Simple site for finding people to work on projects with you

nanodeath · 05-12-2008, 09:53 PM

(Note: the goal of this post is to get comments, ideas, and feedback)

We've all had that experience: "this is a great idea, I can't believe no one's done it before!" Then you start designing it, and coding it, and...if you're like me, you lose interest after 1-2 weeks.

What if you could say "I have a great idea for a project", and you could post it on a site and find other people who are interested and capable and get them to work on it with you? That'd be sweet, huh? That's the baseline idea for this site.

This site would be designed with homebrew (+ nonpaid) projects in mind, with teams of 3-5 people per project. The site isn't about hosting your data, or anything with project execution -- it's only for finding people (and a couple other things).

So far, there are three sections.
* First is an Ideas section. This is where you go if you have a great idea, but don't want to be the one to work on it or coordinate it. You can post your idea here and see what projects are created around the idea.
* Second is a Projects section. This is where you find interesting projects that you may want to join, or kick people out of your project if they've fallen off the face of the earth, or get contact information for others working on the project.
* Third is what I'm presently calling the "Graveyard". You can upload or link to so-called "dead" projects that are never going to be worked on again, but you want to allow other people to continue. By posting a project there it'd automatically be released under some license, like say the BSD or MIT license.

That's the 1.0 functionality...

Before giving my ideas for additional functionality, does anyone have any comments/feedback? Sound useful at all? Also the name is TBD, so if anyone has any ideas I'd be grateful...

binaryWeapon · 05-13-2008, 03:11 AM

This sounds like a very great idea. I'd be interested in helping to create something like that after I've given up on my current project =P.

I would suggest adding a coding forum section, so after one has begun working on a project they could get help on the same site, although that would not be the focus of the site, as it is on this one. Also, I would add a finished projects section, which would be the opposite of the "Graveyard". It would contain all the finished projects, links to them, lists of the participants/tools used, etc. Another cool feature would be "Featured Project", or project contests. Like the "CF Helpful Member" awards on this forum, there could be "Best Project" awards or something of the like.

And, as a parting thought,

to Coding Forums!

nanodeath · 05-13-2008, 03:27 AM

Thanks for the feedback, binaryWeapon. I've actually started on the site already, since I didn't want to make public an idea I thought I wasn't going to finish. I'm deliberately keeping the site small and simple, so that I can actually finish it

which means...at least until the 1.0 version, I'm planning on going it solo.

The forum would be a bit of an undertaking, since I'd want it to be fully integrated with the site, which is using ruby+merb. But hopefully it'll be coded by version 1.1

As for the projects that make it into the End Zone (heh), that does sound like a good idea, though I don't know how often projects ever reach a Done state. It could serve a similar process to the Graveyard, in that the creator feels like "I've done everything I'm going to do with this".

I've briefly considered actually hosting some of the code on the site, but...space is hard to come by on a VPS, so if I did it at all, it'd be like, 1-2 megs, maaaybe 5 megs maximum.

nanodeath · 05-13-2008, 03:32 AM

Way to edit your post while I'm busy replying to it

That's definitely possible for the future (awards and featured projects), and vaguely related to some of the "additional functionality" I was tempted to go into earlier. What I had in mind was more like...helping User A figure out if they actually want to work with User B. That is, does User B flake out on projects, does he code well, is he annoying...do projects User A start usually end up finishing, do they suffer from feature creep, do they get a lot of pageviews/attention, etc.

Thanks for the welcome! I admit I'm not a regular reader of this forum, but was looking for a service that did something similar to what I wanted to uh, streamline/optimize with a dedicated website.

kosstr12 · 06-14-2008, 02:40 PM

When you get the site done, I'll join because I can never finish anything. That's an extremely good idea, and if you really develop it, it would help coders everywhere.

Thanks,
Koss

nanodeath · 06-14-2008, 04:29 PM

Sweet, glad to see there's some interest. It's a little hung up at the moment since it's being built using Merb+DataMapper, and DataMapper is a bit "cutting edge" which means I hit serious bugs sometimes -- some of which prevent me from say, registering test accounts. So it'll get done, just not tomorrow.

kosstr12 · 06-14-2008, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nanodeath

Sweet, glad to see there's some interest. It's a little hung up at the moment since it's being built using Merb+DataMapper, and DataMapper is a bit "cutting edge" which means I hit serious bugs sometimes -- some of which prevent me from say, registering test accounts. So it'll get done, just not tomorrow.

Good Luck, I'm looking forward to joining

gnomeontherun · 06-14-2008, 09:49 PM

First this is a great idea, and secondly it would be only ironic if you didn't find someone to help you make this site :P

While I could think of dozens of other neat things to add to this type of a site, I want to applaud you for focusing on the basics to start with. I would say that your description should be a beta version, which you could find a nice handful of developers to join and work improve it. I think the biggest thing is to stay away from developing into Sourceforge or Google Code, which you seem to be focusing on providing a networking opportunity.

While I'm not an official programmer or anything, I'm a designer and developer. I would be willing to assist with this endeavor, because I've got a few other ideas I'd like to find some neat people to work with! My skills would be more limited since I have never heard of Merb, but hey I'm still offering help.