There is not a migration from reddit to hubski. What? Let me put it in national terms reddit has 43 million users that is 3 million people more than Argentina. There are less than 6000 accounts on hubski that is about the same as Saint Pierre and Miquelon ever heard of it? To rephrase it in a way that Americans can understand if reddit is America hubski is the Cayman Islands.
What we are experiencing here is not a symptom of reddit's decline but and testament to it's strength. In my estemation Hubski has had a period of growth because like anything else that makes it to reddit's main page we got a hell of a lot of hits.
Continuing the national metaphor it is as if Brad and Angie visited the Caymans, raved about their trip and some people planned their vacations based on that.
I found Hubski through Reddit, and I'm so glad that I did! Hubski feels like home to me, but I still visit Reddit. I use Reddit within the confines of several subreddits, most notably "Ask the Historian" (AWESOME subreddit), another subreddit where I am an author with an ongoing series, as well as several science-oriented sectors and the EarthPorn subreddit where I post pix of New Mexico. My 15 year-old son is a Redditor as well, and I can tell you that his collection of subreddits are probably very different than mine! This isn't an either/or dealio. You can be a citizen of both sites and enjoy what they have to offer, no matter who you are. There is an extra value here at Hubski for me. I am making real-life friends.
This isn't an either/or dealio.
Well said. I'd love to read the ongoing series. Can you provide a link?
Oh man, something terrible happened overnight. I had ignored several of the new kids, and I did it without malice or announcement, however they must have figured out I was one of the folks ignoring them. They must have scrolled through my comments and posts here, because they found the link to my Reddit story, which I had posted on my first day here in one of the Theory of Reddit threads. Although, perhaps they were just scrolling through the Reddit tags and found my story. Either way, I deleted that comment post haste this morning! These folks galvanized the troops and bombed my series and its multiple posts with all kinds of negativity, down votes, and in some cases what felt like evil. I know it's the internet and I need to put on the big girl panties as they say, but boy, I felt violated and tiny when I awoke to it. I am in the process of deleting my entire series, it doesn't feel good to have all of that up there. I'm sure the mods will fix it etc, but I'm feeling weirded out right now. I will find another place to post it, maybe here. It's a novel in progress, science fiction, with a New Mexico flavor. It's very very different. I had posted over 18,000 words so far! I'm feeling kind of vulnerable at the moment, and wondering if it is smart to continue posting rather soul-searching stuff on the poetry thread, for example. Hubski feels, or felt, so intimate and lovely that it all seemed okay, but now I'm realizing that it's like any other site, open to internet madness. And in another moment of sadness, Kleinbl00 deleted all of his pix on our epic thread! Why? I wish I knew. So sad, the thread doesn't make any sense now. Well, change is good they say, and maybe I need change right now.
Man that's harsh. We debated the wisdom of having the ignore list public, and decided that publicity would discourage abuse. We also thought abuse of the ignorer would be difficult, given our setup. We didn't consider cross website torture. Some contingencies come out of left field. I'm sorry that happened to you, and I hope you don't resent us for it. We love your content here, for what it's worth.
You folks are all awesome and I love Hubski. Something like this was bound to happen, I guess, and I made an easy target, having posted the link to my stuff on Reddit. I think because it was a Reddit link, it probably felt like fair game to the kids who probably really haven't reasoned it all out and may feel bad when they do.
I hope I've giving them enough credit! We humans have a way of improving with age, at least I like to think that's the case. I'm pathologically optimistic, though. I would rather three people read my stories and enjoy them than the great unwashed masses who shake their heads and don't "get" them. After the current situation settles a bit, I will post them here.
Out of curiosity, how would one "abuse" the ignore feature?
Well, I suppose its a stretch to say "abuse". What I meant is that too much use of ignoring might be used to stifle debate; that's not what we envision its use to be. We like dissent. Of course, the experience is yours to choose, so feel free to ignore whomever you want, in whatever quantity you want. I have employed ignore quite liberally in the last few days myself. I hope to not feel the need to do that going forward.
Hi mk, thank you so kindly for your gentle words. I have no idea why I was a target. It might have been because I ignored and had publicly posted here at Hubski my Reddit link. Not sure, but either way, it's okay. Life goes on! It's just internet nonsense! I love Hubski and am so glad to be a part of this community. It's funny how you recognize your tribe when you meet them.
