Offering HN something relevant (e.g. design, programming, business advice) is really cool.
Offering something irrelevant (e.g. your apartment, your bike, your girlfriend for a night) isn't so cool.
Tell HN: Please continue offering your services (goods, rooms etc)
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Re: Tell HN: Please continue offering your services (goods, rooms etc)
#322c - Please Bear with me, I am not the best at conveying ideas.
The Offer HN trend is of great value, its inspiring, collaborative, and genuine. I think it deserves to be encouraged because, well... its more like the world I think most of us would want to live in.
I was thinking about how this trend would play out though, and being a cynic, I am certain that at some point this will be abused. All systems can be bent, broken, or subverted and for a human system like the HN community, the inevitable abuse will damage the trust being built up on the site. I hate to be negative, but I have to point out that there are people who do NOT subscribe to the DNA of HN and assume that some other human beings are just marks. Offer HN is an ideal target for such individuals.
At the same time, for a successful community, Good faith needs to be assumed. The alternative is, well, suspicion of most offers, which I think would be corrosive to HN.
From here, it suggests to me that a separate system to ensure transparency and good faith would be required to support Offer HN requests. A simple way to identify affiliations, skill level and so on would perhaps be useful, and would also help address any further concerns that people may have. At the same time it could take away from the spontaneous nature of the help which would be a shame.
- Ok, complex rambling thoughts over! Hopefully someone finds something in this useful, it would be a shame to see Offer HN dissipate. -2c.
Re: Tell HN: Please continue offering your services (goods, rooms etc)
#33I think there is a big difference in an 'Ask HN' post and a 'Offer HN' post.
In general terms, an 'Ask HN' post is the HN crowd helping an individual. Everyone can participate to help that individual. An 'Offer HN' post is one person helping one other person (or maybe a small handful). I enjoy seeing the occasional Ask HN post because I can participate/contribute in some way to most of the requests. For Offer HN posts, I can't participate unless I have that specific need that needs addressing.
To me, there is less 'value/participation' to the HN community from the Offer HN posts to the Ask HN ones for that reason. Offer HN type posts are better serviced by other specialists sites of which there are no shortage. Yes - I understand 'value' is subjective, but this I think my point is reasonably objective from a 'whole community' point of view.
Re: Tell HN: Please continue offering your services (goods, rooms etc)
#34For what it's worth, I've upvoted this too. I certainly didn't mean to kill the trend completely (which is what seems to have happened :-/). There is some obvious value to it. I wouldn't want to see the Offer HN thing become a lasting trend at the current levels... that said, the odd "Offer HN" doesn't bother me, and I certainly wouldn't want to think that all offers stopped completely just because my post got upvote…
The design, prototyping, and manufacturing guide is mine and I've gotten a dozen plus emails from people asking about product ideas. Instead of taking weeks to figure out if something is viable I can answer the question in a few minutes. Having designed apparel, medical products, mobile apps, AI, toys, etc. I can pretty much look at something at tell what it's going to cost, how long, and the difficulty.
I'm doing it sure to meet people but mostly because I wish there was someone to help me when I was learning product design. There would have been a lot less bumps and bruises.