

Show HN: Skillswap, a tiny site to help people help each other - jackfranklin
http://www.skillswap.in/

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eksith
This is a brilliant! Excellent execution as well and it brings people together
to form connections that can last longer than the current exchange.

This is what we should be seeing more of on HN.

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jackfranklin
Thank you :)

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Argorak
Nice idea, simple and helpful, especially as there are quite a number of
interesting offers with different skill groups like "need help with coding,
can offer help in writing" already.

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jackfranklin
Thanks! The idea was to keep it stupidly simple, and not limit what people
could ask for / search for. Had a couple of people ask if non web dev topics
were allowed - to which my reply was "of course!"

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mkl
Do you have plans to make it work without a Twitter account?

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jackfranklin
Not currently, no. Twitter seems like the perfect way to allow people using
the site to connect and get learning.

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cac04
I really, really like the idea. However, I neither have nor want a Twitter
account. Would it really be difficult to allow people to use the site without
a Twitter account?

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jscore
This one is the best:

_vojto is looking for help with Data analytics.

In return, they can offer their help with Relationship advice.

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DjangoReinhardt
Good one, beautifully done. Just signed up. :)

Request: Provide an option to delete swaps. Once I've found someone willing to
exchange help, maybe I wouldn't want to continue advertising the swap?

Just a thought... :-)

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jackfranklin
Thanks - that one is absolutely on our list.

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DjangoReinhardt
In fact, you don't even have to allow delete - you can just let the users
'hide' them. That way, if I want to offer the same swap, I can just 'unhide'
it. :-)

Out of curiosity, what's the stack? I read Heroku & MongoDB. I'm guessing it
is an Ember.js app?

EDIT: unhide not unidentified. Damn you auto correct!

~~~
jackfranklin
The entire source code is on my GitHub account:
[https://github.com/jackfranklin/skillswap](https://github.com/jackfranklin/skillswap)

It uses the free Heroku instance with the free MongoHQ addon. That way if the
site failed completely I wouldn't be out of pocket! If it keeps being used
we'll either stump up some cash for Heroku or look at other hosting options.
For now the free Heroku is fine, and the free MongoHQ addon still has enough
space, particularly as we're storing so little.

There's no Ember or any similar framework, just a bit of jQuery that does the
search filtering (which I want to improve - the entire site is a result of a
3-4 hour hack yesterday, plenty can be improved upon).

It's a small Ruby app that uses Sinatra, with Mongoid my gem of choice for
talking to MongoDB. Uses the omniauth gem to authenticate with Twitter, and
that's about it. Dead simple :)

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DjangoReinhardt
For a few-hour hack, it has been done quite beautifully, I must say. Kudos!

I'm more of a Django/Python guy myself and I've been running a few of my own
self-learning projects on Heroku, too. So yeah, I know where you're coming
from. :)

You might want to look into using Bootstrap Typeahead.js to auto-tag topics
posted by users. I recently got it working with a bit of jQuery on one of my
own projects by using Django Rest Framework to serve the corresponding JSON
content. It may even help you auto-match users in the future! (I'd like my
ESOPs now, please. :P)

I wish I knew how to Rails, but I've only just begun with Django, so I suspect
I may not be of much use to you with the code. :(

Good luck, and may this project take you places! :)

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danielrmay
Great idea, novel execution.

However - you might want to stick some validation or a moderation step in: the
first in the list is currently "necenzurat is looking for help with getting
laid. In return, they can offer their help with massage.".

Unless, of course, that is the real underlying intention of the app...

EDIT: After a short think, I think it would be nice to use a similar auto-
complete "tag" entry system a la Stack Overflow. This would make entering any
number of skills a great deal easier than just a text field.

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jackfranklin
Yup - spotted and deleted that one.

I think we need some form of being able to flag an entry as spam, and it going
into moderation when that happens.

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enrmarc
Fantastic idea! Just out of curiosity, what hosting service are you using?

~~~
jackfranklin
Currently it's on Heroku, using the free instance and the MongoHQ addon. Find
it perfect for little side projects like this, especially when launching at
first to see if the idea is any good or not.

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afandian
I know I'm a bit old fashioned about correct use of TLDs. But. Is this for
Indians to swap their skills or not? If not, the domain is very misleading.

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dbaupp
" _skill swappin '_", perhaps?

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afandian
I'm sure there's an aesthetic argument. But I think there's a stronger
correctness and not-misleading-ness argument.

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garg
Where is the 'correct use of TLDs' documented? I hope you never come across
URL shortening services, like goo.gl, or bit.ly or you'll really get confused.

