[vargas84]

Hi HN, OP here. This was a small side-project I built recently with the intention of fostering more collaboration across HN. Hopefully this can help connect people with similar interests.

I'm pretty green so I would appreciate any feedback. My primary goal with this is to build something that can actually be useful to people - is there anything I can do to better achieve that goal? I'm also planning to add features over time so if there are any requests please let me know.

[sillysaurus3]

Hm, well, I can't figure out what it is. There's no explanation on how to use it. I tried entering "tptacek" for an HN user name, saw that it turned green, tried pressing enter, and nothing happened. Maybe some kind of helptext would be good?

[vargas84]

I guess I have to work on my UX design :)

The first step is to enter in your username. If the username exists, you'll be able to add interests to that username by clicking on the plus button next to the interest field. Once you do that, you will immediately become searchable and should see the search results updated. You can modify interests by simply editing the input fields and delete an interest by removing all of the text in that input field.

I'm taking the site down until I have time to add a proper authentication system though. I realize now that is probably an essential feature, even in an mvp. I will also make sure that the next iteration of this is a lot more clear.

I really appreciate your feedback!

EDIT: I want to apologize to users of the site. In my excitement to release something, I underestimated the likelihood of people trolling and importance of a proper authentication system. Not to mention, my lack of clarity probably led to well-intentioned users interacting with the site in ways I did not intend. I promise a better experience in the next iteration.

EDIT 2: I decided to leave the site up (so anyone that ends up reading this has context) but have disabled it until I can fix.