I created a location-based Q&A platform

[lagilagimasto]

A website me and others made that allows users to post and answer location-based questions that are visualized on a map. We want to make it easier for people to communicate about going to places.

https://questchirp.com

 

[karenwnc]

@lagilagimasto I think this is a nice idea, but like many other nice ideas, this will only work if a lot of people will start to use this. And no one is going to start to use this, before there already are a lot of users. The classic chicken and egg problem.

Also, the current version of the website is very buggy.

If I click on a location pin and answer the question and click Post Answer, nothing happens. No error message, nothing.

If I click the "view answers" button, my answer is not there. And if I click the location pin on another location, my previous location's answer is still there (the form doesn't reset when changing location).

There should be no "next question in city" when no other questions exist.

Also, I don't really know how this is going to scale. Imagine one million users start to use this tomorrow. The location pins of big cities will be flooded with questions, and since the questions seem to work on city basis, imagine trying to ask where to get a good pizza in New York when you are in Manhattan, and the answers are going to be relating to entire city area, not just Manhattan.

Then there is the problem of data quality. Do you want a lot of data? Then allow everyone to ask questions and write answers without registering. But if you do that, the data will be full of trolling and nonsense questions and answers. And if you force registration, you will have much less questions and answers, especially since there are no incentives for anyone to answer, or give the correct answer.

And lastly, there is the problem of Google. Google basically has everything that they need to make this thing but a lot better.

Imagine if by some magic, luck and a lot of hard work this service becomes popular and people actually start to use it. Someone like Google could literally spend one week of development time and add a similar feature to Google Maps and basically kill your product over night.

Like I said, I think this is an interesting idea, but I don't know how this could work.

 

[lagilagimasto]

@karenwnc Thank you for your input! The reason you couldn't post your answer is you weren't logged in. We will be sure to make the login page popup when you try to answer questions (right now the login page only pops up when you try asking a question without logging in).

As to scaling, this is just a MVP and we will improve it if we can get more users. Having to refactor our website for 1 million users would be a wonderful problem to have

As to data quality, that's a problem we will just have to endure. We ourselves can post and answer questions to get the ball rolling, but we know that registering will also turn away many people. But we are adamant on forcing logging in to keep contacts of potential users and keep quality of answers.

We are working on creating a reward system for answering, but keep in mind many people on Reddit and Quora interact and answer not out of incentive but out of interest. People often just like to share their thoughts.

Google Maps already has a Q&A ability but they will never change Google Maps to make Q&A a main feature. We believe there's many features that can be added to this location-based Q&A idea. Imagine I can mark all the places I have been, and then other people's questions about places I've been will automatically end up in my feed so I can answer them. Questions about less visited places will be higher in the feed and questions about more visited locations will be lower feed (as it's more likely someone will answer it anyways). There's so many ways to integrate the map, forum, and social media aspects. I'm just rambling at this point but I think the idea is interesting enough to see how far we can take it.