Tim Long

Competition: Win Visual Studio 2010 Professional

This will be of interest mainly to astronomy enthusiasts…

Competition: Win Visual Studio Professional 2008/2010

Thanks to my friends at Microsoft, I have been allocated one copy of Visual Studio Professional 2008 or 2010 to give away as a prize to the ASCOM community, a current estimated retail value of £700 / $800. I’ve decided to offer it to the person with the highest reputation on ASCOM Answers at the end of 28^th February 2010.

Rules

1. The person with the highest reputation on ASCOM Answers, as adjudicated by me, at 23.59 UTC 28^th February 2010, will be the winner.
2. In the event of a tie, the winner will be selected based on the highest number of ‘badges’. If there is still no outright winner, then the winner shall be selected from amongst those tied for first place by random draw.
3. If the winner cannot be contacted within 7 days, then their prize shall be forfeit and shall pass to the person with the next highest reputation, and so on.
4. The winner will receive an individual not-for-resale license for Visual Studio Professional (or equivalent) Edition.
5. The winner may elect to receive Visual Studio 2008 immediately, or wait to receive Visual Studio 2010 after its launch date of April 12^th 2010.
6. The prize is kindly donated by Microsoft UK and is subject to variation in content and delivery date at their discretion.
7. Administrators and moderators of ASCOM Answers (i.e. those with a diamond after their name) shall not be eligible.

How Do I Enter?

Simple. Visit http://answers.ascom-standards.org and create a non-anonymous login (I suggest using your Yahoo ID – simply click the Yahoo button when asked to log in). Start asking and answering questions, commenting and voting.

The normal rules apply on ASCOM Answers. Posts must relate to ASCOM or Astronomy and are subject to moderation and editing by other users.

Strategies for Increasing Your Reputation

Reputation is earned by posting questions, answers and comments and by voting on other people’s content. Your peers, members of the ASCOM community, get to vote on your content, so quality and relevance really counts. Here are some ideas for how to maximize your reputation.

1. Think of a problem you’ve recently resolved with your astronomy gear. Create a new question that describes the problem, and then answer your own question by providing the solution that you found.
2. Look back in the ASCOM-Talk message archives. Pick a question and enter it into ASCOM Answers. If you can find the answer, then add that, too.
3. Same as (2) but find questions from other astronomy related forums and mailing lists.
4. Pick an existing question on ASCOM Answers that has multiple answers. Create a new answer that incorporates all of the existing answers, corrects any mistakes, and expands upon the content. Format everything so that it looks really great. Then stand back as your new super-answer gets voted up and becomes the de-facto correct answer.
5. Vote on other people’s questions and answers. Best practice when casting a vote is to leave a comment explaining why you voted the way you did.

Dos and Don’ts

Remember, everything on ASCOM Answers is in question-and-answer format. Here are some general dos and don’ts:

• DON’T put answers into the question section. Always split your content into a question (or problem description) and then submit your question. Then answer it (provide the solution) in the separate answer section beneath the original question.
• DO answer your own question – this is OK and specifically allowed.
• DO stay on-topic (Astronomy). If you don’t, your posts may be moderated, voted down or deleted.
• DO answer other people’s questions, even if there is already an answer. Your answer may be better.
• DON’T ask further questions in the answers section. If you need to ask for clarification or further information, add a comment to the original question.
• DO tag your questions with up to 5 tags, so that others can find them more easily.
• DO try to re-use existing tags in preference to creating new ones.
• DO accept a ‘best answer’ to your questions, by clicking the check-mark next to the answer. If you answered your own question, then you can still accept your answer as the ‘best answer’ but only after 48 hours have elapsed (this is to prevent people from ‘gaming’ the system).
• DO format your content carefully. Content that is both accurate a visually appealing is more likely to get voted up. The site uses something called MarkDown, which is a common-sense easy-to-use method of formatting plain text content. You don’t need to know and HTML – but if you do, some basic HTML tags are supported too. There’s a full help page provided on the site.
• DO read the FAQ.

Good luck!

Share this post: | | |