some local LUG members to assist me if needed.

No worries if that doesn't work out. I was mostly just curious.

I'd like to move forward with sending this out to you. Please send an email to my SE username at gmail with your shipping details.

Done and done...

I have an idea for 42077 Rally Car, which I think LEGO would appreciate.

How can I motorize 42077 Rally Car with LEGO Power Functions?
The Rally Car set looks really nice, and even has a built-in steering system which can be controlled by a gear on the top. There's also a fair bit of extra room inside, is there a way to add Power Functions elements to make it remote controlled?

And then the answer would be instructions on how to rebuild the set to accommodate adding Power Functions, which I'm confident can be done fairly easily (I'm thinking servo and L motor would do nicely).
I have lots of Power Functions elements on hand, and would definitely be willing to write both the question and answer, and I could probably come up with some other Q&A's while at it. I also think this could potentially be beneficial to LEGO as it advertises a way to use both this set and their Power Functions elements (and a reason to buy them).
For LEGO's benefit, I can also post instructions to social media.
UPDATE: Q&A posted.

I'd like to move forward with sending this out to you. Please send an email to my SE username at gmail with your shipping details.

I think I could do something with the brickheadz

Can two or more Brick Headz be combined to create a figure on a larger scale that is similar to Brick Headz or at least is humanoid in appearance?

I don't have any of the donated brick headz but have about a dozen of the older ones, I have also the Brick Me set to add pieces.
I would answer something like "Yes, I combined Brick Headz X and Y and pieces of Z to get: " followed with a picture of the result. If the question/answer is well received I would attempt instructions as a follow up...

I'll happily send all of the Brick Headz to you. Please send an email to my SE username at gmail with your shipping details.

I'd like to hang on to a few of the Classic and Creator sets. I'm assuming that these will be a bit less popular among our AFOL userbase.
I don't have precise questions in mind since I haven't looked at the parts yet, but I'd like to do something along the lines of:

What are some uses for {part}?

I like to make alternate models, and these themes are usually brilliant for that. I'd likely post many alternate builds to Rebrickable and hopefully that experience would give me ideas for good building or part identification questions along the lines of this or this.

Nah I just don't meet the requirements since I haven't been active in the past year.

@BoltClock I've updated the requirements to be either 125 rep in 2018 (so we can include new and active users) or 1k total rep (so that we can include folks like you who have contributed a lot in the past but haven't been active recently). The goal of these requirements is to prevent people from creating an account just for the purpose of getting a free set. :) I don't want to exclude legitimate participants.

I'm reading this while in a LEGO Certified Store checking out the new stuff... I gotta get home stat.


text:
2024 Q3 Activity Support
I'm opening another opportunity to request support for asking and answering questions on our site.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, August 2nd. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2024 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work before the end of October.

For this support request, we are restricted to the following:

667 EUR
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

Do you actually mean May? I thought it would be closer.

@JenserCube That was incorrect and simply a copy-paste from last time. I have updated this to October, but there can be flexibility here.

I would like to have a go at answering this question about the rotor speed of 42145 Airbus H175 Rescue Helicopter.
PS: Thanks for the heads up for this Activity Support!

I'd be open to answering either Purpose of the four rubber tires in The Globe set (21332) or How to effectively attach mirrored stickers to an interior curved surface? - but since both sets are on the pricier end of the spectrum and the first question already has an answer in the comments, while the second is really a niche topic, none of these would be a priority even in my eyes.


text:
Winter Bash 2018 Building Competition
This is the thread where we'll be tracking and voting on submissions for the 2018 Winter Bash building competition. This year, we're asking you to recreate a scene from a holiday song. This can be any song you like, just be creative and try to capture the theme of the holiday season.
Here's an example that could have been a nice submission to this competition from JKBrickworks:

Rules

Builds must be original content that has not been shared in any venue previously.
Builds may only use genuine LEGO elements.
Digital submissions are acceptable.
Builds should not use more than 1000 elements. We want this to be a relatively open competition based on creativity, and not an opportunity for you to show off that you have enough elements to build a life-sized reindeer. :)
Designs must conform to our community guidelines and must not contain content that a reasonable person would find offensive either to themselves or to a child.
All submissions must be submitted to this thread before the end of Winter Bash (January 2nd).

Let me know if you have any questions, and happy building!

Regarding the second rule, are digital submissions allowed (LDD for example) and when does the competition end?

Digital submissions are fine. I've updated the original post with the end date.

Don't rules "Builds may only use genuine LEGO elements" & "Digital submissions are acceptable" kind-of contradict each other? Also, why aren't blocks from clone brands allowed? Considering this is & "bricks" community rather than a "LEGO" community, why discriminate people who prefer or who own mostly bricks of other brands?

@JohnSlegers My guess is that only LEGO is aloud because TLG is the one providing the prizes.

Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree

(with Rock Monsters, naturally)
Detail shot:

Features:

A drummer with a mohawk
A keyboard player with an Afro (I call him Rockmaninoff)
A guitar player channeling Kiss
Two singers
One crazy-difficult-to-build Christmas tree

This is brilliant. Nicely done!

P.S. Is anyone is interested in how to build that tree, I'd be happy to post an answer on a question about it.

I'd certainly be interested in how you did that. Personally, I'd build an (extremely fragile) tree like that by stacking Travis bricks and then building out from there. It'd be cool to see exactly how you did it.

