I have been looking for something more substantial than Reddit for some time now and I saw this post on /r/TheoryOfReddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/15goza/is_re.../
I was sick and tired of having to switch up my subreddit list in order to retain the quality of my homepage. I have not been a very active poster for two years now or since I began having to click load more comments at the bottom of threads, but I was still spending hours upon hours every day lurking. And then something in me must have snapped so I began googling for Reddit replacements (at first) and other kinds of internet communities. Tried to join MeFi too but I figured it wasn't my thing. Then last week, as I was going through my old comments for nostalgia's sake I remembered /r/TheoryOfReddit. I subscribed to that subreddit when it was first created but it seems to have been culled from my subreddits during one of my regular purges. Anyway, so I found that thread, clicked the link that leads to this site, and browsed around. And I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. But I don't know what you guys do during your off times. I keep seeing you guys mention visiting each other in real life. So what do you do here that makes you people form such tight bonds? What makes this community tick?
That is a good question that doesn't have an easy answer, but let me first say that I'm glad you found us. When a friend recommends a book to you, you can't look at several pages and expect to understand and appreciate the entire book because it's the entire experience that they are recommending and in order to get the full effect you have to dive in and read the whole thing. I feel like Hubski is similar in this regard. In order to understand what makes the "community tick", you must invest some time. That said, I'll try and provide some links below but it really boils down to having multiple conversations and interactions with one another over a broad array of topics. #tngpodcast -This is a podcast that I put together interviewing and asking questions of the Hubski community around a topic. It's been a few months since I've done one but I'm currently working on one titled "why do you write." #storyclub -A relatively new addition to Hubski, this is where a number of us collaborate on building a short story together badges -We are able to give one another appreciation for the best content on the site. (an idea we've had and utilized long before others have) We read together I would highly recommend subscribing to the Hubski Newsletter that insomniasexx has been putting together, it's a great way to see some of the most interesting posts and conversations, plus she features old content "from the vault" that might help you better understand where we've been in the past as a group. You can read past newsletters here As I mentioned, these are just some of the things that help us form tight bonds. Really, these are just some of my favorites. There are so many more. Hopefully some other people will jump in and help me out. If you have any questions about the site, let me know. Welcome.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I've been chatting to insomniasexx a bit recently about marketing and growing Hubski, because I'm in exactly the same situation with my startup. I then stumbled across this thread (well, because I follow you, thenewgreen) and a couple of the things you said here rang really familiar, and I thought it could be helpful to chip in at a more general level. But Twitter was commonly misunderstood as being a way to "share what you had for breakfast." You had to use it for a while to really understand it. They got past this by pushing Twitter as a way to find new content from interesting people and letting people get sucked in over time. No real conclusions to offer here—just a few thoughts that tangentially connect with some of your examples. Hope they're helpful.In order to understand what makes the "community tick", you must invest some time.
It's a common situation: you've got a kick-ass product, it solves a very real problem, people who use it are head-over-heels in love with it, but there's a bit of a "dip" that requires you to take a leap of faith and use it for a bit before you get hooked. Twitter's subtle effect was that of adding an "ambient awareness layer" to the internet—a sort of dim "knowing" about what's going on in the world.When a friend recommends a book to you, you can't look at several pages and expect to understand and appreciate the entire book because it's the entire experience that they are recommending and in order to get the full effect you have to dive in and read the whole thing.
I love this example because it's true; yet not an immutable problem. Book services like Readmill let you shortcut this whole process. I can recommend a friend a book, but the chances of them reading it aren't huge if they can't see how it would immediately make their life better to read. It just goes into the "later" pile. But the Readmill book page contains my own personal cliffnotes: https://readmill.com/Zygar/reads/glut-mastering-informaion-t...
And, haxcloud, if you're into music that's one of the liveliest areas of hubski -- people sharing their own music, new music they find, old music they want other people to find, etc. #weeklymusicthread #newmusic Don't know if anyone else covered this, but taking a look at the tags page will show you where the most activity is.We read together
Well. We try.
