Poor John.
The contest is a bloody joke IMHO,
I won't disagree. It's been made a joke by a handful of people who just spam the hell out of the site on other sites, giving us a virtual black eye. People who don't care how it reflects on the site, but only how it reflects on their MDC points.
If another MDC is done, it'll be done differently in many regards. But I'm not going to change the rules mid-stream, despite how much it irks me that I'm going to be writing checks to people who made us look bad by spamming the living crap out of other sites ostensibly on our behalf.
Several well-known and very saavy posters from SI have signed on recently at my personal invitation,
Get real John. It's me. Remember me? I know how you're viewed at SI and what the real well-known and very savvy posters think of you there.
primarily to snag the time-critical and evaporating FREE membership opportunity.
I'd tell you to polish up the reading skills, but you already know what you just said isn't the case. FREE memberships are not evaporating. How can you pretend to have gotten that impression when so much verbage has been spent on the fact that it's LIFETIME subscriptions that won't be available after the end of this month.
Old habits are hard to break, and new situations are generally approached in "...IBEW (new guy on the jobsite) hide-and-watch..."
True, but you have by far the lowest percentage of referred members who actually post. About 37% of all people who join the site become posters within 5 days. And that same percentage is applying to most people in the MDC. I haven't calcluated that percentage for your referrals, but a guess would put it at less than 5%.
When I see percentages that low, it tells me that rather than personally inviting people to come join, it's more like a scatter-gun approach. In other words, spam.
Properly managed, every new member should receive a Hallmark quality "...Howdy.." card from iHUb , an Audio-Video "..howdy.." explaining how they can respond to member-initiated PMs, and a free
I do it my way on my site, which I feel is "properly managed" and you can feel free to start your own site and do the same. I feel that the welcome message the system sends new members is "properly managed".
After all, about 1 in 3 who get that message become posters. Unless you've referred them.
First time, shame on me; .......and there certainly isn't going to be a second time.
Good. I'd rather us be known for the quality and depth of discussion here; not for being the most frequently spammed site on competing sites.
