Archive for: Tech Updates

13 Nov. 2007

Building a voting system that works

Posted by sebzilla under Tech Updates | No Comments »

One of the current technical challenges here at Zeros 2 Heroes is building our voting system for the Comic Creation Nation campaign.

The mission statement for Comic Creation Nation is that the people (i.e. our community) decide which books get made. After all, it’s democratic: one person, one vote, or rather one account, one vote. But wait a sec… That doesn’t work very well on the Internet, does it? What prevents someone from creating multiple accounts and voting multiple times? What prevents someone from getting all of their friends to sign up, vote for their content, and never use the site again?

Our primary goal at Zeros 2 Heroes is to create a thriving and rewarding community for creators and fans alike, and we have to keep that in mind when we design and implement any new system or product for our social network, including Comic Creation Nation.

If we put a system in place that allows individuals or small groups to undermine the community for their own benefit (also known as “crowd hacking”), then we go against our primary goal. We need to build a voting system for Comic Creation Nation that is both easy to use and hard to abuse, and still produces results that are an accurate representation of the “will of the people.”

It is complicated but exciting work, and we can’t wait to roll it out for everyone to use!


7 Nov. 2007

First Post

Posted by ryan under Tech Updates | No Comments »

Let me introduce myself,

I’m Ryan the Interaction design/developer on the team; you may know me from projects like: Reboot Redesign, BodyShop, and Pitch Doctor. I will be writing weekly blogs about tool development, user experience, or whatever I feel like:-)

As most of you’re probably aware, we pushed the ‘Pitch Doctor’ live recently; I was the Flash Developer on that particular project. I must say, the ‘Pitch Doctor’ is a considerable step in the right direction when compared to the ‘Reboot Viewer.’ The team is starting to gel and is refining the technical development process (especially testing). As a developer, I sit on the edge of my seat when a project goes live, just waiting for either my project to blow-up or for the community to rip it to shreds in the forum. But you guys/gals have been great! The feedback has been well-articulated and constructive. Even if we haven’t responded directly to a post, we have taken note of all insights and will go over them for the next version of the tools.

Cheers,
Ryan


6 Nov. 2007

Clearing up the Zeds

Posted by sebzilla under Tech Updates | No Comments »

Hi, I’m Seb, the Director of Technology. I’ll be blogging weekly about site updates and features.

To start with, I thought I’d let you know about changes to Zeds. You might have noticed that some users have yellow/gold sunbursts on their Zed avatars. This denotes someone who is associated with Zeros 2 Heroes in some official fashion, but it doesn’t clearly identify the user’s role. To help our community better understand everyone’s roles, we’ve separated the sunbursts into color-coded categories for clarity.

Users with a yellow/gold sunburst are Zeros 2 Heroes employees, while users with a silver/white sunburst are community guides and beta testers. These guides and volunteers are still able to help you and answer your questions, just like any employee can.

Cheers,

Seb