We're a month behind, but that's no excuse to not celebrate our first birthday. :)
Following the discussion here, it looks like we have most of a proposal in place that we can go to the community team at Stack Exchange with. I'm going to summarize what we have so far here and pose a couple more questions that need sorting out.
The Idea
We can do a "topic of the week" contest where users old and new alike ask questions about a topic (TBD). Every question that meets the criteria below grants an entry into a random draw at the end of the week that will determine 3 lucky prize (TBD) winners.
The Criteria
Each qualifying question must:
- meet the site guidelines established in the FAQ;
- be positively scored (> 0);
- be tagged with the pre-determined tags appropriate for the topic;
- be posted while the contest is running. Older questions don't count.
The Topics
We can propose topics in the answers here. The highest voted one will be chosen. Naturally, topics must also fit the scope of Programmers, so no code golf please. :)
The Prizes
Each good question you post will increase your chances of winning. For the prizes, I'm thinking we can offer a choice of a book (perhaps related to the topic) or a development tool in the, say, $50 ballpark. I haven't pitched this price point to Stack Exchange, but I know similarly priced prizes have done well in the past on other sites so it seems like a reasonable starting point.
Once the topic is chosen, I'd like to come up with 5 books and/or tools to choose from that are related and offer the 3 winners to choose from that list.
As Mark Trapp suggested in comments on the original discussion post, we may also do a bountyathon a la Gaming's bounty giveaway.
Next Steps
Do you agree with this? Anything you'd change?
Please let us know what you think and propose ideas for topics and prizes that would fit well with what we do here on Programmers.
Thanks!