A few weeks ago I posted a survey for all Mgoblog users to take. First of all, THANK YOU to the 500 participants! You have immensely helped me out for a class, and hopefully you have helped to make Mgoblog a better online community. As many of you requested in the survey thread, below are the statistical results from the survey and a few insights from the essay responses.

Insights (based on feedback received from survey questions and essay responses):

The point system does not affect motivation to post on a large scale, but it does largely affect the content being posted. While many Mgoblog members appreciate the value of a point system, they believe that the members and moderators are incorrectly using it because of opinion-based voting (rather than content-based), inflated reputations due to over-posting (quantity, not quality) and the exploitation of such reputations. Based on this research, I would make the following recommendations to improve the Mgoblog online community:

• Stress quality (not opinion) based voting to the members. Make it clear to all members that “Upvoting” and “Downvoting” is for quality-based feedback only. All members should have the right to their opinions, and their value and reputation as a poster should not be jeopardized because of varying opinions.
• Continue to support the voting function, but eliminate points for posting. As a result, quality of posts will be stressed, rather than the quantity of posts.
• Set an automatic ban number for members that obtain a certain amount of negative points. This will guarantee that members of poor value and reputation will be excluded as soon as possible.
• If/when these changes (or similar) are enacted, return all posters’ points to 0. This should be done so true reputations can be built within the better system of moderation.

The last "fun" question was meant to judge the Mgoblog community's confidence of win percentage for the upcoming season.

The Mgoblog community expects Michigan to lose to Iowa (close one), Nebraska, and Ohio State, finishing with a record of 9-3. Our most likely loss, according to the amount of votes, is Nebraska.

Thanks again to all participants, and GO BLUE!