Every once in a while, we have discussions here on hubski about hubski. Like Ask Hubski, Reposts and the Better Angels of our Nature, Unfollow Guilt and What Hubski can learn from old-timey forums. It's been a while since we had a discussion like that, and I've been sitting on some unanswered questions & ideas that I'd like to share and discuss.
Over a week ago, kleinbl00 commented on the dehumanizing nature of reddit. It reminded me of an older comment of his and got me thinking. One of the conclusions of earlier discussions was that we should aim to make hubski even more human. It's one of the things hubski does well and what makes this community more than the sum of its parts. There's a reason the bar analogy is often used to describe hubski. I think this place should be about the people and their conversations, just like a bar. At the same time I think that with the combined knowledge that we have here, we can make hubski more human than it already is. The question then is not if, but how: how can we make hubski even more human?
I've got some ideas for y'all to shoot at. They're mostly refined ideas that sprouted from earlier discussions, but they got slightly buried. In one of the posts at the top I talked with thenewgreen about ways to improve the relationship between users. We came to the conclusion that a good step to do that would be to make relationships easier to foster. When I'm discussing with someone here, I'd like to know who I'm talking to. Questions that arise then, are: who are you? How do I know you and what is our history until now? I think I have some ideas to answer those questions.
Who are you?
One of the ideas was to maybe introduce avatars. As much as I'd like to believe I have good memory, it happens every now and then that I forget who the people behind the usernames are. It's just not that simple to link all the conversations I have had with the right username. Avatars would help to recognize other users and make it easier to get to know users. But they are far too obtrusive to the layout, and not having an avatar makes you stand out, which shouldn't happen. Currently, you can embed images in your profile like I have. The bio does a great job at this already. Maybe we could get more people to have a visual bio by introducing something along the lines of MIT's Media Lab: an algorithm that generates a deviation of the logo based on the username sounds cool. Another idea I had was to ask people what piece of art they like best, and display that.
How do I know you?
I don't have a brilliant memory, so once in a while I forget who I'm talking to. Currently there's a counter that tells you how many posts someone shared of you. But I think we can do more with this. Wouldn't it be great to be able to see who that person is in relation to yourself? E.g. they joined x days earlier, they comment more or share less often than you. How many dialogues have you had. Do they share the same things you do? And those metrics are just with what we have available now. These could be visible in a hover window, like insomniasexx designed here
Of course, there is more to relations than numbers. One of the functionalities I'm missing is a quick way to see previous dialogues with others. I'd love to go read my previous conversations with someone, where ideally I could sort dialogues from oldest to newest, the other way around, by most shared and by length. You could define a dialogue as subsequent posts where person A says something, person B responds and person A responds to that. Or make it longer - ABABA - that isn't really important. This could easily be placed on someones bio so you can see the latest dialogue.
What do I think of you?
Ideally, I would look at someone's name and go aah, you're mk, you started this place. But often, that requires me to analyze their bio to figure out who they are, and most people don't have simple labels. Reddit has RES tags, where you can label persons anything you like. Maybe this can be implemented in the hover screen, where you could have a small field to say something about a person. A mnemonic, for me to remember who someone is.
All of these ideas together might be too much, but I do think all of these can make hubski more human. I'd love to hear some thoughts though. Especially the recent influx of people: how do you think we can improve getting to know each other here? Do you recognize a lot of names already?
Btw, due to time zones, I'll probably be responding tomorrow sometime.
