Just a little observation from my side:
Although I’m not impressed with the quality of the vast majority of ideas, in de past months, I am impressed by the quality of a lot of the newcomers.
What I’m trying to say: I think the quality of the CH crowd is rising and I'm pleased about that.
Cheers
Tommy

Posted: January 11, 2008, 1:05 am

On January 11, 2008, 2:05 am vanhees said:

Just a little observation from my side:
Although I’m not impressed with the quality of the vast majority of ideas, in de past months, I am impressed by the quality of a lot of the newcomers.
What I’m trying to say: I think the quality of the CH crowd is rising and I'm pleased about that.
Cheers
Tommy

As in life everything is cyclic, in the past we have had some very sharp minds, unfortunately they come and go. Then we had a lot of noise and now we are getting back to a quality quota.

How does one maintain the quality interest? That is the million dollar question?

Posted: January 11, 2008, 2:37 am

Good question Doymarn.

Sometimes I think that the idea warz should be two weekly.

The idea that wins the weekly Warz should be really crowd sourced in the week afterwards: we all sharpen the idea together (really crowd source the idea) and only then it will go in the yearly Warz.

T

Posted: January 11, 2008, 3:02 am

Interesting thought there (bi-weekly). I know from a Gord perspective it would mean I'd have more time to improve CH2 as the impact of the weekly process overheads would be cut in half.

Soliciting thoughts on this people! And I'll alert Blue to this thread so she can chime in.

One criticism might be the site would "slow down" as the weekly tournament generates activity. But I think that can be compensated for by making conversations stickier. You know, useful alerts when your idea is commented on, or email notifications that a thread you're monitoring had been posted to actually including the message text. Obvious stuff which I'm just can't get to yet.

Posted: January 11, 2008, 11:34 am

I strongly agree with bi-weekly and double-up Cambros prize naturally at the same time.

Quality of winner will definitely be better.

And yes the first tradeoff I thought off is activity. No more weekly videos, no more bunch of ideas for reading pleasure every wednesday.. besides, every one week a winner souds like an easy chance and encourge newbie to try out their luck, like me!

BUT, if it is 200 cambros, bi-weekly, i think it is still possible to maintain the activity level, offseting the tradeoffs I mentioned above and yet improve the quality of winners.

I mentioned about this too in the thread discussing how to stimulate more ideas for the Android contest.

Go!

Posted: January 11, 2008, 12:11 pm

I like the idea of a bi-weekly tournament. The first week should focus on weeding out the crap and getting feedback. The second week should focus on authors addressing that feedback, and then voting.

Here is how it would go in my head for a 14 day tournament

Day 1-2: Get all of the inappropriate ideas flushed out
Day 3-6: Everyone posts their questions, comments and concerns
Day 7-9: Idea authors try to address the posts from the previous three days
Day 10-14: Everyone decides if the questions, comments and concerns are adequately met and they vote accordingly

Now there is no real way to enforce this work flow, but it would be nice if could all agree to do something like this. It might make ideas easier to follow with what we have to work with in CH2.

On January 11, 2008, 12:34 pm GordonMcDowell said:

Interesting thought there (bi-weekly). I know from a Gord perspective it would mean I'd have more time to improve CH2 as the impact of the weekly process overheads would be cut in half.

Soliciting thoughts on this people! And I'll alert Blue to this thread so she can chime in.

One criticism might be the site would "slow down" as the weekly tournament generates activity. But I think that can be compensated for by making conversations stickier. You know, useful alerts when your idea is commented on, or email notifications that a thread you're monitoring had been posted to actually including the message text. Obvious stuff which I'm just can't get to yet.

Posted: January 11, 2008, 12:47 pm

Here is the problem with the 2 week argument. involvement. If I make a ruteen that every Tuesday I go though all the ideas and rate them my ruteen will be destryed. People are creatures of patters, if I come back and see the same thing this will upset my pattern and I will start to lose intrests. Users may drop off.

With the idea of feedback, look back to the TOC... (a new one starting in two weeks?) Gord looked for feedback but it never came or it was limited.

Posted: January 11, 2008, 1:48 pm

Every two weeks would be nice as it can seem a little fruitless voting every week if no idea stands out as a clear winner.

I do agree with what Brenden is saying about managing routines but at some stage you have to question the value of a weekly voting pattern if there is only crud to review.

Posted: January 11, 2008, 6:57 pm

The more quality ideas the better. As much as I thought T-wrapz should win.

Posted: January 11, 2008, 10:27 pm

...Now there is no real way to enforce this work flow, but it would be nice if could all agree to do something like this. It might make ideas easier to follow with what we have to work with in CH2

I'm with you ccozad on the work flow. Furthermore, I'd like you all to consider adding the following work flows.

