Honestly, the system of the site, as it is right now, doesn't encourage much "thought" at all.

neutral. see what you mean, but what the hell does anymore? it encourages conversations.

People naturally lean towards ideas of their own, and the way the following system works, the fact that it is incredibly easy, not only to not see what someone else says, but to ensure they cannot comment on your post, censoring them from the larger audience, encourages everyone to rabidly ensure that they say nothing at all which could result in being muted.

agree 30%. but in my experience the people who get muted in practice are just jerks/tone deaf, not, like, eccentrics with ideas too bold for the common forum.

The submissions are nearly all shitty link posts

disagree - submissions fall in a few categories 1. easy to find link posts atlantic, wapo et al 2. personal tellhubski stuff 3. spam/crap 4. the very rare incredible finds from websites i would never see otherwise

and the only real comments that get discussion are ones where the topics are "pubski' or similar

disagree

clearly showing that this site is more a "hangout" for a select group of people who like each other than a site on which ideas can appear, and be truly discussed in full.

agree 50%

Maybe if "thoughtful" means "friendly" I can see your goal, but as it is, this site is little improved over something like facebook in it's early days. A gathering place for well-educated, tech-oriented people. Nothing baked into hubski encourages thoughtful discussion.

agree... some amount. but who is to blame? not the medium, the people/culture, surely. or at least not the medium completely. at that point it's tautological.

Thoughtful discussion requires a much more complex system that allows users to have open and honest discussion, it requires a system where mob-groups or users with a ton of followers do not have disproportional control over what is seen by the site. This site is not that.

neutral. this is not hubski, never will be, but also you clearly enjoy it somewhat or you wouldn't be here. i'm not sure what you describe is really possible.

anyway, refugee's response is kind of embarrassing, or more so the fact that it'll end up with eight dots in a while.