Hey, check out the site we're working on: www.criticrania.com. We're doing exactly what you mention. You'll need to sign up to see these features, but it's something we're working hard towards perfecting.
Interesting article but it's still arbitrary. I don't think it solves the problem still. What it boils down to is trusting the raters. This is the only way to get by spam, ignorance, and trolling.
I think the solution is knowing who is rating what you're looking at. In the old sense - "Quality over quanitty." I don't need to know what the whole world gave it, just a few people who I've come to trust. We're trying to do this here: www.criticrania.com.
I think this is the only real way around this problem.
Yeah, it makes the bold generic claim to answer "why [all] rating systems don't work", makes the bizarre claim that histograms that show the distribution are "worse" than a scalar mean, and then presents as a solution "We've solved the generic problem by doing two things: adding a 'rewatchable' rating, and plotted it against general quality rating as a scatter plot." Rewatchable is irrelevant to things that aren't movies. The scatter plot is only relevant if the correlation between the two is important, but the given graphs don't support that the correlation has meaningful information beyond that people who like a movie are more likely to want to rewatch it, which is a correlation that is likely consistent across all movies in their dataset and conveys little information about any particular movie.
I think it comes down to fasle negatives vs false positives. A company is in a far better situation if they don't hire a good candidate than if they hired a bad one. So asking algorithm questions and brain teasers, while not a perfect science, is not a bad way to screen fro general intelligence, which hopefully the company can mold into an efficient employee.
See and therein lies the problem! I love working on the idea (Far more than I like doing school, that's for sure). It's practically my baby. But of course I like my idea...
But you raise very good points. I am quite stuck on this one, as you can see.
"You can create new ideas, change the world in ways you haven't even thought of yet." - What if this one isn't it. When do I move on? Haha
I guess I should have added more detail. We've written out a full business plan, it's just very weak (knowingly). We've pitched a few different times and just finished up a Business Plan competition at our school.
It was a fantastic experience and we learned an absolute ton (a lot of it being how much we did wrong from the start, but still very valuable). It's just so hard to tell the difference between "quitting" and spending your time more wisely, i.e. on a new idea.
Are you validating any of these ideas with even 10x random strangers of your target demo? I mean with potential users vs pitching the plans to schools or potential investors.
5x different ideas x10 targets = 50x engagements, not out of the realm of an intensive time-suck. Could eventually lead to an alternate plan point of focus.
Hacker News is a great community, but not really the audience we are looking to attract. With little to no funding, what're the best ways to get people to just take a look?
We went through exactly this at Page99Test.com, a 'micro-critique' writing community. (Well, in fact, I doubt any startup under 3 years doesn't go through the same thing, even those with funding.) Here's what we learned, briefly:
DON'T UNDERESTIMATE TWITTER
Prior to our launch (i.e., when we had just a sign-up page), we used Twitter a lot to get the word out. I was totally floored by how well it worked. Cost nothing more than time -- which is admittedly a resource in short supply for startups. Worth every minute spent. A lot of bloggers and journalists online found us and wrote about us before we'd even launched; in fact, The Guardian (big UK paper) wrote a full spread on us that continues to pay off, six months later.
We have a new 'startup' in the works. Although we don't see ourselves launching until mid- to late-summer, we're already starting to tweet about it.
DON'T DO PRESS RELEASES
If you want to pitch some writers, pitch them directly. No one seems to give a crep about press releases sent out over the wire. Very expensive if you're bootstrapping.
TRY TO GET HN TRAFFIC, TOO
Around the time we launched, one of the HN contributors (Shereef at bettermeans) wrote a post about us and sent some fab amounts of HN traffic our way. Of course, that traffic showed up just to check us out and then left, never to return again. Which was fine. A handful of uber-smart peeps from the HN community actually gave us stellar feedback that we used to optimize the site early on.
It's interesting that you say Hacker, because it is really the avenue we've used least. Facebook was a good start, because friends can invite friends, and so on. But it tends to seem like spam there which is an immediate turn off.
How did you go about contacting the writers? Did you have prior relationships with them or some sort of contact?
The reference to reaching out directly to writers was actually based less on P99T and more on a different startup we used to own, a realtor rating site. In that case, we found a writer for a major newspaper that we wanted to write a story on us --- just looked him up online and called him up --- and pitched the story over the phone. We followed up by sending him a press release we'd written... so we did actually write a press release, we just didn't -- and still haven't -- found it valuable to send it out over the newswire.
You make a very good pitch! =) Do you know if they happen to have an established exchange program? (I haven't looked on their site yet but I will!) Thanks, this is definitely on my radar now.
They do have a good deal of exchange programs. But if you're not applying through one of the big networks (ERASMUS, etc.), then it's probably down to the individual university.
There are tons of exchange students from all over the world, both Master's and PhDs, so it shouldn't be a problem at all.
I'm only a sophomore, so I'm just now starting to try to figure out what direction I want to go in within CS. So the abroad experience would really be to experience teachings of computer science in a different fashion than is custom here. Whether that will actually happen... No idea.
Well, I know from personal experience the universities in the Netherlands are pretty decent when it comes to CS. Added bonus is that practically everybody can speak English (and don't mind doing so).
I'm a msc-student in Groningen. I hear the CS programmes at Delft, Utrecht and Twente are nice as well. The cultures/approaches are all different though, have a look at their websites and see if anything resonates with you.