- Problem domain pass. Perhaps some domains are no longer of interest to CH? Right now, "anything goes" means "nothing goes." The problems should be more specific than just "web solutions."

- Garbage Collection pass. I think a little bit of structure could go a long way in letting the creator evaluate the idea before it moves through the work flow. To this end, I would prefer the ultimate approach to be an "Idea Matcher" automation to determine uniqueness. At the very least, it would provide a list of "similar" ideas.

Imagine getting advice from existing comments, or finding matching partners right off the bat!

- Feasibility pass. I think that once an idea has passed the above, the idea should be rated on business and technical suitability. Personally I think an idea I'd like to crowdsource (or participate in) is one that meets both. Biz before, technical after.

How does one maintain the quality interest? That is the million dollar question?

- Expertise pass (perhaps part of the above). I think it would be great if one could email the "experts." This may mitigate the brain-drain problem discussed earlier.

- Final voting by the crowd should take a day

Posted: January 12, 2008, 2:12 am

I think the idea of workflow is nice, but it might be difficult to get people to do so.

What about the two weekly tournament, where the only the five best ideas go to the second week.

Writers try to improve it, comments get removed or even better: only visible for the submitter of the idea) and this five ideas play a mini tournament with all of us trying to really crowd source and improve them.

Cheers
Tommy

Posted: January 12, 2008, 6:57 am

I think the idea of workflow is nice, but it might be difficult to get people to do so.

Without constraints, true.

Writers try to improve it, comments get removed or even better: only visible for the submitter of the idea)

I have brought it up before, but I don't like the fact that Ideas automatically start running for the next period. So, I would agree on the visibility, and would suggest that be highly prioritized.

...all of us trying to really crowd source and improve them.

Good point. I know it's controversial (even for me as I write), but in a way, once an idea is refined, it's more motivating for others to "feel" some form of ownership. In a couple of months of membership, I've seen many "themes" of ideas going around. I'd bet some of these could be turned into viable consolidated businesses.

Ccan we have a "consolidate business" feature?

I can envision that a consolidated business has better chances of succeeding because it's championed by several highly interested individuals.

Posted: January 12, 2008, 6:41 pm

On January 11, 2008, 11:27 pm techguy said:

The more quality ideas the better. As much as I thought T-wrapz should win.

You mean it didn't?

Posted: January 13, 2008, 11:44 pm

On January 14, 2008, 12:44 am JustMe said:

On January 11, 2008, 11:27 pm techguy said:

The more quality ideas the better. As much as I thought T-wrapz should win.

You mean it didn't?

It won an international design prize called the "fairytale".
T

Posted: January 14, 2008, 1:16 am

I have renamed this thread from "Rise of the crowds" to "7 day vs 14 day tournaments" with Vanhees permission.

On January 11, 2008, 1:47 pm ccozad said:
Day 1-2: Get all of the inappropriate ideas flushed out
Day 3-6: Everyone posts their questions, comments and concerns
Day 7-9: Idea authors try to address the posts from the previous three days
Day 10-14: Everyone decides if the questions, comments and concerns are adequately met and they vote accordingly

Eventually there shouldn't need to be a detailed timeline like this (as proper feeds would make the back-and-forth between submitter and commenters more iterative), but right now it would be an improvement to have expectations of such behavior.

Brenden~
Here is the problem with the 2 week argument. involvement. If I make a routine that every Tuesday I go though all the ideas and rate them my routine will be destroyed. People are creatures of patters, if I come back and see the same thing this will upset my pattern and I will start to lose interest. Users may drop off.

This was an exact argument voiced by MJ who cites "Rhythm and Ritual" as an important aspect of IdeaWarz. By bailing on a weekly cycle, members COULD totally fall out of patterns which are beneficial to IdeaWarz.

Some behavior would be nice to see on a weekly basis... review of ideas for creator updates. Updating votes. Even if the ideas haven't changed this week. BUT it might not happen... maybe by sending a weekly reminder to members... (yay more spam!)

Ooper~
Garbage Collection pass. I think a little bit of structure could go a long way in letting the creator evaluate the idea before it moves through the work flow. To this end, I would prefer the ultimate approach to be an "Idea Matcher" automation to determine uniqueness. At the very least, it would provide a list of "similar" ideas.

An update to workflow is important... I mean at the very simple end there's update-the-copy to give people a better idea of our criteria and at least encouraging them to google their idea. But an actual change to workflow could be so much more.

The automatically incorporating some search results into the workflow could include Google results and AdSense results. It could be a small money-maker (and one that improves our idea intake at the same time).

Vanhees~
What about the two weekly tournament, where the only the five best ideas go to the second week.

I think I'd prefer then a more regular purge of the lowest scoring idea. An understood process where either every day (though unless semi-automated it could be a time-sink) the lowest scoring idea is purged, or yes after a week we reduce the contestants to only "interesting" ideas.

