Old HotW Thread

[bls1999]

I was looking through my computer for some old code and was presented with a document that had not been opened since September 23, 2013.  Nostalgia hit me like a brick.

I was in charge of notifying people to post the new HotW winner in the Hero's Peak forum on the old JV.  Such a noble task, I know (lol).  In my computer, I found the entire source BBCode for the thread I ran.  I made this thread when I was 14... nearly 4.5 years ago. Good God, how time flies.

Anyway, I figured it doesn't really need to be classified now since HotW hasn't existed for 2.5 years. Enjoy this inside look at the inner workings of Hero of the Week!

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Next to Post the Winner (Week 59): Dutany

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People who have NOT posted the winner, read here!

Now, for those who haven't posted the winner. If your name doesn't appear in the below queue and you haven't posted the HotW Winner, and you'd like to, please post below and I'll add you to the queue in the order you fall in HotW. Pretty sure I got everyone, but just in case.

Note that people who:
- have been inactive for at least 1 month...
- are currently banned...
- are on recognized leave (they have made some kind of blog entry or post, or VM on their profile, or it's in their usertitle)...
...all are not in the queue.

How to Post the Winner!

If anyone is wondering how to post the winner, it's actually quite simple! All you have to do (if you're posting the winner for that week), is create a thread in Hero's Peak, and put your congratulatory post as the thread content. Then Hipponator or another forum/super moderator will merge that post into the HotW Winners thread, displaying your post for all to see!  Note: Don't forget to add the profile link of the winner!

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*The below lists go by this format: Current Username (Username when promoted to HotW). If their username is the same, there are no parenthesis. If you change your username, tell me, and I'll update this.

In the queue to post the winner:

Dutany
8363MTR
Roflkoy
ShadowZtar
Zelinoxe (Excaliburn007)
2th!nk (TheWebbz)
Mfdom
FinalCheetah
Dagg
Flyburd (Flybird)
PatMan
Slidin
Nikolaj
Mantle (Zed)
Tank Titanium
Zinx10
Harry Potter
Silverrida
*Espeon*
Ridley
Blaze~ (Blaze~)
Patrickk (*Jolteon*)
Mana-Fire
Arella (Bastet)
#Pinky (Pinku)
Map
Lil Weezy (Anders)
TRUC
Pirate
EugeneJudo
Why not? (Tebbe)
MrPrinceW (PrinceW)

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People who HAVE posted the HotW Winner:

Hipponator
a zorref kid (delicious french cuisine)
Natural Killer Cyborg (Day of Lavos)
[1/2]Lite (Halflite)
wertyuipo
Lil Tunechi (Pontoty)
Joltghonz (*Umbreon*)
Stryker X7
ProClifo
GamerProist
bbuns (Snubb)
Ringstaart
MrDange (Dangevin)
Lunar (Chatbot)
Ross
Lightnin!!!
bls1999~
LCMK
Mr.White. (Tommy 8)

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People excluded from the queue due to inactivity/being banned/in recognized leave:

-Shadowfax- - Inactive
Suuper - Recognized Leave
1queon64 (the night owl) - Recognized Leave
pigəon (PigeonDataCorruption) - Banned
Sanzep - Inactive

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People excluded from the queue because they opted out:

Rokki
Katase (Maple Wise)

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EDIT: I found the VM I sent to everyone... here it is:

Winner Posting VM

Heya /*PERSONPOSTING*\! If you'd like, you can post the /*WEEKNUMBERst/nd/rd/th*\ JVH Winner announcement in Hero's Peak a week from this upcoming Saturday (/*DATE*\) after the voting ends. If you do, be sure to include a warm, congratulatory message, as well as a link to their profile.

For more information on the winner posting process, you can check this thread: http://jiggmin.com/showthread.php?t=110868

Please respond as soon as you get this telling me if you are going to post the winner or not, because I need to get someone else if you don't want to.

Thanks! ^.^

(+1 Generic Message)

[~Bowl]

you just made me salty i never got HotW again

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Cobble]

Oh my, usernames painstakingly colored to make sure you never forget how the current status hierarchy lies

This is bringing up memories but they're not good ones

[bls1999]

you just made me salty i never got HotW again

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You're a hero to me <3

Oh my, usernames painstakingly colored to make sure you never forget how the current status hierarchy lies

This is bringing up memories but they're not good ones

I think it just goes to show how much of a perfectionist I am when it comes to threads and coding projects.

I agree, the Hero of the Week contest was poorly executed and became a popularity contest.  Some of the things said in the voting threads about other members were kind of horrendous.  Often times, these members would end up winning the next round and would never see the things said about them, as a mod would move the voting thread out of Hero's Peak ASAP.

That's part of the reason why I didn't set up a version of HotW on this site.  It was a staple of JV, sure, but it was not something to cherish as one of the better parts of JV.  No one is "better" than anyone else, and HotW promoted that hierarchy and gave winners an inflated social status to enjoy.  I was always conscious of how I behaved after I won to make sure I wasn't giving in to the stigma of the elitism among the winners. I can only hope that no one thought that I was looking down on the people who didn't win, as that would never have been my intention.

