I agree with your basic assessment - "all search functions suck" and "people just want to talk." _refugee_'s point stands, though - #askhubski is a miasma of tedium, whereas last year, it wasn't. It's not a problem of #askhubski. It's a problem of Hubski becoming a Reddit annex. The "thoughtful web" has become a place where Redditors show up and go "I'm thoughtful! Listen to me being thoughtful! You, over there! Be thoughtful!" The new global options suck ass. Used to be you could look at stuff with seven shares and find decent content. Now you just get the "ZOMG THOUGHTFULNESS SHARE ERRYTHINGS!" overclicked links. Which, by the way, were on /r/foodforthought three days previously. I should know. I moderate it. Hubski is rapidly becoming the new Digg for pseudointellectuals. The worst part is it attracts a specific kind of pseudointellectual - the kind with a blog, the kind with a twitter, the kind with six friends who think he's clever, the kind who has never learned how to handle dispute. Mommy's clever, special flower whose wisdom is complete, whose insight is total, and whose thoughts need not be backed up by research or facts because in these halcyon days of homeschool thinking you're right is the same thing as being right. It's funny. mk pushed some code without telling anybody so when you mute someone, they're muted throughout your post history. So that last blog post had a "conversation" where half of the conversation was censored out. There are three "best of" "conversations" with similar problems - Two where I'd been muted, one where I'd muted someone else. And it all comes down to this - where "I disagree but I can't say why" used to be the norm around here, "I disagree therefore you're wrong shut up" has become the norm. I've muted people before, had conversations with them, and unmuted them. I've been muted before, had conversations with them, and been unmuted. Gotta say, though - this latest round, there's no point. "Eternal September" comes in waves, to be sure, but at some point all the new blood drives the old blood away. That's what that Reddit post was about. A lot of people came here. And the new Reddit blood is driving them out. I know I've not shared things for about a week now because fuck you guys, seriously. "Have an upvote" is rapidly becoming the mentality around here and every time we lose granularity, those of us who use the system differently than the median have less and less motivation to participate. _refugee_'s point is "stop being boring." She's too nice to say it that way. Me? I'm so cantankerous that I know that if you're boring, it's not a choice. "Stop sharing the boring" is why I don't follow hardly anyone - the "have an upvote" mentality combined with the "I'm a clever person" mentality means that anything AdBusters would have run in 1998 ends up with eleventy-seven shares within a day or so. But that also means that "global" became a wasteland the minute we couldn't pick the level of popularity. It really comes down to this: I don't have the time or the patience for "beginners" for "beginner's sake." I'm not here out of altruism, I'm here because interesting discussions used to happen. Lately? "Here are my completely groundless and unexamined thoughts on a subject I barely understand, reward me." Old communities become new communities and the old guard gets flushed out by the new guard. That's how it works. The old guard will mourn the loss of their commons while the new guard sweeps in and says "nice digs! Thanks for painting." And we can stick around, or we can jet - but if we stick around, we stick around on the terms of the new, not the old. And if we jet, …well, we're the new guard. It's easy to say "not to say reposts and search aren't problems to be solved - they are." What's hard is to arrange your social structure such that it can be welcoming to the new while also giving the old a reason to stick around. I'm out. I'm out for the rest of the year at least. I have too much to do and too little to say to people who think they're clever by default. That probably makes me a bitter old man but hey - Green Day didn't invent punk, no matter how many hand grenade stickers you put on your mom's CR-V.
Maybe this is just me, but I've not experienced a degredation with new user influxes because (I'm guessing) I'm pretty careful about who I follow. When an influx was happening it was only apparent through meta-spaces like #askhubski. If I blocked that, I am honestly not sure I would have noticed a change at all.
The takeaway from each new wave is that I've generally picked up a one or two new people (if any) or domains to follow and then moved on, which has worked pretty well. God, you have no idea how close I was to typing this exact thing, but I stopped because #askhubski just wasn't a primary reason I enjoy it. But this is exactly what I was referring to when I said that search was a problem to be solved. I personally don't get the most community value from the 'ask spaces' though, which is where most of the reposts happen. My experience and relationship with content on Hubski has remained nearly identical to what it was years ago, with what can only be described as glacial improvements on something I liked to begin with. I mean that as a compliment and I'm definitely not talking about UI or any of that stuff. I contrast that with Reddit where I don't even feel like I'm on the same sight anymore, and no matter how much effort I put into unscubscribing and searching out the best subs, I can't seem to escape the change in tone. I don't know, -maybe I somehow keep a tighter reign over here. Take it easy for the holidays at least. Of course not. Everybody knows that was Rancid.It's not a problem of #askhubski. It's a problem of Hubski becoming a Reddit annex. The "thoughtful web" has become a place where Redditors show up and go "I'm thoughtful! Listen to me being thoughtful! You, over there! Be thoughtful!"
