The other day, ecib and I were having a conversation about following and unfollowing on Hubski. He made the point that 'unfollowing' someone can be a bit uncomfortable at times, because it might be considered to be a negative opinion towards that user.
IMO it is important that people feel the freedom to curate their feed based upon content rather than user relationships. For that reason, I see how displaying user relationships could be problematic.
ecib suggested that we make following anonymous; in that case, you can see the number of people that follow you, but you cannot see their names.
Personally, I think this might be going too far, as someone that starts following you might be someone that you would like to follow in turn. In addition, I think people (especially new users), might be reasonably suspicious about follower numbers that cannot be verified. Furthermore, it might be argued that high-lighting user relationships improves the discourse we have here, as it stresses the connectivity between users; however, I am not sure if this is true or not.
After thinking on it, I suggested to ecib that one solution would be to drop the follow color (green) and the co-follower color (blue-green), and only highlight the users that you follow (blue). Although this wouldn't completely alleviate 'unfollow guilt', it would make unfollowing much less obvious, and people might feel more free to do it.
I'm interested to hear everyone else's thoughts are on the issue.
Don't change a thing. On this particular issue, you nailed it in one. Here's what you get by publishing the follower relationships: 1) You can see the blocs that make Hubski function 2) You remind the user of their clout, or lack thereof 3) You establish a concrete, human relationship in a void of digital nothingness 4) You provide feedback beyond stupid hubwheels as far as ones performance 5) You inform the user of Reddit influxes WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW HOW REDDIT BECAME 4CHAN? Okay, twist my arm. So there was a time when kickme444 didn't work for Reddit, and thought I was awesome. Had dinner with his family and everything. For those of you who don't know, K and 5Days created Redditgifts from scratch in a weekend and were running it all on their own (albeit with server time provided by Reddit). This is important - Redditgifts was a layer of personalization independent from Reddit. If you look at a user's Redditgifts page, you will see far more than their recent posts, their trophy chest and their karma. You will see an "about me" page. There's space for a picture. There's all the human stuff one would expect from, say, Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, anywhere normal. I was also working with honestbleeps at the time, poking around RES and stuff. Meanwhile, I'd been chatting with a few of the Admins about how to make the horrible raiding that was then becoming de rigeur less prevalent. And it all sort of clicked into place: If RES had a plugin that, WITH PERMISSION, pulled a user's Redditgifts profile whenever a Reddit user clicked on someone else's Reddit page, all of a sudden that username would become a lot more human. If they wanted. If both sides specifically asked for it. Behold. Human Reddit. Then, of course, Reddit bought out Redditgifts, Jedberg left for Netflix and the whole thing collapsed into oblivion. I read kickme444 the riot act about it and we don't talk anymore. If I haven't mentioned it before, I've been remiss: the fact that you included an "about me" page FIRST OFF, with no prompting, is probably the one thing that impressed me the most about Hubski. And yeah - I haven't filled mine out. I still get change password requests on my Reddit account. I've still got stalkers. I've still got people trying to dox me. But I'm a special case - I'm a professional asshole with years of experience. The point being: had Reddit had something like your userpage when it began, it would be a very, very different place. Hubski needs to be a different place than Reddit. It already is. I think it's a dire mistake to make the place less personal - if you feel guilty unfollowing someone, GOOD. That means you're anthropomorphizing them. Every person on the internet who thinks of other people as people is pushing the darkness back just a little bit more. Doing socially antagonistic things should carry a socially antagonistic penalty. When I act like an asshole I should be aware that I'm losing followers. Leave it alone.
Hubski: Pushing the darkness back, one person at a time. -- Can we add this phrase to our growing list of hubski slogans? (I have to create a cleaner slogan link.)Every person on the internet who thinks of other people as people is pushing the darkness back just a little bit more.
This is beautiful.
