a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by Pharnaces
Pharnaces  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Floodgates

So I ignore you because I don't like you. Has the quality of the content on Hubski increased or am I simply not seeing the content that I dislike? Ignoring users instead of topics promotes circlejerking and circlejerking leads to bad content.

The nice thing about Reddit is that no matter how large it gets you can always find a nice, cozy, small(ish) subreddit to talk about whatever topic you like after you unsubscribe from the big subreddits of the same topic, but you're never really free from ideas you don't agree with. r/games is a much better place to discuss video gaming than r/gaming, but even if I dislike hearing about, say, DRM, I will still see threads about it from time to time.





Laurelai  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I ignore person A because I dont like him/her. Person A's posts no longer show on my feed. I don't interact with person A and person A doesnt interact with me. Me and person A dont argue or fight. Peace is had.

This is how hubski works, it isnt reddit.

Pharnaces  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I understand how the system works, I'm just saying that the average content quality doesn't increase because you've ignored someone you don't like, a troll, or a meme-spouting idiot.

Laurelai  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It does for me.

Pharnaces  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

How so? Have you stopped the users from posting low-quality content? No, you've just ignored it, just like you probably ignored (by unsubscribing) r/atheism, r/gaming, r/funny, and all the other garbage default subs on Reddit. They were still bad, you just couldn't see them.

Laurelai  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If nobody follows them then their low quality content never gets seen.

Pharnaces  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm sure some people will follow them, lowest common denominator entertainment is always popular.

Laurelai  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sure but my personal feed will be free of them. Ive blocked a number of people already.

Pharnaces  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well that was my point all along, you and everyone else who ignores them will not experience the poor content, but it will still exist. I definitely can see the ignore function being misused to ignore people who believe in different things than somebody. #politics will probably look like r/politics (i.e.: liberal circlejerk) after all the liberals ignore all the conservatives and all of the conservatives ignore the liberals.

Laurelai  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Perhaps but there also wont be cross invasions and meta fighting.

Tumbledown  ·  4334 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It seems as if though you're superimposing reddit's content mechanics onto this site.

    The nice thing about Reddit is that no matter how large it gets you can always find a nice, cozy, small(ish) subreddit to talk about whatever topic you like after you unsubscribe from the big subreddits of the same topic, but you're never really free from ideas you don't agree with.

The entire purpose of Hubski is to allow user to tweak their news feed to their liking. People will follow people who's content they enjoy. People ignore tags and people they do not.

From this mechanic alone, users are allowed far greater power over the content they view than any other site I can think of. Why is it that you're so concerned with the "trash content" that you have the power to remove from your personal feed?

Pharnaces  ·  4333 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, I know. It just seems much more tedious and unreliable as a content aggregation service than Reddit and I think that could be improved with the ability to follow tags or at least put them in the sidebar as bookmarks.

    Why is it that you're so concerned with the "trash content" that you have the power to remove from your personal feed?

Well, in general if a site is mostly dedicated to "trash content" then the average user will come here for the lowest common denominator entertainment instead of the thought-provoking discussions the admins want.

There's a picture of a quote that goes around on /v/ (and maybe 4chan in general) from time to time (link:

   Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."

   Rene Descartes
It's ironic because the painting in the background is of Voltaire, not Descartes, and Descartes never said anything like that, but despite that it actually is quite relevant to our conversation. If the community here comes here for something other than thought-provoking discussions then eventually the purpose of the site will no longer be to provide them.