I'm glad to see so many people pitching in ideas here! I've only been folding for around a year or so and found out about the Chimp Challenge too late to join in. Because of this, I'm not sure what you guys are referring to when you say "what happened last year". Could someone fill me in?

Maybe I'm way off base here, but I'm seeing some rather complex point calculations going on. Why not keep it simple? I mean, the whole point of the CC is to get everyone together and fold to the max, right?

How about something like this: a "best out of 3" system, all measured within a certain time frame (10 days, whatever).

• Number of WUs team has completed
• Number of points team has earned
• A third category I haven't though of yet

 
Any thoughts/suggestions? If it's a really dumb idea or wouldn't apply, tell me. I'm just trying to throw some ideas in. Either way, I'll be folding for the cause. 

rjbelans

Before last year, the challenge was a flat-out race to 20 million. If it would have stayed that way, we would have crushed every other team. Last year the team captains got together before the challenge to decided a handicapping system based on a team's past performance to try to make it so any team could theoretically win. What ended up happening was a bit of a failed experiment when a large increase to a smaller team happened and no other team could catch up to them.

The ideas you see in this thread are attempts to build a better system to account for differences in teams and create a fair system for competition.

 
Ahhh ok, thanks for that!

Question, How is conversion calculated? and for that matter, how is the handicap calculated as well?

past handicap was based on 150 days of oct-feb team PPD
conversion is participation (active folders)
Zodac:  Team converstion - Over the 10 days, how much % of the points were done by the team's CC user.

that's my understanding
looks like next years's CC date will be changed to April
 

wrinvert

any handicap is going to screw us like last year, its easier for the small teams to add 1 person and have it make a larger % difference for them.

ie (these are just round numbers):
evga 200 people add 1 and its a .5% increase
small team b 10 people add 1 and its a 10% increase
.....

Like I said to Zodac - EVGA is against/does not favor handicaps 
I said it probably wouldn't fly
 
I have more of a problem with conversion - we have a lot of folders that switch back to other teams
some of them go back to HWC/NCIX,MPC and OCN after they earn bucks
 
My proposal was
sum(this years CC PPD/ last or best CC avg PPD)
10 teams 10 pts for ppd rank so evga got 10..ocn 9...and so on
75% growth +25% for team rank to be used for overall

BEST growth category , best PPD category, and best overall
    
of course I also proposed getting rid of the Chimp names and fold by entire team 
(shot down)
 
OCAU
best PPD - Monkey (censored).jpeg
best growth - Monkey Brain.jpeg
best WU output - Banana.jpeg
best overall - CC Trophy.jpeg
Last Place - The Dreaded Monkey Paw.jpeg

 Could we construct a system based upon:
Total CC ppd/Active clients over last 50 days (using the CC monkey name)
adding in CC point bonuses based on achieving milestones such as 1 mil points OR 1000 WU's 

Hello everyone. Xavier linked me over here to join in the discussion. :)
 

bobc36

Question, How is conversion calculated? and for that matter, how is the handicap calculated as well?

The way it was done was by taking the total points of each team's CC name, and dividing that by the total points of each team. Yes, I realise this isn't necessarily a true conversion rate, but it is far easier to track that checking each team's users. But for the most part, it was to give us that conversion factor that we could use in the formula to try and improve it.
 

troy8d

This is the same proposal from OCN as before...I've already outlined why it will not be a fair system. The fact that they propose a system tailored to their profile provides them no credibility.  The numbers they run confirms that they are designing a system to favor their own CC performance profile.

But EVGA is NOT against handicaps.  A handicap of some sort is necessary to make the challenge fair for all teams.  What we need is a fair handicap and this one fails hard.

 Troy, yes, I do recognise that a formula that ends up with OCN as the winner won't go down well with other teams. However, let me pose to you the same questions that I posed to the CC captains:
 
1) What factors do you think should be counted in this year's system? My view is that these three should be included:
• Total points - This is an event to promote , and not giving due credit to the team that produced the most points was the biggest downside of last year's formula (in my opinion).
• Performance increase - Essentially, the total/handicap system we used last year. It's the only way to actually keep all team competitive, but on its own, clearly biases the smaller teams too much.
• Team conversion - Since this is a challenge where you try and get your team members to switch over their names (yes, I realise your team may not agree with this point, but it wasn't challenged when I made my formula, so I'll explain it anyway), I feel some recognition should go towards the teams that manage to get the majority of their points coming from their CC name.
 
