Show HN: I Made a Website for Problems

[hippough]

Hey everyone! While searching for entrepreneurial ideas on various sites, I noticed there wasn’t a dedicated space for finding and discussing real-world problems that need solving. That’s why I created the Problem Platform—a place where we can share, explore, and tackle problems together. Check it out!

[mittermayr]

My only bit of advice would be: definitely give a preview of the content to be expected. I clicked around trying to find an example of the type of problem people would post, but all I could find was a sign-up button. This is like asking for money before showing me what I am actually paying for.

[IAmGraydon]

I agree. This is a very cool idea, but the landing page is a bit of a mess. It’s reiterating the same thing multiple times in different ways, which is confusing and unnecessary. I assume the author did this to fill space. It’s also broken on mobile. I would suggest:

1: Header with statement as you have it (Share your problems…)

2: Explore, interact section as you have it

3: Three to five of the most recently posted problems

4: Call to action (sign up)

So you have what it is, how it works, an example, sign up.

Also, are you monetizing this? If not, why require a sign up at all to view problems? Why is the only option to sign up/login with a Google account?

[mikerg87]

Feels like stackoverflow on day 0. At very least make the problems discoverable via Google/bing to grow. Login to comment. Don’t need thr draconian moderation and if done right could be a breath of fresh air.

[joeyagreco]

I think I would use this if it followed the pattern of anyone can view posts and comments but only users with accounts can comment/vote.

I heavily dislike having to create an account just to see the product :/

[kiezmolle]

So why then have you registered with HN? ;) Even with registration, the biggest task remains to moderate all user-generated content. Hence, imo, a bit of a barrier in first place is justified.

[iAMkenough]

After viewing content and comments on HN without a required registration, they developed a habit of visiting and eventually found value in participating and created an account to do so.

With the current approach for the Problem Platform nobody can view the content or comments without a required registration, so prospective viewers don't see value demonstrated and will never convince themselves that adding yet another account to their digital footprint is worthwhile.

[mewpmewp2]

Barrier for write, but no barrier for read.

[diegolas]

HN does exactly what OP wants tho? view as guest view/comment/vote as registered user

[muzani]

lol, I'm on noprocrast mode so HN actually blocks read if I've been logged in long enough. Of course, my brain works around that by reading it on incognito mode. But it's still useful as I spend less time writing.

[viewhub]

Shrink your market. "Problem" is too open-ended. You can't possibly make effective software for all things.

[serial_dev]

I dunno, I like the simplicity of it, if you have any problems, let's find a solution together.

Compare that to stackoverflow, where you need to first spend 5 minutes studying all the subsites and decide where you try and submit your question, and hope it won't be closed in 2 minutes saying not the right place to ask, not the right format, you asked too many questions too quickly, etc...

[spencerchubb]

I don't think the post or the landing page says anything about solving the problems with software. I interpreted it even more broadly: problems that can be solved by any method

[flashgordon]

Also "tackle" is too wide. Is the goal to discuss it? Come up with schematics? A design doc? A poc?...

[SoftMachine]

Requires google account, no thanks.

[greggsy]

Google accounts aren’t exactly scarce commodities

[klyrs]

When people opt not to eat chicken, they aren't driven by the fear of extincting the bird

[layer8]

Quite to the contrary, if everyone stopped eating chicken (and eggs), it would be much more likely to become extinct. ;)

[layer8]

Google accounts are not a commodity.

[throwuxiytayq]

Regrettably so

[wizzwizz4]

The landing page reimplements built-in browser features (<details> / <summary>) badly in JavaScript. This looks like a home-rolled forum system designed by somebody who doesn't know HTML. In my experience, this means there are enough accessibility issues to justify binning the entire codebase and starting again from scratch.

If you had an interesting way to organise, index and/or connect the problems, or something, I might look into this further. But judging by the landing page, there's not even an existing community. There's no reason for me to participate, or invest time in trying to improve your system.

Perhaps a minor thing, by comparison: I don't have, and will not create, a Google account. (I expect that I cannot create a Google account that sticks around longer than a month.)

(I appreciate you're trying to solve a collective action problem – perhaps the collective action problem. Keep at it! The fifth or sixth time might work, if you learn from failure each time.)

