Today brings a significant change to Hubski. Tags can no longer be followed.
Tags have been a source of debate for a long time now. I expect that this will bring some more.
I’ll be happy to get more into the specifics of this decision below. However, the primary reason is that effects of tag-based subscriptions ultimately run counter to the goals of Hubski, and the long-term viability of this community.
We are not removing tags altogether, however. Community tags can still be added to a post, and you tags can still be ignored. In fact, more functionality that will take advantage of tags to improve discovery will be coming soon.
Starting today, when you click on a tag, you are given all the recent posts with that tag. Also, as recently suggested by <span><a class="ajax" href="at?id=possessedcow">possessedcow</a>, when you type ‘#tag’ into the searchbar, all posts with that tag are brought up directly. I am sure that for some users this is going to take some getting used to. In addition to this change, we’ve made another smaller one. Some users, including <span><a class="ajax" href="at?id=Saydrah">Saydrah</a>
On your left, you can now see an ‘unshared’ link. This will bring up all posts across the Hubski community that have yet to be shared (excluding posts that you ignore). We think this will be an interesting way to not only enhance discovery, but give new users a better chance to be noticed, and new submissions to be picked up.
As always, feedback is much appreciated (as if I have to remind you). :)
I actually like that... if it works like I think it should work. For example, let's say I really like what UserX has to offer. He posts a lot of science & technology articles, and he's generally a great guy. However, he keeps submitting these inane #askhubski questions that keep cluttering up my feed. I really don't like most things that are tagged #askhubski, and if I am in the rare mood to view such posts, I'll just go to #askhubski's tag page. UserX is really cool, and I like most of what he submits, so I don't want to unfollow him. Luckily, I can ignore the tag #askhubski, so I see everything that he shares, except his stupid #askhubski submissions. Actually, I think it would be great if mk took that a step further and allowed us to ignore specific tags by specific users. Say, if I generally liked #askhubski posts, but not the ones UserX keeps posting, I could ignore any #askhubski posts from that specific user. Maybe each ignored tag could have a choice where you made it a "global" ignored tag, or you could switch it to "specific users" and add users to the #askhubski ignore list one by one...
If, on the other hand, I choose to keep abreast of what's going on in the world of, say, #occupywallstreet, I'm fucked. If I want to find someone new who's talking about writing, I have to hit #writebetterdammit every morning. If I want to follow along with what's going on in, say, #detroit, well then fuck me. Most importantly, if I'm more interested in seeing what the gestalt has to say about something, forget Hubski. If the echo chamber I haven't carefully crafted for myself isn't talking about it, I'm not going to find it.
Your analogy of a "carefully crafted echo chamber" is, I feel, a fantastic one for what the actual goal of Hubski is (at least from what I've gathered). I think that means that quick changes and "flitting" between subjects are not really in the scope hubski. If you want to follow along with #detroit, you must carefully expand your echo chamber to include it. You'd have to comb the threads and choose the users who will best represent your interests. While tedious, this avoids a group-think mentality. Instead of everyone being forced into a common echo chamber (for example, a subreddit), each person crafts and maintains their own. It's more control ceded to the users, with an even flatter playing field, and I'm digging it.
I've just joined Hubski less than an hour ago, and realized that /that/ is how Hubski handles things. It's not a Twitter clone, nor a Reddit clone. This prevents group mentalities like 100k subreddits, but I am interested at how it deals with users with massive amounts of followers.
I kind of have to agree with kleinbl00. I don't see why you're taking away this optional user functionality from us. You realize that now people are just going to be searching for tags instead of following them? It's going to be basically the same thing, but with more annoyance to the users. I think this is an unnecessary change. I get what you're saying about it being contrary to what hubski is about, but if you want tags to go away you'd have to remove them completely. I'm willing to bet that most new users are going to be making threads over and over about where the follow tag functionality is, since you can just search for them. I hope you will reconsider this. It really didn't change all that much since the search is still available, but now it's just more tedious. If you really think tags are going to ruin hubski, then remove them entirely (but then I'll probably lose a lot of interest in the site, as will some others I reckon). Just my two cents.
