Rankings

I am thinking this week for opening the web site. Instead of doing it today, I will do it tomorrow. Famous last words, right? Well, I put in a bit more development on the Rankings page and more general bug fixing. It’s the old writer’s problem: when to release to the publisher. At least women don’t have to worry about when to birth the baby, generally speaking nature times it out automatically. So now the Rankings has not one but four chart systems, all interconnected with the People and Votes on Commit3x. The majority of people will still like the original chart, which shows each individual person compared to all the people and their total votes.

The most innovative chart, shown in the image, is an interconnection diagram. I call it the Network chart, and the lines are individual votes. Each line represents a link between two people, and it gets darker with more votes placed (the sum of either direction- so votes from Bob to Ben added to votes from Ben to Bob). I’m thinking of changing the line color a bit with vote count, and adding lines from outside to represent people in different cities.

The circle in the Network Chart has colored blocks for each individual person. These blocks get bigger for people who won more votes, and people with no votes won’t appear. The Network chart doesn’t show people’s names, because to know who votes for who Intel Reports are used.

What it shows is much more interesting: if cliques are the norm, or if the city is more evenly dispersed with friendly people. The chart below is basically an even distribution of vote winners, with a couple dark lines as exceptions- at the left (9 o’clock) and the bottom (say at 6:30). And of course, if one person gets more of the votes, we can see where they came from- the masses, or a few generous voters.

So the other two charts? I provide four charts total: People, Votes, Rankings and Network. The People chart lists out every person in a vertical bar chart with the number of votes making the bar height (popular people at the left with lots of votes, and vote-less people appear at the far right). The Votes chart shows all the won votes as adding horizontal bars, and puts the most popular people first at the left (hiding the people without votes off the chart). The Rankings chart splits the people into 5 ranking categories, and shows with a pictogram total count in each category. And, finally, the Network chart shows voting patterns, blocks and cliques.


Here is a video where I talk about this a bit: https://youtu.be/InymWP9RUWQ
 

Business

So it’s time to get to business. Literally. I will set up the corporation for Commit3x and then get the money stuff going in the right direction. We aren’t talking huge amounts of startup funding, other than my precious development time, but we do have to go through the motions that our government has established for our benefit. Commit3x will basically operate and maintain the web site, and collect all the sweet, sweet cash from its success. The corporation will have a life of at least a couple years since I’ll sign it up for some services and accounts that use two years as the basic subscription period.

Of course, Commit3x will be a huge success and so live much longer than that, but lawyers and business thinking is generally pessimistic and risk averse. It’s not that I am risk averse so much, in fact I enjoy taking a good number of large risks. However, in certain specific categories I just haven’t put a lot of risk forward, for whatever reasons. I suspect it is a habitual thing more than a literal risk consideration thing. Moving on.

As a business I need to consider an advertisement. Now I see three real courses forward: (1) that I get friends and the like and it is enough to take off, (2) that I buy normal ads and (3) that I literally pay people money to use the web site. Approach one is the low-hanging fruit that I’ll do no matter what. Approach 2 probably won’t be effective, Commit3x is a bit too far off the beaten path to explain in the 2-5 seconds people might daydream at an ad and anyhow seems like a big downside when viewed in that way. Imagine Facebook or MySpace running an ad before people used the word Blog. Let alone a Web Page that is a Log. So approach three.

The radical approach three does have some clear benefits, if I could pull it off. The mechanics are simple: I give you ten dollars, you buy my five dollar product using your credit card. Imaging a booth at a fair where you get five dollars for playing. But this brings up concerns- while I could reach a critical mass in a smaller audience this way, I would do better to pick specific people and anyhow they might just see it as a way to get money without paying those silly cash fees credit card companies tend to pose. It is sort of a dark method, seemingly a bit evil.

For now I think word of mouth is going to be the solution, and I’m going to start the LLC.

Almost Ready!

What is Commit3x.com? When will it start? Check it out:
https://youtu.be/TdecqVQu33w

Account Merging

I am happy to report I’ve gotten most of the development growing pains out of the way for what happens when a person changes names or cities. I make them get a new Commit3x.com account to use the new identity, but there is more.

I let the people ‘combine’ their accounts, keeping them separate from the person’s private point of view but adding all the votes up for them publically. So, if they live in the same city, their old and new name appear each with the total number of votes they have (combined from both accounts). This means they look cooler than normal, and people can use the old or new identity to find them.

Equally it is good that if you vote for someone in LeSueur, your vote ‘stays’ in LeSueur even if they move to… Detroit.

The next little challenge is, of course, actually doing that tallying correctly. I think it might be a MySQL cursor and a loop, no good. Along these lines I worry over two people same name living in the same city, for now an administrative task to fix.

I think the site will be opening towards the end of the week, and I am excited to let people in!

Opt Out

Implemented the Opt Out functionality, so if someone gets annoyed they can hide their rank and so forth on Commit3x.com.

Here is an excerpt from the user guide:

However, you can Opt Out of the Commit 3x web site. Doing this will:

• Remove your name from Rankings and ballots. Users may still Write In your name, however
• Your name will never appear on VIP Services intel reports, instead ‘Opted Out User’ will be given
• If someone tries runs a new report on you, the report will not be generated
• If someone ran a report of you before, the report will no longer be viewable

I don't think people will opt out much, but I think knowing they can will help make them feel at ease. Anyhow, if you do, then you end up re-verifying your account to turn it back on. So don't.

Commit3x

I'm Brandon with Commit3x.com, and I figure it is time I open up a real blog. Anyhow the old one is still there:
Old Blog


Commit3x is a web site that lets people vote for each other to make emotional and silly drama about who is the ‘most popular’. It is a fun game that people like to play, and like any social situation, we force people to expose their real name and their location (city/city block)