gwern comments on Spaced Repetition literature review prize: And the winner is... - Less Wrong

26 Post author: jsalvatier 19 August 2011 08:35PM

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Comment author: gwern 19 August 2011 11:50:24PM *  19 points [-]

With all that said, I do have some feedback for jsalvatier! (Please don't take this as defecting criticism; also, in the interests of honesty - I noticed all of #2 shortly after the contest began, and kept quiet out of plain self-interest, waiting until the judging happened).

  1. First, it caused me a little stress that judging took so long. The deadline was 1 August, it didn't have to take 18 days to judge, even if events intervened (as they apparently did) to block the earlier gathering which would judge the contest - it could have been done online by so few judges. This is especially true for a contest with only two entries.

  2. The contest was mishandled from the standpoint of publicity. I should not have been so confident I would win; there should have been more than 2 entries with $400 at stake for a task intrinsically worthwhile. There are a number of ways this could have been advertised better:

    1. This could have been announced on the Mnemosyne and Anki mailing lists and forums. It is quite relevant to their interests and they are the obvious places to announce such a contest, even if they would not link it on their front pages.
    2. It could have been advertised better on LW. This was really generous and interesting and potentially a key community tool! (lukeprog won't be this active forever.) Why wasn't the contest an article on the Front Page? (AFAIK, it never appeared there.)
    3. Piotr Wozniak, the expert of experts on spaced repetition in practice, could have been contacted to participate or possibly advertise it on Supermemo.com; he may sound intimidating from the Wired article, but my email correspondence with him was perfectly normal and fluid, with the ordinary delays.
    4. The contest, per #2, could have been submitted to Reddit (the psychology subreddit being only the most obvious of multiple potential targets) or Hacker News; both communities are interested in spaced repetition. This is also true of Imminst.
    5. Google AdWords could have helped; $10 buys a lot of clicks when it comes to spaced-repetition ads, and could well be worth it. ($350 is about as impressive as $360 as seed for a prize.)
    6. Interested LessWrongers could have been personally contacted. Anyone who has created a deck of flashcards is obvious; and why not contact lukeprog? Reading and summarizing papers and reviews is practically his specialty. He is busy, of course, but it's not like spaced repetition is that worthless compared to his current topics, and the prize may make up for lost time.
Comment author: jsalvatier 20 August 2011 12:37:46AM 9 points [-]

1 I did actually announce this on the Mnemnosyne and Anki mailing lists, but I received no responses. :(

2 I felt timid about advertising this on the mainpage, though I am not sure why in retrospect.

3-5 are good suggestions I hadn't thought of. The question is how to generate similar suggestions for prizes in the future. I suppose 5 is obviously applicable, 4 probably applies to many contests, I'm not sure about 3. Perhaps ask if there are any famous figures in the field I am trying to summarize.

6 feels like it wouldn't be effective to me, but I'm not sure why. I suppose the costs to trying this in the future are low.

Thanks again :)

Comment author: gwern 20 August 2011 12:59:50AM *  5 points [-]

1 I did actually announce this on the Mnemnosyne and Anki mailing lists, but I received no responses. :(

Whups! So you're right. I replied with news about the verdict.

#2 is definitely something you should try. If there were no real prize, I think people might laugh at an attempt for the main page, but with that much skin in the game... at least, I would expect LessWrongers to respect someone putting a good chunk of money where their mouth is. They seem to've in the past, with reports about bets, prediction market trades, and SIAI donations all getting upvoted.

I suspect you feel about #6 the same way you feel about #2 - that it's overreaching and arrogant. That is something you may want to look into if you feel the same way in a second contest of equivalent quality. (I understand 'rejection therapy' may help with that.)

EDIT: I've spent a fair bit of time messing with AdWords for my own purposes, and I think I have a handle on the basics, so I'd be willing to help out with future contests as far as that goes.

Comment author: jsalvatier 20 August 2011 02:34:10AM 1 point [-]

I think I would feel much more confident about a second prize. In the beginning I didn't have other people helping me do this kind of work, but now I do.

Comment author: GuySrinivasan 20 August 2011 12:38:39AM 0 points [-]

I agree with all of this, and thanks for the feedback. For my part in causing the judging to take long I apologize; I didn't try to delay it, but I definitely didn't put any explicit effort into speeding it up either. Publicity is one of the things we discussed in our brief retrospective. It's likely another contest will take place, and if it does, I will make an effort to spread the word, but am not committing to make such an effort that no more will be needed. ;)

Comment author: jsalvatier 19 August 2011 11:58:28PM 0 points [-]

Thanks gwern!

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