It seems that while I was lying in the bed for the past few days wishing death would come and claim me (or at the very least would let me live sans misery), everyone here has been productive little bees! 12 and a half pages of blog entries from today! I'm not sure if that's a ProgressiveU record or not, but it's certainly a record for me. I've never waded through 12 and a half pages of blog entries in my life; for any reason. But I was feeling guilty for deserting everyone and thought I'd see how it went. I didn't get that far. But, while I was at it, I realized a few things that I thought should be pointed out to everyone again.
Yes, this is a contest and it takes effort to win. However, you could post 200 blogs at 50 points a post and still not fare so well. Reads and comments, while they don't count for as many points, tend to carry the day.
Fanaile Essence, the winner of the Spring 2007 contest, had over 50,000 unique reads and had made over 500 comments by the end of the contest. Our 6th place contestant (who shall remain nameless) had about 80 posts less than Fanaile, but finished nearly 30,000 points behind her. If you do the math, you see that those 80 blog postings only accounted for 4000 of those points. The rest of those 26,000 points were lost in unique reads and comments.
So what does that mean?
Posting blogs one after another after another isn't enough to win this contest. If anything, it makes it even more difficult for you to win. As I have heard (and seen) time and again over the course of the year that I have been here, many ProU bloggers and visitors absolutely refuse to read posts by a user whose name appears more than twice in a row on the list. Likewise, many refuse to read a post that isn't formatted into discernible paragraphs (or is in all bold, italics, or capitalized), doesn't cite sources or is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.
Users who routinely post well thought out, well written (and researched) blogs, and do so at least a few hours apart, fare better in the end than do those who churn out entry after entry, don't spell check, don't research, and don't format. If you want to win this thing (and the nice little sum that goes along with the winning), I encourage you to follow the advice listed above and aim for quality over quantity. It may not seem like such a big deal, but believe me, it's the difference between first place and no place.
And if you need further incentive to make every post count; the Editorial Team does check and we will track you down to complain about multiple postings, formatting errors or refusing to run a spell check. Over and over and over again if necessary!
And as mvenus929 pointed out just a few moments ago, rating the posts of others also counts! However, we expect you to do this fairly. Rating something a 1 just because you disagree isn't fair, nor is rating something you didn't even bother to read. We do check to ensure people are rating fairly, so be forewarned; cheaters never prosper! At least not at ProgressiveU, where the moderators have walked a mile in your shoes!
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