@AlexanderO'Mara - you got there too fast for me. I was going to use the lego versions of my band: https://scontent.fman2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/11173372_858257724221431_3061592973924650721_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_ht=scontent.fman2-1.fna&oh=3ceeccd736a79e3a4101b2c333067d16&oe=5CA7CBDC

A 1968 Ford Mustang reborn as a Christmas tree
The accompanying lyrics (with some minor changes to the original...):

Last Christmas, I gave you a car
But the very next day you took it apart
This year, to save me from tears
I'm building you something special

This little build is an exercise in creativity in a constrained environment born out of necessity, as we're spending the holidays at my father-in-law and this 75884 is the only LEGO set nearby. So I started wondering how else could it be used and suddenly the inspiration struck me as I was looking at this part.
I've been always rooting for the scrawny "underdog" trees on the market, so this build was intended to depict one of those trees: a bit sparse, a lot asymmetrical, the ornaments are either too big, too small or too clumped, but still full of love and holiday spirit.


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2022 Q3 Activity Support Proposals
I'm opening another opportunity to request support for asking and answering questions on our site. We've done this before, and we've had some great results.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, September 23rd. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
I have some ideas I've been mulling over, but I'm very happy to spread this support around to support the community as much as possible.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2022 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
The requested set(s) need to be prominently featured in at least one question. Your question(s) should be part of the proposal to receive your set(s). The question will likely be self-answered by you and should be tagged as activity-support. Alternatively, I'm open to other non-Q&A creative uses of these sets as well (social media campaigns, etc) as long as they serve the core purpose of our community.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work before the end of the year.

For this support request, we are restricted to the following:

667 EUR
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

Update: It looks like we don't have any proposals this round, so I'm going to move forward with some of my own ideas. Feel free to share any ideas you have regarding use of activity support in the future.


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Winter Bash 2020 Winners!
I want to say a big thank you to everyone who participated in Winter Bash this year. We had a total of 600 users earn 1,070 hats. That's a 3x increase in users since last year.
We had 128k visits to our site this December, the most in any December that I have data for, and it was great to see everyone welcoming new folks to the site and answering questions. Thank you to each of you for keeping the site tidy, active, and welcoming for all of the folks that were interacting with our community for the first time.
Drawing Winners
There's no prize for the most hats this year, but I did want to give a shoutout to @Alex for earning the most hats with 18. Alex has been a prolific contributor for the past two years here and it's great to see their name topping this list.
The following 24 users earned at least 5 hats:
Alex (18 hats)
jncraton (15 hats)
chicks (14 hats)
Michael Verschaeve (13 hats)
zovits (13 hats)
Eran (12 hats)
RSchulz (12 hats)
Christian Rau (9 hats)
A J (9 hats)
JW8 (9 hats)
PeterJ (9 hats)
Phil B. (8 hats)
Zhaph - Ben Duguid (8 hats)
Syberion (8 hats)
Tot Zam (8 hats)
H. Pauwelyn (7 hats)
Alexander O'Mara (7 hats)
Ankit Sharma (7 hats)
mindstormsboi (7 hats)
Akash (6 hats)
Glorfindel (6 hats)
Uli (5 hats)
niamulbengali (5 hats)
Alexander Nied (5 hats)

I've excluded the mods from the drawing as I do each year. The two randomly selected winners are:

Uli
Michael Verschaeve

Congrats to our winners!
Building Competition
Grand Prize
The winner of our building competition this year is the beautiful model of Heinz Field by Christian Rau:

This is a perfectly designed microscale model that captures the architectural detail of this structure perfectly.
Random Winner
The winner selected from the other users submitting content for the contest is the delightful winter hike put together by chicks:

Instructions for winners
All winners will get one set of their choosing worth up to 100 EUR that is in stock or available to order as a backorder at their local shop.lego.com. Winners should email me at my SE username at gmail with shipping information and prize selections. I will be reaching out via other means in the next few days if I don't hear anything from the winners.

I did not expect to be mentioned, since I didn't do anything out of ordinary. But thanks for it! And congratulations to Winter Bash 2020 winners!

Thank you very much! While it raised my own chances, it's a bit unfortunate that so few people participated in the building competition. Given that there was also a random selection, the chances are still a lot higher than just through hats, so it's also surprising more people didn't try their luck. It was already featured in the side bar, maybe a creating dedicated community event could help raise more awareness next year? Anyway, it was really fun and I enjoyed it a lot. I didn't know the set needs to be in stock, though. I think the entire shop is largely bombed out since Black Friday. ;-)

@ChristianRau I would have given you a run for your money, but couldnt participate this year due to personal circumstances. Congrats on your prize!

Wow, thank you so much!  I'm so glad Christian's model won in the building.  This is awesome microscale architecture.  I'm also amazed that I came in second on hats.  It was fun to see which other StackExchanges were near us in the leaderboard.

People named Alex really representing in the hats list! Good work, Alexs!

Thanks a lot ! Also congrats to the other winners.

pity we didn't have many moc submissions...

Received the set yesterday. It's the ship in a bottle. I think it will make for a very lovely vase for the flowers set. Thanks again !


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2023 Q2 Activity Support
I'm opening another opportunity to request support for asking and answering questions on our site.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, June 23rd. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
I have some ideas I've been mulling over, but I'd love to spread this support around to support the community as much as possible.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2023 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work before the end of the year.

For this support request, we are restricted to the following:

667 EUR
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

Here are some possible ideas that I think would be valuable:

Answer an unanswered question. If there's a question that a set doesn't directly help you answer, that's alright. An unrelated set can still be provided as a "thank you" for your contribution. Here are some examples where a set could be helpful:

How much tension can I expect to get out of a LEGO chains before it starts to give away?
How To Ensure Only One Brick is Fed Into a Lego Sorting Machine at a Time?

Motorize the new Land Rover Defender
Motorize the new Hogwarts Express

Would love to try this one day but I struggle to think of a set that matches the question I’d like to answer.