I believe that the lack of information on reddit results in a couple very important things. Anonymity. It's good. It's not facebook. A hot chick has no more clout than an ugly, basement dwelling, one eyed cyclops. People don't know who you are so you are judged by the quality of your posts/comments. People also feel welcome to discuss a variety of topics without their mother, brother, professor, or fuckbuddy judging the "real" them by these comments. Unfortunately, they put in a karma count. This is why karma is so damn important. It is the only thing that allowed you to quickly judge a user. As it turned out, that singular number that was less about the quality of your posts/comments and more about if you posted/commented using the right words or in the right amount of time. Enter: people who say nothing but the "right" words. Hubski allows you to judge a user based on a myriad of different points. I can immediately tell whether or not I follow someone or they follow me. I have a short description that gives me more information. Even leaving this blank gives me some information about the user. I can tell how many tags or people they follow. I can see the number of people that follow them. I can see how many badges they have given and received. All these points come together to create a comprehensive look at each Hubski user. It also takes away the ultra importance of any given number. Is someone who has a few followers but a lot of badges better than someone with a lot of followers but no badges? Because of this, we have to work hard at a lot of different things on Hubski. We want to, even subconsciously, gain badges by writing great comments. But we also want to post and comment on things, even if they aren't the longest or greatest comments so that we interact with people. We want to make sure what we post and share is interesting to others so we can obtain and maintain followers. We want others to notice the stuff we write and respond to it. I think this breadth of goals is another thing that makes Hubski unique and especially different than reddit. On reddit, users mostly want karma. It doesn't matter whether it's a picture of a cat or a long essay to get karma, although the first is infinitely easier. On hubski, a funny cat video may get shared around but it isn't going to get you a badge or increase your follower count. I really, truly hope that Hubski will stay this way even as we get more and more users. I believe that having this variety of information helps with this and why circlejerkers get bored with Hubski so quickly. Taking away any of the information about users makes the leftover information more important. The less information I have about a person, the more quickly (and falsely) I can judge them. It also makes it easier for people to feel like they've "won" Hubski by increasing these specific points. The only way to "game" Hubski is to be awesome and interact and follow and debate and put real time and effort into what you say and post. I like it like that.
So true. I love the "pseudonymity" it and other sites enable.Anonymity. It's good. It's not facebook. A hot chick has no more clout than an ugly, basement dwelling, one eyed cyclops. People don't know who you are so you are judged by the quality of your posts/comments. People also feel welcome to discuss a variety of topics without their mother, brother, professor, or fuckbuddy judging the "real" them by these comments.
And that is truly the tragedy. All I ever wanted was clever people to interact about cool things with. That went by the wayside really quickly. I think it's been damn near four years since I suggested that everybody hits Level 80 and stops. It would make the place very, very different indeed.On reddit, users mostly want karma.
Over the years, the Internet (and Reddit in particular) has become more and more efficient at what it does on nearly all fronts. Of all people you should know the rise of the image macro, the low-effort posts and the circlejerky behaviour. Small subreddits in which you know everyone became huge colossal monstrosities of unknown faces and posters. Ever so slowly, the usernames didn't matter anymore. You've talked about that subreddit consisting of the original defaultmods, which is still good because you know the people there, at least on a basic level. It still has that human factor. However, most of Reddit is devoid of that human factor. Because some sort of social contact requires effort. Too much effort for a site like Reddit, unless it's in a really small sub. I don't want hubski to become too efficient. We're not content-hungry robots, we're humans (or are we dancers? ). I want a site where I have to think about what I do, where social actions have social consequences. The coloring and the bio are aspects of that. Maybe we can think of new ways to improve the Hubski social framework?Behold. Human Reddit.
These are not consequences of size - these are consequences of anonymization. Image macros and circlejerk posts started on 4chan - the /b/tards migrated to Reddit because there, they could get points for their "wit." If reddit had spent more time on building community before building traffic, the low-effort stuff would not have happened. There used to be pride of ownership, at least until Digg came. Then there was no longer a community per se. From that point the place was hosed.Of all people you should know the rise of the image macro, the low-effort posts and the circlejerky behaviour.
Wow, I've never thought about the contrast, but I love that I know and follow and recognize (some of) the usernames here. Veen, nice to meet you.Ever so slowly, the usernames didn't matter anymore.
Still, you might serve as an example that suggests that losing the green and blue-green might have little effect on user familiarity. That is, only two usernames are green or blue-green for you, but 839 people see your name as blue. In terms of what I am considering, the blue would remain, but the green/blue-green would not. To that end, you currently view Hubski as I propose everyone else would (except that they would see more blue usernames, in addition to blue tags). I am glad to hear that you appreciate the profiles. I do think they are important. I want people to feel free to curate their own version of it without pressure. I suspect that you feel able to do that more freely than most. But might that freedom also come from having a high follower/following ratio? Personally, I don't follow two members of team Hubski. I follow/unfollow until my feed feels right. I want everyone to do that. I don't think the site benefits if people treat following like friending. I honestly appreciate your use as a counter example. However, if for the majority of users there is a barrier between the 'is' and the 'ought', I'd like to lower it if it can be done in a constructive way.
Yeah, but kleinbl00 knows he's an edgecase, and not typical. I like the color system. I think the whole point of this site is to discuss things in a way that cultivates relationships. There's some value in knowing what your relationship to another user is. I think subconsciously we act more respectful to our followers, because we assume they respect us. Losing that info could be damaging, IMO. My vote is don't fuck with it.
