Community improvement - Suggested incentive changes

V2 of the community rolled out recently, in theory to help with the disincentives of the current points system. While points were reduced a bit, it did nothing about the underlying issue - the greatest incentive is a really nice prize that goes to the top 1-3 points accumulators most months. With very small prizes for the next 7-9 places.

To be in the running for that prize, you have to maximize points - which means certain activities at a specific time and on a consistent basis. That results in thread spam and less interesting / helpful comments at less appropriate times.

As an example, this is what you have to do currently to stay at the top of the leaderboard:
On the last day of the month, compose 5 responses to different threads that you did not start. Save them as drafts.
Create one new thread. Save it as a draft.
At 7pm EST (or 8 EDT) on the last day of the month, when the new leaderboard posts shows as empty, post your thread and share it on twitter / facebook. Resume and post each of your draft responses. This can get your maximum 25 points for the day in about a minute.
Repeat the next day, except doing everything at least 1 minute later. Continue every day all month. Doing it much later than normal means going later the next day, and so on, until eventually you have lose a whole day and are 25 points behind.

That is the baseline to stay near the top of the leaderboard. On top of that, the margin to actually win:
Participate in all weekly picture contests, etc for a chance at extra points. The admins rarely choose the same person twice in a month, so this tends to average out among the most active people.
Submit a review or multiple reviews at one of the sites that is still allowed for review submissions.

Those activities encourage low quality threads and comments. Responding “good share” gets the same number of points as a detailed and helpful troubleshooting answer, or a friendly discussion. Starting a thread with no interaction is just as valuable as one that gets lots of discussion. A 6th response less than 24 hours after your last response gets no points - so you might save it as a draft for points later.

Suggested improvement -

Make the monthly referral leaderboard giveaways into a lottery among those who have been reasonably active for the month.

Say anyone over 250 points? Or a certain number of likes / days active? - 750 is currently close to the max possible. Still a lot of incentive to be active, without the pressure to max out. And the winner gets the feeling of delight at winning a prize, rather than earning it. I would hope to see a broader pool of eligible people (certainly more than 10), with fewer maximizing points.

This month 6 people had a maximum score halfway through the month, and 2 others were within a few points. Anyone who wasn’t doing this had no shot. When the rewards were posted with only one top prize was available, several immediately dropped out, and the number of daily threads decreased substantially. I have been part of optimizing my activity for the current system myself, not blaming or pointing fingers, just asking for a better system.

I would be happy to hear more suggestions. But whatever they are, one thing to keep in mind - any system that consistently leaves out regular and helpful members like @Chiquinho should probably be reconsidered. Social media shares and daily deal threads aren’t as valuable to maintaining the community and keeping it active and healthy as fun conversations, great pictures, and helpful answers.

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So you want to move from a system which can be gamed to one where judges pick based on merit and round-robin?

I never really liked the point system. Its a little spammy. I get tired of seeing the replies and posts to get points. I’m at the point now I check the site every few days and only reply when I can.

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Put those who meet the cutoff requirements for being active into a bucket and pick one at random.

That is a lottery, not judging or round robin. Encourages activity, those who are consistently active over time will likely win occasionally, and there is no benefit to trying to maximize.

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Did joined community last summer. While had some free time, became active this month (even paticipated in race for prizes :grin:) and did noticed a lot of things that in my opinion should be improved:

