The Featured Member Contest is an ungoing monthly contest among the members of this community site, to highlight the activity and to reward those members that with their daily contributions keep the community alive.

Results of the Featured Member Contest: April 2013 | March 2013 | February 2013 | January 2013 | December-November 2012 | October 2012 | September 2012  | August 2012 | July 2012 | June 2012

How can you become a Featured member ?

For the slightest contribution (except friending or profile updating) you can become one of the featured members highlighted at the homepage: But watch out! You can quickly been "kicked off" from latest five featured at the "Hall of Fame" at the homepage, because as soon as someone else starts to contribute, the member becomes featured too!

Keep posting & contributing if you want your avatar (and the link to your profile!) to stay featured at the hall of fame at the homepage!

How do you know if you became Featured?

Once featured, you will receive an automatic message into your mailbox.

On the community site, the activity feed will show your status as a featured member and your avatar will become highlighted at the top of the homepage. A small message of why you became featured will also appear at the activity feed.

For example:

How long will you stay among the Featured?

You will then stay among the featured members for the rest of the month.

At the end of each month, a monthly overview on the activity of the featured members is shared with all community members:

At the beginning of each month, the monthly Featured Members count is set back to zero, waiting for the members to participate again...

How can you win a Medal?

At the end of each month, three community members are awarded with a Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal as "Top Members" and winners of the monthly Featured Members Contest.

The ranking is automatically calculated through ning's leaderboard algorithm, taking into account a combination of quantity and quality of the content which boils down to the questions: “How much is the member contributing?" and: "How valuable are his or her contributions?”.

We don't know how the algorithm exactly works, but publishing blogposts, events, fotos & videos, commenting, sharing, flagging your attendance at events, getting comments, views & shares certainly has a lot of weight in the calculation of the ranking.

How long will you keep your Medal?

You're Medal is granted to you at the end of a month, for your activity during that month. You will keep your Medal for the rest of the following Month, when new Medals are granted over to new winners.

So: if you want to keep your Medal for the next month too, you should keep contributing during the month you are a Medal bearer!

How can you win a Trophy?

Every year, after 12 months of "competition" (*) a Gold, Silver and Bronze trophy will be handed over to the members that were most active during the past year.

This time not the automatic Ning system but a Jury will decide upon the winners, but again taking into account  a combination of quantity and quality of the content a member contributes, which again will boil down to the questions:
“How much is the member contributing?" and: "How valuable are his or her contributions?”.

(*) The first time the trophies will be handed over will be at the end of July 2013.