picking promotion winners

Adrien Lapointe wrote:So I ran the winner picker app in the forum software and only one of the winners was on the daily-ish email...


Matt Fearnow


Congratulations Matt!

I sent you an email to ask for the email address of the person that first referred you to Permies.com. That person (if qualified) will also get a copy of the book.

I must say, I wonder how your winner picker app works, as once again, I'm on your dailyish email and I'd like to think I did everything correctly to be in the running. So could you please explain how this picker app works exactly, or maybe tell me if I'm doing something wrong when trying to be included in these drawings? Thanks much,

Kat

I would be interested in hearing this as well. It seems like every time you are saying that the app picker only finds one person signed up. I am signed up as well and posted a question in this forum, outside of this email. Is there a way for you to confirm that there is not a glitch somewhere with your picker? This question sounds like it is becoming a common question.

When the 2 winners are picked through the app, I check if they are on the daily-ish email. If only one is on the list then there is only one winner. If none of the two winners are on the list, then I re-run the app.

None of you did anything wrong, it is just that your name did not come up this time.

Adrien Lapointe wrote:When the 2 winners are picked through the app, I check if they are on the daily-ish email. If only one is on the list then there is only one winner. If none of the two winners are on the list, then I re-run the app.

None of you did anything wrong, it is just that your name did not come up this time.

Ah... so that's how it works. It randomly picks two people from the forum (whether on the list or not) and if one of the winners is not on the list then they are disqualified, if neither of the random winners is on the list you run it again. Wouldn't it be better to simply run it from the list of folks who are actually already on the list? Or is it done this way to try and encourage more people to join the list? Thanks much,

Kat

The goal is to encourage good participation on the forum, so it would be contradictory to pick the names from the mailing list.

If you already have the prizes, why don't you "spin" until you get a winner for all of them?

Jen Shrock wrote:If you already have the prizes, why don't you "spin" until you get a winner for all of them?

First, the app picks ten winners. Adrien (or Burra or me) then looks through the ten posts to pick out the best two. Then we fire up a whole different thing to verify the email.

To answer your question: because it would be more work.

paul wheaton wrote:First, the app picks ten winners.

Those ten posts are picked at random, so the more you post, the greater your chance of being picked as one of the ten.

Adrien (or Burra or me) then looks through the ten posts to pick out the best two.

'Best' would be something like an interesting question, a good answer to another member's question, a relevant link, or sharing your own experiences and photos. Basically, something that gets really good discussion going to enable a good exchange of information and to encourage people to have a go at stuff themselves.

Then we fire up a whole different thing to verify the email.

Paul is super-strict about this. If you fall at this last hurdle you don't get the book. I've been known to shed a few tears at this point...

Burra Maluca wrote:Those ten posts are picked at random, so the more you post, the greater your chance of being picked as one of the ten.

The more good quality post or question the more chances. Anything that says: "just posting to win" will not get picked.

Burra Maluca wrote:
Paul is super-strict about this. If you fall at this last hurdle you don't get the book. I've been known to shed a few tears at this point...

That is the unfortunate part, since the winner was picked for the best post and then he/she is not on the daily-ish email. If I had more time I could go back restart the process to pick another winner, but it already takes enough time as is, so that is why we sometimes only have 1 winner.