It's easy to say "not to say reposts and search aren't problems to be solved - they are." What's hard is to arrange your social structure such that it can be welcoming to the new while also giving the old a reason to stick around.
I'm out. I'm out for the rest of the year at least.
That probably makes me a bitter old man but hey - Green Day didn't invent punk, no matter how many hand grenade stickers you put on your mom's CR-V.
I'll bet I'm more careful. But I follow tags. And a lot of them are broad - #technology, for example. Which means either we start parsing things down to nothing, or we put a whole buncha people on ignore. Even that doesn't solve the problem, though. Unless the tags you're following are filled by the people you'd follow if you followed people, you end up with nothing to follow. My own personal queue hasn't moved in weeks. The global stuff? Not worth paying attention to. So really, I'm successfully weeding myself out. Except maybe I like the conversation, too. So what do? …getter of goats.Maybe this is just me, but I've not experienced a degredation with new user influxes because (I'm guessing) I'm pretty careful about who I follow.
Of course not. Everybody knows that was Rancid.
I still mostly follow people, but I've recently switched methods on that too, where as opposed to very slowly adding people based on links they submit, I do the same but only for comments they make that I happen across. I was thinking yesterday how it would be an interesting experiment to follow people strictly via the quality of their comments, ignore links completely, and make your front page the 'chatter' link. Ok, ok, Ramones. None of that proto-punk nonsense, and we'll ignore how much they sound like the Beach Boys.Except maybe I like the conversation, too. So what do?
…getter of goats.
Thanks for putting the vague worry I have lately into words. Too much of these comments feel related to me - I just started a blog, I'm probably trying too hard to be thoughtful, and for fucks sake, I even made that repost in #askhubski in _refugee_'s post. I catch myself sharing posts because I like the person, not just its content. My fear is to become that boring guy. That guy with a blog that nobody cares about. That I don't understand what I write well enough, yet people just share it. I have no clue how to be thoughtful. How to be interesting. How to make something that is of value, that people care about besides me. I'm trying though. But trying alone isn't good enough, just as trying to be an artist doesn't make you one. Kindergarten would be filled with artists if trying was all that's needed to succeed. I always feel like I don't know shit and most people here do, especially you. I keep doubting about every move I make, every sentence I write, hoping it will matter or mean something. Yet I always enjoy reading your posts, as they usually lie close to the real meaning of thoughtful. What I'm trying to ask with a tired, jet-lagged mind, is how can I not be boring? What constitutes an interesting post? What matters?Lately? "Here are my completely groundless and unexamined thoughts on a subject I barely understand, reward me."
The only thing we have in the end is perspective. Your perspective is what makes any facts you know, any stories you tell, any truths you've discovered your own, rather than universal. In an age of Wikipedia, facts are easy to come by. Perspectives become valuable. Seen "Julie & Julia?" It's half-interesting; the Amy Adams portion is dry as dogshit. And it's not because the character played by Amy Adams is uninteresting - she is. It's that no attempt was made to justify her existence. Her uninteresting foil of Julia Child tells me nothing about Julie. Julie's life has all the foibles that anyone's life would have… but there's nothing about her that makes me care about her. She's a stock persona plugged into a stock environment. Now - seen 'Say Anything?' Ione Skye's character is a Rhodes scholar. She volunteers at an old folks home. She's the scream on sound effects tapes. Her dad is an embezzler going to prison. Meanwhile, John Cusack is a schlub who lives with his sister and his sister's kid, whose sole accomplishment is teaching kickboxing to small children. Yet Cusack's character is a hoot to watch. He lives. He breathes. The movie is about his perspective. Compared to him, Ione Skye is wooden and forgettable (and heartbreakingly beautiful; hot damn that girl is something else, even now). Don't try to be thoughtful. Don't try to be interesting. Try to show me the world through your eyes, because I can't see it that way without your help. I used to be criticized regularly on Reddit for making it "all about me." It hurt, mostly because it wasn't true, but partially because the only way I can make you see "my" story is by showing it through my eyes. Facts aren't interesting. Meaning is interesting and meaning is a journey, sometimes self-guided, sometimes led by a tour guide. What meaning have you found for your facts? Note that I won't necessarily agree with you. I may know more facts. We'll trade facts and we'll both leave with a different understanding than we came with. That is how one is thoughtful. That quote up there: "Here are my completely groundless and unexamined thoughts on a subject I barely understand, reward me." Turn it on its head: "I have no grounding in a subject I barely understand but I've been examining it. What are your thoughts?" The former is a mandate. The latter is an invitation. By inspection, which one invites participation? Which one invites dismantling?