@Ambo100 "An unrelated set can still be provided as a "thank you" for your contribution."

I could give the "LEGO chain tension measurement" question a shot (using a similar approach as I did with the train magnets), but I'd need some chain elements for that. As far as I can see, the set with the most chain link pieces currently in LEGO's offer would be 10303: Loop Coaster, which at 400€ would be at the higher end of the allowed price range. Other alternatives with their chainlinks/€ ratio would be:

10303: Loop Coaster 222 for 400€: 0.55
10273: Haunted House 148 for 300€: 0.49
75331: The Razor Crest - UCS 158 for 600€: 0.26
10323: PAC-MAN Arcade 66 for 270€: 0.24

Seeing that the question is about a 16 and a 24-tooth gear, I estimate the required length of the chain at 40-50 links. As the question proposes, breakage of the chain pieces is not impossible either, so the total number anticipating the eventual destruction of some of them should be about 60-70 depending on the number of tests to be conducted. There are other sets which contain chain pieces, but not in the required amount, so in these cases multiple sets would be needed:

42155: The Batman - Batcycle 45 for 55€: 0.81
42107: Ducati Panigale V4 R 35 for 70€: 0.5
42139: All-Terrain Vehicle 21 for 90€: 0.23

Sounds good to me. We can figure out which set(s) make the most sense once we know if others are interested in participating.

Set 42148, Snow Groomer, contains 56 m5 threads. At an MSRP of 9.99€ that gives it a chainlink/€ ratio of 5.6 and should give you plenty available parts. If I'm not mistaken they're identical to chain pieces in terms of linkage, they just have a plate added on top.

Do you have a personal preference between these sets? 1x of each of the Ducati and Batcycle seems like it would give you want you need, but if you're more excited about one of the larger sets we can probably make that work as well.

@jncraton Thanks for the offer - while of course I'd prefer one of the larger sets (the roller coaster looks pretty intriguing from a technical standpoint), I certainly don't want to impose, so let's settle for the Ducati and the Batcycle. The links with the plate as mentioned by MMM seem indeed to have the same interface, but as the question is about the plain version, I'd think to test with those, since different moulds might have different weaknesses.

Sounds good. When you have a chance, please send me you shipping info including a contact phone number. You can email this to my username at gmail.

@jncraton Sent an email, thank you for your hard work!

Posted my answer: https://bricks.stackexchange.com/a/18267/3631 Thank you and TLG for making it possible!

I would like to give this a try too. A couple of questions that appeal to me are the ones on cleaning minifigs and changing yoshi's pose.
The first would just need a set with a bunch of minifigures, potentially 60134 Fun in the Park People Pack.
The second would obviously need a set with the default Yoshi pose, either 71367 Mario's House, or 71406 Yoshi's House.

I'm happy to move forward with either of both of these. The sets we request need to be listed as available on LEGO.com, or they will be dropped from our request when it is processed. Only 71406 is currently available. Would you like to move forward with that set, or do you have other ideas?

71418 and 71387 might also be helpful if you want additional Yoshi colors to experiment with.

I’m happy with 71406, and 71418 would be useful with blue being more common. I don’t own a lot of Bright Pink so that could be a challenge. I could make a digital model if I don’t have the parts.

I’ll drop the minifig cleaning question in favour of the more interesting one.

Sounds good. 71406 and 71418 make sense to me. When you have a chance, please email me (my username here at gmail) your shipping address along with contact phone number.


text:
2021 Q2 Activity Support Proposals
I've been thinking about how to use our Q2 activity support from TLG. Last summer, we compiled proposals from a number of users for the use of this support. That seemed to drive great content and was well-received by the community, so I'd like to do that again.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, June 11th. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2021 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
The requested set(s) need to be prominently featured in at least one question. Your question(s) should be part of the proposal to receive your set(s). The question will likely be self-answered by you and should be tagged as activity-support. Alternatively, I'm open to other non-Q&A creative uses of these sets as well (social media campaigns, etc) as long as they serve the core purpose of our community.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work within 1 month of receiving your sets.

For those of you unaware, TLG has updated the way activity support works this year, so we can now request the following each year:

3 total support requests (Q1, Q2, Q3/Q4 submitted by October)
667 EUR per request
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

I look forward to seeing all of your creative ideas here.
Update:
We're moving forward with both of the proposals below.

Out of curiosity would the activity support scheme apply to answering existing questions on the site? I am really proud of the fact the site has such a low rate of unanswered questions and there are some questions here that might be interesting to answer

@Ambo100 Absolutely. I'm not sure what questions you have in mind, but it would be excellent to deliver a great answer to an unanswered question.

I was curious about this question but I found what I think would be a good enough answer without needing to get the set. I was also curious about your question about road plates but I am not sure if I could find an answer even if I had the set.

I'm trying to find more ways to demonstrate and showcase LEGO building in our community. I'd like to propose that each interested participant this quarter receive a copy of 80022 in addition to their own proposed set. The set includes multiple copies of the following new elements:
72869 (9x black, 2x purple)

73230 (4x)

70681 (8x)

Interested participants would each share an answer for a question such as "What new building opportunities are created using the new 1x1 brick with axle hole?". I would expect answers to include building ideas, table scraps demonstrating techniques, and/or MOCs prominently using the new elements. This would be similar in concept to what New Elementary and other communities have done with their parts festivals. These questions would be asked one at a time over several months to create more content over a longer period of time and to not overwhelm participants.
I know that not everyone is a builder, so folks can opt out of the new parts challenge and still put forth a proposal.

I like this idea. 80022 set is priced at 99.99€. If we get maximum number (5) of ideas selected and everyone chose to receive this set, we have just 167.05 euro left to split.

