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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

I once tried "freelancer.com" on a simple job - I had a small Python program which would standardize WHOIS data from a domain registrar, with modules for about two registrars. I needed modules written for each of about a hundred registrars; they all have different formats. Three people crashed and burned on that. Nobody ever delivered.

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Did you ask them to deliver all 100 in one go? Or did you try and find a dev who could do 5 and then ask for more?

Do this. I have even hired multiple devs for the same project, picking the best to move forward with for follow-on work. I also always put something in the job description that they have to reply with in the subject so that I can tell they actually read the description: Maybe the answer to a simple math question or the like (What is 60 - 21? Please put the answer in the subject like of your reply).

ICANN has mandated that all whois output be standardized, its part of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, there are still some that haven't signed it, but for the most part many many registrars have and their output/field names are standardized. It makes this a much simpler job now.

If it's still relevant, I've found the Ruby whois lib (https://github.com/weppos/whois/tree/master/lib/whois/record...) to be quite comprehensive.

Do you have to pay when people crash & burn? Either way, this kind of thing sounds like a bad proposition for someone.

Out of curiosity, what would you do with the data?

I could help if you're still looking to have this done. My email is in my profile.

Good luck with rate limit issues, I've been there.

Also been there with Nominet. Ended up implementing something with their special Domain Availability Checker only to find that it couldn't handle a single domain spanning two ip packets/tcp segments (wtf?!). After asking them about it a few time the official answer turned out to be: don't do that then.

Proxies to the rescue. And take your time - whois data don't change that often and you can know in advance when it might (E.g. expiry date).

Freelancer.com is usually terrible for outsourcing.

You'll have better luck on Elance

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