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Good on the author for putting something out in the world. I'd love a site like this to exist with data I can trust. I think this is missing the mark on the exe

Good on the author for putting something out in the world. I'd love a site like this to exist with data I can trust. I think this is missing the mark on the execution side a bit. To start, there are only 8 items. They all appear to be stuff the author personally likes with no research or other quantifying data to back up these recommendations. In fact, there are more categories than items? It takes upwards of 10 seconds for data to load from the server. With only 8 records (apparently) to pull, I think something might be off there. Good luck on this idea and I hope it evolves into something great.

tejitopia 3y ago
The website is supposed to be crowdsourced. I want users to create accounts and upload their own products that they trust. The only products on the site right now are the ones I've been able to co-sign myself. My mum even added some products on the site that she's found to be super reliable. I don't really want to just pull data from some third party and flood the website with products I or other people haven't actually recommended
- davidbanham 3y ago
  Put yourself in the shoes of someone arriving at your website for the first time. What reason do they have for signing up an account and adding products to your database? A product like this needs an incentive, a hook. Sometimes that incentive is financial. Sometimes it’s prestige through points, votes or badges. Sometimes it’s power through moderation rights. What’s yours?
wenc 3y ago
Just wondering if I could bring this up for discussion but is Buy it for Life a good consumer philosophy in the first place? Intuitively it sounds like it is — what can be bad about high quality products that last forever that in turn creates less waste? But I have lots of BIFL goods that I’ve enjoyed once or twice but never used again. Some got obsolete, unfashionable and almost all are overbuilt to some extent so they last a long time. Others are in a drawer because my interests shifted (like my very high quality immersion circulator for my sous vide phase). They were also much pricier to start with. There’s also an unintended consequence almost — like EDC people buying way more EDC stuff that they can EDC so they can optimize for EDC. What would happen if we were the buy the right quality for the right use case at the right time and buy as little as possible? BIFL optimizes for quality and longevity but those aren’t always things that are important. Optimization always trades something off and having a narrow objective doesn’t always work. I guess you can always resell.
- tejitopia 3y ago
  Perhaps repair over replace might be a better concept. Since your right and ironically things like this only make people want to buy more stuff when people probably already have exactly what they need. Yesterday I realised I was wearing a crappy shirt that was over seven years old and it was still holding up great. Thanks for your comment you got me thinking about repositioning this!

tejitopia 3y ago

The website is supposed to be crowdsourced. I want users to create accounts and upload their own products that they trust. The only products on the site right now are the ones I've been able to co-sign myself. My mum even added some products on the site that she's found to be super reliable. I don't really want to just pull data from some third party and flood the website with products I or other people haven't actually recommended

davidbanham 3y ago
Put yourself in the shoes of someone arriving at your website for the first time. What reason do they have for signing up an account and adding products to your database? A product like this needs an incentive, a hook. Sometimes that incentive is financial. Sometimes it’s prestige through points, votes or badges. Sometimes it’s power through moderation rights. What’s yours?

wenc 3y ago

Just wondering if I could bring this up for discussion but is Buy it for Life a good consumer philosophy in the first place? Intuitively it sounds like it is — what can be bad about high quality products that last forever that in turn creates less waste? But I have lots of BIFL goods that I’ve enjoyed once or twice but never used again. Some got obsolete, unfashionable and almost all are overbuilt to some extent so they last a long time. Others are in a drawer because my interests shifted (like my very high quality immersion circulator for my sous vide phase). They were also much pricier to start with. There’s also an unintended consequence almost — like EDC people buying way more EDC stuff that they can EDC so they can optimize for EDC. What would happen if we were the buy the right quality for the right use case at the right time and buy as little as possible? BIFL optimizes for quality and longevity but those aren’t always things that are important. Optimization always trades something off and having a narrow objective doesn’t always work. I guess you can always resell.

tejitopia 3y ago
Perhaps repair over replace might be a better concept. Since your right and ironically things like this only make people want to buy more stuff when people probably already have exactly what they need. Yesterday I realised I was wearing a crappy shirt that was over seven years old and it was still holding up great. Thanks for your comment you got me thinking about repositioning this!