[natcombs]

To expand on this idea, it would be cool if you could define a finite task you need (such as a user story) and exchange that for some other finite task that someone else needs. They work on your user story (in a skill they have) and you work on theirs (in a skill you have). Like bartering.

Right now, I see "Wanted: UX designer" but that doesn't tell me if they just need a menu bar, or an entire front-end for a mail client

[tompic823]

Couldn't agree more. I don't have the time right now to commit to another project, but I always love picking off a quick task if it's helpful.

As proof, GitPals posted[0] their own project on GitPals. The sole comment mentions that they're looking for help auditing their JWT implementation. This is a sufficiently small and well-scoped task, and so I did[1]! I admittedly opened GitPals with no expectation of contributing, but the ask was small enough that it seemed reasonable.

[0] https://www.gitpals.com/projects/GitPals

[1] https://github.com/danmoop/GitPals/issues/8

[bostonvaulter2]

I don't understand why this site even needs a JWT. Couldn't they just use a typical cookie-based login flow?

[IgorPartola]

And maybe we could introduce some kind of tokens to keep track of the size of the tasks so that you don’t end up spending way too much time on a task in exchange for little work from them. And maybe we could have multiple potential partners bid on how many tokens each task should take so that you can get efficient pricing. And that would also take care of relative availability of some types of skills vs others (e.g. almost anyone can do basic copy editing but relatively few people can create a novel compiler optimization). And maybe we could also allow you to cash out your tokens at some point. In fact why don’t we make one token equal $1 to make pricing simple. And to monetize this whole project it would be good to add the ability to promote your particular listings, like an ad platform. In other words it becomes Craigslist but cool, right? :)

My point in writing all that is that soon as you take an idea like this and say “and if we only add feature X we could have a bartering economy” my mind immediately goes to the fact that a bartering economy has a ton of drawbacks which is why we no longer use them anywhere. I see people romanticizing it as if it’s much better than our current system, but accounting with it is much harder, pricing is nearly impossible, and there are few penalties for non-payment since a transaction might take a really long time to get settled (at least as long as it takes to complete the longest task). Basically these kinds of projects seem to work only so long as they stay at a manageable size while also keeping an enthusiastic community involved. If you grow, you need economy which leads to all the stuff I outlined above.