But interacting with new people is one of the best things about a decent online community. The problem is that when those new people aren't the ones you interact with, and when they outnumber you ten to one, the community stops attracting interesting new people. The comment _refugee_ linked to is actually part 1 of a trilogy. They're all here.
So we want to interact with new people, but obviously not all new people. There are a lot of new people that make it hard for one to talk to new people one wants to talk about. I guess that even my suggestion that the most upvoted or starred, trusting the community to promote a user who makes a new comment, elevating him/her from the rest of the users, isn't good enough with my idea of separation of account ages. Well, it was an admittedly naive suggestion spurred on by: So then my brain clicked with the age separation idea. In any case. Here: Personally I'm inclined to believe that, unless "new" is meant in "familiarity" and not "new user", those interesting people are still going to big places, but are just drowned out. Coming up with a way to undrown them is perhaps something too complicated for me, but I gave it a shot for whatever it's worth. I'm interested in hearing why you think they wouldn't be attracted to coming to a place with users like that. I can hazard a guess and say it has to do with what you've already said on reddit trilogy, and then the question changes to something more structural and probably out of my league.#askhubski is a miasma of tedium, whereas last year, it wasn't.
and when they outnumber you ten to one, the community stops attracting interesting new people.
Totally worth tryin', yo. Wasn't my intention to jump down your throat. I've just seen the idea played out in /r/ideasfortheadmins since 2008. Here's why I liked the old granularity: "Chatter" allowed me to see what the few people I follow were paying attention to. clicking around through the various "hubwheels" allowed me to see old discussions that had gotten popular, to see who was saying interesting things, and to have conversations I wouldn't otherwise. In other words, i could "sneak up" on a discussion without billowing all 800-whatever followers all over it. You don't get the same visibility anymore.
I always default to using google then Hubski search. It may be a carry over from previous sites with shitty search. Hubski search is fairly good but - site:hubski.com love penis - works too.