Referral Contest: Random Drawing vs. Referral Count

I'm considering running a referral contest in the near future. I'm wondering which of these two methods would generate the most participation:

The member with the highest number of refferals
A random drawing among the members with X or more refferalsWhat do you think?

IN my experience, getting people to post is what helps a forum in the long run.

An article contest might be good. Anything tht gets people posting something interesting. How about, a "funniest story" contest? Again, whatever will get people posting and get them responding to posts. If you get them to keep coming back, then your site becomes a place they visit on habit, and your popularity increases.

If a person was to run a referral contest ...which method do you think would generate the most participation; the member with the highest number of refferals or a random drawing among the members with X or more refferals?

Short answer:

random drawing

Long answer:

I tried this in the past and it got me like 200 members that month but most of them disabled their mails a month later and only did the 1 qualifying introduction post for my contest. It was a nice little bump in the number of members stats, but no useful results. I'd say go for a posting contest too like the admin recommends, but since you seem to want an answer for referrals, I'd say make it a lottery referral contest. Each referral gets them one chance to win out of the total number of referrals. Hooking you up with spam members won't necessarily make them the winner this way. If you want to put the effort into it, I'd delay the prize by a month and not count new members whose e-mail went bad during the past month. I send an e-mail twice a week or so to help keep members that don't return on their own coming back. If I can't remind them and have a chance at them become contributing members then what's the point?

-Raymond

I agree - Drawing...

Thank you for the great responses. :)