Indeed. At this point, I just don't think about it. If people made a recipe site and it became super popular, no one would say "Oh no, everyone is leaving Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/InsertPopularSiteHere for RecipesThatAreDelicious.com!" All it'd mean is that the recipe site is well made and people like it. I also feel like I'm really getting much better acquainted with real people now! It's a nice feeling :)
I like the vacation metaphor, as really I expect most of the people who came over after the syncretic deletion drama will not stick around after it isn't the cool/funny thing to do.
To add to this, a lot of the people "leaving" Reddit aren't actually leaving Reddit, just making Hubskis. And a lot of them spent all their time on Reddit bitching about Reddit anyway. It's certainly not a symptom of Reddit's decline. I get that it has a pretty significant impact on such a small community, but it's nothing surprising.
I think reddit needs competition and I'm glad to see it here. That said, here's a random related idea that I dwell on: One way reddit could be improved vastly (and has been considered before, even by the admins) is a "recommender" system (like netflix), which basically analyzes your votes and others votes, feeds this into a neural net or something, and customizes what you see. Clearly this is not trivial. The benefit is all you have to do is vote on things, and the more you vote, the better your results. Maybe hubski can accomplish the same thing more simply - like when multiple people you follow share the same thing, it gets ranked higher.. or when followers of followed people all share the same thing.
I know this is totally tangential to your point, but my (noobish) understanding is that support vector machines are the first choice in generic classifiers for most problems.neural net
Thanks for the link. It does indeed seem to be a good first choice given the number of users. Sorry it took 20 days to reply!
Competition? Reddit has millions of users and this place isn't even close to 10k.
Much like others here, I came to hubski via reddit. Methinks that I'll still browse reddit, but I see no reason why hubski won't appeal to many redditors, should it become widespread. In fact, I anticipate waves of meta-redditors coming here on the premise of joining the next big thing.
Well if the website had a better layout and functioned well maybe people would move. Right now this place in terrible but has some real potential. No one is going to move until it functions a little better because right now the layout is worse than reddit and that is saying something.
What are, let's say, the top five things you would change about what you see here?
Give users profile pages and not just popups or at least let me refer to older post they've made and commented on to see if I want to follow them or not. Or just give me a link to view their feed easily to I can see what they are posting, commenting on and sharing. Make it more clear what the "Interested in" section does. Also make it easier to find and set interest. Fix the password request and user sign up page(sometimes like when I tried to recover my password today it referred to a 404 page). Also sometimes when you send messages it simply goes to a 403 page and instead of telling you what part of the forum is incorrectly filled out. Time stamp things to let me know when it was posted. Sometimes commenting on things that are days old isn't worth it. They can also at times just give you a helpful time line for things over the course of a day. Make links or make an option to have shared links open in a new tab in the user control panel.
Welcome to Hubski ToxicAirEvent, I see you joined a while ago, still if you have any questions feel free to pm me. Hope these answers helped a bit and thanks for the suggestions.at least let me refer to older post they've made and commented on to see if I want to follow them or not.
-Click on their name, click on "posts" or "comments" depending on which you would like to see. You can also see what they've "shared". This handles your first paragraph.Fix the password request and user sign up page(sometimes like when I tried to recover my password today it referred to a 404 page). Also sometimes when you send messages it simply goes to a 403 page and instead of telling you what part of the forum is incorrectly filled out.
This is a good point. Thanks.Time stamp things to let me know when it was posted. Sometimes commenting on things that are days old isn't worth it.
The lack of a time signature in your feed is intentional. If a subject is interesting, why wouldn't it be worth commenting on regardless of when it was posted? Just because an hour, a day, a week or even a year has passed doesn't mean the conversation has to end. Also, we are adjusting the algorithm so that it is more reflective of activity than time of post.Make links or make an option to have shared links open in a new tab in the user control panel.
Click on "tabs" under the link. Is this what you mean?
This. I'm very new here, but I have studied online conversational spaces. And one of the biggest challenges for Hubski seems to be giving users the sensation that they aren't at a party by themselves. I'm posting this now, but I am quite confident nobody but you will read this -- and if you don't respond, I will be writing into the vacuum that is the internet, so there will be no feedback loop for me. So I think you guys are on the right track as far as indicating the "activity" of a post. But I'm finding it very difficult to create a pleasant community experience here because, as a new user, I constantly feel like I'm in an empty room; my home page is the "feed" which is only populated if I follow people I dont know; the first page on "global" is the newest posts, where nobody has arrived to the party; clicking on "chatter" is just awkward for me because I don't actually know anyone there; and I can't follow tags to populate by feed, which means I can't find people to follow without going to "discover." Anyway, I really want to like hubski and will continue to give it a chance!Also, we are adjusting the algorithm so that it is more reflective of activity than time of post.
