Comment by dzink | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dzink | Hacker News Reader

We have build http://DoerHub.com to tackle this head on. You post whatever projects you are working on (hackers, researchers, scientists, are are 50%+ of the community, but there are also marketers, subject matter experts, designers, etc). Examples:

http://www.doerhub.com/for/doerhub (dogfooding)

http://www.doerhub.com/for/robopaint

http://www.doerhub.com/for/surgery-boards-app

http://www.doerhub.com/for/coincashcard

http://www.doerhub.com/for/synaptor

http://www.doerhub.com/for/securityfirst

Whoever sees your project can help in little or big ways, from joining the team to becoming an advisor or a beta user. Teams are soon getting public/private collaboration tools inside projects as well.

At the same time your profile shows what areas you are great at or looking for help in/learning in, example: http://doerhubassets.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/badge-67f14a8ee...

So you can really easily see people you have a lot in common with and share complementary skills with. An app with real-time chat and serendipity matching is in the works as well. It is entirely free, we haven't made a cent with it but some amazing projects are now in beta because of our work and people who would have never ever met otherwise (a hacker and a surgeon for example) are now doing projects together. There are growing past 600+ doers already and 80+ projects as of yesterday. You are welcome to join.

We don't spread it randomly. Instead we mention it only to communities of doers we respect and would want to work with and I hope you will do the same if you join in.

Totally random, unsolicited, off-topic feedback: this project seems cool and I suspect I might well be interested in using it, and I just bounced because I couldn't figure out how to explore it a bit without signing up. Basically exactly the same thing as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7489870

This is probably a weird irrational hangup, but I tend to assign a fair amount of weight to account creation, and am in general extremely unlikely to register for anything before I am certain that I actually want it. I lurked HN and reddit for, like, a year each before I finally was compelled to create accounts due to people being wrong on the internet. I am unlikely to join your community if I can't lurk anonymously for a while first.

I have no idea whether this makes me strange, of if there is a substantial chunk of the population who acts similarly.

Really appreciate the feedback. (you can also email us at feedback@doerhub.com ) We're thinking about doing that and will ask users as well. The primary reason is because we are making it personal - if you show are great at Perl and want to know more about Marketing we are trying to show you people and projects who know more about the latter and are looking for help in the former. For an early outside prototype (cheaply hosted so traffic crash is likely) you can see here: http://peoplesearch-doerhub.herokuapp.com/viz/ . We want to make people luckier by default, instead of just browsing a growing number of projects in unrelated areas.

I think that being able to browse a little - some kind of search function, perhaps - before signing up would be great.

We'll add an option for project leaders who want their projects explicitly promoted outside of DoerHub to be able to chose to be featured. We keep the quality of the network really high, so some want to stay inside. There are actually entire universities using DoerHub for cross-discipline projects, and some of them want to stay in a closed environment.

It would be really nice to have a "Explore" feature similar to github, where you can see projects, and maybe be able to search for tags. A big call to action button on the main page linking to the explore area would really allow people to look at projects and see how the site is getting used.

Love the concept. I'll also add my own remarks:

-I agree with the parent remark. You can't even give someone a link to a project.

-The Purchase and Ownership sections of the EULA are a bit odd.

-Discoverability of projects is poor.

-Interest tags seem a bit random. I want to add programming to my profile. What do I pick? programming? web dev? X language?

We have fuzzy matching and graph and weigh relationships between terms so if you do Perl it will tie up to programming. Get as specific as you need to be, we do the rest and get better every day.

"You can't even give someone a link to a project." You can actually give links to projects that want to have a public link. The ones I've shared above have enabled public links to their projects for sharing - they show prominently on the project page. A project creator can also chose not to have a public link for project they want to just share with doerhub people and not with the outside.

I also was interested to see what's going on; it sounded intriguing to me. "I want to see what some of the projects are. Maybe I can find a side project to work on!"

Then when I saw that I wasn't going to get squat without giving first via signing up, closed it. I only wanted to take a minute or two here in between tasks, and signing up is a commitment to me.

Sounds irrational, arguably, but here's my rationale: My email box is currently flooded by dozens of emails from countless little things I've signed up for at some time in the past under similar situations. Periodically, I go clear them all out and try to unsubscribe, but it's like pulling weeds-- a project that never ends.

