It's likely that Reddit is going to be drawn to Hubski the most. There's no equivalent to the "downvote" here, so chances are many a social recluse who live on Reddit are going to find Hubski's way to quantify social acceptance to be pretty attractive.
Huh. You figure that the lack of negative reinforcement is going to draw the downvote-shy lurkers out in a big way? I always figured those are the same folks who lurk 4chan, browse SA, and never participate much anywhere else - the "fear of downvotes" is just an excuse. There are almost always going to be "silent majority" readers, I'm not sure if the exclusively positive-reinforcement model is going to change that where other systems with no negative reinforcement at all have failed. I dunno, mostly just musing, but I'm not sure that it's such a make-it feature or trait.
You are certainly correct in your observations of the "lurker" crowd. No matter the site mechanics, there will always be a large component of site users that browse content aggregators for, well, content, rather than the community. However, for those who are a part of the larger reddit community and (as amusing as it is to say this) actually care about karma points, Hubski offers an alluring system to quantify social acceptance. Users only need 8 dots to earn a badge, and with no possibility of being "downdotted", earning badges seems to be an easier goal to accomplish than racking up thousands of karma points. Hubski offers a crisp, customizable content feed that people who like reddit will find familiar. With the comparative easiness of racking up badges, Hubski will likely attract lurkers and avid users from reddit alike.
That's true, but with no "downdot", there's no way for certain content to be quantitatively discouraged, only encouraged. Also, Reddit users taking a glimpse at Hubski may be drawn to the concept of acquiring badges in a similar way that many Reddit users are interested in acquiring karma points.
Which could actually be a long-term weakness of the model, if the site grows too much too fast - with such a low cap on maximum points, it strikes me as possible that some channels and tags get way clogged if a sudden influx of users with a different value set than the past core demographic show up. Personalized feed won't be affected by this, ignore and the like can fix much of that, but with too many too fast, ignoring users from general tags fast enough to keep the tag what you're hunting may become unfeasible.
I'm wondering about this "interest clogging" too, like if people start spamming a single interest. It seems like it won't affect the feed (which I guess is solely determined by shares of followed people), but it could be a problem if you search for #interest.
Which is why I'm not at all upset by people being mad that I started #hubskidrama. They can't downdot me.with no "downdot", there's no way for certain content to be quantitatively discouraged, only encouraged.
I'm going to grab this opportunity to ask you a question related to that. Not that I want to whore badges or anything, but how do I get a second dot on the circle next to my name? I mean, this post of mine has 4 dots right now, but I still have one dot by my name?