Or, y'know, you could always search the tag in the search bar...
That's basically it, kleinbl00. In addition, ignoring a tag keeps it out of external posts that you let filter into your feed. It also removes them from Popular and Unshared posts. If #mylittlepony takes off, I don't have to work to avoid it. As for the user-specific part, I plan on implementing the ability search a tag and a user at the same time. I haven't given much thought to user-specific tag ignores, however. It could be a messy thing to implement.
>It could be a messy thing to implement. :( I hope not. I think that one of hubski's major strengths is the focus on tailoring your own experience yourself, letting it evolve naturally, instead of relying on moderators to curate a conveyor belt of content from a subreddit that inevitably devolves into groupthink and the lowest common denominator. You have control over your own feed, not some faceless moderator who's enforcing rules you may not understand or even care about. I think hiding posts will be a major part of that. If you don't like something, it's a simple click to hide it and forget it exists. If you're hiding a ton of posts from a specific user, then it's probably a good idea to ignore that user. If you could fine tune it to the point of ignoring specific tags from specific users, well I think that would just be the cherry on top of the whole thing. Step back and watch the community weave itself together into thousands of little perfectly individualized hubs.
This got me thinking, what about languages? If I were to follow someone because they submit good music but they also shared content in French it would be kind of annoying, as I don't understand French at all. I guess it would be easy to ignore as long as the content is consistently tagged #france #french #fr #frenchpolitics, but if the content is about video games it's more likely to be tagged #videogames or #jeuvidéo. Has any thought been put into this?
Well, you could add the possibility to say which language a post is and add a preferred language option under controls. Maybe use google to determine the language? Anyway, I think that language problems are most likely a localization problem. The problem will not be gone until Hubski is no longer an exclusively english site. And it will most likely not be a focus point...
I agree, this also means that people that don't have followers but occasionally post good content will be unseen. This change doesn't make sense to me
Yeah that worries me, granted the unshared addition combats that, but I don't think it fully offsets somebody following a tag and having those posts always coming up. I understand not wanting tags to effectively be subreddits, but without any other functionality at the moment discovery might suffer. Edit: I've thought more about it and have decided this is most likely the best decision for the site's identity and future.
A good example of the usefulness of ignore: when I started hubski, I mostly lurked, but I was posting a kiwi song, every day - trying to show off the NZ music scene. I tagged them all "kiwimusic". Some likes and shares at first, but really, only a few people cared about those posts. Ignore kiwimusic and bob's your uncle.
did not follow you but did follow kiwi music. now I follow you. fixed
Glad you enjoyed. I'll continue to post them now and again. Got a new Six60 CD for Xmas and it's pretty good. I really don't worry too much about tags or feeds, I just browse; I follow people very rarely, except that I follow everybody who follows me. Seems to work fine.
A mod? We don't do mod. You are your own mod.
I'll be completely honest, I'm kind of disappointed with the change in functionality of tags, but I love the addition of the unshared page. I think the first thing I'm going to do is make bookmarks for all of my favorite tags, but we'll see, perhaps the unshared page will be enough that I don't miss anything interesting. Now the main thing I'm looking forward to is the ability to hide/unhide posts. Has there been any progress on that front?
Not to add more to the workload, but maybe we could a have weekly "spotlight" on users who contribute/share/comment the most for a designated time, or use it for new users as a way to quickly find topics and users. The problem is it might create "celebrity users" which might make it harder for those lower on the totem pole to gain followers (but that isn't the point of hubski, is it?).
Captain_Ozone, feel free to PM me any ideas you have that could help make this happen. I like the idea of spotlighting users that are making positive contributions to the site. Right now one sticks out imo: http://hubski.com/pub?id=54486 and http://hubski.com/pub?id=55119 -These are the kinds of posts that interest me and use the site in a unique way. That said there are likely many, many more comments and posts from new and old Hubskiers alike that we could highlight. I think every week may be a bit much to bite off but perhaps every month having a "best of". Let me know your thoughts. Also, if you are interested in participating in the #tngpodcast, let me know. We are also going to be doing a Hubski video cast with the help of steve here shortly.
