I am wondering if that thread over on, I think it was r/theoryof, was the best thing for hubski. Exposure and the Eternal September and all that. But the metaphors in your post were brilliant. I've spent most of my goddamn life here in the south dealing with kudzu and privet; it resonated with me.
One of the things that bugs me the most about Hubski is its insular, good-ole-boy network feel. There's very much a "I'm here because I'm a friend of a friend" vibe and too often for comfort conflicts are resolved by intermediation between a mutual acquaintance. For a while, the biggest influx Hubski had was the Circlejerkers following me over for lulz, but the architecture didn't really suit them so they either settled down or left. It left that "good old boy" structure in place. Getting in a bunch of people who don't know each other, who don't inherently like each other, who don't have history with each other is definitely going to change the character of discussions. However, it also means that shitheads from Detroit aren't going to get up in my grille just because I'm not a shithead from Detroit. And I'm all for that.
No, I'm pissed off that on a website that focuses on "following" individuals, there isn't more of a culture of "not being a dick to the people you're following." I think it's related to the "share" functionality, whereby if someone who is following me clicks on my wheel, it gets shared to everyone they're following... and a lot of those people don't know me from Adam (and, for example, know thenewgreen personally). The end result is that from my perspective, I've put a lot of my personality into what I write and share and feel unduly attacked when, for example, I post something about living in Hollywood and the Detroit Contingent shows up to say "fuck Hollywood, all those rich bastards deserve to starve." If they had no idea that I live and work in the entertainment industry there's no reason for me to take it personally. But considering how much I have to say and how much I've shared is about how I live and work in Hollywood, it becomes a personal attack. I'd like to break that chain. Hubski needs to be less about "who you know" and more about "who you read."
Okay. Well, I'm very new here. So when I say I haven't seen any negative sentiments expressed on a personal level it doesn't mean much. (I've interacted with thenewgreen more than anyone else on the site so far, and I can't see him personally attacking anyone on hubski, ever, but again I'm new here.) So I disagree with your first sentence on principle but not from experience. But your last sentence is interesting. It almost seems like you're saying hubski should be more like the better parts of reddit. (Less who you follow and more what sort of content you channel to your feed.) The thing that has attracted me to hubski and emphatically away from most of reddit is the personable feel and the reasoned arguments. But again not being as much of an expert on either website I don't have much more to contribute than a slight disagreement.
The basic problem is that the more followers you have, the more likely you are to run into negative sentiment. The sub-problem is that the more unique and individual your voice, the more likely you are to piss off someone every time you make them happy. So if you are good at "hubski-ing" you end up with lots of people taking a swing at you. You've got 21 followers. As of this moment I have 416. One of them is thenewgreen, another is mk. There's probably a lot of crossover between their followers and mine, but at 400 for me, 400 for TNG and 400 for mk, there's ample chance for someone who doesn't know me from adam (and doesn't have any manners) to tear into me for, say, not liking Dodge. Been there, done that.
I see. I don't really know any way to fix that. If you get "good enough" at any news aggregator, you'll run into this phenomenon. You're "famous" on reddit, of course, and I'm sure you get flak for that all the time. Are you advocating taking the opinion out of this site? Or the personality (for lack of a better word)? If you just post links to news sources, images and blogs all day, without saying or doing anything that might be remotely offensive to anyone, I suppose you might avoid personal antipathy.
Ahhh - but news aggregators are not user-centric. Hubski is more like Facebook or Tumblr. And Facebook, Tumblr and Blogger all give the provider of content the option to censor other users on the content they post. Hubski does not. In many ways, Hubski is a hybrid between Reddit and Tumblr. If you want the Tumblr touch, you need to Tumblr control. I'm advocating a good deal more discussion and investigation on how to continue incentivizing providers past the point where they attract controversy lest they decide it isn't worth putting up with the bullshit (done this twice now). That incentive could easily be "come up with ways to foster community such that a culture of hostility is curbed before it develops" but my discussions with mk so far have been along the lines of "I'm don't see any way to deal with this that doesn't stink of censorship so I'm not going to work on it at all."
