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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  1361 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Soon we’ll all be cancelled  ·  

i think hubski was a great idea and i respect you for creating it as an experiment. its failures, however they might be defined by any of the users who have quit in disgust over the years, or by me, or whomever, i believe are mostly inherent in the medium.

that said, i still encounter new, interesting ideas on the internet fairly often, and none of them come from here (anymore).





mk  ·  1361 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I’d love for you to expand on this, and for no one else to join the thread, if possible, if you’d humor me.

I think I am out of touch with so much that happens here. I think I have a notion of where your critique comes from, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I was dead wrong.

user-inactivated  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

i don't contribute nearly as many pageviews to hubski as i did 5+ years ago, so i probably do not represent the consensus opinion on the state of the site. that said, it is clear that some of my (and your, i think) favorite users have drifted away, despite still being friendly with various people they met through hubski.

probably for a few different reasons.

it is partially the medium's fault. interesting people just don't post on forums much. i figure that's what happened to most of the best users here; they're interesting, and therefore busy. there was a guy who posted a lot of supreme court stuff that was great. was it francopoli who had the astronomy updates? etc.

others were driven away by a few loud users who dislike people having opinions they don't agree with. some even in this thread. but that's a separate problem and certainly not unique to hubski. (although its small size makes it uniquely vulnerable.)

a couple of years ago i unfollowed all users and began screwing around with tag/domain-based use of the site to see if i could land in a bucket i find more useful, but the signal to noise ratio is still not good enough for me to justify spending much time here. (i also found that this wasn't too easy to do... domains, sure, but what's the point, i can just rss; tags, often too scattered.)

for one thing, the norm in the early days of hubski was to post the absolute most interesting stuff you found, and the average poster's age was higher than most of the internet, which meant stuff off the beaten internet path got posted. now when i skim the home page from time to time, there's a higher number of "news item" posts, i.e. ones where nothing beyond the headline is particularly relevant. there's no point clicking on those -- unlikely to breed good discussion, and no additional info in the article. that's just a reddit post. scroll and move on.

(this, at least, includes a degree of personal preference: there are a lot of subjects i find less interesting than i did in 2017 or 2014, and if those are still found interesting by the majority of the userbase, then the site is serving its purpose. but #goodlongread used to be one of the most popular tags, and i don't think it is anymore.)

--

so, i think the short version is basically signal to noise. i'm still pretty sure there's a way to slice and dice things so that nearly every post i see in the home feed is interesting to me, but i haven't bothered because i don't really care about the comments on any of those posts, and there are other ways to get the raw content itself.

mk  ·  1358 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks, flag. Your critiques and feelings are shared by many of us. I've had related discussions with a few of you, and I harbor some of these feelings as well.

    it is partially the medium's fault. interesting people just don't post on forums much. i figure that's what happened to most of the best users here; they're interesting, and therefore busy. there was a guy who posted a lot of supreme court stuff that was great. was it francopoli who had the astronomy updates? etc.

I'm not sure the 'interesting people part' is true. We've had a lot of interesting people posting in the past, and interesting people still post here, and more so on some other forums. I do agree that many of the OG's have gotten busy and have experienced life changes. thenewgreen insomniasexx and myself used to be active community managers. Each day, at least one of us was adding something intended to be positive. Often we did multiple times per day. We also took opportunities to reward the best kind of discussions by joining in. Sometimes we tried to diffuse conversations gone wrong. Oddly, we three are now all founders of venture-backed startups, which is extremely consuming, if not ridiculous. I suspect that our efforts had a positive impact, and that the lack of them has had the opposite, over the long term. Furthermore, I admit that my reduced presence and awareness meant that my contributions in the last few years haven't always been the best example on the site.

Our anti-spam measures have slowed the flow of new blood to the site, which has also contributed to things becoming stale. That has to change.

    others were driven away by a few loud users who dislike people having opinions they don't agree with. some even in this thread. but that's a separate problem and certainly not unique to hubski. (although its small size makes it uniquely vulnerable.)

I have been told this by a few people, some that have left. Those instances really make me sad. I probably don't need to say it, but I can't point to a current Hubskier that I wish would leave us. Some of my favorite people on here have views that I cannot fathom. The better angels of our nature are absent in some threads on this site, and that some patterns of behavior and interactions are obvious and in the balance, negative. Different personalities clash by their nature, and on top of that, most of us seem to oscillate between degrees of a willingness to let go, and fed up. Whenever Hubskiers meet in meatspace, this doesn't appear to happen at all, but likely we haven't met for long enough. We can never engineer this away, but I am sure we can still improve upon what we have.

