Features - Win a Gigabyte Z77 motherboard and Intel Core i5-3570K processor

[Disturbedguy]

"Churlish" or not, it is frustrating to see people signing up to enter competitions and then not bothering to join in the rest of the community, to then have our opinions, views, comments, criticism labelled as snide is to be frank, rude.

I pointed out <removed> as an example, all you have to do is look at the amount of people that have signed up and only posted to enter competitions, to be honest if people were going to sign up just for the competitions I would rather they didn't and remain anonymous when they win.

The fact is we still appreciate the competitions as has been said and criticism, whether its liked or not will come up. DR and Hexus clearly took on previous comments as a forum member only competition was ran which was great and we all appreciated.

[peterb]

If you read my post, you will see that I didn't refer to the criticism as snide, but to some of the comments aimed at new members signing up, without any evidence that they have only signed up for competitions.

Aiming barbed comments at new members is just going to generate a self fulfilling prophesy. It is hardly likely to encourage new members to contribute further if they are going to get a hostile reception.

[Phage]

I have a cunning plan...

Can we have an Editorial column ? Doesn't have to be DR alone, but from Scribe, Tarinder, Admins etc. In the Editorial there would be the usual blend of commentary, trends and humour, weekly round up etc ( i.e. mostly cut and paste from the email) plus the strategy behind the comps could be explained fully, and results announced.

"This week we are have been given two shiney things (tm) by ST Inc and we will be using these to build our membership and site views. Of course all existing members are welcome to enter as well."

Two weeks later....

"Congrats to Joe B. from Leicester, our lucky winner !"

As opposed to.

"This week we have been given a large black object from LBO Inc, and we'd like to offer this is a prize to our valued members, and ask their opinion of it in the real world."

Two weeks later....

"Congrats to "Valued Poster" who is the lucky recipient of our generosity, and will be reporting back with a mini test for your delectation."

EDIT: I have a vague memory of "Bike" magazine doing a "Bloggs Test" column on a regular basis. Certainly AMCN used to do a Bloggs test postscript on many of their major tests. This could be something similar, and provide a start to budding journlalists at no-cost. Bucket of win surely ?

Whaddya think ?

[Disturbedguy]

without any evidence that they have only signed up for competitions.
.

Sorry but if you look at <removed>, that user is a perfect example.
6 posts, 5 in competition threads about either winning or entering, is that not evidence enough?

[Phage]

Ah yes - but is he still reading the site ? Still aware of the brands he won ?
Probably, yes.

[Noxvayl]

Regardless of whether a member has signed up for competitions only or not I don't think we should have to deal with 1 word spam posts from these new members. It isn't too much to ask for members to string a sentence together when posting, heck the 2 I've just written took less than a minute.

[finlay666]

Regardless of whether a member has signed up for competitions only or not I don't think we should have to deal with 1 word spam posts from these new members. It isn't too much to ask for members to string a sentence together when posting, heck the 2 I've just written took less than a minute.

k

[jim]

Sorry but if you look at <removed>, that user is a perfect example.
6 posts, 5 in competition threads about either winning or entering, is that not evidence enough?

You do realise that HEXUS is a global site with colossal numbers of readers, right? The forums, by comparison, have a much smaller number of contributors. That goes for any site really. And we're all examples of that - I go to loads of sites to look at reviews, editorials, opinion pieces, but I don't post on those other sites. HEXUS is my home. So tech sites are getting far more people looking at their main sites than posting on their forums.

Logically then, they're also getting massive numbers of people going to the main page, entering the competitions, and closing their browsers. If you look at MSE, there is an entire forum dedicated to people who go to sites purely to enter competitions. If a few people stop and think "Hold on, I wanted to see a review of the GTX680", then DR wins. If a few people stop and think "Wow, that Gigabyte board looks fantastic", then Gigabyte wins. And if just a few people think "Ah, there's a debate going on about this competition... I'll join the forums", then we win.

I get why you're upset that people don't enter the competitions and join the community, but you're talking about people like Drebin that have made some effort to sign up to the forums, compared to the huge numbers that just entered the competition and never joined the forum at all. I don't get why you wouldn't want to encourage them - we all started off as newbies once, and HEXUS attracted me as a very friendly community. None of us want to lose that vibe.

