I think this is a large part of it - the capital of "good conversation" looms over everyone.

It's preached pretty heavily in every place that talks about hubski - it's a place with good conversation. I want to explore that idea.

The people who don't care, don't care. If they have heard this is the new reddit, then they are going to try what they did on the old reddit. If they were trolls they'll troll, if they were contributors they'll contribute. What ever they did there, they'll do here, and they'll do it without apology. The above essay is testimony and they are either accepted or rejected for who they are.

The second, and likely larger group, are the insecure. The people who do not know themselves with certainty and who use the anonymity of the internet as a method for testing the viability of their potential selves. Which is a troubling goal on the internet, it doesn't have the vast and immediate feedback that's baked into our in person lives, and so people can swing much further when testing personalities than they ever would in person, because the feedback is so much slower to arrive (and is more subtle on arrival).

These individuals, the insecure, lurk momentarily then try on a hat they think might fit. If they feel outcast after trying on that hat, as we've discussed they may above, the immediate reaction would be indignation ("That's not even who I really am") or immense regret ("I've taken a gamble and lost and now I will never have a second chance.")

This is what concerns me. I understand that the desire is to make hubski a mature destination for intelligent conversation, but the underlying architecture has so much more promise than that. It facilitates that desired community very well exactly because a crude community of immaturity could exist on the same site and not touch their conversation.

But that crude community is never given the chance.

The elite community exists and is dominant and if anyone is culturally different they don't have the followers and they don't have the digital dopamine to keep them coming back to propel the adoption by the masses.

This theory has a few notable ramifications. The first being - maybe this is what hubski wants (the site as an organism). The site hasn't seen an influx of waste in its gutters because not enough people are there to dump things in. Or, the desire for an elite site is so strong that no one dare breach the taboo. Either way, it might just be in the culture for people to not cross that line.

The second is, maybe this is just the work of a strong personality. Klein is a strong personality. I have a hunch he would be the first person to tell you that. If that's true, there might just be a case of "this town's not big enough for the two of us" and instead of trying to create a different atmosphere, new cowboys just move on to greener pastures.

The third, and much more personal, is that I should do something about it. This isn't quite interesting enough for me to write about at length, but if you said "yeah" then the question applies to you as well.

The fourth, fifth, sixth, sixtieth, and so on all revolve around what's wanted by the community. What do the individuals who make up the content of the site "hubski" want to see on the site "hubski". Do they want a lofty idea that's worthy of looking and lurking and trying to understand until you build the confidence to join the conversation? Or do they want a safe place where people can try on many hats, offend and be offended, and not find themselves cut off from the community? The end dynamic will be no where near as simple, but I feel that's the question that needs to be addressed if things are to move from where they are.