I think that people have risen up in a very polarized fashion because of the way Hubski's foundation seems to be made. From where I see it, Hubski's the neighborhood pub, a reference seen in its stickers and its community--for the most part, people who have stuck around the site for a while seem to know each other on at least a name-familiarity basis. See sounds_sound comment in the other thread: This means that for us (read: me), it is important for a user to stand by his/her/its (eg thundara's lambda bot) opinions and also the reputation they gain or lose for their approach to speaking about topics they feel strongly about. I'm one of the opposing camp. I don't see a place for anonymous posts/comments as they might tend towards those jabs and harsh words by people who wouldn't say those things if their reputation could be tarnished as a result. There are certainly people who go against the grain here, and certainly people who have more klout simply because of the follower count they have. But I respect those people when they approach a debate in a logical, calm, respectful manner, just as i expect the same in return. People are going to have opinions on this site no matter what. #thesundaypaper is a heavily editorialized publicatiom, for sure. But i think i speak for many when I say that the community and everything which makes the community what it is (the closeness, the notion that we are all really real people) is what led me to stay with Hubski and I think it's what people are trying to protect. But maybe that's just me.
Do you think follower count adds that much clout? The few times I've seen it waved around the braggert was largely derided for claiming it as a source of authority. You could do a regression of follower count and find that a great deal of it is correlated to longevity and activity with the remainder being the raw stuff of awesomeness and ability to state ones case well. Number of followers seems come up when a new person hates either the mechanics or the culture of hubski, and claims that no one will give them a fair hearing because they have no followers. These people are usually jerks who should probably just go somewhere else.