I know that I use the "mail" feature (hubski's PM system) quite a bit and I've noticed others making mention of using it too. In fact, sometimes posts and great (or mostly good) discussion can come out of private conversations. For example, ghostoffuffle and I had a private discussion that we then turned over to hubski at large, Can Art Be Taught?
It's via PM where much of the "relationship building" seems to take place for me on hubski and I think it's a great thing for new users to make use of. delynnbailey actually reached out to me after a comment I'd made during the latest influx and while I see she hasn't been so active, it did make it clear that she was interested in becoming engaged in hubski and I really appreciated that. I know that thenewgreen often encourages new users to PM him if he can help out in some way (which is pretty big of you TNG; in fact you might want to ask your wife to check you for cardiomegaly). Anyway, I wonder if letting new users know that lots of conversations take place both on "the hubski floor" as it were, in addition to behind the scenes would help mitigate the whole "will hubski be our true reddit messiah?" by making it clear that hubski is all about conversations rather than . . . cat stuff and porn and "this" comments. And "power users" whatever the fuck those are.
So the question, hubcaps is: how often do you find yourself sending PMs to people and does that figure into your hubski experience?
1) to discreetly send a correction when the typo is egregious 2) to discreetly offer help, sympathy, or if asked opinions or support on personal issues. 3) to make a discreet suggestion to a newbie on how to format something 4) to make plans with someone about running something on hubski, like a writing prompt or quotesporn or if collaborative stories need to be killed, right insomniasexx? 5) to respond to users who comment privately to public posts for reasons of their own. At some point, I usually ask, "Can we bring this conversation to the community?"
6) sometimes to update people who realize that a sh*tstorm has just swept across the hub and are wondering what they missed. Like humanodon, if there is anything interesting going on in pm, it's worth bringing forward if it's not personal. I also agree that "relationship building" can happen on hubski in the pm space.How often do you find yourself sending PMs to people and does that figure into your hubski experience?
The records show that I have started 385 pm threads in the last 1050 days, or an average of 3 a week. Each thread might have anywhere from 1 - 20 messages. The purpose of these messages include:
Hey, thanks for the mention! I'm still around, continuing to decipher how all of this works. I'm dealing with some autoimmune illness thing so, until all the poking and prodding and testing is done, I'm just coping with overwhelming fatigue and pain. Point being, I love learning and engaging in intellectual conversations and pursuits, and especially broadening my own perspective, but don't have the energy to follow through as quickly as I would like. So sometimes the dialog is floating around in my head and I lack the energy to participate but not the will. I really appreciate that you've made me feel included and look forward to some fun future debate!
I usually have one or two PMs going a week, ranging from serious conversations that are in-depth and great for reflection, to Meriadoc yelling at me about the damn Yankees. Who, by the way, are sending me into a deep well of depression this season. Hubski mail is great and I think that promoting it as a way to reach others could be a good thing. I know it helps with some conversations that a person might want to have, but isn't quite comfortable with having in the public space of comments.
Hey. Nobody has dominated Tanaka, he's yet to give up more than three runs in a game. You have beat him though, I'll give you that. Our offense is pathetic. DFA Soriano, bring up Refsnyder, move Jeter out of the 2 hole, etc etc.
i dont really have any relationships on Hubski so its remained untouched.
All the time havires and eightbitsamurai are two I have ongoing conversations with, which have been very enlightening and fun.
I use the PMs in a couple of different ways: I reach out to new users and talk to them about the site, their experience, any bugs or suggestions they have or help them out with things they may not fully understand yet. Sometimes I message first and sometimes they message me. Sometimes they have a bug or question. I have a couple conversations via PM about more personal life stuff that doesn't need to be broadcast on Hubski. I sometimes send links or quotes or stuff to users if I think they may enjoy it for a certain reason but it's not a big enough or good enough post to warrant a whole post on Hubski. ie: if I know someone is learning about design or HTML or javascript and I stumble on an interesting writeup, I'll send it their way. And then I have a few threads that were deeper conversations or conversations on a thread that kinda turned into something more. These are more rare than the others though.
I use it pretty often with lil but other than that I tend to have most of my interactions outside of "help me figure out "x", bug reports, and stickers requests" in the public. I email with ghostoffuffle, kleinbl00 and theadvancedapes outside of Hubski. Yeah, I guess I really don't use it all that often considering the amount of interactions I have on the site.
I don't generally use PM systems on websites. It basically boils down to this: if it's something that I don't mind other people seeing I feel that I have an obligation to let people see it (as it may be useful to them), whereas if it's something I do mind other people seeing I shouldn't be putting it online in the first place. Especially so on a website like Hubski, where people choose the content they wish to see. Worse comes to worse, you move it to a new post under a different tag.
If I had any money, I'd have a domain and give contacts unique email addresses under said domain. Doesn't keep them from figuring out who I am, but at least stops the spam issue.if it's something I do mind other people seeing I shouldn't be putting it online in the first place.