  1. You can’t change rules during the game. I mean you can’t move deadline like you did with “Calling All…Unboxers!? Open YOUR Box and WIN” activity. It’s disrespect for members that did uploaded reviews ontime and expected to share top prizes.
  2. I would like to add a few words about “Calling All…Unboxers!? Open YOUR Box and WIN” activity. Message of this activity is: “We don’t care about you if you didn’t purchased our newest product”. It’s HUGE DISRESPECT to community members. You should avoid such activities in future.
  3. Fix dead links on site or remove them.
  4. As far as I understand most of members are from US and Europe. So could you adjust time of live streams to be comfortable for European members as well? Hint: time difference between Germany and US West Coast is 9 hours.
  5. Monthly prizes should be kept on a same level. Prizes should be annouced on a very first day of every month. I am sure that some active members were upset while discovered in mid January that there are no prizes except for the first place (5 giveaway tickets is not a prize) this month.
  6. You should reduce spaming by changing Monthly contest rules. It can be done simple: points should be added for activities made in a certain period of time starting at 00:00 am PST or GMT (every 24 or 48 … hours). My suggestion is to do it every 72 or 96 hours.
  7. The last but the most important thing. @SoundcoreAaron @Hanna @Sean @Loz could you start improvements by pinning this post to disscuss the topic. Could you ensure that Decision Maker will read the thread please.
    I do apologise for my average english.
    Sincerely,
    VertigoXX
    P. S.
    Three weeks ago I was nominated as New Collective Member of The Week but didn’t received any points, notes or tickets for that :grin:
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I think they try to give everyone equal opportunity by doing this but I was selected as Community Member twice in 3 weeks once so it’s a strict rule. If you answer questions more than others than you have a high chance of being selected twice a month. Though I’ve seen this is not the strictest requirement so not sure how exactly they select us but nonetheless you know you have to be helpful. As for photos, I think it’s relatively easy for them to select different members each week

I’ve had to do this early this month since I knew my classes would get too hectic for me to stay here as often as I did over the break so maximized my reply points and now I’m right in the middle probably because most of us know we’ll end up with giveaway tickets and have really no chance of LA2P

But I do agree that having top members (activity-wise) win isn’t the best for community in the long term. I decided to not post threads everyday this month because I knew that once classes start, i won’t have time to post anything meaningful or post at all so I wouldn’t be in the top 3 at all towards the end. I also see counterpoint put by @TheSnarkyOne earlier when he said earlier that non-US members don’t have a lot of chances to win so leaderboard is really the best way for them to win good prizes

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I agree with this a 100% for sure. They’ve done this before as well and sometimes I rushed
to get in the race just to realize I could’ve waited and put in better entry to compete head-on with one of the best

Though I agree with this point, I think they advertised it more for potential new members instead of strictly active and regular members. That way they have new customers who can potentially spend more on other items

Another thing I agree with. Sean is based in UK and he is on stream at 8pm ET which is about 3am for him I think or at least 2am and neither is great for non-US members including Sean. I would recommend having streams alternate between US-friendly and Europe-friendly times so people from both sides of Atlantic can attend them.

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+1 Agree

I like that some people bought it, and look forward their contribution in finding and fixing bugs, feedback on future products. But those who don’t need the LA2P wait a little longer, or it’s not a good fit their needs, to be excluded is far from inclusive.

But I’ve learned “the decision of the judges is final” and just shrug.

I agree but don’t see it happening.

The Live streams are mostly the Amazon Live. It is about Amazon selling things on Amazon using non-Amazon staff. The links are Amazon, specific to a country. The USA is the single biggest market, so the platform decides it is USA-friendly hours.

I don’t like Amazon Live anyway, live should be about debate, discussion, Q&A. If people want to buy they can solve that easily off to the side in their respective country. I’d like all the “giveaway” removed from live and live purely to be discussion, debate, Q&A, and yes a time like 8pm CET / 7pm UK / 2PM EDT / 11am PDT would then overlap more people, knowing that in USA that would then overlap people’s working hours more so you’d get less USA attendance to suit Europe attendance. No perfect answer. The alternating weekly USA / Europe idea may work best and be the best idea.

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First of all I didn’t know that drafts of messages on this even existed so that was fun to learn.
Second of all I see both sides of the argument and how it could go both ways. I agree with a post above in thinking that the prize for the month should be posted at this beginning of the month. I also think personally if there is a monthly prize it shouldn’t be just the top one because there could easily be a run away which would leave the rest unmotivated. On the other hand I do think that the thread of the week pushes people like myself to try to post quality content and to really win you often have to be a thread of the week or person of the week which would require quality on the part of those posting.

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I really like your suggestions @jercox
Same things i’ve noticed but had not gotten around to speaking of.

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Live streams can be done on weekends. No working hours… no problems with atendance.

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I was talking about that so often.
But who cares about an old man.