Ooper~
Can we have a "consolidate business" feature? I can envision that a consolidated business has better chances of succeeding because it's championed by several highly interested individuals.

I think the Biz aspect of CH is possibly the weakest. The Wiki, the biz forums, the team... we just don't see enough activity there and I'm not sure consolidating biz a band-aid on a much bigger problem.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 9:15 am

I am totally not down with a two week cycle of IdeaWarz.

I would commit to reviewing ideas a week ahead of schedule and exclude any ideas that are incomplete, etc. from IdeaWarz, therefore reducing the number of ideas people have to go through.

I'd be open to other suggestion as well, other than the one where we change IdeaWarz from weekly to bi-weekly.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 9:29 am

On January 14, 2008, 10:29 am Blue said:
I am totally not down with a two week cycle of IdeaWarz.

The great and powerful Blue has SPOKEN!!!
Oh wait... let me see here... looking up God in the dictionary. I don't see your name there. A series of deities. Ra, the Egyptian sun god... no "Blue, God of IdeaWarz"!

We're just discussing the pros and cons at the moment. There's good reasons to stick at 7 day cycles, I'd just like to tally the arguments here.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 9:35 am

I don't really like the "it's my habit" argument. Habits change, you'll adapt. It's sort of in your genes... (at least at some point it was...)

Perhaps that is part of the problem, people are locked into patterns. They submit the same types of ideas, make the same type of comments, post the same type of forum posts. It is like the movie Ground Hog Day. This is NOT innovation. If you want to be innovative you need to break out of normal patterns.

So the question becomes... if the current system isn't working, do you try harder, or do you change directions?

The book "Death March" would be good to read again or for the first time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_%28software_development%29

Posted: January 14, 2008, 9:44 am

I do not see any added value in changing the tournament.

Come someone spell out to me what value there is?

If you are thinking you will get better ideas you are wrong, you will just get the same ideas but in a larger bucket. I don't know about you but I find it a lot easier to review 30 ideas then 60 ideas, I can follow up on my comments and it dose not look like a chore.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 9:54 am

I think it would be nice if the split up would work more like needy or greedy. So, ideas can set the amount they are requesting and it it is less then $100 it would be split accordingly to the other ideas that don't need as much.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 11:28 am

On January 14, 2008, 12:28 pm Kevin_Cox said:

I think it would be nice if the split up would work more like needy or greedy. So, ideas can set the amount they are requesting and it it is less then $100 it would be split accordingly to the other ideas that don't need as much.

A very interesting idea Kevin!

Posted: January 14, 2008, 11:32 am

Yes just go ahead with two weeks!


Regarding the issue about we are having a big basket of ideas to be reviewed every two - week, yes, i believe if Gord + Blue + Active members filter them out one week ahead as Blue promised then general members will have an easier life voting on interesting ideas only.


Just like American idol, sms voting from generic public is needed to determine winners but someone just have to do a lot of filtering work to select a reasonable bunch from thousands of entries! This is normal.

With more members helping in reporting inappopriate, i believe the workload of blue+gord wdnt be too biggg as well!

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:11 pm

I think a one week process is better, unless we start to see fewer and fewer ideas over a single week. In a two week cycle the list could grow to be a bit much for those who vote and comment. I like to see a single "page" of ideas so I don't have to keep flipping back and forth.

The idea about dropping off the less popular ideas (i.e. low score OR number of votes) is a good one.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:25 pm

On January 14, 2008, 12:28 pm Kevin_Cox said:

I think it would be nice if the split up would work more like needy or greedy. So, ideas can set the amount they are requesting and it it is less then $100 it would be split accordingly to the other ideas that don't need as much.

Its a nice idea, but what if the person thinking of the idea has no clue how much its going to cost to get the business/idea off the ground?

I'm against the idea of a 2 week idea warz cycle, speaking as a new member i found that i only have to wait a few days before my time in the "arena" begins and i can have my idea voted on and discussed between more members. I mean i might of gotten bored of the whole showing you guys my idea if the competition wasn't so immediate.

I also don't like the 2 week idea because i think Brenen is right, a bucket full of bad ideas i most likely what your going to end up with and new users will think its ridiculous voting for some of the rubbish, and then they'll not vote on the one (or two!) quality ideas.

however i think a limit to one idea a week per user(all other ideas thought up by the user could be saved up till the next idea warz)

well thats my two cents (cambro cents of course!)

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:27 pm

Its a nice idea, but what if the person thinking of the idea has no clue how much its going to cost to get the business/idea off the ground?

Maybe that is a good indicator that you need to think about your idea some more

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:30 pm

On January 14, 2008, 1:30 pm ccozad said:

Its a nice idea, but what if the person thinking of the idea has no clue how much its going to cost to get the business/idea off the ground?

