Proposed new charter rule

While these questions can be a bit annoying, some contributors here have given valuable, patient, encouraging and realistic answers to these questions.
Perhaps those answers could be compiled into a sticky and any subsequent questions in the same vein be referred to said sticky, thereby allowing the new Poster to come back at a later stage with more specific lines of enquiry if required.

I'm not a fan of blanket bans on certain topics. What we could do is create some sort of informative superthread for those, ensure the OP gets the right information, and then have free rein at them with Dilbert, etc.

jmcc wrote: »

The superthread is a good idea. It should also be a sticky. The biggest issue is that a lot of people don't really understand what it takes to run a large scale site technologically and financially.

The other problem is that there are 2 types of developers who contribute to that lack of understanding:

1) the inexperienced developer who underestimates resources and doesn't get quality; and
2) the experienced developer, who can do incredible things with limited resources.

Both exacerbate the issue, although the experienced developer hopefully a little less so.

/ninja

Trojan wrote: »

The other problem is that there are 2 types of developers who contribute to that lack of understanding:

1) the inexperienced developer who underestimates resources and doesn't get quality; and
2) the experienced developer, who can do incredible things with limited resources.

Both exacerbate the issue, although the experienced developer hopefully a little less so.

/ninja

It might be a good thing to include links to hardware sites so that people can understand the costs of buying your own servers/hardware. (It might scare the crap out of some people though. ) Most of the suggestions on how to develop large scale sites tend to concentrate on renting dedicated servers but this might only work for medium scale sites. Many inexperienced (and sometimes experienced) developers can underestimate resources and they may be extrapolating from a limited brochureware site to something of the complexity of Boards.ie or Facebook.com. The other aspect is that hardware has to be maintained and continually upgraded and this tends to get lost in the tyre kicking. There's a very good thread on Webmasterworld.com from the guy who built Plentyoffish.com that might be worth linking to in the superthread. It is a bit old but it is definitely interesting reading for those thinking of setting up large sites.

Regards...jmcc

The techie in me says "hell yes. Ban them all."


The Admin in me says it is kinda unfair and will lead to a few very disgruntled posters. We know a lot of people, especially non-regulars, will not read the charter in-depth. So I think a compromise is in order.

+1 to Superthread.

If we ban "great idea" and "do my homework" threads all we would have left are threads that really belong in web design anyway

Graham wrote: »

The first post should read:

"That's fantastic, come back here in a couple of months and post about it when you've done your initial research."

I was thinking more along the lines of "Congratulations on having the same great idea somebody else has most probably executed successfully. You've taken the first exciting step towards crushing defeat"


I think these threads do point people in the right direction with valuable/common sense advice. The guy on here yesterday got good information on how he wildly undervalued the cost of his project and how his idea lacked the basic amount of research needed to even take it to a potential investor. A sticky with example projects and costs may not be a bad idea though.

Graham wrote: »

Easy....

FacebooxNext

• 1 x virtual cloudbased thingameebob (with a database).
• Wordpress
• Wordpress template
• Technical co-founder to write the codey bits according to my undocumented but exacting specification.
• Graphic designer to pretty it up.
• Mobile App for iPhone/Andriod/Blackberry/Palm Treo to be developed in phase 2.

2 days max, job done. €300 should cover it according to a mate who did the local GAA website.

Would prefer someone who will invest their time in this outstanding opportunity in return for a tiny minority shareholding some time in the future.

"€300? Sounds a little excessive. Lets not use the thread as an opportunity to over-quote people..."

Perhaps one of the opening questions should be:
"Have you recently watched 'The Social Network'?"

Regards...jmcc

Colonel Panic wrote: »

Have a look at the going rates for contracted developers with at least 5 years experience, have a look at some of the Amazon examples of running a couple of EC2 instances in the cloud, check the hourly rate of graphics designers and lawyers and and and and...

Take a look at the Engineering blogs for Facebook and Netflix and the amount of work that goes into infrastructure, development and getting everything to talk together fast.

Facebook.com is one front facing URL for a massive behind the scenes setup that's probably 100s of servers and TB of bandwidth.

That's the problem, even a sticky isn't going to be a howto for people who *just* need a developer for their next Evernote/Facebook/Twitter/Netflix. I have worked on some pretty interesting small/medium projects that I think would scale well (and others that would implode) and I don't think I or anyone else is going to compile examples for you or anyone else.

Haha! I wasn't asking for a quote buddy! Nor was i suggesting that people should receive quotes on here. That would be ridiculous without a detailed analysis of the project. Maybe the sarcasm in my last post wasn't as obvious as I had hoped... I know the going rate for developers of varying experience, designers of varying experience, account managers, slaes managers, accountants, solicitors fees. My point was that people outside the industry don't. Why not provide info that will help them understand so that threads aren't created without the poster understanding the minimum cost for a tiny project.

I was suggesting that a sticky be made giving hypothetical simple projects a ballpark quote (Not an unreasonable suggestion. I give people quotes based on simple web projects every day). This would give people a very rough idea of the development costs involved in a simple project. People like the student yesterday should, if they have researched their project clearly and understand the labour and infrastructure costs to get it to beta, understand that a budget of €1k wouldn't even take a chip off the cost to build an evernote like application, never mind run it.

Colonel Panic wrote: »

€20,000,000

(Am I doing it right? :P)

Far too specific.

€15-45k ballpark.

I also like the approach Boxman said; a superthread would be more beneficial than a ban.

Ideally the first post on the superthread would have some basic guidelines, or a template that a would-be founder should have to adhere to:
'I have this many years experience in this area'
'I have interviewed X potential customers'
'I have got Y euro capital'
'I have wrote N pages of design doc' etc.



Separately, I'd also like to see a 'What should I start off by learning / What/where should I do in college' sticky superthread...

I'd be happy if people just stopped doing others educational work for them.

It hurts everyone involved, the poster and the people responding.