We created, hated, and loved ThrowMeAway1 in 5 hours.
People instantly and vehemently (and not always nicely at all) were polarized by her creation.
Though all of Hubski had the ability to filter, mute, and hush her, ThrowMeAway1 was dead in five hours. Buried in an unmarked grave (e-mail was changed as well as password so that it can't even be reset and re-activated), and left to fade.
So Hubski, what did we learn? And what will we learn from ThrowMeAway2?
I think that people have risen up in a very polarized fashion because of the way Hubski's foundation seems to be made. From where I see it, Hubski's the neighborhood pub, a reference seen in its stickers and its community--for the most part, people who have stuck around the site for a while seem to know each other on at least a name-familiarity basis. See sounds_sound comment in the other thread: This means that for us (read: me), it is important for a user to stand by his/her/its (eg thundara's lambda bot) opinions and also the reputation they gain or lose for their approach to speaking about topics they feel strongly about. I'm one of the opposing camp. I don't see a place for anonymous posts/comments as they might tend towards those jabs and harsh words by people who wouldn't say those things if their reputation could be tarnished as a result. There are certainly people who go against the grain here, and certainly people who have more klout simply because of the follower count they have. But I respect those people when they approach a debate in a logical, calm, respectful manner, just as i expect the same in return. People are going to have opinions on this site no matter what. #thesundaypaper is a heavily editorialized publicatiom, for sure. But i think i speak for many when I say that the community and everything which makes the community what it is (the closeness, the notion that we are all really real people) is what led me to stay with Hubski and I think it's what people are trying to protect. But maybe that's just me.
Do you think follower count adds that much clout? The few times I've seen it waved around the braggert was largely derided for claiming it as a source of authority. You could do a regression of follower count and find that a great deal of it is correlated to longevity and activity with the remainder being the raw stuff of awesomeness and ability to state ones case well. Number of followers seems come up when a new person hates either the mechanics or the culture of hubski, and claims that no one will give them a fair hearing because they have no followers. These people are usually jerks who should probably just go somewhere else.
I thought the idea was interesting. We used to have the ability on Hubski to make people "editors" of a post. It was a way to collaborate on the same story, idea, essay etc. We used to do collaborative short stories, poems etc. Well, one time it got a bit ugly and one of the collaborators started writing some hateful things. We had no way of knowing which one. We eliminated the feature, not because of that incident, but because nobody ever really used it. I know lil still misses the function. I thought this was an interesting idea yellowoftops. It's worth sharing the original post too:
I don't know if it will ever come to anything, but mk is looking into making her password/e-mail permanent to prevent people from deleting the account in the future. That is if we want to continue the experiment. Someone could be doing it right now for all I know. It's not like I have the control in this situation.
My issue with a mass/community throwaway is there is no ownership. I would like to specify, ownership, not accountability necessarily. With a community throwaway I can make a thread like this and then I can post three different comments that appear to have opposing opinions, thoughts, etc, that really all come from me. While, to my perspective, that might make for an interesting social experiment (what gets most circles? what gets most discussion? what seems most controversial?) it can limit the engagement of more thoughtful users as they realize there is a lack of ability to trace anything back to any single person, or multiple people. In addition, with a community throwaway, so long as the account has the ability to edit previous comments, no one's contributions are really safe as they could be edited by anyone. It's asking for trolling, if you ask me. It's also asking for community-gaming in a way. It also brings to mind that forum where all the users were really one user - and it brings solipsism to mind too of course. I don't care so much if you are anonymous although frankly, what I share with Hubski I choose to share with Hubski, and anything I don't share, I'm not going to share regardless of whether I am on my account or on another. That's because there are specific reasons I choose not to share certain things and those reasons aren't actually going to change whether I have a mask on or not. Besides that, I do believe in personal accountability, so I'd rather present myself and my mistakes as wholesale as I can and acknowledge that I've failed in my life. Not hide behind a screen because I am ashamed. I would rather have to raise my face and make people judge me for the whole person I am. Those are the general and personal pitfalls I see with such an exercise. Be brave. Also, hubski isn't here to be your confessional. Reddit's great for that. Use Reddit for that. Go on, I understand; it feels good. I've used Reddit for that too, once upon a time. But when you are ready to have a discussion about who you are and what you've done that might have been bad, take it to a website where the people see you for a person. Not a username that is not even worth looking at (which is how I encounter reddit).
