comments

• Stacy Prince on November 12th, 2008:

  Way cool.

• paul on November 15th, 2008:

  Hi guys,

  Fantastic that you’re making this possible!

  A small suggestion: I wonder if you’d consider tweaking your text on your homepage, where it says “We used to make iPod condoms.” Given the sensitivities of the Charter for Compassion, I wonder if some people will be offended by that phrase and use it as an excuse to denigrate the Charter for Compassion? It seems to me we need to make this as open and inclusive as possible.

  The tweak could simply be, “We used to make iPod accessories.”

  What do you think?

• jason jensen on November 16th, 2008:

  any 1 else see a funny pattern here .Theses are the winners of a coupla projects and it seems that unless you are a certain exp level you might as well save your time i think theres some algorithmical discrimination going on. Hint all the noobs jus vote for experienced and youll get exp to also vote for the cats that have the most exp no matter if its good its working for me so in order to get my stuff considered im sacrificing my input

  Graduates
  1. HealthEase Meals
  (3960)
  2. HEasyCook
  (432)
  3. Whole Life Meals
  (2178)

  1. Exhibytes
  (4866)
  MindFlexing
  1668)
  Indelpact
  (1904)

  Dollar Pronto
  (2746)
  BuckInAHurry
  (1624)
  Make it Friday
  (149) *

  Texstar Events
  (4866)m
  Two Gals Galas
  (4866) m
  Good Karma Planning
  (3327)

  GRASP
  (571)m
  SHARPRelief.org
  (571) m
  one on one with the world issues
  (559)

  Door Dangle
  (186)
  Seed the Masses
  (4866)
  Adoors Advertising
  (3327)

• Leticia on November 20th, 2008:

  I feel like repeating myself but I just keep coming back to it:

  1. Blind submissions will be better for the system. And this has nothing to do with Troy (to be true, I like many of the thing he proposes, and vote for his ideas when I think they are the best ones, like I do with everybody else’s). It has to do with the fact that we are humans and when money comes around we just go to safe bet, best bet. And I don’t differentiate whether you show the name, the experience points or whatever, we should be able to choose from a naming just in terms of the name itself, and not whether it’s a safe bet or not. If this platform will give you a name that is tested internationally and that will work, that name shouldn’t be picked (or shouldn’t risk to be picked) depending on who sent the proposal. I believe it is unfair to the client and to the community itself. And yes, there’s no proof that things are going wrong (I agree), but why tempt the occassion? There’s been many of us who have complained about this (for many different reasons) and truly felt more comfortable when we had blind submissions (even if that had no effect on results.)
  Also, I’ve read in previous posts that whoever wants to cheat (in tearms of tracing who proposed what and so on), I have a question: If people is telling us all they have found the ways to find out “safe bets” and game the systme, how can we be so sure that there’s no proof that blind submissions improve the system? OK, I agree, this is a tricky question to answer, but still, I can’t find the reason why knowing the experience or the name of a proposer will “help” us choose the best names. If there’s a reason, I’d be very interested in knowing, cause I can swear I’ve tried to find it out by myself, but just haven’t been able on my own.
  Again, being able to tell the buyer who proposed the name, their experience and all is probably an awesome marketing tool, and also good for the winners themselves, which is why I’m not proposing to erase the name of the proposer once the name has come out and we have winners. I just don’t see why the fact that name A was submitted by 30265 points user will make it a better option for the client, and therefore, I don’t see why that information is necessary for the community beforehand.

