Ninfex
Web and SaaS
community search engine
SHOW HN2021
215points
63comments
#206of 2,533 in 2021
Top 9%of 2021 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
7 positive, 17 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 9 critical, out of 35 comments about the project. Thread score -0.06.
Idea: 7 for, 5 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Interesting, useful concept with community-driven search
From 3 comments
The idea has been floating in the air for quite a while and I agree that something like this is really needed. What I'd personally want to see is a network of anon users hand…
akomtu on HNThis is very similar to something I envision but am too lazy/unknowledgeable to implement, so I wish you lots of success. What about adding a functionality to Ninfex so it…
throwamon on HNNice. I am building this too. Looking forward to exploring your vision of it.
ianwalter on HN
Backlinking from Reddit/HN is a useful idea
From 1 comment
Site looks good, but feels unfocused. Asking people to submit and tag a bunch of links doesn't feel like a viable jumping off point, and I don't think people are seriously going…
sdwr on HN
Objections
Votes could be gamed by sock puppets and click farms
From 2 comments
I like the idea very much. First question that comes to mind though is: how gameable is this system?
kieckerjan on HNHow do you prevent click-farms of promoting entries? All user-based decision making problems can easily be rigged by fake users/sock puppets. As long as there's a monetary…
KETpXDDzR on HN
Spam risk from manual URL submission
From 1 comment
While I love the concept it seems somewhat flawed. If every URL needs to be manually submitted it is far easier for spammers than actual users. Especially if you need a handful…
kevincox on HN
UI wastes space; too few results visible on screen
From 1 comment
I love the idea! I have a UI suggestion: There is way too much wasted space. Information density is crucial for a search engine. It should be possible to see 20-30 results at a…
benrbray on HN
Requests
Open source the project
From 2 comments
This is a really nice project. Along with the crowdsourcing nature an open and FOSS approach is a good fit. Do you consider open-sourcing?
rapnie on HNThis is a very promising idea, thanks for making this! I was just wondering if you were planning on making the site open source, or will this a commercial, closed-source product,…
ibraheemdev on HN
Show forum/community posts linking to a URL automatically
From 2 comments
This is very similar to something I envision but am too lazy/unknowledgeable to implement, so I wish you lots of success. What about adding a functionality to Ninfex so it…
throwamon on HNNeat idea. You may want to crawl and farm some data from hackernews, reddit, lobste.rs, metafilter, stackoverflow etc. Maybe you could even use wikipedia reference links. Right…
twobitshifter on HN
Email verification or domain verification for submitters
From 1 comment
If it gets bigger, you may need to do email verification - at the minimum - to avoid people filling it up with junk submissions. You could probably also do something for site…
drdavid on HN
Questions
How will costs be covered?
From 1 comment
Great idea. Reminds me of a previous HN comment [1]: ``` How to build the next Google: all good results these days are within communities, and Google search has become useless…
atweiden on HN
How gameable is the voting system?
From 1 comment
I like the idea very much. First question that comes to mind though is: how gameable is this system?
kieckerjan on HN
Alternatives named
del.icio.us
From 1 comment
This looks very much like the old site del.icio.us (which was bought by yahoo and discarded). Don't bother going there but see [wikipedia][1]. The trick there was that it was…
duncanwerner on HN
DMOZ / Curlie
From 2 comments
Reminds me of DMOZ. https://dmoz-odp.org/ What is it that makes this a search engine, though?
geocrasher on HNInteresting. Other "people-powered" search engines out there include: - Meorca (https://meorca.com/). It's mostly built from user-submitted sites. - Search My Site…
Seirdy on HN
Searx, YaCy, DuckDuckGo
From 2 comments
There are alternatives to google. I'm not talking only about duck or millionshort[0]. I'm talking about p2p-like search engine like searx[1] and yacy[2]. If some of these…
marcodiego on HNI've cataloged a bunch of engines with their own independent indexes: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html HN discussion:…
Seirdy on HN
Meorca and Search My Site
From 1 comment
Interesting. Other "people-powered" search engines out there include: - Meorca (https://meorca.com/). It's mostly built from user-submitted sites. - Search My Site…
Seirdy on HN