I recently discovered Hubski, and so far I really like it. But it seems just like Reddit to me, which I also like. Basically, and obviously, my question is this: why should I use Hubski, and why is it different than other sites like Reddit or 4Chan.
The userbase. It's a smaller group of people that are active, and it's small enough that you actually recognize the people that post and kind of get to know their views and enjoy hearing responses from certain people. Also, unlike 4chan and Reddit, the site hasn't devolved into memes, reposts, and images with text on them that dominate the top "content" of what seems like every subreddit. People aren't posting things to get imaginary internet points or reach "the front page", and I haven't really seen any "whoring" of that type of submitting here yet at all. The upvoting and "points" of Reddit have turned it into the biggest circlejerk echo-chamber of opinion the internet has seen yet. I stopped reading Reddit and came here because I like the smaller community, and I like the content here better. Sure, the same content could be found on the other sites you mentioned, but sifting through the pile of crap images and video game references that make up 95% of the "content" on those other sites just wasn't for me anymore, even the niche subreddits started to get crummy. There's far less content here than on Reddit overall, but I read and enjoy more of the things that get posted here. Also on Hubski, if people post crap that I think is stupid, I can just ignore them, or the tag, or both. On Reddit, if a subreddit turned to crap, sure I could unsubscribe, but then I miss out on any content about that subject entirely, whereas here I can just unfollow/ignore those specific people ruining my experience and still see stories on those subjects. Oddly enough, the only people I've had to ignore here so far are the people who are/were prolific Redditors with gigantic karma scores... and guess what... my content and Hubski quality got better. At the risk of sounding like an internet hipster, Reddit and 4chan both got too popular, and with that comes a massive decrease in overall quality. You know why Youtube comments suck? Because everyone uses it. You know why I think Reddit and 4chan suck now? Because everyone uses it. Hubski is still small and still has a "community feeling" to it which I like. But if Hubski had a couple million users by next week, no offense to MK, this site would probably get a lot worse too. It's the gift and curse of popularity that kills internet communities for me. My two cents. You should use Hubski if you like it, it's really that simple. You don't have to use one or the other, and can use all three if you like. It's not a street gang or a professional sports team you're joining. ;)why is it different than other sites like Reddit or 4Chan.
I actually think Hubski will scale much better than other sites, as you are not subjected to the content of the crowd. Hubski's unique feed mechanism means that your feed consists only of posts from people you follow. Hubski could blow up and if I didn't follow more people I'd never really know. At least in theory. I look forward to seeing how it holds up.But if Hubski had a couple million users by next week, no offense to MK, this site would probably get a lot worse too.
I do believe Hubski would scale better too, but I also enjoy reading from specific tags too. I mostly follow people, but I also follow a few tags. If I only followed users, you're right, my feed probably wouldn't change that much. But while my content in my feed might remain strong, the comments in those sections might get notably worse if people I dislike are following the same people. Also, browsing the global feeds to find new people to follow, or see more general content outside of my personal feed, could easily become a flood of constant crap with lots of junk to sift through.
With regards to low-quality comments in posts you see, that can be dealt with one of two ways. First, you can personally ignore a new user who makes inane comments. I've ignored as many 'jerk users as I can, so I will never see their comments (or posts) again. Second, the users in your feed can ignore them. Ignoring a user prevents them from commenting on your posts, which gives you some measure of control to the discussions happening on your posts. If these methods become insufficient, I fully believe that mk will develop a better system.
True, but even on Reddit using RES, ignoring users became fruitless over the last year. Too many to ignore in most threads that giving up Reddit was easier than ignoring 50 dipshits per comment section. In smaller niche subreddits, sure it was still doable, but I found it to become fruitless, and removing myself from the community became easier than trying to stay on top of ignoring and filtering people. The way I saw it, is if I have to ignore more than half the users I came across, then maybe I'M the one who was in the wrong place. I don't doubt MK could come up with something to improve the quality of the site if there were to be a huge influx of users, but other than a small pay-wall and stiff moderation like SomethingAwful, I've never seen a website sustain high quality forums for discussion as they've become more popular. He'd be the first person, in my opinion, to truly solve that issue if he did. Reddit did a decent job up until subreddits were hitting hundreds of thousands of users, and some with moderation even kept them decent at that point. But when the defaults toppled into the millions not even moderation could stop how crummy they got. And those users from the defaults just assumed that kind of crap was acceptable everywhere on the site, and the same type of behavior spilled into even the smaller and more niche subreddits. So we'll see, but yes I have faith in MK too, but it's still a huge challenge should this site get large. In the mean time I'm going to enjoy the quality and lack of ass-hattery of a small community. :)First, you can personally ignore a new user who makes inane comments.