Maybe that is a good indicator that you need to think about your idea some more

I thought this was about sharing knowledge? and if somebody doesn't have the knowledge how mush its going to cost to make/design the idea then the idea will just stop there? I bet some of the now sucseful ideas that started on here didn't know how much money their idea would need.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:38 pm

On January 14, 2008, 1:38 pm mullac14 said:

On January 14, 2008, 1:30 pm ccozad said:

Its a nice idea, but what if the person thinking of the idea has no clue how much its going to cost to get the business/idea off the ground?

Maybe that is a good indicator that you need to think about your idea some more

I thought this was about sharing knowledge? and if somebody doesn't have the knowledge how mush its going to cost to make/design the idea then the idea will just stop there? I bet some of the now sucseful ideas that started on here didn't know how much money their idea would need.

I see your point So yes, "unknown" should be an option. The main problem is that not enough people approach their ideas by explaining the gaps. (i.e. My idea is this... I have x so far... I need y... I don't know about z)

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:56 pm

So, I created an idea a couple of days ago and hid it as soon as the system could keep up. Within a very short window, someone in good faith gave me feedback on a half-baked idea. I wasted their time, because the idea is visible the very moment you save it for the first time. This sucks to me!

I can see how a newbie could put in some drafty thoughts and not be able to immediately figure out how to hide it. Boom a half-baked idea that everyone has to review...

Are the reasons for this feature still there? Is disabling the auto-run too much to ask, too difficult to do?

I bet we'd have more quality ideas if an idea wasn't put into the "eye queue" automatically.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:57 pm

I see your point Happy So yes, "unknown" should be an option. The main problem is that not enough people approach their ideas by explaining the gaps. (i.e. My idea is this... I have x so far... I need y... I don't know about z)

The approach is more like... my idea is the coolest thing since sliced bread and if you can't see that you are an idiot.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:57 pm

On January 14, 2008, 1:56 pm ccozad said:

The main problem is that not enough people approach their ideas by explaining the gaps. (i.e. My idea is this... I have x so far... I need y... I don't know about z)

That's a brilliant idea

A feature like that will be so much better than "what were you doing when you thought of this is?"

Posted: January 14, 2008, 12:59 pm

On January 14, 2008, 1:59 pm mullac14 said:

A feature like that will be so much better than "what were you doing when you thought of this is?"

but i really like this field.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 1:14 pm

but i really like this field.

I like it too. I see it more as a field to place requirements though, which is a more business approach to the problem. If we changed it to explain this purpose, then it's possible that the originator will focus on the business a bit more.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 1:20 pm

Brenden~
I do not see any added value in changing the tournament. Come someone spell out to me what value there is? If you are thinking you will get better ideas you are wrong, you will just get the same ideas but in a larger bucket. I don't know about you but I find it a lot easier to review 30 ideas then 60 ideas, I can follow up on my comments and it dose not look like a chore.

I don't want more ideas per bi-weekly (unless it means higher quality). The reason I'm suggesting by-weekly is "optimizing for Gord". There's LOTS of improvements to be made on CH2, and I don't have enough time to devote to it. I want to improve the site is MY concern and its going crazy slow.

Things that take Gord time are (Random and Weekly):
w Comment on ideas.
w Shoot, edit IdeaWarz.
w Write weekly blog.
r Participate in forums.
r Fix panic bugs.
r Review inappropraite content.
r Improve site.

I'm hoping if all the Weekly stuff is made bi-weekly, then "Improve site" will become a larger percentage of my time.

It is not worth doing of course if there are lots of negative side effects. Here's one interesting (possible) negative side effect...

On January 14, 2008, 1:27 pm mullac14 said:
I'm against the idea of a 2 week idea warz cycle, speaking as a new member i found that i only have to wait a few days before my time in the "arena" begins and i can have my idea voted on and discussed between more members. I mean i might of gotten bored of the whole showing you guys my idea if the competition wasn't so immediate.

Pretty good point there. The delay before new members are competing could bore them off CH. But then who's to say 1-week isn't already doing that?

Having a bunch of stage gates, where there's a noisy pile of ideas, then its refined, then they're in competition would probably suck people into the site more, but it would take more effort to make things hidden by default (with the intent being to shield community members from crappy ideas).

Its the exposure of the bad ideas to public which results in them getting set to PRIVATE by myself, as that's how I'm notified.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 1:39 pm

I tend to agree with the majority that one-week cycles are better, but we could make it flexible: Triage bad ideas (remove them from the round) and contest the first 15 reasonable ideas on the following Wednesday. The goal would be to contest 15 good ideas every Wednesday (same work flow as now).

