Doxory

March 18, 2007 5:15 AM

Doxory. Often in life we are faced with a choice of 2.0 possible courses of action. Should I do X or Y? Now you can harness the wisdom of the web crowds to resolve those painful dilemmas for you!
posted by chrismear (27 comments total)

What about when I've only got 1.9 possible courses of action?
posted by kisch mokusch at 5:29 AM on March 18, 2007

Then this is not the site for you.
posted by chrismear at 5:33 AM on March 18, 2007

Web 1.0 Version.
posted by Jimbob at 5:34 AM on March 18, 2007

Hmmm... sign up for a free account in order to view the site? Don't sign up for a free account & just move on to the next post? I can't decide.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:38 AM on March 18, 2007

Hmmm... sign up for a free account in order to view the site? Don't sign up for a free account & just move on to the next post? I can't decide.

I decided.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:40 AM on March 18, 2007

Well, it supports openid so signing up should be a doddle and I don't have to give that site my details.
posted by TheDonF at 6:19 AM on March 18, 2007

What if you have 3.0 options? Has anybody created Doxoryorz.com yet?
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:41 AM on March 18, 2007

3.0 options? That's just madness! The entire interweb would have to become a semantic database to handle that!
posted by Artw at 8:57 AM on March 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

The link is dead, long live the link!

Anyway, having to register to view a site is an excellent way of guaranteeing its failure.
posted by fenriq at 10:08 AM on March 18, 2007

spin, browser, spin!
posted by mrgrimm at 10:18 AM on March 18, 2007

Anyway, having to register to view a site is an excellent way of guaranteeing its failure.

[is this true]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:39 AM on March 18, 2007

Once again, achewood predicts the future. Although, I sure hope no one figures out how to hook up a murder-o-matic to this site.

Also, for pure decision making, I prefered the magic 8 nipple, although sadly it has been lawyered out of existence.
posted by redbeard at 10:42 AM on March 18, 2007

"Anyway, having to register to view a site is an excellent way of guaranteeing its failure."

Didn't seem to do FaceBook any harm. You do need a very good reason to require registration to view though, and doxory doesn't seem to have one (since it lets you browse the most recent entries anyway).
posted by simonw at 10:42 AM on March 18, 2007

Let me amend my statement, any new site that doesn't offer a compelling reason to register to see its content is setting itself up for failure.

Not all sites that require registration will fail, of course, but since I couldn't even get the site to load up, I don't know what they offer to see before forcing a registration. And doxory isn't an especially useful name since it means nothing to me, unlike, say BigBoobsin YerFace.com.
posted by fenriq at 10:58 AM on March 18, 2007

Well, the subtitle to "Doxory" is "Life by committee." Okay, now no one will go there. But... it looks like it's a good place to ask dumb questions you can really only answer yourself, like " Bored now....Build something? vs Take something apart?" And "this sunday...go out with friends vs attend sunday class"

Ah, I see I didn't have to create an account because I once got a livejournal account to view somebody's something.

Life by committee? This is appealing? What were they thinking?
posted by Listener at 11:21 AM on March 18, 2007

Life by committee? This is appealing? What were they thinking?

Doesn't everybody have one of those days filled with choices that could just as easily be made by the flip of a coin than actually thought about? This site is apparently for the coinless (or those looking for an alternative).
posted by wierdo at 11:49 AM on March 18, 2007

Wow. People who have trouble making decisions asking lots of other people who have trouble making decisions to make decisions for them. I sense a possible regress of decision making.
posted by inconsequentialist at 1:13 PM on March 18, 2007

I'm currently one of the developers for Doxory, and I'd like to clear up a few things.
First, registration is not required to view questions, only to vote on them.
Second, you don't even have to register on the site to vote- you can use an OpenID login (username.livejournal.com, for instance).
Third, yes, I know we need to work on "browsability" ;)
posted by ArbiterOne at 1:26 PM on March 18, 2007

Mostly, you need to work on uptime, it seems. I won't be using OpenId if I can't get to the site, now will I?
posted by dash_slot- at 3:21 PM on March 18, 2007

It works for me, and we haven't had any other reports of downtime.
posted by ArbiterOne at 4:37 PM on March 18, 2007

ArbiterOne: really? Not long after this was posted, the site was incredibly unresponsive. I gave up trying to use it after a couple of minutes of server issues.
posted by TheDonF at 4:40 PM on March 18, 2007

Web 0.0 Version.

Life used to be so simple.
posted by scblackman at 4:44 PM on March 18, 2007

What if you have 3.0 options? (From Poppa Neutrino's web site.)
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:15 PM on March 18, 2007

The problem with sites like this is that people pick the thing they think they should do, and not the one they actually would do. Err... wait, no, maybe that's why sites like this work. Or maybe... damn. If only there was some way to ask a bunch of random strangers on the internet which one it is.
posted by !Jim at 3:13 AM on March 19, 2007

For many years, I've been unable to overcome my own laziness to create a handbook (first conceived as a Windows Help File, I thought of this so long ago!) for common sense.

It would be a this/that tree of questions, to help you make the decisions you should be able to make on your own.

For example...

Q1: Is something on fire? (Y/N)
Q2: Was this thing designed to be on fire? (Y/N)
Q3: Did you want this thing to be on fire? (Y/N)
Q4: Do you wish this thing was no longer on fire? (Y/N)
Q5: Do you have safe and ready access to a telephone? (Y/N)
Q6: Do you have safe and ready access to large quantities of water?

...and so on. Somebody please web 2.0 that for me, willya?
posted by davejay at 1:57 PM on March 19, 2007

whoops, Q3 and Q4 are redundant. I'll fix it in web 2.0.1
posted by davejay at 2:00 PM on March 19, 2007

Not necessarily. You might be indifferent as to whether the thing is on fire or not.
posted by chrismear at 2:47 PM on March 19, 2007