Leaderboard end-of-quarter changes

Hi everyone, there's a big event in the Hubdub calendar coming up (quarter end) and I wanted to get your feedback on our suggested leaderboard changes that will come into effect then.

There are a number of problems with the current situation.

1. New users are discouraged from joining Hubdub by the dominance of the leading players. Fewer users motivated to compete is bad for everyone.
2. The large amounts of cash at the disposal of some Hubdubbers makes it easy for them to move markets significantly. This is bad for them and everyone else, and reduces the accuracy of the site's forecasts.
3. Excessively large amounts of wealth become increasingly difficult to manage.
4. The challenge of a level playing field for users at all levels to compete on skill alone is removed by vast differences in worth. We want to make Hubdub as fun and exciting as possible for everyone.

We're eager to take the opportunity of the end of Hubdub's first quarter to create a solution which solves these problems, but which also:

i) Recognizes the incredible achievements to date of our top predictors, the time they have spent nursing their portfolios and the skill they have demonstrated at predicting
ii) Creates a weekly incentive to, on some level, 'start over' if you had a bad week previously

Here's our proposed solution.

a) The leaderboards we will have are:
- All Time Earnings (the combined gains a user has ever made in any quarter determines their position here)
- Quarterly Gains (as now: the gain made by users in the current quarter) [also available historically, e.g. for Q1 2008 too]
- Weekly Relative Gain (all users ranked by the percentage increase of their net worth since the start of the week)

The most emphasis will be given to Weekly Relative Gain, to encourage weekly play and to allow users at all wealth-levels to compete head to head.

b) All leaderboards will have multiple pages allowing you to browse everyone's position, and jump to your own page so you can compete with those around you.

c) We cannot allow users' wealth to continue to grow indefinitely over months and years. The problems we have now (discouragement of new users, massive market movement, difficult portfolio management) will only increase over time if we do. Quarter end seems an appropriate time to recognize and reward our top performers, but scale back everyone's wealth in a fair and reasonable way. We didn't want to scale everyone to the same amount, because better predictors have earned their right to a head start next quarter. Instead, we're proposing to scale back cash and predictions (proportionately) in the following bands:

Users with quarterly gain 20k or more will begin Q2 with 20k (combined cash and predictions)
Users with quarterly gain 5k or more (and less than 20k) will begin Q2 with 5k (combined cash and predictions)
Users with quarterly gain 2k or more (and less than 5k) will begin Q2 with 2k (combined cash and predictions)
Users with quarterly gain of less than 2k will begin Q2 with 1k (combined cash and predictions)

Users' profiles will be awarded an icon show which band they started in that they'll keep for the rest of the quarter.

We know this rescaling could be contentious. We've worked hard to come up with a solution that's fair to everybody, and is in the interests of the Hubdub community as a whole.

For our top predictors, rescaling doesn't penalize the skill you've shown. It allows you to prove your prowess again, against Hubdubbers of similar caliber from the same start point. I imagine the excitement to see who emerges top early on from you 20k'ers will be immense! And remember, your progress to date will put you top of the All Time Leaderboard and the Q1 historic leaderboard right away, so Hubdub immortality is yours. You can continue to build on your All Time Leaderboard position in successive quarters. In future, you may also be able to 'pimp your profile' by buying stuff with the cash represented on the All Time Leaderboard.

For our new predictors, it will give you a chance to make your mark on Hubdub right away and not be at the severe disadvantage that currently exists.

And for those of us in between, we'll be able to have weekly face-offs no matter what our worth is on the relative leaderboards.

Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions on the above. We're open to ideas for the fun icon titles given to users in each band, no modesty necessary :)

Tom