I have been thinking on this, but haven't settled on it in my own mind. I am not worried about the actual functionality being detrimental as I expect that most users wouldn't use it, and I know that a number of active users are interested in new users and onboarding them. Importantly, as kleinbl00 notes, the setting is for the individual, and it is private. One aspect that I do worry about is in anyway supporting an 'us' and 'them' mentality. I abhor tribalism, and I do not want to give it fertile ground. I can see the utility in avoiding new users as they get their bearings or decide that Hubski is not for them. Still, the most valuable user on Hubski to me today might have made an account 15 minutes ago. I think that if most of Hubski felt this way, we would be better off for it. For this reason, I think the timing of this 'new user ignore' would best be short, and not customizable. I would hate to see a "100 day club" emerge on Hubski. The passage of time does not filter for what we are most interested in here. I strongly support the notion that a user should have the tools to create their best Hubski experience, and everything that kleinbl00 said above makes perfect sense to me. However, I am left wondering if there isn't a better way to avoid this problem, which as far as I see it, is a disruption of the global feeds when we get a large influx of users, particularly those with a shared culture and shared expectations. For my part I am going to be reading and thinking. If anyone has thoughts to add, I'd appreciate them.
Said the guy who removed tags. See, this is where stuff doesn't make sense: You say you "abhor tribalism" yet you built a site that functions on personal (as opposed to subject-based) popularity. You even tried to remove every other kind of functionality. You - like everyone else negative - thinks I'm saying "fuck newbies" when in fact I'm saying "give me the option to not see their presence until it won't piss me off." It's a humanitarian gesture, really. Yet you, who doesn't use global and doesn't much support it, don't even realize that these citizens whose presence you don't want to alienate won't even show up for you unless they share one of maybe four tags. Hubski is every bit as tribal as Twitter. Your every instinct is to push it further in that direction. Meanwhile, I'm asking for a change that doesn't impact site functionality one bit - once more, I can go through by hand and ignore everyone in #reddit - and actually gives new users a chance to acclimate. I've already ignored four new users. I doubt I'll unignore them (I doubt they'll be here in a week). If they were ignored by default, our first interactions might well have been after they started enjoying Hubski for Hubski instead of that awkward period where they demand boons and circlejerk each other.
To be fair, I said that I abhor tribalism, not cults of personality. :) But, in all seriousness, I do see an important distinction, which your comment forced me to define in my own mind. I have little problem with people being admired for their personal contributions and accomplishments, but do take issue with admiration for association or some similar low-effort criteria of inclusion. When I say tribalism, I am referring to an inclusiveness based upon ideology, or place, or in this case, time. That said, at this point, that is my only reticence regarding implementation of the feature, and I think it can be easily mitigated. For my part, I am leaning towards doing it, and I think the rest of the team feels similarly. We are going to talk over it on Monday. To be perfectly honest, we probably hamstring ourselves by being so sensitive about these kinds of dynamics. People love to form groups, and Hubski doesn't make it easy to do so. It's something I am well aware of, and I've wondered if my stance on the point isn't still too extreme. It was in the case of tags, as you won't let me forget. There have been other features that we have entertained that have not been implemented based on this approach. For example, we have been tossing around the idea of group tags for some time. That is, you create a unique group tag, and choose who can use it. It wouldn't quite be like a subreddit, since the users that could post would be limited, but it would create something akin to a custom community that could be followed.
This has just become a much more useful conversation. WHY I FOLLOW VERY, VERY FEW PEOPLE One thing about upvotes - they don't matter. An individual upvote is a raindrop in an ocean. They can be tossed about willy nilly without much impacting others' user experience; they can be slathered on without altering the site dynamics. Hubski shares are different. If I click the button, that article suddenly becomes visible to nine hundred people. With comments it's a little better in that comments can't be shared separately from links, but it still radically shapes the appearance of the page. Which would be one thing if people thought of clicking on a button the same way they think of sharing a link on Facebook. But they don't. I can't claim ESP, but I can claim a more-than-passing familiarity with online behavior, and what I see regularly does not reflect "I want to show this to everyone following me" it reflects: - I read it - I made a good comment and I want people to see it so they will vote for my good comment - You asked a question or said something funny and I don't have time to respond so I'm showing you that I heard you, thereby using the "share" function like a read receipt This is incorrect. There's a network magnification effect at play: Let's say I'm following you and you're following insom. You will share things that insom posts, so I'll see it 2x. insom may follow b_b, as will you, so I will be exposed to his posts... and will likely eventually follow him. Pretty soon there's a rolling herd of us who have a substantial portion of our follows in common - we've become a club that reads the same stuff, comments about the same stuff, and shares the same stuff while out there in the world, other things are happening. That's why I got rid of all my follows... and added back in people who are following those I ignore. You can run the analytics; I can't. But in viewing other peoples' front pages, I'd say there's likely to be 70% overlap between you and the people you know unless you are actively working for diversity by exposing yourself to discordant material. So for you, the "global" page is an abstraction - it's that thing for people who haven't figured out your "follow" topology. For me, it's That Place Outside My Bubble. I may be hypersensitive to the bubbling issues around here - chumminess makes me itch - but I think you underestimate the utility of the site you've created outside of the individual follow. You've built an interesting network. The part you were aiming for is pretty well refined... the leftover frontier experiences a lot of tail effects. One of those tail effects is the assembled hordes of refugee waves. NOTE THAT I AM NOT INTERESTED IN DISMISSING THE REFUGEES. I am interested in their learning the ropes outside of my experience. You have filtering already - I can look at unshared global posts, I can look at global posts with two shares. I can look at unshared(?) global comments, I can look at global comments with eight or more shares(?). If I'm not in Global, I'm not likely to see anything by anybody I don't know anyway; I don't follow a lot of "general" tags (PRECISELY because they tend to be used by newbies that haven't found their way around yet). But if I am in Global, I may just find something that nobody in my "circle of friends" has seen... and I may want to participate without sharing, I may want to share without participating. I should not participate in Reddit threads. I know too much and have far too little patience. But I did... BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THERE WAS. Without the ability to filter through the immigrants my Hubski choices become "bubble" and "Reddit." Let me also share something with you: Every reasonably sized subreddit runs Automoderator. Everybody running Automoderator has it set to remove posts by anyone less than (X) days old. Some subreddits have it set to 1. Some have it set to 7. Some have it set to more. Many subreddits also have a karma cap - 5, or 10, or "more than 2." As a consequence, moderators tend to see comments from people who have been filtered. Not a lot - a very, very, very few. The one thing that distinguishes the people who are smart enough to post a worthwhile link and also smart enough to notice it doesn't show up? Their accounts are over 7 days old. Food for thought.To be fair, I said that I abhor tribalism, not cults of personality. :)
People love to form groups, and Hubski doesn't make it easy to do so.
