a note on cookies

I mentioned this a while back in the forum but thought to clarify things here.

As you may or may not be aware, I keep track of how readers help promote Above Ground and reward them with cookies. Readers can then spend the cookies on a prize of their choice.

This is all done by hand, and thus can be very time-consuming.

Also, not everyone makes use of the cookies system, either because they hardly ever do any cookie-earning tasks, or they don't buy any rewards, etc.

That's perfectly fine by me. It's optional, after all.

The thing is, it's gotten to the point that my excel sheet is filled with names of people like this, and it's getting a bit cluttered.

So, the plan is thus:

Starting from October 20th 2009, if you do not earn at the very least one cookie by December 1st 2009, you'll lose the chance to redeem your points.

This is a pretty lenient deadline, I think, and will mostly get rid of all the people cluttering up my excel sheet who are unlikely to earn more points.

I won't detract from the total website-wide amount earned, so bonus story counting will continue as usual. I just don't see the point of keeping track of cookie counts for people who don't make use of the system.

Of course, if after December 1st you *do* do a cookie-earning task, you'll be put back on the excel sheet, but you will have lost any points earned prior to that date.

Not sure how often I'll do this, either. I'll see how it goes this time.