In the end, I came to this formula:
((Total Points/Handicap)*Conversion) + # of mils
Now, it's not a definite system. We can tweak what "handicap" means (last year it was based off the average PPD of a 5 month period; no reason we can't change that to the 10-day average PPD of last year's CC. Perhaps just 1 CP per million is too low; we can tweak that too. But how much is an answer we'll get from my second question:
 
2) Who do you think should have won the CC last year, and why?
 
Now, going by my formula (which includes the three factors I believe to be important), I think OCN were the most consistent across the board. Second most absolute points, a good conversion rate for the second biggest team involved, and again, a decent increase in performance. However, at no stage (here or in the CC forum) did I say those are the only significant factors. I've invited all captains to discuss what they feel are important variables to be included.
 
The way I see it, to make a formula for this year, we need to agree on who should have won last year, and where everyone else should have ranked. Then, we can make a formula, plug in last year's result, and when it matches our expectations, we know it will work. But how to agree? In my formula, HWC are 2nd and Evga 3rd. Does Evga's clear absolute points production mean they should be ranked above HWC, or did they improve their base production enough to earn them that position?
 
Again, yes, my formula does benefit my team. But I welcome anyone and everyone to give me justifiable reasons why another team should have won; this was a system I through up after last year's event, and hasn't actually been tweaked since, since no-one else has told me what else needs to be included. If you have any suggestions, I'll be here to debate them with you.
 
However, please can you leave the "we don't agree with team names" and other similar arguements out of the discussions directed at me. That's something for the CC captains as a group to agree on. I'm only here to defend my system, and try and get rid of the parts that make people unhappy. :)

I don't like the name-changing aspect in CC. I don't believe it brings any value to the competition, and it causes a lot of friction within the teams.
 
We already have the teams that are competing, why is there a need to add one more dimension to the competition?
 

Whatever we do, keep the name change!  I also agree with troy8d, what is the point of a handicap if you add in overall output at the end of the equation? I think total points winner is a neat stat, but irrelevant to scoring since it is impossible to achieve for many of the teams involved.  Also, since members change teams for whatever reason and output fluctuates due to in house challenges, etc, I think the "formula" should be based off past CC stats.  There is too much going on to just look at a couple months as a good snapshot of what a team will do.
 
Good discussion so far, at least everyone agrees that change is needed.   Thought I'd throw in my .02

troy8d

There are only 2 factors that are both relevant and measurable.

• Performance increase: meaning use previous years numbers as a basis for handicap.  How you fold in other months of the year is irrelevant and misaligns folders incentives.  This is the only way to account for all the variables (such as HWC getting help from other forums).  I advocated this metric last year as well (falling on deaf ears). 
• Percent conversion: while this will certainly hurt larger teams like EVGA, I think that it is an important metric for the contest.  How effectively you mobilize your folders and total team involvement certainly speaks volumes to the CC spirit. 

I believe outright production is irrelevant if there is a handicap system.  The large disparity in folding team production size makes total production heavily favor larger teams, putting small teams at an unfair advantage.  Simply tacking it on at the end like you do highly skews the points in favor of the two largest teams EVGA and OCN.  The fact that you have a much easier time converting folders puts the contest squarely in your favor under the system you propose as long as the "handicap" has some semblance of fairness you guys will win. 

Not 100% on how the conversion should fit in just yet, but certainly not the way you have it.  Of primary importance should be how much your performance has improved year over year.  Secondary should be your conversion rate.  You formula does neither as it makes total production of primary importance. 

As to who should have won last year, at the time I would have used the previous years CC PPD as the handicap and see who turns out the winner in that case.  Remaking it again today, I would factor in your conversion factor.  Not entirely sure how yet, will have to put some thought into it. 

Edit: I think the team name format should be preserved as it is the spirit in which the CC was created and also makes it a very unique challenge. 