Flexible works both ways. If 20 good ideas show up at once, let them in.

I don't like using formulas based on dollars or checklists to eliminate or qualify ideas. The old-school rule was that you had to start with a solid business plan, but I think the VCs overlook that rule now. There are occasional ideas on here that are very valuable for stimulating creativity but don't have much chance in the business world for the forseeable future. Still, someone in the community might have the eureka moment and think of the missing link for the next big thing. Also, some of the "save the world" ideas can generate viable spin-off ideas into the future. So, "idea triage" is fine (five flags and Gord & Blue say so), but always encourage constructive feedback when it is due.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 2:06 pm

The reason I'm suggesting by-weekly is "optimizing for Gord". There's LOTS of improvements to be made on CH2, and I don't have enough time to devote to it. I want to improve the site is MY concern and its going crazy slow.

I think Gord needs to be crowdsourced

More seriously, does CH eat its own dog food...it may already exist (sorry, I didn't check), but how'bout putting up some jobs in the "business" section?

Posted: January 14, 2008, 3:15 pm

To go with what Gord just said maybe even the 1 week is putting people off submitting ideas.

You are about to view another newb comment (you may have to get used to them as i plan on staying a while !)

I honestly thought this when i signed upto the site (maybe because of the lovely orange animation on the how it works page!). My idea would be instantly rated/commented/criticized by people and there is a cut-off point to whether the idea is given the crowd source treatment or put into the virtual Cambrian House dumpster. This allows the better ideas staying on the site as they would have a high rating. As the idea grows and creates more buzz, it can obviously take flight into the big wide world.

And who's to say this is a bad idea?

It works for sites like newgrounds.com (bad animations and games are "blammed" from the site never to be seen again! while the good games and animations are recognised and given awards.)Its also pretty much instantaneous and voted by members of the NG community.

the way i see it is that its instant votes for the idea, bad ideas are removed, less successful "potential" ideas have the chance to be improved via crowd sourcing, the users (us) can see higher rated ideas so they can instantly see the better ideas allowing more interest into CH as its easier to find the more credible ideas.


sorry for this essay i have just accidentally written

Posted: January 14, 2008, 3:47 pm

what if the person thinking of the idea has no clue how much its going to cost to get the business/idea off the ground?

Well, they should have some sense if it will cost more or less then $100.

Personally on most of my ideas I know exactly or a round about how much it will cost. I think most people posting good ideas think about costs a little. They should be able to make some estimate. If they don't have a clue to at all about costs then I think that is a problem.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 4:01 pm

On January 14, 2008, 2:39 pm GordonMcDowell said:

Things that take Gord time are (Random and Weekly):
w Comment on ideas.
w Shoot, edit IdeaWarz.
w Write weekly blog.
r Participate in forums.
r Fix panic bugs.
r Review inappropraite content.
r Improve site.

I want to add one more thing...

r Being buged by Brenden... Well that is shared equaly between you and Blue... and now jazz

Posted: January 14, 2008, 5:21 pm

This has been suggested before... almost like a continuous queue of ideas, with the front of the queue being the ideas that are voted best and are then actively worked on.

That would be an interesting because then it wouldn't be which of these 30 ideas is best, it would be is this idea better than the one above it? If it is it moves up the ladder to the next challenger.

On January 14, 2008, 4:47 pm mullac14 said:

To go with what Gord just said maybe even the 1 week is putting people off submitting ideas.

You are about to view another newb comment (you may have to get used to them as i plan on staying a while !)

I honestly thought this when i signed upto the site (maybe because of the lovely orange animation on the how it works page!). My idea would be instantly rated/commented/criticized by people and there is a cut-off point to whether the idea is given the crowd source treatment or put into the virtual Cambrian House dumpster. This allows the better ideas staying on the site as they would have a high rating. As the idea grows and creates more buzz, it can obviously take flight into the big wide world.

And who's to say this is a bad idea?

It works for sites like newgrounds.com (bad animations and games are "blammed" from the site never to be seen again! while the good games and animations are recognised and given awards.)Its also pretty much instantaneous and voted by members of the NG community.

the way i see it is that its instant votes for the idea, bad ideas are removed, less successful "potential" ideas have the chance to be improved via crowd sourcing, the users (us) can see higher rated ideas so they can instantly see the better ideas allowing more interest into CH as its easier to find the more credible ideas.


sorry for this essay i have just accidentally written

Posted: January 14, 2008, 5:41 pm

looks like the conclusion is 1 week after all..

Posted: January 14, 2008, 5:42 pm

Gord is telling us that if we move to a 2-week cycle we'll see more new features developed on CH2.0 as it will free up his time to cut code.

I can't see how this is a bad thing as unless Gord tells us otherwise, it won't impact when CH3 is coming and as we don't know when that's coming anyway, surely it's a good thing to see some new stuff in the mean time.

