I know a bit more about this than I can say, but I advised someone to not be involved with this project. It sounded more like a resume builder than something sustainable.
I'm a Mexican single father studying CSE in Ohio. I have can honestly say that I have never experienced any substantial form of racism but fatherhood as an undergraduate certainly brings a certain degree of isolation. I'm not complaining - I've been dealt a sweet hand - but it is a fact.
I just wanted to thank you for writing this, your last couple of sentences really resonated with me. If more people understood that everyone has something to deal with, the world would be a better place.
Haha I was going for compact but I understand that frustration. I'll think a little bit more about your suggestion. My reservation is that I generally hate having to sign up for stuff before seeing the actual app. This way you can experiment and click stuff right off the bat. I'm sure there is a happy middle ground in there somewhere.
I'll fix the scroll issue now, thanks!
This third idea is awesome - something I hadn't even considered. If I am able to generate enough interest, I'd love to open source this and build out something more robust. This would be a pretty cool feature to add that I would personally get a lot of use from.
Completely understand your thought process. Simple is most often better, but at the same time too simple will leave users scratching their heads.
I don't know about others, but if you could figure out a way to tag specific posts as well as users, to me that would be a valuable tool for searching for past posts or things that have fallen from the first couple pages.
I added some examples with a throwaway account. My hope is that this would become more intuitive as people use this and there is content available.
I think your second idea is awesome, I'll go ahead and implement this next, thank you!
Can you elaborate a bit on your third point? I'm probably misunderstanding but it sounds like the flow you're describing is currently implemented.
Another great idea here. To anyone else reading this, would you mind temporarily adding a code to your about HN 'about' field? This would replace the need for me to ask for an email (the only thing I use that for is identity verification).
To be secure, your app would tell the user what code to add. So after I tell you I'm 'zaroth', you say please add 'gHypQwnm' to your about (show a link to https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zaroth) and a link 'Verify'.
I add it, submit, click back twice, click verify on your site, and then go back to my HN profile and remove it. It sucks from a user interaction standpoint, but better than asking the user for their HN password!
The password I am asking for is completely independant from your HN password. I make note of that in the text underneath the form area but you are not the first person to assume that I'm referring to one's HN password. You are absolutely right though, as a user, I would never give up my HN password to a random 3rd party. Your authentication implementation idea completely sidesteps any ambiguity - I'm going to go ahead and move towards this as soon as I can. Again, thanks for your feedback!
OP here. The biggest issue for my first iteration of this site was clarity - people just didn't understand what it was or how it worked. I thought I fixed that with this iteration but, after showing it to a few friends, apparently not. Any suggestions on how to improve? I'll keep tweaking until I get it right!
Note: You may encounter bugs, site is not totally "ready" yet.
I agree with this - I think both parties would greatly benefit from being able to see a "standard" prototype. Over time, I'm sure a that few spec templates could be developed that would cover 80% percent of use cases. It sounds like a scalable model to me.
As a university student, this is really pretty great. I will have the opportunity to work on reasonably sized projects, earn some extra cash, and probably build a pretty sweet portfolio. I even think it would be cool to form student orgs around this - have upperclassmen train underclassmen in the art of full stack web-dev, and then have let two underclassmen jump into one of these projects with the guidance of an experienced dev. Finally, split the profits. If any of the founders are reading this, would you be open to something like this?
Hi HN, OP here. This was a small side-project I built recently with the intention of fostering more collaboration across HN. Hopefully this can help connect people with similar interests.
I'm pretty green so I would appreciate any feedback. My primary goal with this is to build something that can actually be useful to people - is there anything I can do to better achieve that goal? I'm also planning to add features over time so if there are any requests please let me know.
Hm, well, I can't figure out what it is. There's no explanation on how to use it. I tried entering "tptacek" for an HN user name, saw that it turned green, tried pressing enter, and nothing happened. Maybe some kind of helptext would be good?
The first step is to enter in your username. If the username exists, you'll be able to add interests to that username by clicking on the plus button next to the interest field. Once you do that, you will immediately become searchable and should see the search results updated. You can modify interests by simply editing the input fields and delete an interest by removing all of the text in that input field.
I'm taking the site down until I have time to add a proper authentication system though. I realize now that is probably an essential feature, even in an mvp. I will also make sure that the next iteration of this is a lot more clear.
I really appreciate your feedback!
EDIT: I want to apologize to users of the site. In my excitement to release something, I underestimated the likelihood of people trolling and importance of a proper authentication system. Not to mention, my lack of clarity probably led to well-intentioned users interacting with the site in ways I did not intend. I promise a better experience in the next iteration.
EDIT 2: I decided to leave the site up (so anyone that ends up reading this has context) but have disabled it until I can fix.
I built http://findhn.firebaseapp.com in an attempt to help get more people collaborating on stuff on HN. Help me out by going to the website and adding interests to your HN profile. You'll have to add contact info to your HN profile in order for this to actually be useful though.
I would also appreciate general feedback on the site.
HYO:
I'd be happy to give feedback on projects. I can edit copy and be honest.
