How about something that helps build the site's community? Make a hack that is customizable so that you can hold contests for users for bringing in users. Maybe options to allow you to set rules, how many referrals you need, how many posts a referred user must have in order to count as a true referral. A set time length... Things like that.
This would be a really good hack in order to build small communities.
A contest for driving in members would lead to negative publicity of your site even if that wasn't your intention. User wanting to win would spam your sites url even if there was a rule that it would get them disqualified.
So? Some people do that anyway. I would still like to see this hack made. You could add fields that would say who referred you and where you were referred from. For example, they could tell you they were referred from AIM, a website, or over the phone.
You can't say it'll be abused because everything has a way of being abused. That's just how the internet works. You just need to rely on those who are honest.
10-28-2005, 08:55 PM
Referral Contest
Linear Mode
