ByAntonio Carusillo
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4 years ago
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Idea
Darko Savic Jul 14, 2021
Creative endurance prize: Share one idea per day for a year to win one bitcoin
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Originality
Is it original or innovative?
Feasibility
Is it feasible?
Necessity
Is it targeting an unsolved problem?
Conciseness
Is it concisely described?
Bounty for the best solution
Provide a bounty for the best solution
Bounties attract serious brainpower to the challenge.
The idea is to create a competition where the best ideator gets 1 bitcoin after consistently posting one idea per day for a year. It's about endurance in creativity. In order to win, your ideas would have to be statistically better than those of other participants.
Why?
For you: a great way to sharpen your problem-solving skills within a community of creative people. Also a few other things.
For the platform: a great way of discovering talented creative thinkers and it fits perfectly with the platform's vision.
The platform would have spent that money on marketing anyway. Instead of handing it over to social media giants, it will go to an ideator and make a difference in his/her world. Someday their ideas might make a difference in our world.
It takes from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. Comming up with one new idea per day sharpens one's creative thinking skills and enriches humanity by one additional ideator that likes to improve the world around them.
Size of the bounty
We can afford to pledge 1 bitcoin ourselves. Before the competition launches, we will talk to some high-profile bitcoiners to see if they can chip in to increase the bounty or extend it so that there are additional prizes for the runner-up great ideators.
Why Bitcoin?
Hear what Andreas Antonopoulos had to say about Bitcoin as a store of value 3 years ago. How has it done since? If you know a better store of value, please speak up:)
What defines an idea?
- It's a new or significantly improved version of something (define the novelty of it well)
- It doesn't already exist in the proposed form (we will do research)
- You came up with it yourself
Other than that, anything goes. Solve a problem. Significantly improve an existing solution. Come up with a science experiment. Anything that people would appreciate existing.
What defines "the best" idea?
This is to be determined. Let's come up with a fair rating system in the creative contributions section below. Some examples could be:
- Based on upvotes, one winning idea would be chosen every day. After 365 days the person who statistically won most of the days, wins the bitcoin bounty.
- Most upvoted in the first 24 hours of being posted relative to other ideas.
- To prevent vote fraud, only upvotes by established platform members (rank "brainstormer" 51 points or higher) would be counted.
- Alternatively, a panel of trustworthy and competent people could be asked to rate each participant's idea for each of the 365 days. This is quite a lot to ask of them. Could they vote in batches once per week?
- What else? Please post your suggestions below.
Who owns the ideas?
Everyone. Once you publish an idea (insert into public domain) it becomes unpatentable. Anyone can build and profit from it as they please. Everything posted on the platform is shared under CC BY 4.0.
So share your ideas, not your plans. Hopefully some of the ideas will be brought to life and make the world a slightly better place.
When does it start?
People should be given enough time to prepare and the word to spread. Also, we have to figure out how to fairly judge the competition. Some software upgrades are needed too. Maybe December 1st?
How do I sign up?
We will send an email invitation to everyone on the platform a week before the competition launches. This page will also be updated with detailed instructions.
If possible the creative endurance prize should be traditional and yearly. As the platform grows so should the endurance prize.
[1]https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
[2]https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin
[3]https://darkosavic.com/make-your-idea-notebook-public/
19
Creative contributions
A buffer of ideas saved as drafts to take the pressure off
People who want to participate could use the "Save draft" functionality to put some distance between themselves and the pressure of having to come up with something great every day.
On the days when we feel inspired and have our ideas flowing we could save a few as drafts and post them on the days when we can't come up with anything good.
We will upgrade the draft function to allow post scheduling on specific date/time.
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Selecting the best idea
JM
The truth is not possessed by the majority.
Only one, the one who knows and can only be recognized and judged by some: those who know.
Therefore the truth cannot be chosen by popular vote, but rather by an expert committee on a matter.
Ideas must be ranked and a group of experts in each category must be the final jury for ideas in that group.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Even experts make mistakes. Venture capitalists and angel investors are professionals that bet on winning teams and ideas. I often read stories on how they passed an amazing opportunity because they thought the idea wouldn't work.