I would cautiously endorse some of these things if they were very specifically opt IN. It's useful to me to be a semirandom-appearing string of letters and numbers and nothing else. I'm perfectly okay with others populating their cosmology with whatever shape they judge me to be. If someone wants to click on my page, fine. They'll see I have an embarrassing number of badges and a disturbing number of followers. I don't really want that to enter into the conversation, though. It shouldn't matter. Those are not things that I have done, they are not things I am proud of, they are external judgements of an inhuman system attempting to quantify me via an arbitrary metric that may or may not have the first thing to do with my life. These things matter. Reddit recently rolled out a gauge by which you can see how much Reddit Gold a person has bought... and how much Reddit Gold has been bought for them. Mine is disgusting. Donations on my behalf have powered Reddit for about a week's worth (I think one gilded comment is good for six minutes). That's the kind of shit you get judged for - "why are you such an asshole when clearly someone bought you years and years worth of Reddit Gold?" Fuck you, I'm an asshole because I feel like being an asshole. Don't hold me to some imaginary standard that I had nothing to do with. You can hide that one, though, which makes it moot. I don't have to deal with that one. The moderator one, though... So when diemorz folded up the stattit tent, there was no real way to see who modded what, which fucked other mods over because they couldn't see who had any qualifications for modding. So now every user's page shows how many subreddits they mod - public and private. Result? A whole bunch of mods pruned a whole bunch of moderatorships all of a sudden because the rabble began to rouse. If we're going to do avatars, floating stat boxes and all the rest, I want the opt-in. Not as in "I'll show you some cutesy icon avatar because this user hasn't uploaded a picture or tied their Facebook account to this terrible page" but DARKNESS. If I haven't uploaded an avatar, I want you to see nothing. If I haven't given the system permission to show my followers and following, I want you to see nothing. If I haven't given the system permission to show a pop-up window of any kind, I want you to sit there frustrated at the enigma of me. By the bye, know what I hate? That hubski.com thinks I'm "interested in" anything. That's for me to fill in, not statistical modeling. I'm actually keenly interested in Tuvan throat singing but since that's not a tag we see much, we'll never know. Meanwhile, Hubski thinks I'm "interested in" Reddit when the fact of the matter is I see a lot of ignorance and feel duty bound to dispel it. I'm "interested in" Reddit the way a janitor is interested in spills. You wanna tag me? Fine. Tag away. So long as nobody gets to see those tags but you and possibly me. The act of dehumanization is the act of removing control. Right now I have control over the darkness that is my dossier. You start pressuring me into filling that up and we're dehumanizing like it's Krystallnacht.
Just so you know, in the weekly Hubski calls I'm the one suggesting functionality that is opt out. It's almost always mk suggesting otherwise. He's got a great feel for what should and should not be opt in/out. For example, when a new user signs up they are no longer automatically getting email alerts for each comment their post receives. I initially (until this past Monday) thought this was a horrendous idea, but mk wanted it to be an "opt in" functionality. Turns out he's on to something. It seems users return back to Hubski more often to check on the status of a post/comment if they do not receive notification. Otherwise, they passively await a reply from the site. -I never realized this. I hear veen in regards to wanting some way to visually attach a face with the name because I am the exact same way. If I wasn't partners in Hubski with forwardslash and by this point buddies with flagamuffin I would likely confuse the two all the time -visually. Same was true with ButterflyEffect and BrainBurner at first. Eventually I was able to distinguish as I became familiar with them but nowhere near as fast as I would have if there was some visual cue. But, I don't see a good option for visual cue's, as much as I'd like to. I do think we could make it more obvious that the profile bio can host images etc. As a long time user of the site, it's extremely difficult to know what it's like to "first use Hubski." Today, I received the following message from a new user that shall remain anonymous: What does that tell you? What would you take away from that? Also, I agree with the opt in aspect. I never did before but I'm moving more and more to that side of the fence. Also Also, I had a really kick ass charcuterie plate tonight with fantastic gin martini in preparation for the next #hubskidrinkclub. -Please excuse any typos. But seriously man... a rabbit confit that was amazing.Hi I was just attempting to create a profile - but it doesn't really look like there is much point, it doesn't appear that there is an easy way to access it once created - and yet there is a box for input of personal information. That seems strange. I only caught this note by accident, I'm not used to the meaning behind the icons and their various states. Looks like the place has plenty of room to grow . . .
Full disclosure - I'm only opining here 'cuz I got shouted out. By and large, the functionality is great right now. I was starting to think it was about time to talk about tag thesauri but then I poked around and realized that really, the system is pretty much working exactly as designed right now. tell you what. I'm going to log out, make a new account and see what I see. It was useful to do that on Reddit - HOLY SHIT you can't accomplish anything with a new account. Standby.
