Yep. I'd posit that those of us who had an identity prior to our online identity have two separate identities, while those who grew up with the internet do not have a dividing line between their online and IRL selves. That's why they can react so poorly to online harassment and bullying; I'd just turn off the computer/phone for a couple of days. No biggie. Not being online isn't really an option for many of the people who are younger than me. This is the intent of the Thermometer thingie... a way to encourage good/healthy conversation participation, without gamification tainting the intent. In addition, the thermometer would have to be included by the poster using markup, so the poster would be asking for feedback on their participation. A setting in the user prefs could automatically include the thermometer in all your posts, or you could just use a markup tag - like maybe a tilde-bang-tilde - to have it added to a single post/comment you make. That way the commenter is specifically asking the community for feedback on their participation with THIS post. It invites feedback from the community. Perhaps it is in part because the digital aspect of identity is greater for people born in it?
Ideally, I would like to be able to indicate that I find the comment to be stimulating and constructive without implying whether I agree or not. I wish shares worked this way, but I think they do not.
Circledots share a post to your followers. They push the post up in your followers feeds, so they are more likely to see it. It is you saying, "Hey, if you like me and my content, I think you'd like this, too. Check it out." So when you circledot something, you are promoting quality content rather than "upvoting" it. Sadly, when I pointed this out, I got roundly abused and shouted into oblivion by people who REALLY want it to be a Reddit upvote, and were very dedicated and self-righteous in their misuse of the tool. Which I get. After all, it is the only hammer we have on Hubski, so we hit everything with it, regardless of whether it is the right tool for the job. BUT.... using the circledot as an upvote makes following people totally useless; because your followers feed is then filled with "right? you tell em!" type posts which people have circledotted to show support for the poster rather than share the post as quality content. My thought was that introducing a second tool (that posters could use by choice to solicit feedback from their fellow Hubskites) would inspire people to better use of the circledot, since they'd also have a function for supporting/opposing the quality of the post itself. That would give us three excellent features - circledot, follow, and temperature - to curate and improve the conversation and content here on Hubski. Which is, after all, why mk made the claim that "Hubski is broken" in his original post above, and originally solicited our feedback. (Note: I should mention circledot's other function, which is to weed out spammers, by limiting your Hubski features until enough of your content is circledotted to give you badging capabilities. It makes the low-effort spam posts totally ineffective here, because nobody will see content posted by someone without at least one badge. In effect, if the community likes your content enough time to share it to their followers, then they circledot your posts, and you earn the right to engage more on the platform.) I'm actually kinda curious about how you use circledots...
I admit, my interpretation of the circledot and temp gauge also assume a growing Hubski community, and not one that forever remains static around its current size. As the community grows, the hubwheel may be insufficient, and I'd like to see something already in place that can be leveraged to help identify/reward good content, if The Influx ever comes. There have been several waves of Redditors over the years, and they inevitably use the hubwheel as an upvote, and miss the nuances of this groovy feature. (Then they leave.) So it seems like a social media site needs to take into account it does not operate in a vacuum, but in a world of other social experiences and tools... and needs to recognize new members may need a nudge to help learn the new site's tools. I also like the idea of me being able to use some unique Markup to make my posts more interactive with my readers, than just comment or circledot. I could imagine a variety of markup that could add an attribute to your posts to inspire different kinds of engagement. For example, a sidebar/offtopic option, that made your comment into an entirely new post... but left a link to the new post (and the first line or two) in the original comment on the original post. All comments about your sidebar post would appear in the new post, not in the original comment thread. Which would help when conversations diverge out of OP's topic, and into other areas. Anyway. Just rambling now... :-)