Some kind of a majority opinion is probably as good as it gets when it comes to selecting the best idea of each day. Having a panel of experts and having them vote might make people feel better. So maybe a panel of experts voting on the best idea daily.
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How do we ensure quality?
This is a potential curveball in a quantity-based competition. We can reiterate that quality is more important than quantity, but if the mechanisms reinforce opposite incentives that will not bring out the best quality, and even with quality control moderators it will still lower the general inputs' standards.
This is so important and key to the site's mission that I think there should be specific incentives for high quality, not just moderating against poor quality. A simple example would be for the top post every week or month in terms of balancing creativity with also thorough and accurate supportive research links (to ensure people aren't tempted to cite false facts or claim opinions as research to support their idea.
Obviously, we can have strict rules against this but not all such cases are black and white, and The burden then inevitably ends up falling on the moderators to quality control, so any way to prevent a slew of lesser quality posts painted over to look like they mean something and burdening someone to check all the sources and for potential bad faith reasoning would be ideal.
For that reason if we simply incentivise higher quality within the mechanism itself so people strive for the optimal, rather than ending up in the situation where the incentives punish people for being not fast enough and they MAYBE get punished for lower quality if it gets detected (although negative incentives also tend to backfire hard and we do want people to rather try than not try).
Although I reckon highest quality/most creative/most well-researched posts over a certain time period should ideally be a separate prize because this will make it more attainable, we cannot separate quality and DO want to incentivise it ongoingly. Sometimes we cannot incentivise both the top quality posts and the highest quantity by the same person in the same competition mechanism but we CAN incentivise both as priority in order to not lose the trend that the content put out has a certain level of quality as a norm.
I think given trade off opportunities between quality or quantity we should be ensuring we incentivise and enable people to follow quality, because otherwise it can be very tempting for people to take the quickest shortcuts to get results, as becomes the easy habit of so many content creation websites.
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MC
Michelle Christine3 years ago
Quality should ALWAYS be emphasized over quantity when possible.
That's especially easy to say when building something simple -- should I spend more time/cost on this to make it better, or not? If it's easy to assume that more time and cost will typically, predictably lead to something better, then emphasizing quality can be simply enacted by allowing more time, effort, materials.
But creativity and ideas don't necessarily work that way. It's a question of philosophy not just time/materials/effort as to where ideas even come from. They arrive sometimes all at once, sometimes not at all, often seemingly randomly. It's hard to say that a "focus" on quality would really lead to higher quality of an idea on a case by case basis, because that's assuming it's largely in the person's control. Which is possible, but harder to rely on that assumption. I do think a quantity approach (to some extent, maybe not completely untethered) that incentivizes more sharing of ideas in general, useful or not, could increase the likelihood of there being one (or more) absolutely amazing ideas somewhere in there. A minimum quantity standard might be ok (not rewarding the quantity itself but still encouraging consistency). Encouraging consistency for the purpose of eventually bringing a great idea to surface is at odds with introducing negative incentives.
Agree this does introduce the moderator/administrative challenge of too many ideas. There could be some sort of self-moderation system up front (rank your own ideas to give more weight to the quality ones) though I can see a lot of flaws coming out of that as well.
You could also have a system not designed to "ensure" quality but make it more likely that you'll get quality. Like an up front set of unbiased criteria, even if extremely basic, (does this truly attempt to solve a challenge or advance an environment which could, etc) and classify whether ideas meet the criteria. If you're consistently posting things that don't meet the unbiased criteria that's different than posting a non quality idea, or an idea that someone might not like or disagree with.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
As long as there is even one person in the competition that goes for quality, anyone going purely for quantity doesn't stand a chance of beating them. The highest quality ideas would set the bar every day. Quantity doesn't help if your ideas don't win on any day.
I think anyone doing hard work on quality and consistently showing up for many days won't easily give up to be beaten by a quantity person on a technicality. Someone will hopefully get a streak of quality going. They will set the pace of the competition.
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How do we ensure that there is no winning based on a technicality?
How do we ensure that the winner isn't chosen simply because others failed to post every day or dropped off?