'k. So what I learned is that: A) The tutorial works really well. As in, it's really slick. Mad props on that. B) The site design clearly shows an interest in clean, minimalist programming that rewards paying attention. C) The markup should be WYSIWYG - "bolded" should read "bolded", "italicized" should read "italicized" etc. D) Fuck yeah. Blank page. I've been asking for that on Reddit instead of /r/here's a bunch of shit you should read because that's what everybody else does. E) I really should stop ignoring minimum_wage. His "about me" image is fucking hilarious. F) The second-least heinous layout is "ugly." Fer real, guys - why do you hate contrast so much? All in all, I have no meaningless criticism. The fact that my "settings" page allows me to talk about myself but doesn't demand I do so seems pretty much perfect.
I'm very happy to hear D. There's been an ongoing debate on the Hubski team about it. Score 1 point for b_b and mk. I am definitely of the opinion that not all thresholds should be lowered, for entry or even enjoyment of the site. Re: F, Dark got a bit darker today.
I live in LA, holmes. We got cracks in the sidewalk bigger than 80mm longboard wheels. And that doesn't include the earthquake damage or tree root shit. I oughtta go snap a picture of what the sidewalks look like on the route they took the Endeavor on; half the reason they chopped down the trees is so that they could put in sidewalks with a less-than-2-foot height variation...
MI is a wonderfully ironic state: A place that only survives on car manufacturing, but that won't under any circumstances submit to a gas tax high enough to maintain places to drives our precious autos. We have one of the worst ratios of maintenance dollars:miles of road of any state; throw in the freeze/thaw thing on top of that and spring is a shitty time to be a tire, axle or tie rod 'round here.
I can tell, actually. Curious - when you're building these, what choices do you have as far as ornamentation? It looks like you have: - BG color - Font - Font color - You color - Following color - Followed color How hard would it be for me to have a color picker and a dropdown for font? 'cuz then I'd have "custom" and I might just like that better.
It's mostly the main font and the background, but also the color of some links, textfields, borders, and buttons. Currently each style has its own style sheet. However, it would be worthwhile to have a master stylesheet of the CSS that doesn't change, and individual stylesheets for the custom aspects. If we did that, it would be one big step in the direction of something you are talking about. insomniasexx is working on a CSS project, which will be done soon. After that, I think we should implement that kind of CSS organization. If we had a handful of customizable aspects, it wouldn't be too difficult to allow for individual customization which would be pretty lightweight.
Yeah after I finish this brilliance I think I'm going to redo it and clean it up quite a bit. Maybe even add some comments (SAY WHAAA?!) This will be especially helpful for setting master fonts, deciding which elements are for look and feel and which are necessary for layout, etc. I'm currently about to start building a new, fully responsive website for my company and so I am finally taking the time to implement perfect, documented, and concise CSS that someone will be able to understand in the future. I hope I can bring all the things I learn during this project to help Hubski's css. The coolest trick I just learned about is rems. Basically you set html to a font size of 62.5%. Then you define each element as 14px (for ie) and then 1.4rem after it for modern browsers. When you want to up the fonts a bit for mobile, all you have to do is change the single HTML % and the entire font base will increase or decrease! Nifty huh?!
Well, technically the browser is the one doing the rendering so it'll be about the same. :P
Alright. I did it. Proof. How to: 1. Install stylebot extension 2. Click the extension icon and then click "styles" on the left hand side. 3. Click "add new style" 4. Type "hubski.com" in the top box (no quotes) 5. Type in the next box.
7. Refresh Hubski.
6. Click save. body {
font-family: "Papyrus";
}
Meaningless criticism - What did this person even mean? Like there isn't an easy way to access your profile once it is created? Even on Facebook you access your profile by clicking on your username....it doesn't appear that there is an easy way to access it once created
C) -Great suggestion
D) -That's nice to hear, I was very skeptical about the "blank page" approach. It only works if it's clear to people where to go to find content to fill that page and how to do that. I'm not convinced that this is clear.
F) More to come... I'm now following you Also_kleinbl00 and I expect great things.
The thing about the blank page is when you first visit Hubski, you get "global." It's pretty obvious there's all sorts of content. The thing about your userpage when you first log in, you get "nothing." It's pretty obvious that Hubski is not going to push anything at you. If you had half a clue, you watched the tutorial. If you didn't, it's at the bottom of the page. It doesn't take a lot to switch back to "global" and follow some shit. That's exactly as it oughtta be.
