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comment by JTHipster
JTHipster  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A reddit admin on tags  ·  

I will dissent from the general consensus here that tags are incomplete at best. I think, for what Hubski is, tags are perfect. Let me explain.

Reddit is a site about communities, and the information is secondary to the participation in said information. The articles are interesting but the rewards come first and foremost from responding to the articles or the images; hence reddit's extensive structure for community support and communication.

Hubski is reversed. The primary purpose of hubski seems to be - and this may be temporary as with all things - the article and the information surrounding it. Conversations are secondary - look at the rate of comments per capita as compared to a site like reddit - partially because the articles posted here tend to be more in depth.

Conversations taking on this role of below the actual articles does not promote the building of sub-communities within the greater Hubski metropolis. The community is much more singular here, and while part of that is certainly due to its size. a good bit of it is because there is no effective way to build miniatures communities within the site. That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Hubski is supposed to be about sharing intellectual and thoughtful discussions and that can only happen in a diverse environment. So while subsections of hubski are going to be very, very sparse, the site overall is better equipped to avoid becoming a series of loosely connected echo chambers. Tags are a way to prevent this and I think that's a bit more important and more in line with what hubski is than a lack of subhubs. Also sub-hubs sounds dumb.

The only issue with the user system is that it encourages power users far more than reddit does. If I'm going to look in to the future, I see a hubski dominated mostly by 30 people or so who have several hundred followers each, while most people are left unfollowed. Even right now, the majority of content that will show up on the feed of a new user is the ones generated by the people who have larger userbases following them.

Hell, if I made this comment I just made in to a post, I'd likely get a full wheel if every one of my followers was active, even if I just made a post that said "I like butts." No matter how intelligent a person is, they are more likely to click a button that says "I approve of this" if they know the person. That in turns spreads the content and even if it only attracts 10% of the people who read it, that's a massive number of people as it all compounds on itself.

I for one, shall make sure to reserve a lovely piece of land off in the country side. I plan to have my daughters marry mk to strengthen my connection with the royal family.





akkartik  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I loved this comment and think everybody should upvote it. Can you elaborate on this?

    Conversations taking on this role of below the actual articles does not promote the building of sub-communities within the greater Hubski metropolis.

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Hopefully we'll come up with ways to make the site more egalitarian and socially-mobile as the site grows. That way your daughers can marry for love :p And avoid polygamy :p :p

JTHipster  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I loved this comment and think everybody should upvote it. Can you elaborate on this?

Sure thing. You see, everybody should uphug - yes I misspelled uphub originally but I like uphug better - because I am great and have a burning desire for both attention and external approval of my miserable life. This is generally due to my mother never expressing her approval of my actions throughout life and its created some pretty serious self-est...oh you mean explain the quote? Oh okay that makes more sense.

Communities develop through communication; if you can't express yourself there's no way to form a coherent group because there's no way to coordinate. Imagine for a second that you could in no way know what other people want, that you have zero ability to communicate or understand their desires on any level. Basically, imagine you are a college aged male. Or a married man. Now replace the entire world with women, and every single one of these hypothetical women have a high set of standards that they won't tell you, and they all expect you to make the first move. Also they all friendzone you all the time and never return your calls, even though you thought the date totally went well and you're just worried about them and their feelings. I mean, hypothetically, this person could be named Julie. Haha. Hypothetically...

This is getting a bit off topic, but that'd be an extreme and totally impossible version of what I'm talking about. More communication means more coherent groups, and less communication means less coherent groups. Reddit as a site is designed to encourage commenting and communication, and at the same time provides the ability to create community havens moderated by site members. So what do redditors do? They talk. The more they talk, the more they bond as a group, or the more they are pushed away for having viewpoints too far out of the majority, until eventually they find the four-five subreddits that they spend most of their time on and assimilate in to the community.

What has happened, and happens on reddit to most (if not all) registered users, is the creation of a subsection of the community, almost like its own little neighborhood. For better or for worse, when you subscribe to a subreddit you are becoming part of a separate community from reddit as a whole. Most of them have names for redditors who join the community, or communities are given names (ratheists is probably the most famous example.)

Hubski is the opposite. When you participate here, you are participating on hubski. You are not participating in a tag, you are participating in the overall community, partially because commenting is both less prevalent and unrestricted by subsections. If, say, thenewgreen shares a link on my feed like he has in the past, then I can freely comment on it without having to go out of my way to find it. Boy I sure you don't think I'm done elaborating because I've got half a flask of Chivas, most of a cigarette, the last bit of coke, and another can of pringles to go through so elaborate I shall.

Cross-participation like this creates a healthy overall community because it promotes a diversity of opinions - though only because comments and links cannot be downvoted or otherwise hidden by popular consensus - either in the comments or through the links. Hence the term metropolis. Hubski, as a site, is set up to be a much more monolithic structure as compared to reddit; while it may have a diverse set of opinions, it isn't varied in geographic terms. When you click on a tag you aren't actually entering a different area so much as filtering out other information. While technically subreddits do work in a similar manner, the user does not perceive them the same way. Subreddits are a few steps removed, and tags are not.

In no way is a lack of subcommuntieis bad. I actually think subsections of a site are the easiest way to bring the quality down, because they have the effect of totally isolating a subject from the community. I didn't even know there was a beekeeping tag until a uphugged (that was intentional) post made it to my feed via thenewgreen and others (his name came up first guys, the dude posts everywhere.) If that was a subreddit, and not one of either the defaults or one that I had subscribed to, I would never see that ever, no matter how high up it reached. I actually missed Obama's AMA a while back because I had unsubbed from IAmA once I bothered registering.

Also polygamy is the best system. And my daughters will marry when I tell them damnit! I didn't work my britches to the last thread of their 800 thread count cotton just to have my two girls think they can defy their father! I never should have sent those two off to that boarding school! Soon they'll be like those other harlots, showing their ankles all about, embarassing themselves at dinner parties, even smoking and drinking like a common ape! Why, back in my day, women of their stature and upbringing knew how to be well behaved, and if they were to, as they say, get to know a man in the biblical sense of the word, they would have the courtesy to have the child aborted in private and then bottle up their emotions for ages and ages just to avoid marrying the man they slept with because it turned out he was an alcoholic and abusive and they would rather the child die than be raised by such a horrible father, and then their mother comes in and finds them crying over a blood-covered sheet at three in the morning and knows exactly what they are going through but can't say anything because for her entire life from the day she was born she has been told over and over again not to speak her mind, and its eating all of them up inside because they just know I know that she had the child aborted but I can't bring myself to tell them because this is the early 1900s an emotional expression is only capable of being expressed through the tip of a hat or punching.

Also back in my day a penny bought you a candy and you could by a pygmy manservant for a hundred pounds. I once rode a whole chariot of pygmies up a pygmy mountain for less than the cost of a car these days!

akkartik  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Now I'm confused. Are you saying not promoting sub-communities is good? And what did you mean by "Conversations taking on this role of below the actual articles.."?

JTHipster  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Its not bad. It certainly prevents echo chambers.

Also, I meant that "conversations holding less importance thaan the actual article." Or something like that.

akkartik  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Ah, I see.

akkartik  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·