Unlike other commenters, I don't think "problem" is too broad. So long as you're prepared to delegate to other projects as appropriate, there is actually room for a large-scale, overarching project like this.

[hippough]

thank you for your suggestions

[layer8]

How would this be different from, say, https://www.reddit.com/r/problemsolving/, or https://www.reddit.com/r/problemhunt/?

[mym1990]

Neither of these seem to be very active at all, so for starters I hope this site would have more interaction going on. I imagine the community aspect of the “problem statement/problem solution” is key in actually reaching any kind of velocity. With a site, there is also much more flexibility to (a) advertise the brand and (b) build a better experience.

[-mlv]

Those subreddits look dead.

[bcjordan]

Curious was there a problem that inspired you to create the website? Could be inspiration to scope down the website focus some, or have an example problem/solution on the front page

[nextworddev]

He’s probably just trying to source business ideas for free

[IAmGraydon]

Sure, but assuming users can see the problems as well, it’s a level playing field. On the other hand, if he’s manually choosing which ones go public before anyone can see them, that’s possibly not so great.

[hippough]

mainly that finding business ideas is hard

[bcjordan]

Ooh that is an interesting focus, I personally love sharing and reading about startup ideas and can't get enough of that content online.

In case it's interesting, along this direction there's halfbakery, pg's essay on how to find startup ideas, YC's RFS posts, and more recently the Startup Ideas podcast/youtube channel which features guests sharing ideas they've been thinking about.

Edit: I see you updated the site with example problems, those are great. I could see this being a great structure for collective solution ideation.

[greggsy]

You should put some boundaries around the types of problems you want people to solve. ‘World hunger’ and ‘peace in the middle east’ are obviously out of scope of a site like this, but you’ll get others that will fall into the ‘wicked problem’ category.

Problems that relate to social issues for example. Or even technological problems that cause or stem from social issues.

I don’t recall who came up with it but there’s a social theorist who stated that anyone trying to ‘solve’ wicked problems is either ill-informed about the nature of the problem, or has other motives. The best outcome is to improve the situation for those affected by it.

It’s kinda hand wavy pop psychology sometimes, but it’s important to understand the concept before wading knee deep into something and making the problem worse for all involved.

[spencerchubb]

Why are world hunger and peace in the middle east obviously out of scope for this site?

[juliushuijnk]

I have a free Android app IdeaGrowr that has quite a lot of users, and have tried some things that resemble this concept somewhat.

I don't have the time right now to delve in all the aspects of it, but I have many thoughts about it. The main thing is that you need to come up with a very concrete example scenario where you know that this platform would be amazing. Use this to guide your first iteration and marketing.

Now since presumably your platform is all user generated content (or is it AI?), then how are you going to kick-start the content generation?

[Madmallard]

>sign in with google

Great now my problems are in Google's data stores for advertisement and any number of other uses.

[panarky]

Using Google to authenticate with a site does not share the site's data with Google.

[iAMkenough]

Not directly, anyways. Google still gets to track which pages you visited and what you searched while trying to answer questions you interact with on the site.

[panarky]

No, Google does not track your activity on third-party sites, or the pages you visit there, or the data you enter there, just because you authenticated with your Google account.

[tonetegeatinst]

Yeah I'm open to the idea of a site like this, but I have a major concern that this is like the gold mine of data for product designers and marketing people to help sell you something that dosnt really help.

[DoctorOetker]

This reminds me of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_World_Problems...

[6510]

http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en

[siliconc0w]

I had been thinking of this and am glad someone built this (and much nicer then something I'd throw together). Just the act of cataloging the things that are anxiety causing can help a lot to quell the unease, even if they're problems completely outside your control.

One idea I had was use an algorithm similar to Twitter's community notes to curate and rank both problems and solutions. Sort of a community-moderated Wikipedia of the most agreed on problems and their solutions.

[wavemode]

Nice idea in theory, but needing to sign up to even read any content is a non-starter. How would someone googling about a particular problem even come across your site?

[piyushtechsavy]

I think it would be more useful if you could create a sort of framework for creating a problem and finding a solution for that. May be something like breaking down the problem in small pieces , doing market and competitive analysis, is this idea worth trying. Usually the problem lies less with ideas and more with execution. If the platform can help in executing, it would be priceless.

[mgkimsal]

I'm reminded a bit of http://halfbakery.com

[Stiopa]

One suggestion: often people read others' problems and realize they can be distilled down to a more concrete problem. Maybe those kinds of comments can themselves be a new post, sort of like linked problems?

Agree this is refreshing!

[axegon_]

In principle this is a good idea but it's definitely a double edged knife for the users. From what I understand, your idea is to rely on some level of anonymity. Let's assume your security is 11/10 and nothing gets leaked - great. But people are very bad when it comes to this though: they assume that a semi-random username somewhere will shield them, which couldn't be further from the truth. You need to share 3 seemingly trivial facts about you, and people with good experience will be able to sift through that and figure out your identity. I have a case from about 2 years ago: a guy shared the country where he studied and a place where he worked. A few people instantly connected the dots and figured out who he was. Those of us that did just laughed about it and moved on with our lives(his existence really couldn't possibly be any more sad than it was). However eventually others figured out who he was and the fact that he attacked homosexuals constantly, while complaining about his diarrhea and describing in detail his wife's pregnancy (and being the son of a media oligarch)... You can imagine how that all blew up in his face. While he can only blame himself for this, there could likely be cases when you might also be held responsible. What I'm trying to say is, be careful. Good luck.

[iio7]

> I Made a Website for Problems

Nice. I already see a problem. It requires a Google account. I don't have a Google account and I do not want a Google account. So how do we solve that problem?

[chambored]

This is only tangentially related, but I’ve seen a handful of projects with this same front end design. Does anyone have any insight or resources regarding this design system?

[hippough]

I used shadcn ui and components.bridger.to

[dian2023]

This was cool! I agree with a lot of the comments here re: making read open for unauthenticated users especially. Nice one getting something up and sharing it

[drpixie]

Could be interesting, but I'm not going to bother signing-up just to see more than a very slim homepage. That's a fail from me :(

[blakeburch]

Great idea! Are there any other sites that do something similar, allowing you to share problems or unformed business ideas?

[ace_zhao]

What's the difference between the purpose of this site and Quora?

[pluto_modadic]

good starter project Ethan :)

[hippough]

thanks

[rainysun1369]

Mobile version just doesn't work well, everything is smothered

[brettermeier]

Sign up? Why? That's a Problem.

[jesterson]

An unconventional way for data farming :)

[Bharathkumar12]

Interesting

[nullorempty]

... hm

1. allow donations to the solution of the problem

2. allow people to claim funds when the problem is solved ( they have to be specific about the way they solved it to claim funds )

[11thEarlOfMar]

I attended executive training for a couple of years. The members were all CEOs and would come to the group in monthly meetings with a very wide range of problems from: 'my VP Finance does not complete his work on time and offers an endless stream of excuses. I need to exit him. What's the best approach?' To 'My unionized interior finishers are abusing their time clock, how should I approach the union to correct this?'

The coach used an effective 5-step approach to the resolution process:

1. Present: The presenter makes a clear, one-sentence statement of the problem.

2. Clarify: The sounding team asks clarifying questions: 'How long has the VP been behaving this way?', 'How well do you know the local union leadership?' Only clarification at this step. No suggestions yet.

3. Suggestions/Recommendations: 'Conduct a confidential search, negotiate an exit package and move on. Be sure to keep the BoD up to date on this.'

4. Reaction: Presenter indicates the suggestion they believe is most likely best for them.

5. Accountability: Next meeting, the presenter reports whether they took action, and whether the results benefited from the discussion.

Phases 2 & 3 were conducted in round-table style, with each team member interracting one at at time.

The results were typically effective. The presenter didn't always take the advice, but always reported that the process had provided insight.

FWIW.

[kfarr]

I wish I could favorite this, great process and summary!

[keiferski]

If you click on the “x hours ago” link, you actually can favorite it :)

[tchock23]

TIL! I’ve been on HN for 14 years and had no idea you could do this. Thanks!