I think you get some things right but then immediately backtrack on your valid points with some ridiculous reasonings. Let's start here. That's right. That is wrong. At this point in time, Hubski is not the only place that any of us visit on the web. Hubski has been referred to as the third place of the internet numerous times. Thusly, at times, you will find that the top stories and breaking news stories that are on the front page of every aggregator, blog, and news publication aren't on Hubski. It's not that we are against posting these stories, it's just that most of us have already seen it when we visit Hubski. We all spend time and love our Hubski, but usually the biggest and breaking news stories have already been regurgitated, debated, loved, or deplored ad nauseam elsewhere. I personally come to Hubski for conversations and discussions with other human beings. I don't come here to see the same exact content that I find on Twitter, Facebook, reddit, digg, the newspaper, etc. The following paragraph where you hypothesize ridiculously about the reasons for this is also flawed, for different reasons. Let's say, hypothetically, that this story was important enough to be discussed and wasn't being discussed enough elsewhere. The reason it didn't get shared has nothing to do with the content of the story but how you presented it. You, a user who typically posts insightful essays that delve into psychology and society and human nature, post this: Which leads to a page that literally looks like it's straight from CBS. Loading video symbol, advertisements everywhere, blocks of emptiness, no real information, and a video that I had no interest in because nothing else about this story made me interested enough to waste my time watching a video. If you felt like this story was important and interesting enough, I would recommend giving a little blurb in about why you think it's important. Not a clickbaity headline. Not some ridiculous, sarcastic shit like, "Racist white executive shoots black employee for trying to cure a coworker’s headache." But something besides a worthless article covering an uninteresting story. Yes. Uninteresting. Because even after I have fully read your thoughts on posting the article and the article itself, I still don't find it interesting enough to read further. --- Alright. I'm getting upset at the sarcastic, patronizing shit you wrote (and tried to pass as "thoughfulness") in that last paragraph so let's move on, shall we? Ohio. Yup...that's called life, love, hate, and being a human being. It's irrational, emotional, illogical, and ridiculously glorious. You, however, think, " No. I truly like your definitions of thoughtful in the introductory paragraph. However, I didn't see where you define thoughtful as only including "intellectual" subjects and not using the word fuck. I may be wrong, but your obsession with the use of "bad" words reminds me of my mother and I believe that this obsession, at times, may hinder you (and my mother) from seeing the truth and depth in any statement that has a curse word on the surface. Let's take a look at the "cooing pigeons". Here's the post for reference. 1. El_Duderino giving some more insights on life, inner values and, to top it off, a put-that-shit-in-a-frame-on-my-wall quote. Without limitations, there wouldn't be any need for creativity. You may not have been dealt the perfect hand. But do not forget: we are masters at manipulating the environment around us to suit our needs... that or just god damn determined to make sense of our observations. But do continue telling us what you see, I enjoy reading it =) 2. kleinbl00 giving some straight up kleinbl00 advice. Good advice. Dare I say, thoughtful advice. Yes. I'm going to say it. That comment is fucking thoughtful. And, on top of it, I like it. Which counts for something in my book. Yes, those comments are hand-picked. But all the comments in that thread are essentially the same. They are not cooing pigeons though. They are people bonding over mutual distastes. They are people relating to shitty circumstances and hilarious circumstances. They are people giving advice. --- By your definition, thoughtful means: If that thread doesn't fit into your definition of thoughtful, then I'm honestly not sure what does. It is simultaneously considerate, civil , and contemplative. For fun, I just looked up the definition of thoughtless: not showing consideration for the needs of other people. I find it incredibly ironic that the way that you counter the "thoughtlessness" of Hubski is by writing a flawed, sarcastic, shallow, and downright antagonistic blog about Hubski. I stand by my belief that Hubski is thoughtful. This particular blog of yours, however, is one of the more thoughtless things I've encountered on Hubski.As an experiment, I found the most politically innocuous source for the story imaginable (USA Today) and posted it to see if anyone would bite. Not surprisingly, no one did.
So, the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or whatever they feel like calling themselves) issues a call to supporters to launch attacks in the West – and a few days later there is a beheading in Oklahoma by a man with militant Islamic material and rhetoric on his Facebook page – and nobody on Hubski thinks it’s interesting!?
