2. jldugger [11/07/2008@20:49]

I had a look at the small task list, but I think the design of the contest is wrong. At the moment, there appear to be six small tasks completed; I doubt any of the people responsible for completing them expect to claim any prize money. It's a simple matter of math:

* Five small tasks for 1000 implies $200 per task. If the task takes more than 30 hours a minimum wage job pays better. I am unable to find any guidelines on how much effort a given task should take, but given the purpose of encouraging new contributers one should expect that reading code will be a significant (more than half) amount of the time spent. Possibly more than 75 percent.
* Bundling by fives is crazy. At first it discourages participants simply by the unknown quantity of effort. But I had an epiphany; a sufficiently clever person can nullify all incentive for some tasks. For example, there's only five posted icon tasks. An artist might be worried that someone will take one of the five art tasks, but that's precisely backwards assuming the money is an incentive at all. Once you pick up one task, fewer will bother unless they can find another task elsewhere.
* The flow of tasks is unknown. If you can't find five tasks you think you can claim before anyone else does, you'd have to hope new tasks come along; I've seen little to no evidence this is the case. Many of the bugs marked as completed were done outside the project it seems.

In short, nobody's playing because nobody expects to "win". But maybe I just can't see the statistics. I'd love to see a recording or slides from your lightning talk about participation thus far.

4. Dedalus [11/07/2008@21:23]

So, there are Burger Kings in Istanbul? :)

6. Henri Bergius [25/07/2008@13:46]

Dear Vincent,

Here is my reply regarding the deathmatch :-)

bergie.iki.fi/blog/at_lea...