It is that you disagree with me on this, though. The way you guys run things is mk saying "hey, I don't think tags are something I want, I'm taking them away." The way you guys run things is mk saying "hey, I think I'm going to optionally get rid of ALL TAXONOMY and call it 'serendipity.'" It's not that you don't have the resources to dedicate to search - it's that you prioritize real-world, conventional search below literally everything else, occasionally injecting quixotic attempts to not only deprecate real-world search results, but to annihilate the ability to organize Hubski by taxonomy at all.

Hubski is based on this "let's follow people" model, with "ohhhhkay, if you really insist we'll let you find things that interest you the same way everyone else does it, but we want you to know we resent you for it and will thwart you at every turn" as the icing on the cake. And yeah - it works. It works because nobody has more than a thousand followers, three people have more than 500, and a couple dozen have more than 100. But there's already a class system - I gained 200 followers in the recent influx just by existing. Did you? Or did you gain a faction? I've been here a year and change and I'm already "old money." I've already got the "prime real estate." And when the last wave of refugees hit, they all chose to follow me, despite the fact that I hadn't posted anything substantial in weeks, because they had no real alternative.

Let's say the next Reddit Wave brings in ten thousand people. I can expect to get 20% of that. I could start posting gifs and they'd be visible to more than half the site - chasing away the new blood and annoying the old. Because although there are people who have been here longer than me, and although there are plenty of people who post better content and make better comments, I've got the numbers. And everything Hubski does is designed to magnify my advantage.

There's this basic idea at Hubski HQ that search and taxonomy are things you pay lip service to while dedicating your quest to improving the user-following experience. What you guys sullenly refuse to acknowledge is that user-following, the way you intend it, is already broken at the numbers you're experiencing. I'd wager that one of the reasons 90% of new users bail never to return is that their initial experience is poor and has no chance to improve without fully absorbing the folklore of the place... and who has time for that? If, instead, Hubski gave a new user the ability to craft a page based on his interests and then get exposed to new things through people they follow - now that would be something.

Where we disagree is I see the "base" of traditional search and taxonomy to be absolutely crucial to the experience. You, on the other hand, see it as a necessary evil until you find something to replace it.

I'm right. You're wrong.