How should GayWebmasters.com give away $5000?
I've recently launched GayWebmasters.com which is an online community for, you guessed it - Gay Webmasters. It features a blog, forums, a directory and news feeds. As part of the launch, I'm giving away $1000 a month until June. I've been trying to work out a system of choosing the winner that's based on the close of the Nasdaq on a certain day. I recall Adult.com doing something similiar years ago, which is where I got the idea. Here's what I've got so far:
Every member of GW has a member id, starting with 1 (me of course) and currently going up to 54. Let say by Feb 1st there are 105 members. So using that order, I could then exclude the people who aren't eligble (you have to post something to the site to be eligible), and re-order from 1 to whatever. So say we've now got 103 people eligble, numbered 1 - 103. That list could be posted prior to the close of the market. The closing number is four digits and two decimals, for instance 2301.81.
Using that as a base, first, let's use Nasdaq since that's more fitting. Now to choose the winner, we could take the first three numbers starting all the way from the right. In this case (2301.81) it would be 181. No one would have that number, so next we'd move one digit over and use 018. Then we'd have the winner, whover had entry 018. Assuming we still didn't have a winner, we could then add the amount the market increased, or subtract the amount it decreased. We wouldn't want to move over another decimal because that's not random. So for today, it went up 22.17, so the new number would be 2323.98. We'd try 398, then 239. Still no dice so we add 22.17 again and try the new numbers, and so on. If somehow we end up in an infinite loop, then it's held over until the next day.
Pretty complicated, but I beleive it would to the trick. Here's another suggestion from a similiar thread on Ynot:
propdoc wrote:
Take the Dow (or nasdaq) closing number. Today it was 10880.71 Take the last 4 numbers and convert them to letters, using A=1...Z=26, ignore 0s. In this case 8=H, zero=nothing, 7=G, 1=A. 1s and 2s in the first 3 count towards extending the number to two digits, as would a 1 or 2 in the fifth digit. If the closing number had been 180.71 then
18=R, ignore zero, 7=G, 1=A. Find the member name that is closest. Start with HG, then HGA if needed. Use the "Price is Right" of closest without going over. HA would beat HH.
I'm not crazy about that one, since it seems like it would be harder to script out.
Anyone else have any suggestions? Only one week before the first drawing. :-)
