Conspiracy Santa
Productivity
gift exchange
SHOW HN2014
How HN took it
2 positive, 2 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 3 critical, out of 7 comments about the project. Thread score -0.10.
Idea: 2 for, 1 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 againstExecution: 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
Good idea and name
From 3 comments
The name is great. Conspiracy makes it sound a lot less innocent than secret.
rl3 on HNGreat idea for friends! For my co-workers on the other hand... i'd hesitate to offer an O(n²) solution. I do believe the Feels per Participant™ ratio would be optimal for the…
bengali3 on HNVery cool idea! Maybe make it so that teams of people get assigned to giftees, but maybe not _everyone_? So that, if I want to play with 12 friends, there aren't 12 separate…
mankyd on HN
Useful for managing email lists
From 1 comment
Bah... this hit HN a week too late... Our extended family decided to use this exact model this year, and managing the email lists was indeed a major pain in the neck.
JshWright on HN
Objections
Without automatic buyer assignment, the gift purchase could be missed
From 1 comment
Without the system automatically assigning buyers, I'd expect it's very possible oversight would allow for the final gift to not have anyone in on the conspiracy having already…
Robadob on HN
Email-based approach may not scale to large groups
From 2 comments
We open sourced the little app (Bottle.py and React.js) that powers this tool: https://github.com/zapier/conspiracysanta.com We also wrote an accompanying blog post about it:…
bryanh on HNVery cool idea! Maybe make it so that teams of people get assigned to giftees, but maybe not _everyone_? So that, if I want to play with 12 friends, there aren't 12 separate…
mankyd on HN
Unclear whether each thread assigns a host to buy the gift
From 1 comment
Without signing up for it to test, it's unclear whether each email thread is assigned a different 'host' so that in the end every person handles the actual purchase/ordering of 1…
Robadob on HN
Requests
Assign each person a set number of giftees instead of all members
From 1 comment
Very cool idea! Maybe make it so that teams of people get assigned to giftees, but maybe not _everyone_? So that, if I want to play with 12 friends, there aren't 12 separate…
mankyd on HN
Optional automatic buyer assignment
From 1 comment
Without the system automatically assigning buyers, I'd expect it's very possible oversight would allow for the final gift to not have anyone in on the conspiracy having already…
Robadob on HN
Resize the Santa image to reduce page weight
From 1 comment
You might want to resize the original Santa image on your server - 586K for a small image in the corner is a little large. http://conspiracysanta.com/img/santa.png
dugmartin on HN
Questions
Whether each email thread assigns a different buyer
From 1 comment
Without signing up for it to test, it's unclear whether each email thread is assigned a different 'host' so that in the end every person handles the actual purchase/ordering of 1…
Robadob on HN
Alternatives named
Slack private rooms per employee
From 1 comment
Wouldn't it be easier to setup individual rooms for each employee within Slack and then just lock that employee out of the room deciding his gift?
seeingfurther on HN
White elephant / Yankee swap gift exchange
From 3 comments
Nice. It is definitely a good variation. One that I don't like is the everyone randomly picks a gift from a table of 'equivalent' gifts, and has the option of either opening it…
ChuckMcM on HNThat sounds more like a white elephant gift exchange than secret santa.
dminor on HNI was introduced to that format once I moved to Massachusetts as the 'Yankee Swap'. It's fun so long as nobody takes it remotely seriously. I think it appeals to the New…
jameshart on HN