People's Choice

[Haunted Denver]

So there's been some discussion on the boards about bringing this back. Here's a topic of discussion, how can it be done to ensure that it is an accurate representation of what the people like? Suggestions? Shade, we know you have to have some!

[milkunits]

It may be a requirement that each voting person has a valid profile for the october lounge where they identified themselves as a haunt actor, owner, vendor, or customer. I know this will not entirely limit ghost accounts, but it certainly would identify biased voting or connected voting.

A simple section of the profile could include a drop down menu for the person to identify their interest for the site.

This may not be a solution for this year, but could certainly help return this fun option for the haunted house enthusiast community.

Hope this helps! http://www.octoberlounge.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif

Not sure if this was suggested, but it may be fun for the customers to vote on their favorite characters at haunted houses. This could help haunt owners encourage thier actors http://www.octoberlounge.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif

[Big Perm]

Here&#39;s what I think...

First, I was being facetious in my notion to bring it back. That said, I did try to come up with an idea that would actually make it the "people&#39;s choice:" I&#39;m not sure if it&#39;s even possible but to put a post cap on it. To be eligible you have to have, say, 40 posts before you can vote. This way people couldn&#39;t vote unless they were an active board member and eliminate the create an ID make a vote, create an ID make a vote.

There are numerous problems, least of which would be that people may come in and post the minimum of "hi&#39;s" and "we&#39;re greats" and "we love HD" to meet the requirement.

Another option is to track IP address but that doesn&#39;t mean too much either because people can get their friends or families or do it from school with thousands of addresses (people have THAT much time).

All in all, I can&#39;t see a good way to do it so I say let it die and let us make fun of it.

[milkunits]

I thought it was a good idea http://www.octoberlounge.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif

Heck, we could even all get together at the end of the season for a Hauntscars Award ceremony.

I will start working on my speech now. I would like to thank Dewalt Drills for the drills that made the black walls all possible. I would also like to thank my sponsor Stihl chainsaws who made all the cuts and slashes this season!

Now we are on to something.

[Shade]

It kind of depends on what you hope to accomplish. Here are my semi-exhaustive thoughts on the issue. (You&#39;re getting good -- not to mention free -- advice here, so pay close attention.)

First, the voting pool here is always going to be a really small share of the haunt market. The October Lounge mostly consists of the haunted house die-hards, whether they&#39;re haunt employees or just haunt fanatics. Other people might glance at the posts, but only the true haunt fans will go so far as to create an account and post. That&#39;s why, at any given time, there are maybe 1 or 2 registered members logged in, but 10 or 11 guests in the status line toward the bottom of the front page. So the People&#39;s Choice doesn&#39;t necessarily reflect the consensus of the hauntgoing majority.

Second, I agree that you don&#39;t want the same person creating dozens of accounts. However, I personally don&#39;t see anything wrong with a haunt encouraging all of their employees, customers, family, and friends to create accounts and vote once each.

Take Field of Corpses, for example. It actually says on their website, "Please go to the October Lounge and vote for us for the People&#39;s Choice." So basically, by having that poll, you&#39;re getting free exposure to the site from Field of Corpses. Every one of those visitors who pops over from FoC&#39;s website sees the seven banners across the top of the page just like everyone else. And you already mentioned that a group from FoC has been up to visit The Asylum, so maybe there&#39;s a correlation.

Just imagine if every haunt owner were putting "Vote for us for the Haunted Denver People&#39;s Choice Award" on their ticket stubs and actually pushing for people to vote. I don&#39;t think the answer is to discourage the Scream Parks and the Field of Corpses from promoting like they did -- I think it&#39;s a much more effective tactic to encourage the other haunts to get into the competition as well. More exposure and more visitors to the site can only increase your viability as a haunted house media outlet.

Third, if a haunt encourages everyone to vote, it&#39;s representative of that haunt&#39;s overall market reach, which I think is rightfully reflected into the idea of a haunt being "the people&#39;s choice." The people choose the haunt they like the best -- but that haunt has to reach that customer first before that customer will ever even visit and subsequently consider it the best.

That&#39;s kind of confusing, so let me give an example of what I mean. One of my friends is an indie musician in Nashville. She was recently in a contest with a bunch of other indie musicians. Fans had to create an account (just like on here) in order to vote, and it let each person vote once per day. The artist who got the most votes won a trip to a national music showcase. Every artist who was a contender sent out emails (some of them even sent daily reminders) to all of their fans to encourage them to vote daily. The record label who sponsored the contest knew that all the artists were doing this, and they WANTED that to happen. Why? So they can tell which of those indie artists has the biggest reach and is likely to sell the most records.

Haunted housing is obviously different than the record industry, but the idea is still the same. The People&#39;s Choice is a reflection of who&#39;s got the biggest influence on the local market of hauntgoers who access the internet. That&#39;s why it didn&#39;t surprise me when Scream Park and Field of Corpses got so many votes that one year, considering they were the two who seriously went after it.

