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Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

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Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#161

Post by zaguios »

Kapow wrote: post #140
zaguios wrote: post #121

I actually already wrote this as a reply to another comment, but I think it merits a comment of its own. The best way to do the scoring for the applications is to actually make it into somewhat of a game. Each application should be given a starting elo of 1200. Every time a user wants to go and review applications they will be presented with two separate applications with a similar elo and then will be asked to vote…

Would this be implemented as only showing pairs within a certain threshold of difference, or would it choose an application purely at random and then the application with the closest score (or even 50/50 the next highest or next lowest)? The former seems like it could lead to cases where applications end up in a void between clusters and stop appearing in votes, preventing late voters from giving an opinion on them.…

To ensure each application gets the same amount of views (with the exception of the top ranked and bottom ranked applications) you can pick the next highest/lowest and it will work out fine. My concern with this implementation was that it might be possible for the same applications to be compared multiple times at the high and low ends of the bell curve where elo becomes more spaced out. A better solution might be internally listing all the applications by their elo, selecting an application and random, and then selecting from an application within 5 ranks of itself. I.E. App #342 is randomly chosen and then an application between #337 and #347 will be randomly chosen to compare it with. I am not aware of any name for this voting process.

Each potential implementation has slightly better/worse corner cases, but the general quality of the ranking should still be extremely accurate regardless of the particular implementation. It takes surprisingly few comparisons for items to find their appropriate ranks.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#163

Post by hoodoof »

gizmo wrote: post #157
hoodoof wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>what's stopping you As I say, there's not many ideas that seem inspiring, and as you rightly point out, I'm committed to my own foolish ideas.

How can you be committed to your own ideas and at the same time announce you're willing to abandon them the moment you see a different idea that "blows you away"? And if you're not that committed to your own ideas, the odds aren't good that you'll stick with them long term.

As I said, if I was totally blown away by something then I'd act on it. It would of course have to justify dropping my other projects but I am willing to do that if the idea is good enough.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#164

Post by bmenzalji »

kevin wrote: post #21

Hey everyone! I manage and run the Fellowship program at YC. I just want to build on top of what Dan wrote about being nice. We’re not asking you to do this because we think it’s good manners. We actually believe it’s the right way to think and act like the best investors. It’s easy to form some really bad habits when you sit in a position of power to judge the potential of a person, a team, an idea and their executi…

Thanks for the kind words Kevin - looking forward to hearing back from YC regarding our application! I'm a believer in revolutionizing live events!

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#165

Post by harperlee »

I think here is where the "you cannot unvote" design decision for HN breaks. It's one thing to vote several comments that deserved an upvote and whose subthreads I want people to see and comment with priority; and another thing altogether to manage votes that I know, in the end, will end on one company being selected at the detriment of the rest. Here I want to have the ability to vote only to the one that mattered the most, and I want to be able to unvote if further responses of the startup make me uneasy of my already casted vote. It's not sufficient to take my attention elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#166

Post by zaguios »

GFischer wrote: post #149
zaguios wrote: post #121

I actually already wrote this as a reply to another comment, but I think it merits a comment of its own. The best way to do the scoring for the applications is to actually make it into somewhat of a game. Each application should be given a starting elo of 1200. Every time a user wants to go and review applications they will be presented with two separate applications with a similar elo and then will be asked to vote…

Interesting, I was also going to suggest some kind of alternative review system. I was invited to review applications to CORFO (the government program behind Startup Chile), and since they crowdsource reviews between unrelated startup founders, they have a "points" system to determine whether submissions were reasonably graded (they look for big differences between graders). Your system sounds better :) , but I think…

Yea, a point system would work decently, but as you mentioned there is the problem where certain reviewers give higher and lower ratings than one another. With a large enough sample size you should still get fairly accurate ratings. A 1 vs 1 system based on elo eliminates all of these issues though and helps you find accurate ratings much faster.

The system doesn't need to stop individual discussion, you should be allowed to post responses to the applications as your are reviewing them to vote on. You should also be allowed to directly view and comment on an application by going to it directly as long as you aren't allowed to do anything that affects its rating.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#168

Post by krapp »

dang wrote: post #19
pbnjay wrote: post #12

Will there be a new toplink for "Apply HN" submissions? I think random sorting on that page would be a good idea to encourage all submissions get an opportunity for discussion.

Probably a top link, yes, but in good minimalist form we'll wait until it's clear we need it. (Edit: we need it. In the meantime, please use the Algolia link I included at the top. It's not like we wrote code for this in advance or anything—that would be cheating :)) Random sorting is a good idea. We'll think about that.

    Apply HN
    Ask HN
    Show HN
    (unofficially) Tell HN
Maybe you should just implement tags already and let people subscribe to them or block them. That seems to be what this is kind of turning into anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#169

Post by mlapeter »

dang wrote: post #17
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Ranking by upvotes/comments seems highly problematic, even with HN's antibrigade features. A) There are many external factors that can implicitly cap the number of upvotes/comments. (time submitted, amount of competition, etc.) HN has repost rules to alleviate this problem: would Apply HN posts be able to repost too? B) Not to mention that it encourages sockpuppet voting/commenting, especially since there is a high r…

I think we're on the same page to some extent. What I meant by 'ranking by comments' is that we want the ranking to depend on the quality of the discussion. That's the one thing that can't be faked. That's how the ranking of HN stories works now. It's a combination of upvotes and human curation by users (e.g. flagging) and moderators. So there's going to be some combination of technical and non-technical factors. How…

Would it be appropriate to ask our users of our startup to and vote for us on here? If they are invested enough in our service and community to do so, it seems like that would be a very positive and useful signal in it's own right. Or would that be considered gaming the votes?

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#170

Post by Mz »

cperciva wrote: post #95

we're already seeing quite a few Apply HNs, so we'll add a link for those a la /ask and /show Quick poll for the community here: I run Hacker News Daily ( http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ ) which many people know about; but also Ask HN Weekly ( http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/ ) and Show HN Weekly ( http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-show/ ). In each case the methodology is the same: The 10 highest-sco…

I upvoted to bookmark the comment. I was not aware of these services and might want to come back to them at some point. Though, you know, maybe upvoting won't actually help me find it. But I seem to lose lots of things online, no matter how I try to mark it. Que sera sera.
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