"I live in Durham NC. I like it here in my neighborhood. I feel safe, I have thoughtful and intelligent neighbors that I enjoy talking with. The people around me are creative doers and I learn a lot from them. There are great restaurants nearby and plenty of recreation. About 8 miles away there is a completely different kind of Durham, with crime and crappy restaurants and people that I am not overly interested in talking with. I would not want to spend much time there. It may be the same city but they are two different experiences entirely. I almost never have to interact with the shitty side of Durham (unless I chose to). Just because they are both in Durham doesn't mean that I experience both. If Hubski ended up having tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of users there is no doubt that the level of content (overall) would likely wane. However, I may not even notice because I can turn off "external posts" and still just hang out with the people in my neighborhood (, , etc.. you know who you are) Perhaps I have external posts on low so as to get a taste of the ghetto from time to time too :) the point is I continued, You get what you want and you can avoid what you don't want". Do you agree with the analogy?
This is much less of a problem when there are no downvotes but it's still something to consider. There's nothing stopping a troll from coming in and disturbing conversation.
There is the "flag" button. But then that will require moderators and would be labor intensive and by the time it was handled, the damage is done.
Flags could also be weighted. A flag from a brand new user might mean very little, whereas a flag from a long time user might carry more weight. I will probably also be working on different comment sorting options in time.