Cool, thanks for the feedback. It's good to know we're in a half way decent spot. Only took 3 years. Now for an API :)
I specifically shouted out to you because I knew that you're great at spotting the flaws in people's arguments and because you are quite knowledgable about the inner workings of social websites. And also because I remember you mentioning that you're not following #askhubski. I completely agree with what TNG says. It's not that I don't want to invest here, I do, it's why I spend hours every day here reading and commenting and enjoy doing so. It's that I want to remember all the people I've talked to better. Especially those whom I've had great conversations with a while ago and not so much now, and I don't think hubski facilitates those tapered off relations.Full disclosure - I'm only opining here 'cuz I got shouted out.
Fair enough, I didn't really consider the point of view of users like you. I think that is a good driver for any future changes to the way Hubski works. Which is why I proposed the tagging in the first place. The ideas for metrics I proposed are not something I'd use to judge others: it's more like 'hey, we share the same things a lot, maybe I might want to follow you'. Comparable to the music similarity meter on last.fm or something along the lines. I don't really see how a metric like that imposes standards to the community which Reddit Gold does. It's something I think is nice to know and not much more than that. I'm not gonna judge someone because they didn't like the same articles as I do. As for the picture, yeah I agree that it shouldn't be mandatory, that wasn't my intention but I didn't say it explicitly. I think I gave in to the tendency to label and categorize other people. Useful to make quick decisions but not to foster relations. Yet I think that there's gotta be something I can do to get to know a user better than their last couple of posts. Do you think there are better ways to foster relationships that can align with who someone is?So long as nobody gets to see those tags but you and possibly me.
Those are not things that I have done, they are not things I am proud of, they are external judgements of an inhuman system attempting to quantify me via an arbitrary metric that may or may not have the first thing to do with my life.
Confession? The first bone of contention I ever had with the Reddit admins was over [F]riending. See, Reddit stores the people you have friended. That's in their data. But they're adamantly opposed to seeing if someone has friended you. You can still do it, although RES has rendered it pretty much quaint. Nobody does it any more. But before RES, I'd get comments like "I knew I friended you for a reason" and whenever I saw that, I'd friend them back. It helps a bunch when you're engaged in a knee-deep flame war to see someone with an [F] next to their name trying to defray things. And when the mob wants your blood? That list of [F]s is seriously comforting. Reddit announced they were going to make their user data available to researchers, which would include usernames. If you could wrangle your way around Ruby, you could see who had friended who. If you couldn't, though, it remained opaque. Me and Raldi got into an on-the-phone shouting match about this - they were putting the data out there, but not in any human-parseable way. They didn't have any privacy concerns, but they actively didn't want to foster affinity. He quit two months later. the Hubski crew did that right off from the start - I know when someone has "friended" me. I see them differently no matter what. Rather than saying "the system knows, you don't need to" the approach they took was "we're all people, here's how we're interacting." That's another reason Hubski now gets ten times as much of my time as Reddit does, despite modding a default. I'm investing for people, not a database. The more deterministic the system, the less I'm likely to like it. If you're interacting with me, it does me good to know what those interactions are. If you let me share something I made, as opposed to requiring me to share something I did, the more it resembles a party and the less it resembles a prison.
I suppose "interested in" is a qualitative judgement, and perhaps it should be revisited. The reason that was put there was because users are always clamoring for ways to decide whom to follow. The thinking was that it would be easier to find other users that might share similar interests. But I know you and I tend to agree that making things easier doesn't make the site better, and may in some cases actually make it worse.
"Recent shares" and "recent comments" pretty much covers the spectrum, though, doesn't it? You can see what I clicked on 25 deep. That pretty much shows what I participated in as opposed to interested in. It might be as simple as that one word - my participation doesn't necessary mirror my interest. By saying it's something I'm "interested in" you imply that I endorse these things. Far more useful to show what stuff I've tagged recently. Then you can see what I'm actually submitting.