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Darko Savic3 years ago
If someone wins because everyone else dropped off they still have to complete the 365 days
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Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago
In addition to the points mentioned by Spook Louw, spreading this message will increase the number of participating brainstormers will increase the competition, and hence, the motivation to think of and post an idea every day.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
My suggestion is to use a points-based system and adding themed monthly prizes with extra points.
So, each person will receive 1 point per entry per day. That means if you complete the entire challenge you are guaranteed to have 365 points.
Every day, the idea with the most likes on that day will receive an additional 5 points.
In this way, quality ideas could make up points if you miss a couple of days.
On top of that, I suggest 12 monthly themes sponsored by outside partners, at the end of the month they will choose the best idea for their theme and the contestant will receive a cash prize as well as 30 additional points.
Contestants do not have to keep to the theme when contributing ideas, but the added points and cash prize incentive will make every month interesting and exciting. It will allow people who do not really stand a chance of winning the overall prize to still get something out of it, as well as being a great way to gain a lead on everyone else who is posting daily.
I think this system will ensure a good balance between quantity and quality. Only getting the single point for contributing daily will probably not be enough to win, so brainstormers will have to make sure their ideas are well thought out. This also allows contestants to make up for days missed for whatever reason by winning daily or monthly extra points.
If, for instance, you happen to miss 3 days, it doesn't mean you are out, you simply need to make up for it with some high-quality ideas.
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Options for creating and publishing ideas!)
Perhaps it would be a good decision to post ideas not every day, but you can anytime, during the week, and check them week by week, and assessing each good idea, award it certain points, according to its level!) This can be just as productive approach! )
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Darko Savic3 years ago
The "every day" part is the endurance challenge that keeps the spirit of competition alive and everyone on their toes to come up with something good tomorrow.
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What happens when people post ideas that are not new?
What do we do, when people enter into competition ideas that are not novel or not sufficiently upgraded? They might genuinely not know that their idea already exists. Each entry would be researched by a moderator.
Should they be given a few hours to come up with something else? How would that work on the platform? Should a moderator put their entry on hold and talk with them until they upgrade or change the entry?
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MC
Michelle Christine3 years ago
To clarify, for an idea to already "exist" that would mean specifically written by someone on this platform?
Or thought of by someone, somewhere, at anytime, ever before? (Which would really force any new ideas towards obscurity not necessarily value, assuming there even truly are any ideas that exist which haven't been imagined yet).
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Deru Xu3 years ago
This project may be relatively simple at the beginning, but over time, thousands of ideas have been created, and how to manage these ideas is very important. How to ensure that everyone has different ideas? Is it possible to set up a special section to display these ideas and use more detailed tags to distinguish the types of ideas.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
I think that if an idea does not meet the criteria, it should be removed. The author should be notified and they can receive 24 hours to change the idea or improve it to an acceptable point. They will still have to enter the following day's idea on time.
This brings up another question, seeing as this competition will have contestants from different parts of the world, how do we get past the time difference? Does a contestant have 24 hours to post their next idea, or will there be a set cut off time for everyone? In order to give everyone an equal shot at winning the best idea of the day, a set cut off time would probably be better.
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How to fairly select the best idea every day?
We need to come up with a fair and transparent rating system. Please add your suggestions in the comments below.
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MC
Michelle Christine3 years ago
There could be a panel and an additional prize 5, 10, 20, or even more years from now to really get the best ideas. Having the benefit of hindsight to better be able to assess which ideas led to the creation of the most value, directly and indirectly. Still think an earlier prize would be necessary for motivation. Near impossible to measure accurately either way.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Michelle Christine that's a great idea. A "Nobel prize" type of prize that would be given once every 5-10 years. Lucrative enough to matter. It would be based on hindsight. Out of everything that was posted on the platform, what came to life in a way that had the most impact on humanity.
Regardless of whether it was built based on the platform post or someone else independently stumbled upon the same idea. It needed to be original/novel when posted and done so well before It came to life.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
I think ideas can be approved by moderators, then, the approved idea with the most upvotes every day could "win" that day.
