Hi Joel - lots to respond to over the days. I like your open questioning position and you are right that complaints are best taken with suggestions that you yourself are commited to following.

hubski promotes posts about hubski a lot

yes, of course. If I'm going to vacation on an island, I want to know who the other inhabitants are, whether I feel safe rubbing up against them, what the island looks like, and how it works.

#hubski posts are very positive-natured, and rarely is the site criticized for things in its own community

It seems to me that the site often criticizes itself, but like your post, it criticizes in such a positive-natured way and the criticism is accepted non-defensively (disclosure, my specialty) that it might not seem like criticism. This way of conducting discourse might seem like a foreign language to some people. Finally for the moment - I think it would be good for anyone reading your post and this discussion to consider which psychological needs the website is fulfilling in different ways for different participants and if it is fair to expect those needs to be fulfilled here (i.e. popularity, love, community, self-esteem, others) - needs that used to be met in other pre-internet ways. Perhaps you've heard of Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other Also, one more thing: I think the title "Apathy" is not what your post is about. You seem anything but apathetic.