You say that someone can post in response to themselves under the throwaway account, but maybe it's a wholly different side of a person to let them argue with themselves. And maybe that's a conversation worth having. Just something to think about. Thank you for your post though.
I'm afraid you've gone and gotten about 3 levels way too esoteric and fuzzy-navel-philosophy for me to see the appeal tbh. If you're trying to hash something out between yourself and yourself, the only reason to do it in front of an audience is for attention. To be honest the exercise, if conducted in a 'public' space, would seem mastubatory to me if I knew what was going on. And if I didn't know, it would really be an exercise in deceit, not an exercise in self-dialogue. If, on the other hand, you are trying to have an anonymous conversation with a bunch of other people, I think it behooves all involved to present your multifaceted, complex, or inconsistent ideas/thoughts/etc as cohesively deriving from whichever single mind spawned them. It's easier to understand where the parts came from if we are shown they belong to a whole. It also helps remind everyone that we're all human, and we're all multifaceted, not absolutionist caricatures only capable of black-and-white opinions. Those're my opinions. If a permanent throwaway was created, I wouldn't use it, but that doesn't mean I'd petition others against it either. I just see far more potential for drama and harm than benefit. I hate hubski drama.
I think it would need to be advertised as a feature to really see what it can do. It could have a Brady Bill esque waiting period type thing embedded with it so people can't whip it out when things heat up. That sounds completely ridiculous.
It's inevitable. The question is really, how long until... we see a baby lamb.
I was hoping people would be better about not interacting with the account if they weren't ready. You're dealing with the id and no super-ego and people do not handle that well, both in terms of the user and who they are speaking to. However, I will say that Hubski has a highly rewarding system for people who produce popular ideas, even though they may be incorrect. You gain followers, and those followers have a responsibility to challenge you, but they might not. As long as you're surrounded by people who agree with you, you won't be challenged often enough. Hive minds develop in echo chambers and I don't want to name names, but there are clearly certain opinions in circles that are exacerbated by the circle's members. There has to be a jester in the court. That's what the anonymous user can be.
Just because someone agrees with one comment that I made or one post that I put up doesn't mean they agree with me all the time or even most. I think there is an assumption here that because someone may follow you because they agreed with you a few times, that means they are going to agree with you all the time. I have had disagreements with many hubski members I am quite agreeable with most of the time, kleinbl00, thenewgreen, nowaypablo, right off the top of my head. Just because I agreed with you once or 10 times does not mean I'll agree with you again tomorrow. All it means, really, is that when you say something that doesn't jive, I'll think about it more thoroughly and respond more politely than I would if I've never had a good conversation with you.
There is a certain inevitability that comes with groups. Confirmation bias is a fundamental part of being human. That's what culture is. It is up to the individual to travel, and seek unpopular opinion.
Are you asking if I have a different handle on another site? I only use Hubski, under this account. Maybe it's because I write like a robot.
I don't know I posted about my real problems already. I have a disease that many people don't understand, but it doesn't help anyone for me to shelter them from that. My job is aweful, but I am not going to pretend I'm someone else. Even if that is half the fun of the internet. Doesn't undermine my ability to talk about books, science, technology, or the news. If I lived somewhere better, I could have these conversations outside a forum more often. I think younger people might judge me, but adults know what it is like to work, or try to pay off debt.
Honestly, why not? We can always disactivate it if it gets out of control. It might last an hour, it might last a week but I think it won't last. I'm just curious how long before chaos honestly. Maybe now is not the best time because of the newcomers (welcome!) are not familiar with the culture yet.
As someone who is uncomfortable with dogs and puppies I'd be happy to see trolls under that tag for the opposite reason - they're equally upsetting and great to avoid. I guess it works both ways! It was rather confusing to see that tag in my feed on two posts that appeared to have nothing to do with dogs, however.