I realize simply looking at votes by anyone allows for fake accounts and might be stacked against people who don't have large networks to ask for support, but by moderating the ideas, we can at least ensure that each proposed idea is legitimate.
Alternatively, a panel of judges could be chosen from current contributors, disqualifying them from participating in the competition, ensuring their unbiased opinions.
A set number of points could be awarded to the best, or even top 3 or top 10 ideas each day, which can then be tallied up at the end of the competition. This way, you are not disqualified if you miss a couple of days, but not posting would mean that you miss out on a chance to collect points. This would ensure that someone who posts an incomplete idea every day has less of a chance of winning than someone who posts 200 good ideas.
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What do people who don't win get out of participation?
Some things that come to mind:
Smaller prizes for runner-up ideators
We will do our best to attract some benefactors that might chip in and reward a few people who made it to the finish line, barely missing the first prize. A year is plenty of time for people to step up and support some bring ideators.
Proof of exceptional abilities
This is an opportunity to showcase one's creative thinking skills. Possibly a good reference for future work or finding people to partner with.
Sharpening of one's creative thinking skills
This is an excellent practice. The community is holding you accountable to show up every day and do your thing. James Altucher talks about the importance of daily ideation and how it affects your creativity here.
Rapid feedback
Feedback from people gives you a more realistic picture of how you are doing as an ideator and the quality of your ideas.
What else?
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Pygmalion Effect:
High expectations lead to high performance (and vice versa). People who place high expectations on themselves are more likely to internalize these expectations and improve their performance accordingly.
Also this:
Compete with yourself, not with others. There will always be someone with more.
And this:
Discipline has momentum. Exert a little bit to build the rest.
But also this:
We create our own stress due to our perception of what we must do.
So don't forget to have fun above all:)
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Who should we collaborate with?
Increasing the prize fund
Do you know someone who would chip in for the prize fund? Please ask them. With more contributors on board, we could award some prizes to good runner-up ideators and increase the event's reach.
We are up for any kind of collaboration. How can we make this worthy of their time?
Finding established experts to judge the competition
The ideas should be judged by people with a good track record of working with ideas. Ideators, startup investors, serial entrepreneurs, product designers, etc. People that can recognize a good idea when they see it. Who should we ask?
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A small fee for the participants
A small fee will:
- Motivate the participants to post daily. It is the same as enrolling for a paid online course where the participants are more likely to stick around till the end compared to a free course.
- That fee will be useful for the platform to pay the judges and moderators or retrieve advertisement costs, etc.
- Improve the quality of the ideas since the participants will be more motivated to strive and win.
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MC
Michelle Christine3 years ago
Any barrier no matter how small means that this is no longer a group of people freely contributing ideas.
A cost of even just $1 is the breaking down of a fundamental philosophy that ideas should flow freely. I'm not necessarily saying that cost isn't worth it, but should be considered.
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Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago
Michelle Christine I agree with what you say. On the other hand, any investment on your part creates a sense of belongingness and you maintain the task at hand a bit more eagerly than you would if it were available freely. I think it is a trade-off. A fee will create barriers to participation and no fee may reduce the seriousness of the contributors. I, therefore, think a small fee, enough to keep you engaged but not much to discourage you, is probably the middle-ground. I know people who spend hundreds on games. A small fee should not discourage most thinkers.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
The small fee could go directly into the runner-up bounty pool so that everything collected would be divided into 2 equal bounties for 2nd and 3rd place.
If it happens that the bounty pool overshoots the 1 bitcoin for first place, the total could be divided by 5-10 runner-ups. That way the winner still gets the highest prize but more people get compensated for their effort.
The downside: the entry fee requirement would probably reduce the number of participants. This might be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it:)
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This is totally doable and becomes fun after you push past the scary part
As I post this I'm on my 116th day of a personal challenge to post one idea per day. I wanted to see how long I could keep it going. When I built up a good streak, maintaining it became my religion:)
Last night I was struggling to come up with something. I was cutting it short. Never posted that late in the day. There were 3 hours left until midnight. Today the floodgate opened and I came up with 16 ideas within 40 minutes.
