Suggestion: PC Member of the Week/Month

[Belldandy]

And I mean - I might make some people angry with this - but we could limit the participants to just general members, not PC Supporters nor Moderators.

I don't think me giving 2$/mo for the past eight months or so made me any more "popular." Most people don't know I exist nowadays unless they knew me under my other username on a different account.

Member of the Month might work if it's limited to one win per person. That would make it fair. I really don't care either way (whether we keep it to just MotY or add MotM in as well), but if MotM were to make a come-back, supporters shouldn't be hit just because their names are italicized.

Moderators I think have their own kind of contests, so I can see them being exempt. Again, I don't really care either way, as long as supporters aren't getting hit simply because a green font makes people uneasy. It really has nothing to do with popularity.

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

I can only speak for the section my forum (Chit Chat) falls into, but I don't like this. In MotY, we have two separate ballots, a universal one, and a forum specific one. Universal works because it targets general things, like "best male" or "most likely to make meth" lol. Forum specific works, because they would focus on a single section of PC, where the pool of contestants were similar in someways.

The way you listed the sections don't work, because not all the sub-sections mesh well enough to come up with categories that would embody every single sub-section. Chit Chat and Debates, for example, despite their similarities, are different in terms of how each place is executed, and your method would require us to make spots that would fit for both. Which doesn't work.

True, I did just throw these categories up on the fly, but I still think it could be manageable. It would just need to be restructured in a way that all sub forums could fit into, but also limit the amount of categories that people could be nominated to. When I thought of this idea I was thinking more that it would be more Forum Specific, not the Universal one.

It is more elaborate, yes, but there's always the general Favorite girls, boys, mods, higher staff, pairing, etc. Doing that every month would get repetitive, even if we don't allow consecutive winners. Like I said before, I think Season is a better time frame, because there's more time to observe other members and get your mind off the previous MotS.

I still don't really want these to return because running them ahhh!! But if it were to make a comeback, I think doing it every season, and of course the yearly, would be the best way to go. I hope you don't feel like I'm trying to shut you out or anything, by the way. Just expressing my concerns and such. I do appreciate the suggestion, cause it's been brought up before so it shows that there really must be a desire for this.

Haha not at all my man, I was just throwing something out there because I thought it would be something that would be fun for the community and actually help promote people to post more [: Member of the Season does seem more manageable, not only for the staff running but to get a good timeframe for people to think on who produces/engages in the best content.

The favorite girl/boy, higher staff thing you listed above though wouldn't be a part of this. Member of the Season, which seems to be the more reasonable title now, would be specifically about content alone. One award.

 

[Honest]

If somebody winds up wining, I just don't think it'd be a good idea to exempt them forever as you're mentioning here. x_x" It'd be okay, though, if we did it only for a certain amount of time (three months, maybe, like I said before). We don't necessarily have to worry about quality, if you ask me; we have tons of people signing-up every year, so if we run out of people to vote for, there would always be new ones who are just as good and deserving. It's how it is, you know? Not only PokéCommunity; same goes for pretty much all forums around Internet. People come and go. Some impress, grab attention, and become liked by others throughout the community.



Yup, making it a monthly thing is definitely too frequent. I'm all for having it become seasonal. d:

It was hypothetical, since people kept mentioning repeated winners. I used the extreme, but I don't believe two or three months grace will really change much. Maybe I'm just being Negative Nancy, though. I'd be down to try seasonal, though!

 

[Kanzler]

Do we need our egos stroked any more? Somewhere down the line it gets boring and repetitive, regardless of who wins eh? Iunno, it feels like one of those "participation award" thingies, like we're making a big deal out of something that isn't a big deal, and the whole circus just comes across as superficial and trivial.

 

[Nick]

wow people seem to get their panties in a bunch when it comes to winning member voted titles on a forum. settle down, y'all. geez.

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

Do we need our egos stroked any more? Somewhere down the line it gets boring and repetitive, regardless of who wins eh? Iunno, it feels like one of those "participation award" thingies, like we're making a big deal out of something that isn't a big deal, and the whole circus just comes across as superficial and trivial.

