Comment by rev_bird

10 years ago

I can't tell if this is too harsh, but it seems like you're praising the contest that was advertised, not the one we got. They didn't fund companies "based purely on a pseudonymous-community of 'up' votes." When they realized the community wanted something too risky for them, they bailed, and picked the "winners" themselves.

13 comments

rev_bird

Reply
tlrobinson  10 years ago

It turns out when you let people pseudonymously vote for things you get research vessels named Boaty McBoatface and similar (which I think would be awesome BTW http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-mcbo... )

  • dang  10 years ago

    FWIW, that wasn't the issue in this case. We knew about that possibility and planned for it and even called it by that name. But Kevin and I decided not to treat Maciej's application as a troll. The earnest comments he posted were what convinced us of that, and I don't think we were wrong there.

    I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious elements--it basically does a denial of service on my brain; if it were stage hypnosis I'd be squawking like a chicken. But I'm starting to think one could have taken all the jokes out of this and much the same thing would still have happened. If that's so, then the troll aspect is a red herring.

    • cperciva  10 years ago

      I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious elements--it basically does a denial of service on my brain

      For very good reason: Trolls often pretend to be serious, but serious people pretending to be trolls is incredibly rare.

      5 replies →

  • rev_bird  10 years ago

    I think we agree? When you let "the crowd" make decisions for you, sometimes they make weird, possibly dumb decisions -- that's why "the crowd" doesn't get to do that very often. It's also why I was so impressed by the idea that we'd get to pick these companies to get funded -- if not by literal vote, at least by discussion. THAT was the innovative bit.

cperciva  10 years ago

Except that's not what was advertised. In fact, the announcement said explicitly that they weren't going to fund companies purely based on voting.

  • idlewords  10 years ago

    You're being kind of disingenuous. The announcement said that all evaluation would take place in open HN threads, but it didn't.

    • cperciva  10 years ago

      You're right, they were more generous than the original announcement suggested. If I had been in Kevin's shoes I would have rejected pinboard based on the content of the thread rather than holding an ad-hoc phone interview to give you a chance to redeem yourself.