I did some drawing in the morning. In mid-afternoon, I felt tired and about to doze off. I came up with 2 ideas before falling asleep. An unintentional notification woke me up minutes after I fell asleep. I came up with another idea. Then I fired up the "playground" app within OpenAI's GPT3 and let it suggest all sorts of random problems. I quickly wrote down what came to me as one-liner drafts then moved on to the next problem that caught my attention.
I ended coming up with 16 ideas within 40 minutes. It was an amazing day. A few more like these and the "one idea per day for a year" competition would be completed successfully.
In the past I came close to dropping out several times. Especially when I was going through a difficult period while simultaneously my backlog of ideas ran out. I pulled through by extracting an occasional solution even from the bad period.
It's getting easier by the day. When I'm running low on time I know that I'll come up with something as long as I reserve some uninterrupted time for ideation. The last 4 hours in the day are my backup. If nothing good comes to me until then, I shut out all distractions, retreat into my thinking corner and do nothing else until I come up with something.
So far it seems that one idea per day for a year is totally doable.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Our skills are the result of neural pathways built from past repetition. As with anything in life, we get good at things we practice. Trying to come up with useful ideas on a daily basis develops a problem-solving mindset. Consequently, it gets progressively easier to come up with good ideas.
I vaguely remember reading something about a new skill taking 40-45 days of hard training to proficiency. I'm trying to look up the research on it. Will update if I find it.
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People who find out about the competition after it has started
Arguably the biggest downside to how I envisioned this competition is the fact that people who find it after it has started (majority) would be too late to participate. Which sucks.
Even if there was a buffer - people who start late, get to finish late by continuing to post until they have done the full 365 days these problems would remain:
- the inconvenience of people who finished early having to wait for several months before the results are known
- the deadline would have to be drawn somewhere, so some cool ideators would still find about the competition too late
One way to solve this is to allow anyone that starts late to also finish late. For example, people can start participating between September 1st and December 31st. Posting one idea for 365 consecutive days completes the challenge for each individual. This means that anyone that started posting on September 1st, 2021 ends the competition on August 31st, 2022. The end results would not be known until the last contestant has finished posting on December 31st, 2022.
Alternatively, we could postpone the start and advertise the competition well beforehand. People could sign up to be notified via email a few days before the competition goes live.
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Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago
Whatever solution we choose needs to be applied to those who miss a few days due to any kind of emergency - not well, out of network coverage, etc. Since we cannot police each and every case and verify the reason for not posting an idea on a day, we might need to keep a fixed number of buffer days for all.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Should people be allowed to catch up if they missed the initial few days? I think skipping a day in the middle should disqualify anyone, but maybe those who are late to find out about the competition could be given a few days to catch up?
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Povilas S3 years ago
There's no good workaround. A deadline is a deadline for both start and finish, that's part of the competition, people just have to deal with it. It's best to put as much effort to advertise it really well before and make sure that anyone who would be at least vaguely interested will know about it in advance, if they didn't join till the deadline it's their fault, if they will want to join they will make sure to do it, that's part of the whole thing:)
And if someone still missed hearing about it, maybe it's not meant for them to participate at that time for some reason. I think it's better to make a pre-competition period longer than allow big buffer times. Extending time to include more people might make the competition look sloppy and not gaining enough attention and it might become an obstacle for making it finally happen at all.
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More frequent smaller wins, but not too frequent (eg monthly) for multiple reasons
It's important to realise how rewards of too high stakes can serve as disincentives and even greatly put people off. @Spook Louw's suggestion about monthly incentives got me thinking about monthly being a more effective competition mechanism.
There are multiple benefits for shorter-term competitions:
- Easier Focus, smaller scope, less pressure from risk
- Short term rewards feel achievable, safer and fun and also inspire more involvement, positivity and collaboration
- Rapid iterations mean frequent feedback for improving future competitions. This doubles as market research on what challenges and incentives generate the best quality AND quantity content on the site
- Easier Focus, smaller scope, less pressure from risk
I am already a big fan of smaller wins to keep me motivated and speed up my workflow.
