coupled with other members not being given approval of 2 points per new member upon "authorization" (whatever that means!),
That's not a change in the MDC rules. If I felt I could've changed the MDC rules mid-stream, about 3 participants in it right now wouldn't be.
It's a change in the way the site is administered.
And it doesn't affect "other members" in the MDC. Nobody's being singled out. The new guidelines for approving new accounts apply to ALL new accounts, not just ones that specific people have reffered, despite what they'd like to have everyone think. If anything, the spam-meisters were favored heavily by benefitting from looser approval standards during the majority of the MDC.
Clearly, the Membership Drive Competition, although a good idea, has faltered by the wayside due to unclear rules in the beginning
I agree. It being the first one, it was bound to have problems with it I hadn't anticipated. If there's another one (big IF), the lessons learned from the shortcomings of this one will be applied. For example, posting the link publicly on a site you don't OWN would be grounds for disqualification. I've been relatively low-key about just how much the spamming of the site bothers me. It bothers heck outta me that some people will be getting checks who simply spammed links everywhere. And that one of them has never even POSTED on this site but instead plays dumb and pretends he's unable to through some fault of the site.
It isn't good for a website to start a Community Event, and then to change the rules as the event progresses to it's end.
What rule was changed?
None.
Approved accounts are worth 2 points just like they've always been. Unapproved/New accounts are worth 1 point just like they've always been. What's changed is the administrative process of approving accounts. Matt was having to review well over 100 accounts per day and it was decided that that was a waste of time because the only people who really needed the ability to post more than 3 times per day were people who, well, POST.
Winners were to get one of the TSHIRTS. In the recent Membership Drive Competition, it was announced that the top 50 winners would receive one of those TSHIRTS as a prize, stating that only 576 TSHIRTS would be produced. It remains unclear whether those TSHIRTS have been, or WILL BE produced.
They have not been. We've decided on the quantity of each size to order and the design and they will be produced early February and the first 50 will be shipped to MDC winners (in the size of their choice) and about a dozen more will be shipped to people whose taglines made it to the shirt, then when we know how many of each size remain, they will be for sale on the site.
Let me explain. To my knowledge, none of the other Financial Websites have asked members to be as loyal as IHUB has asked it's members to be. Those other websites just have a URL available out there and they hope to gain new members over time. IHUB has been different from those in that they have asked the members to participate in the growth of the website by being active members of the "community". But the breakdown occurs when the website does not hold up to it's own end of "the community".
Not sure I follow you here. Most websites try to foster a sense of loyalty. We didn't invent that.
If there is to be a TSHIRT created and we see that members have participated in that creation, it behooves the management of IHUB to follow through on it's intent and announce the winners and hold true to their word regarding same.
Ahhhh... Guilty until proven innocent, I see.
Additionally, I recently read whereby an old time member questioned the recent change in the rules of the Membership Drive Competition, and he was cast aside as though his opinion was of little or no importance in the long scheme of things. This is very sad, to me. The member clearly was trying to follow the known rules of the "contest" yet was lead to believe that he was only whining about the sudden change in the rules of the contest.
He was someone's who's been known for years on multiple sites as an incessant spammer, apparently had spammed his way to a high position in the MDC, and was complaining about "the rules changed" when indeed they hadn't.
The homepage is very boring...and very mundane. It needs constantly fresh material to bring members back on a regular basis.
Actually, Matt was making noise recently about doing a revamped homepage. As poor as Matt is at this kind of design, I'm far worse, so the task falls to him.
Financial News, International News, Weather, Sports!????
All of which not only costs a LOT of money (except Weather, probably, but who cares what the weather in Boogerville is like?) and takes us away from the focus of being a *message board*. Let those who are good at news (Knobias, for example) do news and we'll do what we're good at.
What I mean is that IHUB should become a PORTAL! Remember that old Internet Phrase????
Yikes!!! "Portal"? I don't want to be in the Portal business. I'm in the message-board business. Let Yahoo and InfoSpace and Lycos do the portal thing. I can't compete with them on portals. I'll just focus on message boards since it's looking like we can compete a bit there.
