Am I allowed to give my perspective as a 4chan user, or do we still pretend that 4chan is some sort of mysterious and scary place that nobody ever talks about?

(I'm doing it anyways.)

I was initially directed to Hubski by Hacker News, as a new place for discussion of technology and startups that fixed a lot of Reddit's problems. In my opinion, this is a rather optimistic statement because a lot of the things that made Reddit potentially bad (magic internet points, a weighted rating system for displaying content, personal profiles, accounts, etc) are still present here.

I started browsing Hubski from almost the beginning and didn't return back until very recently because Hacker News lied, or at least exaggerated, when the explained the site to me; there was very little actual tech content here, as most of the posts were about societal issues, social progress, gender equality, feminism, etc. These things simply don't interest me in the slightest so I had no reason to browse the site, no matter how good the mechanics were. Now that I've come back, there seems to be a better range of content. The movie club looked pretty interesting.

However, as I mentioned before, Hubski repeats a lot of Reddit's mistakes. The biggest sin, in my opinion, is the #<topic>.<name> notation. Submissions should be viewed and rated based upon topic and relevance, and who posted it has simply no relevance at all. In fact, I think that one should have to click on the comments page purposefully to have to see who posted a link or topic, and purge the tag system from any and all names. I understand that removing people's names from the tags would barely change how the site functions, but it's the principle of the matter - judge people by their content, not their username or their past posting history. Accounts and usernames are the second deadly sin but there's no point in even suggesting change in that regard.

A lot of 4chan's cynicism and bullying is born of elitism and not pure spite, which most people don't seem to understand. There's a certain level of competence and even conformity required to post there without being brutally criticized, and a lot of that is simple netiquette that has been completely lost over the years, like ahem not asking for the FAQ / rules when there's a link to it at the bottom of every page. I personally see a little of that same elitism in Hubski and I really, really hope it stays, because it's that kind of mindset that will keep this place from turning into /r/gaming v2.0 . However, sometimes 4chan spends a little too much time and effort on this - I once spent 20 minutes browsing /foolz/ for a URL because any request for that URL was met with "Check the archives, faggot." I hope Hubski can find a balance between being intentionally difficult and servicing braindead noobs who can't use Google.

Another thing people fail to understand is that 4chan is one of the most accepting places ever. You can be a transsexual autistic Muslim hobo serial killer and part-time car thief, nobody will judge you because they're all equally fucked up. With all the posts I saw before about gender equality, I'd certainly hope that Hubski is of the same mindset. We all have opinions and every single one is shit.

Further addressing some of the points that the OP made - things like thumbnails, Fisher Price colors, and avatars would cause me to do a 180 degree turn and slam the proverbial internet door on this place, and I am /very/ glad the creators of the site were smart enough to not to add them.

Overall I'm fairly optimistic about the site. It didn't start off a very good fit for me, but I'll know after a few weeks of quiet browsing. I'm considering writing a userscript that would change everybody's name to 'Anonymous' and seeing how that goes.