It's a very interesting thought that America might have revolted over the abolition of slavery if they hadn't gained their independence before it happened. I'm sure that if the states were willing to revolt against Britain because they had a few taxes imposed upon them against their will, that they'd definitely revolt if Britain tried to force them to comply with something that would have such a massive impact on the American (considerably labour based) economy. And even if the northern states were still as (comparatively) progressive as they were at the time in our history, they'd probably side with the south in order to make a stand against British influence. Just think, instead of a nation divided by slavery, it would be a nation united by slavery.

I wonder how different America would be today if the union was founded on a basis of oppression, rather than principles of "liberty", and "freedom from oppression".

A site that I visit sometimes for browsing is "Quora". It's basically an extremely classy version of Yahoo Answers, centered around informative responses to questions that are designed to prompt them. Just like on Hubski the answers you see are highly dependent upon the topics that you're following, and most of the posts on there are pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I think you need an account in order to be able to read anything, but it's worth it.

What I find interesting is that a significant portion, if not most, of the redditors trying out Hubski seem to have been lurkers on Reddit.I can't tell whether this is because Hubski's environment attracts the type of user that would feel intimidated by Reddit's discussions (which is what I've heard being said here), or whether it's simply because the vast majority of Reddit's visitors are lurkers. Although I agree with a lot of the criticisms made by the comments on this thread (E.g. rewarding conformist comments, discouraging lengthy discussions, popularity contests), I never found the community to be as hostile as many of the users here have made it out to be. That being said, just from what I've seen so far, Hubski seems far friendlier than most places that I've visited on Reddit, and definitely rewards actual discussion rather than whoever can make the fastest pun.

Anyway, longtime reddit lurker breaking my silence so that I don't end up lurking here.