Comment by Spittie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spittie | Hacker News Reader

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Okay, a bunch of ideas. Probably nothing as good as my last one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7542610), which was meh to begin with (but I'm happy to see that it sparkled a bit of interest).

#1) An anonymous blogging platform. A site that obviously doesn't log you, and that allow you to publish posts without having them attached to an username. Since many would like to somehow post under the same handle, but without having the post attached to an username, implement a system like tripcodes on 4chan (for anyone that's not familiar, you choose a random string, and then you get an "username" derivated from that string. No passwords, no login. As long as you're the only one that know the original string, you are the only one that can post under that "tripcode"). Problems: Money, it's hard to make profitable an anonymous site. Useless, it's not that hard to pick a random name and create a blog on wordpress.com, blogger or similar while using tor. Spam, a site where one can post anonymously without hassle is just asking for it.

#2) (totally inspired by Idea Sunday, but I've had this idea before for a while) a site to post ideas for a project, or a "I'd totally love if someone where to do this". Then implement a rating system or something similar, so that the most common/interesting ideas are always at the top. And a random button to get a random idea (ideas as service!). Call it "Jar for ideas" or similar :)

#1 http://pen.io/

#2) Something like http://www.reddit.com/r/somebodymakethis ?

I'd like to see something like #1 where not even the site hosting the content can impersonate an anonymous blogger. I suppose this would require some kind of key signature system. The problem with tripcodes is that while they offer a persistent identity across every site that implements the tripcode algorithm, you're giving up your secret password for the trip to every site you post on.

I created something similar to #1: http://millisay.com

It hasn't really taken off, but I also haven't put much effort into promoting it. It still lacks a few features (I've been busy with other projects), but I really like the clean, simple design and a few people have posted some interesting stuff.

Nice :) One of my ideas about "tripcodes" was that eventually an user could upload a style-sheet to customize his blog, one could see all the post by a certain tripcode and could follow him (rss?).

I agree, I like the simple design. One problem (or maybe I'm just dumb): I've pressed the "New" button a bunch of times to post something New, and only after that I realized that I should have pushed "Sumbit" instead. Maybe rename it to "Recent"?

I knew nothing about tripcodes until now, thank you. Won't it be a drag to have to type in a tripcode each time you want to post something? Isn't it better to allow having a username and password, but hash whatever is displayed as an identifier on the screen to preserve anonymity?

I'll consider adding tripcodes to something similar I built. It's a bit of an experiment: http://hikigo.com

On spam, it's not anonymity that leads to spam. You get spam on sites that have username/passwords too, like HN. You can fight it in the usual ways any site fights spam.

(A note for HN moderators: your algorithm for detecting spam links automatically deletes a new post from a new user.)

>I knew nothing about tripcodes until now, thank you. Won't it be a drag to have to type in a tripcode each time you want to post something? Isn't it better to allow having a username and password, but hash whatever is displayed as an identifier on the screen to preserve anonymity?

Yes and no, you could just say that the tripcode is a password, and then the user wouldn't even have to type the username :)

Also you can save it to localstorage or something, so that the user has to type it only once.

>On spam, it's not anonymity that leads to spam. You get spam on sites that have username/passwords too, like HN. You can fight it in the usual ways any site fights spam.

I agree, let me say that differently: such a site would have a very low barrier to entry, easily exploitable by bots. Just type in your post, eventually a name/password/tripcode/however you call it, and press the publish button. Easier that the usual register, confirm valid email, publish.

>(A note for HN moderators: your algorithm for detecting spam links automatically deletes a new post from a new user.)

Are you using tor? Because I remember reading that if you create a new account on tor you have to wait two weeks before your account is allowed to post.

Thanks good feedback, thanks! I've changed it to "Recent". The tripcode idea is very interesting...I'll definitely have to think about implementing it.

I made something like #1 a few years ago, but it never took off and I eventually grew bored of it. It's on Google App Engine and open source if anyone is interested to continue with it.

http://wikiblog.jugglethis.net

Regarding 2) Weekend hacker (http://www.weekendhacker.net) used to be a cool little email list with side projects people needed help with. Maybe expand your idea to something like WH?

for #2 I walways think about building a personal note-taking service for ideas, further developments of ideas and ideas that generate other ideas, in a tree-based structure.

It would work as a personal thing, but it would also do some similarity search and show ideas from other people that are similar to each of your ideas "near" them.

So, if you found the others' ideas useful, you could link the two and proceed from there. The other part would see their idea got linked by you and will come and check your idea, maybe establish contact, maybe not, maybe just ignore the linking and proceed working alone.

For #2 : Try Betterific https://betterific.com/

Does pretty much the same thing, allowing users to post ideas/problems/solutions.

If you want to share ownership with a community of builders you can post up ideas to https://assemblymade.com

IHMO, key to well executed #1 is that it should be social yet anonymous so the writer gets a sense of community without feeling like they would be judged.

A buddy of mine built #1 once - dont think it really took off though...

for #2) check out http://sideprojectors.com ? :) Reddit also has a subreddit called "somebody make this".

FYI your chosen font probably looks beautiful on mobile, but does not render properly on desktop Chrome or Firefox for me.

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