Markov's dashboard

A comment on the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

This is an interesting idea. – InfernalMachine, on September 06, 2008 15:24

fijis replied on September 06, 2008 08:03 to the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

I don't think we can base question quality on users or H$ alone. For example, some questions have awful suspend/settlement times which makes it easy to gain a little dough if you time it right. For example: "Will company X's stock reach $50/share by the end of the month? Suspends: last day @ 11:59pm". We've all done it - it's after (the real live) market closing so you dump loads of change into the question. The return isn't good but it's safe and pays out in a couple of hours. Those questions have tons of users and tons of H$ but they're not really quality questions.

I was thinking about this some and came up with an off-the -wall solution that defeats this problem. Ready? Base the quality on users or H$ bet on the wrong answer(s). Crazy. Hear me out. If the market settles at 99% that's a bad question with a bunch of people obviously gaming the system. In that case the 1% voting on the wrong answer would tip you off and the quality reward should stink appropriately. However if the market closes at 60% that's a pretty good question and the 40% multiplied by users and/or H$ should reward accordingly.

This would reward people for creating popular, quality questions.

RogerKni replied on September 05, 2008 10:13 to the question "No more DJIA, the moron's approach to climbing the leaderboard" in Hubdub:

I like what Markov said: "co-mingling this [day-trading] with the vast majority of other question scenarios on Hubdub seems to be like mixing oil and water" and "...have a separate Hubdub for it that does not registers earning towards the primary Hubdub site."

I think "separation" is the only way to please both factions: the ordinary, lightly involved majority, and the heavily involved in-game day-traders. However, there should not be a separate Hubdub site, but only a separate assets "counter" for day-trading winnings, and a separate leaderboard for winnings on one-day stock market predictions.

This separate leaderboard could also accommodate in-game betting on sporting events, which I suspect would be very popular.

letmewinplees replied on August 28, 2008 23:41 to the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

Hey everyone, Ive been reading this forum and I just wanted to say that rewarding the question creators is something I always thought should be a part of the site.
I think one way to do it would be to reward the creator at by the number of correctly settled questions. Maybe every time you reach a certain "level" throw in a bonus.
An example:
beginner
level 1 20 questions settled (and $H500 bonus)
level 2 50 questions ($H1,000 bonus)
level 3 100 questions ($H2,500 bonus)
level 4 200 questions ($H5,000 bonus)
level 5 500 questions ($H10,000 bonus)
You can have an icon similar to Super user indicating what question creation level each user is.
If you stress the fact that the questions have to be settled to count, this will help encourage quality questions.

Tom Griffiths replied on August 19, 2008 06:59 to the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

Good suggestion Markov - thanks. We'll run some experiments to see how these look. One thing to bear in mind is that we have to balance combating uninteresting questions with encouraging niche questions that may not be well represented on Hubdub (and also may attract new members).

A comment on the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

Interesting idea. – InfernalMachine, on August 19, 2008 00:48

Markov replied on August 19, 2008 00:33 to the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

@Tom - How about "Average # of Individual Predictors per Question"? This would encourage interesting questions while simultaneously discouraging people from creating hundreds of 'narrow interest' questions just to get their total number up. Personally I would rather see people filling the question slots with 5-10 interesting question submissions per month rather than 200 questions about how fast some celebrity's toenails are growing. The latter simply serves to knock the interesting questions out of prominence and thereby reduces the number of people who see and wager on them. Maybe a minimum of 5 questions would have to be asked to qualify for question ranking and the ranking could be reset on the first of each month. Downplaying quantity to encourage quality would be a step in the right direction.

Tom Griffiths replied on August 18, 2008 11:11 to the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

@Markov - good points - I think you're right, the reward for question creators should be based more on interest than number created (although it's good to track that too). We were thinking basing it on the number of individual predictors per question, added across all questions.

Nigel Eccles replied on August 17, 2008 19:18 to the idea "Anyone up for a survey?" in Hubdub:

We actually ran a survey about 3 months ago and got about 500 responses. Three lucky people also won T-shirts. I had always intended to get around to publishing a summary of the results. If there is still interest I will.

Lesley started following the idea "Anyone up for a survey?" in Hubdub.

InfernalMachine started following the idea "Anyone up for a survey?" in Hubdub.

