Ranking : the concept of trees

[skylimit]

Hi,

I'm absolutely new on this site, but I like the idea very much.
There are two competitions going on : people trying to get the immortal status by registering as many notes as possible, and others trying to get as many new users on this site as possible.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to combine these two efforts, and reward them with a rank... Why combining ? A user who enters a huge amount of notes, could extend his status, by refering other users to this site. But not just users that create a user-id, and then leave. Users who also enter a lot of notes is better, and even more interesting is refering users to this site who in turn, refer new users to this site.

In order to push this system to it's limits a bonus system could look like this (as a third competition - next to max number of notes & max number of users refered)

Level 0 : any note you entered yourself counts for 100%
Level 1 : any note a pupil of yours entered counts for 50%
Level 2 : any note a pupil of a pupil entered counts for 25%
Level 3 : any note a pupil of a pupil of a pupil entered couts for 10%
Level 4 : no reward for anything deeper than 3.

A ranking system could look like this

Rank A : 50.000 points
Rank B : 25.000 points
Rank C : 10.000 points
Rank D : 5.000 points
Rank E : 2.000 points
Rank F : 1.000 points
Rank G : 250 points
Rank H : 60 points
none : less than 60.

Entering 60 notes can take you to your first promotion, which is easy to accomplish, but intended as a stimulus. Acquiring 50.000 points is near to impossible when only 250.000 notes are registered ... But do we really know ?

Other questions : would de-jo and Kockske be on top in this new ranking, or would vkem be an important player in this competition? Who knows, maybe he would be on top of a tree with virtually all Finnish competitors, with could give him about 15.000 points...

The idea is to boost the number of users, but not in abolute numbers, we reward users who bring new dedicated users to the site.

Currently my rank is "none" ... so I will leave this idea to comment on by the more experienced players.

Kind regards.

[Donald]

Ranking is indeed becoming more and more futile for beginners. I think that by the end of the year you will need much more than 5000 notes to enter the top 10. This won't be interesting for newcomers.

My proposal: Start a new list in 2003 with the top scorers of the year 2003. Keep the existing list as "All time scorers", store the results from end of 2002 in a "history" section.

[emmem]

I don’t know if encouraging competition on the site is such a good idea because in many cases where competition is involved some people start cheating.

But I must admit giving rankings or titles based on some criteria has something appealing. Maybe a level based on the bills entered (eventually in the past 15 days).
Something like

0 bills = level 0 EBT
1 to 10 bills = level 1 EBT
11 to 50 bills = level 2 EBT
51 to 100 bills = level 3 EBT
101 to 500 bills = level 4 EBT
501 to 1000 bills = level 5 EBT
1001 to 5001 bills = level 6 EBT
and so on.

Something similar for referring

0 referred = not additional title
1 to 10 referred = level 1 referrer
11 to 50 referred = level 2 referrer
and so on

And also something for the activity.

Entered bills during the last 5 days = active
Between 5 days and 3 weeks = on vacation
More than 3 weeks = retired

Well we don’t have to implement this. But it’s always nice to say that I’m an active level 5 EBT level 1 referrer.

[skylimit]

The beauty here is :

a) the idea of the tree : where you are on top, and look down what "your" pupils are doing, and earning points with that, without having to put in thousands of notes yourself. You can "manage" them if they quit "working" for you ... figuratively speaking ... There you have your own little tree to worry about

b) the idea of an "easy" promotion at first, that gets harder and harder. There is an encouragement, an icentive if you will ...

c) there is no way to cheat, when you have to "refer" a member, and "make it" enter "unique note numbers" ... how would you fake that ? All fake hits are moderated, and are very obvious to track too, since they are members of your personal tree

d) if you think about it : this is the only correct way to evaluate who are the true pioneers of the site that made a terrific job to make the start, and grow it to a critical level that makes it worth while today ...

Apart from the real reason why people use the site : their first hit, their first international hit, their first intercontinental hit, and so on ... all forms of statistics and compition are "even more fun" ...

Of course, I'm not the one who needs to implement it ... and I don't know if it is that simple to implement the multi-level tree

Kindest regards,
PS : I'm still at level "none" , but will be promoted next week ..

[HNL]

I'm simply not interested in competing here. I let the ones that are have all the pleasure they get from it.

The only thing that keeps me entering notes to EBT is the hope of getting a hit some time.

That's the main idea of eurobilltracker . You can also see how many banknotes you get in a year for example. It is very difficult to (re-)enter the top 10 users.... .

[EuroBillTracker]

skylimit,

I like your ideas a lot. In fact, ranking is used by the dollar bill site and I think it's good. He doesn't go down the tree like your propose but still...
The problem with this is that it will be very costly on the site to do updates unless I do them once a day or so which would be ok now but what about later ?

