Considering no score is kept and choosing to share a post just places it into the feed of others that have chosen to follow you, I don't see the 'ego petting' you're referring to. The concept of hubski is fairly simple; follow people who post things you like. The ignore option ensures you don't have to be barraged with people/tags/posts you don't find appealing. I think the layout of hubski is far superior to other sites as it basically stops memes and group-think before it can ever take off limiting the site to just whatever you personally find interesting whether it be technology or space.
we must have different definitions for circlejerking, clearly.
I don't really see the issue with that or why that should be tainted as a circlejerk? Don't we already aggregate into groups based on similar interests? A circlejerk is humorous self-deprecating fun-poking or an uber-serious mutual self-patting-on-the-back
I think I can understand that fear - but I like being in control. I actually follow people I disagree with, by conscious choice. It adds to the discussion. It keeps things fresh and interesting. I could cocoon away with some people that make me feel good about myself. But instead I keep a group of people in my feed that challenge the way I think and disbelieve the things I believe in. If I miss an intelligent post made by some one I ignore because they usually post pictures of unicorns, cats and narwhals, well, then I miss out. But I also miss all of the noise. (not that there's anything wrong with unicorns, cats, and narwhals).
it's up to us, right? we get to control the flow. I've misunderstood people, and I've been misunderstood. I had to control myself and hold back the inner flame-troll and just keep it civil. And in the end, I still don't agree with some people... but I follow a few of them just to keep things interesting.
That's probably the better way to go about it, it's still pretty tedious to ignore all these tags in my feed that I just don't care about or want to avoid. It'd be nice if there was a way to follow a tag, like #history, and have all of the posts with that tag be given more weight in your feed.