Show HN: Backlog – a public repository of real work problems

https://www.worldsbacklog.com/

by anticlickwise • 7 months ago

112 28 7 months ago

AI has made building fast and cheap, but finding the right problems still feels hard.

I built World’s Backlog (https://worldsbacklog.com ) to collect real problems directly from people working inside different industries.

Contributors post workflow pain, others validate it, and builders can study severity, frequency, and willingness to pay before building anything.

Would love feedback from builders and people who feel real pain at work.

jamiepond• 7 months ago

This is a smart idea. Looking forward to seeing it populated!

anticlickwise• 7 months ago

Thank you

rubyfan2• 7 months ago

Nice idea, sort of like the inverse of Product Hunt.

1) it seems aggressively walled off by login/singup, e.g. one must signup or login just to view the details of a problem.

2) there is a variation of this in the corporate world where “innovation” consultants try to pitch corporate clients on the idea of featuring business problems to a panel of startups. There are a few problems I’ve seen with this model but the most applicable is, people most passionate about a problem set aren’t always the decision makers to procure or fund the solution.

3) have you thought about how to make this a functioning market? It seems like you need to attract builder to work on these problems and subject matter experts to document the problems more deeply than the top level titles.

chrisandchris• 7 months ago

For 1), use reader mode.

rubyfan2• 7 months ago

The title shows correctly but the text is static and looks like an example unrelated to the title.

xnx• 7 months ago

Similar: "[flagged] Database full of 1000+ validated problems that can be turned into applications" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260998)

ramon156• 7 months ago

Looks cool but I have to pay for features I don't want. I just want to see the current issues companies are facing, no need for AI gunk + extra data I have no idea about.

wingtw• 7 months ago

Great idea! I would n it differently, tho - many of "problem owners" might not be aware of the term backlog.

never_giveup• 7 months ago

Yes please, this is a great idea. I feel like the key is to promote it among non-builders.

uutangohotel• 7 months ago

The wall around viewing an item is too heavy handed IMO.

Use verified email (or magic link) to auth for posting and actions (validating). The posts themselves should be public.

You’d also get some SEO opportunities from more public pages.

whazor• 7 months ago

Like a github issue tracker, but for anything. You know when you are in trouble when hitting a github issue when googling.

You read through the comments and hope someone found a solution

jamesxv7• 7 months ago

Love the idea, I build something similar for focused for my country, Puerto Rico. https://traquealo.com

rzzzt• 7 months ago

I remember a GitHub repository where someone documented problems and resolutions related to their house in the issues section.

I'm also trying to gather a personal backlog of things at home patiently waiting to be resolved, but can't even get myself through the collection phase...

hyperpape• 7 months ago

What worries me is that the item I most know about seems like the problem statement is not that useful. The title is "early delay detection for shipments" and the text seems to mostly be about inventory (so the description is odd).

The frame is that enterprise solutions for these problems do not scale to smaller retail chains, and I find that at least believable.

The thing about this problem is that it's not hidden. It's extremely obvious. I work in SaaS targeting logistics (transportation for me, transportation, order management and warehouse management for our company), so I know a bit about this space, though I'm not in it directly. Plenty of people are solving this problem for bigger companies.

I put roughly 0% credence in the idea that many many people haven't noticed this is a problem for smaller companies. I put low credence on the idea that no one has tried to solve it for them via software. What I suspect is that this is a case where the basic idea is super-simple and obvious, but the reality of producing something that works in the market is hard.

None of that is to say that there couldn't be a real improvement here. It's just that I suspect it takes a real insight into why this problem hasn't been solved yet, and a new angle to make your solution work.

embedding-shape2• 7 months ago

Please do ask for login/signup up front instead of tricking people into filling out forms, and then be met with a login/signup form right before actual submission. I know it's a known dark UX trick to increase user signups, but it feels incredible hostile.

Not only do I feel like you wasted my time, but you probably still kept the data, and then just didn't make it visible to the user who filled it out, since there was some async step in the middle somewhere. Sadly, this is the only thing I could focus on after hitting it, rather than giving you feedback on the project/product itself. But I'm not feeling very helpful anymore.

kwanbix• 7 months ago

"AI has made building fast and cheap, but finding the right problems still feels hard". Really? How so?

wmeredith• 7 months ago

"Here's a list of problems you have to create yet another account to view."

...

Still hard to find those problems, I see.

sghiassy• 7 months ago

Signup wall made me bounce

heliumtera• 7 months ago

This was the most intense captcha I have seen. Don't know what is going on. Surely you have fixed the spam probably, since not many are willing to go through this wall. Interesting concept, really liked it. Please consider diminishing this barrier until low effort submissions becomes a problem, for now it does not look very active.

pdimitar• 7 months ago

Why would you require an account to explore? Instant bounce.

mrgoldenbrown• 7 months ago

My workflow pain that needs a solution: dark pattern web sites that require sign ups to view content.

embedding-shape2• 7 months ago

CTRL+W solves that problem pretty much immediately for me, and somehow seems to help my CPU and RAM to consume less resources also.

stronglikedan• 7 months ago

Be sure to do another Show HN once you've removed the signup requirement, or I may not remember to revisit the site I left because of it.

jamjamjamjamjam• 7 months ago

Im not signing up for that. For the world’s backlog you might want the world wide web to be able to read it.

tediousgraffit1• 7 months ago

I guess this is more broad than like code triage and sites like that? Hard to tell cause I dont want to sign up to see what's in it.

KomoD2• 7 months ago

I submitted the problem a lot of people are experiencing in this exact thread. Here's some insights from your AI, maybe you can implement the solutions it suggested.

https://i.imgur.com/def8vHo.png

ddfarmr• 7 months ago

having had the same idea, I immediately registered. Unfortunately feels like a scam, at least for now…

Show HN: Backlog – a public repository of real work problems

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