@Alex That's a good point. If we get 5 people interested, it might make sense to pick a less expensive set for some of them to explore. I also considered 41449 for the new curved window element.

I know this is possibly too much to ask for, but I’d like to review set 10278 Police Station (EUR 179.99) with a copy of 60304 Road Plates (EUR 19.99) to answer the question: what are different ways I can use the new road plates for my modular city?
If both together are too much, I am okay in dropping 60304 as I can easily obtain a copy myself.

I love this idea, but it would be tough to justify 200 EUR if we get other great submissions. New Elementary did cover this to some extent already in their review: https://www.newelementary.com/2020/12/lego-city-review-mocs-60304-road-plates.html

I’ve got some additonal ideas to what newelementary suggested, but I’ll check and possibly put in another suggestion for a review.


text:
Winter Bash 2020 LEGO Prizes!
Happy holidays everyone! Bricks Stack Exchange is once again participating in the Winter Bash celebration with the rest of the Stack Exchange network!

There are a few different ways to win prizes this year. All winners will get a set of their choosing worth up to 100 EUR.

2 winners will be selected randomly from everyone who earns at least 5 hats. Progress can be checked on the Bricks leaderboard.
1 winner will be selected for the best submission to the building competition.
1 winner will be selected randomly from the other submissions to the building competition.

Thanks go to TLG for supporting this activity by providing prizes for us!
All winners will need to provide me with a shipping address within 1 week of the end of the competition, or their prize will be forfeited. This contest is unfortunately not open to residents of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar/Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Syria, and any other U.S. sanctioned country and where prohibited or restricted by law. This is a legal requirement that is outside of both our control and The LEGO Group's control.
The goal here is to facilitate positive engagement on the site both to celebrate the holidays and because this is the time of year when we get a lot of new traffic from parents and others just getting into LEGO. My hope is that providing prizes for this will facilitate meaningful engagement on the site. Please don't make a mess of things just to earn hats. :)
Good luck and have fun!

Will everybody get the same amount of “votes” in the raffle, or will you use a pro-rating system like the one proposed after last year’s Winter Bash? I proposed giving everyone with at least 5 hats one entry into the raffle, and then adding entries for every 3?/5? additional hats attained.

@PhilB. The plan for this year is to simply give each person with over 5 hats one entry into the drawing. This is somewhat logistically simpler for me, and also removes any incentive at all for folks to go overboard collecting hats. If folks are looking for more chances to win, we do have the building competition available.


text:
Winter Bash 2020 Building Competition
2020 has been a challenging year for most of us. I know that my holiday plans look very different than in previous years. For this year's challenge, we'd love to see submissions that explore the great things that are still present in the 2020 holiday season, even in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. Here's a summary prompt:

Capture the joy in the unique 2020 holiday season

Submissions for this year's building competition should meet the following criteria:

Builds must be original content that has not been shared in any venue previously.
Builds may only use genuine LEGO elements.
The model should fit within a 16x16 baseplate. We want this to be a relatively open competition based on creativity, and not an opportunity for you to show off how many bricks you have.
Designs must conform to our community guidelines and must not contain content that a reasonable person would find offensive either to themselves or to a child.
Digital submissions are acceptable.
Multiple submissions per user are allowed.
All submissions must be submitted to this thread before the end of Winter Bash (January 2nd). There are no limits on the number of photos you can share for each submission.

We're offering a 100 EUR LEGO set prize for the winner and one randomly selected user who shared a non-winning submission. The determination of the winner will be influenced community votes, but the final determination of a winner will be at my discretion.
A winner will be selected approximately one week after the end of Winter Bash to allow time for interested users to vote and/or leave comments on submissions.
Good luck, and happy building!

Will voting be extended a little after Jan 2nd to give late entries some room? Also, is the number of photos/pictures somehow limited? But great idea anyway!

Oh, and is it limited to one submission per user?

@ChristianRau Great questions. I've updated the post to allow multiple submissions per user, indicate that unlimited photos may be shared, and give a week after the competition for voting.

Thank you. I also came up with another question meanwhile. ;-) Are we allowed to publish the submissions in other venues once the competition is over? I'm sure we are, but I thought I'd ask.

@ChristianRau Absolutely. I'd even be happy for you to share your work elsewhere while the competition is active. That rule is only in place to prevent folks from just sharing old MOCs that happen to vaguely meet the criteria for this competition. Submissions should be new creations built for this contest.

With Christmas and New Year both cancelled, a lot of classic Christmas motifs kinda fell flat. I had really liked to build a little micro-scale Christmas market, but that's just not 2020. But there's still a few things we can enjoy over the holidays, like football! So I designed a model of Heinz Field, the stadium of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I wanted to build a model of Heinz Field for a while now, but I intended it to be about 3 times as large and apart from a few rough ideas it never really took shape yet. So this was a great opportunity to try it on a smaller scale first (it's around 1:2000).

It was quite a challenge on this scale and as you may notice I didn't quite fit it into 16x16 if you include the SNOTed trim of tiles around the border, although I already cut away a small piece from the northwestern parking extension. But the model itself is technically only in a 16x16 (or even 14x16) space. I needed the trim, though, because the base construction is rather complicated as I had to do quite a bit of offsetting by half-plates to get all the seating and facades work out in the way I wanted.
So far it's only a digital design, but I verified that it's all properly buildable with existing LEGO pieces. There's also no parts out of the ordinary and according to Stud.IO it's about 500 parts at ~50€. I plan to build it at some point in reality, even if I might not get my hands on all the parts before the competition is over.