God, that's exactly the answer I needed. I just came back from my research trip to Hong Kong. When my group was walking around the older parts of Yuen Long, far away from any tourist, we were suddenly approached by a local. He recognized our Dutch and asked if we were from the Netherlands. Turns out that the man, named Kit, lived half his live in Rotterdam and the other in Hong Kong. He even talked Dutch, invited us into his home and gave us a tour of the area. But most importantly, he showed what daily life there looked like. Like having a shrine in his living room to his ancestors, which is very common. How he just managed to live there, with the expensive housing and all. That he saved up to make sure his cousins could have a better life. Most of all, it gave me the perspective to understand how millions of people live there. The things we have in common, that they all have their lives and aren't just numbers on a population chart. Now I have more grounding on a subject I understand more with every day. I think the main difference between hubski and reddit in this aspect is the axiom of honesty. I think that comments here are genuine opinions, not just the common denominator to gain moar karma. Because there's almost no point in whoring for votes here, comments are only written for their own merit. So it's normal that it's about you. I read comments to know what people I know think of it, or what thought are voiced by people I don't yet know. Reading comments there on the other hand is just to find a rebuttal of the main story, or a nice addition to it. It often doesn't matter by whom. When you make that important, they get upset. What are your thoughts?Try to show me the world through your eyes, because I can't see it that way without your help.
I used to be criticized regularly on Reddit for making it "all about me." It hurt, mostly because it wasn't true, but partially because the only way I can make you see "my" story is by showing it through my eyes.
I think my thoughts are one perspective, and I think we're in a thread that's a week old wherein most everyone who had something to say said it. I think the discussion is worth continuing between more than just you and me… …and that's exactly the sort of thing that makes a good post. Hop to, squire. And don't be afraid to shout out to some peeps. mk thenewgreen _refugee_ theadvancedapes @plentyofpeopleI'mforgetting@
Just drove through said, "ice storm." Stay put pal. I'm not sure why I was shouted out to for this, except for the fact that I shout out to kb at least twice a day. Retribution? veen, you should know that your content is enjoyed here. I'm looking forward to a post about your travels, others are too. Be safe pal!I think that comments here are genuine opinions, not just the common denominator to gain moar karma.
-We are extremely careful not to give "points" out. This is the main reason that it takes a long time to get that hub-wheel to have a full rotation.
It's 2am and I'm typing this from my phone and I don't really have a good question yet to further the discussion. You can start it or I'll sleep on it. Besides, a relaxing Sunday's always the best day to reflect on oneself. On a sidenote, I'm often hesitant to tag people in posts. It always feels like I'm infringing on their time. I'd rather have it that they would respond on their own schedule instead of having me screaming in their inbox for their attention. 'Night
I was ignoring #askhubski for a while until I realized that people were using it to ask about hubski functionality. It's never been my thing, but it has only become less interesting for me. FYI, the comments are still there, they are just collapsed. I assumed that since someone muted a user, they'd rather the user's previous comments be less featured. Maybe that was a poor assumption. minimum_wage expressed some reservations about it if I remember correctly. I don't mind if I was wrong about that. I rarely mute people, and when I do, it's usually preemptive based on their comments on other's posts. I recall a comment recently where you basically told people that they needed to be the change they want to see. Do you feel that's not possible? Serious question, no snark. We had an influx of folk from #askreddit, and many of them stayed. Basically we've got a "You got your #askreddit in my #askhubski" situation. Ideally, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that. You should be able to guard and preserve your own Hubski experience. The reality is less than ideal. Cultural shift is a thing, a powerful thing. This is very true. Personally, I'd rather a great place that's hard to get to than a good place that is accessible. I see what you are saying about loss of global granularity. But I think there's a better solution to be had than what we had going.#askhubski is a miasma of tedium, whereas last year, it wasn't.