In learning to set myself smaller milestones I have found myself able to contribute more frequently. The important thing is that these milestones still be big enough to challenge me into a good concentrated workflow and that I prioritise dedicated time for them, but not so big as to be overwhelming. It’s helped me to zone in on the contributions I make to make sure the quality is good without getting too much “analysis paralysis” from a combination of perfectionism and too large a focus area.
A good comparison for these would be to look at the effectiveness of game jams and hackathons, which seem to break people out of the usual flow and induce real creativity due to the shorter (but not too short) timebox of dedicated events.
Breaking work down into smaller units and deadlines is also part of the philosophy in shaping Agile, the main software delivery philosophy and project management system, to maximize efficiency and sustained continuous delivery even in the case of long (EG 12 month) projects. EG a scrum sprint (work cycle) is conventionally 1-4 weeks, which helps make it easier to hone in on priority and committed targets during that time.
Aside from reducing pressure from the scope itself, building off of smaller time commitments also exponentially lessens the external “high stakes” pressure of future unknowns, as a year is a long time to commit to daily availability without guarantee, as it is all-or-nothing in terms of whether you will win, even if you do build a rich experience in the exercise, it could be argued that that could be achieved without that same pressure and with more likelihood of immediate rewards.
I tend to brainstorm better without external unknowns as stressors. To return to that “create” zone, I have to pretend they don’t exist, or even take a break similarly to what you propose here. Something as big as a commitment to post every day for a year with 365 chances of messing up has the likelihood of terrifying me very quickly given my creativity is easier to summon in bursts and sometimes seems to require days of doing something completely different to recover.
If I competed I’d have to work very hard to shut it out of my mind and pretend it didn't exist to maintain creativity, which seems counterproductive as an incentive.
Weighing up those risks, where it becomes a heavy time and effort investment gamble, people are likely to find a safer investment for their time even if it generates smaller rewards.
The difference in committing a month (or few weeks, etc), if one month leaves you particularly burnt out you can give yourself more of a break the next month without the fear of punishment and losing all progress just from one slip up.
There is a “safety” in a natural stopping point at the end of the month, similar to getting a game save at the end of a challenging mission, where you can feel a sense of "closure" of the last chapter and more emboldened in control and able to go all out for the next “round” which can be really motivating. I personally have a tendency to steer away from commitments that don’t have a defined short term milestone with some guarantee of progress or return, kind of like a “save point” in a game, or the likelihood and stakes of messing up seem to increase with further progress.
Even people less eccentric than me may find this a large amount of pressure. Eliciting more feedback on this can only benefit, particularly with such a large investment, on how to to avoid invoking people’s fear of failure and to rather seek to encourage creative thinking, as fear is counterproductive to strategising.
2. Short term rewards feel achievable and fun and also inspire more positivity and collaboration
In terms of the benefits of shorter one-month milestones, aside from them being more fun and motivating, it also means that where someone cannot sustain endless effort for a whole year without burning out, there will always be SOME people pushing for the goal at different times. In this way, we rely on the power of the strongest competitors each month to motivate content, while leaving open the possibility for more people to join later as these competitions catch on, not on only those individuals who can commit to being consistent throughout the year, and we get diverse contributions as a result of more people being keen to commit to a month at a time.
There is also nothing to say that someone cannot aim to do this over the whole year, the only difference for those people would be that that they have checkpoints with smaller wins along the way after each achievement.
More people can feel fulfilled that they won something or ALMOST got there. Offering second or third place prizes as you mentioned in your post, @Darko can further maximise this effect.
Shorter milestones also inspire more of a net positive effect while minimising the negative and cutthroat aspects of competition, which it seems we are striving for here - less risk and more playfulness keep people keen to participate, but still able to be good sports and even suggest improvements on each other’s ideas, rather than the massive disincentive from boosting each other's ideas in a larger-stakes competition.
With the risk vs incentive not being such high stakes as to cause major stress, this can also prevent other negative antipattern incentives from “grind” culture like neglecting proper research and quality or even shifting the focus from quality problem solving to simply content generation.
3. Rapid iterations mean frequent feedback for improving future competitions
Rules with each iteration could be modified and improved upon based on your experience and feedback running the competition process. If it turns out that there is a flaw in the competition mechanism or incentives, unclear wording or people find a way to exploit it to get results you would not want to keep the competition running for a year without changing the rules but if people have already committed to an existing process those winning are more likely to become bitter if the rules change significantly once they have started as that tends to be seen as going back on your word.
