Show HN: Solvers.io – use your skills to improve our world | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Solvers.io – use your skills to improve our world

solvers.io

43 pointsBlahah55 comments

Seems like a cool idea on the surface, but a few minutes of browsing make it look like a jobs board for non-profits/startups instead of solving what I might consider "real" problems.

In other words, I'd rather see something much more specific than what I'm seeing here. Something like:

> Hi, we're FarmBot. We're building drones to help farmers farm better. Here are a list of problems we need to solve: UI for farmers to designate pathways, machine learning tools to identify crop quality, (insert more).

What I'm seeing now looks more like job descriptions.

> We need someone to build us an app to find bodies after the Haiti earthquake.

That's not really a problem to solve -- that's a position that's open.

I feel like I didn't explain that very well...

Edit: To summarize, what I really want is a list of problems to solve. I want to know "Here's something that is stumping us. Got any ideas?"

I don't need a new job. I just want to help change the world. I don't know the specifics of why providing clean water to rural areas is such a challenge. But if I did know the specific problems, maybe I could help. What I don't have time for is to take on the entire scope of that challenge.

In other words, give me something specific to solve.

I hope that makes more sense.

Thanks for this feedback. I agree with you. At the moment a lot of the projects are looking for open-source contributors.

In fact, the first 'problem' posted was also the first thing to be solved: a charity's website was running really slow and they needed help fixing it. That got fixed in 24 hours.

We're aware of this and recently added 'tasks' to projects so that specific problems can be solved, and solvers get credit for them.

We'd love suggestions for other ways to encourage people to post smaller chunks that are more like specific problems.

There's this website called solvers.io that is trying to solve problems, but it looks like it's down.

Thanks for the heads up, I've spun up a few more servos.

My bad anyway, it's just (yet) another one of those sites that looks like it's completely hung if you happen to have cookies blocked.

Is this even considered a bug anymore?

Definitely a bug! We use cookies only for GA and for login sessions. It shouldn't affect a pageview that isn't logged in. We'll sort it out :)

Yes, the site is creaking under that lovely HN traffic.

Props to our wonderful hosts http://modulus.io for the dynamic servo scaling and all the other good stuff they provide.

> In fact, the first 'problem' posted was also the first thing to be solved: a charity's website was running really slow and they needed help fixing it. That got fixed in 24 hours.

That was also the first item I looked at and thought, "Oh, I could do that, it should only take a couple hours tops." Everything else requires significantly more time investment -- which narrows your field of helpers down to, "smart and helpful people who have lots of free time".

Those people exist, but they're a much smaller population than, "smart and helpful people who can come up with a couple of hours for an interesting project while procrastinating on something else."

I think your website copy is very strongly commitment-oriented.

From https://www.solvers.io/:

-> "Get involved in a project below"; what about, "Solve a problem for a project" instead?

-> "Got an idea? Post it and recruit solvers"; I dunno what to suggest here, but "idea" is really broad and "recruit" is a loaded term.

From https://www.solvers.io/projects/new:

-> "Project name" and "Role": I think these are definitely sending the wrong message. "Role" might by itself by the source for a lot of the confusion. You're not looking for a role to be filled -- a position -- you're looking for a specific thing to get done. (It can also cause people to ask for the wrong thing, e.g. a website developer when they need a graphic artist or something.)

-> "Describe the project, including its expected duration and required skillset." I think "duration" sends the wrong message, i.e., "if you're looking for help for the next six months, that's OK, just say so". If that's what you intend, cool, otherwise, that spot might be a great time to tell project managers to keep it short for best results: "Describe your project and what kind of help it needs. Try to ask for specific tasks instead of ongoing commitments."

HTH. It's a really cool site, I hope I can do a thing or two there in the future.

Thanks for the feedback!

We're going to move towards a more task-oriented system. The tasks were only implemented last week, so none of the current projects are using them, but we'll try to make sure projects are more broken down in future postings so people with limited time can help out more.

What you describe reminds me of a weekend project I threw together to check out meteor.js: http://inception.getkyn.com/

The few submissions I got aren't earth shattering, but gave me a few new ideas for side projects.

I'll have to dig up the links, but I believe Caravan Studios has a site more closely related to what you describe.

This is a terrific idea. The better-blast[1] idea is a terrific example — an interesting problem, and one where a better solution would drastically affect biology (since BLAST is a common bottleneck).

[1] https://solvers.io/projects/XCaemW5kLMoxcx4jr

Thanks! Better-blast is one of my side-projects from my PhD that I don't have the skills or time to do alone. I've already had offers of help from some really talented engineers from all sorts of different backgrounds. Some of the ideas people have had are really outside what's being done in bioinformatics at the moment! More collaborators always welcome :)

Hi, OP here. We started building Solvers after discussions on HN in November, so we really want to get your feedback on what we're doing. Please let us know what you think of the site, the idea, and how we can recruit more projects and solvers to make good things happen.

If you want to chat to us in real time, we're sitting in our Gitter room: https://gitter.im/solvers

Hi, cofounder here! Was inspired by Richard's post on HN at the end of last year and was determined to help out. We built the site together using Meteor, which was a bit of a gamble with it being one of those shiny new things, but has paid off in productivity and all the great smart packages we're using. If you have any questions about using Meteor for this kind of project just shoot us a message here or at team@solvers.io.