I talked to _refugee_ about an idea I had that would be sure to be controversial: It was that you could not reply to a post or comment that you did not share. In simplest terms, if it is not something worthy of sharing, then it is not something worth continued discussion.

    a couple of years ago i unfollowed all users and began screwing around with tag/domain-based use of the site to see if i could land in a bucket i find more useful, but the signal to noise ratio is still not good enough for me to justify spending much time here. (i also found that this wasn't too easy to do... domains, sure, but what's the point, i can just rss; tags, often too scattered.)

The user base just isn't big enough for that kind of stuff. There is basically one Hubski.

    for one thing, the norm in the early days of hubski was to post the absolute most interesting stuff you found, and the average poster's age was higher than most of the internet, which meant stuff off the beaten internet path got posted. now when i skim the home page from time to time, there's a higher number of "news item" posts, i.e. ones where nothing beyond the headline is particularly relevant. there's no point clicking on those -- unlikely to breed good discussion, and no additional info in the article. that's just a reddit post. scroll and move on. (this, at least, includes a degree of personal preference: there are a lot of subjects i find less interesting than i did in 2017 or 2014, and if those are still found interesting by the majority of the userbase, then the site is serving its purpose. but #goodlongread used to be one of the most popular tags, and i don't think it is anymore.)

This is very true. I have been thinking that the post submission page could stand to have some reminders/guidelines. It's not terribly interesting seeing a feed of mainstream news items that either challenge or support my view of the world, particularly my political one. That's not to say that these aren't interesting subjects worthy of discussion, but I'd find more value in Hubski if it were the minority of content, not the majority. I am guilty of contributing to this decline.

I have some thoughts on how to encourage a less newsy balance. In fact, I have a number of thoughts on how we can make a course correction. Rather than bury it in this thread, I will make a post in the next couple of days, and invite discussion.

Some of us will leave Hubski. Some of us will revisit from time to time. However, we all have learned from our time here, and if we can improve upon in for those to come, then that'd be a good thing. I am not going anywhere. When I started Hubski, I knew that it would evolve, but that its goal wouldn't. I also knew that this was going to be a lifelong project.

Thanks for your thoughts.

kleinbl00  ·  1358 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    It's not terribly interesting seeing a feed of mainstream news items that either challenge or support my view of the world, particularly my political one.

I think it's pretty silly to presume that mainstream articles are shared to inform rather than to discuss.

I can find information fuckin' anywhere. What I care about is what the people I find interesting think about it.

mk  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thank you. I have thoughts on that, and will share them tomorrow.

ButterflyEffect  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Isn’t the Supreme Court roundup posts from johnnyFive who is still around.

Francopoli I miss. Hope someone here had his contact info.

johnnyFive  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yep, I'm still around. I'd like to do the SCOTUS posts still, I'm just not as good at keeping up with when new decisions drop as I have been :)

am_Unition  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I very much enjoy your SCOTUS posts :).

johnnyFive  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks! I really do want to get back on that particular project, as I said.

am_Unition  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No, thank you.

edit: Sorry, this should've been phrased:

No! Thank you.

user-inactivated  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

have you ever considered an option to follow only what a user posts, and not what they share? could be interesting. but finagling with the way the site works can only do so much.

_refugee_  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

it can only do so much. the desire of the site has skewed notably towards link posts. discussion (#askhubski) and OC-sharing posts used to be extremely common. this used to feel like a place where people were asked and invited to share of themselves.

now it's a somewhat lofty but no better than well-sifted reddit link aggregator, minus a few recurring threads that help bring it together (pubskis, music threads, etc)

this is really not a place where people feel comfortable opening the floor with sharing themselves or their content anymore and that used to be very, very common.

Cumol  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I still feel that for me, personally, hubski is still that safe place where I can be vulnerable and be met with compassion, even if it in the form of criticism. Sometimes more than I would to anyone I know. And it has helped me a lot in these times.

_refugee_  ·  1358 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm glad!

ButterflyEffect  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I see a fair a bit of sharing themselves in chat ever since mk made the big change to it. But yes, I by and large agree with you - though to a small aspect of flagamuffin‘s point, it’s difficult to make the time to share myself in a way that’s satisfactory (see: the six months it took me to write up half of my Bhutan trip).

As an unrelated reason for this, I am less and less comfortable sharing personal details on any forum after seeing the ever increasing weaponization of the Internet. I am close to the point of wishing we all had our own private pay to enter bubbles with no inter connectivity.

user-inactivated  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I am close to the point of wishing we all had our own private pay to enter bubbles with no inter connectivity.

