Every month since July 2023, we’ve been running a Post of the Month, Compliment of the Month, and Non-Compliment Comment of the Month Contest. We usually have pretty decent participation, but I think we can do much better.

Several weeks back, I had introduced the concept of rewarding HSBI for those who vote according to the contest rules. However, this isn’t going to help much due to some technical issues which were shown to me which may prevent people from even being able to access the content.

Thus, I’d like to find ways to improve the formatting of the contest, so I’ll throw some ideas out there.

Our Current Format

Currently, we publish, on a monthly basis, 8 nominations per category (Post, Compliments, Non-Compliments) with links which are visible in the original post, as well as in the comments under headings. Depending on the frontend, these options can be accessed with varying degrees of difficulty or ease. Additionally, in order to stay on the original page, simply right-clicking to open a link is the best option. Here is an example of where this last worked well. (Try to access this page via multiple frontends in order to compare)

This can be obstructed easily by spam comments, resulting in a poor viewing experience. Our most recent contest is an example of this.

Alternative Suggestions of Formatting

First idea: in the comments, labeling our nominations in shorthand, i.e. “P1” is the first post, “P2” is the 2nd post, “C1” is the first compliment, “NC3” is the 3rd non-compliment comment, etc., so that you can just vote directly on those without headers. Essentially, the comment section would just have 24 comments consisting of “P1” through “P8” plus “C1” through “C8” plus “NC1” through “NC8.”

Second idea: people simply write in their choices (from the options listed in the post, or another post of their choice that’s not listed) instead of voting on comments. This might be more work for the person voting, but also cleaner in terms of formatting. I believe this option would result in lower engagement.

Third idea: limiting our final nominations to only one per week, thus decreasing our total nominees in the contest to 4 per category per week (instead of the current 8). This decreases the amount of reading of content required by our voters. However, this means that we may have to add a weekly contest to choose between our two weekly nominees for each category, which in turn still requires more participation / voting.

Of course, a combination of any of the above is also feasible, and I’m certainly open to other options which I did not mention as well

Conclusion

We’re looking for ways to help improve our monthly contest for Post of the Month, Compliment of the Month, and Non-Compliment of the Month. Please let me know your thoughts so that we can increase engagement in terms of voting for our nominations!

What do you think of the listed suggestions? Are there any other thoughts that you have on how to help us improve the formatting of our contest? How can we improve engagement so that more people vote on our nominees?

I would love to hear any and all opinions about these topics from everyone who is currently a member of FreeCompliments, since you’re all inaugural members! Anyone else who finds this page is also very welcome to voice their opinion. We’re all about free speech, and everyone’s experience has value.

More posts with further ideas incoming soon!

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