 
See, my reasoning behind the overall production factor was based on two things:
 
1) It was the thing that was complained about most in the HWC chat last year. That really, how much you Fold doesn't matter, just how much you Fold relative to past performance. While that does even things out, the fact is, we're trying to increase production as much as possible for Pande Group. With that in mind, I'm not sure it makes sense for a team like OCAU to rank higher than Evga, considering they made less than 10% of the actual points.
 
2) The old system was biased for smallers teams, as we can see from last year's results, and it could be argued that adding the conversion rate also gives them an advantage. Adding a factor which is in favour of the larger teams was an attempt to balance the formula some more, so that it wouldn't give such an advantage to smaller teams.
 
And just as a note, I don't see why we would have an inherently easier time getting people to switch over than other teams. We had a higher conversion rate that overclockers.com, and they have ~300 Folders (whereas around April last year, OCN had close to 900). The fact is, we got a large group of people together to try and convert members to the CC name; it was something we worked at to increase our production. So I don't think that particular argument holds water. We may have a smaller team than your one, but it's still bigger than the remaining teams in the CC. For reference, current member counts for the teams, which show that other than TSC!, the difference between my team and the remaining ones is greater than the difference between OCN and Evga.
 
Evga - 1,109
OCN - 802
TSC! - 629
MPC - 441
CPC&B - 410
OCF - 287
OCAU - 258
HWC - 69
TPU - 45
 
 
 

wrinvert

i think we also might need to look at something that was said in an earlier post, of people that fold under evga for the money then bounce on home. it tends to skew our stats a little and needs to be taken into account. (it ups our points and drops everyone elses that 350k every month per folder). if you look at even just the last few days we went from a 19k ppd avg to almost 25kppd until the 10th then dropped back down.

zodac i like your line of thinking, my issue is looking at the sample there is such a huge jump from 1st to last. i think some tweaking to your general idea and we might have something thats workable for all

For the second part, that's why I've been asking for people to post what they feel last year's rankings should have been. If you look at OCAU's stats, they had the lowest points production, didn't have the best conversion rate, and while they did have a decent points/handicap result, that was based off their low handicap, which we've already agreed was too biased towards smaller teams. So in my eyes, their ranking as last or thereabouts isn't necessarily wrong. If we can agree on that, then we can move on to tweaking the formula to close the gap, and maybe swap some of the other ranks around.
 
But it is rather important that we come to an agreement on where teams should have ranked. Without that, we're just gonna keep throwing up formulae, and will never come to an appropriate system in time.

troy8d If there is no name change, how is it any different than the team competition we engage in 24/7/365? If you are so worried about the points you will lose over the course of a week, then don't participate. Also, read up on the history of the CC.

Did I say anything to that meaning? You may disagree with me but that doesn't give you the right to put words into my mouth to insinuate other meanings. I know the history of CC. I was here folding for EVGApes in 2009 and 2010. But that's not the point. We're "discussing" changes to CC, right? I put my idea how it could work without name changing in the last page.

Xavier Zepherious

not that it isn't a good idea - it cuts across the history/legacy of the contest and it would involved convincing the others to forget the way in which it was created entirely...- it be a completely different contest. 

A tough sell 

 
I always thought of CC as a competition that's about ramping up production for a short period of time with the overall intention of creating awareness both for FAH and for your team in particular, while having fun at the same time. Now the first part doesn't need any "fairness" aspect, but for a competition to be fun (for all), it needs to be fair. For me name-changing was about fun, not something inside the bones of CC. I may have thought wrong.
In any case, when I thought of "a fair competition", "name changing" wasn't already on the paper. I started from scratch, if you will, and I attempted in putting together "raw production" and "growth" aspects so that it gives a chance to all teams that's participating, regardless of their size. If this can be done, more teams would have tendency to join.
I also strongly think that this competition needs to be run longer. 30 days instead of 10. With or without name-changing, there will be some donors shifting teams just to participate the competition (because their team is not). I believe this dynamics shifts the tides and brings great uncertainty, making it harder for the competition to be fair. But if we make the competition longer, their affect would be much less. Longer duration coupled with removing name-changing (more teams would participate, which means less donors changing teams), could make the competition more fair and fun.
So, this is what I was thinking.
 