It's an interesting idea. Just point thenewgreen to it. His #tngpodcast does this to a degree already.
Okay. The problem I have with this is that it makes it very hard to get started with the website quickly. The approach I was taking was following a number of tags, then following the people who posted in these tags. I feel that removing the ability to follow tags runs counter to that.
That's definitely something we have to keep in mind going forward. thenewgreen and I were just brainstorming some ideas about how we might improve the new user experience. It's a valid point.Okay. The problem I have with this is that it makes it very hard to get started with the website quickly.
I'm not sure if this is actually a good idea, but on signup you could give them the option to enter a few tags they're interested in and have it select X users that post in those tags to follow at startup to populate their feed.
The tags served as topics, steering the experience towards the things I wanted to read. You could always use tags as a way to curate a feed, introducing some bias into how topics are sorted and displayed. "Areas of interest" if you will.
My conclusion from the comments is this: There are specific users here that want to use this site in order to be delivered extremely relevant information according to very specific interests (#tags). This new update ultimately and unfairly benefits users who want to be delivered interesting, but definitely more random content. While this is a primary goal of the site, I think there are a few tweaks that could be added to also include users like kleinbl00 who want to stick to less randomness. My proposal? An "upvote" system that is personal to each users preference of tags. Put another way, a system that adds weight to a specific tag which in turn determines frequency of posts in their main feed; possibly a popularity threshold requirement with the following properties. - numbers of submissions per day
- divided by the number of upvotes in the first hour
- a logarithmic type scale determines this And for you TL;DR types
You'd get to upvot #technology to +3 in order to see more technology related posts.
Reddit does this in their backend code, but if I'm seeing too much of a certain subreddit I have no way of changing any setting in order to see less of it. I think the solution lies in the ability to create a scale that is individual to a given #tag. Some #tags are not going to be too active except for a couple submissions per month maybe; being delivered these needles in the haystack is important. Right now, on Reddit anyways, if I don't go on for a day or two I could easily miss the one submission from my niche interest. What I'm trying to say regarding this other spefiic problem is that this community needs a solution which does the following: - posts above the threshold setting per tag need to be marked (for what we'll call in this example) "important". I don't want these gem articles leaving my feed until I've somehow "marked them as read" (ie. opened the comments or clicked through to the link). I hope I've made the problem clear; the solution might not be the best, but it's a start in the right direction.
There are a couple of ways that I could see rating tags coming into play. One would be to give posts with these tags more 'staying power' in your feed (and possibly popular), and the other would be to favor posts with these tags in external posts. Both would have the effect that you would be more likely to see the best posts with that tag. I can appreciate the effect of not following every post with a specific tag (therefore avoiding the a subreddit-like phenomenon), but biasing a user's discovery with certain tags in mind.
Furthermore, the community needs the ability to tag comments. I'd even be satitsfied for now just being able to add one specific tag (or just add a button ^-^) to comments like:
I really like the "unshared" idea. Great addition. Especially the part that "this will be an interesting way to enhance discovery." If that type of reply could immediately get tagged with, for example, #bot I think it would work wonders for my.... scroll wheel! ;) And again, but put another way:
Some sort of tag excepted by the community where the criteria for this one tag simply is described as:
- this reply could have been made by some sort of bot type program
- adds nothing to the conversion
- is considered a pat on the back to the post author The main advantage to this being you can unsubscribe from certain types of replies. I'd be eagerly awaiting to unsubscribe from replies tagged #circlejerk, #duh, #conspiracy to name a few. This is sort of irrelevant right now as the quality of discussion is fine. I'm more about the content discovery anyways.
Works for me. One of the things that bothered me was that it was hard to discover people with likeminded interests. Since we can now search #tags in the bar, I can look to see who is posting articles that interest me and just follow them instead of the tags (and discover some new things while I'm at it). Tag search works great!
