HN Explorer

Ask/Show HN: HNdex, lists to replace spreadsheets on HN

24 points by vollmond ↗ HN
http://hndex.imnotpete.com

Hacker News needs a secure way to create directories of our users and their ideas - "These spreadsheets are always vandalized, abandoned and then forgotten." [1] HNdex is that secure way: all lists and list items are identified by the HN user who submitted them. If pg or patio11 or jacquesm is listed as available to mentor a startup, you can be sure that user put himself there.

I plan to unveil HNdex early next week; I've worked on it for a couple of evenings and it's nearly done. I wanted to gauge interest in particular features for my MVP. Here is a list of features I am currently planning to have when I unveil it:

* Each user is tied to their HN login

* Any user can create a list

* Lists are marked as "people" and "not-people" (IE, offers or unused business ideas)

* Users can add their own profiles, once, to a "people" list

* Users can add to "not-people" N times

* Users can remove their submissions from any list

* Some form of flagging what vandalism does get through (manual review? auto-delete after N flags? not sure yet)

* A "submit to HN" link for each list

* Allow users to store more bio information if their HN profile is sparse.

I plan to continue improving this after I release, but are there any other features you think are needed for the app to be useful?

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[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1794416

edit: also, I am unable to post here from work, so I will be responding to feedback this evening.

8 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 29.9 ms ] thread
rlpb
> Each user is tied to their HN login

How does that work, then?

Edit: not sure why this seems so controversial. Making this happen is a hack. This is Hacker News. I was interested in the details.

imurray
I don't know, but it would be easy to do. Give the user a long random string that they need to temporarily add to their HN profile about box.
vollmond
Bingo. That's how I am doing it.
sz
Depending on how this thing is used (job threads?), you could also scrape comments off of a thread page that satisfy a certain format.

e.g. someone posts

  #HNdex
  Title: Rails developer
  Location: Montreal
  #End
in a thread, they don't have to mess with their profile and sign up for your site (I wouldn't), and they get visibility in comments to people who don't visit your site without having to post twice in different places. Meanwhile you get free authentication and advertising every time someone does this.
ludwig
This reminds me... I need to start making landing pages for my projects :)
shimon
It sounds like you're starting off with a reasonable MVP feature set, but I'm mainly wondering what lists you will have at the start. It might go more smoothly if you pick a few important lists to feature, and maybe even scrape data from the Google Spreadsheets if it's current, than just leave it wide open for us to create lists.

Lists I'd suggest featuring:

- Companies Hiring

- Hackers seeking full-time jobs

- Contractors available for hire

- Seeking co-founder

There are certainly many other lists that come up on HN, but I'd strongly suggest focusing on a small set of proven ones to feature prominently on your site, with others available in a list sorted by last update time. Also, I'd suggest you work to ensure the featured lists capture enough information to discourage forking them -- for example, you should collect geographic data in the job-related lists, and at some point allow filtering by location. You don't need to support filtering in the first release, I think, but you want to avoid splintering attention from the featured lists due to e.g. "Boston jobs" and "Bay Area jobs" and "New York jobs".

TL;DR: this app will succeed if it has a couple of major lists that a large group of HNers use regularly; so it's more important to ensure the key lists have staying power than encourage the creation of lots of little lists.

vollmond
That's a great idea; I'll see what I can do towards that end. Will need a way for those users to claim their entries..