For film enthusiasts, the model can actually be modified rather easily into an homage to one of the best movies filmed at Heinz Field:

Update: I have since refined the design and put it up on Rebrickable.

This looks brilliant! Great work!

Reall good one

So what else can we do during Christmas quarantine? Watch films, of course! But since I already built a model of Nakatomi Plaza recently, I turned to the next best Christmas classic and designed a model of the McCallisters' house from Home Alone. It might make for a nice addition to the minifig scale version we'll likely get on IDEAS next year.

It features the van of the "Wet Bandits" as well as the tree house Kevin escapes to at the end, although the 16x16 limitation meant they're a bit more crammed together. The tile trim around the border wasn't directly necessary, but the whole thing looks a bit nicer this way and the extra height of the base was needed anyway for the basement entrance. The base would even have room for a battery pack or USB connector and the interior of the house has enough room for one or more LEDs, but many of the windows aren't translucent. Whenever I build it for real, I might make the windows more lighting friendly, similar to the SNOTed ones on the side wings.

It is only a digital design so far and I probably won't build it until around next Christmas. But I made sure it's properly buildable using genuine LEGO pieces and according to Stud.IO it's about 450 parts at ~50€. Regarding the parts, you'll notice in the front view that the roof isn't perfect, but for now I just don't know how to get an inside and outside slope corner directly next to each other.

Update: I have since refined the design and put it up on Rebrickable.

This is great! Those printed 1x1 plates makes perfect little windows.

Winter Hike
Here's my take on a winter hike through the snowy woods:


text:
Winter Bash Prize Discussion
I'd like to get some input on how we run Winter Bash this year. For the past several years, TLG has provided prizes for this via one of our activity support requests. We've offered prizes for most hats, random drawings with a hat threshold, and building contests. Last year, we had a random drawing with a 5 hat threshold and a building contest.
I'm personally considering not offering prizes this year. I received feedback from several folks last year that they didn't realize that there were prizes, or they didn't do anything out of the ordinary to qualify for them. Participation in building contests has generally been low. I'm not sure the prizes drove engagement in a meaningful way.
Using our activity support for prizes, especially around the holidays, ends up being a logistical headache. TLG is backed up at this time of year, so the team that generally processes activity support requests is performing other duties. In the past, it's been March, April, or even May before these prizes have all arrived. In addition to creating a long wait for winners, this delay often causes other issues, such as products going out of stock between when a winner selected them and when they ultimately get shipped out.
I'm interested in all sorts of feedback about Winter Bash, but I'm most interested in the following:

Are Winter Bash prizes worthwhile versus using our activity support to drive engagement on the site in other ways?
If we're going to offer prizes, what should the prizes be awarded for?

Based on some of the previous issues we've had with hat goals promoting a large number of very old posts to the homepage through edits, etc. I'm fairly happy with not driving too much hat-based prize giving ;).
I guess things we might want to consider going forward are things like most improved rep/questions/votes given over the year - albeit some of those do tend to favour the long tail of old questions/answers - things that are harder to game in the last 2 weeks really.

If I understand it correctly, Winterbash is going to happen regardless, so people will be chasing hats, correct? That on its own will drive behavior that will bring up old topics with small edits and any of the other downsides of winter bash you mentioned.
But perhaps instead of offering prizes for either meaningless activity (like the beforementioned edits) or something that not a lot of people participate in, perhaps you could consider handing out prizes for the most upvoted answer and the most viewed question? The latter might be hard if it is a fly-by user who creates the question, but you could always go down the list if the person doesnt respond within a given timeframe.
P.S.: My Q2 support posts will be coming in the next few weeks. I am finally able to spend quality time on LEGO building again after the passing of my wife at the end of Sep. Stay tuned!

I'm glad that your personal life is settling down to the point that you're able to get some quality LEGO time back in. Winterbash will happen with or without prizes. My concern with providing prizes for quantitative metrics like most views or votes is that this encourages botting and sockpuppetry, which has unfortunately been a problem with Winterbash in the past.

My condolences Phil B, I hope you have any support and care you need. As jncraton mentioned there was a bit of "fun" previously with some voting behaviour - hence my suggestion at looking at performance up to the announcement of the competition or similar.

Also, we could opt out of hats ;)

I basically won my last two Christmas sets through this site, so I won't complain about the possiblity of winning real LEGO prizes through Winter Bash. ;-)
However, I do understand that awarding them for random hats can be a bit problematic, since on the one hand hats don't always come for the most meaningful tasks. And on the other hand it also can have the effect of people not even realizing they won something. While a prize out of the blue can be a nice surprize, it's probably better to undergo this effort only if people really want the prizes.
I did like the idea from last year to make it a build contest, because on the one hand you hand out prizes for actual direct achievements and you also make sure people only take part who really want the prizes. However, I understand that when there's only 2 people contributing to the build contest it's not really worthwhile and I don't really want to win just because I was about the only one showing up in the first place. I would have liked to see more engagement in the build competition last year, too.
It's a bit of a problem with low meta engagement on such a rather small site, since a build competition, however advertized on the main site, still only captures a rather small core userbase. Although, I would have thought the lookout of a neat prize (and $100 definitely is neat!) could help with that, there's probably still only so much you can do to advertize it.
So I can definitely live with there being no prizes this year if it takes a lot of effort and the engagement is rather low. Also, if that means there's more room for other, maybe more directed engagement initiatives, that's great, too.


text:
Winterbash 2021
Our community is once again participating in Winter Bash with the rest of the Stack Exchange network this year. If you're new to Winter Bash, here's an explanation from the official FAQ:

What is going on? Why do I see hats?
From December 15th through January 5th, you'll be able to earn hats
all over the sites! Ask, answer, vote, edit, and chat, and you'll
uncover hats hidden in all kinds of places.

