Bonfire: What do you think of this Bonfire Form to help calculate total cigarettes?

[CommunityAdmin]

Greetings!

It was great to see the Bonfire earlier this week rack up 2.8 million cigarettes avoided.  That is an impressive number.  As bonfires get bigger and bigger I've looked for ways that I can help the Bonfire leaders scale and be able to have additional people participate.  The adding of cigarettes avoided is a huge task.  I'm sure that those that have added them over the years will downplay what they did. I look at it and get overwhelmed myself.  To help facilitate future bonfires I've created an online form that works with an online calculator to calculate the total running number of cigarettes avoided. On an hourly basis or whenever they like.

This isn't to replace people stopping by the Bonfire thread to post a comment and toss their cigarettes in. That will still stay the same. It will just be one small additional step to complete. And it will give the Bonfire Leaders a free hand to be more interactive with everyone. This will also be a better way to calculate the number of cigarettes without someone copying and pasting to their own spreadsheet. Many hands, little work!

You can view the form and fill it out.  Please give your feedback on what you think in the comments below. 

Mark
EX Community Manager

Please Note: The output of the form is for the leaders of the bonfire to collect participants and get a running number of cigarettes avoided. It will not provide your individual number upon completing the form. You can find your individual quit stats by highlighting over your username and then click the little square "ex" logo in the pop-up profile or go to your community profile and then click on the My Quit Stats tab to see your numbers.  

[YoungAtHeart]

Good idea, but I think having to provide a link to your profile adds an unnecessary step?   I think your username (maybe use @ and get the link from there?) and quit date should be all that the calculator form needs.

Nancy

[CommunityAdmin]

Youngatheart.7.4.12 wrote:

Good idea, but I think having to provide a link to your profile adds an unnecessary step?   I think your username (maybe use @ and get the link from there?) and quit date should be all that the calculator form needs.

Nancy

Yeah perhaps I can take out the link requirement. It's a little more straight forward with Jive.  I had created the form back with Elgg. It requires people to put their username in accurately though. Sometimes people only put part of their username in and that presents a problem.

Username, Quit Date, and # of cigarettes on average smoked is necessary to properly count number avoided.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[Jennifer-Quit]

I believe that you will have a hard time getting people to do both -fill out the form and also drop by the bonfire to toss them in.  And then if there is a large discrepancy in the bonfire total and the total calculated on your form, trying to reconcile the difference would be an even larger job. This is my opinion only.

[CommunityAdmin]

Jennifer_Quit_05-01-14 wrote:

I believe that you will have a hard time getting people to do both -fill out the form and also drop by the bonfire to toss them in.  And then if there is a large discrepancy in the bonfire total and the total calculated on your form, trying to reconcile the difference would be an even larger job. This is my opinion only.

Link would be put in the bonfire so they'd have to check into the bonfire to even  get the link.  Secondly each person doing a short little form will help out the bonfire leaders tremendously.  I think most would be willing knowing that it will help those leading the event.

THere wouldn't be any reconciling.  The total number would be calculated by the form.  Nothing to reconcile as the number wouldn't be added by hand any more.  Certainly as people throw in their stack that visual number will be something to celebrate for each person.

Thanks for the feedback.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[Jennifer-Quit]

Well I am a numbers person - that is what I do for a living.  So if someone throws 30,000 into the fire but does not fill out the form, it does not count?  

[CommunityAdmin]

Jennifer_Quit_05-01-14 wrote:

Well I am a numbers person - that is what I do for a living.  So if someone throws 30,000 into the fire but does not fill out the form, it does not count?  

If I were running it, I assumption would be that most people would fill it out. I would check to see if a person had added themselves to the list. If they aren't on the list I would add them by  going to their profile and getting the numbers I needed.  Again, assumption would be there would be fewer of these.  So there would be some cross-checking, but that would be fairly easy. Again, just shooting around ideas at this point.

Mark
EX Community.

[Giulia]

I'm in agreement with Jennifer.  (Unless you make it a requirement) suppose someone doesn't fill out the form but drops in a bunch of unsmoked cigarettes?  There's bound to be a discrepancy ultimately.  Also, filling out the form makes it easier for people to just do that and not actively participate themselves in the bonfire.  

[CommunityAdmin]

Giulia wrote:

I'm in agreement with Jennifer.  (Unless you make it a requirement) suppose someone doesn't fill out the form but drops in a bunch of unsmoked cigarettes?  There's bound to be a discrepancy ultimately.  Also, filling out the form makes it easier for people to just do that and not actively participate themselves in the bonfire.  

As I said above, these people would get added manually  but they would be the minority.  The list is de-duped and calculates numbers so it would remove a discrepancy.

Yes there is a possibility that some might not actively participate, but I'm being optimistic.  Currently, there has to be some people who toss in their cigarettes and don't come back so I'm not sure how that's largely different.  What is the level of participation you ideally would like from each  participant? To get the link they need to come to the  bonfire thread, so hopefully since they're here they will participate and not just submit their info and not come back. There might be a way to redirect them back to the thread after they've submitted the form.  

Thanks for the feedback!

Mark
EX Community Manager

[Sootie]

Yes---for people like me who dash in at the end...you would have to have some sort of "stop" on my posting unless I filled out the form...because I bet I would forget! Of course, nothing says this has to be a permanent fixture right? Why not try it with the next bonfire and if it bombs.....it can always just go away.........can't it?