I think SJ and I are on the same level of thinking here. Don't get me wrong I think its great that we "reward" users for their participation but in my personal opinion you should be reward for the level of participating.
The thing with user generated content is this - its really open to each users interpretation and perspective. What one user might think of as a great post another may not and that's fine. However, and this might come across wrong, but not everyone contributes evenly and to me users that are consistently contributing more should be recognized for that.
Anyone can post a deal but it takes a lot of work to go hunt that one extremely hot deal that might be overlooked. Sadly the trend I've seen since we changed to the new program is such that we have far fewer deals that I'd consider as being high quality. The thing that draws users and draws user participation is the quality of your content. I go to SD and FW when looking for bargains because I know when I see a deal that has been voted up its going to be a great deal. Its not going to be something that is just a dollar or two bellow everyday price or its going to be something that was on-sale last week for a much better price.
This is really the second issue I see
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One of the problems I see as of now is the forums feel too farmed and unorganized. Too many deals without any feedback makes for a less than optimal experience. With so many deals we need a lot of feedback to rank and sort them.
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As the program is now I see almost zero user participation outside of posting their deals. From a moderation stand point we have almost no users reporting spam, bad links, bad deals ect. As the site grows and we have more and more users posting deals it would be awesome if we could somehow work in a reward for users that are helping spot spam or pointing out filler posts or even in some cases people that are calling out a bad deal and posting something that is better. I mean IMO why should user a get paid for making the post if user b spots a better deal??
Of course its just me personal perspective, but to me it would make for a much better user experience.