The argument that we're in a pattern and may lose some people if we change the cycle doesn't seem as strong as having new functions / features that may finally remove the dependency upon the weekly voting / comment cycle being the main attraction.

This seems like a good trade-off to me. Maybe we need to discuss what the new features would / could be to sway the vote.

Gord - do you have a prioritised wishlist?

Posted: January 14, 2008, 6:14 pm

This was talked about I think a month or two ago. I don't think a job was ever posted, just a forum post to test the waters.

The request was to ask if anyone in the community would be interested in being a moderator/coder. Now the job came with both hats. So when you weren't regulating the forums or bad ideas, the expectation was that you would be working on code for CH2 or the upcoming CH3. I believe that since you would be "all powerful" and have privileged knowledge that you would also be required to work under an NDA.

No one stepped up so I believe CH just adapted, which apparently means hooking the wagon to Gordon and telling him go...

So if you have the motivation and time...I imagine CH wants to hear from you.

On January 14, 2008, 4:15 pm ooper said:

The reason I'm suggesting by-weekly is "optimizing for Gord". There's LOTS of improvements to be made on CH2, and I don't have enough time to devote to it. I want to improve the site is MY concern and its going crazy slow.

I think Gord needs to be crowdsourced

More seriously, does CH eat its own dog food...it may already exist (sorry, I didn't check), but how'bout putting up some jobs in the "business" section?

Posted: January 14, 2008, 6:52 pm

On January 14, 2008, 4:15 pm ooper said:More seriously, does CH eat its own dog food...it may already exist (sorry, I didn't check), but how 'bout putting up some jobs in the "business" section?

Because we use database access (and occasionally PHP edits) to perform our community management duties. So unless we can hire someone for programming duties as well as community management, its a LOT of power to give up for the sake of one aspect of community management.

ccozad~
That would be an interesting because then it wouldn't be which of these 30 ideas is best, it would be is this idea better than the one above it? If it is it moves up the ladder to the next challenger.

Like when we sorted by Total Score? Except no weekly cycle? Eliminate buckets entirely?

IdeaWarz could then be a weekly (or bi-weekly) grab-bag of ideas I suppose.

Don't idea submitters ( mullac14 ? ) find they DO get feedback? I always see comments on ideas even before the ideas enter IdeaWarz. People comment on the new stuff.

siddey~
Gord - do you have a prioritized wishlist?

No its jumbled right now. I'll post stuff I've got on the to-do y'all can comment on priorities.

But everyone understands right that when we talk about ladder systems and having more community control over site management... that's all coding at this point.

More spam reporting tools (which tighten the loop and kick spammers off quicker), a stickier site (which keeps new members coming back and possibly established members too), breadcrumbing idea submissions so people can detect duplicates... not having that stuff makes me less efficient so I'm busier, and so (ha ha) I don't have time to program exactly that stuff.

Must... get out... of trap.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 7:04 pm

On January 14, 2008, 8:04 pm GordonMcDowell said:
Must... get out... of trap.

Haha - I think you dug your own hole.

So it would be good to discuss your comments on what, "a stickier site (which keeps new members coming back and possibly established members too), breadcrumbing idea submissions so people can detect duplicates" means and whether people think having this is more important than keeping weekly comps.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 7:30 pm

My question is this even something that can be changed? are we talking about something that will never be changed?

MJ wants it to stay weekly so we do not lose page views right? well that my point to. Page views I assume are important to show investors...
So are we talking about something that will never happen?

Can I ask for a yes or no from everyone on weather CH should change?

Posted: January 14, 2008, 7:39 pm

On January 14, 2008, 8:39 pm Brenden said:
MJ wants it to stay weekly so we do not lose page views right?

Probably because right now it's the only time-bound and event-based (i.e. sticky) feature on the site, other than the forums (which are currently dominated only by hard-core members).

Maybe people would be less reluctant to see a change if there is enough substance in what it will be traded for. If there isn't anything significant there, then I agree we should hold-off until CH3 for bigger and better things.

Let's see what comes out in Gord's list of things-he-could-build-if-he-wasn't-video-editing

Posted: January 14, 2008, 7:52 pm

On January 14, 2008, 8:39 pm Brenden said:

My question is this even something that can be changed? are we talking about something that will never be changed?

MJ wants it to stay weekly so we do not lose page views right? well that my point to. Page views I assume are important to show investors...
So are we talking about something that will never happen?

I can't imagine that MJ really cares about pageviews at this point. The number of pageviews CH has is so small that it is inconsequential. The biggest thing CH has right now is a community of rather committed members. Essentially a base that could be built upon.

I don't think weekly or 2 week vote cycles will change that.

