I like Hubski for its discussions, but if some people join and don't want to discuss what they post, Hubski can handle that without disturbing you. People who don't mind will gravitate towards the empty poster, people who do mind will be repelled in varying degrees by the severity of their pleasure/annoyance. I think if Hubski is going to mature as a site it's going to come from accepting more than just the community that's here now. Seems like an innocuous suggestion, since obviously you have to add people to grow. We have a nice bunch of people who want to talk about how a site like this works and computer stuff and how the future's going to be. We need to be more accepting of adding communities. If I wanted to post exclusively about #anime, I could. If the circlejerkers want to do nothing but #circlejerk, they can. It doesn't hurt anyone to have a lot of disparate communities bumping around in the petri dish of Hubski. If you like to keep your Hubski as a place for thoughts, that's great and I tend to agree with you. But some people really like puppies. Maybe they find puppies interesting, maybe they just wanna look at them for whatever reason, but those people shouldn't be stigmatized here. Ignore them, never follow them, comment against them respectfully when you can, Hubski's platform can handle the rest. Let their community grow, too. Don't tell people what Hubski is, tell them what you use Hubski for. Sometimes I post links with little to no comment because I post it as "this is interesting, huh?" But that's about all I have to say about it. Like the action park think I posted early today. I don't have much to say about it! It's ridiculous, it's something that happened/is happening, and that's kind of that for me. But if people want to talk about it, that's fine.Hubski is a place for thoughts.
Is it? Maybe your Hubski is a place for thoughts, but I doubt ytknows' is. I think one of the best things about Hubski is that it doesn't have enough limits to clearly push itself in any direction, but it has given its users plenty of tools to encourage or discourage the content they see.
I completely agree with everything you said. This is a place for people to find their own niche. I guess I posted this out of a certain annoyance and, I hate to admit, a desire for others to use Hubski in a similar fashion that I do. But I do see how flawed that view is. I suppose I just feel that if I'm going to share something, it's meant to facilitate some sort of discussion. But that's not to discredit a post put up simply to share something interesting (although, I would think that if others found it interesting they'd give their input). I'm not saying I don't want #puppies or #herpderpityderpsville. What I'm saying is that regardless of the Hubski community, discussion is always beneficial. Sharing thoughts is an incredible thing and this site has done a good job in creating a wonderful platform for that. I think it'd be poor use of Hubski not to discuss everything. And I must say, I always enjoy reading your responses and thoughts. They're always very well formulated and thought provoking. I enjoy following you.
Thanks! I don't think that the sentiment of "a desire for others to use Hubski in a similar fashion" to oneself is by any means limited to you- I see it all over the #hubski and #askhubski posts. And it's not like your post was that against it. Just been meaning to bring it up somewhere, and thought here was a good place. Like I said, I tend to agree with you. But it would be interesting if Hubski spun out a community of people who never talked, and only shared. Instead of lurkers they would be like pushers. Almost a sort of newspaper you could check certain sections of.
I'd like to just point out that you seem to have a very good grasp of how this site can function. It's encouraging. I think right now what we're experiencing is just a very small community, once the site scales Blob_Castle, and others, would likely not notice an absence of conversation. "Pushers", like certain sections of a newspaper... I really like the analogy.
I... I really like Hubski.
I have a close friend who loves tumblr and we may or may not spend hours talking about the ins and outs of social networks, the benefits of encouraging/discouraging dialogue, how to defend against Eternal September, and whether or not "Well-Kept Gardens Die by Pacifism" is still relevant. Having some trouble getting my head around Yahoo! Pipes or you can guarantee I would have some cool data for this place.
if Hubski spun out a community of people who never talked
I would hope that that would be only a certain community of Hubski, while others based on discussion remained. Otherwise, we end up with the front page of Reddit.