Some Changes in How Blogs are Scored in Experimenting Challenges

Maybe it could be modified to (say):

A blog that contains a decent unboxing or detailed photographs will get 20 points.
A blog that contains a deep-dive into the components will get 20 points.
A blog that contain a fair amount of information towards an actual experiment will get 20 points.
A blog that significantly helps newcomers to work with the technology will get 20 points.
A blog that contains a good quality video will get 20 points.

That way, there becomes a new element of judging beyond a fixed score, but only slightly, and only hinting at applications or tutorials as example ways of scoring. If two blogs contain good quality videos, then only one 20 points overall are awarded for instance, and if someone writes less than 5 blogs, they could still pick up more than 20 points.

If it was like that, then if someone writes a blog then if it meets the competition criteria then it would be accepted regardless of a fixed type, allowing the contestants to continue writing what they find interesting or what the did, in their own way, and scored at a "almost" near-fixed value so that there's not the stress of having to write specific content, and the scoring doesn't need to go into significant effort levels either.

There will always be contestants who will try to game any system (e.g. there are those who submit on the last day, presumably to prevent others from copying). If the readers do not like certain content e.g. copied content or empty blogs, they will voice their opinions in the comments anyway, since no-one likes it when someone tries to bend the rules. That's the check and the balance will come when they realize that doesn't work with the final blog post.

The incremental change could have the benefit that there's less risk of reduced quality content if, with a bigger change, people shift to writing precisely what will be scored versus what they actually would like to do toward the challenge during their five weeks or so. It would be nice to have the spirit of being in a virtual lab with your goggles on when reading people's blogs.

Besides, anyone who doesn't bother to write five decent blog posts won't be able to formulate a decent final blog post (because the previous 5 help gather one's thoughts into an organized blog, rather than emit verbal diarhoea in the final blog which won't win the highest prizes compared to organized content.

The whole experience is supposed to be fun for everyone, that should include the organizers, the contestants and the judging. While prizes are nice to have, in reality if you think you'll get a kick out of experimenting with some cool parts that you'll get for free, and you think you'll have a bit of time to share what you find with your peers in interesting blogs, then those are going to be the fun blogs to read. Magnetics is such an intriguing topic, I'm dying to read all the cool things peoole will discover in the Flyback transformers challenge.

It could simply be the old system, except the points aren't automatically all or nothing, just assigned proportional to quality at the judge's discretion.

It could simply be the old system, except the points aren't automatically all or nothing, just assigned proportional to quality at the judge's discretion.