So I'm just now reading all of this and if I had more badges right now both b_b and kleinbl00 would be getting one. I would be adamantly opposed to losing the color coding of the relationship between users. We are attempting to build a discussion community fostered around the notion that context between people matters. Eliminate the color and eliminate the context. Not a good idea. I'd go so far as to say that devoid of creating a new and better way to highlight those relationships, it's a bad and even dangerous idea. edit: mk, you are one of my closest friends and we don't follow each other on Hubski. If someone is too fragile to handle being "unfollowed" or too passive to unfollow someone, that's sort of their problem imo and I'd guess that they're in the minority. ecib can unfollow me, I'd still consider him a friend and wouldn't be hurt in the slightest. Now if either of you mute me... well, then we'll have problems :)
Don't take this the wrong way, but you spend way too much time worrying about what Hubski looks like and way too little time coming up with a way for me to skin it how I want. You have a much better framework than you have a website. Much like Wordpress, that framework needn't look the same for everyone. You've got like six themes, the best of which looks like a Toynbee Tile: And there's no possible way you'll ever come up with something that makes everybody happy. So instead of deciding what I should and should not see, why don't you invest some time in allowing me to make my own decisions? Hell - you can even mine my (and others') choices so you can see what your users actually want.
I had an idea for the site that others on the team suggested nobody would ever use, but I think you might. Currently you don't follow many people. What if you could follow a bunch of people and then click a button that "reset" who you follow and allowed you to start over, would you ever use that? I would use it. I think it would be fun to "reset" the list of people I follow and restart from scratch, including tags. What do you think? Would you or anyone else reading this ever use it?
I think I'd be more likely to use a "preset" - let me build my follows, then save it, then build another, then save it, then flip back and forth. For that matter, you could form "user groups" - a bunch of folx agree to be a curation group and if you follow that group, you get everyone in it. I CALL KNIGHTS OF THE EASTERN CALCULUS
Anybody can contribute to a tag. If you were to follow Knights_Of_The_Eastern_Calculus, you'd get me, myself, I, Manny, Moe, Jack, Huey, Dewey and Louie. By clicking on Knights_Of_The_Eastern_Calculus, you'd see everything all nine of us had shared across all tags. Which means Manny, Moe, Jack and myself might have to have a chat about Dewey constantly sharing those pictures of himself sitting on the copier. Keep in mind - this is not a fully-formed notion. This is a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a "follow-delete" button.
About a year ago, we talked about something similar to this: unique tags that could be shared with specific users. Basically user-specific tags but with multiple users. Jesus, there have been a ton of weird variations that we have discussed. One that creeps back into my head from time to time is 'follower only posts' and/or 'follower only' messages. Only your followers can see them. I don't think these are good ideas. The possibilities from variations on what we have are dangerously large. But, I suspect some gems are in there.
HULK SMASH UNIQUE TAGS If I want to publish something that belongs only to me, I'll write a blog. This whole mental exercise erupted from the forehead of Zeus because thenewgreen asked me if I wanted a poison pill for my followers function. I said I'd rather have presets. Then I decided that presets would be even cooler if they were communal. It's pretty much the exact opposite direction from the way you guys are going with user-specific tags.
I like user specific tags because I can stop following "music" which often contains a sleuth of content I won't be interested in and follow #music.flagamuffin or something like that.
Again, spitballing: I'd probably run it like a modteam. Anybody could start one, and then it would be by seniority. Anybody in that group could add anyone (via invite) but the "top mod" would have the ability to purge anyone and everyone out of it. I have thought about this for exactly 30 seconds.
I think a function that is gaining usage but is still under utilized are personal tags. If you were to ask Dewey to use the #knightsoftheeasterncalculus and the #knightsoftheeasterncalculus.dewey tag you could ignore the #knightsoftheeasterncalculus.dewey tag and problem solved.
Here's something that I think all of Team Hubski is missing: The customization you guys are pushing requires more mental overhead from me. To make it work my way, I have to have a conversation. I set something up. Someone wants to look at it, they click it. Done. To make it work your way, I have to write #tag.modifier and in order for users to get my functionality out of it, they have to follow #tag and ignore #tag.modifier. It's like that list thing: in order to make it work, I have to remember where to put the colons and shit on the arbitrary six digit string that Hubski generates with the nomenclature that makes Hubski happy. Yeah, neat feature but I'm already suffering under Hubski's arbitrary (and often broken) markup. Now you're going to make me learn site-specific nomenclature? It's a very mk-up approach - "I can alter the codebase so that when I type this secret incantation things change." Except most of us don't want to carry a spell book around with us. We want to press the "up" button on the elevator and get to the 5th floor. We don't need to remember that typing 12356 in the stairwell keypad opens a secret passage to the dumbwaiter. Personal tags are not something I see any need for. Sorry. They're a voluntary way for an individual user to restrict things that works only if both the user and the viewer have perfect understanding of the functionality. The site needs to be easier to get around on, not more complex.
I get that there will inevitably be a learning curve but I'm all for making it more reasonable. That said, it's nice to use a site for a while and be able to navigate it on a fundamental level easily, but over time discover more functions that exist and are unique to the place where you are at. But I don't think these new functions need to be complex or unintuitive. I'm glad mk posted this, it's a good thread with some nice ideas. We will be having more conversations like this prior to making large changes etc. Also, we'll be having IRC time with the Hubski team where we can talk in real time about ideas etc... or what beer we happen to be drinking which is more the likely.The site needs to be easier to get around on, not more complex.