It's funny. mk pushed some code without telling anybody so when you mute someone, they're muted throughout your post history.
"Have an upvote" is rapidly becoming the mentality around here and every time we lose granularity, those of us who use the system differently than the median have less and less motivation to participate.
What's hard is to arrange your social structure such that it can be welcoming to the new while also giving the old a reason to stick around.
Considering the screams of unholy terror when I deleted a couple days' worth of comments in a fit of pique, I'd say it was a poor assumption. And that was 2011, when we still sorta had a community. It was also before everybody under the sun started using Hubski to link to their blog. What we have now is bloggers who can not only censor comments on their blog, they can censor comments on links to their blog. Which would be fine, except we've got so many users who are happy to share pseudointellectual blogs that in the end you're left with a circlejerk self-reinforcement of the unexamined life. Serious answer, no snark: You reach a point where it isn't worth the trouble. Y'all oughtta see what the discussions in /mods50k or /defaultmods look like. It's the redditors who were most of the content in 2008, 2009, 2010, who aren't really mixing it up on Reddit anymore but are still keeping the lights on. So there we are, all the old, big, "power user" names, who have become literal power users because it's the only thing worth bothering with anymore. The discussions elswhere have become repetitive, meaningless and tedious. The arguments become facile. Everyone around you is busily being outraged over stuff you worked through ten years ago. The content is stuff that dates back to PHPBB days. So you farmville it up - you kill spam in the queue and you ban reported links and you move on with your day, your "reddit fix" satisfied without having to interact with a single person. You might as well be playing Bingo. My experience here - "huh. A question. I shared my answer six months ago." "Huh. An erroneous conclusion. I could chime in, but that would be breaking the circlejerk." "Huh. A link that's been resoundingly disproven on three other online communities already. I'd link to those discussions but why bother?" In order to "be the change" you have to beat a dead horse. Nobody likes that, least of all the horse. The last three "discussions" I've had on Hubski were them) I have an opinion that I like enough for it to be fact. me) But it's opinion, not fact. Here's a bunch of facts that disprove your opinion. them) I disagree. My opinion is very compelling. me) …but not factual. them) but my opinion is popular. Also, you're not listening. me) …because you keep repeating your opinion. I'm done here. them) That's because you're a doodyhead. Fortunately I'm much too nice to call you one. Also, muted! So even when you put forth the effort to "be the change" you're erased like an errant blog comment. And this is what frustrates the fuck out of me. This is why it gets harder and harder and harder for me to care. You don't ask anyone else, you try something and if it doesn't work, you go "oops." I know you worship Paul Graham. I know you adore Jeff Atwood. But lemme tell ya - coders suck ass at people. There's this idea among them that "you wrote the code, therefore YOU ARE GOD." Fuck everything about that. Your code reinforces with every move it makes that the contribution of the user matters… and then you go and change shit because I AM GOD and it throws it all in the shitter. Message from website: "content matters." Message from website admins: "fuck the users." Community sites are fragile, yo. They're chockablock with opinions. Yet CODERS DON'T GIVE A FUCK. - How many people asked for lists? - How many people helped puzzle out the implementation? - How easy is it going to be to remember how to use it? Vs. - How many people know markup? - How many problems does it solve? - How seamless is it compared to your cobbled-together language? Yet your solution for a common problem is to force me, the user, to learn your language, because YOU ARE GOD. Eventually, it all boils down to the same problem: constant reminders that this ain't my playground. And when you're being pulled in five directions where you actually matter, it gets easier and easier to walk away. Serious answer, no snark: All the change I want to see can be erased at a whim with no discussion or explanation, so what the fuck is the point of even trying?I assumed that since someone muted a user, they'd rather the user's previous comments be less featured. Maybe that was a poor assumption.
I recall a comment recently where you basically told people that they needed to be the change they want to see. Do you feel that's not possible? Serious question, no snark.
I see what you are saying about loss of global granularity. But I think there's a better solution to be had than what we had going.
I've got to drive home, so I have to revisit with a lengthier response, but this is wrong: I don't have much opinion on Graham. I don't know him. I don't follow Atwood at all. Can't tell you much about him. I know many coders do. I'm really not much of a coder. I'm changing this stuff as a user, and as a result of feedback and conversations I'm having with all of you. Having links for 5 shares and 6 shares wasn't very useful. I say that as a user. But having more granularity could very well be.I know you worship Paul Graham. I know you adore Jeff Atwood.
