I like to look at the post/share percentage. I try to follow people who post a fair amount of original content (aka, people who post material as much as they share material) because I feel that way I'm actually getting to the info - in on the ground floor - as opposed to people who just share a lot.
But I've been thinking about it lately and I realize that you may choose to follow a certain individual because you share a lot of tastes, so whatever they share, you know you'll probably like - whether or not they post original content.
Are there any other approaches out there? Curious.
Forgive me if this has been posted before (which I fear it may have)
:) Don't take it personally, Cortez. insomniasexx and thenewgreen are two of my favorite hubskiers, and I don't follow them. IMO treating following like friending can break the Hubski experience. Since lil, and now b_b follow you, and I follow them, I'll see your posts when they like them most. Or, they can reach me in a less direct way. If I followed everyone that I liked personally, I'd almost have the hubskihose as my feed.
I don't, really. Right now I'm following three people, and that's because they don't post very often and I like to see what they share. Mostly I follow tags, then will occasionally spin through the evolution in the upper right to see what's interesting. If a bunch of stuff is interesting and related, I follow that tag for when everyone gets bored with it and it disappears again.
I follow anyone that interests me with either their post, their comment and even a few times their username. Then I work backwards from there. If they start posting things I don't like then I unfollow them. It's not the ideal way to do it, that's for sure. I follow the maximum number of people and as new people filter in and I want to follow them, I have to unfollow someone else. It's getting harder to do though, because I increasingly recognize all of the people I'm following from a past conversation etc. mk follows only a few people and I know for a time being kleinbl00 followed nobody and was only following tags and using the global posts. We are still a small enough community that this can work and you really won't miss much but as we grow, and we are growing, that will become more of a fire-hose to keep track of. I've mentioned that there should be a "clear" switch for you to start over and start following people all over again. I also don't think there should be a limit to the number of people you follow.
Wait, there is a maximum? Also, it would be nice if you could sort the list of people you follow by a few different attributes, like "how recently they've posted" or "how recently you've shared something they posted". It would help to eliminate the flak.
I think that is a strong idea and it would probably be very helpful to you and you're overzealous following patterns. :P As a purging tool it would definitely be helpful, but I've mostly been trying to come up with any sort of idea to discover users, not purge them after you've discovered them. I've been thinking a bit about having some sort of user discovery page like the tags page but I'm not certain how it would work. I think it would encourage the users to follow those people who already have a ton of followers and deeper the "rich get richer" phenomenon that we've started to see. Also, scalability wise, it wouldn't work for long. People have already noted the tag page getting a bit overwhelming. I find myself going through chatter or the global pages looking for gray names to see who these people are, what they post, how long they've been on hubski, etc. Obviously, not optimal but yeah. Food for thought. Perhaps we can add this to the agenda for next talk. b_b do you have any opinion on user purging/user discovery?
Apologies for derailing the thread thenewgreen, but how is Hemingway?
I only sporadically think of who I'm following, and the recent addition of showing how many posts of someone you have shared when you hover over their name has really helped. I just look at my feed and see the people who have grey or green usernames and see if I'm sharing a lot of them. If I do I'll likely follow them and then if I see stuff from them that I think I could do without I'll re-evaluate whether or not I should unfollow them or just ignore a tag or two. That isn't the only reason I follow people, though. I also seek out users who provide perspectives that I don't understand or perhaps agree with. It can be harder to find these people; I usually find them when reading comments. For instance, recently I've been following every writing tag and writer I can find on hubski. I'm not a huge poetry guy, or even a fiction guy, but I'm rather jealous of those who write well and envy those who have the discipline to write better. Eventually I'll probably prune some of those users and tags from my feed and the end result will be better than I started out with.
follow candidates are people who post good comments or share stuff i've shared, i check the "posts" section of their profile, if they don't post often, or the majority of their recent posts are things that i find uninteresting, i don't follow them. if their comments are good enough it might outweigh a failure to meet the posting requirement. sometimes i wonder if i should follow sharers rather than posters, but i haven't really looked into that yet sometimes i follow random people who don't pass my rubric because they are important for other reasons sometimes i see a post that i find vapid, pointless, stupid, or profoundly boring in my feed and it inspires some unfollowing
I follow you because you post content that otherwise I wouldn't be exposed to. That, to me is extremely valuable. You don't follow me. I take no offense from that. Your posts are some of my favorites and it's because they are so divergent from what I post. That's cool. Everyone I follow shouldn't follow me back. That's not how I suspect Hubski will be. On that note, thanks. I like seeing minimum_wage posts in my feed. Good stuff.
I'm glad to hear it. I don't follow you because you produce large volume of stuff, a significant portion of which is uninteresting to me (not necessarily bad). However a lot of the people I'm following do follow you in turn, and they act as sort of a filter for the bits I do find interesting, so I still end up seeing quite a lot of your posts and shares in my feed, but it's of a higher quality (to me). I'm essentially following you by proxy. This is probably the thing I like best about hubski.
This is probably the thing I like best about hubski
That's actually great to read, it means that using others as your filtering device for content works. And yes, I do post a lot of content to the site and it varies wildly by topic and sometimes, I'll admit...quality.
I'll start following people whenever I feel like my feed needs some fresh blood. I'll usually find a post with some good discussion in it and follow the people on there that I'm not already. My only criteria is that their comments are well composed, thoughtful - ahem, and nice. If someone can bring out their personality in their writing within a few paragraphs then I'm generally happy. I don't really get hung up on the decision of who to follow or not. If someone muddies my feed, then I'll kick'em to the curb.
It's usually a post that spurs me to follow someone. If I find a post unusually interesting, I'll look at the posts/shares of the person that submitted it. If they look quality, I'll add them to my feed. Every few weeks or so, I'll look at my feed and see how my least favorite posts got there. If they have one source in common, I'll unfollow that person. It's nothing personal. I have ways outside of my feed to see what is going on about the site in general, but I do my best to engage the site as a user, and not as an admin. I really want to know how Hubski feels from a user's POV. I've even turned off admin pages for a time, so that we have no choice but to see only what a user can. The shares-count function can be helpful, and I turn it on from time to time.