On the other hand, those losing are more likely to be embittered if you do not change the rules in the interests of fairness. This comes back to how the more time and effort invested and the bigger the prize the more people seriously care about the outcome and there are few upsides to this kind of dispute involving public opinions.
It also means in the worst-case scenario dispute you can potentially just offer two prizes without it breaking the bank since prizes would be smaller in proportion to the time frames.
With smaller prizes and investment there is also the improved likelihood that people will not take it too badly if they lose particularly if they disagree with how the judgement was made, and simply try harder the next time and take it all as a fun personal challenge with winning as a bonus.
This way you invest less per competition but improve the process with every iteration based on participation insights.
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salemandreus3 years ago
I think a prize, or prizes for the highest quality posts of the month as well as the most quality posts (above a certain level metric) and maybe even one which combines the two best in a point system would also do really well in incentivizing desired behaviour of keeping the focus on quality not just quantity.
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Hybridizing monthly and year-long with different "rounds" - encourage comment participation through spot prizes for the people not competing
One way to hybridise the segmented or “monthly” approach while still keeping the competition over a year could be having different “rounds” where contestants are whittled down, with different types of challenges being foregrounded! The first quarter of the year for example could be about putting together a post per day, thereafter the participants put together X number of creative posts every week or month and try to out-compete each other in terms of things like the thoroughness of research, future-proofing and maintenance, even a feasible business or investment plan.
This would form a very educational template for people wanting to learn how best to iterate in terms of convergent ideation, and would double as a type of market research when it comes to seeing HOW ideas can develop and be enhanced!
During this process, others not competing in the competition would be encouraged to post on those posts just like any other post, which would be a way for them to also “participate” and could bring together the “net positive” ideation effect of multiple minds collaborating even while there is a competition going on!
This would make it similar to a spectator sport where those not directly involved can still “root for a team” and follow progress while being part of the general channelling of creative ideas! It would be particularly motivating to know that your own suggestion might be taken by one of the competitors in further fleshing out their idea! There could even be spot prizes for the best comment on a contribution, to further encourage collaboration!
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Survey to see if people are more motivated by alternatives to Bitcoin?
I personally (perhaps through irrational fear) steer clear of cryptocurrencies given the option, and particularly Bitcoin due to its volatility particularly in the past few months and some negative past experiences of my own which may have discouraged me from seeking to invest in it purposely, so perhaps Bitcoin would not hold equal appeal for everyone - might be worthwhile to find something else.
Regardless of the benefits bitcoin is still considered risky for many people due to its volatility and people’s lack of understanding of it - it seems to appeal to a specific culture of people who are enthusiastic about the technology rather than everyone in general as a safe investment. Admittedly I may be biased - my dad is a financial advisor who is rather averse to bitcoin which may personally prejudice me (obviously his views are not the views of all financial advisors!).
Although that amount of free money is certainly appealing, bitcoin in itself tends to be something that is more likely to be a dissuading factor to me rather than an incentivising one, all else being equal, possibly due to some bad experiences and also wanting to simplify and also minimise my risk (which may be a shared sentiment during these volatile times). I am admittedly less informed than many people on the subject, but the need to stay current with the technology and keep abreast of news plus the risk of still wrongly predicting where the market is going, even if it may be more than the “gamble” it seems to me would still be enough to intimidate me
But perhaps I am not the typical contributor profile on this site and perhaps most people see investing in bitcoin as being a more secure investment given the recent technological push with so many lockdowns and social distancing. Perhaps a survey on the site regarding this and other factors would give more insight into what would best motivate people.
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A few thoughts
If people post multiple ideas per day, they should choose one for the competition and lock it in for that day. This is to give everyone a fair chance at winning each day. The decision has to be made each day.
To lower the work burden on the judges maybe they could judge in batches, once per week or so. For example, each Sunday or Monday we would learn about the previous week's 7 winning ideas, one for each day.
