

Show HN: textlaundry.com - massim
http://textlaundry.com/

======
dprice1

      > As a student, I couldn't stand my required english courses.
      > Textlaundry has helped me to improve my writing immensely
      > and now I'm getting fantastic grades. The best part was that
      > it was so cheap!  -- Lisa Paul
    

This quote led me to think that students who use this service are anti-
intellectual lazy cheaters with tight fists. Ironically, the quote has at
least one basic editing problem ("English")! This quote doesn't capture what
professional editing is about. Surely there is a more positive way to express
the value proposition.

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prawn

      - Empty TITLE tag.
      - Favicon is a "P" icon?
      - Put 5-10px padding on the textarea.
      - 100% satisfaction guaranteed icon needs transparency.
    

The design is fine but very, very generic. Nothing relates to a laundry. Why
not a clothes line with text documents cleaned, pegged and sparkling in the
sun?

If you get some resistance in the HN feedback, IMO it is because the service
seems slapped together. I like the automatic pricing calculator but I don't
know that anything else but the domain name is going to be memorable. If the
design shows a bit more personality, I think that would help.

It might've been funny if you had replied to each HN comment with a re-write
of what they'd written to show the benefit of the service...

~~~
textlaundry
We just launched recently, and we rushed this out to validate our idea. So
far, it's going pretty well and love all the feedback we've gotten. We've
added those things to our list of things to fix. Thanks for the advice all the
advice.

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bvrlt
I was just wondering who were the "professional" editors. Some credentials
might increase the trust in your service.

~~~
prestia
I agree completely. Is this service farmed out to Mechanical Turk with the
supposition that more eye is equal to higher quality? Or do you legitimately
have qualified individuals reviewing these submissions?

~~~
fishtoaster
I agree. A turk-based proofreading system might not be a bad idea- a few
layers of suggestion verification and you could get a pretty good first-pass
proofreading out of it. However, the lack of transparency makes this more than
a little shady.

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glimcat
Only taking input by text box is pretty bad. You need to be able to accept
common word processor file formats.

Targeting students is also ethically questionable. Planning to open a sideline
where you help "proofread" math homework next?

~~~
baddox
Colleges provide "writing centers" where people (presumably upperclassmen in a
relevant degree program) offer proofreading. I don't see how this is much
different.

~~~
badhairday
That service is free, this is not. Often times the student proofreading your
paper has already taken the class and off much more guidance to what that
particular teacher/professor is looking for. An anonymous web service, while
convenient, doesn't have that added benefit.

~~~
bbq
How is a college writing center free?

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pjob
Hey, congrats on launching. The service looks interesting. I'll have to keep
it in mind next time I need proofreading help.

One small piece of feedback: Your #headline-wrap and #stage-wrap styles have
overflow: hidden defined while the other top level divs do not. This makes it
so that when the browser is smaller than your content, scroll bars appear but
your main content is hidden beyond the window width and appears cut off when
scrolling.

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bigethan
Without seeing any examples of improved text, my first thought was that an
API/Wordpress/Gmail plugin would be awesome.

Though before I pay, it would be nice to see some examples of improved text.

~~~
jpulgarin
Thanks bigethan, we keep hearing this and are going to put up some examples
up.

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jmcannon
Dividing by quality "Good, Great, and Excellent" is weird to me. What metric
distinguishes the different options? If I only check "Good," will you edit my
text while watching television instead of devoting your full attention to it?

I would get rid of the quality gradient altogether, instead ensuring your
users that all of your work is "excellent." If you still want an extra tier to
your pricing, I guess you could do what translation services do and charge per
revision or by number of people the text passes through, but the idea that you
simply aren't trying as hard if I check "good" doesn't sit well.

~~~
jpulgarin
The quality gradients are actually tied to number of revisions/number of
people who proofread the text. We'll put up more information about the way we
proofread and how they relate to the different options for quality.

~~~
biftek
I would word it differently then. Using the term quality in a sliding scale
manner leaves doubt in my mind. I want to know all your work is excellent.

~~~
hollerith
I am replying so that textlaundry know that not everyone is like parent: i.e.,
I am fine with "Pick a quality: good, better, best" (or "Pick a quality: good,
great, excellent"). In fact, I do not like it when vendors pretend that
everything they offer, even the cheap stuff, is the best that it can possibly
be. I tend to conclude that the vendors\ is either deluded or insincere.

But yeah, if textlaundry can convey in that row of radio buttons
(terminology?) that "great" service means that the text is worked on by more
editors than work on text using the "good" service, that would be an
improvement.