I'm going to try to restate your question: "If 'dehumanization' is the act of removing control, would removing the controls others have over their perspective of you be dehumanizing?" The key is perspective. I am interested in shaping the "I" of this space. My identity, my self-image is the object here. I can't stop you from keeping a Moleskine with notes about every thing I say - but it isn't built into the system. More importantly, your notes do not become a part of the gestalt - it is impossible for them to be a part of my identity. That's why doxing is a powerful weapon, by the way - it's identity assassination. You can be the Pimp Daddy of all Reddit but drop dox and you're just a middle-aged IT consultant in Texas. The image that you have built for yourself becomes replaced by the image that you're trying to escape.
You should work on that. For the good of everyone. "Removal of control" as "dehumanization" because conscience is about choice. When we punish someone, we remove the choices available to them. See: prison, grounding teenagers, revocation of phone privileges, making children stand in the corner. Conversely, as children develop and become more conscious of their actions, we increase their responsibility. We give them greater autonomy, greater choice. When a person is not given control over something they feel entitled to control, they resent it as condescending, as controlling, as infantilizing. When a person has control taken away from them, they internalize it against a slight against their conscience and autonomy. Gun control in the United States is not controversial because millions of Tea Partiers wish to overthrow the government by force. Gun Control in the United States is controversial because millions of Tea Partiers feel that they should be entrusted with the decision to not rise up against Obama the Secret Muslim. None of them will. But as soon as you revoke their option they begin to suspect that you're moving against them. Makes sense?
Ok I see more perspective now. So: Let's say I lived somewhere, and in this place, I behaved a certain way. I was then stigmatized for this behavior and I was forced into behaving a certain way. Then, after leaving this place and entering a new one, the same patterns of behavior I was forced into were still being exhibited by my own habits, even though the conditions for said behavior were no longer directly present. Would my subsequent action of removing these controls within be dehumanizing? Would it be an act of dehumanization to remove myself from the controls of my own perception?
Edit: I was just asked for my opinions of Hubski as a new user, and I hope to answer this person's questions shortly. This topic is exactly where I want to answer all of their questions, and is why I'm asking kleinbl00 these questions
IF: you are human THEN: you are consciously acting in such a way that you are being retaliated against. I'm not big on hypotheticals, particularly vague ones. The world is an empirical place and I believe there is more to learn in discussing "what happened" than "what could happen." I was contributing to a discussion about UI choice. You seem to wish to discuss a Kafka novel.
I am only trying to give an example to better explain my initial question. I'm trying to help you understand the fundamental nature of how I am seeing your appraisal of control in context to humans. I'm coming from a mindset that looks at anything, from an avatar, to a list of things you are "interested in" as nothing more than external objects. I don't see anything humanistic about being forced into controlling your behavior and having freedom taken away from you for not adhering to the person forcing your hand. Unless you believe we are in a constant state of controlling and being controlled. If you don't want something so vague, fine: I was stigmatized in a Greek society at a university, mostly due to my actions and how they generated a lot of attention. I loved shredding on the piano, dancing like no one was watching, goofing around, and asking a lot of questions. Let's just stick to the piano though: I would play the piano. I absolutely love improvising. This would catch the attention of females. Now, I've been playing the piano for nearly all my life, and I do not play the piano fundamentally because I love the attention. When, on a nightly basis, a crowd of women would eventually surround the piano, a few things would happen. One thing led to another and I was cut off. I was turned into an object, as nothing more than a mass manipulator of others. I was marshaled, like a dog, into shutting my soul up. I was punished, I had my freedoms taken away from me. Eventually. I started getting so sick that I was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward and subjected to a cocktail of soul sucking, identity killing drugs. But I'll tell you, it was a lot easier to accept the world as black and white on anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and amphetamine salts. Now I am back in the environment I came from, afraid to walk out the front door half of the time. I have been utterly shredded by the controls within my own mind, both fabricated, and cultivated out of my own psyche. So, would it be dehumanizing for me to remove the externalities which are controlling my own mind, specifically the ones that are controlling the way I perceive things. In this case, like someone's avatar, or what they are "interested" in?