Some of the other haunts maybe didn&#39;t know or didn&#39;t care about the People&#39;s Choice, and yet other haunts were probably passively indifferent to it (i.e. "If people like us, then they&#39;ll vote, but we&#39;re not going to try to sway votes one way or the other by mentioning it") which in my mind is a colossal mistake. By telling every one of your customers to vote for you as the best haunted house in Denver, you are subconsciously communicating to your customer that you honestly think your haunted house is THE BEST haunted house in town, and that creates a repeat-business loyalty in your customer&#39;s mind whether they realize it or not. They perceive your confidence in being the best as a reaffirmation that you are, in fact, the best.

Fourth, let&#39;s just say you have a couple of crazy kids with nothing better to do who really love a particular haunt, and so they decide they&#39;re going to create an ID from their home computer, then one at school, then one at the library, and then one at their friend&#39;s house. Even that itself reflects the People&#39;s Choice, because what other haunt has fans who are that devoted that they will spend the time to do that? The only thing, in my mind, that really is an unfair advantage is if a haunt implements bot technology that automatically generates IDs and votes. And I think this site has sufficient automation-blocking technology to prevent that. (New accounts have to be verified by email and the signup page has a CAPTCHA code.)

Fifth, I would make the voting part of the Haunted Denver site, not the Octo-Lounge. The only reason I ever ran it in the OL is because it already had an easy polling feature built in. The reason I would do this is to make the poll much more visible to every HauntedDenver.com visitor, not just the ones who venture over to the boards. And not only that, but I would make the registration form for the voting feature have numerous required fields: First and last name, address, email address, and cell phone number. Not just for the fact that it would increase the integrity of the poll, but also because it would keep building the opt-in list for Haunted Denver. Given the fact that it&#39;s already mid-October, I would say do the poll in the OL this year, but consider moving it next year. Also, I would maybe consider adding a bonus reward for voting as well, something like, "Vote for your favorite haunted house. After you have registered and voted, you&#39;ll also receive via email a special discount coupon good at any of our Featured Haunts."

Okay, that&#39;s all you&#39;re getting out of me for now. Any more advice and I&#39;ll have to start billing you in hourly increments. http://www.octoberlounge.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif

[WelchWitch]

AMEN Rob!!!

[vampfire69]

A special shout out to Marc at Scream Park for believing in me! For giving me my first shot, And allowing me to share some of my sick vision with all of you twisted fans. I would also like to thank Nanny at Screams from the Past, Rich ,Tony and Lyle from Murrys, love you guys ! But I think the one who really deserves this award the most is my dear dear friend "Great Stuff Spray Foam" sniff sniff Thanks Home Depot for selling such a wonderfull product. While I have center stage ,I would also like to give all of you talented new designers and up and coming actors a couple words of advice #1 . NEVER use plastic! #2. Dont ever say BOO!

[Haunted Denver]

So, let&#39;s see who&#39;s paying attention. We&#39;ll try something here for the 2007 Haunted Denver/October Lounge People&#39;s Choice Award.

Only users who have registered on the October Lounge prior to today will be able to vote. In order to vote, please email your choices for your top 5 haunted houses in Denver to webmaster@haunteddenver.com That&#39;s all you email, example as follows:

1. Haunt Name
2. Haunt Name
3. Haunt Name
4. Haunt Name
5. Haunt Name

In your email, you must also include your October Lounge user name, and your October Lounge registered valid email address.

Emails not containing all of the above information will not be counted, and Oh yeah, emails from the same IP address will not be counted ;P

OK, October Loungers, let your voice be heard, let&#39;s see how this works out. If it works great, if not, back to the drawing board.

[Shade]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Haunted Denver @ Nov 18 2007, 10:04 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> (index.php?act=findpost&pid=3216)</div>
We&#39;ll try something here for the 2007 Haunted Denver/October Lounge People&#39;s Choice Award.[/b]
I&#39;m predicting fewer than a dozen responses.

[Hellraiser15]

id say about three responses

[moodeous]

Look 3 responses on the thread... an counting!

I&#39;m not sure if critics emailing makes any sense... so I&#39;m just going to try and remember to come back and see if anything happens after today&#39;s email blast http://www.octoberlounge.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif

[jasonbach]

Welcome to the November lounge! I wonder how long post-Halloween we&#39;ll see postings here. Is it wrong that I still have my Halloween decorations up in my front yard? My roommates are starting to look at me funny....only 337 more days to go!

[Luv2BScared]

It&#39;s alright Jason...I still have a bunchof my stuff up too!! I keep a corpse and coffin on my coffee table...hehhehhe we are a sick lot aren&#39;t we?!?!?!?!

[Haunted Denver]

Voting will end on December 1st, so get your votes in now!

[Haunted Denver]

And the winners are!

1. The Asylum
2. Frightmare
3. Field of Corpses
4. Brutal Planet
5. Terror in the Corn

Was actually surprised at the number of votes, was also surprised at number of regulars on here who didn&#39;t vote, hmmm. This was a chance for your voices to be heard!

Stay tuned for an all new People&#39;s Choice in 2008! Should be fun!

Haunted Denver

[WelchWitch]

Wow...no surprise, after all it was picked as one of the scariest by the Travel Channel. Marketing is how money is made. Congrads all http://www.octoberlounge.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif