[writimov]

This particular effort seems to be a mix of fun, braggadocio, and altruism. Could this sort of thing be organized with a social network and a list of tasks/problems using a tool like Trello or Jira but for solving any problem? The result would be anyone in the world could help/volunteer to fix real problems with free time. Use: 1) Problem is posted 2) Investigated and confirmed to be real 3) Volunteers start to fix and swap solutions 4) Extra people are recruited as necessary 5) Problem is solved and wrapped up. This could be applied from everything from MongoDB security issues (https://snyk.io/blog/mongodb-hack-and-secure-defaults) to cleaning up neighborhood pollution (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago...) Thoughts? Does this exist already?

[jVinc]

Yes... volunteer work already exists. Suggesting that it could be organized through Trello or Jira doesn't really add any revolutionary element. And many volunteer organisations already have planning solutions.

[et2o]

Why so negative?

[zenojevski]

This is not at all negative.

Imagine parent telling some underground rebel group that their revolution would be more successful if they organized it with Jira.

Meanwhile, this concern is so far away from the rebels, who are doing just fine with pen and paper, and are more concerned with basic needs like surviving undetected.

People are of course excited by this initiative, and wish to contribute how they know. Except what they have is hammers, and there are no nails to be seen.

It looks like you are helping, but you are only diluting the focus from what's important to what's easy to mindlessly talk about in a forum.

It looks like people are trying to organize how to organize, instead of actually organizing anything. It's like the difference between being a writer and a word processing expert.

[_ea1k]

I think you have a point, but unfortunately I didn't get it from your first comment as well. It read as a pretty negative comment.

It sounds like the point that you are making is reasonable, though, and unfortunately one that I see play out with a lot of FOSS projects as well. I remember a talk one time where a project lead essentially made the point that every new talk is met with a lot of "I'll setup CI for you" and "I'll setup JIRA for you", but that none of the people who say those things end up contributing code or issues.

For some reason there is a natural desire among some to organize the organizing before the thing to be organized really exists.

[zenojevski]

Note: I was not the original poster: his comment simply rang very true to me; "lean" is being a motif in my work, as the complexity of precious time and resource management increases.

Contributions are all well-intentioned, but they cost resources, especially if you're not great at ruthlessly filtering out, or don't want to, for any reason; they generate a lot of heat where this energy can't be used.

Also well-intentioned contributors will set up grandiose structures, with no intention other than "to help", but no actual will to carry the actual work out. This usually turns out a wasteland after a while, which is not so much a problem until you realize you have to support it; or worst, it over-shadows the original, leaner-but-actually-productive intent.

> For some reason there is a natural desire among some to organize the organizing before the thing to be organized really exists.

I think this is why we have so many engines which have no games written for it :D

[_ea1k]

It is amazing how closely this matches my experiences. I've been on projects where we were forced to accept "gifted" code that was a tremendous difficulty to actual maintain and fix to a maintainable state. Of course, the whole time lots of people wondered why it couldn't just be merged without testing or anything.

It is very easy for software contributions to create lots of friction and your analogy to heat and energy loss is really great, IMO.

[twirlip]

Indeed, I try to avoid such good-intentioned bikeshedding by providing anecdotal solutions and listing tools I found helpful. That way, someone with a similar issue may find something useful or provide better advice to me.

[joe_momma]

Not true, you are wrong. Better organization leads to a focus that can solve problems at a greater scale and with easier access to solutions. Your metaphor sucks as well.

[zenojevski]

First, you need something to organize.

You can't optimize what's not there.

[ocdtrekkie]

More often than not, the opportunities for people to help vastly outscales the amount of hours volunteers are able to put up to help. Anyone can clean up trash on the side of the road and it's a no-skill job, so why is it still there? Open source projects everywhere need help, but a lot of them languish unsupported anyways.

Most people likely know countless ways they could help, but the time to do so doesn't match up with the need that's out there.

[writimov]

This is the question I was really getting at: where is the site where I can go help beyond the ways that most people already know about? Where I can I volunteer my services to fix a posted problem with MikroTik routers being insecure? Where is the site with a giant list of problems and descriptions of the people needed to solve them? And matching algorithms to put the two together?

More to the point: where can someone who has a totally unique skillset help solve a specific problem?

The assumption I'm making (which may be faulty) is that everyone has a unique and valuable skillset that may only apply to specific problems. (Like for example, I know nothing about B list celebrities from 1950s Hollywood. But if someone had a problem to solve that involved knowledge of that period, they could post the problem and match it to a profile of a Movie professor, or just a regular person who happens to know alot about that subject. The technical complexities of proving someone knows what they are talking about and their authority can be trusted, basically filtering spam contributions, is the biggest technical challenge. But it seems like new tools like machine learning and neural nets could help us here.)

We all know we can help do basic low-skilled stuff: donate money, volunteer at homeless shelter, build houses habitat for humanity, volunteer at local garden, trash cleanup etc.

What website do I go to that collects all of these ways to help and more?

For ex, what website do I go to for helping in these scenarios:

1) I understand politics and want to work on bills in various countries to stop climate change?

2) I understand biology and want to cure the algae bloom I saw in my local lake yesterday?

3) I understand the physics of mechanical design and want to help fix a design flaw in a pair of garden shears that keeps cutting my skin between my thumb and first finger?

Or approach it the other way around: what site can I go to, register my interests and skills and get assigned to existing projects that will change the world? Where I can help anytime I have free time. Or get an assignment in my email?

Scenarios:

1) I sign up on the site saying I have a biology degree and live in Napa Valley, CA and can do environmental stuff. I get assigned to take Cesium 137 readings to followup on the Fukushima disaster in wine country at various GPS coordinates and get sent a geiger counter, instructions, and training.

2) I have Crohns disease but am willing to wear a data collection monitor on my body and send the data to multiple companies developing new medicines or treatments.

3) I care about elephants and can volunteer to take a shift watching through the eyes of an automated drone that scans for poachers on the other side of the planet?

There are plenty of ways to do basic help in a semi-organized manner to treat the symptoms of chronic human problems. There is no site that I've seen where solving the largest problems of humanity can be crowdsourced.

Where I can I volunteer my services to help design water desalinization plants to make them 100X cheaper?

[fenwick67]

Archive Team does distributed grey-hat activities on volunteer-run computers all the time, but only for archival projects.