People seek support and encouragement that is not always readily available in real life. You can't block and mute an abusive boss, but here, you can block and mute abusive people. As thenewgreen said let's have some people
by the way, thanks for the question, we love analyzing ourselves!!But I don't know what you guys do during your off times.
If you click "community" at the top of the page, you'll see a list of the most active posters. Click through a few names and you'll find their profile page. Quite a few people give you a little bio especially how it relates to their interests.So what do you do here that makes you people form such tight bonds?
Tight bonds seem to arise over time when people are positive and supportive to one another's ideas, interests, needs, fears, and feelings. There's was some discussion on this topic yesterday as people were exploring how they can become "best" friends with people they've never met.What makes this community tick?
Hard to say. Probably the same things that make any group of real-life friends seek one another out.jump in and help me out.
> Tight bonds seem to arise over time when people are positive and supportive to one another's ideas, interests, needs, fears, and feelings. It's not just this. I mean, I was on Reddit for years and I never got into the "community" feel of it, even in smaller subreddits. I both browsed/actively commented and lurked Reddit at various times; I'm down to mostly 'lurking' at this point due to quality problems/bad or repetitive commenting. (Novelty accounts. Kill me.) I think part of it is that there is a small tight-knit "core" of users on the site. You see people's names again, and again, and again. Maybe early Reddit was like that, I wasn't on there early enough to know. Don't get me wrong I've been around for tons of Reddit "celebrities" and drama but there's a difference between a Reddit celebrity and someone on Hubski. On Hubski it's like you to get know real, genuine people that you see again and again. I don't know, I'd compare it to a bar (but then, I spend lots of time in bars), whereas Reddit always felt more like a big university. It was a college where, as in real life, I barely got to know most classmates (with classes as subreddits or threads) and I certainly didn't get to know my entire year, let alone the population of the university as a whole when it cycled in and out. On Hubski it feels I'm a regular at a favorite bar. I don't know everyone and I keep seeing new faces, but I still feel like I know half the bar. And half the bar knows me, and we can talk about stuff, or we can just share stuff on our iPhones or Droids that we think is cool over a drink or two, and then we talk about it, too. I have conversations. I have people that I keep an eye out for because hey, I like them, they're kind of cool. I'm having fun with this analogy. There isn't a hivemind here but there are common interests and values - things like writing, creating, music, navel-gazing, you know, thought-provoking discussions. I haven't met anyone on Hubski in person and doubt I could, most of the regular gang seems kind of centrally located in the middle of the country, and I'm on the edge. Theoretically I think humanodon and I could have a Hubski meet-up of 2 if we were both willing to drive some hours towards each other. Course, I don't know where all you buggers are. That's cool, though. It took me a really long time to get used to the community, what with my Reddit experience I had never really valued getting to know people on communities online. They were on the Internet. They weren't real. I didn't know them. Here, I get to know people. And people get to know me. Of course I do feel really sappy and troll-inviting with my little declaration of love, here, guys.
I've gotten a lot of that community feel from Reddit. There are even a few people that I talk to outside of Reddit now. I guess it depends on which subreddits you subscribed yo and how often you commented. I like your college/bar comparison. I think there's a lot of truth in it. Reddit is definitely like a university. You could hang out in the cafeteria (the defaults) all day. You would be surrounded by people who probably share the same interests as you but you have to be extremely loud to stand out. The university also has small clubs and groups. If you hang out there, you're probably going to make some real friends. Hubski would be the quiet bar that people come to when they want a break from all of the noise. I think you described the feel perfectly. I could use a quiet drink as much as the next guy. I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time here.
I'm down to meet up with many of the users on hubski, as long as the budget allows . . . Given the structure of hubski, it seems like a hivemind would have some difficulty developing. I like the personal nature of the community. Maybe it's not for everyone and I'm ok with that. I'm not advocating for exclusivity, just operating on a human level. As for the bar analogy, I for one, often have a few drinks while on hubski, though not usually during the daytime hours and I suspect that others do too!
