

Show HN: I decided to reduce the friction of writing my friend in prison - dpiers
http://lettersforblake.com

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danso
This is a well-intentioned project, but the misleading title and vague About
section really puts me off. This is not an app/site that makes it easier to
send something to "a loved one", it makes it easier to send something to
_your_ loved one.

Which is fine, except the site itself remains opaque about how it works or
what it does. Are people really supposed to just start entering in things
after the "Dear Blake..." prompt and hit send? There's a prominent "About"
link, but it's not great UI/UX to force users to navigate your site just to
figure out what the purpose of it is. The cynical person in me thinks this is
an attempt to astroturf the justice system, so that supporters of Mr. Benthall
can tout a media-friendly number of how many people have written on his
behalf.

But the cynical UI designer in me thinks that what will happen is that a bunch
of "test/asdfjkljks" messages will be sent off to the site's maintainer, who
will either just forward them to the prison or be overwhelmed with trying to
filter signal from noise...and both scenarios do not seem very beneficial to
Mr. Benthall.

I don't want to judge intentions by quality/style of writing, but the About
section is not very appealing to me. Telling me that Blake "led a very normal
life and was extremely kind, generous, and always willing to help" just
screams of an attempted saccharine whitewash. So I looked up what Mr. Benthall
is alleged to have done...and really, the allegations aren't particularly ugly
for him (e.g. he isn't yet accused of hiring to kill someone). The About
section should not be coy about the allegations, it smacks of dishonesty and
is an insult to the audience.

However, I do applaud that the OP looked at the letter-sending process itself
and found it to be "obtuse". There probably is a need to reduce the friction
here, and I would encourage the OP to also write about the steps involved...as
it is, just calling it "obtuse" doesn't really generate much sympathy.

There was a great NYT article about "The Cellblocks' Amazon.com"...a startup
that navigated the bureaucratic roadblocks of sending gift packages to
prisoners...this is what I thought the OP was trying at:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/sendapackage-
bill...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/sendapackage-bills-itself-
as-new-yorks-inmate-superstore.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

edit: My comment is more harsh than I'm probably feeling... I have no opinion
of Mr. Benthall currently, I'm just pointing out that the site's vagueness
doesn't really do him favors. If he's being harshly punished by an
overreaching justice system, more details/transparency about it is better for
generating sympathy. And again, kudos to the OP for trying to navigate the
prison-communication system... a writeup of what that involves would also
generate some goodwill toward Mr. Benthall (as well as expanding awareness of
our justice system in general)

~~~
dpiers
If the concept works well, I'm considering making the recipient user-definable
and running it as a non-profit to help people connect with their loved ones
who are behind bars. If spam/test messages become a large problem, I will add
some preventative measures. In the meanwhile, nothing gets sent without my
seal of approval.

For now I just wanted to get something up and running that made it as easy as
possible for our friends to reach out to Blake. A number of them have already
thanked me because they didn't know how to contact him.

------
zz1
I think you should give instructions on how to send mail without your site
anyway, if someone doesn't want you to read his message (knowing that it still
will be read by the prison staff). Kudos on your initiative: you might want to
get in touch with the freejeremy.net staff, for one, that could be interested
in using your project.