One subreddit that I feel keeps discussion legitimate is /r/askscience. The moderators rule with an iron fist and mercilessly remove inane content and logical fallacy. I like that subreddit a lot because of it. But I agree, the overall quality of Reddit is now akin to the way Digg was right before the site redesign. Terrible.
That's pretty much one of the few I was thinking of as well. With those kind of numbers, heavy moderation is the only way to go. In other big subreddits whenever the mods propose some new rules and changes the community throws a collective hissy fit of "OMG THIS IS "OUR" SUBREDDIT DON'T TOUCH IT IT'S FINE. LET THE UPVOTES AND DOWNVOTES DO THE MODERATING!". But up and downvotes really don't work anymore, and are biased towards image/meme content because of how the system works.One subreddit that I feel keeps discussion legitimate is /r/askscience
And of course the availability of upvote-bundles which you can purchase online for marketing purposes. I felt an heavy uprising in PR-related content in the past year.
Yeah, I follow tags too, but very very few. I was talking elsewhere on Hubski recently about how following people provided the quality regarding a topic, where following tags provided immediacy regarding that same topic. As humans, we like both, and I regard tags as a kind of hack that grant us the immediacy we sometimes seek. I envision Hubksi keeping people as the primary point of entry to topics, with some version of tags (which have not been "solved") as a secondary means. Your point about the global posts is spot on. Also, as Hubksi scales I think that there will need to be a toggle switch where you can have your feed be comprised of the posts of people you follow and the posts they share, OR just the actual posts of people you follow and not the ones they share. It is easy to just share something, and people do it with less thought. This switch would let people reign in what makes it to their feed, keep the quality level really high (only get exactly what people you follow submit), and also let you follow more people without having their 'children threads' snowball into your feed. But the underlying mechanisms are sound. There are all sorts of algorithmic tricks you could do to deal with the global feed problem as scale happens. I have zero doubt that multiple ones will be tried given the level of iteration currently operating.
I was never a huge user of reddit or 4chan - so I can't speak with absolute authority on the matter. But I'll say this: Why should you use hubski? -community. the people here are thoughtful, considerate, challenging, and intelligent. theadvancedapes, kleinbl00, and too many others to name are people that I may not see eye to eye with on political, social, or political issues - but that's the beauty of hubski - we can have intelligent informed discussions that broaden my perspective and increase my understanding. Seldom do conversations devolve into the standard internet flame wars. The few times I felt offended by something, I approached the individual in PM, and came to an understanding. Maybe it's the smallish user base, maybe it's the general tone - but this place seems to remain downright civil. -content. sure... we get the occassionaly cat video or other meme... but for the most part, that stuff stays on reddit/4chan/digg, etc. and the quality content flows here. And by customizing your feed, the noise stays at an almost inperceptable level. -admins. mk, thenewgreen, and others are incredibly responsive. This started as a side project for them. They make no money from the site. They are more communicative and responsive than services I actually pay for. They listen to, and even make system wide UI changes based on a user feedback.
Also there's me, and I dare say I'm downright attractive. That being said, and again piggybacking off this comment here, Hubski is the only site I know of that has been able to have an intelligent, calm discussion about atheism since atheism became popular with 15 year olds who are 2edgy4me. There are even members of SRS on the site, and yet there really isn't any flame war breaking out. Its all very civil and very agreeable. Everyone here likes Android Lust, though. There is that.
Hubski has different mechanics than those sites. On Hubski, your main feed is made up of posts from people you follow, and the posts of people they have chosen to share. The basic philosophy is that quality conversation and content comes from certain people, -not certain topics. I think you're probably familiar with the problem of subreddits on a range of topics devolving into crap. What if you only followed the best posters on say, r/technology, instead of having to see everything that the crowd up votes? That is more what what Hubski is about.
If you like topics, you can follow people who post on that topic often, and as a nice bonus, you also get to see posts on other topics by people of quality you follow. This is an elegant solution to the problem of new content discovery and not getting locked in to just the topics you've selected. As others have mentioned, the community is smaller, but that won't last forever, as Hubski is growing. The beautiful thing is that no matter how big Hubksi grows, you can keep it as small as you want since you decide how many contributors make up your feed. It could get huge and you might never know it. I think it will scale really well, but that remains to be seen of course. Also, you can block trolls and antagonists from commenting on your posts if you wish. Also, the 'up vote' system is not designed to encourage karma-whoring. It stops giving you vote totals after 8 votes, and there are not downvotes. This speaks volumes about the character of the site. There are many other differences that I won't go into. In short, you should use Hubski because you've been curious enough to come here and ask why you should. And you should keep using it if you dig it :) Lastly, if there are any features of Hubksi that you like, don't get too attached. Hubksi is young and developing pretty rapidly. Features come and go pretty often as the site is not shy about trying new things out. This is a good thing.
