

Ask HN: Review ﻿Clusterify.com - small coding project meetups - creators met on HN - aneesh
http://clusterify.com/

======
pixelmonkey
I think this is a great idea. I have always thought hacking and open source
development could be more organized :-) This looks like a great first stab.
Here are some comments:

On aesthetics: although I like the StackOverflow nod, I think the color scheme
is a little too 'grey'. Background is grey, headers are grey, tags are grey,
buttons are grey. Don't know if other HNers have the same sense.

Specific improvements:

\- on the "Add Project" page, you could make the text fields a little bit
bigger

\- rather than picking the # of hours you think it would take for 2-3 people,
why don't you use the fibonacci-like sequence used in Story Point / Planning
Poker estimation. E.g., it's a scale of complexity: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 25, 50
100. See planningpoker.com. You could also consider using a 'slider' here.

\- After I posted my clusterify project idea, I realized I had made a mistake
in the Markdown. Can we get a preview feature? How about editing existing
submissions? (I understand this is early stage :-))

\- The mistake I made is that I thought that links that are on their own line
should be linked automatically. I guess this isn't strict Markdown, but seems
like a common enough convention in most text-to-html systems.

\- Since this is code-focused, you could make google-code-prettify available
for syntax highlighting (or something similar):

<http://code.google.com/p/google-code-prettify/>

\- The "vote up" feature should be available on the front page, rather than
only being available in the right side "project control" section once you
click on a project

\- Speaking of, I think you should move "Project Controls" to the top of the
project page. It's hard to find them on the right side.

Some "pie in the sky" new features to consider:

\- Someone mentioned integration with code hosting services like Github: that
could be very cool

\- Having the project proposal be a Wiki rather than an original proposal with
comments

\- Google maps (or similar) integration to schedule meetings

I'm definitely going to keep visiting. It's a great idea. Keep it up. And if
you're interested in working on a Python project, I've proposed one!

<http://clusterify.com/projects/list/pixelmonkey/11/>

~~~
pixelmonkey
I said "Google maps," but I obviously meant "Google Calendar" :-) Was playing
with geodjango today, had maps on my mind...

But that made me think of one other thing. When I first saw this website, I
thought that you might have been focused on in-person meetups for hacking
sessions. Obviously, a local meetup has limited appeal until you have a more
diffuse userbase, but I still think it wouldn't be a bad idea to support
'local' clusterifies in some way. I'm going to try posting one and see what
happens.

------
fsav
Me and Aneesh have been working hard on an idea I described here a few weeks
ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450810>): a site where you propose
small coding projects and others can join. The goal is meeting new people and
sharing tips while working on fun ideas. We've added a voting twist: you can
vote for ideas, and then showcase completed projects on your blog for people
to vote up.

We think some of you will be directly interested in this, and we hope for your
feedback:

<http://www.clusterify.com>

Thanks to all who helped/are helping/will help us!

~~~
TimothyFitz
I really like the idea, so much so that I jumped through all of the hoops and
added my own project: <http://clusterify.com/projects/list/TimothyFitz/9/>

Unfortunately, there were a lot of hoops! I had to register. Once registered I
wasn't logged in?! I confirmed my e-mail then logged in, then clicked new
project. Most of this went well except for the tags, where the auto-complete
broke (would show the tag I had just typed, over the textbox I'm trying to
type into). That might just be a Google Chrome issue?

My $0.02: You should optimize the hell out of the new user -> adding a project
loop and the new user -> joining a project loop. User accounts are stupid and
antiquated. Have the add project field use the same fields that wordpress
comments use (name, e-mail, optionally website). Defer dealing with misuse
(hopefully defer it until you're popular!)

~~~
fsav
OK so the registering process should now be much easier (for better or for
worse -- we'll deal with misuse as it shows up, as you said). It's not as good
your comment and shimon's propose, but it should at least be much faster: no
activation, direct to profile.

~~~
TimothyFitz
This is why I <3 HN.

Go to a website, comment on it and watch your feedback be used to evolve the
website... in under half an hour! There are even comment threads where PG has
a <5min read-hack-deploy-announce cycle on HN itself.

~~~
fsav
Well I still wanted to smoke test it locally before deploying the change, so <
5 mins would have been a bit hard :P

------
jwinter
Add location information to users. I'm more likely to work on a small project
with someone local. Also, local user groups are doing this already, if you add
location info they could use your software.

