Lots of good things said here by lots of people.

Let's break down the two critiques:

1.) Hubski is Insular, intimidating

Yes, it is. But the reason has less to do with the site itself, and more to do with the culture. There is a general culture of accountability here - If you say something, then you have to mean it, and be able to back it up (or admit to flights of fancy). For the average social media & aggregate user/ human being in general, this is a big change. "What do you mean I can't just talk bullshit?". There is no just "You're wrong", it's "You're wrong because (x)."

This culture should never change. Accountability and civility (as much as possible) are the reasons I come to this site every day.

2.) Long term users have more followers, and therefore have more "pull" on the conversation.

I've seen some evidence of this, but I don't think it's strictly true for all cases. We have a whole host of new "freshman Year hubskiers", including people like Quatrarius and elizabeth who haven't been here for that long, but are in my view high quality members of the community, (shout out to all hubskiers less than 365 days old).

So far as I know, you guys don't weight content from followed users more than unfollowed users, so I think that it's just that, if you DO follow someone and they post in a tag you also follow, there's a double chance that it will show up in your feed.

A while back, KB mentioned that be follows tags almost exclusively, with very few followed people. I've been trying it out since, and I think that in general that's the best way to use hubski. My process is sort of as follows:

Step one: Follow tags that I like

Step two: if someone in those tags posts consistently good quality content over time, follow them

Step Three: see what new tags show up in my feed via that person or via secondary #tags on posts. If any of those appeal to me, repeat Step One.

I don't think something needs to change, per se, on hubski, but I do think a shift in focus from following people to following tags would be a great idea. What it does is reward those who post quality content, while making individuals with fewer followers less "disadvantaged" when it comes to visibility.