[Disturbedguy]

I get why you're upset that people don't enter the competitions and join the community, but you're talking about people like Drebin that have made some effort to sign up to the forums, compared to the huge numbers that just entered the competition and never joined the forum at all. I don't get why you wouldn't want to encourage them - we all started off as newbies once, and HEXUS attracted me as a very friendly community. None of us want to lose that vibe.

I understand this and don't want Hexus to lose the friendly community vibe it has, but I also don't want to see "members" (I use that term lightly) abuse the fact that Hexus is putting these competitions in that they, as <name removed> (sorry to bring him up again, but perfect example) has imo done so far, has joined and nearly all posts are entering the competitions. Looking at <name removed>profile, he has been registered since 20-04-2012, he was last active yesterday at the same time he made a post, entering a competition.

His first post wasn't until 02-05-2012 which was entering a competition, so he was a "member" for nearly 2 weeks before he made his first post and since his last post he hasn't posted anywhere else on the forums. Of course that isn't to say the member hasn't still been visiting the website.

However, surely if someone joins the forum we want them to be an active part of the forum and not just be here to enter competitions?

Don't get me wrong, seeing new members join and become active is good, it helps the community grow which we all want.

[jim]

I understand this and don't want Hexus to lose the friendly community vibe it has, but I also don't want to see "members" (I use that term lightly) abuse the fact that Hexus is putting these competitions in that they, as Drebin (sorry to bring him up again, but perfect example) has imo done so far, has joined and nearly all posts are entering the competitions. Looking at Drebins profile, he has been registered since 20-04-2012, he was last active yesterday at the same time he made a post, entering a competition.

But at least they are "members". Joining the forums isn't a pre-requisite to enter the competitions, loads of people will never join the forums at all... I'm glad that a few people make the effort. I'm also one of those people who always used to ask if we could find out who won the competitions - it's great that a few people have signed up to let us know recently.

However, surely if someone joins the forum we want them to be an active part of the forum and not just be here to enter competitions?

As I've said though, they don't need to be here to enter the competitions - they could just ignore the forums altogether. I do agree with you, certainly, that I want them to be an active part - maybe we just disagree on how that happens.

To me, you join up, make a few posts in a manufacturer forum or in competition threads, and see besides that a great community, and thus decide to join in. In fact, I only signed up to HEXUS because I wanted to raise an issue with Scan, and then I noticed the rest of the forum and joined in because I liked the atmosphere. I suspect if a few years ago, I had been prodded to alter my posting style, I would've probably fled the forum and not come back!

[Pob255]

I have a cunning plan...

Can we have an Editorial column ? Doesn't have to be DR alone, but from Scribe, Tarinder, Admins etc. In the Editorial there would be the usual blend of commentary, trends and humour, weekly round up etc ( i.e. mostly cut and paste from the email) plus the strategy behind the comps could be explained fully, and results announced.

"This week we are have been given two shiney things (tm) by ST Inc and we will be using these to build our membership and site views. Of course all existing members are welcome to enter as well."

Two weeks later....

"Congrats to Joe B. from Leicester, our lucky winner !"

As opposed to.

"This week we have been given a large black object from LBO Inc, and we'd like to offer this is a prize to our valued members, and ask their opinion of it in the real world."

Two weeks later....

"Congrats to "Valued Poster" who is the lucky recipient of our generosity, and will be reporting back with a mini test for your delectation."

EDIT: I have a vague memory of "Bike" magazine doing a "Bloggs Test" column on a regular basis. Certainly AMCN used to do a Bloggs test postscript on many of their major tests. This could be something similar, and provide a start to budding journlalists at no-cost. Bucket of win surely ?

Whaddya think ?

Well there's a couple of issues.
AFAIK you cannot say "Congrats to Joe B. from Leicester, our lucky winner !" without their permission, it's against UK law (I'm not 100% on that but I seem to remember that there are laws covering competitions and this is covered)

that and I have no objection to "Congrats to "Valued Poster" who is the lucky recipient of our generosity, and will be reporting back with a mini test for your delectation."
This give multiple benefits, you're rewarding posters, encouraging people to get involved in the forums, you're generating free content (granted the quality may vary), if the opinions of the users are good then that's worth a heck of a lot to the "product brand" (word of mouth endorsement is the current big thing)
This is all ontop of the normal benefits of generating traffic, advertising, brand awareness generated by the competition.

However as I said before, it's a ballance, if all the competitions were forum posters only then we get a lot more people joining just for the competitions and nothing else.
Personally I'd say that having a mix of forum only and open to anyone is the way to go, just not facebook ones
again that's my personal view, I don't do facebook, I don't want to sign up for a 3rd party service monopoly to enter a hexus competition, ok granted email is 3rd party but I have it already for otherthings and it's not a monopoly, I'd be just as unhappy if you had to have an email account with @SuperPonyMail.com to enter

No objection to the Editorial column, that's good.

[Pob255]

But at least they are "members". Joining the forums isn't a pre-requisite to enter the competitions, loads of people will never join the forums at all... I'm glad that a few people make the effort. I'm also one of those people who always used to ask if we could find out who won the competitions - it's great that a few people have signed up to let us know recently.

Indeed, granted I might well of missed them, but the be quiet psu competition is the first forum members only competition I've seen.

If there where more then that shows how little I look at the rest of the site other than the reviews and the forum
Heck there's large chunks of the forum I don't venture into.
I've got no real objections to "some" joining but only entering the competitions as there are almost all of the competitions do not require membership, all they need is an email, name and an a,b or c answer to the question, just as long as we don't end up knee deep competition only users, but even then it's not that big a problem because they hardly post.
It's a bit like the ones we get who come on here just to abuse the scan shipping deal, you'll always get some but they don't last long, the ones who do stay normally stay because of the forums and become a contributing part of them.

[peterb]

I understand this and don't want Hexus to lose the friendly community vibe it has, but I also don't want to see "members" (I use that term lightly) abuse the fact that Hexus is putting these competitions snip-->

Interesting term "Abuse" so lets consider the following fictitious scenario.

A breakfast cereal manufacturer makes a type breakfast cereal "chillibran" described as "golden flakes of bran, dusted with cayenne pepper, to give a fiery start to your day"

It has a small but loyal market, mainly among Mexican immigrants.

The manufacturer wants to increase market penetration and therefore sales. As it happens, a car distributor in Mexico wants to increase its brand awareness, so it offers a car as a prize in a free competition. The only condition is that the entry has to be on a form printed on the side of the box. I like the idea of winning a car, the cereal sounds dubious, but I buy a box and enter. The cereal is disgusting, I chuck it out on the lawn to feed the birds, the lawn turns brown and dies, birds impose a 200 metre no-fly zone round the lawn. I vow never to buy "chillibran" again.

But the campaign is a success, sales go slightly, the car dealer gets more sales and a few months later, a travel agency offers a week in a luxury hotel in Acapulco as a prize.

Again, I like the idea of a holiday, I buy another box, tear off the entry coupon, and throw the rest in my bin. As it happens, I win the competition. I still won't buy "chillibran" again, unless they run another competition - but some people might find they have a taste for it second time round, and buy it regularly.

Is that "abusing the competition?" Presumably many loyal eaters of the cereal entered as well, but they didn't win. Sales of luxury holidays go up, chillibran sales increase again. Win-win.

On the other hand, it might be that I did try "chibran" a second time and found that now I do enjoy a fiery start to my day, and I now eat "chillibran" for breakfast, lunch and tea - which is an even better outcome for the manufacturer

Don't get me wrong, seeing new members join and become active is good, it helps the community grow which we all want.

And if the competition encourages new members to try HEXUS, the best way to get them to stay is to make them welcome - NOT by posting "smart alec" comments and making them feel HEXUS is unwelcoming. Not only does it potentially harm the HEXUS brand image, but it could put off potential donors of prizes.

Is that what you want?

[Disturbedguy]

Forget it, is perfectly clear what I and other would like, I thought so anyway.

You continue to twist what I say and come up with preposterous scenarios if you want.

Oh look, <removed> still hasn't taken part in the rest of the community....

[Disturbedguy]

Why remove the username?

It has been mentioned before and it makes it clear who I am talking about, if said user was that bothered they would have defended themselves by now, surely?

[peterb]

It is removed because it is referring to another user in an unhelpful and negative way.

Apart from being unhelpful to the member in question, it may also be a deterrent to other potential new members who might be put off by your attitude towards them them.