  2. I still can’t find anything in my account info (no card load no anything)

  3. Naming check and correction. I know I’m no programmer, and it probably is complicated to have it on a page like this, but it would be SOOOOO USEFUL!!
  I’m speaking of two things, the first one is a naming check. I know that we all have different likes (and that’s what makes us a wonderful community I believe), but sometimes there are things submitted that won’t work. I’m not speaking in terms of market, branding, etc. I’m speaking in terms of language and the client’s brief. There are two wonderful examples about this. One is on a previous post by (I believe) Stacy Prince (if not, I’m sorry) about how some of the names (even winning names) weren’t available as .com even though that was a requirement, the other is about the use of other languages: on the last project for a Mexican Snack I’ve read a couple of things that were so not true/pronounceable I’m still amazed. Of course we can’t all speak different languages and/or know if a word is best used in a region or another, but we sure can check for domains, and THERE ARE people from other countries who can check when they are voting. Being able to vote for things that won’t work or don’t meet the prerequisites damages the system, and doesn’t allow us to do a proper selection. Here is what I propose: let us mark those words that might cause trouble (obviously explanation must be required) so everybody know what they are voting on, and we improve the quality of our outcome. I’m not speaking of banning or erasing those names, as many thimes they still are great names (imagine I translate something wrong and write “meall” instead of “meal”, the meaning is different, and that might need to be pointed out, but it could still be perfect for the client/product/company.)
  The second thing is editing. I’ve read a couple of posts asking for it, and I’ve found myself in the need for it. Sometimes we make mistakes -I’m assuming we are all humans, for all the others and the unicorns, my apologies, - but right now there’s no way to correct it. These is quite annoying for me, specially since the only way to say that you didn’t want to write that down is through comments, which are on a different page, and I myself forget to read them more often than I should. Also, it just avoids deleting entries that turned to be against the will of the client (like when the tell us like 4 hours after we submitted our entries that they need a .com and that they don’t want names in German, for example). This also goes against the quality of our votes, and therefore the quality of the outcome. It could probably be solved through the naming check solution, I don’t know.

  4. The comments page ¿could we please integrate it on the names page? Just so we make sure everybody sees it and the information doesn’t get lost. Also, most of the things in the comments page are regarding the things in point 3, so ….

  Sorry for the lenght (although not the content)

  Best withes

• jason jensen on November 20th, 2008:

  I TOTALLY AGREE LETS JUST VOTE ON COMMENTS AND BTW HAS A O EXP’D NAMER EVER WON OR PLACED I TRIED SCANNING BUT DIDN’T SEE ANY WITH UNDER 200 POINTS ITS STARTING 2 LOOK LIKE NOOBS GET NADA DESPITE THAT DRAG ABOUT OH THEY WORK REALLY HARD AND PUT A LOT OF TIME INTO …BLAH BLAH BLAH EQUILIBRIUM FOR A MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE CENTER SOUNDS MORE LIKE A CENTER FOR THE CLUMSY AND UNBALANCED TO ME IT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE TOO MUCH TIME WAS PUT INTO THAT 1

• Brad on November 20th, 2008:

  I posted this comment on another another post but it looks like this would be the proper place to post it. I agree with both Jason and Leticia and here is my logic:

  After a couple of weeks of submissions, watching contest results, and analyzing contest archived contest results, I now understand why this system is flawed and why those with high experience points ALMOST ALWAYS are the ones who place (It’s what I like to call the ‘Casting Couch Effect’).

  New members are not stupid and they see that contest winners almost always have a high experience point count. Therefore, by deduction, if those with high experience points are the only ones who consistenly win, THE ONLY SURE-FIRE WAY TO EARN EXPERIENCE POINTS IS TO VOTE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE HIGH EXPERIENCE POINTS. What this means is that, for the most part, people are not voting for who they think SHOULD win, but are voting for people they think WILL win. And the people who 95% of the time WILL win (as shown by a mountain of evidence) are those will high experience points. It’s an unfair system that feeds on itself and awards EXPERIENCE POINTS, and not good, CREATIVE NAMES.

  This is similar to the dreaded ‘casting couch’ in Hollywood where you have to sleep with the producer to get the job. In other words, you can come and play in our world, and even make money if you stay here long enough, but in order to do so you have to ‘pay your dues’ by grabbing a seat on the casting couch and servicing (voting for) those who have been here long before you. After you do that for awhile (and slowly build up experience points by voting for those who have high experience points) then maybe you can earn enough to truly enter the game and win some money.

