ibeatyou BBQ Clips and a Note About Voting

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Hey guys and gals!

A huge thank you to everyone that made it out to the ibeatyou BBQ in Santa Monica. You braved the miles and the wind, and we’re so glad you did! We had a great time meeting everyone. We ate, raced, played basketball, tossed water balloons, organized two football games, and tried our luck at wiffleball.  After a day at the park, Imhungry hosted an impromptu trip to ibeatyou Headquarters for a dance party! We were running around that day, but below are a few clips from the meetup.

Congrats to the winners of the water balloon toss, who earned ibeatyou points for their BBQ beatdown!
First Place for 1000 Points Each:
ManlyAndy
BigDig712

Second Place for 250 Points Each:
Crabby
flashgordon

Also, super props and 1000 points to SoldierForgotten for traveling so far!

A Note About Voting

homer helped us figure out the rating system

Some of you have written in asking about how the ibeatyou voting system works.  We thought we’d take some time out to answer some questions about it, especially for our newer users:

Question: Are the entry ratings just an average of the vote values?

No.  We use a Bayesian-based system so that all entry ratings are WEIGHTED, based on the total number of votes you’ve received, the average number of votes made on all the entries, and the average rating of all entries.

What this basically means is that people with just a few votes of 5 will not have a higher rating than an entry that has been voted a 4 by 50 people.  Essentially, we don’t give “weight” to a rating until more people have voted it.

More from our post when we first rolled it out.

Question: But how come my entry is behind another entry that has fewer votes?

The weighting system depends on the average number of votes received for all the entries.  If both of these entries are around the average number of votes, it is possible where an entry with fewer votes is higher.

Question: Um, I think someone’s “downvoting” me.  I used to have a perfect 5.0, and now I don’t.  How can I stop these people?

In short, it’s almost impossible to keep a perfect 5.0 rating.

Here’s why:

Philosophical answer: The ibeatyou voting system allows anyone to vote any score they’d like, where 5 = AWESOME, while 1 = POOR.  However, voting a 3 or 4, generally considered positive scores (AVERAGE and GOOD) can still affect an entry rating.   Your friend could’ve voted you a 4, and your score would be affected, even though the vote itself was not a 1.

Mathematical answer: Because of the weighted system, all scores are WEIGHTED.  Even if you receive a 5 for all your votes, your weighted rating will move towards the AVERAGE of all entries.  So unless every entry in the competition is rated a 5, your entry will never stay at 5.

However, if your entry just kicks ass and is awesome, it’ll manage to stay in the top.  One thing we’ve learned in our one year of existence so far is that most of the ibeatyou community is pretty cool.  Be cool, and you’ll find plenty of friends voting you up.

So no need to worry too much about all this math.  Math sucks!

TEAM IBY

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