Tag Archives: MOCpages

The Rise & Fall of MOCpages

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MOCpages

MOCpages is dead. The largest and most vibrant online Lego community for much of the past decade, the site slowly slipped into a coma over the last few years and it seems its founder, Lego artist Sean Kenney, has this week switched off the life support. And that’s really rather sad.

The Rise

Launched back in 2003, before YouTube, Instagram and Tinder, MOCpages was the place to share Lego creations, being free, open to all, and with no limitations on storage. Creations could be rated out of five (and were ranked accordingly), and comments left for the builder, sometimes even by Sean himself.

An update a decade later brought groups, conversations, and a fancier image uploader, with the site becoming so popular it began to become unstable. New servers restored order, and saw many now famous Lego model makers begin their careers, with Firas Abu-Jaber, Nick Barrett, Ralph Savelsberg and many more counted as MOCpages alumni. Including this TLCB writer.

Sadly this success also brought a fair amount of drama, with in-fighting in particular between younger members becoming a bit of a drag on the community, but that wasn’t exactly the fault of the site. A switch from creations being ranked by their average score to ‘Likes’ (a la Facebook) helped ease the tension, and MOCpages continued to grow, with at least two hundred ‘Halo Master Chief!!’ creations added every day alone.

The Fall

However the site’s unreliability gradually returned. With Sean seemingly less and less interested in resolving the uploader issues and – at times – complete server outages, many in the community turned to Flickr as an alternative, and MOCpages’ glory days began to fade.

There were still gems to be found though, and as such our Elves continued to frequent the site (when it was operable) to ensure that TLCB continued to represent all areas of the online Lego community. But it became increasingly difficult…

With MOCpages ‘down’ more than it was ‘up’ its users became frustrated and moved on, and whilst some reached out to Sean offering to take on the site or volunteer to assist with its maintenance, they were met with a deafening wall of silence from the site’s creator.

Now we can’t begrudge Sean too much; he created the site, users could share their models for free, and some now even have careers in model making as a result of the skills they learned. However ignoring the community entirely (and the huge amount of work many had put into creating their pages, groups, contests, and creations) seems to us to be a fairly crappy thing to do. But worse was to come.

The Death

A shadow of its former self, MOCpages was nevertheless remembered fondly by many of its users, and a band of its more notable alumni endeavoured to restart the community by resurrecting one of MOCpages’ most revered contests. Interest was gained, users returned, creations were posted, and then the site crashed. Again.

And with that, the last hope for a proper MOCpages’ resurgence died.

The site limped along for another year or so with frequent outages, until this month the error message changed, from… well, there being one, to nothing at all. MOCpages had been deleted.

No warning was given for users to retrieve their photos or save their text, and there was no alert for us to get our Elves out, meaning the few that were still there have inevitably died with the site.

The Aftermath

We have now removed MOCpages from our list of sources, but the thousands of links from posts here at TLCB to the site will no longer work. Sorry about that. However if you find a creation publicised here that you like – with a dead link to MOCpages – there’s a good chance the builder will have relocated to Flickr, so it’s worth taking the time to search for them there.

We’re here to keep blogging Lego creations uploaded elsewhere, and whilst we’ll remember MOCpages fondly, if ever we decide to call it a day we’ll try to wind things up via a method that’s not an astoundingly poor way to treat the Lego community.

Should you wish to contact Sean Kenney – regarding MOCpages or anything else – you can do so at his website by clicking here.

History Repeating

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One of the best ideas of last year is back. It’s the ‘Fifteen Piece Vehicle Challenge’ on MOCpages. That’s right. Fifteen. One-Five. It’s an amazing test of creativity and pure, simple fun. Just ask Tom Remy, last year’s winner with this:

Air Balloon

A Beautiful Way to Travel, so long as you don’t mind where you’re going…

If you think you can match that, head on over to Sam the First’s group on MOCpages and get building. Three weeks to combine fifteen pieces of Lego should be plenty of time, and even the Elves can scrape together the necessary plastic. It’s informal, it’s fun, it’s open to everybody, and it’s even well organized. Can you tell that we like it? Get over there!

Group of the Month – The Rod Club

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The Rod Club Lego Hot Rod

Here at The Lego Car Blog we like to hear your views, stories and thoughts on the little blocks from Denmark, so for this Group of the Month post we hand over to one of our readers, and a previous ‘Featured TFOL’, Aaden Hughes. Aaden’s involvement in the online Lego community is down to one of MOCpages’ many community groups. He tells all below:

All good things must come to an end, and after 5 years being the ‘bar setter’ in hot rod building, one of the most respected groups on MOCpages has called an end to its long running success. The Rod Club, was the place to go if you wanted to check out the best Lego hot rods and customs from across the web and earned its place as one of the most successful car groups on MOCpages.

