Back to all discussions

  •   about 12 years ago

Question and bug about the application gallery

First the bug -  if you've clicked on a project in the application gallery and then use the previous/next buttons to go through them one at a time the previous button works fine, but the next button always takes you to the first application. I tried it in Chrome, Safari and Firefox and it was happening on all three. 
Also, I was wondering if there is going to be a comment section added to for the applications in the gallery so that we could get some feedback? I know it might be late in the game to add it and people could just use this discussion board or the youtube comment system, but it might help encourage people to leave some feedback about the projects so that us developers could get some input. Just a thought.
Great job with the competition so far. You guys have really done supporting us developers and getting back to our questions quickly. 
James

  • 10 comments

  • Manager   •   about 12 years ago

    Hi James, thanks a lot for the feedback. We'll look into the previous/next issue and deploy a fix right away. As for the comments, we've definitely considered it but with public voting coming up (and prizes at stake), public comments could be used to disparage other submissions so that they receive fewer votes.
    We generally tend toward making things as open as possible, and figure out ways to deal with the outliers, but that's a tough one. We certainly could consider allowing people to provide feedback which goes directly to the submitter and does not display publicly.
    Thanks again.
    Brandon

  • Manager   •   about 12 years ago

    Another thing we can consider is to allow commenting on submissions after the judging period or competition has ended. We'll give that some thought for sure. Thanks again.
    Brandon

  •   •   about 12 years ago

    Hey Brandon,
    I forgot this was on the internet for a second there. I totally see your point about people using public comments to try to affect voting, or generally just opening up projects to unfounded criticism or nonsense. I am sure a lot of people don't want to make their emails public either. 
    A post competition system would be great for the developers to discuss, but I don't know if voters will be coming back to the site after the competition, hopefully, but it seems like the best time to get feedback would be when they are first checking it out.
    A private messaging system built into the account people signed up for on the site would work, but that's asking for a whole big system to be added to the site while you guys are already in the middle of a bunch of other stuff, I'm assuming.
    Will people have to sign in to vote? Then you could hide any comments for a project until a person has voted on it, and only be able to comment on projects they voted for. That's better if people are rating projects, not so great if people are just picking one project that they think is best. 
    I don't know what the rest of the developers think, but I am always interested in hearing what people think about my work. If you guys can figure something out it'd be great, don't stress out about it though. People that want feedback can find some way to point people checking out their projects to leave feedback if they want. 
     
    James

  • Manager   •   about 12 years ago

    Thanks for the feedback. We have a messaging system in our challenge platform already so the private system is doable. Another option is to create some kind of integration between a submission and the overall discussion forum so that users are directed to the forum from the submission page, creating a barrier.
    We're fine with people discussing submissions on the discussion forum, we just don't want the public to view a submission for the first time and see a big, unfair "Terrible" next to it.
    A similar option is to do what some blogs do, which is put a "comments" link beneath a submission so that you only see the comments after a click. It doesn't totally solve the problem but may be workable.
    We'll give it some thought, and feedback is always appreciated.
    Brandon

  •   •   about 12 years ago

    Post contest feedback is a great idea.  I am happy to see the contest organizers taking in to account the potential disparaging comments could have.
    One personal observation I have had with these types of contests is the potential for the Peoples Choice award to be biased to the entry "with the most friends/social networking skills"  Not sure how to combat this issue.  I would be interested in hearing how the contest organizers compensate for this.

  • Manager   •   about 12 years ago

    Indeed that is why we generally tend to have the Popular Choice award be voted by the public, and all other awards be voted by a panel -- as opposed to a mix or percentage of popular votes counting toward all awards.
    People are in fact encouraged to spread the word about their submission, and the benefit of that in terms of awareness for the competition and all contestants who get more exposure than they otherwise would is a big win for all.

  • Manager   •   about 12 years ago

    FYI the "next" button fix is deployed. Thanks again.

  •   •   about 12 years ago

    To offset the "I have more friends so I win" effect has the World Bank thought about going to some of the information visualization blogs to get them to run a little story or link to the competition? This could get in a lot more non biased traffic. I'll list a few that I know of here.
     
    http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
    http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/
    http://infosthetics.com/
    http://flowingdata.com/
     
    Those are just the ones that I know, I am sure there are a bunch more that might be willing to do a write up on the competition.
    You can also try bigger forums like reddit or digg to drive traffic too. 

  • Manager   •   about 12 years ago

    Thanks for these, there has been press outreach and it was posted on Reddit, Digg, Hacker News, a ton of Meetup groups and newsletters, etc. Still, when the public voting phase occurs -- which is after most of the press write about it -- the vast majority of traffic is driven by contestants. It's not a bad thing necessarily; tons of traffic is driven and in fact several past challenges have had popular choice winners of great quality.

  •   •   about 12 years ago

    I agree with the vision of the contest. The public voting is a way to get a trend in the visitors and to see how they are inclined for a particular proposal.
    The official first, second and third positions of the contest are the results of the evaluation of the proposals based on judge critirea.
    Both awards are important and valuable but the sense of them are different.

Comments are closed.