Fifth Week's Prizes Drawn

1) Check your email--we've drawn the prize winners for the August 3 - August 9 period and sent emails to the winners.

2) A few more things about the prize draws and related stuff that we've had questions about in comments or emails:

1. Because of all the "YOU HAVE WON A PRIZE"-type spam emails that go out, be sure to check your spam email folder in case it caught our email.  The subject line is always Prize Winner for TPL's Word Out! 2009 and the email comes from an address ending in torontopubliclibrary.ca
2. The gift certificates are for a wide variety of things--book stores, music stores, etc.
3. The final week's draws for the iPods are from the entire membership pool, not the commenter pool.
4. The frequency of your commenting doesn't influence your chance of winning a prize within one week's draw.  Making a comment / comments during the week gets you added to the pool of potential commenter winners for that week.  Don't want to discourage anyone from commenting as much as they want as long as it's within the rules, but a couple of you have asked for clarification on this.
5. Comments should be your own words.  Please give credit to others if you're quoting their words!  Don't need to get into high school essay land with proper bibliographic citation, just a courtesy thing.
6. There is no Thing #6
7. We definitely want a better comment system for next year where you can more easily indicate you're replying to someone else's comment.  For now I suggest the @[commenter] shorthand that many of you are using.
8. There's no Thing #8 either.

More details on prizes here.

Congratulations to the winners!  If you didn't win a prize--there's another three weeks of prize drawings to go!

Comments

[Tasfia]

yay, i'm first to comment, again!!
CONGRATS TO THE WINNERS!!!
and, thanks for the additional info.

[Nare]

I was wondering how you choose the weekly winners?

[Tasfia]

Nare: i would say it's kinda like a lottery... you put everyone's names in a pile, and perhaps take out 4 names...
that's how i imagine it... i'm not sure... like they say- it's a draw!

[Alan H.]

@Nare: Tasfia has it more or less correct. It's basically a semi-automated version of throwing a whole bunch of names in a hat and drawing a couple out. :)

[Jess]

Oh how about the grand prize, is it also a draw.

[Alan H.]

@Jess: Yes, from the entire membership pool (those who've joined through the "Join" page on the site).

[Jess]

Hey, i don`t think that`s really fair because so many people spend their time commenting, and some spend time just few sentences and maybe you should give it to people who comment and read the summaries and other stuff no offense

[Jess]

draw is really random.

[princess]

Congrats! I want to win something :P

[Alan H.]

@Jess: No offense taken! There was a lot of discussion in the planning stages this year about how to distribute the prizes. Ultimately this was the decision we came to for this year and have had posted since the site went live. So changing it midway through won't happen, since that wouldn't be fair.

That said--all the enthusiastic and smart comments have been a huge part of Word Out this year, and we really appreciate them. So we have reserved some of the weekly prizes for those who contribute (we've had close to 300 unique commenters since the site launch). Contribution is really meant to be its own reward though--the potential to win a prize is just something extra.

We'll be having an entire thread for your feedback closer to the end of the summer that we'll be using to plan next year's program, and feedback about the prizes (how many, what they are, how they're distributed, etc) will certainly be a part of that.

[Shel]

The draw is totally based on chance. But I think commenting here is kind of fun. It gives book-lovers a chance to share and discuss great books and even socialize.

[Julie]

I am totally agree with Shel! I don't know about anyone else, but my summer is definitely far from exciting, and joining this book club and reading the books suggested have certainly made it a whole ton better. Thank you for clarifying some questions pertaining the prize draw!

[Malisha]

Congrats 2 who won!
May The Best Man Win!

[Sarah]

Congrats to the winners. I really wanted to know what made thing #6 and #8 ... but I guess no one will ever know. I'll try my luck this week!

[Nare]

I was wondering where you could type in the code from the bookmark you get @ the library?

[Nare]

I was wondering where you could type in the code from the bookmark you get @ the library?

[Alan H.]

@Nare: Go to http://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/ysrc2009/topsecret.html

[Tasfia]

i'm a bit confused about the secret book title....

[Marzia. R.]

i dnt get it so like if u comment a hundred times a week ur names still only goes in to the draw ONCE and u might not even win. but if someone comments ONCE nd its like 3 words like
"i like twilight" they have an equal chance of winning as the person who gives detailed descriptions???how un is tht??

[princess]

I think some of you are missing the point of this book club. It's not about the prizes but about having somewhere to be able to talk to about the books we read, want to read, etc. If only frequent commenters were included that would spark competition and could discourage a lot of people from coming on here. I think the point is to get people to actually start talking about books because you never know who may discover a love of reading just because they have someone to talk about it with. Who knows a person who commented only three words in the beginning could end up a master poster at the end just because they were given a chance to open up at their own speed :)

Hope I didn't offend anyone here, that's just my two cents :P

[Alan H.]

@Marzia: Short version of the reason--if we (by "we" I mean the TPL staff responsible for Word Out this summer) start making value judgements about people's contributions (by volume, by length, w/e your metric is) as eligibility for the prizes, it opens up a lot of potential problems that could harm other parts of the program.

The prizes are a side benefit of joining the program, and a side benefit of commenting. The real goal is enjoying and discussing books. Yes, I know this is a bit cheesy, but it's how it is :)

Again--these are the decisions that were made this year in the planning stages, posted as the rules when the site went live, and they aren't going to get changed midway through this summer. But all this feedback will be considered when planning for next year.

[Sid]

Congrats to the winners.. no matter how much they commented they're lucky and deserve it just as much as every1 else!!

[Citrus]

CONGRATSSS!!!

[Ruby]

I won 4 books! And a teddy bear! I was just wondering if I won this for reading three books and putting in the box...or commenting like this online.

Either way, I'm really glad I won, and the books are pretty great. Congratulations and good luck!

[Tasfia]

Ruby, i'm soo happy for u!!!
how did u win it??? was it in the giftcard??? pleeeassse tell me??? i'm really curious!!!

pls reply.