Ok I am struggling with an efficient, yet completely non-biased way of running contests.

My thought was to setup a contests forum and restrict its voting and posting permissions to members with 30 posts or more.

That way we avoid people just registering to enter a contest or from anyone making several different usernames to vote their entry up.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

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]RhinoFans.com --> http://www.rhinofans.com
ATVwire.com --> http://www.atvwire.com
UTVwire.com --> http://www.utvwire.com

Are you talking about http://www.atvwire.com?
If so then 30 posts would be too high for such a small forum. I would suggest maybe 10, but i dont think its a good idea, no harm in doing a trial run.

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I personally would not make a minimum number of posts to participate. That will drive away potential participators possible.

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The post restriction was only placed as a security measure to ensure fairness...I changed the number from 20 to 10.

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]RhinoFans.com --> http://www.rhinofans.com
ATVwire.com --> http://www.atvwire.com
UTVwire.com --> http://www.utvwire.com

That's more fair I think.

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World of Warcraft Forums - Your #1 place to discuss all things World of Warcraft.

If it were me, I would still not place the restriction...oftentimes one of the biggest reasons you run a contest is to get some new members...and this would eliminate that completely.

That said, I don't really know the details of your contest, so there might be some reason for doing this that I'm not aware of.

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The reason behind the restriction is to ensure fairness.

Sure I can probably get a ton of new members registering on the site, however, does not mean that they are going to be contributing members to the community.

One thing I find with contests where the members choose the winners is that a participant will go out and recruit people to join the forum and vote for them, after voting, you never see them again. In my opinion, this is not fair...these are community contests, therefore, members of the community should have the deciding votes.

Now if we had a panel of members that were the deciding factors, then I would not have a post restriction as it would not matter if people just joined to never return.

And I going about this incorrectly? Before doing anything on the site I do try to get input from the members...most of them agree with the post restriction.

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]RhinoFans.com --> http://www.rhinofans.com
ATVwire.com --> http://www.atvwire.com
UTVwire.com --> http://www.utvwire.com

Most of the time when you run a contest, the participants are only looking out for their own best interest - not the best interest of the forums. What I mean is that everybody wants to win...nobody wants more competition so that it's harder for them to win. Of course if you ask your members whether or not they support the post restriction, they are going to say yes. Without the post restriction, it is just going to be that much harder for your members to win, and nobody wants that. Winning a contest prize benefits an individual more than overall increased forum activity does.

I'm just saying that if it were me, I would not prohibit new members from participating in the contest, because you're supposed to want and encourage new members to join...There are all sorts of restrictions that you can place on the contest to ensure that people can't cheat the contest and win by not contributing.

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