This is a great idea, I just submitted a project. I also wrote it up as a post, but your post was what prompted me to write it :)
Something I tend to find with projects like this[1] is that they can be forgotten about after the initial launch because they’re not a destination site so there is no way for people to naturally come back to them. Have you thought about doing a newsletter or similar with an update on the projects that are added? I think it could be fairly infrequent (monthly) and automated and still be quite useful.
Also some minor feedback: submitting didn’t work initially because of some problem with the description field. I removed a url and some line breaks and then it worked.
Thanks for the comment. I agree with your criticism. It would be nice to have a newsletter similar to how the EA Opportunities Board newsletter works. I decided against that for a few reasons:
The newsletter should indeed be automated, but this increases complexity and initial time investment. This is a time investment I’m currently not able to make.
There needs to be a steady flow of project submissions before such a newsletter makes sense. I found it really hard to guess this, as we tend to only see successful projects posted. Maybe everyone has a folder with 10 abandoned projects and adds new ones every other month, maybe I’m the only one. I’ll maybe re-evaluate this after a month when I’ll have some more time to work on this.
Very reasonable, I think the project is great as is. I just have one more newsletter-related suggestion:
It’s a lot cheaper to collect emails than it is to do the rest of the work related to sending out automated updates, so it could be worth doing that to take advantage of the initial spike in interest (without making any promises as to whether there will be updates). This could just be a link to a google form on the website if you wanted it to be really simple to implement.
This is a great idea, I just submitted a project. I also wrote it up as a post, but your post was what prompted me to write it :)
Something I tend to find with projects like this[1] is that they can be forgotten about after the initial launch because they’re not a destination site so there is no way for people to naturally come back to them. Have you thought about doing a newsletter or similar with an update on the projects that are added? I think it could be fairly infrequent (monthly) and automated and still be quite useful.
Also some minor feedback: submitting didn’t work initially because of some problem with the description field. I removed a url and some line breaks and then it worked.
i.e. the UnfinishedImpact project, not my idea
Thanks for the comment. I agree with your criticism. It would be nice to have a newsletter similar to how the EA Opportunities Board newsletter works. I decided against that for a few reasons:
The newsletter should indeed be automated, but this increases complexity and initial time investment. This is a time investment I’m currently not able to make.
There needs to be a steady flow of project submissions before such a newsletter makes sense. I found it really hard to guess this, as we tend to only see successful projects posted. Maybe everyone has a folder with 10 abandoned projects and adds new ones every other month, maybe I’m the only one. I’ll maybe re-evaluate this after a month when I’ll have some more time to work on this.
Very reasonable, I think the project is great as is. I just have one more newsletter-related suggestion:
It’s a lot cheaper to collect emails than it is to do the rest of the work related to sending out automated updates, so it could be worth doing that to take advantage of the initial spike in interest (without making any promises as to whether there will be updates). This could just be a link to a google form on the website if you wanted it to be really simple to implement.
Good point. I’m going to do that right away! Edit: You can sign up here.