In the past, we have offered prizes for various activities during Winter Bash, but we have decided to try skipping prizes this year. Everyone will be earning hats for their own sake, so we'll hopefully avoid some of the shenanigans we've seen in the past.
We hope that you all enjoy this activity as we work to keep our community welcoming and inviting as many new folks discover us over the holidays. Happy hat collecting!


text:
Winter Bash 2019 Winners!
I want to say a big thanks to everyone who participated in Winter Bash this year! We had a total of 170 users earn 367 hats!
We added 200 new users to our community this December, more than in any month since the initial spike when we entered public beta in 2011. We also had more new visits and total page views than we've ever had. Thank you to each of you for keeping the site tidy, active, and welcoming for all of the folks that were interacting with our community for the first time.

Now for the contest results:
We had a tie for most hats between @NeverForget and @AlexanderO'Mara. They've agreed to split the grand prize rather than flipping a coin for it, so they'll each get a set of their choosing up to a 100 EUR value. Congrats to both of our winners!
The following 32 users earned at least 3 hats:
Alexander O'Mara (22 hats)
Never Forget (22 hats)
zovits supports GoFundMonica (18 hats)
Rin Rio-Oki (12 hats)
Phil B. (9 hats)
Ambo100 (8 hats)
Chris says Reinstate Monica (8 hats)
Dan1138 (6 hats)
Ankit Sharma (6 hats)
Eran (6 hats)
jncraton (6 hats)
O. R. Mapper (5 hats)
Henrik - stop hurting Monica (5 hats)
Alex (5 hats)
Joe Slater (5 hats)
technicguy1 (4 hats)
lee (4 hats)
X-27 wants to Reinstate Monica (4 hats)
Zhaph - Ben Duguid (4 hats)
user13489 (4 hats)
Scott (3 hats)
Shootforthemoon (3 hats)
PeterJ (3 hats)
Michael Verschaeve (3 hats)
chicks (3 hats)
Joost (3 hats)
WELZ (3 hats)
Robert Columbia (3 hats)
Tonny (3 hats)
Makyen (3 hats)
SkyPaul (3 hats)
Daron Senior (3 hats)

I've excluded the two grand prize winners and three mods from the drawing as stated in the contest rules. The three randomly selected winners are:

Chris says Reinstate Monica
O. R. Mapper
Ankit Sharma

Congrats to our winners! Each of you will receive a Ginger Bread House:

Winners should email me at my SE username at gmail with shipping information and prize selections. I will be reaching out via other means in the next few days if I don't hear anything from the winners.
Thanks everyone!

Congrats to the winners!

Wow, I really won \o/

Wow, that's amazing! I just got back into LEGO (after about 20 years) a few months ago and the Gingerbread House seems really nice, I'm super happy!

This year's Winter Bash was a Smash!

Congratulations to the winners and a happy new year for everybody :)

Thanks and I just wanted to confirm that I received it last week.

@AnkitSharma Great! I hope that you've enjoyed it!

I know it can take a while, but should I be concerned that I have not yet received it?

@AlexanderO'Mara I'm sorry to hear that this hasn't arrived. The lead times are very long after the holidays as you know. There may also be an impact from Coronavirus at this point due to shipping and supply chain delays. The Billund warehouse is closed for at least the next two weeks for example. I've asked for an update from TLG, but I'm not anticipating a quick response with everything else going on.

Well it arrived today after all.

@AlexanderO'Mara Wow. Sorry about the delay. I hope that you are enjoying it! Congrats again!

Thanks! I know it's not your fault.


text:
Winter Bash 2019 LEGO Prizes!
Happy holidays everyone! Bricks Stack Exchange is once again participating in the Winter Bash celebration with the rest of the Stack Exchange network!
While this is a "just for fun" activity, there are also a few different prizes available this year.

The user with the most hats will win 75253 Droid Commander:

Any ties will be resolved randomly. You can track your hat progress on the Bricks SE leaderboard. Bricks mods are excluded from this portion of the competition for fairness reasons.

3 winners will be selected randomly from everyone who earns at least 3 hats, excluding the user with the most hats, as they already get a prize. They will each win 10267 Ginger Bread House:

Thanks go to TLG for supporting this activity by providing prizes for us!
All winners will need to provide me with a shipping address within 1 week of the end of the competition, or their prize will be forfeited. I'm willing to be flexible if winners would prefer a different set of equal value if they already have the prize.
This contest is unfortunately not open to residents of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar/Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Syria, and any other U.S. sanctioned country and where prohibited or restricted by law. This is a legal requirement that is outside of both our control and The LEGO Group's control.
The goal here is to facilitate positive engagement on the site both to celebrate the holidays and because this is the time of year when we get a lot of new traffic from parents and others just getting into LEGO. My hope is that providing prizes for this will facilitate meaningful engagement on the site. Please don't make a mess of things just to earn hats. :)
Good luck and have fun!
Update
The winners have been announced here.

I feel the stated goal ("The goal here is to facilitate positive engagement on the site") conflicts with the observed reality. See my question on meta for the details and please share your opinion.

"3 winners will be selected randomly from everyone who earns at least 3 hats" so that includes the user with the most hats, meaning there is a very small chance of getting two sets?

@David Good point. I've changed this to prevent the top user from winning a second prize.

I assume this only includes hats earned specifically on this site?

@ChrissaysReinstateMonica Correct. This is the hat count from the Bricks leader board linked above.

I qualified for the Copy Editor gold badge before WB ended, but it looks like it hasn't been awarded yet, and I don't know if it will before WB ends. Does that count for anything? https://i.imgur.com/RDX6ZoW.png

How do I provide you with a shipping address? I'm not very good at figuring this kind of stuff out.

