I already see objections to avatars rising. I hate to maybe make you feel like we're ganging up on you, but I will say it's been discussed before and a fair number of people seem pretty adamantly against it. Frankly, if you (general you and not specifically actually you, veen) can't be bothered to remember my username through and over our interactions, then why bother? I don't learn people's names the first night I meet them but if I keep bumping shoulders with them I do. That's what a username is.
As I said in that post you linked: I haven't really changed my thinking on it. Although I do think these discussions are worth having. I do like veen's suggestion about being able to explore past discussions you had with a user. That would be interesting, and it probably would reinforce feelings of civility.2. I recognize many users by their names, and most importantly, what they write. I don't feel that an image can influence that in an additive way. Also, users can and do change their profile images, usernames don't change.
My ideas shouldn't be free of scrutiny so if they're shit I'd rather have people tell me that. I started writing this because a) there are people whom I've had conversations with months ago, and I kinda forgot who they were and b) I noticed I haven't started following anyone in a while. For both problems I didn't see very good solutions so this was an attempt to add solutions for that, by making relationships stronger here and making it easier to get to know people. Not my lack of interest. Maybe I'm lazy or diverting the problem from myself to the system, I don't know because I kinda need to sleep now.
I don't know. I am also a daily hubskier. I'm sure it is different when you have more distance. eightbitsamurai called this place a social network earlier today. I had never considered it as such. For me one of the key differences from reddit that I noticed here from the start was the fact that usernames
Matter, that I actually did have to notice them because without realizing it I was building relationships with these people with each post. Reddit was always so big names never mattered. Here it became evident they really did because you were interacting with the same six people In every discussion. So I have a bias towards saying it is a user flaw over a site flaw due to my experience and take on the site. Your mileage is not my
Mileage and that's okay.
To provide some clarification, I was more referring to the fact that Hubski is more like a bar then Facebook is. People move in and out, but there's a sense of unity throughout the website. Facebook is more like a...well I dunno what it is anymore, but I know the bar metaphor was not apt.