The admins want reddit to be hugely successful at the expense of everyone who made it that way. Shadowbanning people is a bullshit tool that they say is used to combat spam, and yes, it is most often used the way it was intended. Sometimes, though, it's used to silence dissent or cover up their mistakes.

As a moderator, you have two choices... you can either toe the line (and those that do sometimes end up on the payroll like qgyh2 and dacvak) or you're disposable. If you're going to ban someone from your site, just do it. Don't make up some bullshit reason like vote cheating because he upvoted something with his alt a couple of times. I'd be surprised if half the fucking active submitters haven't done that. I've done that. It really sucks when you post something and 10 seconds later it has a downvote, so you delete it, post it again later, and 10 seconds later it has a downvote again, in a subreddit with 2,000 users. Not to mention, a subreddit with 1 upvote and 1 downvote is not visible on the subreddit page. How much fucking bullshit is that? One person can effectively censor you in a small subreddit until someone bothers to check the new queue.

So, someone is obviously watching your account to downvote your new submissions, so you log in with an alt, give it an upvote to offset the stalker, and lo and behold, it's on the subreddit page again and has normal activity from then on. That isn't vote cheating, it's offsetting their shitty algorithm.

The downvote is just another way to harass someone. It was originally called a "downmod," and was used to remove off-topic content and spam from the front page. Then subreddits came around, and the downmod was used to do the same thing until subreddit moderators could show up and remove it entirely. Mods didn't need to remove hardly anything or have strict rules because the userbase wasn't comprised of 12 year olds crossposting from /b/.

Now the moderators are either completely inactive or are busy fighting off the zombie horde, and the admins are laughing all the way to the bank.

I assure you, it was intentional ;) I think this place has great potential, and I have become very frustrated with the state of reddit as of late, in particular the group think / hivemind that seems to permeate every subreddit. I love the sense of community here, and while I don't think hubski can completely replace my reddit experience any time soon (the wealth of knowledge and diversity of the smaller subreddits is just too hard to resist), they will definitely be coexisting peacefully on my bookmarks bar for the foreseeable future.

I look forward to seeing where hubski takes all of us into 2013 and beyond.

How long does it usually take to fill your first hubwheel? I've been using the site on a casual level for a bit, I have 95 followers and quite a few submissions, but I've only earned two dots on my hubwheel. Should I try to comment more? I prefer to submit content more than participate in the discussion, I like reading & hearing what other people have to say.

I actually like that... if it works like I think it should work. For example, let's say I really like what UserX has to offer. He posts a lot of science & technology articles, and he's generally a great guy. However, he keeps submitting these inane #askhubski questions that keep cluttering up my feed. I really don't like most things that are tagged #askhubski, and if I am in the rare mood to view such posts, I'll just go to #askhubski's tag page.

UserX is really cool, and I like most of what he submits, so I don't want to unfollow him. Luckily, I can ignore the tag #askhubski, so I see everything that he shares, except his stupid #askhubski submissions.

Actually, I think it would be great if mk took that a step further and allowed us to ignore specific tags by specific users. Say, if I generally liked #askhubski posts, but not the ones UserX keeps posting, I could ignore any #askhubski posts from that specific user. Maybe each ignored tag could have a choice where you made it a "global" ignored tag, or you could switch it to "specific users" and add users to the #askhubski ignore list one by one...

Thanks for reading my post that brought you here :)

This single change is right up there with removing the ability to follow tags in terms of the positive effect it will have on the user experience. One of the things I hated most about my experience on reddit is the power that internet stalkers could have on my submissions & comments. People tend to give moderators a lot of hate on reddit, and the reddit admins have been of very little help in that regard, which is one of the (numerous) reasons I deleted my reddit account in the first place. I think this is another step in the right direction that will keep hubski on the path of success.

I cannot thank you enough, mk.

mk hinted recently that the OP of a thread might eventually have mod-like powers in their own threads (just like facebook, youtube, twitter, etc). It would be nice if you could prevent people you have ignored from commenting in your threads at all.

I'll be completely honest, I'm kind of disappointed with the change in functionality of tags, but I love the addition of the unshared page. I think the first thing I'm going to do is make bookmarks for all of my favorite tags, but we'll see, perhaps the unshared page will be enough that I don't miss anything interesting.

Now the main thing I'm looking forward to is the ability to hide/unhide posts. Has there been any progress on that front?

My dad is currently playing victim to a romance scam on Facebook. Thankfully, it's a simple Western Union scam, and my disabled father isn't actually leaving the safety of his own house, he's simply wired thousands of dollars over a period of almost a year to someone who he thinks is a penthouse model living in Missouri, but is most likely a large black man living in Nigeria.

He still thinks she is going to show up one day to cook his meals and clean his house and marry him and start a new family with him. He is 50, "she" is supposedly 36... and deaf, which explains why she doesn't own a phone (lol). I have tried and tried and tried to convince him that she isn't real and is just a criminal leeching off of him until he has nothing more to give, but he becomes irate with me and will not listen. It's almost been a year since he first met this person online, and he has sent probably $5k in that time. He receives a disability check of $2k per month, so that is almost three months pay. Not chump change for a disabled man living alone.