They all commiserated with his awful experience – notwithstanding that, by his own admission, nothing specifically bad had actually happened to him.
...but the one thing it certainly isn’t is thoughtful. It’s thoughtless. Or, if you prefer the vernacular, it’s fucking thoughtless.
The social structure that supported my interests and education have basically vanished, exposing my values like never before. This has led to a certain understanding:
Channel your inner anthropologist. There will come a time when Ohio has been in your rearview for many years. You will meet someone at a party who shall say something disparaging about Ohio. In order to bond with them, you must be educated about specific, terrible things about Ohio...
The first meaning is considerate...Civil might be another synonym.
The second meaning of "thoughtful" is contemplative. Involving thought.
The dude slammed Hubski for 1800 words to drive Hubski traffic to his site with comments powered by Hubski. I mean, mad props. Methinks he's still butt-hurt about this.I have only muted one member. I consider it a dangerous right to be used only as a last resort – but without it I probably would have gotten sick of arguing with the person I muted. I see no ethical justification for ignoring people – but I understand that this is my standard and not necessarily everyone else’s.
From my perspective, this is exactly what I get out of hubski and what I like about it. I'm sorry that you don't have the same experience. How can hubski be more thoughtful in your view? Could you link to the Ohio post you lament about? If you want a thoughtful reply on it, it might be a good idea to let people judge themselves.What I hoped for, and what I still believed the founders of this site intended, was a forum for civil discourse in which people might disagree with a minimum of rancor.
insomniasexx, veen, JTHipster, eightbitsamurai, CashewGuy, b_b, PeterC, nowaypablo, mk, _refugee_, ButterflyEffect, BrainBurner, elizabeth, white, symmetric, galen I have one pretty useful rule. If you find yourself on the receiving end of alot of people's anger, it's a good idea to re-evaluate and see if they are right. I've done that. In the meaningful, human sense -- you're all basically right. My diatribe really didn't accomplish anything. I analyzed you as a collective and ignored a the fact that you have feelings as individuals -- quite an irony for me. Not the best analysis either. If it's worth anything to you, I apologize. That said, it is still a fact that there are plenty of the things that show up on the site that I vehemently disagree with, and that annoy me every bit as much as Ohio annoys JTHipster. (I badged his comment, BTW, not because I thought it was especially insightful or brilliant -- but because it was good deal more civil than I expected. I think that worth a badge -- and the fact that I would probably disagree with him about most things is immaterial.) Really, though, I'm not inclined to argue about my post or the replies. It is both embarrassing and unfortunate. Since I'm not fond of muting and ignoring programmatically, the easiest way to keep my blood pressure in an acceptable range is to just not look around here anymore. In different circumstances, I might have time for, and more interest in, the discussions -- and then I would need to work out the conflict. As it is, it is probably better for everybody that I focus my work on different audiences elsewhere. I haven't really decided whether or not to stop posting here altogether. I may continue. It's easy to do, and since you can choose to simply not read my posts or to programmatically ignore me -- there can't be much harm. (Yes, I know -- another damned ironic statement after this post. So it goes...) If I do continue to post, I will reply to questions -- just expect it to happen on a rather long time frame. That is all I have. I guess it will have to suffice. Auf Wiedersehen.
Respect homie. "Technically" you don't need to apologize if you meant it and you were right, but it's worth apologizing even if you meant it, even if you were right, if you weren't delivering it in a constructive and positive way to your audience. George Carlin can be George Carlin because his audience goes to listen explicitly George Carlin. Hitler can be Hitler because his audience listens exclusively to Hitler. WBC can be WBC because its audience has been trained to lose its ability to listen. They don't have to apologize to their audiences. But George Carlin, Hitler, and the WBC may earn themselves an "I'm sorry" if they host their performance in the White House, Israel, or Anywhere respectively. e- this was a harsh and exaggerated response to your statement. Consider it an unrelated tangent, my b :D I didn't mute or hush or whatever you, and I don't regret it now. like peter i hope to see you around.
You know, I've not commented here at all but I read the original post and I was heartened by the level-headed and "thoughtful" replies to what was a rather bombastic write up. I still haven't seen one link to the kind of content or comments that cause his "blood prussure" to fluctuate. Sadly, I think kleinbl00 likely has the proper motivation for the post, no evidence exists otherwise.
