LinkedIn shuts down Cubeduel, the viral co-worker rating service | Hacker News Reader

LinkedIn shuts down Cubeduel, the viral co-worker rating service

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79 pointscwan27 comments

Adam (I have since learned) had seen the limits and the LinkedIn folks actually raised them for us before we launched... But I don't think ANY of us thought that we'd hit the higher limit.

But don't judge us too harshly! :-) Remember, this started as a side-project... And certainly don't judge LinkedIn. Other than not being instantly responsive on a Friday afternoon (which I think wouldn't be a fair expectation), they've been super friendly and pretty accommodating.

You are the creator of this "cubeduel" thing?!??

Wow... hadn't seen it, glad it stopped here or least hoping it did...

I really couldn't imagine a more pernicious effort to poison already strained interpersonal relations in America if I tried.

I don't think your project is illegal but it is clearly, morally, reprehensible. You should be ashamed of yourself. What you are doing is a "bad thing" - on a pretty high scale of "bad thing".

A while back yummyfajitas asked how Wikileaks would be judged if someone died because of their revelations. Can I ask you the same question? What would you do if one coworker initiated violence against another because of your rating site? What?

Not only do I want this to fail but I think it should rebound on your other projects ... hard. I don't quote The-Jesus much here but here, "Judge not, that ye be not judged" comes very much to my mind.

Seriously, this is so bad that you need to take it down NOW and apologize.

you provided more condemnation than analysis. In my reading of the Book, He reached out to people as an educator and provided guidance about a path that offers help to people that followed other ways. Do you see the irony in your quote?

Sorry, the analysis seemed rather clear. Offering people a chance to fight arena-style fights against their fellows is rather unscrupulous to say the least. Do you defend doing this?

Taking down the site and apologizing seems like a pretty clear guidance to ending the problem. What else would you suggest?

Does your reading of the bible or religious texts support sites like 'cubeduel'?

The point is also don't judge unless you want to expose yourself to judgment. I don't mind being judged for condemning this 'cubeduel'. Who wants to judged for supporting it?

One has an obligation to speak out against despicable acts. Do you think this is something other than that?

I agree with you 100% and am willing to take the down votes. This is extremely obnoxious and I would think that LinkedIn is afraid that people will leave the site in droves if this is allowed to continue...

I suspect I've got plenty of supporters. The number of down votes is ... interesting. But I'm not terribly concerned.

I second that. the next thing you will do is probably ask your mom to rank you against your brothers.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged"

God, that is an ironic choice in phrase on your part.

Lots of workplaces have anonymous co-worker feedback and ratings. I actually think that's GOOD-- people have fairly little sense of what their peers think of them.

That aside, I'll address your specific concerns with cubeduel (though from your comment, I'm not sure you actually understand how the system works). Votes are anonymous. And because people are voting between two people, a "down vote" isn't really damning-- it just means that someone out there would rather work with a person more than you.

We also suppress duel data for anyone who has lost 60% or more of their duels (they show exactly like folks who don't have enough votes to calculate). So the worst that someone could experience is a feeling that, when set next to some number of random co-workers, people choose the "someone else" 60% of the time. If someone initiated violence based on that (against who? All their coworkers?), they'd have a 40% chance of hurting someone who voted FOR them at least once. I'd be sad if such a thing happened-- but not guilty.

And, of course, people can nuke their account at any time-- no harm, no foul.

I don't really grok your viewpoint at all (seems like most people don't either), but we've done our best to minimize the "mean" aspects and call attention to the stars. For what it's worth, it's growing and folks seem to like it ( http://twitter.com/#!/search/cubeduel).

It's a great idea (from the point of view of virality) but it seems like it would be poisonous to the atmosphere in most teams. Would I want to stay back late to help someone who'd ranked me lower than my coworkers? I'd love to say yes, but probably not.

For what it's worth, it's nigh impossible to see who voted on you. And even if you're losing duels-- it's not necessarily a reflection on you, but rather a reflection on you vs. a particular coworker. In other words, there'd be no shame in losing a duel to someone awesome, right?

However, if you find that you're losing duels against people who you think poorly of consistently, or losing ALL of your duels, that might create ugly feelings I guess!

"For what it's worth, it's nigh impossible to see who voted on you."

... for now. They could release that data at ANY time. Imagine the damage that will have on co-worker relationships.

Running a web vulnerability scanner at their page could be... interesting. Illegal, probably, but interesting.

>However, if you find that you're losing duels against people who you think poorly of consistently, or losing ALL of your duels, that might create ugly feelings I guess!

Might be time for a little introspection, I would think.

I haven't used it much, but they could use the Condorcet method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method) to rank everyone on linkedin, or everyone in your team, or whatever. It would be pretty silly if they just told you how many duels you've lost rather than give you an overall standing, either global or team-based (although I can see how that could incite some rivalry).

Don't worry they'd rather someone else stayed behind instead anyway

Ah, it is problematic to say the frickin' least...

I'm surprised to see that it might just be an API issue. I have to think that many of LinkedIn's users don't like being rated, and having those ratings be made available without their users' opt-in. For a service like LinkedIn, dealing with people's professional reputations (and potential job prospects), this seems like it might have crossed the line in some users' minds.

All of that aside, it is a really interesting idea, although I do have concerns that Cubeduel is getting a lot of really personal (and valuable) info from this. As a project, it's very intriguing nonetheless.

I wrote a co-worker complaint system for fun once (at the request of my co-workers), and I was really worried it was going to go downhill fast. Surprisingly, they stopped using it before that happened.

Basically, you could complain (publicly!) about any co-worker who had registered on the system, and assign them a number of points. The person with the highest points at the end of the month had to put a trophy on their desk for a month.

That Cubeduel doesn't blow up also surprises me. I think the team has to already be really close to survive that kind of thing, and cubeduel sounds like even less fun than my system.

LinkedIn is pretty stingy about their ToS. You even agree to a on-site code audit if they feel your app is in violation (Section 1.8).

I haven't used Cubeduel, but I wonder if they're displaying user info in violation of: "Data gathered from one user's LinkedIn account/network may not be exposed to another user"

Given the huge traffic, not surprised if they're just throttled though.

So this is the norm now?

From the FAQ:

Can I delete my cubeduel page?

You can "deactivate" your account and it will stop showing up on cubeduel. Login, click on Your Rank, then click on Account Settings, then Deactivate Account.

Yeah,

Providing "opt-out libel" when you're about to IPO is a great idea!

I havn't looked at this, but I guess if you allow co-workers to rate each other then all that's going to happen is that the office politics gets transferred onto the site, with a lot of people bitching about each other, which might not be such a great idea. Also if you're rating co-workers from previous companies then old animosities could be perpetuated online.

I'm only cautious because in a couple of places that I've worked at in the past the office politics was occasionally quite toxic, and amplification of that via the internet could have quite serious consequences.

They have a really great attitude, even when not knowing if it is just a limit or an actual ban.

were they trying to emulate zuckerburg's facemash?

WTF? This was awesome!

LinkedIn, please allow Cubeduel to use your API. This is the most fun I've EVER had with my data (that you happen to keep safe for me).

WTF? 600 + duels and very addicting.

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