Yahoo News and Witcoin Ripoff

[cunicula]

Witcoin was around a while ago, but wasn't successful. It was based on paying people bitcoin when their posts were upvoted. People had to pay to post.
It's a nice idea, but had asinine content.

As an alternative, would it be possible to piggy back on yahoo content? Say you made a site exclusively devoted to yahoo news links. Then you would not need to bootstrap meaningful content yourself. Yahoo would make it.

People love to post rabid comments on yahoo and vote on them. The principle is that yahoo creates the content and the site offers a forum for commenting on it.
The site could feature some stats about the earnings and losses of registered users to encourage competition. You would also be able to look at their comments.

I think payment should be optional. Payment would allow you to earn money from upvotes. However, you would lose money if you got fewer upvotes than average.
It would be a competition and the site would skim some off the top.

I know the thought of this site is sickening, but in my experience that is positively correlated with success and popularity.

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[Stephen Gornick]

I think payment should be optional.

Optional payment to vote?  Witcoin required a payment to vote, so there was very little voting.  And thus very little content posted because there was very little financial reward coming from those very few who actually did vote.

After spending a decent amount of time studying the concept, I suggested making it essentially a quasi-gambling website.  The way I proposed it would work made the social voting task to be a form of gambling because there cost to vote was basically a wager.  If you voted and were in the early third of votes for the post, you would profit ... nearly doubling your money.  If you were in the middle third, the amount you paid to vote is returned ... i.e., you broke even.   And those in the bottom, later third got nothing returned.  

So that makes an incentive for voting on the good stuff (profit as some of those votes will be in the early third) and a disincentive to vote on the bad stuff (likelihood that you will lose money as fewer people will be voting).  

If then the winners (those in the early third) get profit of, let's say, 90% that was lost by the later third then the remaining 10% goes to compensate the content poster and a little bit to the site as well.  This profit potential creates an incentive for better content to be posted.

The problem I couldn't figure out at the time was how easy it would be for an algorithm to game the system.  Instead the rewards should only go to those who truly read the content and vote because the content is good.  At that point it became a problem harder than I wanted to figure out and lost interest.

[FlipPro]

Witcoin was around a while ago, but wasn't successful. It was based on paying people bitcoin when their posts were upvoted. People had to pay to post.
It's a nice idea, but had asinine content.

As an alternative, would it be possible to piggy back on yahoo content? Say you made a site exclusively devoted to yahoo news links. Then you would not need to bootstrap meaningful content yourself. Yahoo would make it.

People love to post rabid comments on yahoo and vote on them. The principle is that yahoo creates the content and the site offers a forum for commenting on it.
The site could feature some stats about the earnings and losses of registered users to encourage competition. You would also be able to look at their comments.

I think payment should be optional. Payment would allow you to earn money from upvotes. However, you would lose money if you got fewer upvotes than average.
It would be a competition and the site would skim some off the top.

I know the thought of this site is sickening, but in my experience that is positively correlated with success and popularity.

This is the same thing we are planning with Tweet Forum 2.0. The more Retweets your post gets, the more coins you make  .

For now you can post for Bitcoins at Tweet Forum

http://tweetforum.com/bitcoin/

[cunicula]

Main point:

The problem with tweet forum, witcoin, etc. is that there is no nucleus of content. People are not going to start writing stuff just
because of the voting mechanism. They need something that interests them to write about. Thus the idea of hijacking yahoo's content.

Free vs. Pay:

By free, I meant that you could post for free, but then you wouldn't be able to earn anything.
You could also vote on free posts, but they would get low priority for display.

Voting would also be free. Standard use of a login such as openID to limit voting manipulation.
Also people who pay to post should be able to vote with more weight (say 5 times as much weight as an unpaid vote).

[FlipPro]

Main point:

The problem with tweet forum, witcoin, etc. is that there is no nucleus of content. People are not going to start writing stuff just
because of the voting mechanism. They need something that interests them to write about. Thus the idea of hijacking yahoo's content.

Free vs. Pay:

By free, I meant that you could post for free, but then you wouldn't be able to earn anything.
You could also vote on free posts, but they would get low priority for display.

Voting would also be free. Standard use of a login such as openID to limit voting manipulation.
Also people who pay to post should be able to vote with more weight (say 5 times as much weight as an unpaid vote).

You OBVIOUSLY haven't been to Tweet Forum, if you think there's no content.

