

Show HN: Q&A for HN users - shazad
http://www.askolo.com

======
darxius
I would suggest having MUCH more information about what I'm signing up for
before I actually hand over my information. All I know from the homepage and
the about page is that its some form of Q&A website. You should have
screenshots of what it looks like once you're logged in, better yet, let us
see the questions without being logged in.

~~~
RegEx
Comments like this are almost always the top comment...yet people just can't
seem to get the basics right. I'm not a designer, so I know it's much easier
said than done, but what's up with the blatant refusal to learn from others'
mistakes?

~~~
staunch
Because the complaints are those of a vocal minority. Most people don't worry
about "handing over" their information, viewing screenshots before they sign
up, or if Facebook login is the only option.

Most people just aren't very picky.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I don't mind the handing over information part, but I will almost always leave
a website that wants me to register without showing me what they do. It's
laziness on my part, and I don't complain about it in public, I just don't
sign up for those websites.

Sites like this are just throwing away users for no good reason.

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gruseom
This is exceptionally well designed and thought through. It seems like it
could be a lot more valuable than just Q&A for HN users, though that's a smart
place to start. I'm impressed with the attention you've paid to some of the
details, like the "Curious" counter.

One thing that has held me back from Quora (apart from needing no new ways to
spend time online) is that absolutely everything seems public, such as who
upvoted what. That makes me uncomfortable, like I'm under a harsh spotlight
all the time. Most of the things I think, or say in conversation, are
tentative and exploratory. I don't want to be publicly committed to them by
default; I want to make that choice myself and be aware that I'm making it,
like posting on HN. I'd be surprised if lots of users didn't feel this way, so
maybe that's an opportunity for you to differentiate yourselves. In any case,
I'd be interested to hear what you've made public and private by default and
what your ideas are on the subject more generally.

It will be interesting to see what this grows into!

~~~
shazad
Thanks for the feedback!

------
shazad
We wanted to a create an interesting space where people can find out about
other users on Hacker News. Let us know your thoughts!

~~~
rednum
I like it and I hope more 'interesting' people will register soon; I think I
should say that before I start whining.

Why didn't you put this (or some sort of similar) information on the landing
page? If I was randomly sent link to your site (ie. without context such as HN
comments or relatively high score) I would have no idea what it is, and leave
forever.

Also I don't like the bar saying ASKOLO on the top - there is no content on
it, and it just takes precious vertical space from my small laptop screen. I
already know where am I, no need to repeat that. The second bar, nagging me to
signup or login is kind of distraction too.

Also, I hope for some filtering features for questions (hide unanswered, hide
comments, hide answers - so I can quickly skim only through the questions - I
think this could be handy when there is more content on the site).

~~~
shazad
Hey rednum, thanks for the feedback. You can do some basic filtering on both
the newsfeed and the individual page if you look right above the questions
section. It's set to show all by default, but I think we can probably do a
better job of making that more prominent.

------
sgdesign
Weird that nobody mentioned AnyAsq, which is pretty much the same thing:
<http://anyasq.com/>

Although Askolo looks better and nicer to use, so hopefully it'll stick
around. I just created my profile, ask me some questions about design!

<http://askolo.com/sachag>

~~~
shazad
Hey sgdesign - thanks for the comments! We wanted to take a different focus
and offer a more conversational format for users vs. an iAmA style site.

We talked to the guys behind AnyAsq a while back and they're working on some
other cool things not in Q&A - we're big fans of the team.

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rdl
My favorite feature of this site, by far, is "wish". I wanted a service where
you could do exactly what it does -- write a note or ask a question to
someone, without figuring out his address. i.e. I can ask a question to Dan
Loeb, savior of humanity _, without trying to find his email address or get an
introduction; ideally the people at Askolo will go through that effort on my
behalf.

(_ He's the Third Point Ventures investor who has been trying to fix Yahoo's
board for a while, and is about to go to war with Scott Thompson, ideally
resulting in the end of their stupid patent troll misadventure.)

