Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-10950063-20140404145452/@comment-5278102-20140408194145

Indefinitesilence wrote: Margurka wrote: Is setting up some kind of competition, like Pasta Duels, out of the question?

I think the problem with admins selecting several to tag as quality from PotM is you still have people not wanting to read more than two or three at a time. What if the admins would select the best two pastas from the PotM nominees to 'face off' against each other each month or week? From there, the users could decide which is better.

It would eliminate poor quality pastas to have the site-runners selecting the duelers, and still generate exposure by engaging readers in a competition. It also will be less likely to deter users from reading because they have to read through a half dozen nominations. Assuming I'm understanding the way PotM works, it would also minimize additional effort by the staff, but either way I believe the main parts of this idea could work. I'm not exactly sure if I like this idea. It sounds too much like it would just be a convoluted version of the PotM votings.

If I'm getting what you're suggesting, basically, we pick two stories from the PotM nominees to battle off and one of them wins.

First of all, how would we pick the stories out? The only way I would really be able to think of is if ALL of the PotM stories had a competition against each other. But, in the end, doesn't that sound the same as PotM? Multiple stories battling it out so that one reigns supreme? >how would we pick the stories out?

I'd guess whatever reasoning the suggestions about having tags would have been. What defines quality is not quite an easy question to answer, it would really be up to the better judgement of our overlords. I have full faith in the staff's literacy.

Yes it basically is the same thing as PotM, but addressing the problem I suggested that people don't want to read ALL of the nominations EACH month. In the end, I assume most people would rather sit and wait to see what the PotM is than go through six or so pastas, spending anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour, deciding which is best. A few might read all of them, but those who do pay attention to the nominees are probably reading only two or three before they move on.

Doing a weekly or monthly contest in this way, it would potentially expose everybody to two or eight more pastas a month, because they'd only have to read the two pastas; twenty minutes at most. Doing this weekly, would also give more reason to visit the site in general.

I often forget about PotM because I just brush it off, it's there, but not really frequent enough for it to be on the front of my mind. A weekly competition could be likened to people watching their weekly tv show. It's happening every week, so it's a little harder to forget. Also, are announcements about PotM nominations happening on twitter? I haven't followed yet, but it would help if they aren't already. Similar for this suggestion, but it'd give a lot more to tweet about if it was weekly.