a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by mk
mk  ·  3749 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How do *you* use Hubski?

    for some reason it's not catching on with me.

Can you elaborate on this? Even if it's hard to pin down specifics, I would be great to hear why you feel this way.

Compared to Reddit, Hubski is currently a quieter, more intimate place. This has benefits and drawbacks. I would love to see more fragmented communities here, but I've come to believe that some dynamics require a certain mass of users. I have definitely seen posts and interactions become possible here that weren't in the past, but as zonk mentions, we aren't yet large enough to sustain most niche communities.

We continue to grow, and I look forward to some of the possibilities that come with an expanding user base. However, at this current size, there are some limitations to what Hubski can be.

That said, feel free to try to make Hubski what you would like it to be. Use the following mechanisms as you would like to. Unfollow everyone (there is a button on the bottom of your profile page) and build a new feed every month or so. Follow only tags and domains, or follow only personal tags. Limit posts to one sentence. Whatever you like.

I should say that we (mostly forwardslash) are currently rewriting the entire site from the ground up. We have a plans for the future, and have concluded that the best path there is to build with tools that are optimized for it. That's not to say that Hubski is going to be significantly different, but it will do what it does a whole lot better.





demure  ·  3748 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sure, I can try to elaborate.

Lemme give some background. I'm not out of high school yet -- and thus suffer from a lack of certain life experiences and am at an age where I feel a little out of place on Hubski -- not a fault of Hubski itself or of its users, not at all. In my efforts to take a break from my studies, I turn to reddit and youtube for mindless entertainment, time which I used when I was little to read (a voracious reader, I was). I've brought that back up to steam during the summertime, but there's always the pull back to that community because it doesn't take effort. Again - not a fault of Hubski itself. That's on me.

So when I go to Hubski during the school year, then, the level of interaction doesn't really jive in my brain with what I feel like that time should be used for. I almost see it as an extension of the kinds of activities my schoolwork requires, see, because of the level of engagement required. And because Hubski (in my mind) thrives on interaction between users -- no, scratch that -- between people, I feel bad being the proverbial man in the corner of the bar, watching everyone do their thing and sipping a club soda, wondering what I'm even doing there (or how I got in, haha).

I dunno. Maybe it's just that I've got to power through with some of my own willpower, because I can tell that it's no wrongdoing of Hubski or Hubski's methods/ideology.

We'll see. We'll see.