Are all the Simple Thanks recipients idenfied somewhere? Is there one place where there is a list? It might be nice to read who has won and when the award was given.

Maybe I missed it, but it would be nice to see some sort of citation with the award, to give some idea of why the award was given. Yes, I know it's at the discretion of Viewpoints but it would be nice to see something like:

Donna recently posted three excellent reviews of books about breast cancer and its survivors. For this, Viewpoints offers our Simple Thanks award.

or...

Paul was responsible for getting five new members to sign up this month, and they have collectively written 16 new reviews. For this (etc).

The citation doesn't have to be elaborate... a single sentence will do. It will give us some sort of idea what kind of behavior gets rewarded with a Simple Thanks award. And it will bring an effective member to the community's attention in a way that lets us know just how the person was effective.

Just some thoughts.

--Bob

Check out Community tab - Recognition section - Award Winners: http://www.viewpoints.com/content/simple_thanks_recipients

We haven't posted any since April, which is one of the reasons we'd like to revamp the program. Many others like you don't even know we display the winners on the site.

Have you considered adding badges to our home pages, next to our Writer status? Then when someone visits a members page they would see the badge stating SIMPLE THANKS AWARD - then much like the pop up message that explains writer status it could have a description that pops up with a link to past winners.  

Next if the community homepage were restyled a little bit.  Maybe make more of an announcement section instead of having to get to the discussion boards to find out about featured reviews, simple thanks and promotions.  Instead of the Big box being a link to the discussion board it could have announcements to the community. 

I think those would definitely bring recognition to the program and the winners.  

Meredith said…

Check out Community tab - Recognition section - Award Winners: http://www.viewpoints.com/content/simple_thanks_recipients

We haven't posted any since April, which is one of the reasons we'd like to revamp the program. Many others like you don't even know we display the winners on the site.

---

Yup, that addresses my concerns. However, when I clicked on some of the names in the list, the first one I clicked on hasn't contributed a review since November 2008 and another is no longer a member. I'd guess that, if you're going to take the time to recognize people and give them an award, it would be nice to see the recipients be more productive.

Maybe Viewpoints should wait until someone reaches Writer 1 status before being eligible for a Simple Thanks.

--Bob

I like the idea of displaying winners like "Meet this Month's Simple Thanks Winners" with links/photos maybe on the home page instead of having people go searching for them.  I also like the suggestion of adding a badge because I think the more places reviewers see a reminder, they more they will check it out.

For guidelines on how you can become a Simple Thanks winner I have to bring up a pet peeve.  No Simple Thanks to reviewers who will not take the time to capitalize the letter "I."  I see many fun profiles with helpful reviews and just this one very annoying and easy to correct mistake.

I see Bob's point on looking for some longevity but then again I think becoming a Simple Thanks winner when you've put out a lot of initial effort in all areas could really motivate some people to go on to a Writer 1 status so... I would be torn on that point.

With so many great minds here, I am sure the new plan will be awesome!

How much of "competition" can there legally be?  Just out of curiousity since I know sometimes there are regulations on that.  I liked the way that Courtney (I think it was) was interacting with the SK-you people stating that they were in the running for a ST award so kep up the good work yadda yadda.

In defense of the lowercase "I" set... I am constantly re-reading my reviews to catch the "I" problem... I have to write my reviews on my old laptop with a wireless connection, because my nice computer is a desktop which is contained in an office. I need to supervise things in the rest of the house, so I can't be in there most of the time. I don't know if it's the screen resolution or the font, or what, but it's hard for me to distinguish the uppercase and lowercase i's. It's a big screen, but the dot is tiny! If someone is only using lowercase, yeah, that's annoying... but capitalization can be an issue with older computer users.

I like the idea of having more of a monthly drawing.  Like every time you write a review, you get 1 entry into the monthly drawing.  You could have other ways to get entries as well.  Such as: 10 comments on reviews = 1 entry or 5 Helpful Votes = 1 entry.  That way, everyone who contributes is eligible and people who contribute more have more chances to win.  Maybe having a variety of ways to get entries would make it fun AND it would be cool if there was a spot on our private page to show how many entries we have in this months drawing.

This idea would make it less manual work, I would think, because it would all be determined programattically, and you wouldn't have to be browsing and looking for activity constantly.  Of course, you could weed out people before giving the award.  If the computer program picks entry #333 and that person has been posting garbage only, then that person would become ineligible and you'd randomly pick another person until it came to someone legit.

Just an idea :)

Hi Meredith,

These are always hard. You can have someone write 50 reviews that get fewer hits than one review where someone picked a hot product and poured some heart in.

There are always those who are quiet in the background but make a huge difference but not noticed in a bean count. That may be members who leave lots of comments of encourage others to join off the site and not way to know that.

I would suggest a nomination with the "why" required. Then, the winner and the one who nominated get a special thanks. I'd just list the special thanks I think but offer some incentive for others to make note of those who go above and beyond.

