(you drew the short straw, huh?)

You know how you murder a community?

You favor new members over old.

You know how you starve a community?

You favor old members over new.

Hubski has had wave after wave after wave of new blood. Some stick around for hours. Some for days. Some just stick around. In the time that they stick around, they either adapt or they leave.

This is not a big site. It never will be. Nobody has dreams of pageviews. It exists for the conversation. It is necessary, therefore, to value the conversation above all even to the detriment of "new users."

A balance must be struck: Maintain that comfortable "third place" feeling for those for whom it is familiar but reduce the chummy insularity for those for whom it is new. And I gotta tell ya - as the primary target of last week's dustup this site is doing nearly everything right.

Look at it this way. We got a rush of new people. Most lurked. Some posted content. Some posted questions. Some found new places to talk, some joined old. Most adapted, most were treated with civility and openness, some stuck around, some left.

Some of them pissed off person after person after person.

("...we get PMs...")

So what happens when you've got someone who just won't get along? You try hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. Then they get on your nerves. Then they get on your friends' nerves. Then you start reacting in a less-than-friendly way. Then the whole thing comes to a head and everybody puts their heads together and wrings their hands and wonders what to do next.

Thus the "you drew the short straw" comment - I've gotten five PMs in the past day suggesting just such a post was a good idea. Timeframe ran from "right now" to "in a few weeks." Everyone wants to worry about this. Everyone wants to know what could be done better. Everyone wants to know what can be done to prevent such unpleasantries in the future.

My answer is "nothing." The system works. Polite people will be polite until they can't stomach impoliteness anymore, and then they start to look to each other to see if anyone wants to deal with the boor at the party. In a GOOD party, nobody wants to be the heavy. In a BAD party, people fall all over themselves to get into the fisticuffs.

Hubski is a good party.

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If anything, I think the taxonomy could be improved. People who tag something with #tv instead of #television. People who think to follow #writing but not #writebetterdammit. I firmly believe that "users" should be deprecated as "things to follow" and "tags" should be made something more easily browsable. It's easy for me to say that, though, 'cuz I have no fucking clue how to program a search engine.

I think the community of Hubski does just fine. I think the landscape of Hubski can be a little confusing if you don't lurk for a while to try and figure it out. The "new user" tutorial is great; as I've said before, I'd be tempted to subscribe every new Hubski account to #newhere and populate the tag with useful, helpful stuff.

But that's small potatoes. By and large? Things are A-OK.