The other day we were discussing the new user experience, and two ideas came out of that discussion that we are now testing out:
1. A Welcome post is stickied in every new user's feed.
This is that post:
Feel free to sign in post facto.
The reasoning behind the Welcome post is simple. New users typically need some guidance, and a welcome post is a good way for us to introduce them to Hubski. Also, if one user poses a common question, subsequent users can benefit from the answer in the same place.
2. Everyone follows badged content by default.
Starting today, badged posts appear in your feed, and badged comments in your chatter by default.
Of course, no one should have to follow badged content, and you can choose not to by toggling 'follow badged content' off in your settings.
Our reasoning behind following badges is thus: Badges are intended to highlight the best content, therefore, it makes sense that everyone can more easily see it. Also, giving badges more visibility makes them more potent. Finally, new users don't follow anything by default, and the badge feed is likely to provide some of the best content to get them started.
As always, we appreciate any and all feedback.
More toggles for the toggles god. I like this idea.
I noticed the spam posted by adibarmi and I see now that it's been deleted. I'm curious. Was the spam discovered by a bot (and I don't mean forwardslash), or discovered by a human. I thought of alerting the powers that be about the spam, but realized that it was posted on a hubski feed so they were likely to see it anyway. Do people realize that when a comment says "This comment has been deleted" - that it is probably spam? I didn't until now.
In this case, it was a manual removal by the Hubski team because our auto-detection methods for comments is not the same as posts. We let the community handle all post spam. Besides the fact that we would prefer to do no moderation at all, it's a major hassle for us remove them. It's not like I have a delete button by all the posts and comments—my hubski looks exactly like yours. We really only remove comment spam when it literally cannot be construed as anything but spam. The ones I have removed previously have all been done by bots with HTML markup in them, advertising Canadian pharmacies, etc. cc: thenewgreen mk
Weirdly, I was alerted to it when the spammer became a follower of #writebetterdammit.lil the only dot lil follower of writebetterdammit. Actually adibarmi is following all the writebetterdammit personal tags and a few domains. Weird. So I checked to see who was following that tag and discovered all the spam. At least spammers want their spam properly written.
That is hysterical. I read an article a while back that spam is more successfully when it is poorly written because it weens out all the people who would be too intelligent to fall for the spam down the line and prevents the spammers from wasting time. It's the same concept as having a high barrier of entry, but only for low people. >.<
Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria? From the abstract:Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.
Yes, I had to tackle adibarmi. I was putting some drip line in our garden this morning, and so was a bit slow on the draw. I don't have a problem putting the smack down on blocks of html about sports watches. If it has nothing to do with the post, see ya later.
Gotta disagree with the auto-follow badge setting. It'd be more fair to expose the user to content they'd see anyway at first, with the option to see what other people have badged. A badged post is badged subjectively, sometimes ironically, often due to personal sentiment. Imagine if everything that got badged on reddit came up on r/All. New users would be far more confused as to what the site holds, than they already might be upon first look.
I understand what you mean, but it's a tough one. We tried suggesting users to follow on sign up, but it introduces a lot of bias and centralizes the following. Until now, we just have an empty feed and suggested they peruse global, but you'd be surprised how every point of friction can keep an otherwise good user from figuring out what the site is all about. Once someone follows a user or tag, the badged part of their feed is greatly reduced, yet we think it currently represents a good place to start. It might not play out that way of course, but we really feel like there was room for improvement in the sign up flow.