My two cents; While redditors love to follow tags as a "replacement" for subreddits, the subreddit system is ultimately something that should stay on reddit. Hubski revolves around following users who submit content that you find interesting, not creating communities that you follow, regardless of who is doing the posting. One of the biggest issues on reddit is the inability to escape image macros, memes, and cat images because they have inevitably invaded every subreddit. With a system where you follow users, you have the choice to not see things you don't want to. The tags are still a great way to enhance and organize the content and find things that are relevant to your interests, but following the users who submit said content is ultimately how hubski works.
The impression that I've learned in my short tenure here is that the philosophy of Hubski is to follow content based on users, not groups or topics. Users carry their own personality and interests, which may or may not be the same as yours. If they are, it serves as a foundation for discussion and debate, which are highly valued here.
I think that's the idea of unshared, but correct me if I'm wrong mk. I suppose if you have interesting enough content, people will share it with their subscribers. Over time, people will learn that you provide quality content and subscribe directly to you.
It seems to me now that you would need to have followers to gain followers.
Not really. I suggest that you need to first be a follower. Be an engaged and interested follower. Also put some interesting bio in your bio. When you follow someone - providing that they are being notified of your followization, they might want to see who you are, and follow you. If you respond to someone's post intelligently, they might want to see who you are and follow you. If your goal is to grow in wisdom and learn to love better, you will soon have followers. If your goal is to distract yourself from life, stroke yourself into believing you are liked, you will still probably get followers. It just takes time and the ability to show up open-hearted and open-minded.
Good advice all around. I was never really against the removal of tag-based subscriptions; I'm much too new to have a strong opinion one way or another. This change definitely surprised me but I understand the motives and more importantly, the broader Hubski mindset much more now. Thanks.
Discovering "new users" is a major focus moving forward for the site. That said, if you know that you are interested in science, the tags still exist and you can go to the list of science posts and find users to follow that post the type of science articles etc that interest you.
Not to too my own horn, but check out my awesome horn.
Killer, I love the idea of 'unshared'. Spurs the adventure of finding posts you like instead of things the majority likes. Not sure how I feel about no-following-of-tags now, but I've only been here less than a week. I guess I started just following tags and then seeing people I like in those tags. Then I started following those people and tags became less important. I felt it was a good way to find people to follow instead letting your feed become stagnant with the same content. As we are adaptable, I'm sure in a few weeks it will not have mattered and we'll all cope.
Oops. Now look what I did, pointing out that tags were basically subreddits already... :P Seriously though, I like the speed of change here, and unshared should encourage more discovery and sharing. On the other hand, taking away tag-following without replacing it with this mysterious new functionality will probably reduce discovery for a time, unless people start using popular and unshared more as a result. I look forward to seeing what the new features will be.
Oops. Now look what I did, pointing out that tags were basically subreddits already... :P Seriously though, I like the speed of change here, and unshared should encourage more discovery and sharing. On the other hand, taking away tag-following without replacing it with this mysterious new functionality will probably reduce discovery for a time, unless people start using popular and unshared more as a result. I look forward to seeing what the new features will be.
Absolutely excellent ideas. Great way to get new posts, and will definitely change hubski towards a sense of connected communities and away from the idea that we organize thing by discrete categories. Take the info off of the shelves!
In my limited experience with the site, tags hadn't affected much of what I viewed. This is largely due to the unstructured taxonomy of tagging - it's all ad-hoc, and the community must decide what is and isn't a relevant tag. Your #politics is my #mudslinging, my #finance is your #thecrumblingcapitalistkakistocracy. That said, I await @kleinbl00 on this thread with baited breath, as I understand he was staunchly in favor of tags and am interested to hear his arguments. I only describe, above, my limited interaction with the site and its navigation, as well as speculation on what could and couldn't happen with the tagging structure as such. Really like the 'unshared' button, though. Nice feature. 'New' may not be as much of a need in light of the intense focus on user-based sharing/following, as 'unshared' is sort of a de facto 'unfollowed'.