~~~
releasedatez
Agree! Its quite hard to meet new friends in person when you start working
full time. I'd love a place where I can meet and work on small projects with
new coders. But my intention would be to meet potential co-founders so having
geo tagging of some sort can be really helpful.

~~~
fsav
That's exactly what we had in mind for the site: a way for people with
restrictive schedules to meet other technical people in a project context
(seeking cofounders is a perfect example of the need). We'll work on
integrating geographic info.

------
gourneau
My description for tweeting: "Clusterify.com is to coding as pickup games are
to sports."

~~~
fsav
Thanks for the mention! And welcome (just saw your profile on the site).

~~~
omfut
Good job guys. I love the concept.

------
shimon
I like this not just because it's fun to meet up and hack with other folks,
but because it gives people a way to post/discuss/brainstorm ideas. It's
always more fun to discuss these things in an open, social setting where the
emphasis can be on improving ideas and generating new ones, and can draw
people away from the traps of being possessive and defensive about their
ideas.

Your main challenge is likely to be getting enough volume on there to keep it
interesting. You might try making a dramatically more lightweight way to
participate -- a simple "What would you like to build?" prompt where people
can type an idea anonymously and other users can vote on the idea, comment on
it, or turn it into a proposal.

In general, you need to find a much more concise way to explain how I get
involved and what the benefit is than a 150 word "basic concepts" page.
Probably there should be a new proposal form that I can see and fill in before
registering, and that form should be designed to explain clusterify as I fill
it in.

~~~
fsav
The principle behind having people registering to post was to make it less
confusing. At first we wanted to separate "ideas" and "implementations", so an
idea could have many implementations and indeed you could have had anonymous
ideas. Maybe we could still have a list of "parentless" projects up for grabs.

I like the idea of a proposal field with instructions. It could still be part
of the registering process (it either ends up anonymous or as yours, depending
of what you decide). I'll ponder on this.

------
anuraggoel
Great ^ Job.

Some suggestions:

Add 'in progress'/'started' as a project status. This would affect some other
features as well, for example filtering the project list. But it would allow
people to find new projects more efficiently.

Also add a field for 'time to finish' once the project is done.

Allow sorting or filtering projects by est. time. If I don't have more than 4
hours, I don't want to see any projects that take longer. Additionally, in the
'New Here' section: _Clusterify: work on fun, small (~2hr) projects and meet
other coders._ '2hr projects' is not very relevant - a lot of projects listed
are est. time >2 hours, and it really depends on the quality/quantity of
people who join.

Do you want to explicitly specify a limit on the number of people who join?
Once the limit is reached the project can move to 'In Progress' status. The
project submitter can approve join requests.

~~~
fsav
Thanks for the suggestions! Actually the intention was to make project
administration happen through comments, but indeed some common pieces of
information are likely to come back in every project and allow for better
filtering and smoother/more straightforward project progression.

As for project length, the core idea is for projects to have low time demands,
and "small" can be interpreted in many ways. Maybe we should change that to "a
few hours", though.

------
davi
Cool.

You have Clusterify as a 'completed' project at:

<http://clusterify.com/projects/completed/>

But not as an idea at:

<http://clusterify.com/projects/proposed/>

So when a project is completed, it gets pulled off the proposed page? Or you
just didn't populate the proposed page w/ the Clusterify project?

Maybe projects should never 'complete', i.e. be removed from the 'proposed'
page. Reason: it might be fun to be able to look at multiple implementations
of the same idea.... different little groups' 1/2 hr takes on a given notion.

Eventually, maybe it turns out that the most interesting ideas are the ones
that the most people bother to make an implementation of, and this could be a
sorting criterion when browsing for ideas.

~~~
aneesh
Yes, right now when a project gets completed, it is moved off the proposed
projects list. We had a lot of discussion about having multiple
implementations of a particular idea, and ultimately thought it might be too
confusing. From the feedback here, it seems we may revisit that.

~~~
davi
I like the simplicity of your site as it stands, just throwing an idea out
there.

The first thing one does when one sees a good idea is to think about how it
could be elaborated on -- that's probably the nature of a lot of the feedback
you're getting here -- but if you _had_ all those features in your initial
mockup, it would be so encrusted that no one would be able to _see_ the good
idea any more.

------
ashleyw
Awesome, very awesome! I'm not to keen on the colours (feels a bit dull), but
love the idea!

------
ashot
this should be a feature of github

------
jmtame
This looks great. I want to open hndir.com with other hackers, I'm fairly busy
on another project right now but really like the idea. It's down right now,
moving the host to linode.

