Show HN: QABounty – Make money answering questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: QABounty – Make money answering questions

#21

Post by sb23 » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 6:20 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20

bbarrows wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put this up too soon.. so I am trying to deal with scaling and some other issues right now but to briefly try to answer those questions/points.. The point is not to get anyone to be your "part time DBA" that was just some example question I came up with, hopefully to spark some kind of debate or just usage of the site. I am basically just giving someone $3 for their 2 cents on a scaling question. I think asking for…

> The point is not to get anyone to be your "part time DBA" that was just some example question I came up with, hopefully to spark some kind of debate or just usage of the site. I am basically just giving someone $3 for their 2 cents on a scaling question. I think asking for someones opinion on scaling is a little different then asking them to be your part-time DBA. I have ~13 years of experience. I would rather answ…

Maybe the site should have a "cash out for rep" feature?

Re: Show HN: QABounty – Make money answering questions

#22

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:13 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #4

bbarrows wrote: post #2

I recently finished my site QABounty. I would get annoyed when I could not get anyone to answer my questions on sites like Stack Overflow so I created this site, https://qabounty.com/ . It is basically your standard QA site but you attach a USD $$ bounty to questions. For example I have a question up at: https://qabounty.com/questions/what-kind-of-database-should-... The best answer for that question will award that…

I'm not quite sure the financial incentives really align for anyone who's time is worth anything (e.g. doesn't live in a third world country). For instance, even at rather modest rate, your $3 buys about 8 minutes of my time, which isn't going to get much of an answer.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: QABounty – Make money answering questions

#23

Post by bildung » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:37 AM UTC

Nice work bbarrows! Don't let the numerous comments pointing out the motivational problems monetary rewards can create discourage you. This phenomenon (the overjustification effect, researched by Deci, Lepper and quite a few others) certainly exists, but certain preconditons have to be met for it to become a problem. Most importantly, the person doing the work has to be highly intrinsically motivated. If that person then gets rewareded monetarily (extrinsical motication), the intrinsic motivation gets reduced. The consequence is an increase in quantity and decreasing quality of the productive output of the person.

But there are many situations where people already start with no or only extrinsical motivation: They do it for the reputation (reputation is an extrinsical motivator), they are college students who have to learn the topic anyway (so would profit from a second extrinsical motivator besides passing the test) etc. - basically every case where the person is not motivated doing the writeup because it enjoys that exact moment.

tl;dr: the overjustification effect exists, but will only affect your project marginally. Good luck!

Re: Show HN: QABounty – Make money answering questions

#24

Post by thedufer » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:40 AM UTC

bbarrows wrote: post #10

hsx wrote: post #6

What happens if someone doesn't mark an answer as answered or choose the best answer?

Moderator goes through and does his best to ascertain whether or not the question was answered and who answered it best/first. If no suitable answer is available coins are refunded. Otherwise an appropriate answer is chosen after 5 days from question post.

That's a short timeline and a perverse incentive. One of the clever parts of SO bounties is that they're taken from you whether you award them or not, so the incentive is to be a nice person and do so. Here the incentive is to never award and hope you get it back.

I understand you don't want people potentially throwing away money - its a problem where you need a high volume of answerers for the no-refund model to work. Just something to think about.

Re: Show HN: QABounty – Make money answering questions

#25

Post by onli » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:32 AM UTC

Looks nice.

I like that you thought at the RSS feed. However, the question feed is throwing a syntax error (in FF, and digg reader can't subscribe to it as well):

  XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
  Location: https://qabounty.com/questions/feed/
  Line Number 25, Column 1:

Re: Show HN: QABounty – Make money answering questions

#26

Post by ryanjshaw » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 10:54 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #4

bbarrows wrote: post #2

I recently finished my site QABounty. I would get annoyed when I could not get anyone to answer my questions on sites like Stack Overflow so I created this site, https://qabounty.com/ . It is basically your standard QA site but you attach a USD $$ bounty to questions. For example I have a question up at: https://qabounty.com/questions/what-kind-of-database-should-... The best answer for that question will award that…

I'm not quite sure the financial incentives really align for anyone who's time is worth anything (e.g. doesn't live in a third world country). For instance, even at rather modest rate, your $3 buys about 8 minutes of my time, which isn't going to get much of an answer.

There are 2 problems with your comment. First, I live in a 3rd world country and my time is worth something, as is my knowledge. That unnecessarily disparaging comment aside, it's quite possible there are plenty of people who have useful knowledge and whose time isn't worth all that much to them. Whether or not there's enough of them, or enough interest from them or potential buyers, are separate questions.