There is only one thing that I find even interesting about k's comments -- they're on my post. I have had him muted for a long time. So, mk , either mr. K has a special dispensation to be un-mutable -- or you guys have a mole on your admin team. Another good reason to go elsewhere.
Yep, those are the only two reasons that this could have occurred, KB has special powers or there is a "mole" on our admin team. insomniasexx or forwardslash can one of you "decent" folks look in to this? Thank you
Looks like you can reply to someone else in a post that you're muted in when looking at that user's comments so long as that user doesn't have you muted. Business logic: the cause of 80% of bugs in code.
You sure it wasn't because we have a mole on the admin team? We ought to fix this prior to the rewrite launch. What do you think? Is that doable?
Well, I hear if you put cat poop in the mole holes they leave.
It's because I shouted him out. Basically there is a loophole regarding shoutouts & mutes - the "letting the vampire in" situation. It applies to all users. Even I haven't figured out what specifics have to happen or what / where you can reply from. I was unaware that kb was muted by em when I shouted him out, so there was no conspiracy or mole.
Thanks insom, perhaps we ought to re-consider closing that vampire loop-hole. Or at least making the person shouting out aware of what they're inviting in...
It was the vampire invite. If someone shouts out to you, you can reply to that comment. It's an unintentional bug/feature that we decided is interesting enough to keep around for now.
Seriously? I found your piece confusing and uninteresting until I read this; now I just think it's funny. It has to be a joke, right? If you want news, read the Times or something.The last straw for me came a few days ago, with the beheading in Moore, Oklahoma. I looked at Hubski’s unfiltered feed, sorted by time, and, page after page, found exactly the level of coverage of this horrific event that I expected to see – none.
I didn't look at your beheading article. Could you frame it in the context of a John Oliver video? eightbitsamurai has used his snarky comment token of the day. Please insert coin to reinstate snark status. Also kleinbl00 I'll be responding to your email soon, it's been a blur of holiday activity and then trying to reconcile with the fact that I definitely shouldn't have taken that dinner serving from the Cheesecake Factory. Gratsi.
I'd have much rather read a well throught out examination of Hubski's moderation techniques, which I personally find to be fairly thoughtless (or, at least, too reliant on "should"). That's where I thought this was going for the first few paragraphs, but then you seemed to make everything extremely personal with the Ohio bit, which then turned into a weird racism thing, which turned into something else.
So...you wrote a thoughtless, aggressive, explicitly antagonistic article condemning that very same behavior? And then you posted it to the same website that you feel is aggressive and antagonistic? You're part of the problem, bud. I think your story about Ohio is interesting. You are the guy who went to Ohio and hated it before even crossing the border. You seem to have a hatred for the people who come to this site, universally condemning everyone for not falling for your baited post while you waited with bated breath to catch someone being hypocritical. You have all sorts of ideas about the people on this site, clumping everyone good and everyone bad altogether into a homogenized, hateful group. You're not any better than the Ohio-hating idiot you were subtweeting in your blog post. Relax, talk to people. You're not going to make any friends by being the "inveterate outsider".
Oh I don't actually care that much. I can be the biggest idiot most of the time. Yesterday I fucked up a pancake, quite literally 24 hours after making the exact same mix of pancake (egg, batter, oil, milk, all meticulously measured) that had produced a near perfect circle the day before.
When I was on a class trip to Turkey, one of my sort-of-friends-but-not-quite-friends-not-really was crying on the bus. I noticed it and threw her a pack of tissues without saying anything, because I felt bad. She flipped out because she thought I had thrown something at her, and then apologized profusely when she realized it was just tissues. We are all the stupidest monkeys.
