- You guys are probably going to get the good majority of people if there's a sort of Reddit exodus.
I'm mostly curious about how well you think Hubski could cope with that; whether or not you think it'd be beneficial to the site and whether or not it'd present a significant change.
JTHipster, you bring up some good hypotheticals. I think Hubski can only benefit from more members, especially those who are thoughtful and like to engage. The quintessence of this site is its organization. A subreddit gets worn out when the riff raff filter in, and that's why Redditers are turned off by too much traffic. Fortunately, on Hubski no one subscribes to topics that are decided on by others. We have the choice to only follow people who have proven themselves that they have something worthwhile to contribute. If there's someone on here posting about trivial or uninteresting things you can ignore them. I think with this model everyone can be happy, because everyone has something in common with someone. Hopefully with more people, there's more opportunity to find like-minded individuals.
Hubski's doors are open for any and all. The way it's been structured everyone should be able to have a unique experience. I look forward to seeing how it scales as it continues to grow. Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus
The problem with reddit's growth is that there is now a very large number of redditors that came late and share absolutely no interest in what the early generations of redditors had. For many, reddit fills the role of memebase or funnyjunk or some kind of personal blog. More provocative content is getting edged out of the spotlight. Whatever the trend of change is, it will only continue in that direction as time goes on. What makes reddit able to cope are subreddits. If you ever just want to throw in the towel with the current reddit, you can just migrate to the more insulated specialty communities where people have formed them for that very purpose. Now you also see major subreddits taking action to enforce a certain bar of quality, so the issue is widely acknowledged. If you haven't seen it, r/theoryofreddit has a lot of this kind of talk. I think Hubski has some policies in place to deter the kind of deterioration reddit has seen, having learned from its predecessors. But I don't think Hubski has built-in elements to cope with the change if it happens like reddit does.
I think it could remain an intimate and tailored experience if you wanted it to be. You could also follow many people and have your external posts set to "many" and get a totally different experience. Your call. Like mk, I don't see this as a Hubski vs. Reddit scenario. They're two different things and I think as Hubski evolves this will be even more clear. I'm confident that Hubski does have the infrastructure to handle the change that comes with growth. -I'm excited to find out.
The question is this: What happens when you ignore someone, so you don't have to see their posts, but they keep commenting on the posts of others that you follow, or on your posts? That question needs answering. I don't think its a good idea to hide all of the comments from someone you ignore, because you might lose part of an otherwise good conversation. But what is the best way to deal with it? We haven't had to cross that bridge, because there aren't any abusive users on the site (yet). But I think its a good topic to think about so that we can be prepared not if, but when, it comes up. Because as you point out, when a site becomes popular, destructive users inevitably follow. Its a good crowd source question. How should Hubski deal with a hypothetical abusive, or otherwise destructive user, bearing in mind the user-centric philosophy of the site (i.e. keeping any kind of moderator/curator as an absolute last resort)?
I think this situation is alike to that of a bully in school. How do you stop someone like that? You can (a) confront the person, but I think that would, most likely, escalate into a flame war and all the horizon of civility and politeness would be crossed much faster than any of us would like to; or (b) you can ignore the person. However, that strategy also has its problems. It might stop the bully, but it also might give him confidence to pursue his abusive behavior without consequence.
Definitely just not responding to negative comments is the best--but also the hardest--thing to do. I know that a PM service is in the works. Maybe by default ignored users shouldn't be able to send you a PM. Just spitballin'. At least that way it would prevent spam to some degree.