(Please don't ask about spiderable and SEO...)

This is suuuper awesome. I've been looking for something like this for a long time.

I've been wanting something that:

-Helps other people like volunteering at a food bank helps people -Doesn't require me to leave the computer -Takes advantage of my specialized skills (data crunching, website optimizing, etc.) -Doesn't require a full time commitment or leaving job -Can be done in piecemeal when I have time.

I'll be looking over all the posts, hopefully I'll find something to contribute too!

Thanks!

We just implemented the tasks system last week, which should help people find bite-sized bits of work, and project owners break up work into manageable pieces to attract volunteers that can't commit loads of time.

love the app! but getting a 404 on the chat link. maybe because i don't have organization privileges for solvers on github?

Whoops, didn't realise the organisation room was private. Thanks for the heads up. The repo room is public: https://gitter.im/solvers/solvers, I'll update the original link.

I definitely wasn't expecting the "Got Skills" button to just link me down to the unorganized project listings. I assumed that would be a place to list myself as an available volunteer with the ability to list my skill set or something like that, then receive suggestions for projects with an option to browse all of the projects.

I love the idea, and I don't want to suggest you go toward catchafire's very narrow model of pre-determined skill sets. That leaves me out in the cold, which is frustrating. But the ability to list your expertise and willingness to help so that project creators could proactively reach out to potential volunteers, would be awesome.

Thanks for the feedback, I agree completely. It's on our to-do list to let people add tags to their profile so they get notified when new projects are posted with their skillset, without restricting them to only helping out with those.

Any other ideas for how to achieve this are very welcome. We'd love to get some UX designers involved in the project long-term, and we've already got a talented designer creating a new style for us.

I don't have a fully formed thought here, but I think, sometimes, it can be difficult to know what your problems are, and perhaps even more difficult to know whether or not your problems are solvable.

I received a mass email years ago from someone I was acquainted with who was heading off to volunteer at a hospital in Somalia. She was spreading the word that they were rebuilding this hospital, lot of details, and then asking for anyone who could devote a month of their life to come to Somalia and train staff or help with construction.

I can't train medical staff, and I doubt I'd be much use with construction, but I reached out to ask if they needed any help securing their facility. The person coordinating the volunteer efforts didn't know until she contacted the woman heading the whole project. She told my friend that everything was being stolen. Sheets, office supplies, mattresses, and the drugs, which would be a huge target, hadn't even arrived yet. They were in serious need of a comprehensive physical security solution and didn't have a plan.

That is a situation where I can provide potentially invaluable help, but despite knowing there was a problem, they didn't even know that there were people in the world who could help with that on a volunteer basis.

So, again, I don't have a solid idea, but if there were any way to help project creators think through and detail their pain points, I think that could be incredibly helpful. My example was extreme, but I'm sure there are many people muddling through archaic, complex problems that don't there are better ways. The Toyota logistics donation to NYC Food Bank springs to mind:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/nyregion/in-lieu-of-money-...

I think you're spot on that many people don't even know what problems they've got. Something we'd like to do in the long term is build a community of solvers that actively seeks out projects. That way people are taking their expertise to the problem and saying, "can you use _these_ skills?".

Another idea is to have a team of enablers - if someone has a project but they don't know what to post we invite them to come and talk to the enablers in a chat room. They then help the project owner figure out what kinds of skills could help them, and get the project posted.

I loved that story of Toyota's engineers, and it was probably in the back of my mind when I conceived Solvers.

That would be fantastic. I'm sure there will be some pendulum swinging as you nail down the balance of enthusiastic solvers & the maximum capacity for cooks in any given kitchen, but I think its a great goal and I'll be following along enthusiastically.

In response to blahah: suppose that you could somehow make the enablers previous recipients of expertise? If you could assess an incoming project's needs and bin it with previous projects, people associated with those previous projects could pay back to the overall effort by trying to help the incoming project decide what the pain points are and how they might be solved.

That's a really neat idea - match up new projects with older projects to learn from their experience. Thanks :)

That's definitely something we're moving towards. It's tricky figuring out when the best time to post to HN is -- do you want early beta feedback, or to drive traffic to a final product?

Basically what you're requesting is something we really want to move towards -- we have in the works a way to add skills tags to your own profile, for example. This will help out with how you'd like to use the site.

I agree with emhart -- this was my exact reaction. Of course I understand that you can't launch beta with all your features, but please consider this another vote for a more robust matching mechanism. Other than that, great work! I think this sort of opportunity to get our hands dirty is exactly what a lot of people are looking for.

This should just be how (at least some) homework/coursework material is generated at universities/colleges.

If a simple CRUD app can solve real world problems, then why not make students make it. If it ends up being used, it can even go on their resume.

Great idea! It's a nice way for people to find work or study experience. We'll look into reaching out to undergraduate programmes.

I'd really love to see that! So much of my undergraduate coursework felt like a complete waste of time since it was essentially throw away work.