Posted: January 14, 2008, 11:05 pm

Hi,I was thinking bi-monthly would be better due to the non impressive number of ideas being hatched around could probably offset the idle time voting, and many would particpate more into business and how would an idea be more market ready.

On 2nd thought am thinking bi weekly could serve wellif the other half of the week would mean welcoming the other non software ideas which I guess have more potential in least time than the long projected perfection a softaware idea offers.

I also would like to suggest that every idea would have some type of progress bar on its age, number of members, "readiness"(protoypte development) , product profile(financial graph profile) ,market updates(if launch already)With these I think the idea would have certain appeal to visiting entrepreneuer.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 12:47 am

OK,
The reason I proposed a two-week idea warz is partly,
(1) The chance to have more good ideas.
(2) To have the chance to really crowdsource ideas.

I understand that page views are important. Web2.0 is all about people coming back to you site. Not visiting once. But, if people come only for the tournament it means that the “play” part of this site is more Important then the content. Nice but no one will ever make money with CH in that way.

I think CH needs ideas that are really crowdsourced, every two weeks when there is no tournament we will dissect a limited number of ideas (I think 5 is enough), critically approach them every part of it, try to improve it and make the ready to be either put into a business or to be trashed. If we can do that people will take CH serious and more smart people will join in. If not all the bright members (and we have a lot of them right now) will simply get bored and leave, while the rest will stay commenting on stupid ideas to have their GP’s.

I’m also convinced that if we can maintain a high level of members, in the future companies will be prepared to pay, to have there products (beta) crowdsourced and tried out here at CH by a worldwide group of people. If level of ideas stays the same way is was in the last months there will not even be a CH3 in my opinion.

Cheers
Tommy

Posted: January 15, 2008, 12:54 am

On January 14, 2008, 8:39 pm Brenden said:MJ wants it to stay weekly so we do not lose page views right? well that my point to. Page views I assume are important to show investors... So are we talking about something that will never happen? Can I ask for a yes or no from everyone on weather CH should change?

Pageview stats are NOT important to us.

What is Important:
- Idea quality. Newcomers and longstanding members should alway see high quality ideas in active tournaments.
- Facilitating idea implementation. More good ideas need to be implemented.
- Intelligent discourse. I think things are reasonably sane at this point. Could always be better, but also we don't want ideas/forums to ever dissolve into complete stupidity again.
- Connecting people. CH does not need to be the conduit through which new ventures are conducted every step of the way (it would be nice, but we don't want to bottleneck anyone)... BUT we do want to be responsible for entrepreneurs / VCs / programmers / designers meeting up and collaborating.

Brenden, I think everyone is already expressing their opinions on this as we go and I don't think we need to vote-and-end this yet. It would appear you don't want us to switch is my guess.

On January 14, 2008, 8:52 pm siddey said:Maybe people would be less reluctant to see a change if there is enough substance in what it will be traded for. If there isn't anything significant there, then I agree we should hold-off until CH3 for bigger and better things.

I can certainly keep things in a holding pattern and just apply improvements in my free time. My assumption is slow programming progress would be just as frustrating to the community as it is to myself.

Gord's CH2 Goals in Priority
0. Alter private message emails so they contain descriptive text.
1. Members vote on idea comments (non-lossy).
2. Members vote on ideas (non-lossy).
3. Admin tools for quick evaluation of member participation.
4. Admin tools for purging member content (ideas, comments) in cases of stupidity and spam.
5. Empower some community members to help manage CH2.
6. Update idea submission copy to better reflect CH criteria (and verbally state 2 idea/week limit).
7. Fix idea size limitations (which can be bypassed currently).
8. Only allow 2 ideas per week (block 3rd submission).
9. Update idea submission workflow to show duplicate ideas.
10. Update idea submission workflow to also present google search results.
11. Idea submitter alerted when their idea commented on.
12. LOVE and BABY accounts trigger warnings to community managers.
13. Community managers alerted when idea set from PRIVATE to PUBLIC.
14. Idea voting weighted based on non-lossy data, and available as supplementary stats (with history and graph).
15. Switch CH2 ranking of ideas from simple vote count to complex vote weighing. (WOC improvement finally happens HERE!)

There's a big time sink in item #1 and #2. So the downside for the community is you get nothing from those until #14 and #15. But (like forum post data which is currently being collected) I want a long history of non-lossy votes with which to build #14, so I can immediately say "this worked based on prior history so its plausible its a good algorithm going forward".

So y'all can offer new priorities or tasks you think are more important. But in terms of how slow I'm currently plodding through this... that's MY big concern. Bi-weekly is my best guess for a source of more programming hours.

The only aspect of this CH3 would benefit from, is a history of non-lossy voting data, and #14... member tools to evaluate quantitatively how their idea is performing. All the other code is CH2-disposable.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 10:10 am

Pageviews are important to me.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 10:47 am

That's because you're female.

