Kritzkast Interview Transcript (First 12 minutes)

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Backpack.tf's price list is voted by the community. How do you feel about users voting for a lower price on an item because they want to be able to afford it? Do you think this problem is currently being dealt with enough by trustworthy people and down voted? Or do you think it is a bigger issue that needs a better work off, and if so how do you plan dealing with it?

I guess this is a somewhat good question. There is always two sides of the story, so you have this one guy who is going to try to create the suggestion for a price that's going to be say, it should be lower because he wants it to be lower, but you also have the other guy who is going to want the price to be higher because he wants to sell higher and make profit. So I think in the end it just really balances out, there are always buyers and sellers for everything, right? So to answer your question I don't really see it as an issue and I do feel that the people voting, they are going to bring their own proof, like there's a tons of suggestions on the backpack.tf site that, they have like 200 comments, so there's people that are spending their time answering that which is pretty amazing.

Going to follow that up and ask what how is it that you know those 200 people are 200 unique people and not duplicates of one person?

So in the backend as an admin, I can see a lot more details than the users, I can see if they're on the same IP address or the time, are they friends with the person who suggested? I see a lot more details. It did happen in the past where someone would suggest a price for like an unusual hat, and when I loaded the page, I saw that every single person that voted yes was like a friend of the person who posted the suggestion. That makes it easier to deal with.

But presumably it makes it more difficult to relay the layer of transparency onto people watching the site, is there any way, for example of letting people know that all the votes that were being cast aren't necessarily being voted by one person or a group of people?

In the end it's an admin that is going to accept or deny the price, so it doesn't, until the vote is closed, nobody really knows who voted on it. They just know that there are maybe 200 people who voted, but they don't know directions it's going. So, I don't think there is anything else they need to see. The one thing that a lot of people have been asking to add is to track when someone is suggesting a price, to show if that person has the item or not. But back to the first question then, it's not going to make much of a difference, because you're going to have this person who, well I guess it does. So, if he has the item you’re going to assume that he wants it to be higher, and if he doesn't have the item you're going assume that he wants it to be lower. So I guess that can help judge the suggestion a little bit.

Do you feel that the current format of prices being modified via the community voting plus admin acceptance is a good one or are you looking to refine it or tune it to be a bit more efficient?

I think at the moment it's the best that we can do because there is so much data. The site has been doing suggestions for so long, and I started like couple of months ago tracking the accuracy of the people who voted so if they voted yes and it was accepted then they have an accuracy rating tied to that person so in the future it means that, if I have let's see 2000 people with active profiles and their accuracy is like 90% and they all voted yes, you can do some kind of weighted averages like that where it could become almost automated based on previous accuracy. So that could help the admin team I guess, judge things a bit better.

What is the best or worst way that you have seen backpack.tf used other than their originally intended purpose?

I don't think there is any bad way to used backpack.tf. You see a lot of people complaining that they're going to use the low end of the prices, but I mean this is nothing new; this is not a backpack.tf related issue. There was the same when people used the spreadsheet or any other pricing source, everyone's going try to get the best price for their item, so I would move on to what the best way it has been used is. I was really impressed when I pushed out the API, so people can create their own tools to use the pricing available and the backpack site, like guys like the bazaar, or tf2 bazaar, or bazaar at tf now, they put the prices on the items, some people create calculators, where you can put whatever item you want, and it will tell you what the total is. You can go on servers and see the pricelist right away, just type price check team captain, and you will see the price of Team Captain, like it's used everywhere, it's really impressive work that these guys have done.

Did you want that API?

Yea, the API is really simple. Basically I dumped the database in JavaScript format so it can be parsed universally pretty much by programming language, so it's very simple, my API is 10 lines of code. I just spit out the database.

And it's open to anyone to use, anyone to sort of manipulate it in any way they feel?

Yeah, the data is available for free for everyone. I think sharing data like this is the best for the community. There is no reason for me to keep. I would say everyone that's using the backpack.tf site, that data is not mine, they are contributing to the site and making it accurate, sharing data with everyone is the only thing I can do.


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(Missing 69 minutes)
 
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I'm bored.

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Fun fact--one of the first things they teach journalism majors is that people are so used to edited/cleaned-up dialogue and diction in movies and TV, that the easiest way to make someone look bad is to transcribe them word-for-word without cleaning it up at all.

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic

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edited/cleaned-up

That would take some time, give me a minute.

 

 

Done. 

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You skipped mah question