[Tarski]

What does the HN community think of having a public ideas website? Sort of like ASK HN: Rate my startup. Users can post their ideas from inception and receive creative input, reassurance that someone would buy that, or no-way don't waste your time building that.

[anigbrowl]

I've seen a few sites like that over the years but they die fairly quickly. This is not to say it's a waste of time, but to point out some basic problems such a site needs to overcome.

One problem is that a general forum is not attractive to specialists (who might have to invest time just to explain why something would be useful in the first place), with the result that suggestions trend towards a blend of trivial and naive. Another is the nagging sense that the more well-specified an idea is, the more likely it is to be be exploited for private gain, and since one can't patent or copyright an idea per se, and building a prototype plus filing an application for a patent is quite expensive, there's not much economic incentive to develop ideas to that point, even if the goal is to make the patent public domain (so as not to allow private monopolies).

[jrussino]

"one can't patent... an idea per se"

Actually, this is precisely what patents are for. You don't need to implement an invention in order to obtain a patent, you just need to describe it in sufficient detail "as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use [the invention]" [1]

[1] http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/index.html

[anigbrowl]

This is true, though the patent office can require a model (s.114 via the same link), so in practice you'd probably want that on hand. I was just trying to distinguish between the 'cool' basic idea that's not patentable and the expensive detailed recipe that is.

[GrayRoark]

There is the http://ideaaday.org/ site. You can comment the ideas. Knowing that there are a million ideas out there keeps me off the brain crack. http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html