Ideas for celebrating Super User's 2nd anniversary

Question

Super User's 2nd birthday is coming up in about a week, on August 18th (next Thursday). It has been discussed among community coordinators and other moderators, and we'd like to do something similar to last year's Super User Contest. We'd appreciate your input on what we can do to make another awesome contest.

Ivo Flipse is in possession of some funds from Jeff which we can use for purchasing prizes for users, and Stack Exchange may be able to provide some swag such as t-shirts or stickers. We need to come up with a proper proposal though so that we can tell SE what we need.

Last year's contest went well, but we're thinking it would be nice to have some different criteria for the contest. For reference, last year's criteria were:

1. The best rookie performance of a new user in that week, as measured by the Super User leagues, will receive a 32 GB USB key.
2. The highest reputation produced in that week, as measured by the Super User leagues, will receive a 22″ LCD monitor.
3. The “most awesome” new Super User question or answer that week, that most embodies the type of Q&A that make the site great — as judged by the Super User community moderators — will receive a two bay NAS device.
4. The most useful Meta Super User question or answer of the week — as judged by the Super User community moderators — gets a Super User t-shirt and stickers.

What new things can we add this year to encourage participation? Some options that have been discussed include things like improving tag wikis, contributing helpful edits, reviewing suggested edits, increasing flag weight by flagging helpfully, improving old posts, writing canonical answers for Community FAQs, etc. The problem is that these types of contributions are much harder to quantify than answers and rep.

Some thought has been given as to a more flexible reward model. Since the hardware from Jeff is only available to users in the US, we could award that stuff to two deserving US users who win some portion of the contest. Alternatively, we could give the hardware to US bloggers who have made good contributions, as Jeff originally suggested. Other prizes could include SU swag (shirts, water bottles, laptop bags, etc.), software, or hardware, which would be less geographically limited since there are computer stores in most parts of the world. Now that there is an SE store, coupon codes for free SE merchandise would be an option. It's up to you, the Super User community, what we should give away, and how to decide who gets what.

Here are some questions to ponder when answering:

• What should the contests be?
• How should we quantify performance?
• What should we do with Jeff's hardware, given its geographical restriction?
• What prizes should we have in the contest?

We need to figure this out very soon, so that we can propose it to the Stack Exchange community team, to figure out the funding details. Please leave your thoughts on this in an answer or comment.

Thanks everyone for your contributions. Hopefully we can make this next anniversary a fun event which will also benefit the community!

Thanks to @nhinkle for writing the majority of this.

Answer 1

Based on the feedback in this meta post and in chat, here is what I'm proposing for the contest categories right now. We have until Wednesday to finalize this, so we can get a post up Thursday.

The duration of the contest will likely be 2 weeks. Some awards will be determined based on activity during the entirety of the contest, others may be awarded twice (once per week). A few of the awards are based on prior participation, to reward users who've made valuable contributions over time.

Prizes are still being discussed with the Stack Exchange community team, and will depend on their stock available and the cost. Possible (not guaranteed) prizes include SU/SE t-shirts, stickers, water bottles, laptop bags, and other swag that appears in the SE store. For "higher achievement" prizes that reward truly excellent work, we might consider awarding hardware, a subscription to a tech magazine, or perhaps a computer-related book or other item. This has yet to be decided, and will somewhat depend on SE's ability to provide prizes.

For categories with judges, the judges will be active moderators, and possibly other users appointed by the moderators for excellent site achievement. Judges and moderators are ineligible for these categories, but depending on what SE grants us, there may be some prize for moderators/judges just for being awesome.

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So, without further ado, my suggested prize categories/challenges:

• Three <2k users with the most reputation gained from suggested edits during the contest
• Three >2k users with the most reputation gained from suggested tag wiki edits
  _{for both of these, the user must not have more than 3 rejected edits during the contest, to make sure they aren't just spamming suggested edits to see what sticks}
   
• The top two new users by reputation
• Two users gaining the most reputation during the contest

• Two user gaining the most reputation during the current quarter (to reward effort over time)
  _{This will be judged by the Super User Reputation Leagues}
   

• The author of the best canonical answer/community FAQ post, as determined by the judges
  _{If the post is community wiki, any user contributing at least 25% of the post will also receive the prize}

• The user contributing the most useful edits during the contest, as determined by the judges. To be eligible, a user must do at least 15 edits during the contest, and the edits must be non-trivial. Candidates will be selected from the top 20 editors for that week.

• The best blog post draft submitted by a new blogger, as determined by the judges, current blog editors, and moderators.

• The crap cleaner award, for the user with the most cumulative close votes, valid flags, and edits. Data for determining this award would require some help from SE employees with database access.

• And, for the grand prize, the "Most Valued Super User", as determined by the community. Voting would occur on a meta post, and each candidate would be an answer. The winner would be determined by total vote score on the answer for that candidate. Candidates would not be permitted to enter themselves, but any user can nominate a contestant. Contestants must meet certain criteria, to be determined, such as minimum reputation, edits, or specific badges indicating participation in the site. I would suggest the following badge requirements, to indicate participation in various aspects of the site: citizen patrol, enthusiast, strunk & white, tag editor, quorum.

Please note: this is a potential proposal, not a finalized plan. Nothing here is guaranteed. None of the suggested prizes or competitions will necessarily occur. Don't blame me if you think you're going to win a certain thing and you don't.

Answer 2

In my opinion there should be no contest.

I suggest that you mine the last three (or there about) months data and find users that have contributed above average. Divide them into 3 parts, noobs, users and veterans (not sure how this division should be).

Then have a lottery and pick one of each group and give them some goodies.

Answer 3

Most reputation gained through suggested edits

A user who makes substantial and good edits is clearly helping out the community. Especially when they're still way below the 2000 rep threshold, it means that they're new to the community, yet want to contribute in a special way.

Answer 4

Best cleanup of a popular Q/A or CW

Our most popular posts should be representative for the site. However, due to their popularity, the noise on these is quite high. A thorough cleanup would include flagging unnecessary posts for deletion, editing our existing ones to make them more readable and understandable, et cetera.

For example, for software suggestions, having a uniform look would be nice. I did this a couple of days ago with our "Alternative to Photoshop" question, by including proper titles, screenshots and feature excerpts from the software developer's homepage.

Of course, this would have to be judged by the moderators, as it can't really be quantified.

Answer 5

Most flag weight gained

Flagging posts that don't belong on the site or need attention helps us to focus on the important stuff and also helps the moderators do their job to keep everything civil and maintain a good signal to noise ratio.