I stand corrected. Apologies. Nonetheless, you're definitely a "easier to ask forgiveness rather than permission" kind of guy. There will always be a "WE CHANGED SOMETHING" announcement. There is almost never a "WE'RE THINKING OF CHANGING SOMETHING OPINIONS PLEASE" announcement. Even when there is, you'll still do your own thing regardless of concensus. Tags, for example.
BAM. cgod sent me the following text last night: RL is kicking my ass atm. The second day of a training I have to be a part of is about to start. I want to write something worthwhile, and I can't do it. TBH, I agree with a lot of what you've said. You and cgod are right in that one way to preserve what we have/had is to have the tools to do it. Share sorting might be a more valuable tool if you don't follow a narrow band of users. That was my approach with lists. It regards a function that people have been asking about for quite some time, the ability to categorically save and share content. Markup is on the shortlist, and forwardslash has designed a more robust implementation. He has a lot more chops than I do in that regard, but his chops have been most recently dedicated to hubski mobile which is another thing that people have been clamoring for. I have more to add to this conversation. I will add more.I miss the ability to see posts with no, one, or two votes badly. Spending way less time on hubski
There is almost never a "WE'RE THINKING OF CHANGING SOMETHING OPINIONS PLEASE" announcement.
So long as it's a two-sided conversation, it's a conversation worth having. Thanks, and good luck with "real life." My schedule at the moment includes eight Youtube episodes that were supposed to be trickled to me two per month starting in September… but which I got the first one of on Dec 4 and which are all due by the end of the year. Wish I could link to 'em - they're gonna be fuckin' AWESOME - but my name's on 'em.
If we really wanted to couldn't we just TinEye your photo, though? I'm saying this on a purely theoretical level, not a stalker-ish one. An #askhubski question I have considered, but not asked, for a while now, is "Do we share too much personal information on Hubski?" Frankly, as someone who's usually pretty tight on my internet identity - i.e., different usernames across websites, no personal identifying information - my use of Hubski just totally blows the lid off my life. It's a huge gaping security hole. I've been considering bombing my Reddit account because of Hubski.Wish I could link to 'em - they're gonna be fuckin' AWESOME - but my name's on 'em.
Thanks. I am going to look for those videos, but won't let on if I find them. I've been thinking on this. IMO one of the problems that Hubski doesn't yet address in a way that is significantly better or different from other places, including Reddit, is that comments are exposed to a 'tragedy of the commons' scenario. As you say, someone voices their valid yet uninteresting top level comment opinion, and upvotes pour in with little regard to its value as a conversational merit. There are a bunch of ways to address this one issue, some global, and some individual. I don't put too much stock in global solutions (for example, comments with long threads could tend to float up over orphan comments, as they are indicative of better conversation), but sometimes they can nudge things in a better direction. Sometimes they go wrong however, as we could just be featuring flame wars with the same mechanism. One global mechanism i have considered is comment length, or even some sort of language score, but there are other unintended consequences there as well. As you know, we've typically tried to make the solutions based on user choice. And yes, sometimes I drag my feet too long, and sometimes I push things out too willy-nilly. I've been thinking about a user-specific way to alter the comment space, and I think we could do an experimental run, and see if it helps, and if so, if it can be improved upon. In short, not everyone's comments need to sort equally. Here's what I am thinking (a rough idea): You can give any given user a rating: poor, neutral, or good. I'm thinking about three face icons on their profile that you see: frown, neutral, smile. Neutral is the default. If you are so motivated, you can rate that user 'poor' or 'good' instead. The user doesn't know how you have rated them, and the way that you rate them only concerns you. However, when you view a post, the way that you rate users provides extra bias to the comment sort. The users you particularly like will tend towards the top, and the users you don't will tend towards the bottom. Everything is still there, but things will tend to sort in a way that reflects your input. There are comments here that wouldn't induce me to ignore or mute, but I'm typically only going to read them if I am burning time. Also, there are people here that make comments that I almost never want to miss. It only addresses one issue, but I could see it going some distance to better insulate from dilution. I'd like to give it a run, or perhaps some variation of it, as an experiment. Nixing shares was a mistake. Actually, now that they are applied to the feed, I like them even more.