Those are called bars, sewing circles, book clubs, debate clubs, cars and coffee, bowling leagues, etc. They're awesome. Unfortunately, Covid kind of put the brakes on all that.

ButterflyEffect  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

For me they’re called mountains ;)

Agree except maybe on bowling leagues. I have complicated thoughts on that one.

elizabeth  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Complicated thoughts about bowling leagues sounds interesting. My only cultural reference in that regard is the Big Lebowski. Is that representative?

ButterflyEffect  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hah, no, though in a way only the Coen brothers can capture, yes. This goes back to the 50s/60s and the rise and fall and rise and current state fall (again) of bowling in the United States. I grew up bowling, bowled collegiate, and have lots of words to spare on this one between bowling leagues, USBC, the PBA, Bowlero, and the book Bowling Alone.

user-inactivated  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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cgod  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think hubski used to be much more a much more challenging and interesting place.

I think there are a bunch of things that make it not snap like it used too but I don't think there is anything that can be done to get its groove back.

I can't really think of what else to say about it other than that.

It's too bad.

user-inactivated  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

i wrote some extra words because i thought it would be letting mk down to respond flippantly, but absent that pressure i probably would have said exactly this. it is what it is.

cgod  ·  1359 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wrote and deleted several paragraphs. I couldn't expresses anything helpful or kind and I am fond of what hubski was and mostly don't dislike it now. I have nothing productive to say.

I still enjoy my self here every so often.

mk knows he can text or call me if he wants, he knows I'd be straight with him. I don't think any of it would matter.

mk  ·  1358 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree with you except for the groove. I'm going to post about it.

Hyperseeker  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There's a few things that could be done. Whether they would work to the result you, or many other users, will consider positive remains to be seen. I find fatalistic approach to system design rarely beneficial.

Here's one suggestion:

Clear fuckin' everything. Remove all content from this forum, and all users. Have all users that are still interested in participating in a new format (TBD) re-register, using previous or new usernames. No archives, no links to previous threads, no saved settings. Reboot.

Then have the users wait for a month without being able to engage with Hubski at all. (Ideally that would also mean not engaging with the same people from the previous Hubski via external contacts, but that's an honor-system contract not everyone would sign, so you can't rely on it.) No messages to mk, no posts, no comments, no chat.

Then you let users come back. Maybe you tweak a few things about the forum engine, maybe you don't. Fresh start. Clean slate.

Here's another suggestion:

Only ever open Hubski to interactions once a week. Host Pubski on that day, let users post links and make comments. Once your timezone-based 24 hours are up, hope you said everything you wanted to say, 'cause it's Monday o'clock, the bar is closed, and you're on the curb.

Not one thing will work if you, a member of the community, is willing to give it a shot.

Complacency is the mind-killer for places like these. Change is good.

am_Unition  ·  1361 days ago  ·  link  ·  

OK, now you're saying something concrete, and I don't think you're completely wrong.

Too many of us here have been horrified at what we see as the implosion of American statehood. Personally, I'm studying it. And I know that with your socioeconomic philosophy of choice (for posterity: libertarianism), statehood is naught but a hindrance, and thus, I think it's hard for me to find common ground with someone who may delight in Trump's dismantling of this country's government.

My horror is reason #1 why I'm not on here waxing poetic-ish about the observed shape of accretion disks bent around black holes by spacetime or whatever. A chorus of other scientist-types are freaking the fuck out too at this administration. I'm not trying to pretend like muh peoples are the end-all, be-all source of wisdom, but to deny that this administration is anti-science is laughable, and some of us are fucking pissed. It's killing people.

I actually don't know how to have a conversation like this anymore. This is a pretty bad first/second attempt, and I'm sorry. Am I? I'm definitely pretty fuckin angry. There's no way that you're as angry as me, bro. Good for you. I'm jealous.

Ugghh, it got uglier from there, I deleted paragraphs.

I'm tired of seeing articles like this that are basically railing against the inevitable disruptions to society brought on by the internet, transparently adapted for a particular brand of politics. Yes, of course people posting their brainfarts on social media is going to be occasionally terrible for said people. That's one reason I'm here fleshing things out pseudonymously.

Edit: I apologize to mk, I didn't fully process their comment before posting. You can ignore me and just respond to mk, if you like. I don't want you to leave this place. I enjoy your contributions. Just because we disagree doesn't mean we gotta hate. It's a couple hours later, I've cooled off a bit, but I'm gonna leave up what I wrote, because it'd be hard for me not to have a hot take like that in person. Maybe I'm simulating that? weird

user-inactivated  ·  1360 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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