Review others websites and they review yours
feedbackroulette.com
feedbackroulette.com
There are alot of words on the landing page [of BCC]. Look at some of the ycombinator pages and you will notice the average site has about 45 words and 4-9 links. Don't give them so many options and so much to read. Otherewise, looks good!
The quality of your users' interactions with FeedbackRoulette is directly related to the quality of the advice they receive. To recruit and retain the best users who give the best advice, you have to be giving out advice which is worth their time. The above quoted advice is well-intentioned but does not convince me that I am likely to realize business value by continuing to be engaged with the service.
To see another take at resolving this problem, take a look at StackOverflow: by breaking the 1:1 nature of the communication, you can use people's desire to peacock to get hypercontributing members of the community to be responsible for most of the good advice on the site, and let the 90% who do no writing merely vote the good stuff to the top. Hopefully they pick the right good stuff. If, on the other hand, StackOverflow picked two random programmers with a question and connected them, the average experience of using it would be getting your query on Rails ActiveRecord validation answered by a junior Java programmer from India. That would be a much less effective StackOverflow. It would likely not maintain the interest of somebody like John Skeet (who, if you are not familiar with the SO community, is something of a local legend).
(Sidenote: if this reviewer was right and there are in fact YC companies with 45 words on the front page... how do I put this gently... there must be someone in your alumni network who you trust on SEO, right? Talk to him about whether that is a good idea. It will be a very brief conversation.)
Proving or disproving these assumptions would be pretty important for strategic direction at a QA site, incidentally, since the world if I'm right looks very different from the world if I'm wrong. Since StackOverflow's data set is public, you could do it as a weekend project. In general, though, this is the kind of stupidly powerful thing you can go with the data you already have in your startup.
Please avoid such racist stereotyping. There are terrible and awesome programmers in every community, and it's an insult to put them in the same bin and call them the same name. I found it quite offensive myself.
'...answered by a terrible/awful Java Programmer from India'.
If he wrote following,
'...answered by a Perl hacker from Germany.' his point will still be valid. I think you are reading too much into it.
P.S.:I am an Indian.
And so this reminds me of an idea for a more focused version of HN I'd had a while back. Let's call it 'Bluntr' for now. All stories are requests for review of work: code, designs, websites, products, whatever. All comments are supposed to be brutally direct feedback, with as much concrete backup-data/recommendations as possible.
Note that this does not mean 'nasty': no mockery or vague insulting filler words would be permitted. But it also means every thread can jump straight to the point, without traditional 'attaboy!' or 'I like the X but...' niceties slowing things down. Essentially: at Bluntr, empty compliments or insults would both be flagged/downvoted to oblivion, while steely-eyed evaluation would be promoted.
The community might not gel without those normal verbal ticks and grooming-activities, but then again these ground rules might help the really focused, strong contributors cut to the chase a lot faster. You are not allowed to be either nice or nasty, just honest -- and so you are free to be more productive. That's the initial theory to be tested, at least.
So... exactly like HN comment threads?
I also think it'd be cool if the homepage showcased some of the highest rated sites, like the way Logopond (http://logopond.com/) works for logos.
If the creator of FeedbackRoulette is reading, skip button pronto!
Reviewers submit a short review with the basic findings and points of improvement, and hint at a more in-depth review.
For a nominal fee, you could access a more in-depth review and consulting (maybe with coding help, etc..). The site could be a nexus between people needing reviewing help, and consultants, for a small fee.
Top reviewers could make a living out of this, other people can submit good reviews in the hope of being picked for consulting work.
Just my 2 cents of brainstorming (probably millions of buts to this one).
Could really work well for connecting consultants with new clients they would otherwise never find.
So for example: If i rate site A.com and the siteowner of A.com rates my review as 5/5 then my sites should be eligible for 5 reviews. The ratios could be different - essentially reward owners for better reviews.
I see a very clear monetization opportunity here. I pay money and get X number of reviews. I am sure you would have thought about this. Cool stuff.
Reviewing the websites even has an addictive quality to it.
Interested to know the business model.
Nice work.
(Also, what if I don't have a website I want reviewed? I guess that violates the 1:1 relationship feedbackroulette is trying to develop, but I'd be interested in what non-"webmaster" folks have to say if there are any willing to submit a review. )
Perhaps this will change later, but in the meantime, perhaps sites could be circulated around instead of just being assigned to one person (which is what I presume is happening.)
Feedbackroulette could be reduced to reddit.com/r/feedbackroulette (imho)
That said: I receive a lot of positive feedback on the service and in the instances when someone contacts me with a bad experience, I take care of them. I'm a little surprised to see such a pointed comment about FBA on Hacker News. If you used the service and had a poor experience, I wish you would have given me a chance to do something to make it right with you.
I rejected good half of responses, but it also made me realize this:
Having thought a bit more about this whole situation here's what I think is the root of the frustration - I would rather not get to the point of needing to reject comments.
There are some obviously half-assed comments, and these are easy to reject. However there are other comments, still useless, that clearly had some time and effort put into them. Rejecting these seems unfair, especially considering the price point. And there is lots of these comments.
That's why an ability to focus the survey more precisely is IMO essential.
Hence - my question. Have you got a chance to add country filters to FA or not?
Also, there are a number of other improvements that would really make this site a lot more valuable for getting feedback than HN, such as rating feedback givers, incorporating Silverback, etc.