
Call Someone Who Cares - andrewmwatson
http://www.call-someone-who-cares.com/
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ookblah
"There is nobody that cares" hahahahaha. I feel sad now.

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anthonyb
The idea's coming from the right place, but it looks like a serious troll
magnet to me...

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joeyespo
This might be a good example of where karma can be useful.

Karma for listeners: Highly upvoted accounts can take precedence to talking to
newcomers; they've proved that they can listen well, giving new callers a good
experience. This will encouraging them to come back or even to sign up as a
listener by following the good listener's example.

Karma for callers: If they ever call again, they will be able to talk with
newer listeners. Perhaps you need to have enough karma to even _be_ a
listener. Why? Listening is a more important quality for the site to be
successful. Starting out as a caller lets allows you to follow the top
listeners by example, while keeping the trolls away from other callers.

Also, a low enough score can block the account for an X amount of time. Where
X increases each time they get blocked. And I think more karma = more weight
on your vote could help with regulation. Mostly because voting will take place
much less often than on other social sites.

This is an awesome idea though, I hope it catches on.

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intended
I would love it to catch on, but there are massive social/legal/moral issues
with it.

Eg 1- someone going through a depressive phase hits up with a troll (ref: case
where someone was in a chat room, streaming a video of himself just before he
committed suicide, people in the chat room egged him on)

Eg 2- Someone is suffering a depressive/manic episode, but turns to this and
is not directed to medical help immediately OR someone has an issue which
would require them to go to a professional, but the listener is not
trained/aware and hence can't give them critical advice

Eg 3- Young adult who has had a traumatic day turns to this service, gets put
in touch with someone who has strong beliefs. (or even mild ones)

Eg 4- High Karma person is taping calls of people talking to them

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joeyespo
Yes, I do agree that there will be some edge cases with moral and legal
issues. For everyone else with something on their minds, most of the time you
just need to talk it out with another human being. It's the emotional side of
their problems that they need help with. They shouldn't really be looking for
advice here.

Kind of like AirBnB (for example) needing to have both parties be trustworthy,
this will also require an element of trust. In the sense of confidentiality
and compassion.

Just because the problems aren't immediately solvable doesn't mean we should
avoid it though. We should instead try different things. Maybe on different
sites or throughout the evolution of this one. But ultimately test to see what
keeps the abusers away and also avoids the social/legal/moral issues.

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rokhayakebe
Let me sign up and give an hour (of my choosing) block per week to listen to
someone else. I would do it for karma.

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epanastasi
Thanks for the feedback! Right now the app is pretty barebones. I can see what
I can do to hack together a better user / presence system when I get some
time.

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neoveller
"There is nobody that cares. Maybe you should be that somebody."

Okay. Waiting for someone to call... ... ...

This is the most inefficient way to rickroll anyone ever

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JayNeely
You should consider teaming up with <http://compassionpit.com/>

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agilo
As the Reader's Digest once put it (according to Dale Carnegie): "Many persons
call a doctor when all they want is an audience". This could save people if
done well.

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badhairday
I can't give Twilio access to my microphone on Lion with the latest stable
version of Chrome. So no, I can't really someone someone who cares.

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johns
<http://www.twilio.com/help/lion-tamer>

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tftfmacedo
[Honest question] By doing that aren't you allowing any app that uses the
Twilio API to open your mic/camera without permission?

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ADiMichele
Good work! I've had some cool ideas for Twilio projects but so far the pricing
has made them all impractical. The Twilio Client is really opening some doors
in this respect, being 1/4 the cost of a phone call and a cool feature to
boot!

I still hope you have some throttling in place though because 1000 concurrent
users will cost you $150/hr...

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dmor
Go Frank!

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epanastasi
Thanks! It was just a fun little idea I implemented when I should have been
doing real work. :)

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known
<http://www.airbnb.com/> \+ <http://www.call-someone-who-cares.com/> is better

~~~
johnx123-up
For down voters, please refer top story
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811080>

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frytaz
There is nobody that cares :)

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suyash
nice idea...(chat roulette - video)!

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daten
This reminds me of anicechat.net but it looks like it uses sound?

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ericdschmidt
Bravo!

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zackattack
Hey, I run CompassionPit.com and have built up a sizable, stable community....
(40,000-200,000 unique visitors/month). I would be very happy to collaborate
with a like-minded individual. The app is on the node.js stack and I've funded
development and hosting entirely. I've released the source for free.

<https://github.com/zackster/CompassionPit--Node-/>

