Posting/Referral Contests - How do you keep track?

Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by Tyler, May 21, 2009.

  1. Tyler

    Tyler The Badministrator

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    If you've ever held a posting/referral/activity contest, how do you keep track of who is in the lead? The winner is the one the posted the most, brought the most new (active) members, is the most active, etc.

    Especially for vBulletin, is there any easy way of keeping track of all of this to be as accurate as possible?
     
  2. Rafael

    Rafael Regular Member

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    vBulletin keeps track of # of reffered members through Admin CP -> Users -> Referrals

    I also suppose you could make some sort of mod that gives a point everytime someone posts and everytime someone refers someone else, etc.

    Then of course the user with the most points would be the winner.
     
  3. Tyler

    Tyler The Badministrator

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    I'd love a mod that gave a point for every post, referral, and maybe thread that is made. 1 point per post, 2 per thread, and 3 per referral. That would help, I think.
     
  4. Imperial

    Imperial Adept

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    Although not specifically designed to do so, you could probably use vBExperience to accomplish the same results. It awards points to users based upon their actions like post of threads, referrals, etc. It lists all users in an activity chart based upon their activity and points. There is also the option to calculate points based upon lifetime statistics or from the time of install. You could install it for the length of the contest, then uninstall and repeat as necessary. Not as neat as a dedicated referral mod, but could be used to accomplish the same result.
     
  5. Rafael

    Rafael Regular Member

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    That sounds like the easiest solution.
     
  6. Tyler

    Tyler The Badministrator

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    Yes, thank you. I will look into trying to use that.
     
  7. Nick

    Nick Regular Member

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    This is what I was looking into, but then I realized that it calculates points based on activity since the beginning of the forum's existence. I've looked and looked and cannot find an option to start calculating at the time of the install.
     
  8. Imperial

    Imperial Adept

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    It has been a few months since I looked, but if I recall during the installation, there is an option that you can toggle whether you want the mod to retroactively calculate or whether you want it from the install point onward. I'd have to look again, it may be differences between the 3.7 and 3.8 versions of the mod.
     
  9. plazzman

    plazzman Adept

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    vBCredits has a referral, posting, replying, rating, activity, sign up and viewing reward system.

    It'd be nice to know who a person referred, as opposed to how many
     
  10. Nick

    Nick Regular Member

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    The referrals section of the AdminCP tells you which members were referred by another.

    Does vBCredits allow you to calculate points starting from a certain date, or at least the day you install it, or does it calculate them from the beginning of your forum's existence?
     
  11. TVDinner

    TVDinner Newcomer

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    on my UltraBB forum we have a custom script that we run and just put in the date range and it returns the top 10 (or 20, or whatever we want) posters in order with their post count. It works awesome. The custom script was written by the creator of the forum software for free which was cool.

    without that custom script it would have to be manual and that would be a complete and utter nightmare.
     
  12. Imperial

    Imperial Adept

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    Small update, vBExperience has a feature in the Admin CP where you can "Delete Statistics/Points" as a reset function. I've never used it, but would assume it would start tracking from the time of deletion once again.
     
  13. Nick

    Nick Regular Member

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    Mind sharing where exactly this is, as I cannot find it? :doh:
     
  14. Imperial

    Imperial Adept

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    Might vary by version but in this 3.0 version:

    vBulletin Options -> vBExperience -> Delete Statistics

    /admincp/xperience_admin.php?do=delstats
     
  15. Nick

    Nick Regular Member

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    That does delete/reset the statistics but they are just rebuilt at the next scheduled task.

    I think vBCredits is offering me the functionality I'm looking for, so I will most likely be using it.

    Thank you so much for the help though.
     
  16. Tom

    Tom Regular Member

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    The referral tracker plug-in for MyBB...

    I also check IPs and crack Proxies so I can verify no members are creating false accounts to receive rewards and none are using proxies, etc.
     
  17. ArnyVee

    ArnyVee Regular Member

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    I've been waiting for a modification that would track the posts for contests.

    Can't wait until someone comes up with it and releases it. :D
     
  18. Nick

    Nick Regular Member

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    Me neither, Arny. The one Brandon uses would be perfect. Hopefully he can get a release out of the creator for us. :cool:
     
  19. Tom

    Tom Regular Member

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    Just have them give you their starting post count, then at the end, take the difference.
     
  20. Nick

    Nick Regular Member

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    It's not that easy if you give thread creations more points than regular posts. Also consider the fact that posting in some forums (i.e. Miscellaneous or Off-Topic forums) don't count.

    Then you count referrals - but only referred users that have made at least ten posts.

    You get the idea... :)
     

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