Bringing in top quality experts from outside the Silicon Valley bubble is the
main thing Quora has failed to do (Larry Summers is on there since he's
friends with Marc Bodnick, but not a whole lot of other people like that).
Askolo is probably a better format for that kind of person than Quora is.

~~~
caoxuwen
Thanks rdl! Credit to gschmidt who suggested this feature

------
OmarIsmail
This solves a big pain point that I have with Quora. In the early days when
Quora was in private beta, it was great because "celebrities" like Zuckerberg,
Evan Williams and people like that would answer questions. But as it grew,
particularly after becoming public it just didn't scale and all the elite-
members left for the most part.

By focusing on people it seems like askolo will be able to avoid that fate as
the celebrities won't get drowned out. One danger is to make sure the
celebrities don't get annoyed/hounded too much. Need to strike a balance
between feeding their ego (hey lots of people want to ask me things, sweet!)
and annoying (ugh.. ANOTHER friggin question email). I'm sure you guys will be
able to figure it out.

~~~
shazad
Thanks Omar!

------
jcfrei
had a similar idea a long time ago (ie. ~2 years) and it was called askcue.com
(still online). question sites like these face a huge chicken and egg problem,
because you need people asking and answering... sorry to break it to you, but
you've ventured into a very competitive and difficult (answers.com,
answers.yahoo.com, quora.com, askreddit, formspring.me) section on the
internet. still, best of luck to you!

~~~
shazad
Thanks for the feedback - we're interested in not just Q&A, but really the
idea of people search. We see Q&A as just the medium through which users can
find out more about other people.

------
duggan
Suggestion / Question: the "suggested users" list disappeared after my first
follow, so discovery has become a little tricky.

Does it exist elsewhere? If not, might be a good idea to put it back in.

~~~
caoxuwen
Hi duggan, it is somewhat buggy indeed. People/Content discovery is a major
feature we are working on right now, it will be out next week.

------
eps
_See other profiles_ at the bottom of someone's profile frequently includes
the person him/herself. In general though - it's an excellent idea, but it
appears to be difficult to browse people and/or to search for someone
specific.

(edit) Also I am not clear if everyone's treated equally on the site or if
there are people how are willing to answer questions and the rest - who asks.
I'd say that latter would be a more natural arrangement, and it'd be also
sensible not to require an account to ask a question.

~~~
shazad
Thanks eps. We wanted to limit who could ask questions primarily to keep
quality high and to alert users when their question is answered, but this is
something that we might open up if people prefer it.

------
dot
How did you get so many people to sign up pre-launch? Well done!

------
deepkut
For some reason, this is more friendly / easier than Quora. I can't quite put
my finger on it. Maybe it's Quora's red, I've never liked that.

On a more specific note, have you considered making the answer textarea not
highlighted upon focus? It seems to clash with the surrounding divs.

I also love how I can follow who is in YC right now considering they somehow
gained word before everyone else :)

~~~
tathagatadg
The missing vertical line separating the main content and the sidebar in Quora
always makes me uncomfortable - it makes the right end of the each section
very jagged. Huge turn off. Then again Quora UX design guys must have seen a
good reason to leave it that way ...

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jfarmer
It's hard to find people to follow, even though I'm well-connected to the
initial group of users (lots of friends in YC, started using Quora in 2009,
etc.).

It's made worse because the Facebook Connect prompt on the homepage shows ~12
friends using the site, but once I log in I can't find them. There should be a
word for that. Soup Nazi UX or something. "Here's some soup. NO SOUP FOR YOU."

~~~
shazad
Hey jfarmer, thanks for checking out the site. That looks like a bug - you
should automatically be following them if you used Facebook. We'll look into
it right away.

~~~
jfarmer
I didn't connect with Facebook because I know all the dirty tricks people
play. ;)

I can't connect now, after the fact. There are also some simple design
oversights. For example, any time I see a list of people, there should be a
"follow" button next to their name.

It's actually quite hard to find people to follow starting from nothing,
unless I want to follow some of the 8-10 people you suggest automatically.

I'd give the first-time experience a C+.

~~~
shazad
Good feedback. We have a feature to connect with FB after the fact, but it's a
bit hidden so we'll make that more prominent.

------
jazzychad
Quick nit: your facebook connect icon is a big letter "C" instead of "A" like
your favicon... caused some cognitive dissonance, for a minute.

~~~
shazad
Thanks we'll fix that.

------
ankeshk
Like the clean interface. Much better than formspring.me

However, each question requires its own permalink. So that people can share a
particular Q&A.

