Advents, what, where? (Notes about posting advents)

sleepyjones

(This is an old post (edited slightly) but a lot of the information is still relevant)

Same questions come up every year in the run up to Christmas and the advents, so here goes :

What is an Advent?
Basically, think of the Advent Calendars you got a kid (or the Gin one you get now!), you open a box each day and got a "treat". Advents are basically that, you open todays box and enter that days competition.

So a site may do a standard advent which opens on the 1st December and closes on the 25th December, each day of the advent there will be a new competition with (generally) a new / different prize. So you would return to the site every day (open that days window) and enter the competition. Some advents will for example not open until the 15th December, some may close on the 15th December, some may run straight through to the New Year etc etc

Why all the fuss / stress?
It can be tricky to keep on top of the advents because there might be 200 sites running advents, on various platforms (ie Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / fill out a form etc), with varying prizes ... while all this is going on you will still have the standard competitions being posted (generally there are probably more competitions that will get posted in the run up to Christmas that aren't necessarily "advents"), so it can get a bit "busy".

How are Advents typically posted?
Advents are usually posted on the main Competitions forum starting with an A: instead of the usual E:, Someone, generally (whoever posted the advent) will then add a link onto the Advent thread (more on that later). It would also be nice to keep thread titles to a bare minimum, so instead of posting something like :

E: 24/12 Thorntons ADVENT - Win Chocolates daily

Should become :

A: 24/12 Thorntons

You should then also add the usual (TW) / (FB) / (Weekly) type monickers at the end.

So, the A: advent threads will just be the same as normal competition posts, you click the link and it takes you to the Advent post for that competition where the "chat" for the advent should take place.

On the main board, it's usually a sticky at the top of the first page, you'll find the " 2020 Advents Thread", this will list all of the Advent posts ordered into categories. This thread should only be used for informing the "Master of Advent ceremonies" that a new Advent has been posted and it needs to get added to the list, please keep all chat related to a specific advent in the advents competition thread (not the 2020 Advents thread).

Here are some previous advent threads to give you an idea of what I'm oan aboot :

2016

2015


Is it worth it, do you win?
Yes and yes, a lot of MSE'rs win on the advents, some don't win anything, it's no different from any other type of competition really. The thing with Advents is that a "competition" will only run for 1 day then the next day there will be another one. This will generally mean that it won't have as many entries as some of your standard competitions ... but then a lot more people will pick up "comping" in the run up to christmas ... so who knows.

Do you have to enter every day?
Nope, not unless it specifically says to, generally you would just enter for the prizes you want (ie, sometimes a "Prize" is Free Postage, or 10% off your order, which you just wouldn't bother entering at all).
Some "advents" may have a "Grand Prize" where they might stipulate that you have to enter, for example, on 10 days over the course of the advent, these won't stop you from winning an individual days prize though.

How do you keep track?
In the standard way on the forums, clicking a link in the Advent thread will take you to the Advent post, if someone has posted a "Here's today's comp" reply, thank them, you'll then know you've entered this because you have the "thanks" registered against the reply, you can't specifically Green tick the reply so use the "Thanks" as an alternative.

A lot of users will setup Spreadsheets, word documents or setup folders in their browser and save their preferred advents into it (ie the one that has the best or more relevant prizes to them), some people just go Hog-wild and enter everything. It's up to you.

Advents over £100
Trialled this last year and it seemed to be a roaring success, so we'll be bringing this back this year. There'll be a post in the Compers Chat Forum called "Advents over £100" ... if you're going through the advents and notice a prize that is worth £100 or more you can post a link to it in that thread, this allows users who are out Christmas Shopping all day the ability to catch up on all of the days "good" prizes without having to trawl through 300-odd competition threads. All you need to do is post the Day number (if there is one), the title and a link to the competition thread ... here's a previous years post in action :
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5567411

The 2020 thread can be found here :
🎅 Advents over £100 ... please post link here 🎅

---

If you've never done the advents before and you're a bit of a slow/end date comper, take the time now (before the advents start) to tick off as many competitions ending in December as you can, this'll give you more time for advents without having to worry about the standard competitions.

Anything else, ask / comment away.

Moneybot

First of all a massive thank you to sleepyjones for taking on the Advents. It is stressful enough keeping up with entering them with a volunteer to man the main thread; goodness knows what it would be like without.

I am now going to make a pointless plea. I know this is like !!!!ing into the wind but I feel better for saying it. Could we keep the bumping of Advent threads to a minimum? You know what I mean. The bump every time somebody wins one of 1,000,000,000,000 instant win prizes (pringles). The 20,000 bumps with the same right answer today question or the 10,000 confirmations that yes that is a duck in the picture or the wrong answer posted under the right answer. This could all be because a lot of you have blocked each other and can't see the previous posts. It's Christmas unblock for the festive season.

There I feel much better now.

On a separate note does anybody know if the much loved Haggis hunt is returning this year? It hasn't been the same the last couple of years without it.

mumto2boys

Do you want me to amend my already posted Advent thread now then or wait til the advent thread is up and running, there are already a few advents pre-posted on the main board?

sleepyjones

What advent thread?

mumto2boys

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5730321

Sorry I didn't mean thread I meant post, didn't read it back before posting

There are a few other posts dotted about already too.

mansey

Time to hibernate

sleepyjones

OK, everything is up and ready, I think!

Blueyez

I saw this and wondered how long had I been asleep?!:rotfl:

sleepyjones

I wasn't planning on starting until November but apparently they're starting to appear already

hdh74

yeehah BRING IT ON!

One-Eye

E: 24/12 ADVENT Thorntons - Win Chocolates

We'd like the title to simply become :

A: 24/12 Thorntons

I think the "A:" for sorting purposes is a good idea, I hope that it succeeds without lots of "E:" being posted instead.

I don't like the lack of detail in the Thread Title. Missing Out the word ADVENT makes it harder to spot as you are scanning the forum - you are left trying to spot the difference between:
A: 24/12 Thorntons
E: 24/12 Thorntons

...and while the lack of detail works OK for well known companies, we could get
A: 24/12 Great Lengths
A: 24/12 Oyster ................. (nothing to do with Oyster Cards)
A: 24/12 Prestige ............... (nothing to do with cookwear)
and even
A: 24/12 Spam

I think it would be better to have A: 24/12 ADVENT - Smiths (Amazon Vouchers) as a Thread Title, but you can have A: 24/12 Smiths as a link in the Advent Thread.