8 Responses to “Giving out Earth Gifts to Humans”

• sri
  April 19th, 2007
  11:50 am
  
  

  Give out an ipod mini every month. Cost = $79. Perception…its an IPOD!

  I use to give out DVD players in some functions I hosted. DVD players were only $25 but the perception was outstanding!

  People paid $12 tickets to attend the function.

• Tony Chung
  April 19th, 2007
  12:12 pm
  
  

  Totally agree with the perception element sri.

  It’s important to maintain a balance between:

  - fun and easy AND
  - requires thought/time

  For instance: give us two tips on __x__, and we will give the top 3 __y__.

  two tips is easy, and as long as ‘y’ is desirable (like sri said, ipod), then from the perspective of the reader,

  1) it’s easy
  2) i totally could win! (top3 versus only one winner)

  => i will compete. => i am involved with earthlink => you get your tips!

  my two cents!

• Melvyn
  April 19th, 2007
  1:44 pm
  
  

  Your issue is that you want to know if potential participants are over 18 but you don’t want to have repsonsibility for managing the resultant data that the proof of ID would impart?

  My suggestion would be to simply do the giveaway with a disclaimer and announce that it’s only open to entrants over 18yrs of age.

  This solves a lot of problems:
  1. Legally you’re covered – You’ve stated you intend the items to only go to people over 18yrs of age and you’ve added a disclaimer that they have to “accept” (something like a checkbox that they need to select).
  2. Morally (IMHO) you’re covered – regardless of the hoops you ask people to jump through people can always lie. You could ask for a drivers’ license but how would you verify that the scanned image was (a) genuine or (b) owned by the sender? There’s no way to know and therefore the hoop is pretty meaningless. You could ask for a passport but since fake passports have been getting past airport passport control personnel for many years, what makes you think you could 100% certify a genuine item?

  The fact of the matter is that you’re not supplying a nuclear bomb and you shouldn’t worry that something provided (a) on trust, (b) with a disclaimer and (c) clearly labelled as a “multi-tool” leaves you in any way exposed.

  I realise this is a very simple solution to your problem but often it’s the simplest solutions that work the best.

  Incidentally, last week I celebrated my 29th birthday

• matt snider
  April 19th, 2007
  2:27 pm
  
  

  I think you should find obscure 80s or 70s references that are difficult to find or not present on the web. Things that people who lived in that era in America would know, but foreigners and young’uns wouldn’t typically know. Something like, who was your favorite 80s porn star? and throw out any ‘Ron Jeremy’ responses.

• Melvyn
  April 19th, 2007
  10:31 pm
  
  

  The problems with the “references” approach are many.

  Let’s first take for granted that the author of this question doesn’t share your myopic view of the world (“Is there anywhere outside of America?”) and look at the wider problems with your proposal:

  1. It’s far more restrictive than inclusive for desired contestants. Blogs are inherently friendly and open places trying to encourage interaction this would go completely against that spirit. In other words it would be like restricting electoral voting privileges to 5% of the population just because they’re “like me”.

  2. Everything is online. Whatever you may consider “obscure” I guarantee there’s a blogger out there who writes about it endlessly.

  3. It’s still inconclusive. For example you could ask “who was your favorite tv character from Saturday morning shows?”. 14yr old Johny sitting at his computer calls out “Mom? Who was your favorite tv character from Saturday morning shows?”.

  4. It’s ageist and unfriendly. People have to share your interests and fond recollections or they can’t join in? What if an 80 yr old man wants to enter? He’s over the age limit of 18 but may not have any idea of the hip cultural references from your youth in the 70s. What if a new immigrant wants to enter? They might be over 18 and live next door but still not have the same cultural background.

  So for the effort involved (thinking up the question, searching all over to check if you can easily find it online, verifying each individual entry including those that name things you’ve never heard of) I don’t think you get much of an ROI.

• Dave C.
  April 20th, 2007
  9:15 am
  
  

  I’m the asker of this grouporation challenge. Thanks, everyone, for some extremely helpful thoughts — particularly to Melvyn and Matt for your ideas around the multitool giveaway specifically. Melvyn, I like your streamlined and straightforward approach. If there are any more thoughts or tips out there, keep them coming!

• rlasater
  April 20th, 2007
  1:00 pm
  
  

  Melvin’s got it right:

  Are you over 18? Y/N. Works for porn sites, will work for you.

• Dave C.
  April 23rd, 2007
  12:04 pm
  
  

  Thanks again, grouporationers! Additional thoughts and comments are welcome, but in order to keep things moving I’m ready to award the thank you loot.

  Melvin, for your valuable contribution you’ve earned yourself an EarthLink PCFineTune multi-tool, suitable for problems large and small.

  Matt, I appreciate your ingenuity and will be sending you a gen-u-ine Helio skullcap.

  Tony, in exchange for your two cents I’m going to send you an EarthLink ProtectionPack.net duffle/backpack.

  Please send your mailing addresses to earthling at corp dot earthlink dot net and I’ll work on getting these into the mail.

  Sri and Rlasater, thank you for your contributions as well. If you’d like a token of my thanks for sharing your thoughts, send along your mailing addresses too, and I’ll send you some fun mystery things.

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