"Look at me, do I look pretty? Who's looking at me? Are you looking at me? You should be looking at me!"

Posted: January 15, 2008, 10:49 am

So the downside for the community is you get nothing from those until #14 and #15.

I disagree, I believe the community starts seeing a benefit at #5 and #6. That is the pivot point where things become more productive because more people can do things. Even if it is one of these community managers taking care of a spammer... that is HUGE because then you don't have to be interrupted. (Interruptions take more time than the small time it takes to deal with them... there is also the time lost trying to get back in "the zone" before you were interrupted)

And #10 sounds like something that some ambitious community member could start tackling right now so we can pipeline the process....

The task:
Given a block of text, select key words and phrases and perform google searches on those key words.

Comments:
A non trivial problem.... BUT you could simplify by starting with the elevator text (which has a known structure)

You could also analyze a bunch of Tommy's comments and find the patterns in the things he picks out to search on.

Sounds like a cool project...

Posted: January 15, 2008, 11:10 am

Didn't say that #6 would be a benefit, because there wouldn't be a "learning curve" and if there are problems, all people need to do is link to that section and things are explained.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 11:12 am

On January 15, 2008, 12:10 pm ccozad said:
And #10 sounds like something that some ambitious community member could start tackling right now so we can pipeline the process.

I didn't think #10 could be handed off to community actually 'cause I thought the Google call would be crazy easy and the formatting would be hard.

Like say "Google Search" on a page, their integrated search tool such as...
http://www.google.com/sitesearch
...which would be directed not to CH so much as the www. And we could enable AdSense for search which MAY be totally lame, or might actually return more relevant results.

I haven't put much thought into that yet though. I just know I'd like to see CH idea matches + Google WWW matches + AdSense all combined onto one big "Has it been done?" page. So the idea would be submitted but PRIVATE at that stage, member sees the matches and then its their call if they want to flip it to PUBLIC at that point.

ccozad said:
I believe the community starts seeing a benefit at #5 and #6.

Oh yes, I mean community would see benefit of #5 probably quickly. I meant to say that #1 and #2 don't pay off until #14 because until then there's no public reflection of improved vote collection.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 12:12 pm

Oh yes, I mean community would see benefit of #5 probably quickly. I meant to say that #1 and #2 don't pay off until #14 because until then there's no public reflection of improved vote collection.

Oh Ok, that makes more sense.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 12:30 pm

I didn't think #10 could be handed off to community actually 'cause I thought the Google call would be crazy easy and the formatting would be hard.

What would be the search term? The entire idea? I don't think I get it...

Oh well, it is #10 anyway, so I suppose I'll have some time to ponder it...

Posted: January 15, 2008, 12:46 pm

Might make an interesting tie in for idea comments...

http://www.google.co...ds/samples/blog.html

Posted: January 15, 2008, 3:14 pm

On January 15, 2008, 4:14 pm ccozad said:
Might make an interesting tie in for idea comments...
http://www.google.co...ds/samples/blog.html

For sure that's a neat example.

#10 would probably search on nouns or something like that. If it was total crap maybe we'd have a real-expression competition or something for better. Don't think iterating up quality will be a big issue.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 3:47 pm

"2. Members vote on ideas (non-lossy). "
Whats the point of that? Bad ideas should be voted down. Why would you want to vote for ideas you don't like?

Posted: January 15, 2008, 7:27 pm

Will #3 also include the ability for CH members to check out their karma status?

I can see the mechanisms to build karma happening but no mention as to how we know if we're transcending into the next plane.

Posted: January 15, 2008, 9:50 pm

On January 15, 2008, 8:27 pm Kevin_Cox said:
"2. Members vote on ideas (non-lossy). "
Whats the point of that? Bad ideas should be voted down. Why would you want to vote for ideas you don't like?

Ah! Sorry I wasn't making myself clear on this. I mean non-lossy as offering a date-stamped historical record of voting data. Currently we write over the previous voting record. I think its important for submitters to be able to gauge how their clarification posts, updates to idea content, and how criticisms of others are swaying overall vote count.

And also, the ability to compare vote tallys over time during a weekly competition would be neat. Watch your crappy idea as it slowly plummets into the negasphere*!

("Negasphere" being the world of negative numbers, not the place where stolen goods migrate to in the first season of Miami Vice.)

Siddey~
Will #3 also include the ability for CH members to check out their karma status? I can see the mechanisms to build karma happening but no mention as to how we know if we're transcending into the next plane.

I assume so, although its further off than reviewing votes. This particular karma's only impact IS voting weight... its not a GP or Cambro or any other sort of tangible multiplier withing the CH2 scope.

Posted: January 16, 2008, 10:15 am