-This is not lost on me. At all. I have had a number of people, smart people, tell me that they tried to use the site but couldn't "figure it out."
Thanks for having this approach to developing this site further. A thing I've been thinking about lately: it might be a good idea to improve the relation between users. I find it quite difficult to go back and look up my previous conversations with people. I'd love to go back and read earlier conversations with people I interact, or read the best conversations, or the most recent. With some people around here, I know I've had good conversations with them, but I'm not grat with names so I'm not going back hundreds of pages into my own comments to find them. And I wouldn't know how to search for it. Ideally, if I went to someone's profile, I'd like to see more info about what our connection is. Like the 'how many posts have you shared by them' but going beyond that. Many things are possible, the conversations just being one.I'm glad mk posted this, it's a good thread with some nice ideas. We will be having more conversations like this prior to making large changes etc.
Hey veen, great suggestions. One thing really quickly that you might dig is that if you hover over a users name it tells you how many of their posts you've shared. After hovering over yours, I see that I've shared 10 of your posts. I like the idea of being able to quickly see more about our specific relationship to one another. mk
It's super subtle and just to the right of the name.
Yeah, I'm not a hero with names, and while I remember quite something about the people behind the usernames, I'd like to be able to go back and look at past interactions with that person. I've thought about the ability to tag people, like in RES. But that might be too intrusive to the layout. Ideally there would be a way to see what that person means to you, but I don't have a clue how to quantify that.I like the idea of being able to quickly see more about our specific relationship to one another. mk
Here's the horrible, ugly truth. If we each had a little image next to our names that was unique to us, you'd remember people a lot more easily. That said, we've discussed such things in the past and it's probably not going to happen. A very long time ago I suggested that people could have images but that these images would be automatically pencil sketched like in the WSJ. Probably a horrible idea, but my reasoning was that it would be in black and white and wouldn't make the page too distracting. I'm up for any suggestions though as to how to show relationship etc.
An image would indeed be easier, which is why I really like it that images can be added to bio pages. I for one always imagine humanodon's drawing when I read his posts, it gives a face to a name. But at the same time there's the problem I've encountered on many forums: I stop reading the usernames, and remember the image alone. People have disappeared for me because they changed their avatar. And in general they're ugly as hell. Let's get our goals clear. What I think the site will benefit from is a better way to foster relationships and connections, both existing and new. One way this would be achieved is to make them more recongnizable, e.g. avatars / images / anything visual. Have you seen this amazing idea before? MIT created a way for everyone to have their own version of their logo, using algorithms to generate 40,000 deviations. I'm not saying we should do the exact same but it is an interesting way to make people recognizable in a large operation. Another example: in WhatsApp groupchats, every person you chat with has a colored name. As I chat more with people, I started to quickly distinguish people because of that visual detail. After a while I stopped looking at the names above the messages and knew by the colors who wrote it. The first weeks here my mind tried to do the same, since I didn't have a lot of lightblue names. But I quickly made mistakes, e.g. confusing you with theadvancedapes because of the long, lightblue name that both start with the. Another way to foster connections is through the information you can know from someone else: right now I can only see how many posts I shared of you (19). It is where my idea for previous conversations comes in. There is a plethora of data that you can show to others. Which one is valuable is something to think of. Preferably, viewing someones profile, you would be able to assess who they are in relation to yourself. Maybe a number that says how many posts you shared that they shared as well. I'd love to hear more thought & discussion on this.
I like veen's thoughts. To add some more: how about being able to set a profile image, and if you hover over someone's name for > 1 second, a little 180x180 profile image pops up. (greater than a second so it doesn't pop up while you're mousing through a page.) Furthermore, how about a popup box when you click someone's username that has all of the info that normally appears in the left column of the profile page, so you can view someone's info without leaving the current page. You could then click their username from the popup or something to view their full profile with posts, shares, comments, etc. This would be similar to how the Twitter webpage (not mobile app) works when you click on someone's name.
mk, b_b, forwardslash, insomniasexx, Some interesting ideas from veen and doesntgolf. -By the way, have you ever tried golfing? It really can be quite fun.
Thanks! Parent twice for my comment by the way. And maybe it is a good time now to start a new post on this? I'm not gonna. I've golfed a bit! I had the chance to get 6 golf courses on stances and movement for free, after which we went to a pitch and putt track to put it to the test. I ended up coming back four more times there, quite like it as a relaxed sport. The satisfaction of landing a perfect shot is really great.
accepts as compliment I hear what you are saying, but this is one case where a user suggested to me that the design was significantly affecting usage. I think the conversation was worth having if only for the insight it provided. At this point, it feels like a push to me. There are good points both for and against a change. We did discuss moving the follow count up top to profiles last week as the badges did, and if anything, this might just give a bit more validation to that idea, as it's a pretty nominal thing to begin with.You've got like six themes, the best of which looks like a Toynbee Tile:
Don't take this the wrong way, but you spend way too much time worrying about what Hubski looks like and way too little time coming up with a way for me to skin it how I want.