Do you run afandian.com? You should change it to afandian.co.uk because that's
really not a commercial website and by your logic, you're misleading people by
using incorrect usage of the TLD system.

~~~
afandian
Well you could start with RFC 1591 which indicates that Country Code TLDs are
associated with countries.

If I want to sell fish to the United Kingdom I could register fish.co.uk . If
I wanted to sell to France it could be fish.fr (or poissons.fr). India,
fish.in (I'm not going to guess that the translation).

You may decide that you want to grab an Indian address because it looks nice
but that doesn't stop it being a technically not a correct usage. If you
accept the existence of ccTLDs (and they do exist) then you have to accept
that inherent to their existence is an association with a country.

Non-geographic TLDs exist. They may not look nice, but they exist for a
particular reason (cases where geography isn't relevant).

I know people are doing their best to dilute the naming conventions for
aesthetic reasons, but it doesn't change the facts of the matter. If someone
wants to register a Skill Swap for use in India they're SOL.

EDIT:

Yes, afandian.com is mine. My presence on the web has nothing much to do with
my geographic location (unlike my imaginary fish shop). And .com is non-
geographic, so surely that's the right choice on geographic grounds?

As for whether or not I'm a commercial entity, that's a fair question on
technical grounds. But I think most people understand that .com has become the
general purpose domain (I'm not an ORG or a NET or a GOV). The .co.uk domain
is equally 'commercial'.

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JayNeely
Consider that the majority of people aren't familiar with RFC 1591 -- I think
that would nullify any argument that the use of a country code TLD is
"misleading".

Numerous countries in fact permit and promote international registration of
their ccTLDs as a product for creative domain names, including .co (Colombia),
.cc (Cocos islands), .fm (Federated States of Micronesia), and .it (Italy).

And importantly, conventions change, and RFCs are a starting point for an
evolving set of standards. .net isn't limited to "only the computers of
network providers" as RFC 1591 states. Is everyone with a .net domain doing
something incorrect?

~~~
afandian
(It looks like I made my last edit after your reply.)

Who wants to use my new Java library? It's in the namespace `java.util`
because I like coffee and utilities.

All I'm saying is that a domain name dedicated to a particular country can
cause confusion if it turns out not to. I'm not saying you can't do it. Some
are obvious (bit.ly) and some you don't know until you try (vagrantbox.es).
I'm not advocating a hard-line approach, I'm just saying it can be confusing.

And I personally think it's a shame (like I said, I know it's an unfashionable
point of view. I'm not expecting to convince anyone).

Corollary: What if I do want to register a domain about skill swapping in
India? Do I have to put "India" in the name?

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grumps
I like this... I was just thinking about last night how it would be nice if I
could just swap with someone.

I would note you might want to protect against things like "help me get laid"
I see it it on the homepage just a moment ago. while a legit request, you'll
likely lose users over it. I can imagine there will be other crazy and illegal
requests too.

~~~
jackfranklin
Agreed - going to add some system to enable people to flag entries as spam, at
which point they will be removed and undergo moderation.

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anuragramdasan
This is amazing. Actually anything that allows people to ask help without
being treated badly by other users or mods is something i find amazing.

It would have been much better if there were any way to ask for help without
twitter. A simple PM system maybe.

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bjourne
Awesome. It's a site-idea I have myself been toying with but never gone with.
Maybe you can extend the scope of your site beyond programming-related topics?
For example, I'd be interested in exchanging driving lessons for programming
tutoring.

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realrocker
Good Idea. Well executed. Edit: Hide "Offer My Help" on my own swap(when
logged in)

~~~
jackfranklin
Good spot, thank you. Will add it to the list.

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nimrody
How about letting people add some more information besides 'skill'. I.e., what
sort of project they need help with or what is the scope of the help needed?

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teh_klev
Nice one. Would be better if folks asking for help could be made to (or
optionally) be a bit more specific about the sort of help they're after.

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joshcrowder
Great idea! I'm going to sign up

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Nicholas_C
I love this. This is the type of idea/site I aspire to create. Simple, easy,
useful.

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realrocker
Already connected to 2 people. You might onto something grand here!

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scirahul
Awesome job, bang on target, no bullshit, good luck!

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shloime
Brilliant. I'm loving this.

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gp-
phpmentoring.org

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chrismorgan
Something I would _really_ like to see here is use of gender-specific pronoun
"he" or "she" instead of "they". Yes, the language has changed so that "they"
is acceptable as gender-neutral singular, but it's still regularly jarring,
and when the information is or can conveniently be there (you can very easily
collect it—male, female or unspecified) it makes it _much_ more pleasant to
read.

~~~
jackfranklin
Do you know how we would go about doing it? (That's not a snarky Q - I
genuinely don't know!). I too would love to but I'm unsure as to how to
reliably do it - and in the mean time gender-neutral was a safer bet.

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chrismorgan
You could tie it in with letting the user specify the name to display;
changing away from using Twitter handles is probably not a bad thing anyway.
Thus you could have as part of the sign-up process:

    
    
        1. Call me _________
        2. Refer to me as 
           ( ) male ("he")
           ( ) female ("she")
           (x) gender-neutral or plural ("they")
           ( ) actually, we're a group ("they")
    

For e.g. Twitter sign-up, you'd auto-fill the first with their username and
the second with gender-neutral.

That does sound rather awkward and could hopefully be improved upon. (I added
the final option as it occurred to me businesses could use this.)

~~~
danielrmay
I agree that the concept of displaying "he" or "she" would indeed be an
improvement, but I feel as though the only way to get over the awkwardness of
the form questions you defined would be to go through some kind of "profile
builder".

This obviously takes the app to a new place - now talking about some sort of
profile system - this would obviously be a huge feature to add with a load of
other implications.

