Also I just wanted to post this! I forgot about it in the opening post.

I also tried going over average points per member for the current standings... here was the results:

Gryffindor - 140 Slytherin - 126 Ravenclaw - 178 Hufflepuff - 149

This is another option we could explore.

thoughts?

Well, we were touching on the group idea. I'll use HA challenges as an example:

Instead of posting your HA's to the challenge thread, you would send them to your Prefect (or in the house forum for your house). Then members of your house would vote on which 5 would get submitted to the challenge thread. Your house prefect would post them to the challenge thread.

Then we would choose which group of 5 fit the challenge best, and divide up points. Like first place would get 50, 2nd 40 etc etc.

I personally do not like the "average" idea, because (as we've seen with various restock wars) those end up being really bad with people who do nothing sort of hurting it for everyone else.

Well, we will be having at least some group activities next term, that much is for certain.

So far the consensus is that the ideas we've come up with aren't in you guys's favor. That's ok! If you guys wish for things to stay the same overall, we're perfectly content with that. The only reason we offered a change is because we will be giving prizes out to the House Cup champions and we wanted all houses to have equal chances of winning. If you don't care about the prizes, then I guess it doesn't matter if it's equal or not.

I like the idea stated above about randomly assigning partners for certain tasks, I will talk to about how to flesh that out and getting it to work for some things (I already have an idea in mind evil laugh)

If anyone else has any ideas for making things more fair, please continue to discuss it here for Mary and I. We're taking everything into consideration.

I will be holding the Special Ability tryouts during the break, but I'm going to give everyone who signed up a chance to tryout. Therefore, if someone takes a long time to get back to me, it might not happen before the next term starts. However, I'll try to get it all done before then!

I haven't quite read through everyone's pays yet, but I just wanted to pose another question to everyone.

Is part of the problem the scheduling of the activities? Are we scheduling too much/too little? Are we not giving enough time/too little time to participate?

These are actually a really valid points! Thank you for voicing them, I honestly hadn't thought of it.

I have been keeping the numbers on this and will post the averages after all the points have been added up! :)

Also I just wanted to put it out there that not all group activities will be voting! This was just an example. Mostly what I had in mind was being able to have really hard, challenging puzzles for you all to work on as a group. If we had decided to go with all group activities, then that was a suggestion on how to make the HA challenges work. As Gryffindor said, if you guys are content with how things are working, that's absolutely fine! We figured that since we are a new group, we are learning as we go, and we'd love to make it the best experience for you guys.

The reason we only reopened HA challenges this time is that, well, after a challenge was over, sometimes I'd give the answer key to it! Kind of hard to reopen it if I've openly given the answers, you know? Maybe next term we will hold off on revealing any answer keys until the end. But then that doesn't guarantee users who have done the activities already will not share their answers - but this is a risk we take even when the activity is originally open. So it's something to consider. :)

Thanks everybody for your input! You've given us a lot to think about. Keep it coming! :D

Just so I'm understanding correct, when you say "and do this for each house" do you mean give houses different point scales?

Hi all! I just wanted to let everyone know that we haven't forgotten about what was discussed here. My main objective for this term was to introduce group activities to try to see how it will impact how points are earned. I have one that is ready to go. However, I just wanted to make everyone aware that it is quite possible that it might not happen this term. There is a bug on the site right now that is not allowing for new forum group forums to be created. Why does this matter, you ask? Well, in order for these group activities to work, you need somewhere to work on the activity without the other houses being able to see your answers. This was going to be accomplished by having the separate house ping groups act as a place for you guys to work on your answers. But since Slytherin and Gryffindor's groups don't currently have forums, we're unable to start the group activities until we can create a place for you guys to work on them.

That being said, we have implemented some slight changes for this term. I don't know if you've noticed, but we've changed the amount of points given out for some of the activities. Activities that are generally puzzles and brain teasers have only been giving 10 points rather than 15 and 20 points, while lesson assignments and challenges that involve more creativity, such as the writing challenges and the upcoming forum group image challenge have been giving out between 15 and 20. I'm really liking this change so far.

We are also planning on reopening challenges for members that may have missed some of the earlier ones later down the line. This will include almost all challenges, not just the HA challenges!

Anyway, I just wanted to give you guys an update. We really appreciate all of your feedback and help with shaping the cult!