As a plus, a teacher/TA is marking the work anyways, so you might have several people going at a problem from different angles and having the quality of the work evaluated by someone who (presumably) knows their stuff.

I bet this could work well for group works/final projects.

This is great. Just met someone who works at the FoodBank and as she described some of her tech problems it became pretty apparent that some basic CRUD apps could save them many, many hours every year. I do not think this is an uncommon thing.

Please do ask her to post on Solvers. If she needs help formulating the project just ask her to email us: team@solvers.io

Like the concept. There was a guy at a local meetup who was a startup involved with helping the homeless. I think this would be a great resource for him.

Thanks, and if you get a chance to reach out to that guy, please ask him to contact us: team@solvers.io. We'd love to help him.

Email sent.

Do you have any further info on that guy's project?

Yes I do: http://hacktoendhomelessness.com/

If I may, I'd like to comment on my initial impression:

Bland. Sorry. I know minimalist is all the rage these days, but I (speaking only for myself) would prefer more of a grid-image-based view of the projects.1)It'd add some flare; otherwise it just reminded me of stackoverflow. 2) While I think of developers as largely rational, if your sales pitch is going to be "make a difference", you'll probably need to appeal to people's emotions, personalizing the projects, making people feel something. Loving the idea, though.

Thanks very much for the feedback - I agree. Neither of us founders are designers. However, we've now got a great designer working with us, and we'll have a new look in a few weeks. Others have mentioned wanting images for projects, and that's definitely something we're considering. However, we have to balance it with not wanting to make it hard for people to post projects.

A lot of charities, for example, are already tentative about asking programmers for help, and we're a bit concerned that asking them to produce a pretty picture could put them off posting. Ideas for how to have the look without putting off posters are very welcome.

You guys probably have more important things to to think about, but when it comes to personalizing projects, here are my thoughts:

1) Not everything will sound or seem uber exciting, so the only images they will be able to post will be generic getty ones or none, making them look inauthentic or just plain.

2) Have you thought about, uhm, video proposals maybe? Something like webrtc could make it pretty easy to record using the posters webcam, without making it more challenging to post. It'd personalize the post, make it easier to relate to, put a face to the project. webrtc + html5

Can't really come up with anything else off the top of my head, but I wish you luck.

Yes, someone else also suggested video postings. At the time I argued that it needs to be optional to keep friction low, but I do agree it's a great way to get people engaged! We'll definitely keep this in mind and take your suggestions on board. Anything we can do to pull people in to help is a good thing.

Congratulations - this is a beautiful concept. Very inspiring.

Thank you! It's great having a project you really believe in. I was inspired by Richard's original idea, and if we can continue to inspire other people then we'll be extremely happy.

What does this do that a site like catchafire doesn't already accomplish (except for focus exclusively on technology)?

Catchafire is awesome.

Our goal with solvers is complementary. We're very focussed on enabling hackers and other technically skilled people to solve problems. And once we've got the platform in shape, we want to build a community that actively seeks out people who could use their help. We hope to have subject-specific task forces that go looking for projects to solve.

So, it doesn't really bring anything to the table then. (that's not meant to be as rude as it sounds - text doesn't lend well to that type of statement).

Why not just work with catchafire to branch off your task force idea rather than weakening an already weak system of nation-wide volunteers?

Me and davedx have discussed this before and we came to this conclusion: it's a healthy thing to have multiple sites in the same space. In reality, a few people control the direction of each site. There can only be a single direction for each site. If we were to merge, it would greatly reduce our ability to experiment with new ideas, and ultimately we think it would reduce the number of problems being solved. We don't mind if it's us or them who leads to problems getting solved, we just want to help as many people as possible.

What we're very interested in is having a reciprocal agreement with other similar sites, so that we link to them and encourage our solvers to join all the communities. This way, whichever has the best ideas will help the most people. We already have an agreement with interdisciplinaryprogramming.com which hasn't launched yet, and we're in touch with openhatch.org. We'll talk to catchafire too, and we'd love to hear about anything else in this space.

seems like catchafire focuses on actual organizations and requires an interview with volunteers.

i'd really like a platform where i can just practice my skills and learn new things on someone's open source project, rather than committing myself as a volunteer of a nonprofit.

i have skills i'd like to improve on in a practical application with guidance. there are people who need, or dont want to do, that kind of work. we just can't find eachother.

Well I applied to two projects. I'll see how it goes.

awesome idea!

Thanks Nancy! :)

This is what I read after going to this site:

Hi, I'm a "creator/founder" looking for people to finish my cockamamie idea in which I can stamp my name all over it when it's finished. I use the old, tired "changing the world" slogan over and over. I'm basically what's wrong with the internet.

Wow, I hope that's not the impression we're giving.

These are scientific or charitable projects, not startups. We've already had a few nice problems solved. For example, a charity that does neuroscience training in Africa had its broken website fixed and now has some long-term help from developers.

Credit for the solution will always be given to the solvers.

Some people always take the most negative view of everything. This is an amazing project don't let others get you down. I signed up and it will be one of my goals to help out on some projects.

Here's what I thought after reading your comment:

€^#&%@* &£@+=% (appropriately censored for expletives) ;)

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