Never, ever think I'm against conversation. Quite to the contrary - I'm against changes implemented without.I hear what you are saying, but this is one case where a user suggested to me that the design was significantly affecting usage. I think the conversation was worth having if only for the insight it provided.
Customization = good, but I think you picked a bad example. The themes are functional. hubski is essentially a forum, and I've never been on a forum that benefited from too much thought about its skins. (See: livejournal.) I've spent time on a thousand forums, and basically every time I tried some skins and defaulted to basic out of sheer necessity. What other kind of customization do you want? Usage changes? Specific UI stuff? I think I'm stuck in the reddit mindset where I can't see a reason for everyone's hubski to be slightly different.
I'm not saying I want to change the way Hubski looks to you. I'm saying I want to change the way Hubski looks to me. UI is important, and UI is personal. With Livejournal, you're impacting what everyone else sees (see also: Myspace). The reason Facebook won that one is that by forcing conformity on everyone, it set certain standards for legibility. (well obviously there was more to it than that, but still). However, if you take a look at Protopage, you can tweak it any way you want - it's just a UI that allows you to arrange things to your liking. I've been playing The Last Story pretty heavily and damned if I don't spend nearly as much time fucking with peoples' wardrobes as I do fighting monsters. And you know what? They built that in, and they incentivized it. And what it equals is more gameplay for less effort and - as previously discussed, The Ikea Effect. Customization counts.
Right, but how? hubski is a basic forum. The rule of function over form applies here, I think. Like you say, we have certain standards for legibility, and this is good. Anything else seems a bit superfluous. If our admins here spent all their time on this and were paid and so on then yeah, maybe I'd look for some behind the scenes customizability, but hell, a forum's a forum. We're here to read text and follow links.I'm saying I want to change the way Hubski looks to me.
Colors, fonts, etc. Then why are there six presets? The discussion, already in progress, is "messing with the look." The "admins" are, as previously stated, spending time on it already. My argument, if you'll read back, is that I'd much rather have the customization in my hands than theirs because then I'll get what I want without having to worry about anyone else's notions. Notions such as how "dark" is actually "asphalt."Right, but how?
hubski is a basic forum. The rule of function over form applies here, I think.
If our admins here spent all their time on this and were paid and so on then yeah, maybe I'd look for some behind the scenes customizability, but hell, a forum's a forum.
Okay. Now that I think about I guess I'd like some more markup. Hex color palettes maybe. Some cleaner menus (mk, the domains followed popup is messy as hell -- sorry to keep bugging you about insignificant shit but hey). I've only ever used one but I sort of assumed all that changed was the background color ... as in they all have the same function over form aspect. From here it just sounded like you were advocating for extremely personalizable CSS stuff, impacting where things were on the site, menus etc. -- what I would consider overkill for a forum. Maybe because I'm unfamiliar with wordpress I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Either way. I'm happy with what we have and would probably continue to be happy with whatever we ended up with.Colors, fonts, etc.
Then why are there six presets?
Knowing someone follows me makes it more likely that I will follow them. It doesn't guarantee it - my standards for following someone include them posting a fair amount of original links, not just personality based on what they share - but I do figure if someone follows me and I interact with them regularly, and key here is that both parameters are met - then I'm much more likely to check out whether I want to follow them by clicking through to their profile. Because the other thing is I don't share everything I read or comment on on Hubski. I only share what I think is really, really good. So it turns out I've read several articles b_b has posted recently, even though - turns out - shared none of them! Now following b_b. Partially because I saw his name was green and figured, hey, I know b_b! He's cool! Do I want to follow him? He's following me. Let's click through and find out.
Not that I'm a psychopath or anything (I keep feeling the need to reassure Hubski of this) - I was writing up a reply to lil about her unfollow guilt tangent, which I liked - but I rarely feel guilt about things. It is true I do sometimes; I've found when I do I immediately act to get rid of it. Also, I don't know. I'm a person of few rules. What rules I have are simple, sometimes unexpected, and I follow rigidly, but outside of them, much is flexible and undefined. See how it goes! See how it makes you feel! If you don't like it, don't do it again. That's more my take on things. Edit: In other words, nyah nyah nyah b_b, if I don't unfollow you, it won't be for your precious feels.