Moderators should do their best to determine whether an idea is new (or significantly improved) at the time it was submitted. Each novel idea gets some kind of a checkmark that it passed as novel. If in time someone figures out that this was a mistake, the person who posted the idea gets to replace it with a new one.
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Flexible timing but mandatory endurance
It would be great if anyone was able to participate any time between now and December 31st, 2022 and they would qualify as long as they put in 365 new ideas.
The problem:
How do the judges fairly judge ideas against one another if the submissions are not all done on same days?
Someone who posts early might be posting without competition for a few days. Someone who started late would have tons of competition.
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Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago
Instead of comparison of ideas that were posted on a day, the first ideas posted by the participants are compared, irrespective of when they were posted. Then the second ideas are compared and so on.
The advantages:
1. This will eliminate the problem of unfair comparison since some people might start early and have an advantage since no other idea is posted on that day.
2. Using this kind of comparison, true "creative endurance" will be judged. Based on experience, it so happens that we have several great ideas to start with. The number of great ideas goes down since thinking of a great (winning idea) idea daily is difficult. Therefore, the first few great ideas of one person may be compared with another participant's 50th idea in the competition, which might not be so great, but is a novel idea nevertheless. This will give the person who started later, an added advantage. To avoid that, if the ideas are marked as first, second, third, etc., and all the first ones are judged together, it will identify the differences in "creative endurance" and not just "creativity" across the participants.
3. It will not be too much work for the judges. The judges will not be able to start judging right from the first day of the competition. They will have to start judging from January 1, 2022.
The disadvantages:
1. No winners will be announced during the competition. All the winners will be announced only after the competition.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Shubhankar Kulkarni Yes, that could work, however:
- Feedback is crucial and motivating so that you know how you are doing. In this case, there would be no feedback until the end.
- Someone starting late could still have an advantage by picking a few competitors and gauging their ideas (first, second, third, etc) then making sure what they post is at least better than that.
- Judges would have a hell of a task reviewing 365 x number of contestants at the end.
- By reviewing late, there is a higher chance of finding many ideas not to be novel. This is more difficult to fix (give people a chance to replace the non-novel ideas) when all should be replaced at once.
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Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago
Darko Savic I agree. Your first and last points are the most important and cannot be circumvented while using the first, second, etc. marking system.
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Proposal for a rating system
Vote fraud reduction
To prevent vote fraud via made-up accounts we could limit the like function to accounts that have accumulated at least X points. That way people have to earn the right to vote by first contributing high-quality content and building a reputation. Even if they want to cheat with made-up accounts it would be very difficult to earn the right to vote for each made-up account.
Judges and medals
We could add special “medals” for judges so that each judge can pin their medal to one of the ideas each day. This means double feedback - one from the public via upvotes and the other from the expert judges via medals.
If for example, we had 3 judges (that’s 3 medal pins every day). When all 3 pins are assigned, the 4th pin could be calculated automatically based on public likes. Whichever idea has the most public likes gets the public medal that day. In this example there would be 4 medals assigned each day.
What if there is no definite winner each day?
If no user receives the majority of medals, then there are multiple winners for that day. Would this be ok? Do we need a definite winner each day? A year is plenty of time for someone to take the lead. We could have play-offs if multiple people end the year with the same score.
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Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago
Definitely. Alternatively, if three players win on a day, they share 1/3rd of the score. So, for example, if you have a straight win on 2 days and a shared win (along with two others) on the third day, your total win score would be 2.333. If you share a win with only one other person, your score for the 3 days would be 2.5. Does this make sense?
Also, the medals awarded by the experts should be displayed on the platform only after the day ends. Otherwise, the medals might affect the votes (people might vote for those ideas that present a medal).
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Add your creative contribution
General comments
Darko Savic3 years ago
In this video from 3:20 onward James Altucher is talking about the importance of coming up with ideas on a daily basis https://youtu.be/LS06mrFgFEo?t=202
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Darko Savic3 years ago
If possible this should be traditional and yearly. As the platform grows so should the endurance prize each year.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
Darko Savic That way, subsequent competitions would grow in competitiveness. People would start preparing well ahead of time. It could only be a positive thing!
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