I'm sure to come off as a wet blanket, but for some reason it gets to me that every time there is a giveaway someone joins H-B and 3 minutes later their first post is the giveaway, and most likely at the very least a 50/50 chance never to be heard from again, or until the next giveaway.
Maybe they should have at least 10 posts or something like that to be eligible?, or am I just being an old fuddy duddy?

I'd say there's plenty of people who agree with you. I'd like to hear others opinions however. What you're suggesting isn't outlandish. I don't have a problem with the giveaways bringing in new readership, that's a great thing. But if they don't really stay or participate, then I'd be in support of some slightly better defined guidelines that prevent this.

Problem is, let's say you require 10 posts before signing up. That will generally result in 10 completely worthless posts getting dumped quickly, just so they can enter. And making too tight of a requirement isn't going to be fun for the forum body nor the site sponsors. So there isn't a perfect solution.

Not to mention that moderatorship time and energy has to be applied to the job. The issue seems annoying but too trivial for a 'rule', which means the need for enforcement.

It would not be hard to implement programmatically. There's already rules for posting in the Buy/Sell, so most of the code is already written. The Buy/Sell avoids attempts to game the system by requiring 90 days membership and 15 qualified posts ("qualified" meaning at most 5 will be counted in a given week). If there's a general consensus that giveaways are desirable, it's mostly a matter of deciding on the criteria; I'd suggest something less demanding than the Buy/Sell, e.g., 30 days membership and no posting requirement.

I'm not an old timer here. But I am on other forums, and we've seen this issue there. Make a 50-post requirement, then you get 50 _____posts from a bunch of folks who want to enter the giveaway/raffle/sale. Then you never hear from those people again.

The only thing that has worked has been something like "to enter this giveaway you have to have registered before yesterday"...which isn't at all the same but does have a similar effect. If someone wants to join just to enter the giveaway, this discourages that. Hopefully in those moments they might nose around and decide to join anyway and participate in discussions. Of course you do have some folks who get mad about it, but they weren't going to contribute anyway....

It's hard to know if the newbies ever engage elsewhere. What if the give away participants later order coffee from one of the vendors? There may not be a "record" of what impact was made.

If we're upset that somebody who's only posted once gets a free pound of coffee, I think we're missing the point of the community. We need to engage people, however we can, to pursue good coffee. Is that approach fraught with occasional difficulty? You bet.

But long time members should appreciate the value of the education, comraderie, and expertise far more than the value of a pound of coffee...regardless of how good that coffee might be.

Very important to solicit the opinions of the giveaway sponsors to finalize policy.

I imagine a fair number of these could be non-posters (lurkers), who use the site and decide to cross the threshold to try their luck for the freebie. We may not hear from them again, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

This is quite likely.

I think a 10 or 30 day membership requirement would be okay, but requiring post counts might not be such a good idea. I think lurkers are quite welcome and at home here, and many don't have much to add to the current conversation but should feel free to participate in drawings. Eventually they might have something to add to the conversation and at that time they'll start posting.

Personally, I lurked for a while before joining the forum and posting. Still, my early posts were pretty poor quality and I should have studied a bit more before posting.

Thanks to all for your input so far. I pretty much agree with everything that's been said. I just threw out that 10 posts # as a starting point. As Tom said, there doesn't seem to be a perfect solution. I wasn't sure if this has ever been discussed here before.

SAB wrote:If we're upset that somebody who's only posted once gets a free pound of coffee

I'm certainly not "upset" about this, just a suggestion in the suggestion box. Although, hypothetically, one might come to a different conclusion if the giveaway was for a Slayer or Monolith instead of a lb. of coffee, eh?
Anyway, I've had my say and H-B can do what they will with it.

heavyduty wrote:Thanks to all for your input so far. I pretty much agree with everything that's been said. I just threw out that 10 posts # as a starting point. As Tom said, there doesn't seem to be a perfect solution. I wasn't sure if this has ever been discussed here before.

I'm certainly not "upset" about this, just a suggestion in the suggestion box. Although, hypothetically, one might come to a different conclusion if the giveaway was for a Slayer or Monolith instead of a lb. of coffee, eh?
Anyway, I've had my say and H-B can do what they will with it.

Just as a point of clarity, please know that I was NOT pointing fingers at you, just talking about the generic "we" as a community here ! Certainly a question worth asking! It doesn't bother me either way.