"An interesting idea might be to scrape the IBJJF databases that exist publicly. Maybe even public competition records to get a lot more competitors and coaches into this database. "
You are assuming that the site owner's goal is to get a lot more of the BJJ community to use the database. It is not.
The site has existed for years, and it is clear that it will only represent a drop in the bucket of the global BJJ community without changes in approach and/or better promotion. I mean, there are only 82 verified profiles in the entire country of Brazil at the moment of this writing.
There have been all kinds of suggestions on increasing participation, but ultimately, it's his project and he is not interested.
"You are assuming that the site owner's goal is to get a lot more of the BJJ community to use the database. It is not. The site has existed for years, and it is clear that it will only represent a drop in the bucket of the global BJJ community without changes in approach and/or better promotion. I mean, there are only 82 verified profiles in the entire country of Brazil at the moment of this writing. There have been all kinds of suggestions on increasing participation, but ultimately, it's his project and he is not interested."
I wouldn’t say I’m not interested but I might disagree on what the approach should be. From the beginning, we’ve taken an approach of quality over quantity when it comes to the content of this platform. So auto-creating thousands of empty profiles with nothing but a name and a rank is definitely not the way to go, in my opinion.
"It depends on Your pov. Round about 5.000 BB all over the world are an alternative voice that should be heard. It is not the target to be the only alternative to ibjjf in my eyes. But at the moment it simply is.💁🏻♂️"
Another point that should not be overlooked is that Beltchecker has been growing every single day since launch. We did not have a single day without anyone signing up since 2019. Is it necessary to grow faster? I'm not sure; especially not considering that it could compromise quality or trustworthiness of the data here. Creating and building a profile here requires some effort and time, by design. Humans have an extremely short attention span at this time in our history, so by default, Beltchecker is not for everyone and it was also never intended to be.
I see it as a very rare example of a platform that has managed to succeed through quality over quantity in a sea of instant-gratification apps.
But anyway, there is still ongoing work to evolve this site. You'll see later in the year 🙂
"Is it necessary to grow faster? I'm not sure; ... not (if) it could compromise quality or trustworthiness of the data"
Thank you for the reply!
I think it might be worth it to define some sort of a, well, mission for BeltChecker, other than "an experiment" (sorry if that's been done and I am just playing years old tapes). It could be something like "a high quality database of BJJ practitioners around the world", and could be measured on the success of its mission by, say, how high the quality is, and what percentage of BJJ practitioners (blue belt+ practitioners?) it represents. If those were the measures, then pure growth would not necessarily be a success; one would look at whether the % growth of the site is higher or lower than the % growth of BJJ practitioners around the world.
I would also suggest that there might be ways to dramatically increase the number of *quality* profiles by using more promotion (including promotion by the current users) and figuring out ways to lower barriers to entry without sacrificing quality.
You can probably crowdsource a lot of ideas here and pick the ones that seem more in line with the spirit of the site you'd want to maintain. One idea I'd suggest (and I apologize if maybe it's already been discussed or even implemented) is letting (triple verified) academy owners enter the data for their students, generating invitation emails stating that their instructor signed them up. This could skip the name/email verification without lowering the quality of the data, since it came from a verified third party. Sure, a lot of students would not reply, but a great number would - and white/blue belts would get verified automatically, since their instructor already verified it (right?).
If even the registering process of today is too much of a barrier, imagine how many profiles lacking of evidence we would get here without that barrier! The "Profiles needing more votes to verify" already today has far too many names which have been there for ages and steal attention from more deserving profiles from members who have actually put some effort into their profile. Also, is it really even close to the kind of barrier it is to pay hundreds of dollars to a private company for a diploma?
If anything, I'd prefer to see more barriers before it's possible to vote on the profile. E.g. mandatory lineage plus actual evidence uploaded under the latest belt (and the initial BB, in cases of degrees on BB), if there's no confirmation from the promoting instructor. At least for everyone promoted to BB or lower the last 25 years or so.
IBJJF is an organization similar to the NFL they currently have (for Gi) the most prestigious tournaments for jiujitsu. If you are a hobbyists with no aspirations to compete in the Pans or Worlds, or a NoGi only practitioner, then you don't really need the IBJJF. I feel like beltchecker is mainly an online community of jiujitsu practitioners, but as far as I know they do not have a tournament per-se. That being said, I don't think of it as a substitute, rather something entirely unique. If you do not want to deal with IBJJF, yet still want to compete there are many other tournaments on smoothcomp, AGF, JJWL, and ADCC to choose from. The wonderful thing about jiujitsu is there is always something new to learn and experience. And if you are worried about your belt, don't! Just train and have fun and continue to get better at jiujitsu.
"If even the registering process of today is too much of a barrier"
I think you are assuming that the higher the barrier, the better the quality. I'd like to suggest that creative minds might come up with verification methods that may have lower barriers to entry with similar (or, who knows, even better) quality.
I'd like to also suggest that, depending on the goal of the project, the percentage of representation of the BJJ community is not completely and totally unimportant.
