Contests Forum

Right, let me start off by saying I know the Contests Forum has been neglected for a long time - Well it all changes from now on!

The staff have been discussing what to do with the forum and I've decieded to create this thread to ask you, as members, what you think should be done about the contests area.

I've drawn up a new set of rules/guidlines which are currently under review by myself and the rest of the staff and we are currently looking into ways to get people interested in the contests forum again. You may be thinking is just "more talk" but it isn't, we are going to get everything sorted for the contests forum this weekend! (There might even be a nice special contest to kick things off with but you'll have to keep an eye out untill then for more details on that)

The first thing everybody will be thinking is "Approve Contests!". Thats the first thing I thought of too and I'll be taking it upon myself to make sure all contests are reviewed and then approved in sharpish fashion and ofcourse the other staff members will be here to make sure everything runs smoothly too.

So; we have the new guidlines underway, we have some promotional ideas under review and now we want to know what YOU want to be done about the area to make sure we aren't missing anything the members want.

If you have an idea about anything related to the contests forum, no matter how big or small it can be about antything, then please feel free to let us know about it here. It could be a rule you want implementing, a new feature, a whole new way of doing things, anything - let us hear your contests forum suggestions!

I'm not sure what sort of response this thread will get but we will be starting work on the contests forum this weekend so make sure to have your say!

Thanks Alot everyone!


PS. Please only post suggestions relating to the Contests Forum. I want to hear what YOU want from the contests forum, any posts made not regarding the Contests Forum will simply be removed.

Obviously do actually apporve contests this time. Maybe also concentrate on promoting the contest forums a bit to actually get them used by people.

Take some ideas from other sites which use contests as a main selling point or ones that are used heavily such as sitepoint.

Well. The way I see it is the only things that needs improved are the number of contests. There haven't been hardly any new contest worth entering in a while. So Talkfreelance really can't do anything about that.

White-Line Studios; Yup the contests will start to get reviewed and approved again now and much quicker than ever before! - We will be providing users with more information and better guidlines so that it is as easy as possible to set up a contest without needless delays

Smoke; Thats one of the reasons behind this thread. We will be improving the contests area to get people interested in it again and we would like members ideas on how to do so (as they will be the ones starting and entering contests). I think a lot of people didn't want to hold contests here due to the lack of inactivity in that area, mainly because it was taking too long for contests to be looked at and approved. Hopefully with this fixed and a bit of re-promotion of the contests forum we can get people starting good contests here again.


If anyone has anything to say on the issue of why people might not of wnated to start/enter contests here at Tf then, again, plase feel free to have your say

Ye, not sure if you've got one but create an easy to use template for people to fill out when creating a contest. That would help sen most people always don't put down the relevent details.

Originally Posted by White-Line Studios Ye, not sure if you've got one but create an easy to use template for people to fill out when creating a contest. That would help sen most people always don't put down the relevent details.

We had a brief template that we will be improving when the new guidlines and information are posted up this weekend. Thanks for the input!

Originally Posted by White-Line Studios Ye, not sure if you've got one but create an easy to use template for people to fill out when creating a contest. That would help sen most people always don't put down the relevent details.

This guy has a point, an easy generator would be a good idea for members to make sure they don't miss a single field. (Have it get posted in for them similar to sitepoint).

Ah, I see. I thought he ment a template they could copy and paste into their post themselves and fill in the information they want to display from there. Like how at the moment we have an example contest for people to use as a basis.

Following on the idea of users filling out a form, how about something akin to what we used to use at yaXay? (http://forum.yaxay.com/submitcontest.php) I don't know, it just helps to make things that little bit more 'official'.

Another idea: allow mini-contests. By that I mean those little events just for fun which can be instigated by members or staff. Little fun things that anyone can enter taking as little or as much time over it as they want to give. Signatures, photo captions, creative code snippets, etc.

A cross between Sitepoint and designoutpost contests would be perfect.