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Show HN: My new project - ask.io

ask.io

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Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#61

Post by ericabiz »

elohesra wrote: post #52
ericabiz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've misunderstood. My point was that women seem to be in rare supply on Hacker News. I find myself often commenting on items as one of the "token women" in the community (token, n. "a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality, feeling, etc.")

Ah, and with the link further down to the TokenAdult username, it all makes sense. It was the link between Woman and Adult that was baffling me, as I've not been around the HN comments long enough to know who TokenAdult is.

Yep, a bit of inside baseball there, I suppose! Glad it's all sorted. :)

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#62

Post by tjbiddle »

chasing wrote: post #36

I'm sorry, but I feel like you've got some major problems, here. 1) There's no context on your wife. Hospitalized recently? For what? Cancer? Stubbed toe? And birthday cards... Help how? If I were in the hospital for something serious, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care one whit about receiving cards from people who knew nothing about me. 2) You say below "the current favor is for my wife." Really? You made a site to so…

OP is not necessarily the one who asked that favor - Anyone can submit a favor and one is chosen each week: http://ask.io/about.html

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#64

Post by GrinningFool »

Cool and fun. I'd just recommend making it more obvious what people are seeing when they view the landing page.

When I first landed, I kind of thought you personally were asking for this thing. It took a moment to process the context and realize that this wasn't the case.

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#65

Post by thetrb »

chavesn wrote: post #56
raverbashing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And are you sure all cards will be nice and fluffy? Or, I'm sure an Atheist would receive a lot of "I'm praying for Jesus to make it better" cards (or any other way around really, this is just an example)

This is a depressing comment. If there are people who would go out of their way to snail-mail an insult to an unwell and unfortunate target, then there is far less hope for the human race than I realized. Alternatively, if you're suggesting that someone is so entrenched in their principles that when they need comfort or compassion, they won't appreciate a gesture of goodwill for what it is because they don't agree wi…

Why do you think most online communities have rules against posting real addresses? Because exactly these kind of things happen.

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#66

Post by skore »

ericabiz wrote: post #35
skore wrote: post #20

> My wife is not well and was recently hospitalized, but her birthday is coming up. I think it would make her happy to receive a lot of birthday cards. Could you please send her a birthday card? Wait, so your wife is sick and you think a lot of cards from random strangers will cheer her up? In my experience, that's rarely how wives (or for that matter: husbands) work. I'm all for random acts of kindness... not too su…

> That's rarely how wifes work. Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P This should go without saying, but not all "wifes" (sp) work the same. I had surgery recently and I would have loved this. Plus, I think it's awesome that the OP managed to score ask.io--a great, short domain name--and is using it for charitable purposes. Cool! Also, I think I'd have enou…

I was pondering whether I should put in a "or husbands" qualifier. Seems like I should have!

I also fixed the spelling.

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#67

Post by jcutrell »

I very much like this idea.

I think the most important and persistent feedback would be to offer more (even if just a few more) asks on the front page. While it makes sense to limit focus, by having one a week, I feel entirely less compelled to keep ask.io on the forefront of my mind.

If you do choose to stick with one, make a few macros or something like that to allow people to be reminded of the newest ask once a week. I have a lot of things to do on Mondays, so I could see this falling behind. Perhaps you develop a very simple iphone app that pushes a notification of the newest ask?

Other options would be an email list or an easy-to-use calendar reminder. Think ICS. You could also take advantage of the new push notifications for Safari.

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#68

Post by bkmartin »

raverbashing wrote: post #44
ericabiz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's rarely how wifes work. Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P This should go without saying, but not all "wifes" (sp) work the same. I had surgery recently and I would have loved this. Plus, I think it's awesome that the OP managed to score ask.io--a great, short domain name--and is using it for charitable purposes. Cool! Also, I think I'd have enou…

And are you sure all cards will be nice and fluffy? Or, I'm sure an Atheist would receive a lot of "I'm praying for Jesus to make it better" cards (or any other way around really, this is just an example)

And a lot of atheists wouldn't take offense to you sending such a card. Even Dawkins didn't take offense to people praying for him. He said that it wouldn't do any good, but he appreciated that people were thinking of him in such a way. Could someone be a real bad actor and do something unkind with this? Sure, but they can do that with anything. Should we shut down the internet because people can use it for distributing and consuming child pornography?

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#69

Post by chavesn »

thetrb wrote: post #65
chavesn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a depressing comment. If there are people who would go out of their way to snail-mail an insult to an unwell and unfortunate target, then there is far less hope for the human race than I realized. Alternatively, if you're suggesting that someone is so entrenched in their principles that when they need comfort or compassion, they won't appreciate a gesture of goodwill for what it is because they don't agree wi…

Why do you think most online communities have rules against posting real addresses? Because exactly these kind of things happen.

Online communities are sources of passion, emotion, argument, conflict.

There's a big difference between that and knowing basically nothing about a person other than that they're in a hospital and having a birthday.

Re: Show HN: My new project - ask.io

#70

Post by danpalmer »

vikp wrote: post #48

This is an interesting idea. I don't know if I would be comfortable posting my address, though. Definitely not trying to make this political, but please do more reading about "Mother" Teresa before quoting her as an inspiration: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor... , http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Prac... and http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-mta022…

Came here to mention this. 'Mother Theresa' evokes charitable feelings and connotations for many people, for some (myself included) though it's a very negative thing.
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