
Social news for smart people via ongoing IQ tests - amichail

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comatose_kid
Perhaps the best test would be having two buttons displayed to the user before
they post a message:

"Please take an IQ test before you post" and "Post your message"

Since the people who take door #1 demonstrate intellectual penis envy and a
lack of judgement on how to best spend their time (a fair criticism of me
right now, since I'm responding to this post instead of working), you should
only allow people who pick door # 2...

Seriously, I think the idea is a non-starter. Here are a few problems I have
right off the top:

1) Big assumption that the quality of submissions and/or discourse is
proportional to IQ. I don't think you can use IQ as a lever in this regard.

2) Even if 1) is incorrect, the IQ curve has a normal distribution. So, you'd
cut off most of your users pretty quickly as your IQ requirements get higher.
Last time I checked, it is a bad idea to actively trim a large chunk of people
from your community. Especially by effectively telling them that they're 'too
stupid'....

3) I'd be willing to bet that you'd alienate an important subset of people -
intelligent mavericks, who wouldn't care to be part of some club based on a
number. And I'd also be willing to bet that theirs are the viewpoints that
would probably make your site interesting enough to come back to.

4) Adding onerous requirements (even if they are periodic) to allow people to
contribute would probably result in a huge falloff in participation, and not
just by the 'low IQ' club...

I'm guessing that I'm probably not in your target demographic, since I don't
understand what benefit a site like this would offer - beyond feeling good
about one measure of your intelligence.

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nurall
It is very important for any Social News website to cater to the lowest common
denominator. I agree with some of the comments here that suggest that a lot of
people might feel alienated.

It would probably work to abstract out the IQ of the user from the user
himself. This means NOT having an IQ test per se and instead using relevant
data mining techniques to measure the knowledge of the user based off of the
user's posts and the rating that the user receives. I guess knowledge is a
more relevant criteria for most people to read a given post, unless you expect
someone to solve/crack a problem, rather than add content.

But, at the same time, if the metric (could call it IQ or KQ??)) can be
internalized, and used to group people together and in turn used to attract
people falling under a given group, might be valuable. A notion of relative IQ
(of groups) would probably be more relevant here. (Creating an e-harmony for
people in the same group and cater to their needs based on a given metric)

I also agree that this will apply better in a domain specific platform more
than other generic social content platforms, simply because it would be easier
to measure a given user metric. So, it needs to be as domain specific as
possible.

Is anyone working on this kind of a model? Definitely an interesting
problem!!!

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amichail
Did anyone try such a thing?

For example, to vote/submit/comment, you might be required to solve an IQ test
type problem first.

These problems might be chosen at random from ones created by other members of
the site.

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byrneseyeview
I like it -- a CAPTCHA for stupidity.

You could do pretty simple problems (like the Project Euler stuff), with a few
random elements to keep things interesting -- especially because the smartest
people would come up with shortcuts and be able to post more frequently than
those who solved it by hand.

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yaacovtp
Some of the smartest people I know read Us Magazine and People religiously. If
you want a certain population of users target what they are interested in.

Once you've screen them with your IQ test, do they really have to prove
themselves again before submitting another link?

If you just want to write and take tests go play on okcupid.com.

~~~
amichail
There are benefits to ongoing IQ testing.

First, this allows the community to raise or lower the bar for continued
participation on the site.

Second, it limits cheating whereby you have a smart friend write the test once
for you.

Third, this gets around the problem whereby you get an easy test just by luck.

Fourth, it will result in a membership highly interested in solving IQ type
puzzles on an ongoing basis.

~~~
timg
Make people always be required to be in the top 50% of members:) Sounds like
an engaging competition to me.

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mauricecheeks
Someone who's IQ is reasonably high will still say uninformed things. Also, IQ
does not change with age... so a 14 year old with a high IQ would fit right
into your "elite community" and immediately spoil the party due to their lack
of maturity.

Why not just form a blacklist of "stupid IPs". Keep your input productive...
or die.

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jkush
The only problem with this idea is that communities evolve. Who gets to modify
the test to seek out people with the new, desirable traits? The site creators?
Oldest member of the community?

I think the concept of communities being self-policing still holds.

~~~
amichail
There is no standard test to be used. The questions are created by members of
the community. To vote/submit/comment, you will need to answer one of these
questions chosen at random.

If you don't get it right, you might have to wait an hour or so before trying
again with another randomly chosen question. And if you get too many wrong,
you would get kicked off the site.

If many members start to see contributions from people who are not that smart,
they could try to make their questions tougher. And so you would have a higher
probability of receiving a tougher question.

If many members feel that the community is too small, then they might make
their questions easier. And so you would have a higher probability of
receiving an easier question.

~~~
amichail
Yet another variation involves an IQ filter so that you can filter out
submissions and links submitted by dumb people.

You could even do it with votes as well, so that a link submitted by a high IQ
user but endorsed mostly by dumb people would not appear for you.

~~~
jkush
My response isn't very scientific, but it seems that having to take a "test"
in order to be able to post or comment somewhere would immediately indicate
that the community in question would be elitist and probably boring.