@technicguy1 I'll ask the winners to send me info via email after I draw the names.

@jncraton Oh ok

I have a suggestion for next year: perhaps we can make the lottery draw for the prizes weighted? So everyone who gets at least three hats gets as many entries as they have hats. This would stimulate further participation, as it is fairly easy for a regular Bricks.se member to get 3 hats, but getting beyond 5-6 hats requires several secret hats, which can typically only be gained through very active engagement. And the more you participate, the higher the chance are that you win a prize, as your name gets entered multiple times.
As a slight variation we could award people extra entries for each hat they have over the required minimum 3 hats, so basically #entries = #hats - 2, with #hats >= 3 to qualify.

I think this is a good suggestion, and I was thinking about this myself.

This sounds like a good change to me.

I was planning to make this suggestion as well, maybe with an additional restriction on the maximum number of "lottery tickets" one can receive, to discourage the kind of cutthroat competition observed this year (and to a lesser degree yesteryear).

@zovitssupportsGoFundMonica: the change I propose is to counteract the fact that there is an initial surge in participation which then levels off when people have reached the 3 hats, as competing for the top spot requires a whole different level of dedication :). With my proposed change, hopefully some people will continue to interact to gain more hats and increase their chances of a prize. That said, if we make the maximum high enough (getting 10 hats is quite difficult) that could work, or perhaps we say 1 ticket for every 3 hats, with a max of 4 tickets per person?

@PhilB. "competing for the top spot requires a whole different level of dedication" You're absolutely right, and in my opinion if somebody has this level of dedication then being on the top spot should be it's own reward. - "That said, if we make the maximum high enough (getting 10 hats is quite difficult) that could work, or perhaps we say 1 ticket for every 3 hats, with a max of 4 tickets per person" I'm completely on board with this, 10 seems attainable but only through work and dedication.


text:
Create the tag synonyms "cloaks" and "capes" for tag "accessories"
Just added the tag for "capes".  I feel "cloaks" can be a synonym, but honestly BOTH should be synonyms for "accessories"  Can someone with the appropriate amount of reputation please create the synonyms?

To be honest, I'm not quite sure we even need that tag

I'm an optimist.

Indeed, we've tended to use [tag:accessories] for those previously

Cool.  That works, but it is 100% not obvious.  You might want to consider adding some synonyms. Changing question to reflect that.


text:
Do we have a bug caused by the Colorado transfer?
Since the sites moved to Colorado for the week I've seen an unexpected behavior, but only on Bricks.  It always shows me in the header that there is one suggested edit, but when I go to the review queues page or that particular queue it tells me it there are none.  This is happening to me on Linux and MacOS in up-to-date versions of Chrome.

Is it still there? I approved one suggested edit just now. It was your tag wiki edit, so I'm wondering if it was showing in your badge count, but not in your queue since you obviously can't approve your own edit.

That was it!  Thanks.

It still seems like a bug.

It basically is a bug, but I believe that it's also known behavior: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/230726. The review queue count is cached and is the same for all users. It's computationally expensive to personalize this for each user.

That's a totally legit compromise.  And now that I realize tag wiki edit could cause it I won't be surprised next time.  :)


text:
Are there other chat rooms?
Are there other chat rooms besides Bricks.se? If so how do I find them as I would like have options. Can someone help me figure out how to get to them if they exist?

The Chat Rooms are a little transient, there is the main Chat Room (we should probably unfreeze the original and close the new one, although it's never had much traffic), and members with enough privileges can create new ones, or we can move extended comments into specific Chat Rooms.
I think historically we've not tried to replicate the discussion communities available elsewhere on the web that are well established, and the Stack Exchange sites haven't always been great at surfacing the chat features, as we've been about providing great answers to specific questions :)


text:
How do I locate chat?
I'd like to participate in chat. I have only found the question and answer part. Is there a chat room for general conversation about LEGO? If so I can't seem to locate it and would like some help

Is there a chat room for general conversation about LEGO?
Click the top right icon on the menu bar then click the "chat" link:

It will take you a list of list of rooms about Bricks:

Click on the Bricks SE link.

Thank you. I look forward to conversing with fellow LEGO fans


text:
Where am I allowed to post a link to a website selling Lego compatible bricks?
I am curious if I am allowed to post a website (Lego compatible store) link here.

This is covered in the FAQ on promotion aka "How to not be a spammer". But basically : no, unless it's directly relevant to (a part of) an answer of yours.

I’m voting to close this question because it is soliciting to promote an alternative website

As others have mentioned, unless it's directly relevant to a question, and you disclose your relationship with the site, you can't promote other sites in answers.
You can however add a link to the site in your profile, either in the "About Me" section or in the "Links" section. Both of which will allow you to promote your site:

If it's in answer to someone's question, and you disclose that it's your own site, then yes. Otherwise, I think, no.


text:
2024 Q1 Activity Support
I'm opening another opportunity to request support for asking and answering questions on our site.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, February 23rd. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
I have some ideas I've been mulling over, but I'd love to spread this support around to support the community as much as possible.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2024 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work before the end of May.

For this support request, we are restricted to the following:

667 EUR
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

Here are some possible ideas that I think would be valuable:

Answer an unanswered question. If there's a question that a set doesn't directly help you answer, that's alright. An unrelated set can still be provided as a "thank you" for your contribution.
We have 21 questions related to the D11. Many are unanswered and are likely at least partial duplicates. If someone wants to clean these up in some fashion, that would be great. I don't have the set, and we can't get it via a support request as it is out of production, but an alternative "thank you" set could be provided.
Motorize the Orient Express train set
Explore the sound brick in the Sorting Hat
Analyze the physical accuracy of Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit

Dang, I missed it this time around. Is it still possible to join this time, or will I have to wait until next time?