~~~
fsav
What were you planning to do with the site? A list of profiles? (ie. dir as in
ppl directory?)

~~~
jmtame
Honestly, not too sure. I know I wanted to be able to see other hackers from
HN at my school. I've gotten a lot of feedback, just wish I had more time (or
help) to build it out.

~~~
fsav
You might want to check out hackrtrackr.com . The creator talked about his
site elsewhere in the thread.

------
mtw
awesome. if you have a group feature, i'll be using it for a hackers meetup
here in montreal. we meet monthly and need a tool to aggregate hacker
projects. (or maybe use tags?)

~~~
fsav
Hey I _am_ in Montreal! :P And sure we'll add group/location features if
they're useful to actual real-world meetups.

Thanks for the comment.

~~~
mtw
hmm have you been to the freehackers meetup @ bolidea?

~~~
fsav
Nope, haven't been to much Montreal tech events except CUSEC for the moment.
I'll have to check it out.

~~~
lpgauth
You go to McGill?

~~~
fsav
No. I went to Polytechnique until last year (graduated in May 2008).

~~~
lpgauth
Ah d'accord! Bien, je suis toujours interesse de voir ce que d'autre etudiant
ou nouveau gradue font! Il y a definitivement un manque d'interet pour le web
a McGill.

~~~
fsav
Hey I just saw you're the one behind Review Robot. I saw your presentation @
CUSEC/Democamp last month. Prior to working on Clusterify I was developing an
iPhone app (which I still haven't got around to publishing), so that was quite
interesting.

Le monde est p'tit.

~~~
lpgauth
I'll stop hijacking your thread now but if you're looking for a partner for a
project or something I wouldn't mind... Me email is lpgauth at gmail.

:)

------
Maro
Your tagline is "To assemble ad hoc teams for short coding projects".

You could come up with a semi-unique name like "codelets" ("hacklets",
"hackies", "projectiles", ) for these "short coding projects". This would be a
unique term specific to and identifying your site, similar to "tweets"
identifying messages posted on Twitter.

~~~
fsav
I love the term "projectiles"! :) And the branding idea is good in general. We
already have "clusters" which we could use to denote teams, though.

------
tectonic
I'm interested in using this to meet hackers near me. I'm also interested in
doing summer YC if anyone is interested.

------
villiros
This is really cool. Taking one look gave me quite a few new ideas.

I'm slightly confused about its focus, though. How is it different from those
sites that list webapp ideas? Nothing is stopping me from taking one of the
ideas described on this site and just doing it myself...

~~~
pixelmonkey
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an
individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the
moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and
the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is
that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without
darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the
globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his
condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature,
when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening
their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and
have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give
an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to
men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be
done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or
complaint from anybody.

-Thomas Jefferson

------
wesley
Very nice, subscribed to the RSS feed but the RSS links point to invalid
locations.

~~~
fsav
OK thanks for pointing this out! URLs should be fixed in RSS feed now.

------
nihilocrat
Needs more games. Of course, that's a community issue. :)

The development time for games tends to be longer, so "a few hours" is more
like "at least 2 days, if we are binge-coding".

~~~
fsav
I'd absolutely see games as a good category of ideas, but very small-scale
games. Of course we're not enforcing any time limits, so we'll see how the
community actually evolves.

The "few hours" suggestion is due to our original intention: to target people
who are busy, yet see meeting other coders as useful (&fun, of course!).

------
niels_olson
hmmmm . . . I wish something like this could get tied into the larger network
of meetups. For example . . . how would one get 2600 people to be aware of a
system like this?

~~~
fsav
Group/events/location features have been mentioned 3 times at least in this
thread. For sure we'll be thinking about how to implement this properly.

As for the "how to make them aware" part, we'll try to find ways. If anyone
has suggestions, go ahead!

------
gojomo
Neat idea. Get a favicon!