For me, The Rod Club was what got me started on MOCpages. Ever since I first laid eyes on the group I had always wanted to become a member. I strived to earn my spot in their ‘Elite Section’ (dedicated to the best rod builders on MOCpages) and dreamed of one day getting their Rod Of The Moment (ROTM) award. Many of the greatest car builders were members, and they inspired many other builders to join and to try to reach the goals of earning a spot in amongst MOCpages’ ‘Elite’ or achieving a ROTM award.

After 5 very successful years The Rod Club’s founder, Ape Fight, has decided to close the group’s ‘Elite Section’ and ROTM award. The group remains but it’s now simply a ‘folder’ to put your rods into. With no more ‘Elite Section’ or ROTM award, the group has finally called an end to what was the ‘golden era’ of rod-building on MOCpages.

If you like hot rods check out the link in Aaden’s guest article above. The top 50 hot rod builders held on The Rod Club’s homepage is sure to inspire you. And if you’d like to get a group or community that’s close to your heart featured here on The Lego Car Blog please get in contact in the usual ways.

1/3 Million!

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Lego MinifiguresIt only seems like a few months ago that we published our self-congratulatory ‘1/4 Million!’ post. And that’s because it was. In fact, the 1/3 million mark quietly slipped past unnoticed earlier in the week. The Elves were on a bit of a roll and we had too many models to blog to check our stats… but we’ve caught up now. So concentrate, here comes the science part:

  • TLCB has recorded 1/3 million views in 20 months. If we maintain our current daily hit rate we’ll reach another 1/3 million views every 12 months.
  • We estimate this to be about 1/8th, or 12%, of the annual views achieved at the The Brothers Brick and, slightly less impressively, about 1% of the views achieved at MOCpages.
  • We’ve approved almost 700 comments (keep ’em coming!), and deleted over 11,000 spam messages.
  • We’ve blogged approximately 500 cars, trucks, bikes, planes, spacecraft to date.

As always, a big Thank You to you – yes you – reading this post. Without you this blog would just be the ramblings of some incompetent writers. Keep your Suggestions and Feedback coming, we really do try to read and respond to all of them, and we’ll see you in a few months at 1/2 million!

TLCB Team

MOCpages Upgrade

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Here at The Lego Car Blog we use a number of sources to bring you the best Lego vehicles that the internet has to offer. One of these is MOCpages.

MOCpages

MOCpages, the web’s largest Lego-only sharing community, has unfortunately had a difficult year. A huger server crash wiped out almost all site imagery, and their troubles were sadly compounded by the damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy on Manhattan in October 2012. Since then, MOCpages has suffered numerous outages, errors and glitches, to the point where many have given up and gone elsewhere.

However Sean Kenney, MOCpages King (we’ve given him this title), recently announced a shiny new server array is on its way! This should mean a return to speed, and most importantly stability, at one of the most vibrant and popular Lego sites around.

In order to transfer site data to the new servers MOCpages will be down on Friday 28th June 2013. This also means that any links from TLCB to MOCpages will be broken during the transition. We wish MOCpages staff the best of luck with the upgrade, and we’ll see you on the other side.

TLCB Team

MOCpages Situation

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MOCpages Broken

Picture courtesy of Mark Kelso

Yes, it’s that time of the month again. MOCpages, the largest exlusively-Lego creation community in the world, is experiencing technical difficulties.

MOCpages is one of the four high profile sites that The Lego Car Blog Elves plunder for content. Unfortunately the current issues mean that the Elves are increasingly reluctant to visit, as no new creations means no meal tokens for them. As such, we’ll be redirecting most of our slovenly workforce towards more fruitful pastures. It also means that we’ll probably be blogging slightly less frequently during MOCpages’ downtime, as creations are harder to come by. However, as always, you can help us by suggesting suitable creations via the Feedback and Submission Suggestions page in the top menu or via the Comments.

Summary of MOCpages’ situation:

  • Photo Uploader defective
  • Email notifications inactive
  • Group ‘hack’ identified

Should we uncover any further details regarding MOCpages’ status we will of course pass these on. However, as even the MOCpages Moderators don’t know what’s happening we fully expect not to know anything until the issues are resolved.

TLCB Team

…

The Great Inventor

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2-2-2 Steam Engine

Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Inventor. Engineer. Pioneer. And owner of a really cool name

Today will be somewhat of an educational post for a few of you, and a tribute to one the greatest men of recent(ish) times for others, although if you’re part of the first camp you’ll probably be a member of the second too by the end of this passage.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) was an English engineer responsible for much of the technology that accelerated mankind’s progress through the 20th Century. He engineered the first underwater river tunnel, the first propellor driven ship, the incredible Clifton Suspension Bridge, London Paddington Station, Harbours, and of course, Railways. Almost everything he is credited with designing pushed mankind’s creations beyond what was previously possible; largest brick span, largest suspension span, largest ship, first metal ship…

TFOL George G has built a fitting tribute to IKB for the 2012 MOCOlympics. We’ve featured the 2-2-2 train from George’s creation here, and the whole scene is definitely worth a look. Check it out on MOCpages.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel succumbed to a stroke aged 53, leaving a wife and three children. His bridges, tunnels, stations and harbours are still in use today. And the moral of today’s story kids is Stay In School. And Don’t Smoke.

