I agree! Positivity! Mutual feelings! We're all part of one big family! But seriously, I think you're right that superusers are the weight behind the whirlpool that spins Hubski. I think a few neat little features would be great to implement: 1) If a user you're following is inactive for X days, you should get an alert of some kind when you visit hubski that prompts you to unfollow them. You should be urged to.
2) If you haven't commented on or shared a user you're following's posts in X days, then you get a prompt to stop following them. Because clearly you don't care about them that much.
2.5) It occurs to me that if someone is inactive you will see both alerts, so I guess I would put something in so you only see the inactive one.
3) Seriously consider the ramifications of having a "follower limit." So only a certain number of people can follow you at once (say, 5% of the site's total users at absolute most). I like this because it will weirdly encourage a lot of things- following people who follow people, more use of the global and chatter pages if you want to follow big users. And I think, very importantly, if this is implemented, then users should have the ability to edit their followers. This way you can cull your following as well as who's following you. I don't recommend that #3 happen without some modelling and forethought beforehand, but I'm fairly certain it would prevent any serious super-user problems. I don't know whether or not this already exists, but a Hubski account should also probably have a point at which it's automatically deactivated- has no followers/following, and only the base hub and badges remain of it. I mean, after, say, a year or so of inactivity. Obviously not much of a problem yet.
1) So let's say I go on vacation. I come back to no followers. 2) I read most of the articles that I see in my feed but I share only a few of them, not because I didn't like them or do not care about the poster, I just share the really good ones and the under-shared ones. BUT, that's just me. 2.5) Honestly, you know who you don't want to follow more than Hubski would. 3) I'm lost here. Sounds like a giant messy web of trying to follow whoever follows that guy so that you can see another guy's post. I guess I just don't understand why inactivity is a problem, nor how it relates to the whirlpool of superusers. Interesting ideas nonetheless!
1) Yup! Fuck you indeed. It's not like it's a mandatory "You cannot follow this person any more." Just a message that prompts you to unfollow the person who's taking a break or not coming back. If someone really likes you, they'll stick to it, and if you come back, people will follow you again. 2) Again, if you want to keep following someone who's posts you're not sharing or commenting on, that's your business. You should just be reminded of it. 3) Right now, unfollowing mk and kleibl00 does nothing- I still see them everywhere because almost everyone follows them, and they pull in so many shares and comments taht it's hard to avoid them. Limiting the number of followers a user can get prevents us having a situation where the pond doesn't have room for little fish because there are 3-5 whales wandering around. Yeah, you'd follow someone who followed someone else, but I'd put hard, cold cash that all users are withing 2 degrees of one of Hubski's Holy Trinity.