Member of the month on your forum?

[Kale]

Has anyone ever done a member of the month on their own forum? I kind of like the concept and idea, but feel it will not work on a forum unless you have a decent amount of active users on your forum. I'd rather choose users who are active, friendly, and get along well with others in the community.

 

[Cory]

I would want the user base to nominate members so the administration doesn't come off as biased or promote favoritism.

It wouldn't work well on my forum since I don't have much posting activity.

 

[Cedric]

I like this idea for many reasons, and Cory's method for nominating.

By selecting a member of the month, you can recognize and reward users who have made valuable contributions to the forum. This can help to motivate and engage users, as they may be more likely to participate in the forum if they feel that their contributions are valued.

The member of the month feature can encourage users to be more active and engaged on the forum, as they may be more likely to participate if they have a chance of being selected as the member of the month.

The member of the month feature can help to build a sense of community on the forum, as it allows users to get to know each other and learn more about their fellow forum members.

By recognizing and rewarding active users, you can improve the overall user experience on your forum and create a more positive and welcoming environment.

If anyone would like to see it happen on Admin Junkies, I'd gladly do this.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I am contemplating this idea on FAF.

I'd like to do several "of the month" features.

The primary benefit for the "winner" will be some free advertising. Nothing too much, nothing too little.

I would like to do a Forum of the Month (OTM), a member OTM, big board OTM, and others. This is planned as the forum grows of course.

I think it is a good way to involve the community, praise people and their efforts, and make them feel like they're at home.

Forums in 2023 should be about members not you.

 

[Nebulous]

I would want the user base to nominate members so the administration doesn't come off as biased or promote favoritism.

We tried that in the past and it got a lot of member involvement at first but doing it month after month, members started to lose interest in nominating/voting. Some months we’d only get 1 or 2 votes from non-staff members. It was decided that instead of constantly hounding the members to nominate/vote we’d just handle it as a staff team, which has been working well.

We’re very diplomatic in who we choose to be MOTM and there is no biased decisions or favoritism.

Whoever is selected to MOTM always gets a kick out of it and seems to enjoy being spotlighted for a month so I see no reason to stop doing MOTM (even if the community as a whole doesn’t seem interested in nominating/voting anymore).

 

[Kyng]

I do Member of the Year instead... I feel like doing it every month is way too frequent: the same members would win over and over, and it'd just lose its meaning.

 

[Kale]

If anyone would like to see it happen on Admin Junkies, I'd gladly do this.

Yes, can always do it here and give it a shot too.

I'd like to do several "of the month" features.

I'd like that honestly. Maybe forum/community of the month as one idea/concept.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Yes, can always do it here and give it a shot too.

I'd like that honestly. Maybe forum/community of the month as one idea/concept.

Yeah, give the members plenty of opportunities to be nominated and accepted as "of the Month".

It'll make it fun.

It can keep the forum active if you integrate activity into it.

 

[Ashley]

I don't think I'd even consider member of the year honest. Kind of hard to offer prizes on a general discussion forum, and I don't trust mailing real prizes, especially money and big stuff like that, because not everyone is who they say they are on the Internet, so I don't like to hold contests in general honestly.

 

[Smokey]

I've seen this on many other forums but it's never been something I've done on mine personally. I'm not against it, I just never bothered to implement such a thing.

 

[Arantor]

I've honestly never liked it because I've yet to see a way of implementing it that isn't actually weirdly biased in one direction or another:

* If you do it randomly, it's largely meaningless (you can minimise this by excluding inactive users)

* If you do it based on staff feeling, it's biased in favour of who staff likes (obviously)

* If you do it based on community feeling, it's got some serious potential to be gamified by the community; it just becomes a popularity contest.

* If you do it based on number of posts that month, it's gamifiable unless you add in various disclaimers and rules which you'll have to police.

* If you do it based on number of likes that month, or most liked post, you're back to the popularity contest - skewed by prevalance of poster. (Consider: on simplemachines.org, I am the #1 poster. I am also the most liked person - and I haven't posted there in *months* to keep my place but it's still there for onw.)

