Please can a staff member change the title - I accidently clicked submit whilst in the middle of typing this, and briefly edited the message and edited it again. Thanks.

Well, Xmas is coming soon, and I just had another one of my crazy ideas.

I'm sure some of you will have heard about it before, but for those of you who haven't...
People elect to take part. When they do, they agree to send a small gift to someone [a physical or electronic item] - to keep it fair, we could agree on a maximum amount of cash spent, e.g $10.
All those who elected to take part, will be put into a hat [maybe a virtual one someone else can think of a clever way of doing this], and two names will be pulled out at the same time. [Maybe have two hats, with an identical set of names]. The person from hat 1 gives a gift to the person who got pulled out with them from hat 2. Then the names are put back in and re-drawn, so the person from hat 2 gives the gift to the person from hat 1.

Of course, if people want to send physical items, or PayPal cash, then a staff member or some other elected [and trusted] community member provides address details or sends the PayPal cash - it is supposed to be a secret Santa game.

Maybe you'll all love this idea, maybe you'll call the men in white coats to take me away... but I'd like to see what everyone else thinks about this.

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I'm to assume that because you posted this in the Feedback forum, you are suggesting that we do it here at AF, right?

Personally, I have always liked the idea of a secret santa contest for a forum...I've seen them done before, and when pulled off correctly, they work out quite well. For one reason or another, I've never organized one for a forum of my own, but I would love to do it. I'm not sure it would be possible at this point though...we have less than a month and a half to Christmas which leaves little, if any, time to organize this...From my experience, people need to know their partners 1+ month before Christmas...Before we got to this point, we would need to iron out all of the rules, give everybody a few days (ideally a week or more) to ask questions and sign up, make the drawings, and give everybody plenty of time to purchase the gifts and ship them (if need be).

I like the idea...but I really think that it was proposed a bit too late.

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Too bad, this could have been fun.

Although, not too many people are keen on giving away their mailing address.

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I went to Vegas, and all I got was this Blister. - true story!

However, this would be a great idea for next year, I think. After all, it would be voluntary, so yeah.

Hell, you could even do a virtual one if someone doesn't want to give out their mailing address... Like if person A got person B, and person B didn't want to give their mailing address out but had a website, person A could pay for one month advertising at a site like AF.

~Crystal

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Or what about like you post x amount of posts on the persons you got forum? Or even better like people who are good at graphics could give them away , and the person could give back like posts or a skin or a domain.

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Now this is something worth checking out.

Why do we have to wait for Christmas eh?

Well it would have more of an impact if linked with a holiday.

You know what we could also do? Post the birthdays of very active members on some list and then maybe as a birthday present people can sign up to post on their site. =)

~Crystal

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Mercury Ice has a new home!

Awesome Idea Ashley, just a bit late i think too.
Also its a nice idea to CrystalShards, I like it! nothing better then waking up on your birthday seeing a lot of members posting for the day hehe.

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I've run a 'Secret Santa' for the past three years and the members love it

Yeah, I definitely think it's a great idea, and I'd love to do it next year

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