We all have different expectations of the site, and reasons for being here. I'd like to get some more perspective on what people dig, and what they don't.
There are some things about the site that I like, and some others that I feel just ok about. However, I don't want to start things off. I'll jump in. -There's one thing in particular about Hubski that I want to mess with.
I'd also like to consider the possibility that what we think we want, isn't always what we actually want.
I should be able to submit something and if it's been submitted, see the old article. Particularly since the whole point is the comments, I don't want to miss comments on something I'm interested... and the way things are now, if someone I'm not following posts something with a hashtag I'm not following, I won't see it until someone who follows us both recommends one or the other. The situation is manageable now, but traffic is light and even then, I still duped something yesterday. Along similar lines, some way to "fuzz" similar tags would be nice. If you statistically start seeing the same things in #writebetterdammit and #literature, my feed should start to fill up with some of the stuff from whichever one I'm not following... until I opt out, of course.
I'm leaning towards the idea of a specific discovery page... something like, popular, recommendations, tags that you like, etc., all rolled into one spot. It's just a very rough idea atm, but the popular page could be more useful as it stands, and more personalized. However, I'm going to do my best to steer clear of algorithms that alter your feed, since algorithms are so easily broken. But, there should be algorithms that suggest content that you might add to your feed. I think a 'suggested articles' section might be good for the discovery page.
I think more could be done with the badges too. Not sure exactly what yet, but they need tweaking imo. What about email notifications for when a particular hubskier posts? Maybe I would be interested in knowing when or or posts? I would actually use that for those 3 people. That way when I'm at my desk at work I don't have to keep toggling over to Hubski to see if one of my favorite submitters posted but can get an email. It would obviously have to be something you opted in to. What do you think?
As for badges, that's good to hear. Some updates are in the works, and will start appearing soon. As you've requested. :) As an aside, sharing posts by email will be rolled out in a day or two.
I recognize that Hubski is a place without downvotes, but Reddit's handy-dandy method for setting up an RSS feed for whenever somebody comments is why I have an army of tedious little shits preventing me from commenting usefully. Saydrah has ~6 downvote bots even now. All it takes is a griefer with an axe to grind showing up and stirring up shit whenever you contribute to really kill the buzz of contributing.
Edit: It might be neat to just enable HTML5 desktop notifications like GMail has now, though, for when you have hubski already open
I've been contemplating modifications and options that would reduce it's prominence, but I haven't settled on anything yet. I'm actually considering removing it for a few days, just to get a feel for the site without it. That said, the usefulness of the all posts page might diminish on its own as activity increases. There's just something about it that doesn't sit right with me.
Now, building off of that, I think it would be interesting if your personal profile page had kind of break down and analysis of the content you most visited. so while i think that i might not like #agriculture that much, as it turns out hubski is telling me that i've read 40 articles in the past three months with that tag then i might have to reconsider my position. similar to the way online banking systems will breakdown how much you spend on a particular thing ie. rent, food, entertainment. so you can say "Holy Shit! I spent $10,000 last year on beer!" Could be interesting.
I'm going to do some more work in this direction, but I want to take it stepwise. In the end, I'll probably separate out 'profile preferences' and personal recommendations and analysis into their own pages. Anyway, thanks for the idea. More to come!
I tend to agree with that. Now, building off of that, I think it would be interesting if your personal profile page had kind of break down and analysis of the content you most visited. I like this idea. As I mentioned above, I am considering converting the popular page into a more generalized discovery page. This would be a good idea for that page. -Thanks!
One thing, I do like how most people are discerning about content they share. That's a valuable thing, IMO. I don't want to spoil that aspect.
I appreciate the desire to leverage the person-based discovery of content, but the fact of the matter is, "All posts" exists because your current approach doesn't adequately parse Hubski. The way to diminish the "schizophrenic" usage of the site is to improve the functionality of "follow", not eliminate the functionality of "all." FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not a programmer. You could tell me how you're coding all this and I wouldn't understand well enough to offer suggestions. So take this with a grain of salt: You have to have a pretty good idea, down there in your data, of what we click on and what we don't. You also have to have a pretty good idea as to what we comment on and what we don't. The way to do "follow-based" discovery wouldn't be an "all" button but, perhaps, a "mutate" button. Spitball up a variation on the statistical approximation of what I'm following, tweak a couple things, and spit that new profile back to me to let me see what else is out there. This allows me to dig more into the "social" aspect of it and less into the "all" aspect of it (because sometimes it's important to know what everyone else sees, too, I don't ever want that to go away). I use Absynth a lot. It allows you to do this. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
This whole conversation is good, and it's giving me some food-for-thought. The pattern here seems to be that everyone would appreciate better ways to find good content. That's where I am going to turn my focus. I don't want to add just a bunch of functionality, however. I'm going to put some serious thought into making a discovery page that is both useful and pleasing to use.
http://hubski.com/comments?id=lessismore If you go to your hub, you can click on 'posts': http://hubski.com/posts?id=lessismore :) I suppose that means I can do more work on the UI. I am going to clean things up a bit in the next week or so. I have designs to make the profile page less cluttered, and to make the 'popular' page into something more personalized and useful.
The current format is fine when there are 2-3 comments. But, when the comments get in to the 10-20 or even 50 range like now, it can be difficult to follow the conversations. Take for example 's comment http://hubski.com/pub?id=13570 At first glance, it is difficult to tell if he is responding to this comment http://hubski.com/pub?id=13553 or this one http://hubski.com/pub?id=13544 .
Although this is the first time I've noticed you have the word "whence" in your gobbledygook. Yep. some Hubski pages need to know from what page you just came from. Say you try to comment, but didn't log in. After the log in, Hubski drops you from 'whence' you came.
Or would it be preferable to use a hashtag like #hubskibugs?
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- I'd like ways to be able to more easily discover content that I'm interested in. Some form of a recommendation system might be a possibility. - If there is a large influx of people into Hubski, there will eventually need to be a way to control spam and so forth on popular hubs like politics or music.