The userbase. It's a smaller group of people that are active, and it's small enough that you actually recognize the people that post and kind of get to know their views and enjoy hearing responses from certain people. Also, unlike 4chan and Reddit, the site hasn't devolved into memes, reposts, and images with text on them that dominate the top "content" of what seems like every subreddit. People aren't posting things to get imaginary internet points or reach "the front page", and I haven't really seen any "whoring" of that type of submitting here yet at all. The upvoting and "points" of Reddit have turned it into the biggest circlejerk echo-chamber of opinion the internet has seen yet. I stopped reading Reddit and came here because I like the smaller community, and I like the content here better. Sure, the same content could be found on the other sites you mentioned, but sifting through the pile of crap images and video game references that make up 95% of the "content" on those other sites just wasn't for me anymore, even the niche subreddits started to get crummy. There's far less content here than on Reddit overall, but I read and enjoy more of the things that get posted here. Also on Hubski, if people post crap that I think is stupid, I can just ignore them, or the tag, or both. On Reddit, if a subreddit turned to crap, sure I could unsubscribe, but then I miss out on any content about that subject entirely, whereas here I can just unfollow/ignore those specific people ruining my experience and still see stories on those subjects. Oddly enough, the only people I've had to ignore here so far are the people who are/were prolific Redditors with gigantic karma scores... and guess what... my content and Hubski quality got better. At the risk of sounding like an internet hipster, Reddit and 4chan both got too popular, and with that comes a massive decrease in overall quality. You know why Youtube comments suck? Because everyone uses it. You know why I think Reddit and 4chan suck now? Because everyone uses it. Hubski is still small and still has a "community feeling" to it which I like. But if Hubski had a couple million users by next week, no offense to MK, this site would probably get a lot worse too. It's the gift and curse of popularity that kills internet communities for me. My two cents. You should use Hubski if you like it, it's really that simple. You don't have to use one or the other, and can use all three if you like. It's not a street gang or a professional sports team you're joining. ;)why is it different than other sites like Reddit or 4Chan.
I actually think Hubski will scale much better than other sites, as you are not subjected to the content of the crowd. Hubski's unique feed mechanism means that your feed consists only of posts from people you follow. Hubski could blow up and if I didn't follow more people I'd never really know. At least in theory. I look forward to seeing how it holds up.But if Hubski had a couple million users by next week, no offense to MK, this site would probably get a lot worse too.
I do believe Hubski would scale better too, but I also enjoy reading from specific tags too. I mostly follow people, but I also follow a few tags. If I only followed users, you're right, my feed probably wouldn't change that much. But while my content in my feed might remain strong, the comments in those sections might get notably worse if people I dislike are following the same people. Also, browsing the global feeds to find new people to follow, or see more general content outside of my personal feed, could easily become a flood of constant crap with lots of junk to sift through.
With regards to low-quality comments in posts you see, that can be dealt with one of two ways. First, you can personally ignore a new user who makes inane comments. I've ignored as many 'jerk users as I can, so I will never see their comments (or posts) again. Second, the users in your feed can ignore them. Ignoring a user prevents them from commenting on your posts, which gives you some measure of control to the discussions happening on your posts. If these methods become insufficient, I fully believe that mk will develop a better system.
True, but even on Reddit using RES, ignoring users became fruitless over the last year. Too many to ignore in most threads that giving up Reddit was easier than ignoring 50 dipshits per comment section. In smaller niche subreddits, sure it was still doable, but I found it to become fruitless, and removing myself from the community became easier than trying to stay on top of ignoring and filtering people. The way I saw it, is if I have to ignore more than half the users I came across, then maybe I'M the one who was in the wrong place. I don't doubt MK could come up with something to improve the quality of the site if there were to be a huge influx of users, but other than a small pay-wall and stiff moderation like SomethingAwful, I've never seen a website sustain high quality forums for discussion as they've become more popular. He'd be the first person, in my opinion, to truly solve that issue if he did. Reddit did a decent job up until subreddits were hitting hundreds of thousands of users, and some with moderation even kept them decent at that point. But when the defaults toppled into the millions not even moderation could stop how crummy they got. And those users from the defaults just assumed that kind of crap was acceptable everywhere on the site, and the same type of behavior spilled into even the smaller and more niche subreddits. So we'll see, but yes I have faith in MK too, but it's still a huge challenge should this site get large. In the mean time I'm going to enjoy the quality and lack of ass-hattery of a small community. :)First, you can personally ignore a new user who makes inane comments.
One subreddit that I feel keeps discussion legitimate is /r/askscience. The moderators rule with an iron fist and mercilessly remove inane content and logical fallacy. I like that subreddit a lot because of it. But I agree, the overall quality of Reddit is now akin to the way Digg was right before the site redesign. Terrible.
That's pretty much one of the few I was thinking of as well. With those kind of numbers, heavy moderation is the only way to go. In other big subreddits whenever the mods propose some new rules and changes the community throws a collective hissy fit of "OMG THIS IS "OUR" SUBREDDIT DON'T TOUCH IT IT'S FINE. LET THE UPVOTES AND DOWNVOTES DO THE MODERATING!". But up and downvotes really don't work anymore, and are biased towards image/meme content because of how the system works.One subreddit that I feel keeps discussion legitimate is /r/askscience
And of course the availability of upvote-bundles which you can purchase online for marketing purposes. I felt an heavy uprising in PR-related content in the past year.
Yeah, I follow tags too, but very very few. I was talking elsewhere on Hubski recently about how following people provided the quality regarding a topic, where following tags provided immediacy regarding that same topic. As humans, we like both, and I regard tags as a kind of hack that grant us the immediacy we sometimes seek. I envision Hubksi keeping people as the primary point of entry to topics, with some version of tags (which have not been "solved") as a secondary means. Your point about the global posts is spot on. Also, as Hubksi scales I think that there will need to be a toggle switch where you can have your feed be comprised of the posts of people you follow and the posts they share, OR just the actual posts of people you follow and not the ones they share. It is easy to just share something, and people do it with less thought. This switch would let people reign in what makes it to their feed, keep the quality level really high (only get exactly what people you follow submit), and also let you follow more people without having their 'children threads' snowball into your feed. But the underlying mechanisms are sound. There are all sorts of algorithmic tricks you could do to deal with the global feed problem as scale happens. I have zero doubt that multiple ones will be tried given the level of iteration currently operating.