Thread of the Month Competition

The Idea

In an effort to spice things up around this website and encourage the creation of high quality threads, how about we establish an official Thread of the Month competition? Judged by the overall quality of the thread, the winning thread would be showcased on the front page for 1 week of the following month. The author could receive a boost to their stats/points.

How It Would Work

Only Mods would have the power to nominate a thread and members would have the option of voting from a collection that received the most nominations (perhaps a special tab for mods with a collection of threads that have been nominated already - but not showing how many or by whom). For example, the top ten threads with the most nominations would be placed in a random order into a poll thread which members could vote on. Mod threads can be considered, but they will not be allowed to nominate their own threads.

The Rules

- If a thread of the author makes it into the top ten, they are unable to vote in the poll.
- No member may win it two months in a row.
- Mods may only nominate a total of 3 threads each month.
- Only 3 threads from each forum category can be nominated in one month.

Uncertainties

- Actual reward for winning (what would be a suitable reward/incentive)
- If there is a tie among nominations/votes (perhaps an extra internal poll between mods only if needed)
- Minimum time you must have been a member to qualify (what would be appropriate?)
- time window/deadline for submitting and tallying up nominations/votes (28th of each month?)

Your View

What do you think of the overall idea. Can you suggest any improvements?

a reply to: Dark Ghost I know some members will hate this, but I think there should be a social media aspect as well to promote the business of ATS. As in how many retweets and/or Facebook 'likes' a thread recieves to get the quality content shared in attracting new eyeballs to the site.

ETA: How does this differ from the top topic for 30 days section of the site? There's got to be a differential between most flags vs. thread of the month, is the remedy to that the placement on the site of the top monthly thread?

I love it. I can see it encouraging me to post some threads I have been sitting on for years simply because I hate controversy and it takes so much time to get it right.

I have no doubt there are others out there with a knowledge of something others haven't been exposed to and perhaps think it of no interest or maybe too controversial.

It's a great Idea, but I think the current format covers that pretty well with the 'flag' system.

originally posted by: rexsblues
It's a great Idea, but I think the current format covers that pretty well with the 'flag' system.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Perhaps every full member could have one "tolkien" each month to vote on their Favorite thread?

a reply to: Dark Ghost

That would only leave 12 threads per year. Why not do a thread of the week, and get 52? Or is that too much?

I'll have to cast a dissenting vote here. There are already enough so called stats and the inherent counting games and intense self awareness that those bring out in people on here(and on all "social" sites).

It's not hard to forsee a future where the "thread of the month/the week/the year" would devolve the board into threads about the "thread of the month/the week/the year" and who the nominees are and on into infinity"the thread about the thread complaining about the thread of the "..it would devolve into the sort of self congratulatory /popularity sorts of contests this board is often skeptical of.

Since the board seems concerned with revenues/ad stream issues, the idea would not be to water it down with repetitious nonsense and instead each member contribute quality. It's on us all to create and contribute in a worthy way..clicking a few ads as we go. I admit I read ATS every night , I just don't always sign in..so from reading around here in the past few days , I thought I should probably help out by signing in, posting and clicking some ads. As altruistic as the OP idea is...interacting with the site(and it's advertisers) ..good posts/topics,... are the real key.

originally posted by: rexsblues
It's a great Idea, but I think the current format covers that pretty well with the 'flag' system.

Self explanatory.

I LIKE IT ALOT!

originally posted by: Dark Ghost

- Actual reward for winning (what would be a suitable reward/incentive)

Winner gets a month of surfing ATS free of ads.

a reply to: SLAYER69
I don't have an 'AD' problem (why do you).

The reward.....Maybe something cool though like a different text color or effect to the text of our posts. Rainbow, electric, or fire.....

Can we get like a special emoticon set. LIKE THE OLD ONES as a perk? LOL

I like the idea