Wow! Look at that! Give a man something concrete to discuss and all of a sudden the sentences flow like water from a mountain spring! So: 1) You love playing the piano. 2) Women love you loving playing the piano. 3) Complications ensued Here's what followed: - "I was turned into an object" - "I was marshaled like a dog" - "Into shutting my soul up" - "I had my freedoms taken away from me" Your words, not mine. Do those strike you as phrases describing the dehumanizing effect of rescinded control? thing is, I read the second, third and fourth paragraphs and we're talking about something real. I get to Are we conflating antipsychotics with internet avatars? Because I fail to find the parallel.So, would it be dehumanizing for me to remove the externalities which are controlling my own mind, specifically the ones that are controlling the way I perceive things. In this case, like someone's avatar, or what they are "interested" in?
Furthermore, do you not see the merits of discussing UI choice by discussing choice in and of itself? Or the fundamental qualities of human behavior? Although I don't have the depth of experience in non-physical social constructs, I do have experience in social behavior. This topic is asking about humanizing Hubski, and I am trying to understand what is and isn't humanizing by your understanding.
Would it be an act of dehumanization to remove yourself from the controls of your own perception, specifically how you perceive others to judge you? And what you worded is just as interesting to me, because I am not at all interested with creating an image of myself here. But I also accept that it will happen. I believe it is beyond my control, but, pertaining to the topic of humanizing Hubski, I am now wondering if the beauty of this social construct is in the design... To break down the walls of human social behavior that evolution constructed since we first left the trees, that could arguably be more of a detriment to us now.
Let me break this down really simply: I didn't try restating your question out of some zen "grasp the pebble from my hand" thing. I honestly don't understand your questions half the time. "Would it be an act of dehumanization to remove yourself from the controls of your own perception" is like a Psychic TV lyric. I don't know what you mean by that. I think you mean "Is the effect as bad if you choose to opt out?" In which case I say "no, because you're choosing." But I'm just guessing here, man. The fact that "what I worded is just as interesting" to you when I was literally trying to say the same thing using simpler language illustrates that a whole bunch is being lost in translation. I mean, do me a solid and rewrite this sentence: ...such that a 4th grader could break it down. We'll talk.
To break down the walls of human social behavior that evolution constructed since we first left the trees, that could arguably be more of a detriment to us now.
I don't like the idea of avatars. We already have a bio field where people can "humanize" themselves on Hubski, with images and all the kit and caboodle. I think that avatars would just clutter that and cheapen the experience, I don't think they'd work in the way that you'd like them to. Imagine 100 users with pictures of cats, and you follow 5 of them. Which results in no gain due to avatars. I would never use one, and as an aside I hope we never have anything like the flair system on Reddit either. I'm just opposed to those kind of things. Seeing how much overall interaction I have with a person might be useful though. Going beyond how many posts of a person I've shared would be neat, I'd like to have a fuller picture of my interactions with a given person on Hubski. Maybe not as a hover but I'd like it better if it would come up when I click their name, if I opt-in to it. Seeing how often they post compared to me or when they joined relative to me is irrelevant, there's people that rarely post but when they do it's a joy to read, and I can just click the username to see when they joined. As for tagging a person, I'm completely indifferent towards it and have no argument for or against it. It's something that I don't think I would use, but could see it being beneficial as a whole. I agree with having these things be opt-in, if anything.
So color me weird, but... We're discussing UI here, and we're discussing UI changes that the user can make. We've got styles... or we did. I just tried to change mine and it's empty. Anyway - Our current UI kind of represents mk's whim more than anything else and, as I've mentioned before, your best hope resembles a Toynbee Tile more than anything else. If I had a Protopage-like UI builder I'd use it. If I had the ability to save those pages I'd share them. Hubski is, after all, a database with a web front end on it. We're all talking about ways to make that database more parse-able by the humans looking at the front end. The fact that I can see your page is pretty cool... but that's something you generated, not something you built.
That bug with your settings is fixed. An errant <p>. forwardslash implemented a faster parser for our markup last week and this was related. This thing has been a bear, but we are in a much better place. I agree with you and doesntgolf. "interested in" sucks. I often look at mine and think: oh, really? Social algorithms are built to fail. As b_b said, it was in response to a expressed need, but it doesn't succeed at filling it. I like veen's idea of previous dialogs/interactions. That, I would find interesting. I visit your profile, and I can see what we last chatted about. Maybe a link like: "Chatted with: 13 days ago". When you click the link, you see all of your previous discussions with that user. That kind of information is much more interesting and useful than an algorithm that can grow stale or miss the mark. That might not be the ideal implementation, but something along those lines. Simply listing the tags you've used is probably more useful than "interested in" for a new user checking you out.