speaking as someone who never knows the exact tag to type in/ follow/ post (exact tag-terminology), I say thank you :) I have too much experience trying to follow say (using kleinb100's example) #occupywallstreet instead of #ows, which all the "cool kids" are tagging. (sigh, never cool enough to know the tags, lolol)
Now that tags don't explicitly matter, what is their purpose? To help with similar posts? To help me curate the content I see on the front page? Because it's human nature to categorize things? The questions that follow are highly dependent what one would answer to the above: Is one post only meant to have one tag? Two? A hundred? Should tags be ranked by users by their relevance? What if a troll decides to tag everything on the front page with #dicks? Should the original poster be able to see who tagged their posts with what? Restrict tags altogether? I'm rather fond of how what.cd implements tagging. Half to help the content browser quickly select what they think is interesting 1, 2]and half to construct pretty maps like this one. Having extensive tagging like this opens up the door of post suggestions, like Netflix does with movies, but I have no idea what the signal-to-noise ratio would be when you give the reigns to the users of the website.
Yes, my opinion is that now that following tags is out (and that's something I've thought would be good for quite a while), that we would be better served by allowing multiple tags on a post. The reason is that a singular tag functions as a community organizer, while multiple tags can transcend a singular community and hopefully bring groups together. I am lobbying to have a character limit in the tag field and nothing more. That limit would also be arbitrary, obviously, but the other option is infinity, and we have to stop somewhere. Some happy medium probably exists.
Keep in mind that keeping ignore around opens this up to (even accidental) abuse. If I ignore #atheism and someone posts a #cosmos video that another person finds areligiously inspiring, I won't see it, despite loving the spiraling shapes of galaxies! I'm tempted to suggest a probabilistic ignore, if the votes for a particular tag exceed 25%, say, keep it out of my feed (Balancing this with the number of users I follow suggesting the post to me, perhaps). But I also have a tendency to suggest overly complicated solutions, so pick and choose what you think is actually decent.
It's a discussion that b_b and I already started having. Not using tags as subscription actually creates some possibilities. I want to use them this way a bit and think on it. However, that what.cd implementation is interesting. Something like that was on the table when we came up with community tags. It's a possibility that tags will evolve as a result of this.
I think this could work out well. And a quick edit: I should elaborate; I feel if you are following a tag, you are following it for content. If you are following a person it creates stronger community and puts some responsibility on content creators and sharers.
Late to the party on this one, but I thought I'd add my two cents as a new user. Removing the ability to follow by tags narrows the opportunities for new users to get discovered. The "unshared" page helps balance that some, but that throws more weight on the adventurousness of older users. If they don't go out of their way to look at the unshared page, then it's that much harder for the submissions of new users to get noticed. If you want to stick with the following users but not tags, may I suggest providing some mechanism for inserting a few unshared posts a little more assertively in or around each user's feed?
If you go in to "controls" you can up your "external posts" (posts from people you don't follow) to "many" and that will do what it is you are asking. I do think that perhaps we can make the external posts more differentiated looking. What do you think mk?
As others have said, the "unshared" page is a great idea. Something what bothers me tough is that I have absolutely no real way of finding what is going on with a tag. For example, I want to keep up to date with the #bugski posts. I have no quick way of finding all those posts. I would propose a change in definition of following. Instead of following and letting them show up in the feed, you have a special "follow" page which contains the links to your favorite tags. It still does promote following hubs, but at the same time, it doesn't make finding you favorite tags more difficult than it should be. I think this might also be a problem for you (mk), since you want to keep up to date with bugski as well. This is just me rambling beforehand. I"m curious as to how this will work out. Let the experiment begin! EDIT: Seems I can't read. Searching for a tag works, so there goes my idea about it being too much work. If you can't remember the tag, you weren't interested anyway.
Well I see one major difference: 350+ per comment vs 140 characters. mk are these words or characters? I believe they are words.average comment length:
last 5 comments: 308.2
last 50 comments: 355.9
last 200 comments: 356.0
I know there are short replies but we also have people who wrote books in heir comments. Hmm
Wouldn't it be possible for me to go the 'unshared' page, and just share all the posts, effectively clearing the page? Could this have desirable effects?