Do you have a member of the month award on your forum? If so, how do you award it - by staff discussion/vote, by member nomination and staff vote, by member nomination and member vote, or some other method? What do you look for in a motm? What do you give to a motm during and after their month of honor? If you don't have a motm award, why not?
At FeedbackExchange we have a member of the month, which I decide personally. Our website of the month is a publicly voted thing, so I think that satisfies the need for democracy. 😛 Our MOTM gets a gold membership as a reward, as well as the WOTM winner.
I think that a member of a month is a great idea for a small forum, as it is normally easy to pick and select a person who deserves it. But once your forum gets larger picking the right person gets a lot harder, as you cant be everyone, and selecting one person over another might lead to backlash.
Generally at the start, I'd pick a member of the month and make them a sticky advertisement in out showcase board, and add them to a "Special Members" user-group where they get access to a special board and can lock their own topics.
We use the MotM award in favour of "elites" at our forum, and I think it works out well. Members send in their vote for who they'd like to be MotM and based on those votes a winner is selected. Some of the perks; custom username colour and icon for the month, userbar, custom special card, 15% off items in our shop for the month, 300 of our forum currency, the ability to avoid flood control and can opt out of the display edit notice.
I used to, but after awhile I couldn't think of any more incentives and I couldn't keep up with it after a while. It was a good idea while it lasted though. 😀
I think it's a good idea so that the forums' members can gain some encouragement.
I like the idea. Things like VIP membership, money, forum currency and advertising space are normally good incentives for members. I think you have to know your user base though. For example, if you have a music forum, a I Tunes gift card would be a very good prize.
I honestly think it just makes some members leave because they don't win. 😛 I have never done a member of the month, simply because it just causes competition that isn't really needed, and when a member doesn't win they might get mad and simply just leave the forum because heaven forbid they do not win. 😛
I will probably add a member of the month sort of thing when my forum grows a little bit and I have some nice active users. I will likely pick myself unless members express concern with that. I would rather pick myself though to prevent people voting for personal friends all the time.
I've never really had a MotM award on any of my forums. I actually do think it's a really great idea to award certain members for all of their hard work.