Y'all need to trust the votes, man. When was the last time you saw a spammer shared? They sit there, selling tires or siding or whatever, in the global - unshared pile and that's entirely appropriate.
That's interesting, because AFAIK, you use global more than most. It's one of those issues where I can see a reasonable desire for each. Part of my reasoning for default culling is the way that the site will appear to logged out users. Of course, we could show everything once someone logs in, but that might seem odd when the global feed (the one that a new user must begin with) is fraught with what the rest of the site sees as garbage. Of course, looking at posts with more shares will help, but I don't think it would be too long before spammers start sharing with puppets.
I'm a corner case. We both know that. But you build for the corners so that the middle is more stable. If I'm using "global" more than most, you should probably pay attention to me more than most. It means I've found more use for global than most, which means I'm predicting the future for everybody else. Default mod, here to help! Know what Reddit only started doing recently because it fucked with their made-up traffic numbers ('tis true: if you look at a paid traffic report for Reddit as opposed to Google Analytics, they're overestimating by 15-20x): Domain bans. I can already ignore domains. So can everybody else. You have the ability to track how many times a domain has been ignored, right? Set a threshold. Hell, set a threshold/alexa rank ratio - that way even if 20% of your users have huffingtonpost ignored, it'll still show up in Global because it's huge. ahametals? that threshold could be a little lower.Of course, looking at posts with more shares will help, but I don't think it would be too long before spammers start sharing with puppets.
Here's someone that hit the threshold fast: https://hubski.com/pub?id=146772
So build out your non-global feed. That's the thing about "global" is it's made up of the intentions of everybody, not just you. If I click on "community" I see: - 3 strikethroughs in "recently badged" - 5 strikethroughs in "most badged" - 4 strikethroughs in "active posters" - 3 strikethroughs in "popular commenters" - 3 strikethroughs in "active commenters" ...which, to me, demonstrates that my own little corner of Hubski is veering towards "echo chamber." That's fine - so long as I can venture forth into the great unknown and see what everyone else is doing. Some of those guys I got ignored and muted come up with interesting content sometimes, I just hate talking to them.
Hmm. We ignore and mute for different reasons, is what I'm getting from our last few exchanges. I ignore people who always have low-quality content that I would never want to see -- you're more heavy-handed it sounds like, so I can understand why you might want to "venture forth" occasionally. I probably never would.
I ignore people who engage me in flame wars. I've nearly ignored theadvancedapes a few times because his content is entirely too pie-eyed popular science for my tastes, but he's earnest, he's polite (far more polite than I am), he's trying hard, and he's sharing the stuff that interests him (and clearly interests others) and it's good to keep an eye on that stuff. I ignore obvious spammers. Doesn't gain me much but I figure mk's got some secret sauce back there to detect spam and I assume I'm helping.