There’s some chatter today on Hacker News and Profy about a new site called Numbrosia. Unlike Digg, stories are not ranked via user voting.
Instead, users solve math puzzles that get progressively harder. The higher their score, the higher their submitted news items appear. The exact number of points for an item is the recent score divided by the number of submitted links, so it makes sense for users to submit just a single story.
There’s no business here, and we’ll likely never touch on Numbrosia again. But I like the creativity, and sometimes seeing something like this creates the seed of a new idea in others. Plus, puzzle addicts will likely waste an afternoon on the site.
Perhaps intelligent testing could help other sites reduce spam or otherwise improve their service.