First, I think this is a fantastic idea and I signed up instantly, privacy issues notwithstanding. Not only can you exchange coding favors and build a reputation, you can also practice your design and development skills in a variety of projects, which might be an additional major draw. I can't wait for this to get underway. This is one of those ideas that I wish I thought of.
That being said, I really think you should explore this idea further and create a dedicated website for it. A mailing list is great and easy to maintain and all, but a reputation-based service has to have the appropriate mechanisms to work well. It wouldn't take that long either.
Envision a site where jobs are listed as they're approved and removed as soon as they're completed or claimed, with discussion and advice flowing freely between parties. The site would keep track of projects both requested and completed by each member, and award appropriate kudos within the community to encourage and reward participation. People would be able to link to their profiles, which would display which projects they completed for which sites, on their resumes or facebooks or whatever. You could make a leaderboard of top contributors, and perhaps a provider request system that may eventually involve money. It would be like Elance except eroding the barrier between "service providers" and "employers" - instead, everyone would be both.
There's tons of potential here. Once you get critical mass, monetization could go far beyond ads: off the top of my head, you could skim paid projects, offer premium filtering capabilities and other services to paid premium users, or even get paid by companies that come knocking on your door wanting to hire some of your more skilled members. You could maybe even provide a service for members to tutor other members (serving those who go to your site for practice) and take a % of that $ too.
I realize this goes far beyond a simple "scratch my back and i'll scratch yours" paradigm, but I really think you might have something. The cherry on the top is that some of the smaller features that you might want to add to the site can actually be crowdsourced to your community :)
So yeah, great idea. A community of developers that interact with and work for other developers in exchange for the same being done for you? Sign me up.
First, I think this is a fantastic idea and I signed up instantly, privacy issues notwithstanding. Not only can you exchange coding favors and build a reputation, you can also practice your design and development skills in a variety of projects, which might be an additional major draw. I can't wait for this to get underway. This is one of those ideas that I wish I thought of.
That being said, I really think you should explore this idea further and create a dedicated website for it. A mailing list is great and easy to maintain and all, but a reputation-based service has to have the appropriate mechanisms to work well. It wouldn't take that long either.
Envision a site where jobs are listed as they're approved and removed as soon as they're completed or claimed, with discussion and advice flowing freely between parties. The site would keep track of projects both requested and completed by each member, and award appropriate kudos within the community to encourage and reward participation. People would be able to link to their profiles, which would display which projects they completed for which sites, on their resumes or facebooks or whatever. You could make a leaderboard of top contributors, and perhaps a provider request system that may eventually involve money. It would be like Elance except eroding the barrier between "service providers" and "employers" - instead, everyone would be both.
There's tons of potential here. Once you get critical mass, monetization could go far beyond ads: off the top of my head, you could skim paid projects, offer premium filtering capabilities and other services to paid premium users, or even get paid by companies that come knocking on your door wanting to hire some of your more skilled members. You could maybe even provide a service for members to tutor other members (serving those who go to your site for practice) and take a % of that $ too.
I realize this goes far beyond a simple "scratch my back and i'll scratch yours" paradigm, but I really think you might have something. The cherry on the top is that some of the smaller features that you might want to add to the site can actually be crowdsourced to your community :)
So yeah, great idea. A community of developers that interact with and work for other developers in exchange for the same being done for you? Sign me up.