Mentally I was prepared to give the site a minute or two, but the requirement to sign up before I can even see what's up is a deal breaker to me-- I wasn't planning to spend that kind of time.

Then I make a liar out of myself by coming here and typing for several minutes. In any case, I love the idea, and I bet a lot of other people are, like myself, looking to connect with other people that want to give and take on various kinds of projects.

Thank you, this is great. Posting cold to people who don't know the site is not normal for us. We were trying to create a "club of doers" experience - we do everything we can to help the doers who are using the site with their projects so that they share it with other doers they respect and invite others. However I saw several posts that really ask for the problems we are solving, and felt compelled to offer the site as a resource. We really want to make the landing page experience as clear as possible. I am taking notes. feedback@doerhub.com is also red constantly (I also work until 5 am most nights to implement the updates). Please, write me if you are open to seeing the next iteration of the page as well. Ping me if we can assist you in any ways as well. You guys are doing us a huge favor!

This is going to be even more true for me in the future, and I was already pretty intolerant in this respect. I just used LastPass to get a list of all the passwords I should change after Heartbleed, and the list is terrifying - I can't believe how many things I've had to sign up for. My bar for getting any sort of credentials from me has just gone way up.

Does the GitHub connect help? We're thinking of adding Linkedin and Facebook as an option. Would those help?

I think that's trying to solve the wrong problem. The problem is that the closed, unbrowsable site makes it impossible for us visitors to tell whether it has any relevance to us at all, so we bounce right away. The front page has only very vague, general information and an unreadably small screenshot, instead of the actual projects and people which would solve the problem completely.

I think what the front page needs instead of what it has (or as well but right up the top) is a list of active, interesting projects like you posted here, and a link to browse all public projects.

You guys have sold me. Will put that up asap and update everyone.

I love the idea. It really sounds awesome but no matter how often I visit, I can't stop myself from bouncing within the first minute. I'm by no means a designer or a ui expert, but it just feels so damn uninviting. The fonts are too small for me and the content is full of buzzwords, marketing speak, and the whole "connect, lead, mentor, impact, reinvent" thing sort of exhausted me. Connecting with others should be easy. Reading that made me feel like you added friction instead of removed it. All in all, the whole site feels very "global corporate" instead of grassroots movement.

Sorry if that came off overly harsh. I wish I had suggestions to give instead of just criticisms but design really isn't my forte. I can tell what works on me but not how to fix what doesn't.

This is awesome! Thank you! Would you be open to pinging me at feedback@doerhub.com? I would love to follow up with you.

Shameless plug...I liked DoerHub, but wanted a simpler UI...so I built http://lilhelp.org this weekend. Whatcha think?

Unsolicited respectful feedback: if I landed on your homepage without the context of this HN article, I wouldn't really understand what you're offering. Lot of jargon on the homepage. Even with the context, I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at on http://www.doerhub.com/for/doerhub I will probably investigate further because I have a vague idea of what DoerHub is and that it might be useful to me, but I wouldn't if I landed there cold.

Would you mind sending me a quick email to feedback@doerhub.com ? I would love to get your feedback on the next iteration of the page.

Interesting idea. I prefer to work with people in my local area, is there a way to filter on that? I'm thinking of ways to foster more cooperation in the local startup scene and a sub-set of something like this might be an interesting option. Just a thought.

Yep, we ask for location and have local functionality for universities and hackathons. Will need to open it up more for self organized groups.

Sounds awesome.

Please make a web based chat. Nothing worse than being forced to type on a phone when I'm already on a computer

Yes - that's mostly done already and it's coming!

HTTPS on the signup form (or everywhere)?

http://www.doerhub.com/for/surgery-boards-app

Is this oral surgery on a ship? The "FR137" marker and door structure suggest that it is.

I think it's oral boards exam for surgery people, not oral surgery. The photo is uploaded by the project creator and the project is now in beta after the two founders met on DoerHub as far as I know. A hacker reached out to the surgeon who posted the project.

Could you elaborate on the github permissions required if I sign in via that method? Write access to all public repos is what I'm interested in particularly.

We are about to give you the ability to pull in your GitHub repos and turn them into doerhub projects you can then open up for contributions from your non hacker friends and other subject-matter expert doers.

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