http://hndex.imnotpete.com
Hacker News needs a secure way to create directories of our users and their ideas - "These spreadsheets are always vandalized, abandoned and then forgotten." [1] HNdex is that secure way: all lists and list items are identified by the HN user who submitted them. If pg or patio11 or jacquesm is listed as available to mentor a startup, you can be sure that user put himself there.
I plan to unveil HNdex early next week; I've worked on it for a couple of evenings and it's nearly done. I wanted to gauge interest in particular features for my MVP. Here is a list of features I am currently planning to have when I unveil it:
* Each user is tied to their HN login
* Any user can create a list
* Lists are marked as "people" and "not-people" (IE, offers or unused business ideas)
* Users can add their own profiles, once, to a "people" list
* Users can add to "not-people" N times
* Users can remove their submissions from any list
* Some form of flagging what vandalism does get through (manual review? auto-delete after N flags? not sure yet)
* A "submit to HN" link for each list
* Allow users to store more bio information if their HN profile is sparse.
I plan to continue improving this after I release, but are there any other features you think are needed for the app to be useful?
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[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1794416
edit: also, I am unable to post here from work, so I will be responding to feedback this evening.
Lists I'd suggest featuring:
- Companies Hiring
- Hackers seeking full-time jobs
- Contractors available for hire
- Seeking co-founder
There are certainly many other lists that come up on HN, but I'd strongly suggest focusing on a small set of proven ones to feature prominently on your site, with others available in a list sorted by last update time. Also, I'd suggest you work to ensure the featured lists capture enough information to discourage forking them -- for example, you should collect geographic data in the job-related lists, and at some point allow filtering by location. You don't need to support filtering in the first release, I think, but you want to avoid splintering attention from the featured lists due to e.g. "Boston jobs" and "Bay Area jobs" and "New York jobs".
TL;DR: this app will succeed if it has a couple of major lists that a large group of HNers use regularly; so it's more important to ensure the key lists have staying power than encourage the creation of lots of little lists.