No. However I think the Reddit culture has had a negative influence on itself. I think that when you are posting on reddit, you self editorialise in order to make the post conform to whatever you think will be successful on the subreddit or thread, because otherwise you will find yourself downvoted to oblivion. Posting elsewhere, I don't do that. The way hubski works is pure genius. If you disagree with me it's far more likely you're going to just say so and have a discussion with me, rather than squelch my posts (for you). And disagreement with me doesn't make my posts disappear for other people. My ideas feel more valued here. And I see that in almost every post. People are respectful, because they know if they are not, people who actually make thoughtful posts and replies will just remove them from their view, like a pest. For the most part this is true though certain celibrity posters do end up garnering upvotes even when their comment is contrary to the general sentiment. But it's rare. Look I get what you're saying. I don't think it's going to be a huge problem for hubski. I think people will very quickly work out that this is not a reddit clone, at all, things work differently here, and those that don't? Well ... if they have to, they can always start a new account and try again :-) edit: this is a great question, btw.- Upvotes and downvotes turn the comment section into a competition to control the message, and the way comments are organized buries thoughtful posts that came a bit late, after a period of reflection. It also emphasizes junk and fluff that is easy to process and hides effort posts.
I agree that Hubski has more intelligent discussions, but I'm not convinced it's a result of the Hubski system itself. I think it's just a more thoughtful community. Reddit had thoughtful discussions before it became mainstream. Same as Facebook and others. Hubski still encourages group think by pushing voted comments and posts to the top. The advantage it does have is a lack of a downvote mechanism. On Reddit, a single person can hide a post or comment by downvoting early. So there's greater incentive to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
I think you've hit on a key issue that community size plays a large factor in the quality of discussion. Many of the niche subreddits I visit still have thoughtful dialog. I think any community will suffer an Eternal September effect as they grow more popular. One of the ways reddit avoided this was by allowing new communities to form to mitigate this (see /r/gaming -> /r/games -> /r/VideoGameAnalysis) but I'm not sure if there's any way to completely avoid this fate. Another way some communities have handled this is through strict moderation/curation (e.g. metafilter's cost for signing up, strict moderation of /r/askscience ) I think Hubski's method of following users and being self moderating is an interesting idea, especially combined with the focus on slower, long form material rather than "fast food" content. Though I'm sure there will be some people who will complain that the recent influx of users from reddit (of which I am one) has degraded the quality of content. But hopefully that will not be the case.
Wow, I never knew about the Eternal September phenomenon but now I understand why online communities take a turn for the worst after becoming popular. The same thing happened to YouTube after 2009.
And as for hubski, only time will tell, however I'm not so sure any kind of moderation could solve the problem, only delay it. Let's say hubsky gets flooded with people posting shit content and comments. The people you follow will have a harder time finding good discussions, thus you'll have a tougher time. This creates a pressure to conform to the tone of the newcomers and before we know it, we're back to where reddit is now. At least that's my hypothesis.
I think the big problem is in wanting the entire community to be the same way. We can chastise reddit or digg or 4chan or whoever for having group think, but it's the groupthink here to want "intelligent conversation". The problem is that anyone who doesn't adhere to this culture, or any internal culture, is then shunned by that culture. It's a side effect of scale that eventually the values and culture of the community becomes fragmented. No matter how good a site is at giving you the ability to filter based on your preference the simple knowledge that 'your community' has dissent in it, even if you don't see it, is enough enough to get most people complaining about the state of the community. It's more a humanity issue than a service issue.
I hope the atmosphere here doesn't change that much. Already a lot more conversing than I've ever seen in reddit. And this is just one thread! On a thread such as this on reddit, everyone would be screaming, tl;dr
I think the system prevents opinions from being buried through downvotes, which helps preserve a wider variety of opinion.
I saw a few posts after the reddit influx. The thing about some people from reddit is that they try to turn other sites into reddit. That's not what we need. Hubski is different and for only being here for ~2 days, I already love it. I agree with your answer
I came here from Voat. It is not a direct clone. Voat offers considerable improvement over Reddit. For example you have only 10 upvotes/day until you collect 20 upvotes from your posts. You also need 100 upvotes to be able to downvote anything. After your first 100 karma the restrictions are relaxed but there are still upper limits. This forces users to be better behaved and almost eliminates vote brigading and spam. It is an improvement but definitely nowhere near the sophistication of Hubski. For example they still need moderators which always skews the discussion and creates undue workload.
Reddit is great for the specialized sharing of content. If you want to see the latest videos, or cat pictures, or read Seinfeld fan fiction, theres a subreddit for it. The problem is that it doesn't allow for great discussion between users without messages being hidden behind the most upvoted and gilded posts. The competition puts users at each other's throats instead of having actual discussion. Hubski is such a brilliant platform because it prioritizes thoughtful discussion above anything else.
And the motivations that come with karma don't help across the whole of Reddit. If you write a stupid one-liner in a default sub, it's an easy way to get thousands of points. If you write a valuable, in-depth discussion in some niche sub, you're lucky to get a dozen points.
Yeah, having a meaningful discussion rarely happens on reddit and often it's just those who want to pick a fight. I'm glad this site is not another Reddit clone, it's better than that. You can't downvote and upvotes have greater weight to them. The lack of subcommunities actually unifies the site and prevents stupid moderation and censorship.