"I think it might be worth it to define some sort of a, well, mission for BeltChecker, other than "an experiment" (sorry if that's been done and I am just playing years old tapes). It could be something like "a high quality database of BJJ practitioners around the world", and could be measured on the success of its mission by, say, how high the quality is, and what percentage of BJJ practitioners (blue belt+ practitioners?) it represents. If those were the measures, then pure growth would not necessarily be a success; one would look at whether the % growth of the site is higher or lower than the % growth of BJJ practitioners around the world."
Yeah I guess we could come up with some arbitrary measure of the project being "successful". One could be to create a high quality, public database of practitioners with trustworthy content. By this measurement we are by far #1 in the world at the moment. Another could be to be a widely acknowledged alternative to the black belt degree promotions offered by IBJJF and old-generation black belts. As a first in the world, we have managed to do this and 450+ promotions have been approved by the community. So by those measurements, I would say that Beltchecker is quite the success.
I don't think we should run too far with the notion that Beltchecker was "just an experiment". I might have said that at some point. But more than anything, Beltchecker is an idea. An idea of trying to do things different than what always has been done. And the fact that we're still here and still growing, I think is a sign that we were onto something.
Is there still room for improvement? Absolutely! Would it be cool with even more growth? YES! Would I love to work full time on this project? Hell yes, but nobody wants to pay me for that 😂
"I would also suggest that there might be ways to dramatically increase the number of *quality* profiles by using more promotion (including promotion by the current users) and figuring out ways to lower barriers to entry without sacrificing quality."
The current barrier of entry:
- A profile picture showing your face
- A selfie of you holding a handwritten note with your name on it
- A picture of something official with your name on it
- Your belt promotion history
This is what is currently required to qualify for a verified profile and be part of Beltchecker. I am not sure how we could lower that barrier?
"You can probably crowdsource a lot of ideas here and pick the ones that seem more in line with the spirit of the site you'd want to maintain. One idea I'd suggest (and I apologize if maybe it's already been discussed or even implemented) is letting (triple verified) academy owners enter the data for their students, generating invitation emails stating that their instructor signed them up. This could skip the name/email verification without lowering the quality of the data, since it came from a verified third party. Sure, a lot of students would not reply, but a great number would - and white/blue belts would get verified automatically, since their instructor already verified it (right?)."
Please do not interpret this as negativity, but my job is to predict what can go wrong and what might not work, so that's why I do best 😂 And I see several issues with this:
- I don't think conceptually that a platform should allow people to create profiles in other people's names or with their email addresses. First of all, it might be annoying if someone else sign you up for stuff or you might not even want to have your name listed on a public website by your coach. But there might even be legal issues with this in some areas (like the EU, probably).
- There's no way we could verify a name or face just because a verified instructor created the profile on their behalf. They could misspell the name, they could fake it, they could upload the wrong picture, etc. They probably also don't know the students birthdate and maybe not even all the details of their promotion history. Just too many things could go wrong here.
What could be done could be an invitation function that sends the students and email with a link to create a profile. But they would have to do it themselves, for sure.
The thing is, that the price we pay for thoroughly vetted, quality content profiles is that we lose a LOT of people who are simply not interested in participating, putting in the time, have their name on a public site or even just sign up for another social media platform. But that is just how it is. We are not in the business of instant gratification; someone else can do a SWIPE TO VERIFY YOUR BJJ RANK IN 8 SECONDS AND YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT OMG OMG app
But anyway, I'm always VERY happy to hear about suggestions and ideas for improvements. Personally, I think that the current bottleneck is the interface and usability of the site. I have learned A LOT since I started building this 4 years ago; it was basically the first thing I coded in 20 years 😂 So that is an area of improvement which I am currently working on (in the little spare time I have).
"Yeah I guess we could come up with some arbitrary measure of the project being 'successful'. One could be to create a high quality, public database of practitioners with trustworthy content. By this measurement we are by far #1 in the world at the moment. Another could be to be a widely acknowledged alternative to the black belt degree promotions offered by IBJJF and old-generation black belts. As a first in the world, we have managed to do this and 450+ promotions have been approved by the community. So by those measurements, I would say that Beltchecker is quite the success. I don't think we should run too far with the notion that Beltchecker was 'just an experiment'. I might have said that at some point. But more than anything, Beltchecker is an idea. An idea of trying to do things different than what always has been done. And the fact that we're still here and still growing, I think is a sign that we were onto something. Is there still room for improvement? Absolutely! Would it be cool with even more growth? YES! Would I love to work full time on this project? Hell yes, but nobody wants to pay me for that 😂"
Have you considered sponsoring/hosting a tournament?
"Have you considered sponsoring/hosting a tournament?"
With what money or time 😬
Also, I have absolutely zero interest in giving up or pausing my current career to start running competitions instead, that sounds like a nightmare to be honest 😂 (been there, done that)
"What could be done could be an invitation function that sends the students and email with a link to create a profile. But they would have to do it themselves, for sure. "
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Presumably, the students would be more likely to join/fill out the profile if the invite originated from their instructor.
As far as the instructors go... I think a good number of instructors already on this site will probably do it just because they like the project. However, I think instructors will also find value in this. It's an easy way to track who's been at each belt/stripe level for how long and might be up for a promotion. It might also increase "stickiness" of the students, since new white belts might be less likely to drop out if they have (and invested their time in) a profile showing their progress.
