markkat

I am (in part) attempting to address this discovery issue with http://hubski.com. It is a de-centralized aggregator in that submissions are public, but there are no shared pages. You get the content posted by people you follow, but also the content that they decide to share with you (not unlike a retweet). Instead of votes, posts propagate via shares.

There are also tags, which may be followed as well that are usually topical. That helps 'outside my feed' discovery. Also, you can select a certain amount of external posts to filter into your feed for some serendipity. Finally, you can ignore specific users and tags to control for what type of external posts filter in.

We aren't huge, but we've got a pretty eclectic range of content.

Using this model, bloggers and content creators can post their own links. If people aren't interested, they simply won't see them. -There are no community pages to be polluted. IMHO shared feeds are key to the decline of these types of communities.

http://hubski.com is a smogasbord. It depends on who you follow.

Full disclosure: it's mine.

I think this system could work.

One problem with community forums is that there is a drift to the 'majority taste'. As the population changes, so does the majority taste. This could put some drag on that drift, but you'd probably need to use historical voting data if it were to pull things back to the HN center. Otherwise it might just hold the community in a place where HN doesn't want to be.

Hey, I love tubalr. Thanks for making it.

I have a FB account, but never comment with it.

I don't want my every interaction on the web connected.

I am getting tired of the social web.

It sounds something like that to me. I am doing something similar with hubski.com, where you essentially blog into an aggregator.

I like the pieces of what's here, but I think masonry is a bit overdone, I personally like a higher information density.

This is correct.

http://files.arcfn.com/doc/srv.html#rflink

Honestly I just want to see this funded because I want to see how it plays out.

Sure, but inconsistency of opinion isn't a very admirable trait.

IMO so readily putting people into groups of 'approval' and 'disapproval' based upon such limited information is a mistake. Quickly writing off others as those people seems close-minded, and you can miss out on a lot of opportunities with such an attitude.

So was it a test? It disturbed me too.

>It is a truly revolting submission.

This is the problem. The MSM is full of hyperbole. One nice thing about HN is that it is rarely rewarded here.

You could have said:

People are hostile to that posting because it talks down to its readers by being a gigantic infographic. It could have been explained in a few paragraphs of text. Also, the idea appears to be made by people with a preference for form over function. Therefore it has little practical merit.

It would have made the same point, without the hostility or hyperbole.

Personally, I found the overall idea unrealistic, but it was interesting to see Wikipedia mocked up in another way. Their schematic using the color bars for languages gave me some ideas.

I have to admit, it confuses the heck out of me. I am always in fear of destroying code because the documentation part is spot-on. I read and reread, and still feel like I am working on a best guess interpretation.

It's more than just creating content, it's communication. Quora's end of the bargain was to maintain a quality platform for the exchange of ideas.

I never got pass the real name policy.

I think a mistake is that these services are either built without a clear development strategy, or the development strategy doesn't jive with what the users expect from the early growth phase.

That's what I dislike most. It doesn't have the feeling of flow that you expect from a community-content site.

http://hubski.com/ You choose who curates content for you. Posts are shared rather than voted on.

Thanks, I did realize that, but thought to leave it, as I think it makes a point.

I just added a bypass in the G+ post, however.

Thanks.

Can we really say that we are individuals interacting with each other, when those that we interact with are only facets themselves?

http://bit.ly/P3zyl6

Can we really say that we are individuals interacting with each other? When those that we interact with are only facets themselves?

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107417838165139717795/posts/XDXa...

A very good point.

Ads are probably toxic to social media in most cases.

And worse than the ads, are the advertisers, and what they want.

Thanks. That's definitely some good advice, and stuff to think on. As a user I remember being initially taken aback by subreddits, but it was a brilliant move for those reasons.

I'm already following r/michigan, but I'll check r/grandrapids out. So many people say good things about GR. I'm in Ann Arbor, yet I never get over there.

Thanks for the response. I've always been impressed by the way you've busted ass for these sites and didn't let doing so turn you into a goof.

I think as interested I am in what you did, I'd be just as interested in what you decided not to do.

Also, I wonder if the secret sauce to subreddits is the user 'buy in'. Once you've got a Reddit, you want people to visit it.

I never read advice books, but I think I'll make an exception here.

If you have a moment, I'm curious, at what point did you feel that Reddit was starting to run on its own steam, and did it happen before or after you expected it to?

This is the biggest caveat with community spaces. Although Redditors can subscribe to subreddits to customize their content, each subreddit remains a community space. IMO there isn't an alternative to heavy moderation when shared spaces are inherit to the design.

There is a timeout for those options.

That reads like a MS press release.

Be funded, or they generally don't give a damn. That seems to be their MO.

To get most like HN: http://hubski.com/tag?id=programming

Thanks!

For those unfamiliar, you follow people and/or tags on Hubski, and instead of voting, you share articles with your followers.