[4h3y]

Man, I remember being a HotW and having a shiny golden name for 3 months for winning a drawing contest with a few submissions.

Brings back memories...

[Cobble]

You're a hero to me <3


I think it just goes to show how much of a perfectionist I am when it comes to threads and coding projects.

I agree, the Hero of the Week contest was poorly executed and became a popularity contest.  Some of the things said in the voting threads about other members were kind of horrendous.  Often times, these members would end up winning the next round and would never see the things said about them, as a mod would move the voting thread out of Hero's Peak ASAP.

That's part of the reason why I didn't set up a version of HotW on this site.  It was a staple of JV, sure, but it was not something to cherish as one of the better parts of JV.  No one is "better" than anyone else, and HotW promoted that hierarchy and gave winners an inflated social status to enjoy.  I was always conscious of how I behaved after I won to make sure I wasn't giving in to the stigma of the elitism among the winners. I can only hope that no one thought that I was looking down on the people who didn't win, as that would never have been my intention.

It was part of a larger pattern. You get it all over again if you enable status games the way you're doing now.

This page is a microcosm of bad incentives.
You've got ten roles with seven different colors. You're setting up a ranking that goes from "registering" to "making a lot of posts" to "getting a contest approved" to "donating money" to "becoming staff" to "being bls1999". You're encouraging people to care about this ranking, whether that's your intention or not.

You inserted a referral link instead of just a link to the register page because you're treating a high referral count as an end unto itself. You put a top referrers ranking on the front page so nobody forgets who the important people are.

If you want this community to be healthy you need to cut that out.
Don't put rankings of any kind on the front page or really any page that isn't dedicated to rankings.
Don't list thank counts anywhere other than people's profiles.
Keep at most two username colors for registered users, for regular users and for forum moderators, because there's some practical benefit to being able to see who can help you with administrative stuff but the rest is only useful for bragging purposes.
Don't call people with 200 posts "ultimate members". It would help to just say that people with more than 200 posts can change their usernames, without giving it a special name. Many people on JV actually cared about being an ultimate member™, and that's terrible. They wouldn't care as much if it was just the ability to change your username and user title, without status attached to it.
If you want to get an icon don't turn it into a contest. Ask people for suggestions, then do a quick poll in the same thread. You'll get the same results without the drama and status games.
Don't make contests all official with a formal approval process and whatever it was that JV had going on. You don't have to lower the standards, you just need to avoid making it into a status thing.

Acknowleding how bad HotW was is good, but JV had enormous structural problems that you're copying.

[bls1999]

This page is a microcosm of bad incentives.
You've got ten roles with seven different colors. You're setting up a ranking that goes from "registering" to "making a lot of posts" to "getting a contest approved" to "donating money" to "becoming staff" to "being bls1999". You're encouraging people to care about this ranking, whether that's your intention or not. You inserted a referral link instead of just a link to the register page because you're treating a high referral count as an end unto itself. You put a top referrers ranking on the front page so nobody forgets who the important people are.

I went ahead and removed top donors because, to be frank, I don't think that role will ever do anything. As for the rest, I physically cannot give certain users access to some forums without giving them a secondary usergroup. If I could do that, I would only have one group for all of the members. Regarding staff colors, they are meant to stand out on the forums as they do on PR2 so people know who's who.

I also removed my referral link from that post and removed myself from the top referrers board.

Don't put rankings of any kind on the front page or really any page that isn't dedicated to rankings.

If someone has a suggestion for that space, I'd be happy to hear it. It's there currently 1) because I don't have anything better to put there and 2) because I want people to have an incentive to invite more members to the site.

Don't list thank counts anywhere other than people's profiles.

I just disabled thank counts on author panels on posts. Let me know if they appear anywhere else.

Keep at most two username colors for registered users, for regular users and for forum moderators, because there's some practical benefit to being able to see who can help you with administrative stuff but the rest is only useful for bragging purposes.

See above re: staff colors and usergroups.

Don't call people with 200 posts "ultimate members". It would help to just say that people with more than 200 posts can change their usernames, without giving it a special name. Many people on JV actually cared about being an ultimate member™, and that's terrible. They wouldn't care as much if it was just the ability to change your username and user title, without status attached to it.

I'll have to think about a different way to differentiate between users who do and don't have those perks.

If you want to get an icon don't turn it into a contest. Ask people for suggestions, then do a quick poll in the same thread. You'll get the same results without the drama and status games.

The reason I made it into a contest was 1) to give an incentive to participate and 2) to stimulate the community. We got tons of fantastic submissions and at the time of posting have had over 30 people vote in the poll.

Don't make contests all official with a formal approval process and whatever it was that JV had going on. You don't have to lower the standards, you just need to avoid making it into a status thing.

How do you feel it's a status thing right now, other than that to which I've responded?