Yup. A few of my writer friends went to AWP. It sounded like fun, though I was a little put off by my friend's impression that more than one session seemed to be about bitching that young writers are having a tough time getting published. Getting published in quality publications is hard, for good reason. That said, I'd be interested to hear your impressions of how it went.
Well, I think it was a really valuable experience, but I wouldn't do it again the way I did it. I live in DE/PA area and I went with a friend. We were interested in travelling on as tight a budget as possible and while taking as little time off work as possible. So we ended up taking midnight trains both ways, and only taking off Friday (I think Thursday was the first day of the conference). It was pretty impossible to sleep on the train on the way there; we both dozed off for a few hours. Then when we got there it was snowing of course. Silly me hadn't checked the weather in Boston and in PA/DE we were having record high temperatures that weekend (pretty sure it hit 90 degrees) so I had like, a hoody and a leather jacket. It didn't bother me that much but it was unexpected. We got in Friday morning, Friday night we crashed at a friend's place, we stayed all day Saturday (which was the end of the event) and took another late night train back. I was exhausted by the end of course; the crying baby on the train on the way back led to much bleary-eyed discussion of "spawn" and how I was never going to "whelp." As for the conference itself - it was both fun and extremely overwhelming. I got Stephen Dunn, Bob Hicok and Brian Turner to sign copies of their books for me. I wanted to get C. D. Wright to sign "Rising, Falling, Hovering," but she quite clearly did not want to be at the reading - it was a 4-poet panel of readers that was supposed to last an hour. She stood up and read one poem. Then booked it immediately afterwards. I went to a lot of seminars but not as many as I had planned; I spent several hours sitting on the top floors of the convention center enjoying the sunlight and kind of rejuvenating. I went to one on Levis and several panel readings; I went to a panel about oppression in poetry (which probably factored into my Afghan landais blog post which I wrote much later); I went to one about "geek culture," you know, stuff like that. I told my friend afterwards that if I did AWP again I would never do it the way we did it. I'd want to be able to take the time and either crash for two nights or get a hotel. Really I don't see me doing it again unless they bring it to Philadelphia, or I have a nice belt of money saved up that I can afford to blow on it. I found it valuable but exhausting and not valuable enough to repeat. Maybe if I were more of an established poet it would be better for me in the sort of "see and be seen" culture of conferences - one of the reasons I was interested in going was because I think either Gaiman or King strenuously advises writers to go to conferences, that they're the "next step" and help with networking - but I wasn't really connected enough to benefit from any of that. I did get lots of free journals and leads on journals I might want to submit to, so there's that. Mixed bag, positive experience, you should've gone. I used my old student ID (even though I graduated years ago) and got discount "student" pricing for the weekend. Wouldn't have gone otherwise.
Oh geez, that sounds like a stressful way to go. I can see why you wouldn't want to do it that way again. Which Hicok did you get signed? I only have This Clumsy Living. I only read it once, but it didn't really stick to me. I'll give it another read though. I always get Hicock and Christian Hawkey mixed up because when I bought This Clumsy Living I also bought Hawkey's Citizen Of, which I didn't really understand most of. Foolishly, I left it behind during my last move and now I want to read that again too (but I don't want to pay another $14 for, sorry Hawkey). I think the networking aspect is what drives a lot of people to go and that's something I would definitely find valuable as I haven't kept up most of my poetry connections. One of these days I'll make it out to one, just to check it all out for myself. Thanks for writing all that out :) Oh and, I use my old student IDs often. I used to be able to go to the MFA for free, but I guess that arrangement has changed.
Words for Empty and Words for Full. What got me started on Hicok is his wonderful Switching to Deer Time which I think is in the book you mention. However I can't say I'm completely in love, he's not a Dean Young or Louise Gluck or a Lawrence Ferlinghetti to me. Words for Empty and Words for Full deals a lot with the VTech shootings as he was teaching there at the time. It's interesting but Hicok gets very political very often. I struggle with political poems. They get very dated very quickly, I find. And personally it's not something I find inspiring very often. Yeah no problem. It helps to decompress, you know?