I saw it more as a way to exploit something that a person may have worked a long time on then as a pick me up for someone. For instance, I personally don't visit the Game Development section of PC, but I would love to congratulate someone on a job well done one one of their projects. It's not egotistical or anything like that: it's more just a way to give someone the attention and recognition that they otherwise probably wouldn't get as a lot of people only visit certain sections of PC. At the same time, it could draw newcomers into a certain section that they otherwise wouldn't go into, improving the overall production of PC users as well as peak new interests.

 

[Kanzler]

Hmm now there's a thought. D&D always needs love.

 

[Honest]

I actually don't believe cliques would be an issue. It didn't appear to be one in the MotY contest.

 

[Sydian]

I haven't seen a clique around PC since 2012, js.

 

[Melody]

I think there ought to be a way for good members to be highlighted for good reasons. For most intents and purposes, MoTY covers most of our use-cases.

However I believe that there should be an infrequent/irregular method too, known as a "Member Spotlight". These members are those who are highlighted when the staff recieves a set minimum number of nominations. The attention only need last for a brief period of time, such as a day, being announced as a spotlit member, and given some temporary cosmetic group for a week or so. This gives us a good way to recognize lesser known members who are less likely to be remembered by all when MoTY rolls around.

Nominations can be made public as well so others can be aware when someone is up for being spotlit.

 

[Mana1]

If it's members being praised and pointed out, why not just have moderators pick individuals from their forum area?

Much less work in terms of organisation, less repetitive for members to go through, and as staff we can eliminate the possibility of the same person winning over and over.

 

[bobandbill]

I actually don't believe cliques would be an issue. It didn't appear to be one in the MotY contest.

However, there certainly had been in the days of MotM being a thing. Not a 'MotM creates cliques' correlation, of course, or that they'll happen if MotM is a thing again. =p But that doesn't mean they can't very well start again.

Personally, I would rather just keep it as MotY rather than month. Too often imo before it'd just seem stale again, and years ago it really was just the same people voting for the same friends in general. And I'm unsure about the restrictions on previous winners being a great solution too. Won once = never can win again: scrapping the barrel in a year or two. Won once = can't win for three months - well, then you just have a rotation of the 3 or so most popular members... not much better, as it'd still be a narrow section from the number of people posting in any one section.

If a person is popular, of course they're going to win in a certain category. Which is pretty much as it should be. o_O; Right? I mean a person becomes popular by posting around and being active and whatnot, don't they? So aren't those people the ones who should be winning these categories anyway? As opposed to say, someone who is "more deserving" but has only posted 4 times in the month. Doesn't the person who is demonstrating those qualities more deserve to win?

Disagree because from experience I can say that hasn't been the case - as in, popular users win when they aren't actually posting around and being active in regards to the category they win. There's a few instances of that in the past, e.g. inactive admin with 0 poems of the year winning best poet, back when we had the Poetry section. I felt that was a sort slap in the face to the few members at the time who were actually contributing to the section.

Yes, if it worked fine then there's no problem, but that's not always the case.

If it's members being praised and pointed out, why not just have moderators pick individuals from their forum area?

Much less work in terms of organisation, less repetitive for members to go through, and as staff we can eliminate the possibility of the same person winning over and over.

Can say that sounds like a great event though if it's just 'mod picks a member of the month', as in not much participation by anyone else. Then sections missing out whenever their mod takes a LoA or doesn't have a mod, etc... seems messy too.

 

[moon]

I'm one of those people who dislike these kind of "contests" altogether. Not speaking for staff overall here, of course not. Speaking for myself. If you win, what does that mean? That you got a lot of people voting for you. And what does that mean? That you know a lot of people or do cool stuff or say cool stuff. Okay. So you didn't know that already? Why do you need an official stamp of approval for that? I guess it's more important for some than it is for me, I just want to point out that there are people thinking like me. Or. At least one. Me :]

Moreover, did the MotY really make people visit more sections than they usually did just because they saw some people win categories there? If you saw some member you've never really seen before win a FF&W category or D&D category, would you really go to that section and read their stuff? I just want to know if "people might discover other sections" is even a valid argument for bringing MotM back.

