Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest, and More!

Oliver Perez goes for the Mets today against the Indians, with Opening Day quickly drawing nigh.

This season, open threads will be a little different than last year, as we're going to run a monthly Mets giveaway contest, with prizes including the Mets World Series DVD set, MLB 08: The Show for PS3, and other Mets gear (possibly hats/shirts, or maybe even replica jerseys if we get enough people involved).

Before every game I will post a link to that day's contest form, which will contain some questions about the upcoming game. Every game will include the following questions:

- Mets' score
- Opponent's score
- Mets' starter's game score

Those static questions will be supplemented with two additional questions. Here is today's form, which you can fill out for practice and see what I'm talking about. Results of spring training games will not count, but you can at least get a feel for how the form works.

There are still some bugs to work out with the form; it was originally used on the SBN Blazers site Blazers Edge, but is being ported for use here. You will still see some artifacts of the BE version (the first field on the form still says "Blazersedge user name") but those and some other bugs will be ironed out shortly.

I will post a longer explanation of the contest rules and scoring next week sometime, but I just wanted to get it out there so you guys can try it out. If you have any comments or suggestions please let me know, as this will be a pretty organic process as we stabilize the system.

In addition to the gameday contest, this site will be undergoing a platform change, likely to take place next Thursday night, 3/27. All SBNation sites are being converted to a brand new blogging suite designed specifically for us and geared towards sports blogging. You can see the new platform at already-converted sites like Athletics Nation, Halos Heaven and Minor League Ball, among others.

Obviously, the interface is being overhauled, but there are a number of new features that will make interacting with the community here even easier and more rewarding. "Diaries" are being replaced by something called "Fan Posts", and a new feature called "Fan Shots" allow you to post tiny snippets that might have been too short to be an actual diary in the past. The new site will accommodate user avatars and easier posting of images and YouTube videos, and those of you who visit multiple SBNation sites regularly will be excited about the universal login feature that will be implemented across the network.

There are countless other features that I'm not going to go into just yet, but it's definitely an exciting time to be part of SBN. There will be an adjustment period for everyone, but overall I think everyone will come to embrace the changes and the freedom of functionality that the new platform will bring.

That's it for now. Again, please test out the game form and let me know what you think. If you run into any problems with the interface or posting your answers, just let me know in the comments here.