Those of us with 500+ followers will always wield more influence than someone like you simply because we've got a head start. Any time Hubski gets mentioned on Reddit, I'm inundated with followers - you aren't. Power users will always exist. Hell, there are power users in real life. Power users on reddit and digg were a problem because the position of their stories was visible to everyone: digg had one front page, reddit has /r/all and subreddits with one front page each. But here on hubski, your status as a "power user" doesn't affect me. I'm not following most of your followers, so even if your posts get a lot of shares from those people, I won't see it. If your post is shared by someone who I am following, then it's coming at me through a filter of someone whom I have deemed to be a good judge of worthy content. If I decide they are sharing too much from you, I can simply take them off my whitelist. I can't conceive of a situation in which your power user status would affect what makes it through my whitelist, but in the rare case that it does, it's easier for me to blacklist a few power users I don't like, rather than attempting to blacklist all of the myriad shitposters that may be present in a "power tag". So tags are, at best, useless because you're already following the good posters, and at worst, will clog your feed with bad content.Rather than building a culture of power users. Speaking as one, that's a major win for the site.
I also don't see what's wrong with building a community around a tag - there isn't a lot of reason for me to follow #Detroit, but since people I follow follow #Detroit I get to see anything worthwhile (to me) anyway.
Doesn't mean the scale should be tipped towards them. Necessary evils should be minimized, not accepted as basis. | But here on hubski, your status as a "power user" doesn't affect me.| Au contraire. Suppose I posted nothing but cat pics. I would soon attract a following that loved cat pics. New visitors to Hubski would see a predominance of cat pics because I, as an influencer, create an environment favorable to cat pics. You're secure in your selection of followed individuals, but are they? Are the people they follow? As the general content starts sweeping more and more towards cat pics, it starts becoming an environment that is friendliest towards cat pics. Those who wish to view something other than cat pics are discouraged by the paucity of decent content compared to cat pics. Before too long, the people you're following aren't posting any more. Me and my cat pics, on the other hand, have gone off and formed the SFWCat network. Some people will follow #catpics. Let them. Some people will block #catpics. Let them. There's no logical argument for allowing the existence of tags but only making them viable for blocking. Meanwhile, you lose exactly nothing by having tags be a viable way to discover content - you don't have to follow any, just like I don't have to follow any users. I'm following like four people right now, and that's new. Tags and global are pretty much the only way I'm getting content.Power users will always exist. Hell, there are power users in real life.
So tags are, at best, useless because you're already following the good posters, and at worst, will clog your feed with bad content.