This reminds me of something I used to hear from a girl I used to hang out with, who would sometimes say, "I'm the most normal person I know," which struck me as a particularly abnormal thing to say. Also, is it psychopaths who don't feel guilt, or is it sociopaths?Not that I'm a psychopath or anything (I keep feeling the need to reassure Hubski of this)
My reading actually tells me "psychopath" is not the preferred nomenclature and the term is, if I recall correctly, "dissociative affective disorder," but I was using the word for recognition more than correctness. I don't think hubski actually thinks I am psycho- or socio-pathic - one reason I feel comfortable continually reassuring you all I'm not. I may use the reassurance as much for myself as the community at large.
tell ecib it's ok to unfollow me. It won't hurt my feelings. joking aside - I've felt a tinge of that before - and even a hint of sadness when my follower count goes down, but I have to remember that a lot of users are far more dynamic in who they follow and who they don't' - and that changes all the time. I think there is a value in knowing who your followers are. Perhaps a user could choose to follow anonymously? that could be a protection for the follower?
I don't think a change is necessary. Just sharing my opinion. I don't especially agree or disagree with anyone in this thread, I just think you're all overthinking the concept of 'unfollow guilt'. A lot of us are friends here, so unfollowing could get personal -- but the users I am tempted to unfollow are almost always people who initially contribute a lot but then vanish forever. It's such an outlier for someone to be unfollowed for a different reason that spending time thinking on changes strikes me as a waste. So, you should all deal with it? I guess that's what I'm saying, but hopefully politer.
My feelings are similar to flag's. From time to time, I try to unfollow people who have not contributed in months and years. I find unfollowing time-consuming and tedious. If it wasn't so much work checking people to see when they last commented or posted or shared, I would probably only follow about 20 people + notable newbies who I want to encourage and find out more about. The title "Unfollow Guilt" is hilarious though. Guilt is an important emotion that we should follow all the way down the rabbit hole. When we catch it, we should grab the scruff of its dirty collar, pull it up into the light, and interrogate it. If you feel guilty because you betrayed your own values, then your guilt tells you to smarten up or to question your values - maybe you've outlived them, maybe they're not even yours. But I digress. EDIT: By the way: In the last hour, someone "unfollowed" me. True. Should I feel guilty?
My views are essentially these: You Hubski feed is made up of posts from people you follow and the posts that these people share (mostly, some like kb follow strictly tags, but they are in the minority). You feed is central to your experience, and the ability to curate it and keep it in shape is paramount to having a the highest quality experience. We follow people for a variety of reasons...good comments, good posts, curiosity and testing the waters, collaboration, etc. But over time, we find that some people we follow can actively harm our feed, not contribute meaningfully, etc. This could be for a variety of reasons...our own interests and usage of Hubksi may have evolved away from some we follow, they may not end up posting stuff we respond too, etc. The bottom line is that should you find yourself in a position of wanting to prune those you follow, you're met with a very large psychological barrier. The moment you do, they are alerted by a color change. It's only human for this to create an uncomfortable friction that acts against tailoring your Hubski feed. Across all social networks, I've seen this phenomena play out. It's my opinion that NOT knowing who is following you is optimal. This lets you continually curate your feed and experiment with it, without creating a psychological barrier of any sort that keeps you locked in to your existing tribe. That being said, as mk mentioned, there is also a value to knowing who your followers are, and you'd lose that if you removed the ability to know this entirely. I think that a good compromise is to remove the color cues and still retain the ability to see all your followers on your profile page if you want to actively look them up. Regarding user trust, -I personally think it's silly that people might think that Hubski could now secretly inflate follower counts to boost people's ego. That prospect is a non-issue for me. So what does Hubski think? Does the knowledge that anybody you follow will be instantly alerted if you unfollow them keep you from doing it ever? Do you think your experience would be improved by this change? Do you think it's a mixed bag and you'd gain from it, but also lose the feedback that comes from instantly knowing someone is following you? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Edit: I'd still want the ability to see your total follower count no matter what. Even if it is anonymous, or if you have to go to your profile to see them. No downside to that metric staying in place that I can see. Only upside.
I agree with this entirely. Keep the follower count and list on the profile page (similar to how the badge count was recently removed from the top nav). And remove the color cues. To add to this, if this solution was implemented, the only metric still next to the username would be the notifications/full-hubwheel count, so I think it'd be cool to integrate that into the Hubski logo that appears to the left of the username. Have the center circle glow orange if you have unread notifications, and have the outside circles light up (either orange or the lighter blue) to indicate how close you are to a full hubwheel. Along with the little "x 2" next to it to indicate how many full hubwheels you currently have. I think this would work well both aesthetically and functionally, since the current logo serves as a link to your main feed, of which there is obviously already a link in the main navigation in the top right.That being said, as mk mentioned, there is also a value to knowing who your followers are, and you'd lose that if you removed the ability to know this entirely. I think that a good compromise is to remove the color cues and still retain the ability to see all your followers on your profile page if you want to actively look them up.
thenewgreen suggested this some time ago. I agree it's not a bad idea if we can make it look nice.To add to this, if this solution was implemented, the only metric still next to the username would be the notifications/full-hubwheel count, so I think it'd be cool to integrate that into the Hubski logo that appears to the left of the username. Have the center circle glow orange if you have unread notifications, and have the outside circles light up (either orange or the lighter blue) to indicate how close you are to a full hubwheel. Along with the little "x 2" next to it to indicate how many full hubwheels you currently have.
