My parents and sister will be in Japan from March 13 until March 24, and so I will not be spending as much time as I usually do keeping an eye on JAPUNDIT.

So, if you are a spammer or an embittered soul who really wishes to give the public a taste of your darker side, here is a chance to get more exposure, because it will take me longer than usual to delete your posts and comments.

For everyone else, please help out by posting a lot and please remember to vote.

I have changed the story promotion threshold from 7 to 8 votes to give stories a bit more life.

Let’s keep an eye on what happens over the next few days.

Got a note recently that says one regular contributor (zichi) is experiencing problems when posting articles to JAPUNDIT.

He says:

The posts used to load very quickly but now they stall after 5 minutes or more I hit the submit button again, wait another 5 minutes and hit it again. Usually on the 3rd try it uploads.

Is anyone else having any problems?

Just a quick note to let everyone know that our router went kaput here at JAPUNDIT Central, which means that the laptop I use for JAPUNDIT business is currently not accessing the Internet.

If anyone needs to contact me, please do so via a JAPUNDIT personal message, as I am unable to read any mail sent to any of the japundit.com mailing addresses.

I do have another computer here, but it is for business and I don’t want to conduct any non-business activities on it.

After much procrastination and personal business that had me totally distracted for a while, the T-shirts for the promotion campaign were taken to the post office today and sent out.

Soon we will contacting the Top 10 winners about their additional prizes.

The following are the winners of the JAPUNDIT Promotion Campaign drawing.

We will be contacting each winner individually to arrange for the sending of prizes. If we are unable to contact one of the winners for some reason, we will draw again for the applicable prize(s).

1. Yukozuna
2. Guyz5375
3. kwech
4. robin
5. Zichi
6. sputnik
7. aragato
8. duffmachine
9. the human naught
10. WordsnCollision
11. otakureview
12. skiljapa
13. cwj333
14. Paul
15. lalalemon
16. mike
17. Hummy
18. riki
19. JSharp
20. makeitquick

Congratulations!

Another reminder that there are just two weeks left until the end of February when we will be bringing the JAPUNDIT Promotion Campaign to a close. The next 14 days will be the last remaining chances you have to accumulate points by posting articles, commenting on articles by others, and voting. The more points you have on March 1, the greater the chance you have to win one of the valuable prizes we are offering.

We also would like to announce that the list of prizes has grown even larger!

In response to comments we have received from members, we have decided to award strange English T-shirts to all 20 lucky winners.

The top 10 winners of the drawing now will receive a $50 gift certificate redeemable over at J-LIST (for winners located outside of Japan) or a 5,000-yen Quo card (for winners located inside of Japan), and a $10 certificate that can be applied when using Rinkya’s online auction and shopping services.

All winners, 1 through 20, will receive strange English T-shirt.

These T-shirts are the real deal and not novelty items. They are shirts that I have purchased off the rack at a Japanese department store

The JAPUNDIT Promotion Campaign runs until midnight March 1, 2009 (JST)

Click here for full details about the JAPUNDIT Promotion Campaign including general rules, the point system, and a list of prizes.

Just a quick reminder that there are just a few short weeks left until the end of February when we will be bringing the JAPUNDIT Promotion Campaign to a close. Though we are approaching the deadline, there still is plenty of time left to rack up points by posting articles, commenting on articles by others, and voting.

We also would like to announce that the list of prizes we will be awarding at the end of the campaign has expanded.

The original list of prizes consisted of a $50 gift certificate redeemable over at J-LIST (for winners located outside of Japan) or a 5,000-yen Quo card (for winners located inside of Japan) for each top 10 winner, and a strange English T-shirt for each of the the next 10 winners.

Now thanks to the people over at Rinkya, each top 10 winner also will receive a $10 certificate that can be applied when using Rinkya’s online auction and shopping services.

Rinkya is an English language buying service for on-line Japan auctions, stores, manufacturers and specialty websites. Rinkya provides worldwide buyers the ability to bid and buy on auction sites, from stores and specialty web sites, even special order goods usually unavailable outside of Japan without any knowledge of the Japanese language or business etiquette. Sellers simply ship to Rinkya’s Japanese warehouses, and Rinkya’s Staff ships the goods to the buyer anywhere in the world.

Remember… The JAPUNDIT Promotion Campaign runs until midnight March 1, 2009 (JST), so you still have plenty of time to participate.

Click here for full details about the JAPUNDIT Promotion Campaign including general rules, the point system, and a list of prizes.

We would like to direct everyone’s attention to the JAPUNDIT New Page posting guidelines, which have been newly updated. Click here to view them.

It also might be a good idea to check out our FAQ, which is available here.

The point values that appear in the “JAPUNDITS” list on the JAPUNDIT News Site sidebar is based on a karma calculation that is performed automatically by the software that runs the site.

I really do not know what type of algorithm the software uses (and really am not that interested in chasing it down), and I have no direct control over the points that it produces.

Following complaints about a loss of points by one member, I checked the karma configuration and found out that it was set up to delete karma points at the end of 90 days. This means that if a user stopped posting or started posting less, that user’s point total would begin to decline after some time. I have change the setting so karma points earned are never deducted, but I am wondering whether that is a good idea.

If anyone would like to express their thoughts on this it would be greatly appreciated.