Another idea suggestion would be, create a popular answers tab on all users
page. So that if someone has answered 101 questions, his best answers don't
get lost.

~~~
shazad
Great suggestions. You can actually share an individual Q&A using the "share"
link right below the answer.

------
jazzychad
Another quick nit: please update your From address for your notification
emails to include a friendly name (like Askolo or something). Right now, since
no name is specified, GMail only displays the part before the @ symbol as the
sender, so I get "notification" as the sender... and that looks like spam.

~~~
shazad
Thanks - we'll get that fixed up.

------
tersiag
Interesting idea (I especially like the wish feature)! Great implementation!
How do you plan on getting users to come back after they've read(or asked)
what they needed to read? Perhaps you can have a daily/weekly interesting
thought-provoking question that will get users to come back...

------
michaelkscott
Please, please include the timestamps for questions, answers, and comments.
I'd love to know when some of the questions were asked and answered. If the
time is already there (and I'm just not looking hard enough) please tell me
where it's at.

------
instakill
A few things:

\- How can I see the questions I've asked? \- Why aren't the questions I've
asked not appearing on the askee's profile? \- Is there a person discovery
after the initial one on sign up? \- What features are coming up next?

~~~
caoxuwen
hi instakill, person/content discovery is a major feature we are working on -
it'll probably be out next week. Regarding why you can't see you questions on
askee's profile - the askee may have made all unanswered questions invisible
(you can do that too in your settings page) or deleted your question. Right
now there's a short text under the "ask" box that explains it - we should have
made it more obvious.

------
kingsidharth
So Quora for Hacker News?

~~~
smdennis
I'd interpret more as Quora for people - I think there's huge potential in
this space.

------
Bootvis
One small thing: when I signed up using Facebook it showed the e-mail field as
'undefined' and didn't allow me to create an account. When I tried again every
did work as expected.

------
tathagatadg
Two questions (1) How did you get active profiles of so many awesome people on
your network?(2) Is there a way to map the HN handles to profiles in this
site?

~~~
shazad
(1) We reached out directly to a handful of people that we admired and a
number of them were nice enough to take the time to sign up. (2) Not as yet,
although a number of people use the same handle for their Askolo reserved
name. This is something we'll definitely look into.

------
zeantsoi
It would be nice if you added the date and time that questions are asked and
answered. That would help users gauge recency and temporal relevance.

~~~
shazad
Hey zeantsoi - thanks for the feedback. Right now questions are automatically
sorted by recency. We left out timestamps to try to create a more permanent
space for answers, but this might be a useful thing to display since we've
gotten a few requests for it today.

~~~
zeantsoi
Right. IMO, here's an answer by pg where a timestamp would have provided a lot
of context:

A: Not yet. I haven't spent much time reading the next batch of applications
yet.

------
bhousel
Nice site! I think the questions and answers need some kind of visible
timestamp though. Q&A, by its very nature, can go stale quickly.

~~~
shazad
Hey bhousel - thanks for the feedback! Right now questions are sorted by most
recent so you can see new questions at the top of a page, but we're looking at
rolling out timestamps as well.

------
volaski
It's really impressive how you guys got so many YC people on board before
launching. I really hope you're not a YC company because that would make this
post dishonest. (I know many YC alums help out each other but have never seen
them do it in stealth yet) I'd like to assume that you're not. Could you
clarify this? I'm asking because I noticed far too many YC alums and faculty
on the profile.

~~~
ashraful
They are YC-funded. PG answered a question as such:

<http://askolo.com/pg>

~~~
volaski
That's disappointing. I had guessed they might be, but was hoping they were
not, because they commented below "(1) We reached out directly to a handful of
people that we admired and a number of them were nice enough to take the time
to sign up." I think this is dishonest, and even makes me question the
credibility of some of the other occasional posts that come up on the front
page. Although I can understand why they are not mentioning YC, something
about this makes me uncomfortable, unlike other YC launch announcements on
Hacker News.

------
flaviojuvenal
What is askolo technology stack?

~~~
shazad
Hey flavio - we're using node.js, mongodb, and redis.

------
ajaymehta
Just emailed these guys a bug report and got a response in <2 minutes. Props.

------
psawaya
This site feels like a classier version of Formspring. Nice job!

------
swombat
Well, I signed up. Let's see what happens...

