MaskOfDestiny’s community-wide poll about the BIONICLE canonization contests has concluded, and we are ready to share some preliminary results. We received over 980 responses (after filtering out attempts to respond multiple times). Thank you to everyone who participated!

Our team ran this poll to gauge the BIONICLE community’s opinions on the canonization contests currently being run on the TTV Message Boards, in response to growing concerns throughout the community about the way the contests are being run. This poll asked ten questions, seven of which were multiple-choice responses, and three of which were open-ended. The questions were as follows:

Question #1: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: I would like canonization contests to continue beyond the conclusion of the Hagah contest. (Multiple choice: Strongly agree, Agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Disagree, Strongly disagree)

Question #2: How satisfied have you been with the timeliness of the contest organizers in running the contest? (Multiple choice: Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)

Question #3: How satisfied have you been with the transparency of TTV’s host team? (Multiple choice: Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)

Question #4: How satisfied have you been with the selection of characters TTV has chosen to hold contests for? (Multiple choice: Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)

Question #5: How satisfied have you been with the clarity of the canonization contest rules? (Multiple choice: Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)

Question #6: How satisfied have you been with the enforcement of the canonization contest rules? (Multiple choice: Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)

Question #7: How satisfied are you with the voting process? (Multiple choice: Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)

Question #8: If the contests were to continue, would you like to see TTV continue to run these contests, have a different group run them, or pursue another option? (Open-ended response)

Question #9: If another group or team in the BIONICLE fandom was to run the canonization contests, which group would you want to do so, and what would you want such a team to look like? (Open-ended response)

Question #10: Would you like to provide any other feedback or notes? (Open-ended response)

So, now that the poll is over, how did the BIONICLE community respond? Firstly, in the interest of transparency, we are releasing a spreadsheet containing the full, raw responses to the poll, for all to view and analyze.

Secondly, for your convenience, we are also providing an analysis of the results of the multiple-choice questions (Questions 1-7) in this news post. Analyzing the open-ended responses will take more time and manual effort, so we will follow up with an analysis of Questions 8-10 in another news post on Nov. 29. In the meantime, please feel free to browse the responses in the spreadsheet linked above. Please note that these responses have not been censored for profanity, so there is some occasional inappropriate language.

Filtering Duplicate Responses

In a recent video, TTV raised concerns about the integrity of the SurveyMonkey poll we used to conduct our survey, particularly about users’ ability to abuse the system by submitting multiple responses. Although no system is foolproof, we’d like to assure our readers that we were able to detect any responses that were submitted from the same IP address, which (as far as we know) is the same countermeasure used by TTV to detect duplicate accounts. The spreadsheet linked above includes all responses, including those with duplicate IP addresses. For privacy reasons, we have anonymized the IP addresses in the spreadsheet, but responses that were submitted under the same IP address still have the same anonymized IP address. Before conducting our analysis below, we discarded any responses that shared an IP address with another.

Number of Responses

Out of 1068 total responses, we filtered out 85 duplicates, leaving 983 legitimate responses. We also thought you might be interested in seeing how many users responded to the survey over time. Below, we plot the cumulative number of responses after the poll opened. We got a large number of responses right after the survey was first announced, and a second, large bump after TTV released their video the following day. We saw a small bump when we sent out reminders before the poll closed on Nov. 25.

Quantitative Survey Results

Here we summarize the results of the first seven survey questions. For all of the average scores reported below, scores range from 1 to 5, with 1 being negative (Strongly disagree/Very dissatisfied), 5 being positive (Strongly agree/Very satisfied), and 3 being neutral. We also report the percentages of users who answered positively (4 or 5) and negatively (1 or 2).

Question 1

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: I would like canonization contests to continue beyond the conclusion of the Hagah contest.

Mean: 3.56
Standard deviation: 1.58
Positive: 63.0%
Negative: 29.2%

Takeaway: BIONICLE fans are very divided over whether to hold canonization contests at all, but the majority (63%) do want them to continue in some form.

Question 2

How satisfied have you been with the timeliness of the contest organizers in running the contest?

Mean: 2.61
Standard deviation: 1.23
Positive: 24.1%
Negative: 46.1%

Takeaway: People are generally dissatisfied with the timeliness of the contests on TTV, with 46% unsatisfied vs. only 24% satisfied.

Question 3

How satisfied have you been with the transparency of TTV’s host team?

Mean: 2.80
Standard deviation: 1.39
Positive: 34.4%
Negative: 43.3%

Takeaway: People are also generally dissatisfied with TTV’s level of transparency, with 43% dissatisfied vs. 34% satisfied.

Question 4

How satisfied have you been with the selection of characters TTV has chosen to hold contests for?

Mean: 3.59
Standard deviation: 1.18
Positive: 59.6%
Negative: 15.9%

Takeaway: People are generally happy with TTV’s choices of which characters to hold contests for, with 60% satisfied vs. only 16% dissatisfied.

Question 5

How satisfied have you been with the clarity of the canonization contest rules?

Mean: 3.13
Standard deviation: 1.37
Positive: 45.1%
Negative: 33.7%

Takeaway: People are also quite happy with the clarity of the contest rules, with 45% positive vs. 33% negative.

Question 6

How satisfied have you been with the enforcement of the canonization contest rules?

Mean: 2.87
Standard deviation: 1.36
Positive: 36.2%
Negative: 39.9%

Takeaway: Results are about even for enforcement of contest rules, although they do skew a bit negative (40% negative vs. 36% positive).

Question 7

How satisfied are you with the voting process?

Mean: 3.13
Standard deviation: 1.36
Positive: 46.5%
Negative: 32.0%

Takeaway: People are pretty happy with the current voting process, although there may be room for improvement (47% positive vs. 32% negative).

Stay Tuned

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for an analysis of the remaining questions.