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As per Drupal.SE's Birthday Celebration, I was thinking of a contest to reward the participation on the site during a week (from now on, the contest week). A prize would be given in the following cases:

  • For all the users: The reputation they gained during the contest week is at least 600, and it is the double of the reputation they gained in the 7 days before the contest week. The reputation gained for posts created more than 7 days before the contest week are not taken into consideration.

  • For the users whose reputation is still 1 or 101 at the beginning of the contest week: Their reputation increased of at least 300, and they answered at least 5 questions.

  • For all the users: Between 7 days before the contest week, and the end of the contest week, they answered to at least 56 questions, and each answer has got, during the contest week, a score of at least 3, and no more than a down-vote.

  • For the users whose reputation is still 1 or 101 at the beginning of the contest week: Between 7 days before the contest week, and the end of the contest week, they answered at least 28 questions, and each answer has got, during the birthday week, a score of at least 2, and no more than a down-vote.

  • For users who have never flagged a post before the contest week starts: They flagged at least 30 posts, and not more than a quarter of their flag was declined.

  • For users who have never voted to close a question, or flagged a question to close it, before the contest week starts: They voted to close at least 30 questions, and at least three quarters of the voted questions was closed.

  • For the users who have already voted to close a question: They were the first users to vote to close 70 questions that were then closed.

  • For users who have never suggested an edit before the contest week starts: They suggested at least 70 edits, and not more than a quarter was rejected.

  • For users who has never offered a bounty when the context week starts: They offered 3 bounties, for a total bounty of at least 300, and they assigned all the bounties after at least 5 days the bounty was started.

The purpose of the contest is incentivizing the general activity on the main site. It is not offering something already given from badges, and that is the main reason the contest tasks are different from the requirements of any badge. Also, the prize for any of the contest task is not a badge.

The prizes will be decided from Stack Exchange. :-)

  • Fun? On an StackExchange site?? Quick, alert the devs!! ;) Seriously though this is a really great idea, nice one – Clive♦ Aug 29 '12 at 17:10
  • Have there been other SE sites that have give out rep as a contest prize? – mpdonadio♦ Aug 30 '12 at 20:10
  • @mpdonadio It doesn't seems so. I thought of that too, but there is a technical issue: The reputation would be manually given to the winners, and there isn't a way to say to Stack Exchange software "Give this user 100 extra points." There are bounties, but bounties are linked to an answer given to a question, where the question is chosen when the bounty is offered. In the contest case, the reputation would be given to the users who didn't necessarily answer a specific question. – kiamlaluno♦ Aug 30 '12 at 20:18
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It's an interesting idea to throw a competition - but I feel like this contest is more or less the same as the badge system. Do something x times or get x score.

I feel like that this birthday thing is the possibility to do something else - inspire people to do what makes SE great. If we should have a contest of some sort, I think maybe having less concrete goals, or maybe a jury to select outstanding questions and answers that could be voted on for something like answer of the year - or best answer never voted on etc.

  • There isn't any badge that is given for users whose reputation got increased of at least 600 in a week, and it is the double compared to the reputation gained the week before. That could not give you the badge for getting 200 points in a day. (600 points in a week means an average of less than 100 points per day.) If you look the other contests, the goals are always concrete goals. – kiamlaluno♦ Aug 30 '12 at 20:00
  • Furthermore, the prize for the contest are not badges. – kiamlaluno♦ Aug 30 '12 at 20:09
  • @kiamlaluno I was well aware that this contest is not the same thing as a badge - my point was that the contest you suggested reminds a lot about the badge system - and that we might be a bit more creative with this contest should we choose to have it. – googletorp♦ Aug 31 '12 at 18:30
  • You can say that about every contest, as every contest defines goals with criteria about the reputation gained, the number of edits done, the number of answered questions, the answer's score, the question's score, how much old was the question, etc. Those are the same parameters used to assign badges; the only difference is the used criteria. Why are those parameters used? Because Stack Exchange staff communicates who the winners are, and they can easily find who matches the required criteria because those parameters are already recorded on an SE database. – kiamlaluno♦ Aug 31 '12 at 22:05
  • There isn't a jury that decides which questions, or answers can be voted. The criteria adopted from a contest need to clear from the beginning, so that who participates to the contest, and who checks who the winners of the contest are, know exactly what it is required to do. – kiamlaluno♦ Aug 31 '12 at 22:08
  • I like the jury idea, perhaps the devs would be kind enough to pull out a random selection of active users to serve as jurors? Or maybe the moderators could do it? – Clive♦ Sep 1 '12 at 14:14

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