Does Pioneer tournament manipulate the scores to pick winners?
https://medium.com/@anton_87731/how-silicon-valley-vc-tournament-manipulates-the-scores-to-pick-winners-1608e8c0ff22
Recently I've been participating in Pioneer - an online tournament for projects. I believed in the vision, invited all my friends, wrote an article about my experience, and was excited about it in general.
This week, after looking at how the points are calculated, I'm not so excited anymore. In short, if the organizers don't like your project, you will not be allowed to win.
Here's my post with detailed analysis of how it really works: https://medium.com/@anton_87731/how-silicon-valley-vc-tournament-manipulates-the-scores-to-pick-winners-1608e8c0ff22
Don't be as naive as I was!
Your interpretation of the numbers doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It's pretty clear how having a lower ratio of upvotes to downvotes could lead to more points because the points are calculated based on who you were compared to when being upvoted or downvoted, not how many of each you got.
It seems like you are expecting a fairly even distribution in the delta of points but I don't see what reason there is to expect that outcome; it all depends on the algorithm.
And it even says on the FAQ that there is human intervention in the process. They are just investors placing bets on who they think are best of those who surface to the top of the leaderboard, to call that manipulation seems a bit silly.
Hey there, thanks for your comment.
I understand that the scores can be dependent on who you were compared to. But the matchmaking (choosing who to compare to) is a part of the scoring system. And I can't think of a fair combination of matchmaking + scoring that would explain the scores - the difference is just too large. Can you?
Re: expert voting. This thread on HN touches many points about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20536418. To quote another participant: