Tuesday, August 30, 2011

From Aberystwyth to York, Update on the Grow a College Subreddit Competition.

Earlier this month we announced our first Grow a College Subreddit Competition to see which college could cultivate the best subreddit. When we announced the contest, we had a list of 50 schools. That list is now up to well over 200. If your school is still not on the list, please add it to the wiki or reply to this thread.

The competition officially began on August 26th, but based on feedback we have decided to extend the deadline to October 24th at 10am PST, and we changed one of the prizes (#2) to account for different semester schedules. We also saw some college subreddits asking their members to subscribe and unsubscribe to help their numbers. Any subreddit found doing such subscriber manipulation will not be considered for the contest.

Here are the revised prizes and categories:

Prize 1: Best Percentage Growth
* School colors on reddit front page for a day with mascot as reddit alien
* Large box of mascot designed alien stickers
* Large poster customized to your school
* Large box of school’s subreddit QR code stickers
* Possible meetup hosted at your school by a reddit admin(s).

Prize 2: Best Absolute Growth
* School colors on reddit front page for a day with mascot as reddit alien
* Large box of mascot designed alien stickers
* Large box of school’s subreddit QR code stickers
* Possible meetup hosted at your school by a reddit admin(s).

Prize 3: Admin Choice Award
* School colors on reddit front page for a day with mascot as reddit alien
* Medium box of mascot designed alien stickers
* Medium box of school’s subreddit QR code stickers
* Possible meetup hosted at your school by a reddit admin(s).

The popularity of a college subreddit will be assessed in three ways:
Absolute Growth: traffic growth (50%), activity growth (40%), and subscriber growth (10%).
Percentage Growth: Growth in number of subscribers to college subreddit in ratio to the school's undergrad enrollment and number of days since fall classes started.
Admin Choice Award: will be given to the college subreddit community that the reddit admins enjoy the most. This can be through design, content, activity or even just one amazing post that will make us all laugh.

And in the interest of full disclosure, here's the list of the reddit staff's schools.
  • alienth - University of Alaska, Anchorage
  • bsimpson - Johns Hopkins University
  • chromakode - Portland State University
  • hueypriest - Tulane University
  • intortus - Virginia Tech
  • jenakalif - Michigan State University
  • kemitche - Colorado School of Mines
  • krispykrackers - University of Central Florida
  • paradox - University of Utah
  • spladug - University of California, Santa Cruz
  • pixelinaa - California State University, Los Angeles
Let the contest begin!

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