For the record, my hubwheel is never not orange. I don't know if I'm unusual in this. I don't necessarily consider this a drawback. I dismiss things as I respond to them, not as I read them - so I don't mind that it's always orange, it lets me know I have things to get back to. I was just wondering if anyone else experienced this variant on functionality, I guess. *Also, it's impossible to access notifications on certain early versions of IE. This is probably a factor too. I have managed to access mail through the profile link, but the orange hubwheel link doesn't work.
If you use the "dismiss all notifications" function in the corner of that page it will cease being orange. Once in a while I have to do it because there's no humanly possible way for me to clear them out one by one.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you really shouldn't be following people for "good comments," as the follow feature has nothing to do with whose comments you see. That won't 'curate your feed'. I follow people who post good things, and I (mostly) don't follow people whose comments I enjoy but who post three things for every hundred they share.
Well, it's up to you why you follow anyone, but following people for their comments at the very least puts their comments into your 'chatter' feed. Personally, I like chatter a lot, but most people seem to not really care about it. I thought it would really encourage more talking, but I'm not sure how much, if any, impact it's had.Correct me if I'm wrong, but you really shouldn't be following people for "good comments," as the follow feature has nothing to do with whose comments you see.
Oh, I didn't even know that. I don't use chatter. I guess I prefer to talk about a specific subject over the span of a day than talk about something I don't necessarily care about with much prompter replies. Maybe I don't know what the point of chatter is.
The point of chatter is just to see what others are talking about. Maybe there's a story that you wouldn't click on, because it doesn't look interesting to you. However, conversations meander in all sorts of ways, so maybe there's an interesting conversation on an otherwise uninteresting story. Or, maybe there's a conversation going on in a story that's not in your feed. You might find it there. Chatter helps users to find such conversations without having to browse everything. Obviously it doesn't work as efficiently as I had hoped.
I think part of the problem is that I already see nearly every damn thing that anyone comments on. I was talking to mk about this yesterday: I follow so many people, tags and domains that it's really rare for something to pop up on my feed because it was shared there, not because I was following the poster, tag or domain (only 1/20 on my feed now; same when I was thinking about this 24 hours ago). So I tend to catch most of the conversations without needing chatter. I also have a limited time to hubski that I mostly spend with notifications, submitting or the first 15 posts on my feed. So I'm not chatter's target audience, don't despair.
I like chatter because it reminds me of conversations I thought died down. Sometimes it takes a day or two before somebody replies to an interesting conversation, and by that time it's not on my feed anymore. I don't feel like checking for new replies constantly, or simply forget because in my mind I've already read all the replies (like in this conversation for example). Chatter allows me to circle back and revisit older posts, which is pretty nice.
On the contrary, it is almost the sole reason I follow anybody anymore :) Over time what I have found is that, as a news junkie, I am going to be exposed to all of the headlines and links to all of the major and minor stories I want to follow through a broad range of sources. What Hubski can give me that another aggregation cannot is a consistent, quality gravitational center of conversation. For this reason, I am almost always more enchanted by the 'chatter' link than by the front page. The aggregated links are more of a framework that holds good conversation together. The way I go about choosing who to follow has evolved over time, that much is certain.Correct me if I'm wrong, but you really shouldn't be following people for "good comments," as the follow feature has nothing to do with whose comments you see.
Another option might be to have the follower count in the top nav go the way of the badge count - restrict it to the profile, in which case I suspect people would keep track of their followers a lot less. Or even another option might be to use ecib's solution of followers being anonymous, but you get a one-time notification or something when you get a new follower (with their username) so you can check them out and potentially follow them back. One issue this might bring though would be that people would be spammy and follow tons of people to try to get them to follow in return, and then unfollow everyone.
I have my own "twitter problem" right now. I just joined instagram yesterday, and I don't know how to get any followers. I don't want to connect through FB, because it's a stupid and silly thing I'm doing (handwriting tweets on sticky notes and then photographing them) that I'm sure I'll lose interest in within days (but I hope not). Follow me, on that. That would be way better than following me on Hubski. Handle = dr_durp
I really don't use it personally too often. I mean too, but I just...don't. I use it mostly via my wife's store's account. I would be a lame person to follow. One instagrammer you should follow though is this guy: He's the chief Asia photog for AP and 95% of his feed is comprised of photos he snaps with his iPhone from inside North Korea. It is by far the most intimate and revealing peek behind the curtain of any source I've come across. He just left DPRK on assignment in South America unfortunately, but his feed is packed to the gills with good stuff. Edit: I did however, follow you, thenewgreen, and _refugee_ Edit 2: Dude, you at least need a profile pic. It can be a sticky note...