I suppose that could be gamed, but I would not personally send in just people I know. I'd look for those who are working to become part of the community and for extra good reviews and comments and so on.

If it was a nomination thing, I'd either feel like I have to nominate everyone (b/c so many people or great and I can think of reasons why so many people deserve it), or I'd just nominate no one... I'd probably nominate no one because it would be easier.  Plus, if someone is great writer but no one every finds them, they'd never have a chance.

I prefer the idea of a drawing, just b/c any participation here would count you into the drawing and you wouldn't need to be nominated to win.  As I explained in my example, comments, discussion board posts, etc, those would all earn you entries in the drawing.  Getting more participation is key, and something like this would help (I think!)

I don't think we should get into the nominating thing as some people will be nominated a lot and others who are just as worthy might get lost in the shuffle.  Perhaps we should do it as a game of chance ... a sweepstakes ... with the names of past winners removed from the running.  That way, no one would have to worry about seeing a list of winners from the past.

I think offering sweepstakes does certainly give lots of people an incentive to write more reviews, perhaps in genres they never considered. For example, I was interested to read a male perspective on a breastfeeding pillow!

I do think you have a lot of great writers here on VP, many of whom have written quite a few high quality reviews. I think that perhaps offering rewards to ones that have reached a certain writer status might help to retain some of your excellent writers who have been around for a while. Perhaps offering varying levels of rewards for the varying levels of writer status might encourage people to reach the next level.

I think the idea of making someone ineligible for a future reward if they already received one might be a good idea but to limit that lock-out time for a certain number of months.

I think that some people who write reviews here are just trying to get a quota for some other reward program offered at other sites. Many of those just write the minimum number of reviews and check out, and I'm not sure that you'd be able to keep them writing without a constant incentive. Other new writers may be seriously looking to become a part of the community through the discussions, posting comments, giving helpful votes, and writing reviews, etc. I think those newer writers might be more deserving of a reward in my book.

I like the idea of locking people out for a few months too.  On another site, I remember some people would win month after month after month and it got to the point that I just gave up b/c I couldn't produce as much as they could so my chances of winning were slim.

Monthly prizes or sweepstakes definitely get people interested though!

I have to be honest. I just won Simple Thanks, but I am not sure why. I looked at the past winners, and why they won seems to be subjective. Of course, that's OK! It's a website for Viewpoints! But I think keeping up the list of winners with a "Meet this Month's Simple Thanks Winners" like awlafon suggested would be nice. That way you can look and see all the different reasons everyone won.

I don't like the idea of nominations. It could turn into a popularity contest that way. Only being able to win once in a time period is something I would get behind.

It just needs to be promoted more. You could even mention it in the "read this first" topic in the discussion board. I read that, but I don't remember it being on there. We all get a welcome email when we join. You could put a "check out Simple Thanks" link in there. Those last two wouldn't even be too labor-intensive.

Well I think pitcherday made a really great point. I did e-mail Meredith with my ideas - just fyi. Jo

I emailed my ideas as well but I will say that I didn't agree with some ST winners. I couldn't and don't understand why they won. Some posted just a  couple of reviews, didn't rate or comment that I know of, and were long gone after winning.

I think ST awards should go to people who show a true interest in the site for more than a contest or a two to four review span. These people should be ones that are recognized by the community for making the site better whether it is through GOOD reviews, helpful or friendly commenting, or a combination of these things.

I think newer members are just as eligible as veteran members but I don't think a new member should recieve a ST after just a  couple of reviews. I see no evidence that it matters to them as far as sticking around.

Having said that, some newer members who have receved a ST have gone on to become very valuable members of the community. Whether winning a ST award motivated them to stay or not, I don't know.

I definitely prefer sweepstakes but I also have to say, when people who come JUST for sweepstakes, write poorly, don't get into the community, and win big prizes then bolt, I get a little annoyed. I love to see people who deserve to win, win. But I guess the idea of a sweepstakes is for everyone to be on an even playing field and have an equal chance of winning.

So really, I said nothing in this post.

It's 4 a.m. It's the best I've got. lol.

I think with a site like this, where it's free and opinion-based and not requiring technical jargon or specifications, it's hard to actually gauge what a "good" review is. I have seen some reviews that are 4 or 5 sentences long and get 12 helpful votes, when a long one on the same product gets none. If it's going to be dependent on traditional good writing, with spelling, grammar, and proper sentence structure, then that excludes many reviews (including some of mine). I know we have a spell-checker, but more often than not, it does not recognize real words and sometimes suggests nonsense words.

A sweepstakes could be more fair. I wouldn't like it if someone came and wrote one review just to enter, but what if it was a really good review that got a lot of traffic? They may have only come for the sweepstakes, but they really helped Viewpoints out by drawing traffic and therefore it was a helpful and good review because it got people to come here and surf around and check it out. So maybe we hooked someone who does stay on here and contribute a slew of reviews.

The ST program is great, but I wouldn't want to be the person figuring out what's good or bad or adds value! I think it's been fine so far.