You've been here two years. The lion's share of users have been here two weeks. Most of their discussions are going to be related to "WTF is this place?". Speaking as someone with 555 followers, it's retarded that anything I post has 10 times the viewership of something joelg236 posts. Rather than foster egality and discovery, it's turned me into a "kingmaker" - a post that sits for a day with zero votes will pop up to the top if I guess correctly that it's worthy. I still feel quite strongly that people who are interested in writing should be able to click "follow #writebetterdammit" and be done with it, rather than type "writebetterdammit" into the search bar, find nothing, click on "community", see it's neither a popular nor a trending tag, and give up in frustration. It's three clicks to even see the tags I'm ignoring. Let me follow stuff instead of dudes and I'm much more likely to find stuff I'm interested in.
Now that looking at content by tag is no longer an easy option, I find myself missing it more and more. The option for following either or both seems better. EDIT: but I like mk's "follow people to connect personally" site model, too. I can't stress that enough. I've made friends on hubski in only two months, which means they're doing something right.It's three clicks to even see the tags I'm ignoring. Let me follow stuff instead of dudes and I'm much more likely to find stuff I'm interested in.
My mind is moving, flagamuffin and kleinbl00. My biggest aversion to tags has always been avoiding the tragedy of the commons. It wasn't clear to me why tags were any different than subreddits, and why they wouldn't follow the same content cycle. Over the last few days I have come to some important conclusions on this front. I'll follow soon.
Tags are different simply by allowing more than one tag per post. I've been hammering at the admins of Reddit to allow cross-posting for going on four years now but the simple fact is their architecture doesn't allow it. Yours? You can do it as an afterthought. You've been awfully cagey about tags, never fully elaborating why you dislike them. I'm curious how tragedy of the commons applies in your mind. Care to share?
I just have a sec before I am supposed to watch the Walking Dead with my wife (It's awful and good). The short version is that a tag gets too many subscribers, and too many posters. Soon #space goes from discussions of volcanism on Titan, to countless Neil deGrasse Tyson love-ins. Everyone is soured by the quality of #space and declares Hubski to be full of mouth-breathers. A few survivors create #realspace, and it begins again.
All right, thanks for that. The short version of my answer is the same as the long version of my answer: If you clutter up my #space feed with Neil deGrasse Tyson love-ins I can ignore you. Subreddit crawl is a problem in that subreddits are one-dimensional. By allowing your users to subscribe to both tags and other users, you create a two-dimensional subscriber space. Granted, if a person posts three lame things and one awesome thing I might miss the awesome thing because I'm ignoring them - but if I see one awesome thing in a miasma of crap I can follow the person who posted the awesome thing without having to worry about the miasma.
Anyways, I think hubski naturally promotes content good for discussion. Since tags can be used by users to mark bad content (ex. #spam or #repost or #loweffort), I think it would be pretty easy for the community to regulate itself, provided that it doesn't get flooded with people who like bad content, in which case almost everything is useless to combat it.
I've been chipping away at the boys on this one. I think that if we impose a character limit in the tag line, it would be difficult to use them as spam, but within that character limit, one should be able to makes as many tags as possible. If tags exist, there isn't really a great reason to limit them to one. I see all or nothing, and everything else is a kind of Obama '09 stimulus package, a nod to the fact that its a good idea, but close to useless in practice.
I couldn't agree with you more! It has always puzzled me why the OP is only allowed one tag per post - I would absolutely love it if that number were increased, even if it were only to three or five... unlimited seems almost too good to be true.I think that if we impose a character limit in the tag line, it would be difficult to use them as spam, but within that character limit, one should be able to makes as many tags as possible. If tags exist, there isn't really a great reason to limit them to one.
As it is now, every person gets to add one tag, presuming they've earned the right to tag. The difficulty with tags is that the taxonomy becomes a bear. At some point #writing and #writebetterdammit need to merge (or at least overlap) in order to make the content parseable. I have no solution for that as of yet. The rest of it seems pretty elemental to me - I mean, Twitter lets you follow tags, and Twitter lets you follow people. They've got a bit more of a userbase.
My only dislike is the lack of community in tags. No sidebars, no wiki, etc. But I am almost interested to see if one tag can be a whole different experience for two groups of people (if it can be pulled off). If it can than this site has FAR outdone what reddit ever will.
Community implies both personal connections and a more general sense of belonging. I think hubski does the first one very well, but communities within hubski just haven't come up yet. I think tags may or may not do that. If tags were implemented, the people who value personal connections more can follow users, and the people who value community more can follow tags. It seems like a good balance.
That is half the point though. People chose to follow you, and your posts won't go higher on the... But they will... Actually that is an interesting point. I think, maybe, that only badges should count when a user comments on or shares a post of someone that they follow.
I think there is a balance to be made between stuff and people. There is value in following a person because you find them particularly interesting, but there is also value in finding content through your interests. I don't see nearly as much #programming as I'd like to in my feed, mostly because the people who post there post a lot of other things, and don't solely focus on programming. It would be ideal to follow #programming for programming specific content, and follow users for more general content that I trust them to share. I'm inclined to be on your side of the tags argument. Let me follow stuff instead of dudes and I'm much more likely to find stuff I'm interested in.
You might be overvaluing how good your feed would look by only following tags, but I see where you're coming from.