It seems like you've identified a problem that Hubski hasn't grown much in its 10 year lifespan. My experience is that there is never enough content (posts & comments) on the site each day. I'm not sure how showing users even less content (comments from new users) is supposed to address this.

The digital marketing growth hacker types like to image a funnel that tracks a user in their journey towards a desired endpoint. Some percentage of users drop off or fail to stick around at each level of the funnel. This makes the higher levels of the funnel the most important places to influence behavior, because you have more users to work with. The experiment here seems to be fiddling with the Retention of users who have already found hubski and registered an account in the Acquisition and Activation levels.

I have no insight into this site's actual traffic numbers or how many new visitors check it out, but that is where the focus should be to grow this community. More potential friends need to be browsing the front page so they can be compelled to register some day. It's hard to see names that we know and recognize leave the site, but attrition is natural. Without a consistent source of new members, this site will inevitably shrink into a devoted core. At that point there probably isn't critical mass to keep a site like this alive, and the remaining few will probably transition to a group chat or other private discussion to keep in touch.

I love this site because of the serendipitous nature of the content and people here. Without that new energy, I may as well just subscribe to the kleinbl00 newsletter and move on.

Now that my donations are going twice as far, I decided it's finally my turn to chip in a few bucks. Thanks for all the amazing work!

I like you pseudonymous folks on hubski better than the "real" people on my Facebook. I think this is actually the perfect middle ground, where people can truly express themselves and build a reputation, but not tie that to their real identity if they choose not to. I think I'm a lot more "real" under this handle than I ever was on Facebook.

The obvious solution to illiteracy and ignorance is education.

However, this problem is structural and I place most of the blame for this situation squarely with us, the technologists and designers. We have created a world where it is acceptable to load a webpage with dozens of tracking scripts. We have designed advertising systems that are perfect delivery methods for malware and viruses. We have built competing browsers that are feature incompatible and have contradictory interfaces.

We have established a computing system (especially with Windows) that sets users up for failure, by default. It's time we technologists fulfill our responsibility to deliver operating systems and software that respect user rights and priorities. We should be proselytizing and installing GNU/Linux operating systems (Debian, Trisquel, etc.) that are not user-hostile by default. We should be educating users on the importance of being in control of your (free) software rather than being controlled by your (proprietary) software.

In the future, I recommend not giving two week's notice for hourly labor like this. Two week's notice is a courtesy that makes more sense for salaried workers in specialized roles. The type of roles that will take more than two weeks to fill. If you're working hourly labor at a restaurant, or in retail, or construction, your job takes between two minutes and two hours to fill. If your employer has already demonstrated that they don't treat you with courtesy (everything in your story points to this) then you don't owe them any in return.

When you live in a humid climate in a poorly insulated building, with no natural ventilation, AC makes a lot of sense. My bedroom is often 5+ degrees warmer than the outdoor temperature, so it's stifling without at least a short blast of AC.

In reality, "Capitalism" has a definition. Private ownership of the means of production largely describes our current economy, whether there is robust competition or not. "Crony-capitalism" is Capitalism, and vise-versa. It always has been.

The new badge certainly looks very nice. Although it's just become a more vibrant reminder than I don't have any yet.