You could get better mileage blending some or all of these but ultimately it will devolve into something either gamifiable or manipulatable with a big enough forum.

What you could do, though, is run with the bias. Make two awards.

The first is staff pick of the month for most helpful, most insightful (and be completely upfront that this is both biased and a staff pick), and the second is a community pick. You almost want a custom poll option for this: pick the top x posters of the month by post count, plus the top x posters by likes received that month. Keep pulling from both lists (ignoring duplicates) until you have the top... ten, say, of the month. Then allow people to vote for these people - but also if they want to write in a name of a person with autocomplete. Voting should be anonymous to regular members until the end of the voting period.

This way you get some flexibility around who gets picked with the 'obvious frontrunners' picked out first, then everyone else can still vote for their favourite.

 

[Shortie]

Back when I had my general chat forum before I closed it in 2017, I did have a member of the month that we would do each month where members of the forum would nominate people who they thought deserved member of the month and it would go in a poll on the last day of the month for members to vote on who they would like to see for a member of the month out of the two people who received the most nominations. If I was to ever bring back my forum again then a member of the month would definitely be something I would do again.

 

[Cory]

We’re very diplomatic in who we choose to be MOTM and there is no biased decisions or favoritism.

The problem with this is the user base does not know this. They could argue all day that you just picked someone because you favored them. It's a very fickle thing to pick select members out of your community for special causes. I don't have a problem with people that do it this way, I just wouldn't choose to do it this way myself.

 

[Cedric]

The problem with this is the user base does not know this. They could argue all day that you just picked someone because you favored them. It's a very fickle thing to pick select members out of your community for special causes. I don't have a problem with people that do it this way, I just wouldn't choose to do it this way myself.

Perhaps a good idea would be to have a minimum required posts in that time frame and use a random selector script. And then exclude the person for the next month.

 

[Cory]

Perhaps a good idea would be to have a minimum required posts in that time frame and use a random selector script. And then exclude the person for the next month.

That seems fairer to me than random selection.

 

[Heatman]

If you don't do anything to recognise your actively committed members on your forum, it's going to be very difficult to keep them on the forum for a long term.

It's why having some sort of reward with a little money gain for them once in a while. It's something that's going to make someone like me very happy and feel appreciated. I'm sure most people would be happy about it.

 

[Kale]

If you don't do anything to recognise your actively committed members on your forum, it's going to be very difficult to keep them on the forum for a long term.

It's why having some sort of reward with a little money gain for them once in a while. It's something that's going to make someone like me very happy and feel appreciated. I'm sure most people would be happy about it.

I feel like once your forum is more established and has more active users, then sure I'm all for MOTM or 'of the month' flavor type things. I feel like to me it boils down to who was active that month and contributed to your forum etc.

I do agree with switching it up. Once somebody does win they cannot win again for another month.

 

[Heatman]

I feel like once your forum is more established and has more active users, then sure I'm all for MOTM or 'of the month' flavor type things. I feel like to me it boils down to who was active that month and contributed to your forum etc.

I do agree with switching it up. Once somebody does win they cannot win again for another month.

I completely agree with you on that about things being easy for you to run the MOTM when your forum is more active. It would be very clear who's giving more than others.

But I kinda feel that it's even more important when the forum isn't well built because every effort matter at the beginning of any forum. If you recognise those that stick with the forum at its infancy, they will become long time loyal members.

 

[Henrywrites]

I completely agree with you on that about things being easy for you to run the MOTM when your forum is more active. It would be very clear who's giving more than others.

But I kinda feel that it's even more important when the forum isn't well built because every effort matter at the beginning of any forum. If you recognise those that stick with the forum at its infancy, they will become long time loyal members.

It is pertinent to also spread the rewards, if any, amongst the top 3 for each month. This is going to make loyal members of the forum have a sense of belonging being on the site as well.

 

[Heatman]

It is pertinent to also spread the rewards, if any, amongst the top 3 for each month. This is going to make loyal members of the forum have a sense of belonging being on the site as well.

The first forum that I won MOTM award, I was given a reward of $5. It's not much but I valued it so much because it's an appreciation for all my efforts on the forum.