Lifesupporters.com Contest (IDEA)

[Duke]

I'd like to award you guys for your continued patience and support of this site but I'm not very good at coming up with ideas so I'll need your help.

I'm considering a contest that expires Jan 01, 2007 that is as follows:

---->Lifesupporters.com Official Page Views Contest <----

$100.00 USD to the member who guesses closest to our total number of page views on the year 2006.

Rules:

- only open to active members of this site. An active member is one who holds a 50 + post count in our forums by December 25, 2006. Any member with fewer posts will have their vote disqualified. For official posting guidelines, click ......
- You can submit a vote only once but voting will close as of July 1, 2006.
- You do not require 50+ posts to vote but you do require 50 + posts to win. If you don't attain a minimum of 50 relevant posts in our forums by December 31, 2006, the prize will go to the next closest guess.


I'm also willing to up my portion of the winnings to $150.00 or possibly $200.00 USD if donations are made to this draw. Essentially, I can setup a separate PayPal account for this drawing alone and all money collected (- Pay Pal fees) will be added to the winnings.

If we all donate a bit, maybe the prize can get up around $500.00 USD, not a bad payday for one guess.

Thoughts?

[Vautrin]

Duke, one problem with that:

spamming / clicking away.
If I were to say 2,000,000 page views for the entire year, and the rest of the crew would say 1,200,000-1,500,000, I could manipulate the results quite consciously in the last week of December.

I would suggest hiding the statistics from July 1st, or check whether or not users are suddenly accessing the site like mad. Even if they do not sign in, their views will count towards the total.

Easiest would be the hiding of the statistics.

[Duke]

No one would know who guesses what, all ballots would be to myself only and hidden from everyone, including staff.

I can make the results public once the contest is over but since I'll be asking for an entire message, pre-formatted in a certain way, there is no chance of tampering.

As for page view manipulation, well, I can't control that but at this point, do you believe that someone will actually sit there and refresh away for hours? It simply wouldn't make any sense because at the rate the site seems to be drawing traffic, all your doing is taking yourself out of the money really.

I can also view everyone’s individual points when it comes to this so if I saw a drastic jump in individual member points, I'll know who's the culprit and they'll be disqualified immediately.

Simply put, hundreds of page refreshes would jump you up several hundred points/day above your average. If your average points count is high and you've added no content then you’re automatically out of the contest.

I'm also looking into the possibility of adding the User Points module again to this site so it will be easy for us all to monitor on a daily basis.

[Duke]

Maybe, we could change it so it's a guess based on what the average page view count per month is at the end of the year. That will be a lot harder for anyone to tamper with because page refreshing will only screw up your own vote.

At any rate, I want to increase the membership and participation here so awarding some sort of cash prize attached to posting in our forums is worth the investment.

I'm open to all sorts of other ideas so if anyone has a better suggestion, please post it here and we'll discuss it.

[Merika]

We are thinking about doing the $1 a random post next month. At any particular point anyone will make a buck based on being the next random post. Not sure that would work out on here though because you have a different kind of membership. But if someone doesn't want the money they can always donate it back to the site and get credit for that.

[Duke]

If I can, I'd much rather have a larger payout simply because the members put so much time and add so much content here that I think anything less isn't really fair to them.

[darkangelism]

i think its a good idea...i thin vaturin has some good points, but i think that the people on here have more integrity then to cheat and it would be seen that they are just refreshing pages. I would contribute towrds the fund.

[Stephan]

People Lie and cheat.. its by human nature. Its a great idea, but it doesnt really work out great, because its more of a lottery than a contest, I think a contest with an availability of a stratigical idea, and or such, would be the best for the site (Suggestion)

[Duke]

Well it sounds like my idea is completely out the window now so if anyone can get more specific on a new idea, I'm all ears.

I'd really like to have something in place so the payout is around Christmas time because everyone can use some extra cash that time of year.

[Merika]

Originally Posted by Stephan

People Lie and cheat.. its by human nature.

Not us Lifers! We are the best people on the planet!!!
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I think if you toy around with it awhile Duke...you'll come up with a good idea that will end up working real well to build the site.

[Duke]

Originally Posted by Merika

Not us Lifers! We are the best people on the planet!!!
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I think if you toy around with it awhile Duke...you'll come up with a good idea that will end up working real well to build the site.

I think I have the tools here to determine who's playing a less than fair game which is why I'm offering up a contest in the first place.

I also agree with Merika, you simply will not find a site, anywhere on the net with more sincere, caring, loyal and trustworthy members than this site has.

[Merika]

I'm just sucking up because I want to win the contest.

[Luba]

I guess family is excluded