I can buy that the global experience can be improved. It is a conversation worth having. I've tended to view global as a pool from which things were drawn out, not the place where you would want to soak. However, I do understand the bubbling issue. My default search engine has switched between Google and DDG about 5 times now. It's not a perfect analogy, but global is where I go if my feed is feeling stale. IMO global should be able to be viewed in its entirety, thus 'show-global-ignored'. However, even if in spirit global remains a fishing hole, we can change what's in the tackle box. Just for the sake of argument, is there a better metric here? For example, "ignore users until the community shows X appreciation?" I am NOT suggesting implementing this AT ALL, but I wonder if that is the best way to determine if someone has learned the ropes, or if it's enough (or superior) to just rely on a few days time for the best filtering. Is newness what is best addressed? Part of me wants to make the time 9 days just so we can call the setting Pease-Porridge.
I don't think so. "Ignore users until the community circlejerks you to the top" is not a useful metric as yesterday's adventures were largely driven by Redditors celebrating other Redditors in a "fuck the man over here until we feel like going back over there" frame of mind. It also drowns out unpopular opinions, which are things I like to see, believe it or not. I also really don't want a fixed setting, as I suspect we'll be done with this current crew of tire kickers by Sunday, whereas the SRS invasion took a good week or two to burn out. I mentioned this to TNG, I'll mention it to you: Give me two sliders, one that says "older than" and another that says "younger than." let me specify a range. It's then no longer about "censorship" it's about finding another avenue into the data. Another thing we use automoderator for - sampling. Over in /r/movies we had Automoderator report anyone with over 100k comment karma because we were interested in seeing whether or not /r/centuryclub was having an effect on our content the way they were in /r/askreddit. Note that we didn't do anything - we just wanted a highlighter. What we discovered is that the centuryclub posse largely swooped in on fast rising threads, largely said circlejerky things to each other, and then left, without interacting with our community one iota: in other words, they existed in their own splendiferous bubble of irrelevance and harmed no one. You can learn a lot about Hubski by poking around Hubski. I'm asking for another instrument. Do this: Code it up for yourself and see what you see. Take notes. Then do it again in a week. Lemme know what you learn.Just for the sake of argument, is there a better metric here?
As someone with 900 plus followers, I wholeheartedly endorse the idea of ignoring "users with more than X followers." For balance, users with less than X followers seems appropriate... but I doubt I'd ever use it. It would, however, be a useful tool for those poor downtrodden masses that see themselves as the butt of the joke here: If I had an account that was a day old, and I felt like seeing what Hubski really looked like, I could ignore users with less than two followers less than a week old and then you wouldn't need that pesky recommendation engine that gave me 900+ followers in the first place.
When a new user joins it simply says, "you are not following anyone yet...."then you wouldn't need that pesky recommendation engine that gave me 900+ followers in the first place.
-fwiw, that pesky recommendation engine has been defunct for a good while now. You are "naturally" receiving these people now.
You are one of the most insufferable people on the internet. I am severely disappointed, coming here from reddit, to find you here whining. "You - like everyone else negative - thinks I'm saying "fuck newbies" when in fact I'm saying..."
... " awkward period where they demand boons and circlejerk each other" No, I think you're pretty much saying "fuck newbies". Please go back to reddit. You have 20+ subs to mod and I'm sure you can keep your superiority complex fed without poisoning hubski. This is my first hubski comment :)
Go back to Reddit? Dude's been here for 3+ years. He and mk have a long history of sparring over site features. It's not personal, and they get along pretty well. Context is lost when you just read this one comment. Context matters, and it's lost on new members; I think that's a large part of the gripe to begin with.
Yes. That's exactly right. So many users land here and expect to just drop in. It's like approaching a group of people at a party who are already chatting. Observe the social graces: introduce yourself, shake hands, listen and THEN try to participate.Context matters, and it's lost on new members; I think that's a large part of the gripe to begin with.