Advents 2016 - Improvements / Who's up for it?

sleepyjones · 17 October 2016 at 10:58AM

Not long to go now folks, heard a thing on the radio yesterday that it was exactly 11 weeks until Christmas Day!

So with that in mind, the advent threads should be starting to appear soon, probably within the next couple of weeks! so I figured I'd fire up a post to "pass on the torch" as they say.

Soooo, lets get started with any improvements that can maybe be made, and start throing names into a hat for volunteers.

For the volunteer, It'll need to be someone with a lot of spare time to keep on top of everything that's going on, posts will be coming in thick and fast through November, but during December you'll need to try and keep on top of everything that has expired as well as the new Advents being added, so it's not necessarily a job you can dedicate 2 hours to in the morning, it's pretty much a constant thing, you'll be updating stuff all day long. (Not trying to scare anyone, but that's the nature of the beast). Will probably need someone with a bit of experience on the forums, so probably not suitable for a "noobie".

Info here (from last year) :

What is an advent?

2015 Advent thread

As far as improvements are concerned, we had a lot of talk last year about categorising prizes, and doing things which require the forum to be updated from a programming point of view, these aren't really practical so it's not really worth dwelling on things like "adding a new button so I can click ..." type stuff.

So any questions about advents, any volunteers, any suggestions ... fire them all in here so when the time comes, we should be ready to go!

For me, the obvious improvement would be to allow two people to manage the advent thread, this would go under the "Need to update the programming" of the forum so not really feasible. As a suggestion we could maybe think about having two advent threads, 1 for social media and one for normal sites, So we'd have one member looking after the twitter / FB etc and the other will handle all the website entries, this could cause more problems than solutions though, just trying to think of a way to lighten the workload.

poro · 17 October 2016 at 12:27PM

&#55357;&#56881;&#55357;&#56881; I started comping three weeks ago due to wanting a distraction to my ill health and enter between 500-1000 comps a day (including mag dailies and click to wins) so didn't even know this concept existed!!

Just read the "what is advent" post and now I'm completely and utterly buzzzing!!

I wish I could offer to help, Lord knows I have the time! But as you said, being a newbie I don't understand the forums etc well enough yet!

(I would adore a little tutor session from someone!!)

OneYorkshireLass · 17 October 2016 at 9:42PM

I did the 2013 thread. I wasn't updating all day, but of course, everyone works differently. If I had the time I'd catch up for maybe an hour in the afternoon and then again on an evening. I managed to comp at the same time too. I even had flu during advents ... that was pretty grim.

Re expiring - that only really happened on and after the 12th Dec.

Still, it made Nov/Dec go pretty quick!

jaibaby · 17 October 2016 at 10:58PM

I love your idea of two separate threads, and would love to offer my help but I never get time to so much as sit and relax for an hour during December - having 4 children, my nieces & nephews over for tea pretty much every night and the joys of Christmas shopping takes all my free time (and energy).

But I will send hugs & thanks to any who do offer, and plenty of good comping karma

xx

rugmaker · 18 October 2016 at 7:32AM

I think it could be done by several people on 1 thread if it was set up carefully. If the index covered the first (say) 10 posts and each was made st the start of the thread by a different person they could then each edit their bit. Don't know if that makes sense.

sleepyjones · 18 October 2016 at 10:03AM

rugmaker wrote: »

I think it could be done by several people on 1 thread if it was set up carefully. If the index covered the first (say) 10 posts and each was made st the start of the thread by a different person they could then each edit their bit. Don't know if that makes sense.

The problem with this is, generally, they're organised alphabetically, so Last year it got to a stage where a post was too big (too many characters) so all the subsequent post had to be shuffled down to fit everything in at the top, this'd be hard to manage if you had other people doing the subsequent posts, so I'm not sure this would be the best option unless you leave a lot of empty posts that you can use if you need to, it's an idea, but probably not the most efficient.

rugmaker · 18 October 2016 at 10:17AM

Fair point. Another option would be for a single thread where links to all new advents were posted, and then a number of threads by category and alpha split for the lists that we all work for, each started by and administered by a different person who update from the main thread. Just think if we can find a way to split this between a few people there will be more possible volunteers and less work each.

toniq · 18 October 2016 at 5:29PM

If no-one is found by beginning of November I'll volunteer again.

But if I'm doing it I would prefer it as 1 thread and as other years people chuck the comps at the end and I'll collate.

Feel free to volunteer beforehand.

x

Tradition on this board dictates a different comper takes it each year so really should be someone different than one of us who have done it before, but i'm willing to get stuck in again, think I did it in 2008?

sleepyjones · 19 October 2016 at 1:06PM

I would do it again, I actually didn't mind it at all, I found I still had time to enter the stuff I wanted to enter and keep everything updated ... there's no way I will have time this year though ... my comping as a whole this year has been a bit on/off.

AprilLady · 20 October 2016 at 1:28PM

I've often thought it would be good to have social media comps separately, even in normal comping, as you can just avoid those altogether if you don't do them and don't have to wade through so much to find things you want to enter.

I'm afraid I don't have enough experience or time to help out this year, but maybe in the future!

I_Love_comps · 20 October 2016 at 2:53PM

I am willing to help out with Advents-if you are still looking for people to help out.

Advents 2016 - Improvements / Who's up for it?

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free