@MatthewJensen This support has already been requested and arrived, so you'll have to wait to get on the next one.

@MatthewJensen The Q3 support thread is up now if you are still interested: https://bricks.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/621/2024-q3-activity-support

I'd gladly tackle the Earth and check just how accurate the model is compared to reality (sizes of the three bodies, distances, orbital parameters, rotation speeds, etc.) and which features got simplified away.

I'm happy to move forward with this. I'll work out the details with you via email.

@jncraton Just to be clear: in order to keep qualifying for the activity support program in the future, I should avoid using knock-off parts in my answer, right?

That's probably best. Would 3rd party elements enhance your answer in some way?

Since my only official, brand-new servo motor is broken, it would be a lot easier than to implement a return-to-center with a non-servo motor, but it's definitely doable. https://bricks.stackexchange.com/q/18609/3631

That makes sense. I don't have a PF servo, so I'm not much help diagnosing this.


text:
Should we implement 'how-to-ask' tips for certain tags? (Updated May 2021)
Stack Exchange has a network wide feature which allows clear instructions on how to ask a question to be displayed for certain 'problem' tags. The full details about the feature can be found here.
I would like to propose we use this feature for identification questions.
Approximately 7% of questions posted on LEGO Answers are identification questions. A lot of the users who ask these questions tend be new to Stack Exchange. The only way they can find out how to ask a good identification question is to visit the tag wiki page which is buried away in the tag database.
With the 'how-to-ask' feature implemented for the identification tag, users who use the tag will have a prompt similar to the one shown in the mockup below.

Should we implement this system for identification questions?
If a 'how-to-ask' tip is provided for identifcation questions, what tips should be provided?
Are there any other tags that would benefit from this feature?

Hey! Can you mention which tags you want this added to now in the question? We're sending this to our devs to have them do this but it's unclear which tags we're going to be adding the warning to. Thanks! Is it just [tag:piece-identification] and [tag:set-identification] or the other identification tags as well? Could y'all put a new answer with the slightly different variants for each tag that you want?

In regards to the identification tag being replaced with various other more specific tags I would like to suggest the following changes:

part-identification

Part identification questions get better answers if they...

Provide detailed descriptions of the physical appearance of the part
Include clear photos of the part of parts
Include details about when and where they were found

set-identification

Set identification questions get better answers if they...

Provide detailed descriptions of the physical appearance of the set
Include clear photos of the set
Include details about when and where they were found

minifigure-identification

Minifigure identification questions get better answers if they...

Provide detailed descriptions of the physical appearance of the minifigure
Include clear photos of the minifigure
Include details about when and where they were found

sticker-identification

Sticker identification questions get better answers if they...

Provide detailed descriptions of the physical appearance of the stickers
Include clear photos of the stickers or sticker sheet
Include details about when and where they were found

There is also the model-identification which is rarely used but I am not sure if it is necessary. It does sometimes get confused with the set-identification tag which is quite similar but has a different usage.

Thanks for this! :D

Hi @Catija, would you be able to let me know if the developers have been notified? I don't think we have any objections to this change.

It's in their backlog - which is unfortunately long. Thanks for your patience!

Thanks! Just updated the tags.

This has been implemented. Thanks for your patience.

Should we implement this system for identification questions?

Oh, yes!

If a 'how-to-ask' tip is provided for identifcation questions, what tips should be provided?

The second and third in the example picture seem to be good, pictures (or maybe even drawings, sketches) would be quite appreciated. I don't think the first one would help a lot, it is very subjective and vague, but I'd add a couple more:

What kind of connections does the piece have? (Studs, Technic, other)
What is the overall color, theme or style of the set? (By style I mean System or Technic)

Are there any other tags that would benefit from this feature?

Mindstorms questions seem to be the ones that would benefit a lot from some generic tips on error messages, but in this regard I can't offer any concrete and up to date advice.

The reasoning I had for the first tip was due to the amount of questions that get posted as 'What is this minifig/set/piece?'.

I would also consider including a tip to identify if the element is actually from the LEGO system or if it is from another building brick system.  People might scour their resources to identify a certain LEGO piece only to find out it's actually from Mega Bloks.

I've compiled a possible list in my post here. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

How does this sound?

Identification questions get better answers if they...

Provide detailed descriptions of the physical appearance of the part (color, theme, connections, etc...)
Have picture and/or illustrations
Include details about when and where they were found

Sounds good enough for me :)

This is now live


text:
2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we welcome 2021, and in keeping with tradition, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Bricks over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
1
4

Users destroyed³
1
0

Users contacted
1
0

User suspensions lifted early
1
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
71
494

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
5
24

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
8
170

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
5
89

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
55
384

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
7
277

Tag synonyms proposed
0
1

Questions reopened
1
1

Questions protected
1
11

Questions merged
5
0

Questions flagged⁵
0
78

Questions closed
28
53

Question flags handled⁵
40
37

Posts undeleted
3
12

Posts locked
3
2

Posts deleted⁶
154
111

Posts bumped
0
50

Comments flagged
7
81

Comments deleted⁷
281
211

Comment flags handled
64
24

Answers flagged
3
368

Answer flags handled
334
38

All comments on a post moved to chat
1
0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Bricks without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2019: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

A big thank you to Shog9 for writing the queries and script to facilitate fetching and posting this data to all the sites in the network, and to Brian for the subsequent work making the whole thing more user friendly.
Wishing everyone a happy 2021!