I can feel how badly you're about to get shit on by some people on this site. However, I'm gonna try to be a little less reactive and offer a simple reason why you aren't accurate in what you're saying. That's one of the issues that became apparent to me when I first joined, and I saw it sort of as a formation of circles-- When we block out a range of things we dislike and the 'main' group more or less just follows each other, we completely isolate ourselves from anything else that might happen on Hubski. Hubski is a universe, and you're a planet that can swing through with some other planet homies and create a galaxy. There's a really, really, really small chance that your galaxy will ever collide with anything else happening on Hubski because you mute everything new inbound that you dislike. So will your homies. What we're lucky to have on Hubski is one huge galaxy filled with all the 'power-users' and great content sharers and creators, and everyone else who views them. There aren't enough active users that disagree with each other to such a polar proportion where there is a separate community created that blocks out the first. We're not missing anything good that happens on Hubski. You might have black holes and other phenomena (see ahametals) that are some of the most active things on Hubski but comletely ignored and shut out of what we experience. I'm okay with that. it's how it works, there could be a thousand ahametals and they'll all be shut out even if they're the most active grunters on the site. So when the screaming pigs start grunting together-- what do we care either?in practice if enough narrow-minded pigs accumulate to grunt their message in harmony – what do they care what anyone else thinks?
This is why I don't mute almost anything or anyone. You never know what kind of cool stuff you'll run into here.There's a really, really, really small chance that your galaxy will ever collide with anything else happening on Hubski because you mute everything new inbound that you dislike. So will your homies.
OK, you're right, ahametals hasn't hurt a soul and he's quite confusingly adorable in his comments. I was just using him as an example of a vagary in the Hubskiverse; doesn't deserve to be related to a pig though. Where's Yvesloren when you need to make a point. Oh, right there.
Hilarious. I have posted things that I am almost ashamed of, just to see the hubwheel spin. Then again, the messenger matters. If minimum_wage were to post 10 exercises to save you from back pain at the office, I would probably share it just for the sake of irony.
I agree with white. I'd be much more interested in you writing about this. (It'd also be a more subtle way to throw jabs at hubski, if that's your inclination.) This would be an interesting post. Is it Hubski, or is it the internet in general? Is there anything that can be done? Your post reminded me about a recent one wherein Meriadoc expressed his disdain for California. JTHipster wrote the post about Ohio, and I think it might help to be familiar with his writing in general to get a bit of context. When something rubs him wrong, he takes pleasure in eviscerating it. To me, he wasn't just slamming Ohio, but was slamming the existential malaise the Midwest can induce in general when you aren't accustomed to it. Just like Meriadoc was slamming California for being defined by wealth and capitalism, JTHipster was lamenting Ohioans being kind. And polite. And agreeable. And fucking, utterly, boring. It's over the top, and it's supposed to be. You should have linked to the post. You are right that our tagline is much about aspiration. But, I think an honest assessment of our comment feed would indicate that the majority of conversation on here isn't far off the mark. Of course, not all of it will be. Still, perusing your comment history, it seems like good conversation. Perhaps I am missing something. PMs maybe? At any rate, Hubski is not a news site any more than it is a art site, or a poetry site, or a music site, or a rant-about-the-State-I-dislike site. It's a site for conversation. You might readily find the conversations you want to have here, and you may not. You might be able to find them with effort, or you may not. I didn't see your post about the beheading in Oklahoma. There have been a number of posts and topics that I was dying to get a conversation going about, but were never were picked up. It makes me crazy, but sometimes it's just the ebb and flow of things here. Personally, I think the conversation about extremism in Islam is well worth continuing, and I do believe that some liberals are not being intellectually honest. There was a good post/counter-post on that topic within the last couple of days, with some good comments made about each.The internet is not a thoughtful medium.
Ouch, harsh responses in here. I'll try diplomacy. If you feel the vision of a thoughtful website is naive, the rest of your post is inconsequential. A better piece might examine the vision as a whole rather than disparaging one attempt to create it. I could be reading this in a way you didn't intend, though. I already know you feel the implementation is naive. You seem to place thoughtfulness solely within the context of discourse. I'd say hubski has made you pretty thoughtful, considering the amount of words you've poured into posts about it. Though semantically, there seems to be a lot of disagreement on that point within this thread. I'd be much more interested in you writing about this. (It'd also be a more subtle way to throw jabs at hubski, if that's your inclination.) I think your post is more about venting your frustration with not finding your discourse utopia, within or without hubski, than it is about hubski.Unfortunately, such a vision is tragically naive.
The internet is not a thoughtful medium.
