How and where to Do Something Useful For Someone Else Online?

Discussion in 'General Advice' started by Alexand, Aug 28, 2018.

  1. Alexand

    Alexand Rhymes with &

    So, sometimes, I find myself wanting to do something helpful for someone...but I don’t know what specifically to do.

    However, I do know that there are certain websites that encourage the giving and receiving of favors...which would allow me to "do something helpful" in this way. Like, places where someone could post a question and I could answer it, or places where someone could post a translation request and I could fill it…that kind of thing. Websites that allow me to turn my time and effort into something tangible that helps someone else.

    But I don’t know all that many websites like that...so...I’d like to put together a larger list.

    Does anyone know any good websites like that? Or, generally, places online one can go when one wants to volunteer one’s time for someone else’s benefit? Preferably the kind of places where the volunteer work necessary is the kind of thing that can be done in one sitting. (My attention span’s not great.)

    Here are the options I'm currently aware of:
    • LyricsTranslate: People submit songs that they want translated, and then you translate them. So, as long as you're able to translate from one language into another, you can help.
    • StackExchange: People submit questions they want answered, and you can answer them. So, as long as you know the answer to certain things...you can help. I feel like SE, more so than most similar websites, makes it easy to find questions that you specifically would have the knowledge to answer; there’s communities for everything from pure math, aviation, and bioinformatics to D&D, anime, LEGO...but at the same time, there aren't so many communities that it's difficult to scroll through all of them. (I used to just troll Yahoo Answers for questions I could answer, so SE's really a step up for me...)
    I'm also vaguely aware that certain Youtube channels allow you to submit subtitles for their videos, which is also a Helpful Thing that I think would be fun to do...but I don't know any specific Youtube channels that have that feature enabled. So, I'd also like to know about any of those channels, if you know them.
     
  2. Birdy

    Birdy so long

    • Like x 2
  3. KingdomByTheSea

    KingdomByTheSea Well-Known Member

    If you Reddit, there's a lot of subreddits geared around this general idea. I'll link some general ones - a lot of the requests are for monetary assistance, but there are definitely some requests for translations, people to take surveys, and other non-monetary tasks.

    All three of these have links to a lot of more specific subreddits in the sidebar (eg computer help, homework help, audio help...) I don't know your skills/interests so I'm linking general topics only

    https://old.reddit.com/r/Favors/

    https://old.reddit.com/r/ineedafavor/

    https://old.reddit.com/r/Assistance/

    TBH you could probably ask on any of these subs for ways to help people online (online help-ception!) and they could give you even more Reddit-centric ideas
     
    • Like x 1
  4. Alexand

    Alexand Rhymes with &

    Ohhhh right, I forgot about Free Rice! I think my middle or high school had a club where people would play Free Rice together after school... I tried some now and learned that I'm very bad at geography, so maybe I'll use the site as an opportunity to learn.

    The only thing about Free Rice is the ad-dependency of the model...in order to enable ads on my browser, I have to disable a whole bunch of extensions at once, including some privacy/anti-tracking extensions, and I don't usually want to do that...but I feel bad using the site /without/ having ads on. I guess I'll just have to Free Rice in dedicated chunks, without multi-tasking, so that I remember to turn ads on as soon as I start with it and turn them back off as soon as I'm done.
    First of all...thank you for giving me the URLs that link straight to the Old Reddit layout. I still haven't figured out how to navigate the new one...

    I haven't actually logged in to my Reddit account in years (since I usually only lurk a few subreddits, and can just visit them directly), but I'll try logging in more. It's nice that there are options within these subreddits that allow me to not de-lurk - like answering surveys, voting in contests, etc - but in case I do want to do one that requires de-lurking...

    By the way, I learned about a new Do Something Useful Site today: Zooniverse. I haven't registered yet, but it looks like it supports a number of citizen science projects that you can volunteer to help with. That also falls under the purview of this thread.
     
    • Like x 1
  5. Birdy

    Birdy so long

    yeah the site doesn’t do what it’s meant to if ads aren’t active

    you could also download another browser, not install any extensions, and Just use it for freerice
     
  6. Alexand

    Alexand Rhymes with &

    ...Y'know what, that's a good point, you're right. I was about to say "I can't install any nonstandard browsers, because it defeats the purpose of my Cold Turkey Blocker", but I actually already have a second browser...that I use only for school-related/academic websites...Safari. I don't really need to have ads blocked on my School Browser, so I can just use Free Rice on there, too.
     
    • Like x 2
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