One argument for MotM that I can accept though, is "it would be fun". Sure, we can do stuff on PC if they are fun enough! And those who don't think it's fun can just avoid it. I guess.

 

[Nick]

If it's members being praised and pointed out, why not just have moderators pick individuals from their forum area?

Much less work in terms of organisation, less repetitive for members to go through, and as staff we can eliminate the possibility of the same person winning over and over.

I was going to suggest that too. Moderators know their sections and their regulars well enough. But I think what people want here is a community effort.

 

[Onicon]

Awarding good quality content is a neat idea (although that's what we thought emblems were for) but we really should keep the competition, the regulars and probably even the time out of the equation, else this devolves into a popularity contest. Community interaction is fine and dandy, but in this case it is probably smarter not to leave it to the masses.

We think we can trust the staff to handpick people who deserve it at any point. Stuff simply does not become less or more relevant just because it happened to be a particularly busy or weak year.

And in advance: We think popularity alone is not a tight argument for why this one is superior to the other one. As said, for us the quality of the content is much more important than being known.

 

[Hiatus]

Moreover, did the MotY really make people visit more sections than they usually did just because they saw some people win categories there? If you saw some member you've never really seen before win a FF&W category or D&D category, would you really go to that section and read their stuff? I just want to know if "people might discover other sections" is even a valid argument for bringing MotM back.

This probably wouldn't work for some people, but for others, it might. I mean, if somebody had seen someone win "best artist" category, don't you think it could possibly spark their interest a bit and have them wander off into their gallery? If they like what they see, maybe they would even drop a line before leaving. If they'd like to view some more art at some point in future, they'd come back into the section and browse through even more galleries. Same applies to pretty much everything, including ROM hacks, games, stories, and role-plays. :]

 

[Belldandy]

Could the Moderators not find 3-5 people from their sections (one hopefully who is a relatively new member) and then poll it for the community to decide between? Then it adds that community effort people were looking for, but still perhaps keeps the nominations unbiased.

 

[disciplish]

In terms of the actual Member of the month thing, really like it was said it detracts from MotY. I could see a MotS though, as something similar is/was already in place in the Roleplay Corner [agagaga I couldn't find the more recent one so have this one instead] and it worked pretty well in my opinion. Then again, the Roleplay Corner is also of a different nature than the other forums imo so it might not be the best example. :x

On a separate but sorta related note [the actual reason why I'm responding to this], what about an award for threads, like a Thread of the Season? It's not really much of a popularity contest. You can argue that a thread would easily be nominated for getting more posts from more people, but if it does there's a good reason for this. Things like stickied threads probably wouldn't be included [bar ones that were made during said season] but actual threads would be a cool idea in my opinion.

 

[Karma Police]

Yeah we used to follow a traditional voting system in Roleplay Corner for the Roleplay Awards which is similar to this whole MotM thing. I'm not sure if anybody remembers but it wasn't really the best thing around. Basically we had people trying to just get support and win the award (the whole clique situation mentioned there) even if there were better candidates around.

Which is why the whole system was revamped and we instead have the whole thing that people are suggesting here for probably over a year now, the moderator + 3 or 4 people he/she picks basically look at members that the people nominate and then decide who wins. It has worked pretty well so far, I think.

Also it used to be monthly but like many said it grew repetitive and boring so it's restricted to a quarter now.

Personally I think that the mods should decide whether they want to hold such a contest like this in their sections or not, like the Roleplay Corner. Only MotY should be community wide, imo.

 

[Captain Fabio]

I haven't seen a clique around PC since 2012, js.

This.
People of old will remember the actual cliques that were around, but there seriously aren't any anymore.

We had this years ago and it was seriously just a popularity contest and nothing more. It ended up being seriously pointless, so we decided to cut it. I don't think it would be any better now. I think it is an idea that should be left alone, being honest.​

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