

Ask HN: Review my startup, Beansight.com - Oyinko

Hi Everyone,<p>One of my friend told me that I can get great feedbacks with Ask HN to improve my startups. So let's ask you.<p>I'am working working on a new website where people can share predictions and be rewarded for good ones.<p>On Beansight you can share and record your predictions about what it’s going to happen. You can also read other members predictions and agree or disagree with them. Most important, you can also write comments to argue your position.<p>If members make good predictions, they will earn credibility points and if they earn a lot of them, they will become an expert on Beansight. So they will be able to use their Beansight profile to prove their expertise.<p>We're planning on launching a lot of new features in the coming months, but we've gotten to a point where we'd really appreciate some feedback for improving effect. We are particularly looking for feedback about the UI.<p>Thank you<p>Cyril<p>Link: http://www.beansight.com/
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derrida
Just a thought: Whether a prediction is objectively good or not is different
to whether the prediction is seen as good or not. If you can think of a
mechanism to figure out whether a prediction was good or not after the event
has happened, the system could then make a second order prediction about
whether that user's a good predictor or not. Keep me up to date if you manage
to solve any of these problems.

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Oyinko
We worked on an algorithm that will check every prediction to know if they
happened or not.

If members record a prediction on Beansight and that it happens, they will be
rewarded. If they record predictions that will not happen, they will lose
credibility points.

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derrida
How do you check if it has happened or not? Is this based on peoples votes
after the predicted time of the event? What if someone wants to make a
prediction that involves when something occurs?

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geeyom
Hello Derrida,

The algorithm to check whether the prediction occurred is based on each single
vote. It weights more people with a great expertise score and weights more
votes close to the deadline or votes that passed the deadline.

If the prediction comes to an end before the deadline, then the algorithm will
wait to reach the deadline to validate it. But we will soon let the community
close a prediction if they decide it's over.

Guillaume

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russjhammond
You should check out the Iowa Electronics Markets.
<http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/index.cfm>

They do something similar but in more of a traditional market format.

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nickfrost
Add it to <http://startupli.st> There the early adopters will be able to
follow, provide feedback, sign up for your service, and even recommend it to
their friends. Have fun!

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kacper
Frankly speaking the idea is pretty funny and yes, I am wondering how to you
check if sth happend or not. Btw, the UI looks pretty standard.

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Oyinko
We have an algorithm <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2467043>

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genystartup
Lovely design and good effort on the coding. I just don't like that having to
log in to vote bit. It's unnecessary in my honest opinion.

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acrum
I agree. Let non-users vote, but make people sign in to add comments or post
their own predictions. You can include some kind of measures to make sure
someone doesn't vote more than once or twice.

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Oyinko
I know that making people sign in to vote is a lot of work for them.

But, we need to track what people vote on Beansight to calculate their
expertise on prediction.

But maybe the possibility to vote on a prediction without sign-in could be a
first step to make them connected to Beansight.

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acrum
Yes, you could have them vote and then give them the opportunity to sign up.
Store a cookie or something so they can only get one vote as an unregistered
user. Of course, this could be hacked, but you could put in provisions to
check for multiple votes from the same unregistered user's IP, etc.

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iworkforthem
easy to click: <http://www.beansight.com/>

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truthsayer
Sounds pretty useful. Has nostradam.us been registered?

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Oyinko
not yet!

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tdoggette
Typo: "Prouve your expertise" should be "Prove".

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wvanwazer
Also, "Read Experts" doesn't really make sense. You need another word at the
end. Perhaps "Read Expert Predictions" or "Learn from Experts."

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Oyinko
You are right. We are working on a new page and we need to improve the
wording.