Website of the Month – The Brothers Brick

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We seem to have long months here at The Lego Car Blog; 7 months in and only 3 of these posts have made it onto the site. Nevermind, the Elves have been now been suitably kicked, er, we mean, redirected, and we have another group to show you, hurrah! This time it’s a rival blog (fulfilling a promise we made way back at the start of our car-blogging endeavor), and it’s probably the best Lego blog out there to boot.

The Brothers Brick

The Brothers Brick started way back in 2005, when AOL ruled the interweb, YouTube was but a month old, and Lehman Brothers were definitely absolutely positively making secure and wise investments. Most of you will be more than familiar with the work of this esteemed digital media engine, its penchant for beautiful landscapes, its blatant sci-fi bias, and… its disregard for anything with wheels.

In fact it was this disdain for transport related MOCs that triggered the creation of The Lego Car Blog. We wanted a blog to feed the huge Lego vehicle building community that had so far gone hungry. A hole was definitely there to be filled <insert your own dirty joke here>.

Now it seems the AFOL community has awoken to the vehicle-building scene. Both The Brothers Brick and the MOCpages Awards have started including vehicles in the mainstream, thanks largely to the brilliant creations you guys are uploading, which is also what gives us a reason for being.

So thank you Lego Car Blog reader, and if you’ve not checked them out yet, make sure you visit the guys that started the ball rolling in the first place…

MOCpages Gets Wheels!

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We love MOCpages here at The Lego Car Blog. Only thing was, none of the mods were interested in vehicles, so our favourite things with wheels were always under-represented in the competitions. Not any more.

For the 2012 Mocies, a sort of Oscars for Lego builders, the gods have smiled upon us and there’s a ‘Best Realistic Vehicle’ category. The nominations are in, giving you the chance to vote for things like this….

2012 MOCie Awards

2012 MOCie Awards. Vote now!

It’s a Ford GT40 by Mortalswordsman, but regular readers already knew that. There’s a Malte Dorowski Porsche too, and a huge and menacing black JPS Lotus transporter by DeTomaso Pantera, and an MGB by Nick Barrett and, and….. get in there and vote: http://www.mocpages.com/group.php/20804. The elves are beside themselves. They’ll probably post enough votes to crash the servers…

Group Of The Month – Brick Busters

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Brick Busters

Plagiarism. The scourge of universities and LEGO-sharing websites alike. Now at The Lego Car Blog we are a fairly liberal bunch. Sharing ideas, content and techniques is all part of the joy of building, and is pretty much how the internet operates in almost every community, be it film, music, news or bricks. After all, almost everything we post here is an image taken by someone else that we’ve used without prior consent in order to publicize their creation.

However, there has been a growing trend of picture theft and re-post amongst the Lego community, with the thieves pretending the stolen creations are in fact their own. This is often in an attempt to win a contest, gain popularity, or just common-or-garden trolling.

In reaction to this Brick Busters was born; a forum where the ‘swipers’ as they are known, can be published and action taken to remove the stolen images and/or ban the thief. The Brick Busters team do a fantastic job and have halted the theft of countless MOCs on Flickr, MOCpages, Brickshelf and others.

So how can you help in the fight against plagiarism online?

Join the Brick Busters group, either on Flickr or MOCpages. The more eyes they have, the more effective they can be.

…And what not to do:

Steal someone else’s MOC (obviously!), but also use or directly copy an original idea or technique without giving credit to its original inventor. By the same token though; don’t go too far the other way and claim everything you make is an original masterpiece – our favourite attempt to claim credit was someone thinking they had invented ‘4-wide’ cars. ‘Delusional’ doesn’t even come close!

Brick Busters; from all at The Lego Car Blog – Keep Bustin’ : )

MOCpages, NOTpages

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MOCpages error

MOCpages' Time Of The Month

We love MOCpages at The Lego Car Blog. Created by Lego artist Sean Kenney as a means for Lego fans to share their work, the site has grown in popularity and expanded its features to become the largest dedicated LEGO community on the web. Regular readers of this blog will know that many of our featured models are sourced from MOCpages, which now has over 300,000 creations to choose from.

However, MOCpages has become increasingly unreliable in recent times, and currently it’s having one of its ‘moments’. We know the MOCpages team are working hard to resolve the issues, but in the mean time, if you click a link on The Lego Car Blog and it doesn’t work, our apologies. We’re sure MOCpages will be functioning to some degree again soon.