EDIT: Right now people can post on Tweet Forum, on content from ALL OVER THE INTERNET (just like Yahoo, and actually sometimes better :p) and get paid BITCOINS for it. No BS.

Now the voting mechanism, along with TONS of functionality is still missing. But SMF can only go so far...

That's why I am working on TF 2.0 find out more about it here.
http://tweetforum.com/tweetforum-news/%28ann%29-tweetforum-maintenance-and-cleaning-preformed-11202011-info-on-tf-2-0!!/

[cunicula]

Flippro, don't get irritated. I'm a friendly.    If you can get input, then you should try to run with it. The last thing you should do is take a combative attitude with potential users.

I think you should consider a more targeted approach (e.g. give people 5 possible stories to comment on, with accompanying pictures, and change them every week.) People do not like to have to consider too many options simultaneously. Make a contest for best comment on the five articles. To start, subsidize the entry fees heavily, but charge something so people get used to interacting with the site.

Here are some questions to consider...

PRODUCT
What type of content does tweetforum aggregate?
What message about content does the tweetforum main page convey to users?
Are there better sources of this content?

ACTIVITY
How do tweetforum users interact with content?
How does this differ from interactions which could occur on another forum?

USERS
Who are the target users of tweetforum?
Where do these users hangout and how can you get their attention?

COMPETITIVENESS
What advantages does going to tweetforum have over an alternative venue?


Ideally, answers to these questions should be short and obvious.

[FlipPro]

Flippro, don't get irritated. I'm a friendly.    If you can get input, then you should try to run with it. The last thing you should do is take a combative attitude with potential users.

I think you should consider a more targeted approach (e.g. give people 5 possible stories to comment on, with accompanying pictures, and change them every week.) People do not like to have to consider too many options simultaneously. Make a contest for best comment on the five articles. To start, subsidize the entry fees heavily, but charge something so people get used to interacting with the site.

Here are some questions to consider...

PRODUCT
What type of content does tweetforum aggregate?
What message about content does the tweetforum main page convey to users?
Are there better sources of this content?

ACTIVITY
How do tweetforum users interact with content?
How does this differ from interactions which could occur on another forum?

USERS
Who are the target users of tweetforum?
Where do these users hangout and how can you get their attention?

COMPETITIVENESS
What advantages does going to tweetforum have over an alternative venue?


Ideally, answers to these questions should be short and obvious.

Those are some very good ideas. Sorry not trying to be "mean" .

[Bitcoin Oz]

I would rather integrate stack exchange and reddit -especially the bitcoin ones than the craphole that is yahoo, but using virtual currency so your status on those third party sites affects your earnings on witcoin which would rise and fall as your status does. Then let people earn bitcoins for "consulting" sessions regarding coding,cyptography,security and other things,with the site performing escrow etc.  Im sure people would like to hire experts in these fields whose knowledge is perfectly clear by the levels they've reached on other sites. The site might take a cut from that...or something. There might even be a section of the site set aside as a gambling/quiz section.

Ive been out of the loop for ages without much internet and witcoin lost all development awhile ago. Some good ideas in this thread worth chewing on.

[Bitcoin Oz]

I think payment should be optional.

Optional payment to vote?  Witcoin required a payment to vote, so there was very little voting.  And thus very little content posted because there was very little financial reward coming from those very few who actually did vote.

After spending a decent amount of time studying the concept, I suggested making it essentially a quasi-gambling website.  The way I proposed it would work made the social voting task to be a form of gambling because there cost to vote was basically a wager.  If you voted and were in the early third of votes for the post, you would profit ... nearly doubling your money.  If you were in the middle third, the amount you paid to vote is returned ... i.e., you broke even.   And those in the bottom, later third got nothing returned.  

So that makes an incentive for voting on the good stuff (profit as some of those votes will be in the early third) and a disincentive to vote on the bad stuff (likelihood that you will lose money as fewer people will be voting).  

If then the winners (those in the early third) get profit of, let's say, 90% that was lost by the later third then the remaining 10% goes to compensate the content poster and a little bit to the site as well.  This profit potential creates an incentive for better content to be posted.

The problem I couldn't figure out at the time was how easy it would be for an algorithm to game the system.  Instead the rewards should only go to those who truly read the content and vote because the content is good.  At that point it became a problem harder than I wanted to figure out and lost interest.

Perhaps you could bet on the best answer like a prediction market for knowledge lol.