I've been thinking on it for too long myself. For the record: I recognize that I'm often shouting at you for things you do with your website on your time with your money for your entertainment, and that's a dick move. Sorry for that. And for the record, I do it because I've invested a lot of my time in the exact same place and I have nothing to show for it - and whenever something changes without my input, I'm reminded of that fact. Allow me to appeal to you as a scientist: One of the arguments I've made against Team Reddit is that they betatested once. Go check my user page - I got a badge out of it. It worked. They learned a lot. And then they never did it again. I don't know nearly enough about coding to even phrase the conversation in a useful way, but allow me to fumble around for a little: you need a beta interface. You need some code to sit on top of your code that allows users to tweak their own personal functionality. You need a EULA that says "here's what I'm tracking, here's what I'm not, here's why, and by strapping this thing on, you consent to let me watch how you use it." You need to be able to fuck with it regularly. You need to give me the option to turn it on and turn it off and see what it does to functionality. You need to say "we're rolling out this beta feature we've been messing with and we're rolling it out site-wide for a week or until we decide it was a horrible idea, whichever comes first." You do have god-like powers around here - might as well tweak things to see what happens. Perform some versioning, take some notes, run some experiments, see what you get out of it. Shit, write it up well enough and get someone to sign off on it and call it a legit experiment. Maybe get some grant money, who knows? You really do have a unique opportunity here in that you have a small, tight-knit community that doesn't torch'n'pitchfork much. You don't have a massive userbase to rabblerouse. You're a lot more agile than any other aggregator and you have the wherewithal to flight test. No matter what you roll out, you're going to get a global answer. Put the stuff you're thinking about messing with into several peoples' hands before you do it, and you can get a better handle on what you get out of it. Surveymonkey is your friend.
Thanks. No worries. I understand where you are coming from, and know you well enough. The one luxury that Reddit had that we don't is a lack of day jobs. We feel it. There are opportunity costs that we are paying, and many we don't even know about. I wanted to cry when akkartik stepped down. I was drunk at a buddy's birthday party when he sent a text from the Scottish highlands, telling me that he had to pursue a personal coding project that kept eating at him. I was drunk and gobsmacked, but I understood. Hubski is that project for me. forwardslash has been a huge win for Hubski, and the wheels are on tighter than they have ever been. However, we are rationing and it is not ideal. I doubt we can code such a layer, but I do recognize both the experimentation and the approach to it are critical. At the very least, when we do experiment, we can make it clear, and benefit from the discussion that occurs around it. Years ago, I used to be part of this weird blog/rpg thing running among several friends on Blogger. We all grew up gaming, and some sort of rpg/story/rap battle thing organically emerged. One of my pals was the GM and admin, and nothing was more infuriating than the time he started fucking with what people were writing. Sometimes, he deleted posts wholesale. It was supposed to be part of the experience, and the whole thing was a joke to begin with, but our reaction was viscerally negative. As much as I slave over this thing, every one here is here by choice, and I don't want to give the impression that I am not acutely aware of the time and trust people give to the site. There's no getting around that I am always going to be a blackbox of sorts, but I don't want to be arbitrary. Also, I won't pretend that the site's character is a product of my vision alone.
you both have points here. I don't think you've tried to implement anything that didn't come directly from what users request, and you're a user yourself so it's not like you're disconnected from what's going on. Obviously you can't appease every aspect here, but you end up facing the God problem insofar as do too much, villified, do too little, villified. At what point does the authority or your autonomy overreach and at what point does it become syndicalist and at what point does the input of a few users override the rest? Both you and klein know your shit when it comes to this so this exchange directly proves that evne two people that have the same goal have vastly disparate methods and approaches. That's going to happen on every site no matter what happens and they're going to be fragmentation. What's the solution for it you propose, kleinbl00? Where the median?