That's still one of my favorite threads in Hubski history. I'm mostly okay with the current UI, but that's because I'm really not picky with those kind of things (though that is slowly changing). You say Protopage, I think Tumblr. I suppose it's more or the less the same thing though, being able to build your own page with a layout you want and whatever features you want. Assuming I'm understanding that correctly. Side note: What is your threshold for embarrassing number of badges and disturbing number of followers?
I've been on Tumblr like once and didn't really understand it. Protopage? Yeah, that I had to set up for my mother-in-law when iGoogle went away. Looking at it now, yeah - might as well start a Wordpress blog. That's why I said "protopage" - you get a limited number of colors, you get a limited number of layouts, you can put one (1) image behind it if you're really bent about it. Me? Give me colors and fonts and I'm good. one need only browse Reddit for a while to see what's possible within CSS.
The avatar thing is something I hate as well (as in, an avatar in the comment section). My idea for a generated one is just to get more people to choose some visual cue / identity over just a textual one, as others can recognise them better that way. So more people with a picture in their bio.
I've been swamped with the 9-5 (lately 9-9) job but I have a couple questions for the community. What information do you want to see about other users? Specifically. Don't think about is it possible or not. It's brainstorming. 1. Avatars. Or not avatars. This has been pretty thoroughly debated already. 2. Seeing more of your relationship with other users. 3. flagamuffin's comment below regarding 'your past conversations with x'. veen said this as well - "see previous dialogues with others" 4. _refugee_'s insight into snapchats functionality of who you snap with most. 5. veen's note about seeing joined x days earlier, they comment more or share less often than you, etc What else would you like to see if we were to dramatically increase the amount of information you could glean from profile pages? I kinda want to get it all out there and debate the opt-in, privacy, etc side of it later. I can assure you that mk and the team here is thoroughly committed to opt-in functionalities and giving users control over their information. We are making big strides to make Hubski more private and controlled by the user. We never want people to be scared of what information may be out there or automatically generated about them. One thing I would really love to see is a visualization of my connection to a person. We have really nifty graphs for frequency of posts/comments over time. I would love similar graphs to somehow capture my relationship with another user. Maybe how many time's I've shouted them out/replied to them/they replied to me over time. Maybe some way to compare shared interests in tags. Maybe some way to compare the number of threads we both commented on. Chances are, even if I haven't engaged directly with them, I would like to get to know them better if we comment on 90% of the same threads. And I've got a meeting. Throw thoughts at me.
Damn! That was fast! I like it. That was in my "shit for the future list" not "shit for tonight"!
What if I could click on a users name and see how many followed tags and domains we have in common?
I don't use snapchat, so I didn't know about #4 -- how could we adapt that idea to hubski? Person you've replied to most, person who has replied to you the most? It would need to be pretty detailed to have impact I think, but it would be seriously awesome to be able to pull up a list of people you've previously in-depth discussed the minimum wage with when you're submitting something about that subject. Perfect, love this, I'm naming it the hubski correlation coefficient and now that it has a name we need it to exist.Maybe some way to compare the number of threads we both commented on. Chances are, even if I haven't engaged directly with them, I would like to get to know them better if we comment on 90% of the same threads.
I'd like to see more stuff on interactions I've had with previous users, both visually and in a list or something. I have trouble remembering if I recommended something to someone already in a previous conversation. I don't really care about the avatar thing, even though I have one in my bio page, but sometimes when I'm tired, it's hard to see the usernames clearly. I get usernames confused all the time. Is it possible for user names to use different typefaces or is that a pain in the ass? I guess it might not make things any easier, since our usernames are so small.
If you go to my profile and then to the graphs and then click on "replies" you can access this page: http://hubski.com/comments?id=humanodon&filter=kinsomniasexx Woooo-hoooo!
It was created when the interactions were created. Sorry I just realized I didn't explain that at all. I was on the call and replying at the same time. Never a good choice of tasks to multitask. We went thru this whole thread to see which feature requests we got to and didn't. I got to this one and realized it had been implemented. You can access any by going to the graphs and clicking the number. Or altering the URL manually.
