About unfair polls and contests

[djdevon3]

I can think of at least 2 instances where you’ve asked viewers to be interactive and make decisions for you (what repair videos to show next or to move FATR to ETCG1) plus the contest where you used a dart (neato but ultimately unfair because a spammer won).

Topic

[Redeemer]

I can see your point, But also a big problem with that is, The forums are still pretty new. There’s still less then 1000 members on the forums, Thats a good number of members. Thats not even close to half of his viewers, Of course most of them are from youtube. Sure we did take the time to register and post, And who knows maybe he will do something for the forums only. I personally didnt sign up for special attention or better chances to win something. I signed up for the simple fact that I like watching eric’s videos, And if I’m able to help give a little advice here or there why not. Just my 2 cents.

[twiggy]

The help I am getting from Eric’s videos has way more value to me than whatever is at stake in any contests. Eric has saved me about $2500 dollars so far so there’s is my real prize.

You need to appreciate the time that Eric puts into helping you and producing videos that he doesn’t even charge you for and not worry about the small stuff..

[380]

Both of you make great points but I for one mostly agree with djdevon. I do have Facebook and participate through there but I think that those type of things should be done through the forums. i know not everyone or even half of Eric

[twiggy]

If these contests are so important to you, just open up a facebook account. It’s free and only takes a few minutes. Just sayin….

[djdevon3]

Seems some of you misunderstand. I don’t put any value in the polls or contests. They really don’t matter to me other than the ability to participate in them. It could be “name your favorite car part”game and people would fill the video comment section with hundreds of names of car parts. My point is, it’s the participation that is fun.

Might be hard to believe but some people such as myself don’t want to have anything to do with Facebook or Myspace. Youtube isn’t much better but I’m not going to go into a 5 minute lecture on privacy policies.

[Anonymous]

I actually kind of agree with djdevon on this one. I want nothing to do with Facebook. I think ETCG.com is a great tool in Eric’s arsenal and should be used as a place where you can post your two cents on polls, enter contests, etc. It’d be pretty easy to offer ETCG.com as an option for those. Personally, I think ETCG.com is better than Facebook, but that’s only because psychotic ex-girlfriends can’t hunt me down here. T)

[twiggy]

There was no official vote on Facebook. He just asked us to leave comments for him to review. There was a thread right here on these forums titled FATR32 where we had a chance to weigh in so technically we were not left out of that issue anyways

[pcmdjason]

Well as far as I can tell this forum does not have a poll feature.

[JD]

Quoted From pcmdjason:

Well as far as I can tell this forum does not have a poll feature.

fortunatly not 😉

[Redeemer]

There may not be a poll option to these forums yet, but it took me less then 5 minutes to do something like this.

http://micropoll.com/t/KEyJLZCxpp

[yarddog1950]

I very much hope that Eric continues to do exactly what he thinks will allow him to continue to provide the best, (I think he’s the best !) “how to” auto maintanance and repair advice in the F*****g English speaking world (!)
I think you young fellows are a little naive. (That”s what old dryed-up farts like me say when we mean “very naive”)

[EricTheCarGuy]

You make some great points and some that I have considered myself. I had thought about putting the polls directly on the site and not just the forum but honestly I have to work out the logistics of that with my web developer who seems to have a lot going on right now so my communication with him is limited. I only chose those locations, FB and the comment section on YT because it seemed like something I could manage, I learned from both experiences and moving forward I hope to make any ‘give aways’ or ‘polls’ more fair and accessable, suggestions like this are invaluable to me, remember I’m just an automechanic that happens to be good at making videos, THIS is the first forum I’ve ever been an active member of so I have a lot to learn with this AND with social media, to be honest I don’t even post anyting on my personal FB only ETCG for the most part. ETCG has grown into something bigger than I expected and I’m still working that out but I hope with the help of people willing to make posts like this one I’ll be able to make ETCG all it can be, I learn just as much from my audience as they learn from me.

Thanks for your posts here I appreciate your input.

[Shirokuma]

The bigger your forum gets, the more likely you will need moderators. One forum I’m on has a moderator for every category, while another has none (because it is a chronological string of topics, doomed to repeat over and over). Both forums manage an annual fund raiser because bandwidth is expensive. Ganoksin holds a raffle for about $15,000 in tools. In the beginning, there was only one winner. Now it’s split up among three winners. Tickets are $40 each, but odds are pretty good because there are only about 10,000 subscribers.

😉

Jeff

[Author]

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