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I learned so much in the earlier years of reddit. It solidified my position for atheism and educated me in many useful topics that were never covered in school, or at least not in a way I understood it.
I like that there doesn't seem to be a downvote button.
It's getting to where you have to wade through a lot of crap to find something interest there. I'll still go there, but I wanted to see what this is all about.
I use reddit to stay updated on major topics in the more intelligent subreddits -- timely things like news and current events, scientific discoveries/breakthroughs, and modern politics.
Hubski seems like a community more involved in a larger variety of interesting topics found around the web, less concerned with concrete events and more interested in thoughtful articles ("a thoughtful web" is a fitting tagline).
I like Hubski because it hasn't developed a singular "voice" (yet; this still remains tentative). It is still developing a personality, and its members are still testing the waters. Personally I hope this period of Hubski's development lasts as long as possible, but realistically I'm not so sure how sustainable it is.
Just to let you know, this issue is very important to me. Actually, it's probably my biggest goal/concern. That's a part of why I just pushed this update: http://hubski.com/pub?id=5046
Let me know if you think we are slipping. :)
Personally I've never been good at (or fast enough) to find and post links since I don't want to spend my day digging through endless rss feeds and irrelevant google alerts - I just want a site that has all the good stuff already posted - so I'm a little wary of the "power user" format here, however, as long as the content is good, I have to say I'm already sold on the idea of Hubski.
Oh, and great job with the site. I especially like the clean and simple layout
My hope is that there will always be a competition to be the most interesting content sharer. If an echo-chamber begins to form, hopefully there will be those that will maintain hubs that run counter to it. If you only follow these people, you should be able to escape the chamber to a large extent. Comments may be another issue, however, and I think creative solutions might be required there eventually. We'll see.
Right now, I'm focusing on Hubski for what it is.
Right now this feels more like r/truereddit than r/truereddit , which has slipped enormously. I think through the pick-and-choose fashion of the hubs, we'll have the choice to keep it that way. If someone starts submitting garbage, just unfollow them.
Sites such as this exist to provide a place for people to share and discuss content. Therefore, from the "people" side of things, you should share and discuss that which interests you. If you have tastes complementary to others, they will partake in your sharing and discussion. From the "site" side of things, the goal is to make this sharing and discussion as pleasant and efficient as possible - the more transparency, the better.
Reddit is falling because the transparency went away. Reddit is in no way about sharing and discussing any longer; it's about points. Further, since positive and negative points are possible, it's become a battle arena. Its the social network equivalent of Eve Online.
Hubski has an opportunity to differentiate itself from that model by keeping the focus on the people and the facilitation and downplaying the overhead. But this is alpha-test stuff, and as such, I'm approaching it as an alpha tester.
The way I used to use Reddit was to go through my RSS feeds and submit anything I found interesting, or I thought others would find interesting. Then, as Reddit grew, I found myself searching for anything on my RSS feeds on Reddit, because someone else had probably already submitted it. For the past year, I've been ignoring my RSS feeds because while the stuff that interests me hasn't been submitted most of the time, it's also been brutally downvoted by a bunch of people with time on their hands and the attention span of gnats.
So the way I'm using Hubski is the way I used to use Reddit - find stuff that's interesting in my RSS feeds and post it.
Which right now means that a whole bunch of people who are "following" me are going to get a firehose of #architecture and #business on weekday mornings. My understanding is that if they don't click the dot, they don't see it for long... but for a while, they get a heapin' helpin' of stuff that may not interest them. In the grand scheme of things, no big deal. Site-side, though, it's a potential bug. So I keep doing what I'm doing because users will never conform to a flawed site architecture (Reddit's architecture favors trolls, and as soon as there wasn't the staff to hand-pick and weed through the trolls, they took over), the site can conform to the users. This is the nature of organic design.
Perhaps what we need is a "-#" - for example, you could "#" kleinbl00 and "-#" architecture. Or "#" UserSince1996 and "-#" worldmusic. Maybe something like:
#"kleinbl00 -architecture"
#"Usersince1996 -worldmusic"
Maybe I submit that to #bugski for thought purposes.
That's an interesting idea kleinbl00. It's a layer of complexity, so I will be very cautious about my decision to implement it, but the idea itself (and the expressed need) is good food for thought.
At the same time, we might just find that those that follow you do appreciate your posting style, and those that don't, won't. Or, alternatively, someone like myself could serve as a #"kleinbl00 -architecture filter. I might follow you and share a good number of your posts, but not those that concern architecture.
At any rate, I'm going to keep this in mind as we see how things play out. It might be a good strategy to address issues that arise as you mentioned.
The part of what kleinbl00 says that resonates is this: I'm probably not going to be interested in following too many people, because I already have a long list of them that I "follow" elsewhere (i.e., Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, etc.)
Reddit's double-edged greatness/weakness is its subject-oriented approach. And I think if hubski grows into quality, it will be because it finds a creative way to go that direction without ghettoization.
Tagging is a good start. I don't think it'll scale well on its own, though. I'll keep thinking on it and watching what happens, and if I come up with anything more intelligent to say, I'll keep you posted. ; )
Edit: Not OP, but kleinbl00
So from my perspective, I've had a "truce" for months now. If you want to make it two-sided, so much the better.
I've never been to reddit. It's just not that big where I live. http://tinyurl.com/yzbm8p7
I found hubski through thnewgreen's comment on TED. http://tinyurl.com/3ftbb3j
If you've read that I think you're good. I'm new too, but I haven't seen any etiquette section besides that... I'd say the best idea is to avoid any behavior similar to "karma-whoring" and focus on providing quality content, if possible.