
Show HN: Ballotter, an Online Video Debating Platform for Our Discussions - grif-fin
https://www.ballotter.com/
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jamespitts
The big suggestion I have for your team is to structure live sessions with
television-like scheduling. Early-on, a live experience web site does not have
enough usage to generate a good time for users. I learned this while running
rapt.fm, a live web platform for freestyle rapping.

Have a calendar and use twitter or other means to announce upcoming events to
concentrate the attention of users. Create well-promoted "prime time" slots,
later add in regular programming, and overall make it clear to the users that
all other times are "down times" and not likely to have a lot of debates going
on.

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notheguyouthink
_(not OP of course)_ This is a really excellent idea, thank you. I've never
thought of arbitrarily creating scheduling as a way of improving engagement,
as previously the thought of old fashioned "tv show scheduling" would make me
very uneasy - with that said, low population makes it much harder not to have
events/etc.

This seems like a big boon for an active community site. Interesting!

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oneshoe
Hello. I really like this idea and just watched a debate and did enjoy it.

I do like the idea of it of aggregated and real time feedback from the viewers
however, My only suggestion is to make the cheers and jeers a little less
intrusive. I'm just not that interested in the peanut gallery and, (for me) it
interferes with the fluidity of the very short time frame people have to talk.

Great work though - I'm very interested to see how this does.

~~~
grif-fin
Fantastic. The sample is prerecorded. Any new debate will have the cheer and
boo with much lower volume.

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alistproducer2
I had literally the same idea. I had actually started researching webrtc. the
tech looked a little fragile so I decided not to go forward. I hope you can
work out your kinks and get it running, because I would be interested in
giving it a go. It's like trying out my idea without putting in any of the
work!

~~~
grif-fin
Webrtc is growing and improving everyday! We are aware of the current issue.
Will resolve and update this comment.

Out of interest how would you have done your idea differently?

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alistproducer2
I felt like webrtc is pretty much the only option as a desktop client. I hope
you get it fixed soon. Also is your code OSS?

~~~
grif-fin
It is fixed for desktop. Mobile may face issues due to network difference but
a new version for mobile is a possibility if debates come through :)

It is not OSS yet. May go OSS later though.

~~~
alistproducer2
I'm sorry to hear it's closed source. Open sourcing it could go a long way to
helping get the word out. I'll check it out.

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grif-fin
We have created Ballotter as an online (live/recorded) video debating platform
to bring the discussions worth sharing on an online stage. Ballotter has just
came online and is at the beta stage. We hope to gather a collection of
amazing debates and people who want their voice heard with spectators voting
and sharing. Couple of questions for HN:

\- What is your take on Ballotter?

\- Any suggestions on the product?

\- Any suggestions on user gathering?

~~~
fillskills
I was thinking about the same idea but for coming up with more interesting
political candidates. The current candidate pipeline is stagnant. Could this
be repurposed as a competition + publicizing platform for political
candidates. From local to National level. The biggest hindrance is validating
up/down votes in my use case.

~~~
grif-fin
True, Ballotter very much matches the political debating scene but it is
whatever users make it to be. To narrow it down to political area we would
need to know many politicians to provide the content. We do not know any
politicians willing to debate live yet.

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zalmoxis
Great MVP!

You might want to look for supporting
[https://www.temasys.io/plugin/](https://www.temasys.io/plugin/) for Safari
and IE, though rumour has it that Apple is planning to support WebRTC.

Also honored to see that you're enabling Redux DevTools Extension, so we can
look inside the processes there.

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gmgarrison
Don't require WebRTC on the landing page. Apple browsers don't support it but
I can't imagine you want to prevent those people from even learning about your
product.

~~~
grif-fin
You are right, by using WebRTC we are ignoring Safari users. Since this is a
prototype we are looking forward to get majority browser users involved
(Safari is around %3.5).

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alphabettsy
Doesn't work on iOS 10 either, so it seems 3.5% is very low.

~~~
grif-fin
You are right when taking into account the mobile users safari is way more
than 3.5%. As I said currently we are not targeting mobile users.

We think a specific app would be required which having it on both iOS and
Android requires resources.

Do you think the current MVP shows the potential of the idea?

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alphabettsy
I use HN with an RSS reader on my iOS devices so I wasn't able to check it
out.

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keyboardhitter
Small typo on the loading screen, "If it's taking to long" should use 'too'

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grif-fin
Thanks, will fix it.

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xolb
In the end of the debate, it would be interesting to show the score of each
participant.

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grif-fin
The number next to thumbs ups indicates the votes each debater has got from
the spectators.

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greatNespresso
Looks promising BUT I'm on mobile and it does not show the video.

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grif-fin
We are aware of the issues on mobile. We think an app would be required which
we will launch if more debates are made via Desktop users as we think they are
the major users.

What do you think?

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greatNespresso
Sounds perfect !

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Vinkekatten
"An error has occured" Error message: "error: Is the gateway down?"

\- It's down but the reload button had a nice, blue color

\- Maybe do a little more load testing?

\- Don't be down.

~~~
grif-fin
Fixed.