I don't know what to do at this point except make sure that I will be here for him when he finally realized he has been lied to and scammed. Every time he brings it up, I tell him how I feel, and he gets upset with me. She is supposedly flying in every few weeks, but something always comes up, and then she needs more money. It's gotten to the point where I will avoid him so I don't have to have the same conversation. He is stubborn and very much believes that children should not question their parents. He says God spoke to him, and she is the answer to his prayers. I feel so powerless and upset at this point that I avoid his calls because it is causing physical manifestations of stress.

Does anyone have any advice on what I should do? I keep hoping he will finally see the light. How many times can a grown man be lied to before he figures it out? He is a very smart man, college educated and a linguist. He has MS, a degenerative brain disease, but his symptoms are very mild and mostly physical. He walks with a cane and his hands shake to the point where he cannot type very fast anymore, which is why he is on disability (formerly he was a medical transcriptionist). My mother passed away a year ago, and he met this person online not even a month afterwards. I know that love and grief both cloud your judgement, but this is ridiculous.

I teach an after-school program for predominantly low-income K-8th grade students. Each day after school I help my kids with their homework, plan activities & play games. I also drive a shuttle bus back and forth from a local elementary school a few times each day. Part of each morning is spent updating content on my center's Facebook and Pinterest pages with the intent of reaching parents in the local community.

Right now, I could see myself doing one of three things with my life. I would love to teach science at a local middle school. I find teaching and working with children to be extremely rewarding, even if it doesn't pay very well. At the same time, I would also like working on & tinkering with computers, so I would really enjoy opening up my own local computer repair shop, or perhaps designing websites for local businesses, something of that nature. Lastly, I really like playing Magic and collecting comic books, so I think I would enjoy opening up a local game store and selling both of those things for a living.

Very amusing to see what looks like a sun flare of redditors surrounding ytknows and lolsail.

It's a very popular optical illusion, shown in many textbooks. Basically, the orange circles in the middle are both the exact same size, even though they look like different sizes, due to the size of the blue circles surrounding them.

I knew it looked familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until today.

I love these analytical posts. Please keep them coming!

That sounds reasonable - the entire point of the "unshared" tab is to find new content from new users (stuff that might not have gotten shared if you hadn't been looking for it). If several people have commented in a thread, but no one has shared it, that's probably a good sign that the post is not worth discovering in the first place.

I highly doubt some IRC chatter will "dilute the content away from the main website." If my experience has shown me anything, such alternate ties only serve to make the community closer, and encourages bonds of friendship between members. That's half the point of Hubski, isn't it? To meet new friends with similar interests?

I still check in from time to time.

You can still contact me here.

Hey mk, I just noticed something a bit odd. My profile page says I'm interested in #photography and #dubstep. I did submit a few things under those tabs, but it was like 400+ days ago and I was just bored testing the system. I went through and deleted all of my posts under those tags, is there any way you could "rescan" my profile or something? I don't want potential followers to get the wrong idea about what sort of articles I typically share. Now I mostly post #science, #technology, #education, #politics, #thehumancondition, stuff like that.

Excellent idea! I'm going to play this today with the kids in my after-school program. I'll definitely let you know how it went!

Yes, one thing that struck me as odd is that ignored users are highlighted in red in the comments section. That seems very counter intuitive to me. "Hey, I know you told me you don't want to see anything else from this user, so I highlighted their comments in red so you notice them quicker!"

Excellent news! Thank you for being active in the community, mk, and responding promptly to feedback & criticism. It's so refreshing after dealing with the latest generation of reddit admins.

Happy New Years, lil!

Does our current education hamper individual creativity and growth? And does the US need a major revamp of its public education system?

Absolutely. I teach an after-school / summer program for predominantly low-income K-8th grade students. Most of my Kindergartners are with me each day for longer than they are in public school. The amount of six year olds being medicated on a daily basis because they are bored is unfathomable. I feel like public education in this country is just a conveyor belt pumping out kids into a broken economy. It's extremely frustrating that my infant daughter will be going into the public school system in a few years, because I can't afford to home school her or send her to a more progressive private school.

I demand to know what sort of shenanigans are going on around here! ;)

...I really hope not.

I read wikipedia all the time, just not when I'm browsing hubski or reddit. I prefer to see them in my google search results, not my hubski feed.

It's nothing personal, I love most of your submissions, and it was even an interesting article! My enmity towards wikipedia stems from years of constantly seeing them dominate the front page of the /r/TodayILearned subreddit, and hoping that the moderators would ban them and delegate them to /r/wikipedia where they belong. Alas, unfortunately, my wish was never granted.

However, that's a great example of how reddit's system of moderation is flawed, and hubski's system of personal filtering is so much better for the end user. If personal domain filtering is adopted here, rather than constantly being frustrated by a specific domain popping up on my front page like I was on reddit, I could simply filter it out of my feed. Much superior, imo, than trying to get the moderators to ban the domain for everyone, as commonly happens on reddit.

Perhaps make the mute list public, but not the ignore list? I would ignore someone who may be a great person, but perhaps we just don't share similar taste in much of anything at all. On the other hand, I would mute someone who is being a jerk and/or harassing me or other people in my submissions. There's a big difference between the two, imo, and just personally I would prefer to keep my ignore list private, if only to spare people's feelings if they happen to end up there.

I unfollowed you because you insult everyone around you with each breath you take...

...and now you're on my ignore list.

Of course but my point is I keep seeing other people use a variety of these terms, it's probably got something to do with an ancestral desire to belong to a tribe, but whatever, it's happening. I just wanted to see if we could actually agree on one of them that suck less than the rest so that when people feel the need to use one, it's not a different one each time.