Reddit has become user-centric in many ways. This is one of the largest problems with reddit, but it is fact. hubski is most like tumblr mixed with twitter, I suppose. It doesn't strike me as remotely similar to facebook. You mean in the sense that if I post something I can limit who 'shares' it to just my close friends or whatever? Okay. I'll conditionally agree with you. If indeed there is a problem with the personal side of hubski, which I haven't myself seen evidence of yet but may in the future, then I admit that some sort of solution might be needed. However, it may just be that hubski will remain a personable version of tumblr/reddit, and if that's not your niche, it's not your niche. Curbing this hostility could accidentally curb what many of us like so much about hubski, and I can see why mk would fear that. Good discussion, sorry for my weather balloon-related dig at the beginning.And Facebook, Tumblr and Blogger all give the provider of content the option to censor other users on the content they post.
>Reddit has become user-centric in many ways. That's not a statement one can make without a defense. I'm recognized a great deal less than i used to be. I would argue that Reddit has become overwhelmingly less user-centric than it used to be. >You mean in the sense that if I post something I can limit who 'shares' it to just my close friends or whatever? Okay. No, I mean that if you make a comment on my post and I don't like it, I can delete it. Same with Tumblr or any blog.
For the former, I was thinking of novelty accounts, and how on the larger subreddits jokes about usernames and reddit personalities are rampant at the top comment levels. That's what I would call user-centric rather content-centric. (Additionally, things like bestofreddit, and also subs that are dedicated entirely to non-content things like helping people through charity or advice. Strays from news aggregator status into the internet community arena.) For the latter, I don't think that would be a particularly bad change, especially if you had to earn it first, in the same way you have to earn retagging privileges. I also notice there is no way to hide comment strings on hubski.
>For the former, I was thinking of novelty accounts, and how on the larger subreddits jokes about usernames and reddit personalities are rampant at the top comment levels. There hasn't been a novelty account that has lasted more than a couple months since PIMA went down. Before him, there weren't any noteworthy ones since PACG. The remaining "novelty accounts" are all moderators and are universally despised. >Additionally, things like bestofreddit, and also subs that are dedicated entirely to non-content things like helping people through charity or advice. I've been bestof'd more than 40 times and created /r/favors. To say they are "user-centric" is incorrect.
Disagree. There are the various "draw/read/sing/dramaticize your comment" guys. I imagine there are other examples but I'm not on the big subs enough to see them. In any case, I regret giving specific examples, because that always runs the risk of letting the person you are debating "debunk"* those examples and ignore the larger point -- which was that reddit is more about the community of 'redditors' than it is about the content these days. In some subreddits more than others, because of course lumping all of them together is a silly generalization. *in quotes because your response to bestofreddit (not r/bestof) was not adequate in my opinion.
>Disagree. There are the various "draw/read/sing/dramaticize your comment" guys. And since SIDT none of them have caught on. He's been out of the limelight for a year. "I imagine" is not a valid point of argument. >reddit is more about the community of 'redditors' than it is about the content these days. That wasn't your point - your point was that it was user-specific. There's a big difference between "favors internal content" and "favors individual users." I asked you to provide examples because you're making allegations you cannot defend. Saying "I shouldn't have given examples because they ignore my larger point" isn't argumentatively sound - if you have assertions, you must back them up with data. What you have is a feeling. Your feeling is based on lack of information. I have data. And that's why I said you are wrong. "Adequate in my opinion" is syntactically the same as "truthiness."
I've seen comments by the watercolor guy, the dramatic post guy, the sing your post guy, and the read your post guy in the last two weeks. Don't have them saved because I don't care. If you want "data," you'll have to do with that. Don't tell me what my point is. reddit is seen more and more as a 'community' and less and less as a news aggregation site. That is my point. It is still both, but its focus has changed semi-recently. I did provide some examples, and you refuted them without actually refuting them. A caveat -- reddit can be about the content. It's a matter of where you are on reddit and how you use it.
I've seen this sentiment quite a bit, but I think the readers of ToR are largely people that we should be happy to accept into the hubski community. Now, when a post in a default subreddit makes it to the #1 spot on r/all, then I'll be worried.
Until I moved down south I had no idea what the hell Kudzu was. Now it's everywhere. Did you know that Kudzu is used as a thickening agent in cooking? I had no idea, but it works really well.
I did not. I have to admit the idea somewhat repulses me. What really annoys me about non-native, invasive species is that most people can't tell them from the species native to their area, and don't understand what the problem is. They look at a wall that's been overgrown with kudzu and they say "at least it's green." Meanwhile, the best trees in the Smokies are dying.