Piggybacking on this- it's immediately apparent that Hubski's "follow the people rather than the topics" interface encourages the development of a strong online community, versus something like Reddit, which is really good at promoting the semblance of community. Reddit's basic interface allows us to congregate, as you already said, around an idea. Which is the basis of any community, online or off. The illusion breaks down, however, when you realize that the transactions on any given Reddit sub are incredibly fleeting- given that a) the size of any one sub all but guarantees that you'll never talk to the same person more than a handful of times, and b) there's little incentive to actively follow any given user, since unless they happen to post something that makes it to your timeline, you'll only ever follow them if you actively dig around for their profile. So ultimately, you get a bunch of discussions which may or may not remain civil and may or may not remain on the topic of your mutual interest, but which, more importantly, hardly ever build anything more than a fleeting relationship between the congregating users. And communities may begin around a shared passion, but they thrive through interpersonal connection. I've only actively been on Hubski for, oh, about eighteen hours now. But once you get over the superficial similarities to something like Reddit, you very quickly realize that the interface encourages actual community-mindedness. By following people rather than topics, you're forced to a) choose carefully to relate to people whose conversational style and substance complements yours, and b) then constantly keep tabs with what all those people are talking about. It more effectively promotes deliberate personal interaction rather than incidental interaction around a given subject, and it seems to insure, at least at this early point in my experience, a level of civility that increasingly seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, around places like Reddit. The conversations I've seen around here have been largely respectful and substantive. It's a really refreshing change.
"so far I really like it" Why are you asking then. "But it seems just like Reddit to me, which I also like." so fuck it, use those other sites. If reddit, 4chan and hubski all seem equivalent to you it doesn't really matter where you go. Try hacker news and slashdot while you are at it. It's really just about what we are consenting to do with each other here. Asking for a Hubski infomercial just seems like a trolling to see us seals bounce a ball on our heads. If it seems "just like" all those other sites then you have missed something about what people are doing here. Really? just like 4Chan? you do troll.
The interface. It's purposely hard to use (read: not impractical, but takes a while to learn). Reddit's downfall was it was too easy for middle schoolers, high schoolers, etc. to pick up and use for "le may-mays". It's too easy to have a subreddit with nothing but imgur posts. Most defaults are 95% images. Hubski encourages thoughtful text, scientific articles, and intelligent conversation. Just the way the website is designed. Hopefully it works though...
I disagree, Hubski's interface is hardly anything way out of the ordinary for it's kind of site; you have voting where the community decides what gets the most attention, your information and other tools are at the top, and you can follow users as well as tags; these are all things that people know from reddit or twitter, although it does take a day or two to learn the ropes of Hubski, I feel as though the sober aestethic (No image previews, very little bright colors) and the small, polite community (Which can be intimidating.) do more to make the site what it is. Lastly, you can't really blame a particular age group for reddit's current state, the one common denominator of the bad parts of reddit is a large reader base, /r/teenagers was a pretty polite place last I checked.
That's harder to say when you experience first hand. Hearing the freshmen in my school talk only about Reddit's "/r/funny" and "/r/adviceanimals" and how they should "lol submit this video of this guy grabbing his balls to /r/videos. You'd get so many upvotes man" really emphasize to me, in my opinion, how it's no longer as discussion friendly as it was.
No no no, It's not bad. That's why I don't like using the word, but it's really the most accurate one. I'll us an example. Recently, I saw one of my classmates using an off-brand Reddit iPhone app, so I said "Why don't you get Alien Blue? It's features are great, and it's even great without getting the paid version." too which he responded, "Yeah, it's pretty nice but it doesn't let me do this." So he's on r/funny, and this app lets him open a photo, go to the next photo with a tap, then the next with a tap, etc. So then I go "but.. but.. the best part of Reddit is the community! You can't even see the title, let alone the comments!" and he goes "Oh no, no I just think a lot of these photos are funny." Hubski doesn't let you quick scroll photos, even if this was a photo oriented website (thank God it's not). The discussion and the community, and in a way the interface require commitment. It's perfect.