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daviddaviddavid
There is a glaring typo on the front page. The section titled "Fully anonymous
and secure editing" contains the following sentence:

"Your confidential documents will be kept in our secure servers and can only
accessed by you and our team."

I'm no professional proofreader but I think that "can only accessed" is non-
English.

Fail.

~~~
johnthedebs
You made your point in the first two lines; I think your comment would be much
better without the last two.

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shin_lao
Here's the first association I make with text laundry: money laundry.

Then there's a testimonial about a student who's too lazy to do his assignment
and uses external help.

I don't know what's your target, but if you're looking to appeal to companies
I think you're off.

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lpolovets
Cool service!

To echo a few other comments, I'd love to see examples. Specifically, I hope
examples could explain the following:

1) What kind of changes are suggested? Spelling corrections? Grammar
corrections? Improved sentence structure? Improved paragraph structure? Some
combination of these? Something else?

2) What's the difference between good vs. great vs. excellent? The quality of
the proofreader? The amount of time spent proofreading? The number of times
something is proofread? A concrete example would be very helpful.

Also, I think showing a list of the types of documents you can proofread would
be helpful. It might just be me, but when I saw "document" I started thinking
about college essays or work-related documents like letters of reference. Then
I saw a testimonial that mentioned blog posts and thought "oh yeah, I could
use this service for those as well!" You might miss some customers who don't
realize your service is very open-ended.

~~~
textlaundry
Hey lpolovets, I agree that's not clear yet. We actually provide all of those
depending on the document we get. Some of them need more thorough editing,
while other documents just need basic proofreading. The good/great/excellent
corresponds to how many editors your text will be read by. Someone else
suggested that we change it to that to make it clearer. Thanks for the
comment.

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Roedou
Is the Terms & Conditions page just copy/pasted from elsewhere?

If not, things like the following are very concerning:

    
    
      > Advertisements. textLaundry reserves the right to display advertisements on your blog unless you have purchased an Ad-free Upgrade or a VIP Services account.

~~~
jpulgarin
Yeah sorry, that's from Automattic's terms and conditions, we can't access
your blog :P We'll change the wording soon.

~~~
smd80
Wait... Sorry, but you ... didn't proofread your ToS?

Really?

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jmjerlecki
I didn't quite know what to expect when visiting the site with a name
textlaundry.com As tacky as it sounds proofreadmypaper.com would be much
"cleaner" (excuse the irony).

Props on launching. I think your provide a useful service. I love the idea of
submitting my paper immediately and getting a quote.

~~~
textlaundry
Thanks! The name is tentative, and just something we went with for now to test
the idea. The instant quote is something we noticed no one else had, so it was
something we could stand out with.

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systemtrigger
Congrats on launch. The instant price calculator is slick.

I notice it's on Rails. Shoot for an API and a Wordpress plugin. Both could be
jets for this type of business.

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glfafn
Would be interested for such service but like others mentioned you need to add
some examples of what you guys can do.

~~~
jpulgarin
This is a great idea, we'll put up some examples of our work up soon!

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stfu
how do you guys handle the editors? like I was thinking about a different idea
where I need multiple people to handle the projects. it seems quite a lot of
work to either code a complete backend or distribute the stuff manually.

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kulpreet
I'm interested in knowing if there are any similar services.

~~~
jpulgarin
There are a few but I'm confident we have one of the lowest price points per
word (if not the lowest). A google search for "proofreading service" turns up
a few.

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volandovengo
nice job! nice design to streamline proofreading.

~~~
jpulgarin
Thanks!

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earlyriser
I could pay for this. When did you launch it?

~~~
jpulgarin
We launched a couple of weeks ago - still testing the waters and seeing what
kind of demand there is for a product like this, especially in academia.

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jsavimbi
IP scanned after visiting this site.

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saltwatershane
Be careful using the verisign logo if you're not actually a client (which it
appears since you're using an image, and not the verifying script). Also,
paypal name shows Edison Labs, which is confusing given it doesn't match your
domain name

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jsavimbi
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is just a cobbled together CMS front-end
with clip art icons and generic photos for what appears to be a proof-reading
service, am I correct? Or am I missing some sort of technological
breakthrough?

~~~
catshirt
yes, it seems to be a service for proof reading. what's your point?

~~~
jsavimbi
It's seems to be a [very] poor attempt at creating a webpage with a form for
an offline service. (Not much in the way of hacking, per se)

