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Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#81

Post by dang »

vonklaus wrote: post #76

Also, while I don't loce what I'm about to suggest it makes sense: 1 upvote = 1 + (Account Age In Years / 2) Or some metric discounting (but not eliminating) new accounts while proportionately weighing soneones contribution/participation in the community. while to some extent everyone should be represented, but some members of the community have been here much longer, are much more knowledgeable, and participate a lo…

We can do things like that if we really need to, but my guess is we won't. Experience has taught that such measures make others feel less welcome, which is a bad outcome and not in the open spirit of this experiment. Good comments and insights speak for themselves; if those older users are as good as you say, they can sing for their supper.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#82

Post by dsugarman »

dang wrote: post #39
hooande wrote: post #33

I'm not sure about considering upvotes. People might send out message to all their friends saying "There's this thing called hackernews, can you sign up and vote for me?". Similar to how someone would launch a kickstarter. I don't think that this will be very common, especially not in the first few batches, but it will become common sense after a few years. Remember, you're dealing with hackers here. I worked my YC a…

You may be right, but I'm pretty sure the community would hate it if we didn't consider upvotes at all. The idea is to fit this process in to how HN already works, and see what happens. HN's pretty good for discussing stories about technology and startups, and a lot of those discussions are a kind of vetting of investment decisions and startup pitches anyhow. Why not move that way earlier in the process and see what…

The biggest downside could really be incentivizing promising founders to gather upvotes rather than building something.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#84

Post by dang »

arihant wrote: post #79

I am not very sure about this for a few reasons: 1. There is possibly several ways to game the upvote system. HN community is not anonymous, and there are people who have more friends here than others. A lot of very good founders would probably not have enough friends here. That might create bias once an Apply HN post reaches first page vs. another. 2. Participating startups risk facing public bashing while hoping to…

We've put a ton of work into HN's anti-gaming software. There's no piece of code we've worked harder on. We also have a ton of experience looking at voting data. That's one advantage of keeping this process close to how HN normally works: that software and experience will apply here.

That's definitely not to say that there won't be new forms of gaming that we haven't seen before and don't know how to combat. It's a risk. We can mitigate that risk by emphasizing the quality of discussion in the threads. Experience has taught that genuine community interest is pretty recognizable. If a post gets lots of upvotes, but little community interest, or the interest doesn't seem genuine, HN users will notice, as will we. That should provide a measure of self-correction, and beyond that, we'll see what happens. If you think you notice fakery, hn@ycombinator.com is the place to let us know.

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#89

Post by nacs »

dang wrote: post #39
hooande wrote: post #33

I'm not sure about considering upvotes. People might send out message to all their friends saying "There's this thing called hackernews, can you sign up and vote for me?". Similar to how someone would launch a kickstarter. I don't think that this will be very common, especially not in the first few batches, but it will become common sense after a few years. Remember, you're dealing with hackers here. I worked my YC a…

You may be right, but I'm pretty sure the community would hate it if we didn't consider upvotes at all. The idea is to fit this process in to how HN already works, and see what happens. HN's pretty good for discussing stories about technology and startups, and a lot of those discussions are a kind of vetting of investment decisions and startup pitches anyhow. Why not move that way earlier in the process and see what…

Maybe limiting votes to people who have been registered X amount of days or have X amount of karma would help solve this issue with votes?

Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund

#90

Post by botterworkshop »

This is brilliant and immediately reminded me of "wisdom of the crowd" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOucwX7Z1HU (start at 2:00 if TLDW).

Basically average crowd > individuals. 160 people guess # of jelly beans in a jar. Few are close, but averaging all the guesses leads to 4 away from actual.

Would be fascinating if applied to this as well...

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