

Ask HN: Review My Site - Studylance.com - pixpox3

Hello all,<p>I submitted my site a few days ago for feedback but didn't get too much response, so I thought I'd try one more time...<p>If anyone has any feedback its much appreciated, both from a design/usability standpoint and a coding standpoint too.<p>Is it clear what you have to do as a student/tutor?<p>Many thanks!<p>The site url is:<p>www.studylance.com
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csomar
This is extremelly useful for math and physics students who generally can't
make an income through the web unlike IT students.

I believe it can succeed, one thing to watch: Keep your site SPAM free, Ban
the people asking for very hard and long questions and giving few money for
it. Also ban users who bid on every question and they are unable to reply.

If your site continue with high-quality, it'll attract a lot of other people,
high-quality also (smart)

Good Luck with it!

(Edit: you forgot the about page)

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caffeine
Your "about us" page is full of lorem ipsum. Doesn't inspire much confidence
in the company...

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mechanical_fish
Worse, the lorem ipsum isn't aligned with the rest of the elements on the
page. ;) It isn't even doing its job!

Also: your teachers have areas of "expetise". Normally I strive not to flame
people's spelling, but when you're building a site to sell expertise to
people...

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RiderOfGiraffes
Clickable: <http://www.studylance.com>

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pixpox3
Thanks

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kevinherron
It doesn't like my password, but I have no idea why. All it will tell me is
"Enter correct Password. ". Maybe some hint on why my password doesn't meet
your password constraints?

Edit: Apparently I can't have an exclamation point in my password. That's
absurd.

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mgrouchy
Honestly, I think the idea is pretty neat. The website looks pretty good and
for general answers I think this model may work. That being said, if a
university student posted an assignment question on here and then answered
that question exactly as on an assignment, that is tantamount to cheating. I
know when I was in university(which wasn't too long ago) my professors were on
top of plagiarism and such, and tend to watch for these type of things.

With a site like this, it doesn't stay a students best kept secret for long
and once the cat is out of the bag its only going to cause trouble for
students using it.

That being said, its a pretty good idea, I'd be interested to see how this
pans out.

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rksprst
Your UI focus is wrong. For instance, on the question page the main things are
category, post date, number of bids. These elements take up as much height
space as the question itself. The question is also in a textbox which I have
to scroll to read. The focus should be on the question (which should just be
in a div). Right now it looks like an accessory instead of the focus.

BTW, out of curiosity... was this built with asp.net mvc?

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hwijaya
I think design/usability are acceptable. At least i can understand it after
playing with it for less than 1 minute.

The only thing that you need to be careful of is probably a market-risk. This
type of site is platform model and usually run into chicken-and-egg problems,
therefore, takes longer than you imagined to take-off.

Overall, the idea is great. It certainly has potentials. Keep it going! ;)

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ashleyw
You should probably do it in US dollars rather than British sterling.

Firstly because more people know dollars, but also because it's a higher
number, which I'd think would attract more answers; £10 vs $16…only to Britons
would they seem the same amount.

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ianbishop
Nice site, I will definitely be giving it a try.

My only design complaint so far is the green on blue buttons at the bottom of
a question ('Ask Student a Question', etc.).

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justlearning
i like the logical separation of the page using light colors. I think,
although you may be tempted to add more rows to the "top tutors", it looks
good as is at the moment - may be couple of rows more. The pound sign beside
the top-tutors is very 'diggy'. may be small image size? may be you should
think those rows in terms of reddit-like than digg.

..and could you share your web-framework/db/architecture details?

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quizbiz
Why use this when I can type my question into Google and get ranked answers
from answers.com?

But I do like the design and interface, a lot.

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mechanical_fish
Heh. Because the answers that come back from answers.com won't be the answers
to your specific homework problems. ;)

Or has Google gotten that good, while I wasn't looking?

[attempts to cut and paste equation from a question into Google to see what
comes back]

Um, is there a reason why I can't select the text of a question on this site
we're reviewing? Is this a bug, or is it some sort of "feature" that just
_happens_ to drive me right up the wall?

Anyway, the answer is: there really are a hell of a lot of pre-solved
equations out there in the Google database. So maybe you're right. But I
suspect that, even if the answer is out there in Google, there's still value
in the service of locating that answer and presenting it to the questioner on
a doily.

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known
Can you name studylance.com competitors?

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karanbhangui
Are you Felix.f on the site?

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pixpox3
No that's someone else...

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empone
is that a bookworm holding a cigar?

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pixpox3
Well spotted, you passed the studylance test.