I think only highlighting the users whom you follow is a good idea if you decided to change it, though frankly I've never had a problem if want to follow/unfollow me. I mean, if all 17 of my "followers"suddenly disappear, I would definitely want to know what I did to create such a negative atmosphere, but at the end of the day, it's useless to get upset about social interactions on the internet.
I've always felt that having any kind of explicit reward system, whether that's followers or karma, will eventually lead to the lowest common denominator. Badges are not that bad because you give those away, so it encourages good posts and comments, but you don't give away followers.
Back on Reddit, if I wrote a comment, and then some minutes later my comment karma jumped, I'd know that I wrote a comment that people liked. People tended to like some pretty base stuff, so my highest karma posts were what I would consider my most dumb and pointless comments. I didn't succumb, but I guess there's something about the gamification of social interactions that leads to worse interactions. It's like "likes" on Facebook. You get a little guilty happy feeling, as if now you feel more validated. Someone cares! Or something vaguely to that effect. So when you see how many upvotes or "hubski ticks" you got, it tells you what people consider a good comment. Which, as the old guard of a social website becomes outnumbered, could become more and more base. The number of followers that you have could also be considered a type of upvote point system in the gamification of social interactions. If you post a lowest-common-denominator comment and see your follower count shoot up, then you might be incentivized to do the same in the future. On the other hand, if you're giving away badges, you have nothing to gain by doing that, and since badges are rare because it takes a while in order to get them to give out, it's more meaningful. I agree with myself regarding the upvotes and upticks. I think that should be hidden. I'm not convinced that followers have that same gamification/lowest-common-denominator effect. Kleinbl00 is seeing it from a different perspective, that the people who are unfollowing other people are benefiting from feeling like they're hurting someone because it keeps us human, and that the people being unfollowed get to know that they just did something that people don't approve of. Also that it keeps us aware of who the old guard is, and what they approve of. In this case, letting us see how many people follow us but not letting us see the actual individuals following us is the worst of both worlds. You have an abstraction of "followers" in which you don't have any meaningful relationship with them so it just becomes another point system. If you're going to show followers at all, I think you need to have that human relationship. Otherwise, don't show how many followers there are. The last thing I want is to see the phrase, "sweet sweet followers" somewhere on this site. (This kind of culture: http://imgur.com/r/TrollXChromosomes/225AM). I've yet to make up my mind really about this issue. More than anything else, I think it's important to think about what kinds of positive and negative incentives are being extended on both sides of the follower-leader perspective. It'd be interesting to see some clinical research into Internet incentives and relationships. Could a site be engineered to prevent extreme "filter bubbles" (http://dontbubble.us) (being able to create your own bubble is what's good about hubski, but it's also a potential danger when or if those bubbles become too insulating), karma pandering, mob mentality, trolling, or other "bad" social interactions based on such clinical research? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_evaluation_theory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Determination_Theory, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrinsic_motivation seem relevant.) I should mention that I do like mk's solution.
I think this is something worth thinking about. What if following was anonymous, unless the person following has posts that have been shared by the person being followed? That way, if two users find that they like the other's posts, they can be made aware of the fact in the event that they'd like to follow each other? So, like if I chose to follow you, you wouldn't know until you'd shared something that I posted, or maybe a set number of things that I'd posted. Does that make any sense?
It's interesting, although I had to read it three times to understand it. :) I do worry that it might be too complex, and I expect that people would often be sending me PMs asking why they can see some of their followers, but not others. Also, I am not sure if it solves ecib's guilt problem, as it becomes most problematic when you have familiarity with the user you want to unfollow. This might only work to increase that familiarity, as my view-able follower list would be smaller than it would be now. They might feel more scrutiny.
Sorry! I think the GRE questions are messing with my ability to structure thoughts . . . I can see that. No need to implement one's own headache. I'm not really sure that there is a way around guilt, at least not via the structure of Hubski, since the user presumably understands the choice they are making by unfollowing someone, whatever the mechanism. One thing I've noticed in discussions about followers and following, is that people tend to mention that they follow some people for the content they post and some for their comments. Now, I'm sure that people use the follower/following system in different ways, but if there were some kind of distinction that a user could make privately, between those they follow for the sake of conversation or content, but still appear to be following those people, might that work toward sidestepping the guilt?I do worry that it might be too complex, and I expect that people would often be sending me PMs asking why they can see some of their followers, but not others.
Not to overstep here but I think if you are not adult enough to handle some un-follows then maybe, assuming you are trying to cultivate a more mature environment than...you know, then maybe you aren't mature enough to participate, and maybe the un-follows will lead you to some growth in that regard.