I had a conversation once with mk where I proposed something like the following: A sort of indicator (doesn't matter what, it could be their name changing colors in a heat-map, a little climbing bar graph, a number on a scale, etc) that goes up slightly when you reply to someone. It would either be their name or be near it. That's all. Over time it would go back down at some point. Basically it just sort of let's you know if you've chosen to interact with this person before, and to what degree slightly...sort of like "Hey, I've met you before" I thought it would be interesting in that it might alter the dynamic a bit. Give you a slight pause before you either ignore them and move on or engage with them. I sort of like doing the "hard work" of remembering who I've interacted with because if you build a connection this way it is more solid, but this idea intrigued me.I don't have a brilliant memory, so once in a while I forget who I'm talking to. Currently there's a counter that tells you how many posts someone shared of you. But I think we can do more with this.
Snapchat does this. It keeps track of how often you snap people and how often they snap you, but it also maintains a time metric of some sort. So when I open my snapchat, it shows me the 3 people I snap the most frequently at the top - but if for instance I haven't snapped one of them in the past week, even if I've snapped them 7 times a day for the month before that, that person will fall out of my top 3. Then there is also a list of "recent snapchats" where it keeps about 5 people who I have sent snapchats to recently. This is a lot more dynamic than my "top 3" list. I don't think we could do it in list format here but I would really enjoy that. It could be like bars, like when you are listening to music and the bars go up. I like this idea but I don't know as it is necessary. I agree wtih you about the building a connection - as I'll put it - the "old fashioned" way. Where you had to learn people's names and identities and personalities over a series of conversation, and yeah sometimes you forget stuff because it's human nature, but then it comes back up again and you remember or re-learn it.
I love the idea of using insomniasexx's design to display information from a user's profile on hover or on click. That way, if someone wants to include an avatar in their profile they can, and if not, they don't. As others are advocating for, it's completely opt-in. It's just a quick display of your profile and stats, which may or may not include a photo. IMO it'd be cool if it worked like the markup window. I also like kleinbl00's ideas of getting rid of the 'interested in' portion of the profile, and having the option of hiding your number of followers and badges.
I already see objections to avatars rising. I hate to maybe make you feel like we're ganging up on you, but I will say it's been discussed before and a fair number of people seem pretty adamantly against it. Frankly, if you (general you and not specifically actually you, veen) can't be bothered to remember my username through and over our interactions, then why bother? I don't learn people's names the first night I meet them but if I keep bumping shoulders with them I do. That's what a username is.
As I said in that post you linked: I haven't really changed my thinking on it. Although I do think these discussions are worth having. I do like veen's suggestion about being able to explore past discussions you had with a user. That would be interesting, and it probably would reinforce feelings of civility.2. I recognize many users by their names, and most importantly, what they write. I don't feel that an image can influence that in an additive way. Also, users can and do change their profile images, usernames don't change.
My ideas shouldn't be free of scrutiny so if they're shit I'd rather have people tell me that. I started writing this because a) there are people whom I've had conversations with months ago, and I kinda forgot who they were and b) I noticed I haven't started following anyone in a while. For both problems I didn't see very good solutions so this was an attempt to add solutions for that, by making relationships stronger here and making it easier to get to know people. Not my lack of interest. Maybe I'm lazy or diverting the problem from myself to the system, I don't know because I kinda need to sleep now.
I don't know. I am also a daily hubskier. I'm sure it is different when you have more distance. eightbitsamurai called this place a social network earlier today. I had never considered it as such. For me one of the key differences from reddit that I noticed here from the start was the fact that usernames
Matter, that I actually did have to notice them because without realizing it I was building relationships with these people with each post. Reddit was always so big names never mattered. Here it became evident they really did because you were interacting with the same six people In every discussion. So I have a bias towards saying it is a user flaw over a site flaw due to my experience and take on the site. Your mileage is not my
Mileage and that's okay.
To provide some clarification, I was more referring to the fact that Hubski is more like a bar then Facebook is. People move in and out, but there's a sense of unity throughout the website. Facebook is more like a...well I dunno what it is anymore, but I know the bar metaphor was not apt.