Another idea is to create teams like was typical on distributed.net/seti/the canadian money tracker. This could be "easily" done but needs to be written..

On another hand, perhaps I should give more visibility to the 15 days back rankings which attempts to alleviate the problem with having people join when the top members have entered 5000+ bills

All in all, I agree we will have to find a solution to add class ranking (people love to be ranked). I think it could be fine to find names for them... Whether I will be able to go down to the 6th level down... I am not sure

[Skylimit]

Another way of building a friendly competition is allowing users to team up, under a common name.

Allow a user to create a teamname. You could build in a restriction, that only users with a certain rank (eg promoted 2 times) can create a team-name, and only users with a rank (eg promoted 1 time) can join the team.
Another restriction can be that only members with a lower rank can join, to avoid having the top-users form an unbeatable team, as of day one of the implementation ... there goes the fun

A team consist of a team-leader, and 10 team-members.
The team gets points for entering note numbers + for referring new users to the site (thus becoming a powerful promotion team) in the same multi-level tree concept as described above.

Another way of promoting is attention in the press, or banners on other websites. I think that the users that have the right profile for being interested are eg. portfoliotrackers ... Since this site is still weak in France, the number one site (I think) is www.boursorama.com
The site has 900.000 active members, and placing a banner there will work. Of course, this guys will not give away space for free, unless somebody knows a back door ... ?

Kindest regards

[skylimit]

Continuing the team story ...

Some team members will retire. At the end of the month, the team leader could expel one non-performing member, thus allowing another member to team up...

Also, unhappy members can quit the team and form their own.

Kind regards

[Skylimit]

Exchanging banners with other sites is probably another way of growing.
Each team can look for sponsors (max 3, a main sponsor and two co-sponsors)

Three spaces are available to give away on the EBT-site. One on the homepage, the others on stats & team-pages.

First goes to : team of the year
Second : team of the month
Third : team of the week.

The idea is, to make a sponsor put the banner on his site (eg for one week, and win free advertisement if the team becomes team-of-the-week). Every new user that comes in through this banner, makes the team stronger they are sponsoring. By becoming the "team of the week", automatically the banner of the sponsor is on the EBT-site the week after. This could lead to a sponsor for one month, trying to become "team of the month" etc ...

The larger teams become (in ranking) the easyer they will find larger commercial sites that are willing to sponsor, thus making the team stronger, and willing to sponsor for larger periods, ...

Imagine what a banner for one week on a large website would mean in terms of users ...

[Restriction for banners : not anything goes : porn, militaristic, discriminating or racist sites, or anything that could be seen as "disturbing" should not be allowed.]

I just keep on dreaming, ..., I'm already in the next millenium.

Kindest regards

[EuroBillTracker]

I just keep on dreaming, ..., I'm already in the next millenium.

I appreciate your suggestion and I think they are good. Here is my take on them:
i) they will take time to implement so obviously this cannot happen over night
ii) I cannot devote hours to this site everyday so this would have to be almost completely automated so i) increases
iii) The higher the incentive, the higher the chance that someone will spend time hacking the site, essentially entering fake bills which we do not want happening

so... until we have a check for bill veracity I do not want to do such things

[skylimit]

Obviously there is a long implementation track, and some suggestions just don't make sense right now ... only (much) later

Before you can enter the era of sponsoring you need at least

a) some kind of ranking system
b) multi-level referral tracking
c) some kind of bill veracity check ... you're right, people will start cheating -> any suggestions here ?
d) ranking modification : based on b)
e) allowing team creation (based on d)
f) team shape maintenance facilities
g) and at last : team sponsoring - in 2204.

That's not even a millenium ...

[smh]

A bit off topic, but why don't you create a user account on this furum skylimit? Than you can start increasing your forum rank

[Skylimit]

A bit off topic, but why don't you create a user account on this furum skylimit? Than you can start increasing your forum rank

Better ?

[Mr Euro]

I have the same opinion as Craft. I'm not interested in teaming up with others nor to get a high level of EBT. I'm only interested in getting a real hit. That's the point of this site isn't it?

We have a sort of competition. Countries vs Countries. Users vs Users. That's good enough for me. If you start with getting higher levels, you will get higher fake hits/notes entered, I'm sure of it.

I'm doing my part for EBT, but I will never get a high level, which will discourage me to do further.

The suggestion of Donald to start a new topscore every year I do like. That's appealing.

I think if the personal stats are more important. I think the development of that should take priority.

Well, hope my opinion is worth something.

[DoubleYou]

We have a sort of competition. Countries vs Countries. Users vs Users. That's good enough for me. If you start with getting higher levels, you will get higher fake hits/notes entered, I'm sure of it.

I totally agree with you.