I was having a discussion with a friend who is new to hubski recently and the idea came up about how a post only needs 8 shares to "fill" the wheel. At some point when hubski is more popular (which is coming soon - I've seen tons of new users recently), this will probably need to change. Our two ideas were:
1. For each circle to represent more than 1 share. This would need to change dynamically based on traffic and/or users online. 2. To have different "levels". This means that the circle changes colours each time it gets more than 8 shares, and each level is a different colour. This might be confusing to new users and might not scale as well.
What are your ideas about how the hubski wheel will evolve with the amount of users on hubski?
I think that if this needed to occur, the first dot would be a single share, then the second may take 2 more then the third 10 more and it the number could increase based on the communities size. Definitely food for thought. Though there are still a lot of posts that currently don't get to 8 or even 1 for that matter. Good thought though, thanks.
Do we need to do this? I like that right now there's just a sort of Terry Pratchett Troll Math http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Discworld)#Literacy_and_... about popularity. How popular is a post? 1,2,3, Kinda, Very. I very rarely actually count the dots around the wheel, although maybe I'm unusual in that.
Being the friend who thought of this, I thought of a few additional reason why such as system is a good idea. I think that colours may be useful because they will both make the site more colourful and also increase the memetic nature of the site which may help build a culture.
I don't think Hubski needs to be more colourful. The Grey theme is complimented well by the simple touches of orange and blue. If the hubski wheels were to be given stages of colour depending on the amount of shares, then the colour set would have to be monochromatic. Otherwise any page would look very messy if there were wheels of every colour scattered across the page. I really like the idea of colour stages but I believe the colours would have to begin with a very light blue, or even a light grey, then progress into slightly darker blues as it was continued to be voted on, a post which may have hundreds or even thousands of shares eventually may even reach the colour black. I really like the idea, but my point is that the wheels would have to be monochromatic. Making Hubski more colourful isn't necessary.