

Ask HN: Review my new webapp - Charuru

http://limitedlist.com/<p>It's a webapp for making community ranked lists.<p>I've been working on this for the past 4 weeks or so. It was supposed to be a weekend hack, but I kept on wanting to 'polish' it and it turned out to have a lot more features than a MVP calls for...<p>Any advice, critiques on design or content or business would be super great. Thanks!<p>Some example lists that HN might find relevant: http://limitedlist.com/list/preferred-pastebin
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jcr
CONSIDERATIONS:

\- <http://limitedlist.com/list> The listing of lists doesn't scale
horizontally so the browser needs at least 800px width. This will break a lot
of browsers (think mobile). It's obvious the designer like the look of the
three-across the page, since it does scale in higher resolutions while
maintaining three-across (i.e. three-across is forced). The problem is when
you force this, your design breaks on some browsers/devices.

\- Add List Item The initial 'add-list-item' is just an unlabeled textbox, so
the first thing I entered was an URL. Needless to say I did it wrong. The
first textbox is the 'title' of the item. When trying to correct my mistake
via 'edit' I was faced with three unlabeled textboxes. The first (single line)
textbox had the URL I had entered. The second (single line) textbox was empty.
The third text box was multi-line (I believe this is for comments). The
various entry fields _SHOULD_ be labeled. --You're free to expect me to read
your mind, but don't be too surprised when I fail. ;-)

\- The home/landing page is very sparse. It's easy to see you were aiming for
a 'clean' home page (good), but the problem is most people will have no clue
what the site does (bad).

\- popup when adding an item to an existing list When adding an item to an
existing list, the tooltip-like popup letting the user know "thankyou and
moderators will look at the submission" disappears too quickly. You should
make the user 'close' or 'confirm' the popup to be sure it has been read.

\- <http://limitedlist.com/about> The 'about' page does not clearly state what
the site is about, how the should be used, or most importantly, why I should
want to use it.

\- security/permissions If I create a list, am I the 'moderator' of that list?
Can I allow/disallow other users to add items?

\- update notifications If I create a list (or subscribe to a list), can I get
an email/sms/IM/twiter/FB/whatever message sent to me every time a new item is
added to it (or other change updates)?

\- spreadsheet Other than a pretty interface, what advantage does your app
have over a google spreadsheet?

(Yes, I often ask the pointed question above and I probably seem like an ass
for it, but it really is an important question to ponder very deeply.)

\- Integration / API If I created/moderated a list and wanted to integrate it
into my own page, there's no way to do it. I might want to integrate the list
onto a page on my own website, but more seriously, I can see where integrating
a managed list on a FB 'home page' or 'fan page' or similar could really be
desirable. I'm not a FB user, but even I can see how such integration might
make your site/app really take off, and similar could be said for other social
'user-home' services (gmail, yahoo, myspace, youtube, ...).

\- Useful? Though having and Internet based, multi-user list is an interesting
concept, I cannot think of what I would use it for? (NOTE: this could be
entirely my own fault due to lack of imagination and/or coffee)

COMPLIMENTS:

\- The design is nice and clean.

\- I like your use of drop-shadow.

\- I was _VERY_ pleased to see the 'thumbs-up' icon was not a FB 'like'
button.

NOTES: \- If you had hierarchy of lists, you'd essentially be recreating a web
directory (see dmoz).

Congratulations on shipping!

~~~
Charuru
Thanks for your review! It's given me a lot to think about.

>3 across list scaling Yes this is a good point. You consider a horizontal
scrollbar breaking right?

>labels Most of the textfields are 'labeled' with the html5 placeholder tag.
You should see some text inside the inputs that gives you instructions. I
think that was the wrong thing to do overall and will now be investing in
better labels and descriptions. Thanks!

>security/permissions Yes, click the edit button on the top of the right
sidebar of the list. You'll see all the options there.

>notifications Yes right now you get a private message. You're notified by
email whenever you get a private message, assuming you've registered a real
user. Right now it doesn't have other modes for messaging, but it's probably a
good idea to implement those. Might also be a good idea to skip the private
message step.

>spreadsheet What are the voting options on a google spreadsheet? The primary
use of limitedlist is rankings as described on the home page. But I think it's
easy to miss. >On LimitedList items are rated in a special way. Each person
gets 9 points to distribute throughout all the items in a list. He or she can
give only a maximum of 5 points to an item. As a result, each person picks
favorites, and has additional power to choose runner ups. We add everyone's
ratings together to create a ranked list. If google spreadsheets can do this,
then I would say focus and interface.

>integration/api Yes totally, so important. I'm working on this. I wonder if
it's possible to validate an idea if it's missing such an important part of
virality?

>useful? well for me, how this started is I wanted to read a new author I just
discovered. But he has many books and they're all highly rated. I just wanted
to get the *best book, to make sure that I actually like him. It took me a
long time to read all the reviews and figure out which book I wanted to read.
I think a list would've made things much easier for me. But that's sort of a
one off kind of thing. But this can be used for any toplist situation really.
I'll be posting some more hacker related lists to HN.

>compliments Thanks! thank you so very much.

>dmoz not sure about web directory, but it is a slightly different way to
organize data.