Acknowleding how bad HotW was is good, but JV had enormous structural problems that you're copying.

It's my mission to make this website as welcoming as possible. There are many hierarchal features that come stock with MyBB, such as a reputation, thread ratings, etc. I disabled all of that because that's not where the community's attention should be focused.

This is some great feedback that I cherish. Thanks for voicing your concerns here. If you have any more suggestions, please let me know.

[Cobble]

I went ahead and removed top donors because, to be frank, I don't think that role will ever do anything. As for the rest, I physically cannot give certain users access to some forums without giving them a secondary usergroup. If I could do that, I would only have one group for all of the members. Regarding staff colors, they are meant to stand out on the forums as they do on PR2 so people know who's who.

I also removed my referral link from that post and removed myself from the top referrers board.


If someone has a suggestion for that space, I'd be happy to hear it. It's there currently 1) because I don't have anything better to put there and 2) because I want people to have an incentive to invite more members to the site.


I just disabled thank counts on author panels on posts. Let me know if they appear anywhere else.


See above re: staff colors and usergroups.


I'll have to think about a different way to differentiate between users who do and don't have those perks.


The reason I made it into a contest was 1) to give an incentive to participate and 2) to stimulate the community. We got tons of fantastic submissions and at the time of posting have had over 30 people vote in the poll.


How do you feel it's a status thing right now, other than that to which I've responded?


It's my mission to make this website as welcoming as possible. There are many hierarchal features that come stock with MyBB, such as a reputation, thread ratings, etc. I disabled all of that because that's not where the community's attention should be focused.

This is some great feedback that I cherish. Thanks for voicing your concerns here. If you have any more suggestions, please let me know.

Great!

I'm not suggesting getting rid of all user groups, but making them purely administrative. You could have a group for people who can change their usernames without giving it any particular name people care about.

I suppose encouraging new members is an ok reason to have a top referrers ranking. It's not zero-sum, so there's a point to it.

I'm not too sure about contests, but they did get weird on JV.

[Kursed]

I remember I was next in line to post HOTW before JV crashed, lol.

[bls1999]

I remember I was next in line to post HOTW before JV crashed, lol.

RIP lol

[aaaaaa123456789]

Re: contests being a status thing, this was definitely a problem on JV. The absurd level of formality made actually getting a contest accepted a milestone — how many people created "unofficial" contests just because they were waiting for acceptance?

First of all, I doubt there's any real need for contest-specific forum sections. People have a million other ways to organize contests, such as dedicated Discord servers, that are much more effective. From what I remember of JV's contest-related sections, they were essentially a glorified chat server — and there's no point in turning a forum into a chat server when actual chat solutions exist.

If contest-specific forum sections are gone, there's only one thing that needs administrative oversight, and that is the ability to award official prizes (e.g., PR2 parts). For that reason, I'd consider taking the opposite approach to the one you're taking now: let contests organize themselves, and once a contest is settled into something the community likes, approach the contest owner(s) privately and discuss the possibility of awarding prizes, including whatever changes the contest would need to make to become fairer or somehow better. (Or just let people approach you, but without the absurd level of formality that it requires nowadays. A simple "hey, can my contest award prizes?" Ask a Mod thread is definitely more than enough.)

As of right now, you have a 1,200-word document describing the rules for a contest. This seemed like a good idea when it was made, but time showed that this is just a great way to encourage people to think that running a contest is a goal by itself. You require the contest owner to have 200 posts on the forum (because we all know that someone with 150 posts cannot run a contest, right?), there's too much focus on judges to the point that "getting the Nth judge" is a milestone in itself for a contest (despite the right number of judges for a contest can very well be zero — consider an extreme "random user of the fortnight" contest), there's a whole approval process that just doesn't need to be there (I trust your ability to reply to Ask a Mod posts with "I think this is OK; let's see what the rest of the staff thinks"), and there's even a disciplinary process that definitely doesn't need to be there at all.
All in all, this contributes to making the whole contest environment excessively formal, which in turn imbues the contest owner position with an aura of power and achievement that it simply shouldn't have. Do consider that JV did have games and contests before the prize system was created — good ones remained popular simply because they were fun, and bad ones vanished.

I'd seriously recommend dropping the whole formal contest system that has been developed over the years; it has shown to foster a system where making or running a contest is a goal in and of itself. Instead, I'd propose switching to the straightforward and simple approach of reaching out to good/popular contests and letting people contact you in case you miss some, and just give and monitor prize-awarding permissions to these people. In fact, given the level of staff activity we have nowadays, you can even completely do away with this permission and just grant prizes yourselves when contest winners are picked.

I know it seems like a hard decision to drop the formal framework that has been developed over the years, given that so many people (me included, back on JV) spent much time on it polishing it and fixing things. But in the end, it just seems unnecessary nowadays.

[Resarekt]

Wow week 59....and I was like number 78 or something to become HotW I think...wowza

I wonder if I can still find my post when I hosted (briefly) the Ask a Hero threads! Time to look....