I have had that experience with many companies. Often times in financial companies it will be up to the discretion of a partner to decide if they would like to pay interns.
I interviewed with two different offices of a large brokerage (shall remained unnamed but they were purchased by BoA). One office told me I would get school credit for filling orders. The other office offered to pay me for doing market analysis. It seems the difference lies in how much they value an interns service.
Often, people don't see the long-term consequences of such choices. That lack of broader perspective always reminds me of the Aswan Dam. It accomplished all of its stated goals and was, therefore, a "success" as measured by the stated goals. But it had a few minor little unexpected side effects, like causing a schistosomiasis epidemic, increasing the amount spent on fertilizer for farms by like 600%, etc. ad nauseum.
I get labeled a bleeding heart idealist by a lot of people. I remain frustrated at my inability to adequately explain that my views are typically rooted in something deeply practical. A short explanation: I basically believe in "karma" -- but I don't think there is necessarily anything mystical to it. Just because people frequently can't trace the effect back to its root cause doesn't mean there is no such relationship in reality.
<crossing my fingers and hoping that doesn't sound like some unrelated meandering rant>
I looked at making a site similar to this about 15 months ago. I found the market to be saturated and hard to differentiate in. There are currently sites that allow both users and experts to post video responses to each other, I find this much more interested then reading a threaded response.
That said, it looks like the threads could be improved with some added functionality such as integration with facebook--a picture or two would make the debate seem a little more interesting. Also, how does one "win" and argument, I did not see a ranking system.
Final take aways:
-How do you differentiate the site from a news aggregater with comments?
-UI needs a little more color?
-Maybe a a sidebar that explains the premise of the site.
I think the differentiating factor with other news aggregators is the argument feature. Lots of times an interesting discussion on reddit or hacker news will get lost somewhere at the bottom of the comment page. By breaking it out to an argument thread it can get more exposure, and be available for other users to read who might have otherwise missed it. I often find the comments sections of sites like this to be more interesting than the articles themselves, I'm hoping this makes comments more readable and usable.
Arguments are decided by votes. The argument is active for 7 days or until the participants decide to call a draw or one concedes. At the end of the 7 days, the argument is ended and the user with the most votes is the winner.
A leaderboard or ranking system is definitely in the works. Right now it would just show all users at 0 though. Scores at this point are just the total number of arguments won. I'm still evaluating if that's the best way to go, but I think it will work well enough to start. Something like the Elo rating system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system) used for chess ratings might be better, but time will tell.
UI design is definitely not my strong suit, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible. Your suggestion is appreciated, though.
I've been tweaking the copy at the top of the home page for a while to try to explain the site as succinctly as possible to leave more room for topics and arguments. A sidebar might be a better way to make it stand out.
Facebook integration is definitely on my long list of improvements to make. I think the site would really benefit from integration with a Facebook app. You're not the first person to ask for pics / avatars either. I'll have to see how I can fit that into the layout.
It seems like femtocells are are a half way solution. Leveraging a dual mode smartphone would provide much easier solution. Maybe a phone based client that automatically routes through the WiFi to the cellular infrastructure would be a better solution.
I know t-mobile has a solution but that still requires you to get a separate router and it is limited to certain phones. .
I've looked at enterprise solutions like Agito Networks, but the cost seems prohibitively high for non enterprise users..
I interviewed with two different offices of a large brokerage (shall remained unnamed but they were purchased by BoA). One office told me I would get school credit for filling orders. The other office offered to pay me for doing market analysis. It seems the difference lies in how much they value an interns service.