Proposal for a plugin to enable nomination and display of "Post of the Month"

Development

AI-generated summary

A plugin proposal is being discussed to enable a “Post / Topic of the Month” feature. Alexander_Wright suggests the plugin would work by presenting a selection of top posts to the Admin team, who would then add their own nominations and present them to the user base for voting. The winner would be added to a Hall of Fame and optionally pinned globally.

Merefield shares their experience of manually implementing a similar feature and suggests alternative solutions, such as picking a topic from the Top Topic List and editing the OP with an additional heading. They also highlight the importance of considering top contributions that might be replies rather than topics.

Alexander_Wright agrees with the idea of a Post of the Month topic and emphasizes the need for a voting system to increase user participation and avoid accusations of favoritism. The plugin aims to promote positive contributions and encourage user engagement.

1

On my forum, I’ve noticed that some conversations that should be of more interest to users can get buried amongst other chatter.

I’m proposing to develop a plugin that would enable a “Post / Topic” of the month feature. I was thinking it could work as follows:

  • Each time period, a selection of top posts, by likes, would be presented to the Admin team and they would be presented to the user base for voting.
  • The Admin could, of course, add their own nominations to this list.
  • The winner from the vote would then be added to the Hall of Fame, and optionally pinned globally for a time.

I think it best that users are offered a short list to vote on, rather than being able to nominate any post because:

  • It gives increased visibility to a range of top posts
  • It encourages participation by the userbase.

At this stage, I’m seeking comments and improvements for this feature set. I’ll then get to writing a plugin to implement it. It’ll be my first plugin. so I may seek help at this stage!

The plugin will be open source.

2

(Focusing on the functional side: I would not wish for a moment to discourage you from getting into the fun and reward from writing a plugin.)

I’ve done this manually in the past and I think it’s a great way to highlight positive contribution.

The Top Topic List already gives one a really good guide as to which Topics moved and shaked the community in the last period?

One solution might be to simply pick a Topic from Top and edit the OP with some kind of additional heading and then pin it? Choose the Topic within a short chat within the staff group based on a shortlist from Top?

Another thing to consider is the fact that the top contribution might actually be a reply (ie a Post). Perhaps you could link the top Post from a monthly regular Post of the month Topic?

3

It was a post half way down a lengthy topic that has prompted my thought for this feature, so a post of the month topic is a good lead in.

I think I particularly want the voting part described above, to increase the user base participation, and to remove accusations of ‘closed cliques’ picking their mates.