The whole thing here is not correct at all.
I don’t mind about all the free donations.
But I care about the lousy tricks being used to get those.
So I decided to take a break here.

And there are others who did, I am not alone.

Addendum :
Who cares if Mr. XYZ is publishing a new song, or Mrs. ZYX will be married to Mrs. XZC.
Opening a new thread about that important news is not relevant.
All this important news should be collected in one thread.
So all who care about can read it and there is no need to wade though all those “high importance”.

So enough said, bye, bye…

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If an issue is new threads, then it’s less than 10 non-admin people who make majority. There are only 4 people making on average >1 a day. Any gaming is between only these 4, to get to 1st and 2nd rather than 3rd.

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@jercox is correct.

Any other member who wanted to be in with a chance of winning could not win unless they made many new threads. Hence the current system both forces a couple to keep winning, and for no incentive for anyone but these few to engage.

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:roll_eyes:
One should really look at the users chart, for the year… Jan to Jan, and sort by “read”.

The top person makes sense, they are a moderator… the others :woman_shrugging:

What about the other 800,000+ users other accounts?

I’m really surprised at the rehashing of a thread that’s been posted twice before, and responded to by @loz and @SoundcoreAdam

How many of us here have more than one account? Be honest with yourself, why would you need?

I only have this one, never thought otherwise.

But As the host … I would be working on weekends… and that doesn’t sound fun to me. :man_facepalming:t2::joy:

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So if we get rid of the five points for posting a thread this would in turn get rid of all the useless threads and in turn get rid of the many comments that just say nice share or something a long those line which seem to be part of the problem.

Maybe they should use an algorithm, like Anker does, to decide the top ten of the month because then this doesn’t factor in social media and takes into account other things like days visited and threads read. Just an idea I’m sure these are possible flaws in it as well.

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So it’s currently 1 a day, a low number. So you think just remove it altogether and so threads created when it naturally calls for it?

Someone gaming would still find a thread to share each day. As you cannot share same twice, you’d still have folks wanting a minimum number of threads to share to farm the sharing points. At least the sharing points clutter another place you don’t see if you don’t want to.

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I’ve shared a response to this question about the Amazon Live streams in the past but I will repeat it.

The Amazon Live stream and Community are two different vehicles, run by two different teams.

We do share a notification of the Live stream in the community because we do like having community members take part. However, the purpose of Amazon Live is to introduce current and potential customers to the Anker brands ( Anker, Eufy, Nebula and Soundcore) and provide an easy path to call out and showcase products from all brands.

At least currently, the Amazon Live platform does not allow us to suggest products or direct viewers in other markets outside the US to their respective sales pages. So for that, you’ll have to request that feature from Amazon. Keep in mind, we JUST got the ability to self moderate the chat which was the #1 requested feature by streamers.

Secondly, as a vendor on the Amazon Live stream, we have to achieve certain numbers (sales, viewers, clicks, minutes watched, etc) to stay at the top of the Featured Creator tier, so doing an occasional giveaway helps us boost traffic and watch time in the platform. We only do a giveaway once every 5 or 6 weeks to keep it special.

Additionally, evenings between 8 -10pm ET are some of the most watched times on Amazon Live. It’s the same reason why streamers who live across the world (Atarabyte for example who lives in Korea) CHOOSE to stream at those times too.

BTW, Amazon actually just added a NEW credential for brands to have over 2,000 followers and we are only currently halfway there.

Third, while I understand your desire for the live streams to be a conversation and debate, but as the host for the past 10 months, 2 or 3 out of every 4 streams, I have to pry questions from viewers and rarely are they volunteered or suggested.

I do appreciate your feedback. Maybe at some point in the future, someone will host a monthly live stream on the community to address your desires … And maybe it can be at EU convenient time. ( I nominate @Sean :wink:) but you’ll have to ask them for that.

Hope that answers your questions or at least helps explain it better…

@jercox @ktkundy @TheSnarkyOne @Logically @VertigoXX @Chiquinho @Duane_Lester @Shivam_Shah

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Question about followers needed. Do they have to be like followers who actively come or if I just start asking family members to follow to help get Soundcore to that mile stone would it help?

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They just have to hit that follow button…

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