SFU VFM So Far

Since Maayan from UBC Insiders reviewed the SFU VFM contest last week, I thought it was about time I offered my perspective as an SFU VFM contestant. For the record, I agree with Maayan's assessment of the contest at SFU. This post may also be timely given Mark Latham's recent proposal to turn UBC's VFM contest into a similar year-round, month-by-month design.

Instant Blog was created to be our entry into the SFU VFM contest. You may have noticed that although VFM is intended to better inform voters, there isn't a lot information being published by the SFU VFM blogs. This might be surprising to some people, especially since the SFSS elections are only five days away. From the perspective of a contestant though, it's not at all surprising.

For the most part, there is a lack of quality content being published. Why? It's simple - you don't need content to win. February's first place winner had one post for the entire month. sfuvfm.blogspot.com has never posted any content, yet has won a total of $70 over two months. What incentive is there to post content, when it has so little to do with reward outcomes?

Right now, rewards are based on ratings from voters, but these ratings (at the moment) are not a particularly good measure of performance. There are so few voters (perhaps because there is little content) that the voting process has been reduced to seeing which contestant can get more of their friends voting for them. As of February 23, 2008, there were only 66 registered voters. By my estimate, 47% of those registered voters are my friends. Without objective voters, ratings will likely not reflect the quality of contestants.

So far it seems that the contest has relied on contestants to promote their blogs and attract new voters. However, judging by the number of registered voters, I think most contestants feel it's more trouble than it's worth to promote beyond their circle of friends. Even within friends and classmates, it's difficult to get the vote out month after month. Despite personally knowing nearly half of all registered voters, I was unable to get enough of them to participate beyond a single month. This was partly because for the most part I didn't try to get them to vote again. I was basically unwilling to spam them with monthly requests to vote in the contest. At least in the short-term, I think the contest needs to move away from relying on contestants to bring in voters.

Overall, contestants are being rewarded for poor performance, there aren't enough voters to make the rating system effective, and contestants are either unable or unwilling to attract more voters. Without much content to attract new objective voters, I think there needs to be a separate incentive for voters. I suggest eliminating the fifth place prize (there are only four active contestants anyway) and redirecting that money towards a prize draw for voters. After rating the contestants, voters can be entered into a fabulous prize draw.

I know it's still early days for the contest, but I thought I should offer my two cents so far.