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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Apathy

Now that looking at content by tag is no longer an easy option, I find myself missing it more and more.

    It's three clicks to even see the tags I'm ignoring. Let me follow stuff instead of dudes and I'm much more likely to find stuff I'm interested in.

The option for following either or both seems better.

EDIT: but I like mk's "follow people to connect personally" site model, too. I can't stress that enough. I've made friends on hubski in only two months, which means they're doing something right.





mk  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My mind is moving, flagamuffin and kleinbl00.

My biggest aversion to tags has always been avoiding the tragedy of the commons. It wasn't clear to me why tags were any different than subreddits, and why they wouldn't follow the same content cycle.

Over the last few days I have come to some important conclusions on this front. I'll follow soon.

kleinbl00  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Tags are different simply by allowing more than one tag per post. I've been hammering at the admins of Reddit to allow cross-posting for going on four years now but the simple fact is their architecture doesn't allow it. Yours? You can do it as an afterthought.

You've been awfully cagey about tags, never fully elaborating why you dislike them. I'm curious how tragedy of the commons applies in your mind. Care to share?

mk  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I just have a sec before I am supposed to watch the Walking Dead with my wife (It's awful and good).

The short version is that a tag gets too many subscribers, and too many posters. Soon #space goes from discussions of volcanism on Titan, to countless Neil deGrasse Tyson love-ins. Everyone is soured by the quality of #space and declares Hubski to be full of mouth-breathers. A few survivors create #realspace, and it begins again.

kleinbl00  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

All right, thanks for that.

The short version of my answer is the same as the long version of my answer:

If you clutter up my #space feed with Neil deGrasse Tyson love-ins I can ignore you.

Subreddit crawl is a problem in that subreddits are one-dimensional. By allowing your users to subscribe to both tags and other users, you create a two-dimensional subscriber space. Granted, if a person posts three lame things and one awesome thing I might miss the awesome thing because I'm ignoring them - but if I see one awesome thing in a miasma of crap I can follow the person who posted the awesome thing without having to worry about the miasma.

mk  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That is it in a nutshell. Our filtering system either works, or it doesn't.

kleinbl00  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Our filtering system either works, or it gets tweaked.

FTFY. ;-)

joelg236  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm interested - how exactly does the filtering system work? If a pile of users were to flood a tag, how would hubski react? Does it rely on users ignoring them?

joelg236  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Anyways, I think hubski naturally promotes content good for discussion. Since tags can be used by users to mark bad content (ex. #spam or #repost or #loweffort), I think it would be pretty easy for the community to regulate itself, provided that it doesn't get flooded with people who like bad content, in which case almost everything is useless to combat it.

b_b  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've been chipping away at the boys on this one. I think that if we impose a character limit in the tag line, it would be difficult to use them as spam, but within that character limit, one should be able to makes as many tags as possible. If tags exist, there isn't really a great reason to limit them to one. I see all or nothing, and everything else is a kind of Obama '09 stimulus package, a nod to the fact that its a good idea, but close to useless in practice.

syncretic  ·  4080 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I think that if we impose a character limit in the tag line, it would be difficult to use them as spam, but within that character limit, one should be able to makes as many tags as possible. If tags exist, there isn't really a great reason to limit them to one.

I couldn't agree with you more! It has always puzzled me why the OP is only allowed one tag per post - I would absolutely love it if that number were increased, even if it were only to three or five... unlimited seems almost too good to be true.

kleinbl00  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

As it is now, every person gets to add one tag, presuming they've earned the right to tag. The difficulty with tags is that the taxonomy becomes a bear. At some point #writing and #writebetterdammit need to merge (or at least overlap) in order to make the content parseable. I have no solution for that as of yet. The rest of it seems pretty elemental to me - I mean, Twitter lets you follow tags, and Twitter lets you follow people. They've got a bit more of a userbase.

dublinben  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't even know why I bother to tag my submissions thoughtfully. Nobody is following #technology or #politics, just #Dublinben's_Article_of_the_Day.

bioemerl  ·  3569 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My only dislike is the lack of community in tags. No sidebars, no wiki, etc.

But I am almost interested to see if one tag can be a whole different experience for two groups of people (if it can be pulled off). If it can than this site has FAR outdone what reddit ever will.

joelg236  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Community implies both personal connections and a more general sense of belonging. I think hubski does the first one very well, but communities within hubski just haven't come up yet. I think tags may or may not do that. If tags were implemented, the people who value personal connections more can follow users, and the people who value community more can follow tags. It seems like a good balance.