Hmm. Yeah, I just reread Switching to Deer Time and I really liked it this time around, though I wonder because I know I've read it before and yet I remembered none of it. Maybe I just wasn't open to it at the time, preoccupied by something else. Sometimes reading can be like flossing for me, as in, sometimes I read something it passes through my brain and takes something with it, kind of the opposite of what I expect reading to do. I don't like political poems for a lot of reasons, though I have experimented with writing them in the past. In general, I don't think that poems should be used to espouse philosophies, political or otherwise because that uses poetry as a vehicle for something that is likely better stated in prose. For me, poetry is the vehicle and the driver. Political poems rely on a carryover of emotion from whatever issue evoked the reaction in the first place. It feels like cheating. You're right about the timeliness too. I know a guy who used to write political poems and often about political landmarks from history. I could not handle poems that were both historical and political. In any event, he writes about politics and financial stuff now and I think that's a better fit. He's a pal, but man oh man.
I think the "core" of users is something that scales fairly well with the way Hubski is structured around people instead of around topics. Social networks of like minds scale well—but social networks around topics do not. A popular topic leads to giga-threads, hivemind, and a tendency to lurk. Whereas self-organisation around like-minded people leads to a different set of behaviours entirely—one that is inherently less intimidating. Certain sets of rulesets afford certain kinds of behaviour.
I made my Hubski account awhile ago when it was first mentioned on Reddit. I never put too much time into it. I figured I could get the same experience over there as I can here. Lately, I've been getting back into Hubski. I've been lurking a lot for the past few days trying to get the feel of things here. I didn't want to be one of those guys who joins a community without knowing about it first. I'm still trying to get the hang of things. It's weird following people, it kinda makes me feel like a stalker.
I get that, I started tracking various tags that fancy my interest. It's still probably going to take a awhile to get the flow of things.
I'm still trying to get the hang of things. It's weird following people, it kinda makes me feel like a stalker.
Ha. I get that, I really do. It's sort of like going to a party or a function when you don't know anybody. Everyone's got name tags on and is in little groups scattered about the room in conversations. You never want to interrupt a conversation but really you just need to jump in and introduce yourself. That's when the party gets fun.
Nice analogy. Take this as my introduction then.
thenewgreen has wonderful analogies and metaphors for everything. Now that I've pointed it out, you will smile every time you see a new one. Welcome to the community. It's the tiny details that make us special.
There isn't some sort of initiation ceremony involving hooded robes is there?
not yet. But I like the way you think ProtrudedDemand.
Since you follow users instead of subreddits, you start to know usernames a lot more than you ever did on reddit. It's cool. Because of this I learn more and more about the people on this site over time. I'll learn their interests and hobbies and opinions on different things and I'll link all those bits and pieces of information together. A couple months later I realize I know these people pretty well. This is such a weak answer. I apologize. I drank far too much last night.
If you don't mind, I'll provide some advice. In real life we tend to meet people around topics; at work, a tennis league, a gaming group, french class etc. I think the best way to use Hubski is to follow one or two people (kleinbl00 is a good one) and then to follow a number of tags. As you start seeing good content from people via those tags, follow the ones that post it. Also, I follow and unfollow people all the time and people unfollow me and follow me all the time. I don't take it personally. You should be able to follow and unfollow without feeling any sort of "pressure". But... if you are looking for people to follow right now, check out the "badges" link at the top of the page. It has some of the best content from the site. Also, the community link at the top of the page has some nice resources.
It really depends on what you like. Go to the tags page and click a tag. I'll choose drugs because....I love drugs? Anyways. If you look down the list you can see that minimum_wage seems to post a lot of content, so that would be a good choice to follow. Rinse and repeat. As you go on you get a feel for the people who's content you read and content you don't. Another great way to judge is to go into your settings and set "share-counts:" to yes. Now when you hover over a name you can see how many things you've shared by that person. If you're following someone and that number is zero, then it might be a good idea to unfollow them. If you don't follow someone and that number is 10, it would probably be a good idea to follow them. As you build your feed, you can always check out the global posts at the top and discover new stuff. Hubski gives you a myriad of ways to discover and read new content.