Cool. Also, tarring and feathering everyone on Hubski based on the few who commented on the Ohio thread? That's definitely...not...uh...thoughtless. Right? If you wanted or hoped to see articles regarding certain content on Hubski, and didn't see them, you should have posted them instead of silently judging the people who do post content for not always being interested in what you are interested in. If you are then moving to bitch about no one upcircling what you think is important, then it makes sense to conclude that maybe most people who follow you on Hubski are not interested in what you think is important. Doesn't make Hubski less thoughtful, just less-interested-in-your-thoughts-ful.
Re: Oklahoma beheading. 19 people follow you, there were no tags, and it's a domain that's rarely submitted or followed. It's no wonder it didn't gain much traction, because the only people with a chance of finding it are people using the global feed.
Hey there, I suppose I have to respond in some kind. First off, I actually came to ohio with a pretty positive attitude about getting a chance at a fresh start, and it only became negative after the fact. I gave no indication in that post or any of the comments in it that it was other wise, so I'm not sure where you draw that conclusion? I know you might find this infuriating, but I straight up hate the midwest. I am very much a person who likes and belongs on the coasts. I like cities, and dirty places, not knowing my neighbors, dive bars, broken things, and weird obstacles to overcome. I don't like knowing everyone in my community. I don't hate people who like that, but I will never understand their enjoyment of what I think is an incredibly tedious lifestyle. You can like it all you want, but I've seen nothing to convince me to change my mind. Skyline Chili actually blows. Cincinnati especially is such a poorly managed city that rows of shops are just straight up empty. There's shitty parking and no foot traffic, the amount of crime by the college campus is crazy high, and while the people are polite, they aren't friendly in the slightest and the roads are the hottest garbage. We could sit down and have a thoughtful conversation about the state of cincinnati especially if you want, but to do that you're going to have to get over the fact that thoughtfulness does not mean that we are going to agree or even be polite about it. I'm incredibly candid with my opinions, and I'm not going to dress up what is becoming progressively worse criticism in niceties because it does not fit your ideal image of this website. Also you can't expect a post under usatoday to gain much tranction, since before your post, usatoday was last used 307 days ago.
Heads up, mostly irrelevant commentary ahead. I agree with you about the Midwest, but I have to say for my dad's sake: you're not allowed to judge Cincinatti chili until you've tried Gold Star. PS The Cincinatti Reds are a fantastic and historically fascinating baseball team PPS Pete Rose should be in the baseball hall of fameSkyline Chili actually blows.
Yikes, what an awful post. Are there instances, members, and topics that you can point to that paint Hubski as thoughtless? Yes. I can point to examples of all of these. Still, I think on the whole Hubski is quite thoughtful. More so than any other site I've encountered on the web.
Assumptions much? Hubski is not a news webiste. And as it has been pointed out, thoughtful does not mean intellectual. I've found plenty of thoughtful discussions here. I'm also curious, who was this article intended for? You don't link to any of the discussions you mention so it can't be for people not familiar with Hubski (or maybe you simply don't want them to go read these threads and make up their minds themselves?). So was it written for us, the users of Hubski, that you already knew would disagree? Well you wrote that article. We disagree. What now?A Note for Hubskyites: You will find unfollow, mute, and filter buttons located conveniently on my page. Feel free to use them – thoughtfully, of course.
Hey to be honest, I think we're getting some great discussion out of it. Almost everyone seems to have identified a different weak point in the arguments being made. I've found with my book club that often the books several or most people dislike generate the most discussion. It helps if one or two are staunchly defending the book. If everyone likes something, the discussion becomes more boring (although it doesn't have to).
Of course all of this depends on the definition of "thoughtful". I'm not sure what anybody can really expect from an open website accessible to nonexperts. If somebody is serious about a particular subject, be it middle eastern politics, astrophysics, art, whatever, there are numerous places they can go such as printed/online literature where the discussions will dwarf anything that you find on popular online mediums. What I suspect people are generally interested in when they come to a place like this is being able to have a civil discussion about something that they aren't an expert in and being able to read interesting opinions and such. Nothing too serious. Whether hubski is right for that, well, I only joined yesterday so I guess I'll have to find out.
I'm not going to write anything more than this short paragraph because unwarranted cynicism and pessimism piss me off, and I don't want to say something I regret. But in my time here, Hubski has gone above and beyond being a thoughtful web (although it does that to): it's a wonderful community. And I love it here.