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Comment by snewe | Hacker News Reader

Someone needs to keep track of these types of predictions and track how often the author is wrong. It is costless to make big predictions, because rarely do people come back and say "You were wrong." It would be nice if I could search for this author's forecasting performance.

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At least one person has already tried: http://wrongtomorrow.com/

It needs a design overhaul, but it's an interesting proof of concept.

Politifact did this for the US election (and continues), in fact it won a Pulitzer for it!

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/

That was the entire premise of my YC app back in 2007, actually. Here's a mockup, in case anyone's interested in working on it ;D

http://reidesign.us/misc/veracifyWebsite3-5.png

Promises are used like credit, but the tab often goes unpaid because people forget. Politicians, blogs (especially Apple blogs), and talking heads have made an art of exploiting this 'loophole', so it would be nice to have a website where you could track their past performance re: promises and predictions.

Exactly what I thought someone should write. I gather it didn't work out because it was difficult to monetize?

Honestly, it just never went anywhere. I'd pick it up today if I wasn't already seeing a lot of success bootstrapping an online retail store. It's often in the back of my mind, though.

In a roundabout way, I suppose monetization is the root problem -- I didn't (and still don't) have the time/money/connections necessary for a Twitter-style 'build it and the money will come' business plan.

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