  Matt, I’m sorry but how you can discount Troy’s multiple placings in 10 versus multiple placings in 3 is astonishing; simple statistics would tell you that there is a major difference there. Troy is a fantastic namer, no doubt, and that is why he consistently places, but the fact that he placed multiple times in 10 out of 11 should tell you that people are voting for WHO they think will win, not for the best name (which is totally counter to the point of the contest, for both the client and the community). I’d love for you to calculate and post the AVERAGE EXPERIENCE POINTS of the winners when blind submissions were implemented versus when they were not. I’m sure that would be very telling.

  I understand you guys are out to make money, and to do that you need to make people like Troy happy, but your system is inherently unfair and doesn’t properly reward the NAMES that this site is based upon. I’ve talked to numerous new members who have quit becuase of the way the system is weighted toward the elders and I’m afraid that I now agree with them. The only true way to REWARD innovation is to re-institute blind submissions. I have no doubt that the community is actually picking the winners in each contest, but its WHY the are picking those winners (they’re the only ones who win) and the motivation behind it (the only way to earn earn experience points themselves) which is why the algorithm is flawed.

  This site is a great concept and coming up with names is actually very fun, but when you finally figure out what’s going on its sorta like a kick in the nuts. I’ve been completely appalled by some of the most recent winners when there have been some very, very witty and valid names in the loser’s bracket. When something like ‘Wallet Card’ can win over numerous other impressive submissions, I’m sorry but I call B.S.

• Troy on November 22nd, 2008:

  @Kluster, any new updates with anything regarding NameThis? whats going on at the Kluster Headquarters? we havent really heard anything from you lately…

• Troy on November 23rd, 2008:

  @Kluster, how come in the member area (messages, member profiles, etc.) the old total of personal watts are still displayed?

• Richard on November 23rd, 2008:

  1) Like just about everyone else here I think BLIND submissions are needed. (And easy to implement)
  I also think the top 5 lists should be removed from the archive.
  First thing I did when I started voting here was look up the top lists to see who wins all the time.
  That swayed my reading of the names.

  Of course, later I did some basic maths and worked out that Troy is actually a bad bet!
  He puts in way too many names. So, all you can do is put 1 vote on each name (maybe 2)!
  Slow and painful way to make loose change. (Voting system suks, see my previous posts )

  2) We need to be weeding the names automatically/manually somehow. There is far to much noise from
  noobies… “FRED.com - Fred is easy to remember” (not a real one, but plenty of obvious junk in name lists with no available website).
  Clients DON’T want 300+ random names. Maybe 20 reasonable names to consider.
  If we let this get much worse we may as well get the proverbial “monkeys and typewriters” in.

  3) And a limit to how much description is needed. A very brief limit 160 characters?
  300 names by 160 characters is still a lot to read through to judge a load of names.

  4) And as Kluster has not contacted me about my ideas for NameThis 2.0… A peek. (I continue to work on it)
  In my system all non-sucking names share proportionally in the rewards.
  And everyone who votes is paid for voting honestly, not for guessing most popular or best networker.
  And you only vote if your vote counts… ie when it is, say “Tampons” men won’t be invited to judge.
  So your time will not be wasted, providing an opinion that the client does not care about.

  My 2 cents for the day! (Hopefully not as long as Brads! )

• Richard on November 23rd, 2008:

  Just a quick idea for a name cull…
  Small text in red saying “Have you checked the domain? Must put AVAILABLE or FOR SALE in description.”
  And don’t accept submissions unless they have “available” or “for sale” in the text.
  That would kill 90%+ of the junk I reckon.

  I have actually put in a request to PCNames.com to see if they will add some features for us namers…
  I’ll keep you posted on that.