If a subject is interesting, why wouldn't it be worth commenting on regardless of when it was posted?
Your feedback is great Alvin and it is much appreciated. The analogy of going to a "party" is a good one. The thing is, just like when at a party, you get more out of it when you walk up to a circle of conversation, introduce yourself and join in. Otherwise, you become a wall-flower and get little out of the experience. Moving forward Hubski needs to have more people at the party and needs to make it easy to find the "circles of conversation".And one of the biggest challenges for Hubski seems to be giving users the sensation that they aren't at a party by themselves.
I agree Alvin, this is an important problem to tackle. Nobody wants to take the time to craft a thoughtful comment/post only to have it gather dust. There are two things that can help with this 1. The "chatter" feed that we recently introduced is something that we have had behind the scenes and have used a lot. It's nice to have and certainly helps stimulate conversations. 2. More users. -We're working on this.clicking on "chatter" is just awkward for me because I don't actually know anyone there;
I think lurkers can have a great experience here, that's not what you were addressing. You seemed to be interested in stimulating conversation. Lurkers by nature aren't interested in that. I know a number of people that use Hubski strictly as content discovery site. They're not much interested in conversing just reading. That's great and I think the "global" links help this out tremendously. You can see posts at every iteration of their evolution and "lurk" accordingly. I love lurkers. Especially lurkers that use the "share" button.
Thanks for the feedback, alvin. Some good points. In many ways, new users deal with a chicken or egg problem. It's something that we need to improve upon. I am convinced that adding commenting activity to the feed algorithm will help with the empty room feeling. That should be rolled out very soon. Definitely feel free to send feedback and suggestions as you spend a bit more time feeling things out.
Our primary goal is to support/promote good conversations on a diverse variety of topics. We want the user to be able to customize their own Hubski experience while keeping the signal to noise high. The direction we take is mostly informed by our own use of the site, and from feedback from others in the community.
>-Click on their name, click on "posts" or "comments" depending on which you would like to see. You can also see what they've "shared". This handles your first paragraph. Missed that sorry. I will still say if I refer to say your post page(http://hubski.com/posts?id=thenewgreen) In the sidebar maybe say that I'm viewing your post and give a nav option to view your comments and other info from right there instead of having to click on your name again somewhere on the page and then waiting for the pop-up and then clicking again and waiting for the page to load. You can streamline a step or two out of that with some slightly better navigation. Also while I'm on it if you move some of that user info on the post page to the sidebar give the option to follow them in there with their sorting information since a lot of people are probably going to decide to follow a user based on their post. >Click on "tabs" under the link. Is this what you mean? Sort of. I mean that does work. I'd like to just be able to click on the external link and have it auto open in a new tab via a user configured setting rather than having to click over to the new tab link. That said not to big of a deal because you have the tab link and I can just click center on the scroll wheel. >The lack of a time signature in your feed is intentional. If a subject is interesting, why wouldn't it be worth commenting on regardless of when it was posted? There is something to be said for that. At the same time news events can somtimes move quickly and the topic can still be interesting but knowing how long ago the headline/thing was posted can be helpful because it might mean you want to go hunting for a newer post with newer info. I can take it or leave it with the lack of time stamps however.
Some great points, thank you. I like the idea of having the user that posted the contents info automatically on the side bar so you can follow them immediately without having to click on their name. mk, food for thought. We've discussed having an option in controls so that you can enable "tabs" always being "on" thereby foregoing the button. Thanks for the feedback. Again, welcome. Let me know if I can be of any help. See you around.
So I just stumbled into this old thread somehow and found it interesting to see the totality of the changes that have happened in the last 235 days: Done Share count (turn on in the settings) allows you to see how many things you've shard by this user and if you click the number you see the list | Time stamp things to let me know when it was posted. | You can turn times on in your settings as well now, although commenting on old things isn't bad because, unlike reddit, old posts with new comments will come back into circulation on the feed.Give users profile pages
let me refer to older post they've made and commented on
I found Hubski through this video: http://vimeo.com/49409909
I don't think it's really a migration, it's more of a percolation? I found out about Hubski from my brother, who in turn found out about it from Reddit. I'm not abandoning Reddit, I'm just ALSO using Hubski. But to deny that there will be more and more people coming over from Reddit is a bit naive I think. A lot of users are already here because of Reddit posts, I think Syncretic's in particular. As more Redditors find out, they will share with more people. There is a significant demographic within Reddit to which Hubski will appeal, and they will eventually find it.