I'm jumping in late on all of this as I typically tend to stay out of such things, but shouldn't there be multiple classes by team size/strength?  (i.e.  We go against ranks 2 and 3, and considering that 2 and 3 are gaining on us there shouldn't need to be much if any weighting?)
 
I know when I race my Rally Class vehicle I'm not competing with Street Stock class vehicles, nor do they try to come up with metrics to do such because it would just be silly...
 
In this case I'd just measure by team size and output over the past three months and create brackets...  Sorry, if you're a smaller team then you compete in the smaller brackets, it doesn't mean you're not as cool, it just means you need to push and grow if you want to play in the top rank (just like the top rank teams had to do)...
 
Prizes (if there are any for CC, I don't know) can be divided up in general pool (everyone gets a chance/drawing) and winner pools for each bracket...  Winning teams/winning people from each bracket then just get put into a random drawing of their own regardless of class; the winning teams in the smaller brackets have just as much chance to win the big prize as the big teams do... 
 
Again, I'm new to this, so I don't know if the EVGApes thing is some sort of tradition, but for a new person (outside looking in) it seems kinda silly...   As a team we all want to win, and each winning team has MVP's and folk who go the extra mile; let them be recognized...  They will not get any more chances to win a prize in the final (winners pool) drawings then any other person on the winning team, but they should be recognized for their efforts to help get us all to the win...  That just helps build better teamwork for all of us, and creates friendly competition between ourselves to push harder/do better...  I believe that for many of the High Output folk it's not so much that they expect to win more prizes because they produced the most, but they should to be recognized for what they've done to contribute; my feeling is that when we're all under the same username it sort of detracts from that... 
 
Just my two cents... 

troy8d

1. It was complained about the most because of how inherently unfair the contest was to the larger teams.  They were at the biggest disadvantage and making the most noise about it because they would benefit most from raw score being factored in.  Don't let the epic fail of last years contest cause an over-correction to this years contest.  What still amazes me to this day is that the majority of you guys looked at last years system and thought it was going to be remotely fair...
2. You could argue that conversion rate favors smaller teams, but you could also argue against it (as you already have in the case of OCN).  If that is your logic, my question then becomes: why introduce a factor that favors smaller teams if it necessitates introducing an additional that favors larger teams to balance it out?
3. Furthermore if that is, in fact, your logic, then why is the interaction in your formula setup in the way it is?  Wouldn't it make more sense for the interaction to be between the competing factors that supposedly balance each other out? 
4. I still do not think the total production is at ALL relevant.  No way is it fair to count that when you've got such a large disparity in production capacity.  You might cleverly mask this disparity, but lets look how fail the formula really is:
   • If we only look at the points from production 120 million points, EVGA would place 5th compared to the total points of all other teams. 
   • If we look at a reasonable handicap, then OCN finishes first and EVGA finishes second based on their production dominance (I ignore HWC because the handicap does not take into account that HWC consistently recruits from other forums for CC and thus their monthly averages are a poor representation of their CC performance - something that was discussed prior to the CC on this forum several times). 
   • Total production pretty much dominates all other factors in your setup.
5. Bottom line:  your formula increases the disparity of the points gap making it more unfair, rather than fairer for the teams involved.

Like I've said, this is just an initial system; it requires tweaking, and I am in no way saying it is a perfect system, ready to roll out. And yeah, win mentioned the big disparity between 1st and 9th as well; it won't take much work to fix that.
 
But then, what would be a fair difference between 1st and 9th? Something in the region of just 10%? Or 75%? Or something else?

bowlinra
At the end of the day, I'd like for my 4 year old to look at the scoreboard and just get it without a decoder ring. 

Also, I kinda like blkhole's idea of classes and/or bowlinra's idea of unique events/races/etc. While I agree that the event should be fair for everyone, handicaps seem too complex. Why not have classes of PPD (ex. - teams with 10-15 million PPD would be in a class) or WUs per day and have races just within those classes? This would allow for any team at any level of output to compete with teams of similar output. Seems simple and fair to me.