Comment by corobo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corobo | Hacker News Reader

I think the FAQ is missing a bit of info. Nothing deal-breaker-y, but the biggest questions don't actually get answered!

The ones about how much each answer pays and the minimum threshold, the answers essentially say "you get paid an amount per answer" and "you can pay out above a threshold" without actually saying what the numbers are. It's a little recursive :P

I guess my main question is: Ballpark figures of course, not holding you to a quote, how much per answer? We talking pennies or dollars?

Threshold then comes in to play as (for example) if it's pennies per answer and the payout threshold is $100 it will probably not pay out for anyone but those that figure out how to game the system or get reeeally involved and treat it as a job ala Mechanical Turk

I'm also getting a vague reminder of Aardvark[1] (RIP, cheers Google) if it'd help to see how something similar worked :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark_(search_engine)

Good question!

So the way this was designed, is so that the unit (answer) cost is fairly cheap (below the dollar), so that volume is incentivized.

In turn, the payout amount which is a fraction of that per unit cost was calculated to be an attractive enough figure. Such that if you don’t do this ala Mechanical Turk you get some decent extra cash out of it and if you do get very involved you can even make a salary out of it.

However, there is a dynamic algorithm that takes into account several factors primarily consistency on the quality of the answers that directly impacts each users final compensation.

Thus promoting a virtuous cycle of better content.

Thanks so much for asking and hope this makes sense!

Thank you for the response

Look forward to seeing your progression! Best of luck! :)

Thank you for your comments and wishes! :)

Thanks for reminding me about Aardvark, I used to use it a lot and haven't really seen anything like it since.

I used to make a load of IRC bots back when they shut it down, I wanted to make a replacement for it

I was worried Google would squash my finances forever with a patent lawsuit haha

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