It's a sore spot based on years of trench warfare with Reddit admins. ADMINS: "So it turns out nobody liked that decision." ME: "Did you ask anyone before you tried it out?" ADMINS: "no." ME: "So why are you surprised?" ADMINS: "because we're understaffed and this isn't really our thing." ME: "So why don't you hire someone to do this?" ADMINS: "We'll get right on that." (wait six months) ADMINS: "Well that wasn't very popular." ME: "Did you ask anybody first?" ADMINS: "Why would we do that?" ME: "Because that's what we discussed last time." ADMINS: "That was before our time. We're new." ME: "…"
Trust me I know. I've been there for 5 years. I don't know how you stayed a mod for as long as you have because I gave the fuck up after my third try. The shit has gotten out of control, and it's based on some flawed libertarian bullshit that admins have always had as a doctrine of running the site. They've never had any idea on how to approach a community correctly and they have no idea that it's failed miserably. Once big money got involved they were completely fucking lost. At least here we have mk attempting things the community says and has a team built out of users. I don't know how involved you are in hubski itself or how much coding experience you have, but I know you have the community experience to make some serious great changes with this site, and we can't have just what people are asking for because they ask for some stupid shit usually, especially when coming from other sites. So how do we go about having a balance between a creator ideas and user ideas and having select users having too much say? If mk asks us "what do you think of this idea?" and they say "we fucking hate it" resoundingly, despite the majority of the naysayers saying "we should implement a karma system!" then what the fuck do we do? Or if there's a new idea that's never been done on any site that's revolutionary and has to be implemented to test the waters?
This is why I'm against followable tags. They promote unpreservable culturesBasically we've got a "You got your #askreddit in my #askhubski" situation. Ideally, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that. You should be able to guard and preserve your own Hubski experience. The reality is less than ideal. Cultural shift is a thing, a powerful thing.
So we think we know the problem; what's the proposed solution? I came up with a stupid idea that maybe could be toyed with, if for no other reason than to see how it works in reality: You can only see and interact with accounts from people who registered at the same time you did, within a year, perhaps. If you registered three years ago, you can't see anything from people who registered two years or one year ago, though they can see you if they want. This gets rid of reposts and "newbies", because you hang out with a crowd that has seen what you've probably seen and you never have to deal with the rerun syndrome. Do you really need to interact with all 100,000,000 active users of a site? Even the 1,000 active users of a small site? See all the stuff they post? If you really want to see the stuff newbies make, then you can have the option to see all posts from all users and so on. Or maybe if it gets "upvoted" or starred enough you get to see it despite your settings (though you can disable that if you want) so you don't miss out on a newbie who happens to know what he's talking about because he's an expert in the field. Just a thought, perhaps a completely groundless and unexamined thought on a subject I barely understand, but it is what it is. This post I thought of has to go somewhere, so it may as well be here.
But interacting with new people is one of the best things about a decent online community. The problem is that when those new people aren't the ones you interact with, and when they outnumber you ten to one, the community stops attracting interesting new people. The comment _refugee_ linked to is actually part 1 of a trilogy. They're all here.
So we want to interact with new people, but obviously not all new people. There are a lot of new people that make it hard for one to talk to new people one wants to talk about. I guess that even my suggestion that the most upvoted or starred, trusting the community to promote a user who makes a new comment, elevating him/her from the rest of the users, isn't good enough with my idea of separation of account ages. Well, it was an admittedly naive suggestion spurred on by: So then my brain clicked with the age separation idea. In any case. Here: Personally I'm inclined to believe that, unless "new" is meant in "familiarity" and not "new user", those interesting people are still going to big places, but are just drowned out. Coming up with a way to undrown them is perhaps something too complicated for me, but I gave it a shot for whatever it's worth. I'm interested in hearing why you think they wouldn't be attracted to coming to a place with users like that. I can hazard a guess and say it has to do with what you've already said on reddit trilogy, and then the question changes to something more structural and probably out of my league.#askhubski is a miasma of tedium, whereas last year, it wasn't.
and when they outnumber you ten to one, the community stops attracting interesting new people.
Totally worth tryin', yo. Wasn't my intention to jump down your throat. I've just seen the idea played out in /r/ideasfortheadmins since 2008. Here's why I liked the old granularity: "Chatter" allowed me to see what the few people I follow were paying attention to. clicking around through the various "hubwheels" allowed me to see old discussions that had gotten popular, to see who was saying interesting things, and to have conversations I wouldn't otherwise. In other words, i could "sneak up" on a discussion without billowing all 800-whatever followers all over it. You don't get the same visibility anymore.
I always default to using google then Hubski search. It may be a carry over from previous sites with shitty search. Hubski search is fairly good but - site:hubski.com love penis - works too.
To a large extent, I have this going on, except I do add people slowly. It has worked well for me. I've also stopped adding people based on the links they submit, but almost exclusively on the comments they make that I happen across. That's been working even better for me.You can only see and interact with accounts from people who registered at the same time you did, within a year, perhaps.