I have thoughts. 1) The Great White Hope of Reddit was going to be 3rd-partying their system as blog comments on Conde Nast's properties, a la Disqus. This ran aground when they discovered what a bloated mess Reddit is to run. If you guys can spool out an installation of Hubski that can be run locally, is lightweight and has optional central coordination, I'll bet you could license that. Hubski has a better chance of being a ranked Wordpress plugin than Reddit ever did. This will mean focusing on functionality more than community but it's probably worth doing. I'd look at Red Hat's business model, considering Rob's thoughts on open-source. It makes sense to unleash the code onto the world and then get paid to support it. 2) #askhubski turns into a shitshow during influxes because it's an obvious tag. #vaguequestionsbypablo, on the other hand, does not. Likewise, #writing is a perennial pigfuck while #writebetterdamnit is not. And while I think a parseable, searchable tag taxonomy is vital to the future of Hubski as a site and as an architecture, it's also clear that quality through obfuscation is a thing. 3) I think people underestimate the chilling effects of muting. By my observation over several of these waves, a user need only lose their temper and get muted in a couple places before they decide to fuck off home. We have few recurrent trolls and a lot of our "trolls" are actually maladroit teenagers that aren't used to interacting in an environment that remembers what an asshat you are every morning. I think we would benefit from really exploring and nailing down what muting and blocking mean from a social standpoint. They're much more influential on a user when they're new. I'm wondering if it might be useful to have the system send an acknowledgement, not when someone mutes you, but when someone unmutes you. But that's just me spitballing. There's plenty to discuss about muting but we never get there because we burn all our energy on "yes, we need that, sit down and eat your porridge." I want my conversation tracking graph back. Maybe you don't get that until you've been around the sun a few times, but considering how relationship-dependent this place is, knowing what the last conversation I had with User X was is useful. I get that it's cycle-intensive. Finally, if you intend to monetize Hubski and accept donations, you need a way to convert those donations back into something of value. This pretty much demonstrates that you see a donation model as a stopgap on the way to profitability, which makes donors unwitting venture capitalists with a guaranteed 0% return. That will foment resentment.
I can't remember where I got it, I think freakanomics, but I like the idea of giving people some control over the direction of their donations (the freakanomics example was talking about taxes). So TNG would post three upcoming projects from the to-do list and when you donated you could donate those dollars to one of the three specific projects. Once one is "funded" it gets made. It's a sort of very pragmatic value add that gives donors the feeling of control on a site.
Thanks for the reply. I agree with much of it. I don't see user donations getting us there, but perhaps I'm wrong. I would also be glad to take a SUBSTANTIAL pay cut in order to make Hubski my full time pursuit. The way I was thinking about it was very much akin to the NPR model, where only 34% of the operating funds come from the public: Also, I'm literally just spit-balling, which I know YOU know, but anyone else reading this, don't get freaked out. None of this is in the works, I'm just thinking transparently with you all.I want my conversation tracking graph back.
-We all do. I don't think this was an intentional thing. When mk gets back, we'll put that at the top of the list. I miss it for the same reasons you do. It's a good feature. if you intend to monetize Hubski and accept donations, you need a way to convert those donations back into something of value. This pretty much demonstrates that you see a donation model as a stopgap on the way to profitability
I hear you. I'm not sure that "profitability" is the goal, but sustainability is. If we are to continue to put the amount of time we put in to this place, eventually it needs to become my full time pursuit or I will keep getting fired from my jobs. No joke. 
I've been doing work in the non-profit sector of the triangle and they have a lot of technology issues. I haven't been able to put my full force behind figuring it out, but there may be a solution there where you can build solutions for them part time, implement hubski as a back end chat program for donors and participants, and use that money to support the project. Just random thoughts.
Thanks for the thought. I'm not really interested in an enterprise version of Hubski. If you take a look at the DvH model, you'll see that it's a perfect fit. It doesn't disrupt the community at all, we would get to hand select the media/pulications/blogs that have it in a manner that helps to grow our community around high-integrity content. Thanks though.
if you're willing to accept money to make the thing go, you should be willing to accept money to make the thing stand up on its own. I'm not saying "all in on Mammon" but profits give a lot of operational flexibility. You either make money or you don't. If you're willing to make money, don't set out to suck at it.
I hear that, but I also don't want it to ever be the driving force. There are needs and wants and it's dangerous to confuse the two.
I think point 3 is something we need to take note of, for the reasons you mention. I don't think we should change mute, at all. However, I know that "You are muted here" message is not at all nice to read.
Maybe if that "You are muted here" text were an obvious link to some more text explaining why mute works the way it does, and some reassuring text about how they shouldn't take it personally, (i.e., people mute for all kinds of reasons or sometimes none at all); maybe something like that would mitigate the perception problem.