
Show HN: Sourceful – Crowdsourcing the best public Google docs - MattSourceful
https://sourceful.co.uk
======
ollerac
Back when I was working on another startup, I hired a freelancer friend to
create "The Freelance Rate Calculator" [0], which ended up on Sourceful a few
months later. Before that, it went viral on Twitter (112,570 impressions) [1]
and brought in a ton of traffic to my startup's home page.

Ever since then, I can't shake the feeling that I should probably turn it into
a simple SaaS app.

It really made me think that nicely designed Google Sheets documents are
probably the perfect way to prototype some applications. They're free, fast to
build, and anyone can access them... And, apparently, you can get them to look
pretty damn nice.

[0] [https://sourceful.co.uk/doc/101/the-freelancer-rate-
calculat...](https://sourceful.co.uk/doc/101/the-freelancer-rate-calculator)
[1]
[https://twitter.com/panphora/status/1094081680166531072](https://twitter.com/panphora/status/1094081680166531072)

~~~
MattSourceful
It's a great spreadsheet! It's been doing really well on Sourceful and is
currently the highest rated doc for tag "freelance".

I couldn't agree more with you about Google docs for prototyping. A Google
Sheet + Form (e.g. collecting signup emails) combination offers some serious
potential.

I would like Sourceful to be a place where projects like that are promoted and
initial discussion around them takes place. Twitter/Facebook are not ideal
places for that as the content there is too ephemeral.

------
realbarack
I like the idea and have also noticed the rise of the public Google doc. I see
it as a part of a greater trend of people flocking to semi-private internet
spaces. (I'm in various semi-public Slack channels and Discord groups.)
Bringing discoverability to these spaces could be valuable.

~~~
MattSourceful
Good point about Slack and Discord. It's interesting that even though
participants are semi-private - in my experience - the standard of discourse
is usually higher than the non-private places like Facebook.

------
MattSourceful
What are your thoughs about using Google Docs and Sheets as a quick-and-dirty
way to create and distribute content, especially by non-tech-savvy users?

It appears that the use of this format has been growing, especially during the
recent events (coronavirus pandemic, climate change then BLM protests).

~~~
kawfey
I always felt strangely about it. It is quick, dirty, free, and easy, but the
fact public docs hosted on Google Docs are very unstable, i.e. they don't get
archived, and they're prone to removal by the writer at any moment, or by
Google if either it breaks rules or if they get asked to by law
enforcement/governments, I don't trust the URL to stay the same (not sure
why), accessibility is poor, some docs require to be logged into google (and
this also means identities are tracked) and they're not indexed. The list
helps but I imagine it's quite a lot of work to keep it up, and in a year from
now will be abandoned.

I can't say a static webpage is any better, since that requires quite a bit of
know-how, hosting costs, and other in-conveniences than just making the google
doc public.

I also feel confused when celebrities et al. share their deep thoughts,
apologies, outcries, and other information by screen-shotting a story written
in their phone's notes app and posting the images, but there really isn't
anything simpler and more reliable than that (since writing in non-native
apps, especially iOS, tend to reset themselves and delete your text if you
exit the app for too long).

~~~
MattSourceful
Those are very good points. Without going into too many details, I am hoping
to resolve some of the issues you've mentioned and provide a bit more
stability to this format.

Haven't thought about celebrities screen-shotting their thoughts but it's
definitely a thing :) there could be something there.

------
fudged71
This is neat. I'd love to know what are the most shared google docs/sheets on
the web. Is it possible to scrape these off of Reddit/Twitter/Forums etc and
get stats on how many times they have been viewed?

~~~
MattSourceful
Sourceful viewing figures are taken into account in Sourceful to sort "Hot"
page but not displayed to users.

Outside of Sourceful, to see what is the most viewed document on the web, the
best way is to use a tool like ahrefs. However, the quality of the doc does
not seem to be strongly correlated to this number as the top docs are often
clickbait/practically useless.

------
senthil_rajasek
Are these docs not indexed by google?

If yes, is curation the value?

~~~
MattSourceful
No, most of the time they are not indexed by search engines - unless the docs
has got a lot of good backlinks, it will not be visible through search. Also,
a lot of docs which seem to do well in Google search are scam pages with
illegal movie downloads, etc.

So there is a lot of added value in showcasing and promoting great docs which
are not easy to find. Another area is giving feedback to the doc owner though
commenting - the collaboration system in Google docs is not ideal for high-
level discussion about the doc.

------
dang
Lists can't be Show HNs. Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

~~~
MattSourceful
Apologies, I guess in the context of the Show HN it's less of a list and more
a tool to submit and comment on Google docs to which people can try out.

~~~
dang
Ok, I've put Show HN back and modified your title from "Sourceful – a crowd-
sourced list of the best public Google docs".