Markov replied on August 17, 2008 05:24 to the question "How do we encourage good question creation?" in Hubdub:

Good question, Bayoubear! I've been trying to figure this out myself. I noticed my site visits dropped off quite a bit a few weeks ago and realized I was losing interest in the questions in general. I certainly may stand corrected, but it seems over time a relatively small number of users were asking a disproportionate number of questions. That is all cool and kudos to them for doing it. However, it seemed to me to have precipitated two things: 1) a number of people were asking questions just for the sake of asking a huge number of questions, many of which had a rather narrow interest, and 2) the vast majority of users were not asking any questions at all for some reason. Why this may have been happening, I do not know. Somebody suggested adding discussion forums. That is a great idea and might fuel interest from some of our 'silent' members. Also, having a question leaderboard based solely on the number of individual users who responded to a question, rather than H$ wagered. I sense the general populace is losing interest. Again, great question!

Markov shared an idea in Hubdub on August 17, 2008 04:28:

Anyone up for a survey?

Since I am just a regular HubDub member I am not privy to any details regarding per capita usage statistics, active user numbers, or any other figures that might lend insight into how well the site is doing. That having been said, I therefore have no idea whether or not the general HubDub membership is active and satisfied with the direction that the site is taking and how interesting it might be deemed to be. There is really no reason or need for me, personally, to know any of this. However, there is great need for the site operators to know and understand such information. Perhaps this is known and my suggestion here is moot. But....Would a detailed, blind response, survey to the entire membership provide valuable insight to the site operators? Would it improve the site? Just a thought.

Bayoubear replied on August 01, 2008 11:14 to the question "No more DJIA, the moron's approach to climbing the leaderboard" in Hubdub:

@ Curios
My first day on the 'job' and I hope to be able to settle markets more quickly. Everyone can help by sending info to help settle markets, although I should be able to handle the standard markets (DJIA, Nasdaq, etc,) pretty easily.

Although Americans do make up the vast majority of Hubdubbers, I've love to see more participation worldwide . . . I would like to see us add the FTSE and DAX markets back to the system and also one or two of the markets (Shanghai , Nikkei, etc.) in your section of the globe. Not only are these markets important to a large segment of the global trading population, adding them back would also allow for round-the-clock play for Hubdub members.

Thanks for any positives and I'll work on fixing the negatives

curios replied on August 01, 2008 03:40 to the question "No more DJIA, the moron's approach to climbing the leaderboard" in Hubdub:

well bayou bear u r wrong until you have all indices and all open prediction u r pushing up hill as to the 84% Americans as being in the majority where is the fairness to the other 16% i suppose we don't count?
as to indices since Andrew left he was write on the ball i have to wait any thing up to 36 hrs for action on flagged or longer like i say we don't count i want to see hubdub succed but it will not when the issue is really here's a good site lets take it over if you people want some one to do your indies

Bayoubear replied on August 01, 2008 01:47 to the question "No more DJIA, the moron's approach to climbing the leaderboard" in Hubdub:

Trying to open a separate topic on this subject...I've changed my closing times to only 15 minutes before closing rather than 5, and on a day like today, a lot of people got caught on the wrong side . . .

I'm very open to suggestions, but I do like having it open during the day, since that allows people to react to announcements made along the way.

Maybe there should be questions that suspend before opening, like Kruijs % related questions as well as my point level questions....perhaps the close up or down questions should also end earlier...

Good points all...I'm just looking for ways to get and keep a lot of people involved!

tisha replied on July 10, 2008 10:38 to the question "Re-opening voided questions" in Hubdub:

Actually it wasn't, Markov was dealing directly with the Category Editor.

If the Get Sat forum and Contact Us forms are getting ignored, we would definitely like to know.

A comment on the question "Re-opening voided questions" in Hubdub:

What to use if you feel the GetSat forum and the Contact Us form gets ignored - which was obviously the case here :( – kruijs, on July 10, 2008 10:36

tisha replied on July 10, 2008 09:03 to the question "Re-opening voided questions" in Hubdub:

Hi all,

Thanks to the Supers for being so vigilant about monitoring this site. I have emailed Markov directly; he explained the situation to me and I think we reached some sort of resolution.

We are very concerned when users complain they have not received a response from us, so please use Get Satisfaction or the Contact Us form if you feel your comments have been ignored.

Cheers,
Tisha

NewsWrangler replied on July 08, 2008 04:27 to the question "Re-opening voided questions" in Hubdub:

@Markov ... I just read your comment in the market thread.

I don't know why you haven't received a reply to your flags or emails.

I'm confident your post here will result in a response -- which in no way suggests that your prior messages via other means shouldn't have been responded to.