- If I have learned anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.
Is hubskis follower/badge count similar? I can't say that I do whatever it takes to raise it...
I'm sure some people do care about their follower/badge count. I did before I hit around 40 but more as a sign that I was integrating in the community. It's nice to get a badge on a bit of content that you think people should check out, means that more people might see it. I don't care about total badge count but it's a lift when something you thought carefully about gets a badge. My favorite thing I ever posted on Hubski didn't get a badge but the reception of it was warm enough that I was just as pleased. https://hubski.com/m/pub?id=93262 I don't know that I would have been any happier to have a badge on it, hadn't written anything creative non-fiction wise in over a year when I pushed that out while more than a little drunk one night, and it I suppose making it was as rewarding as anything anyone else would have had to say about it.
I see your point on the hippie thing. Hubskiers can mute any jack-hole they want. Sort of like banishing a particular member from your piece of the commune, I guess. No other members of the commune get to intervene either. I read and comment waaay more than I post, so I'm a bit more of a free-loader myself. Mainly because I don't spend a lot of time discovering original content. I enjoy reading comments and reactions to comments.
So... Do you think its possible to maintain the commune as it grows? I think about this a lot actually. Recently i pruned back the people I follow, like way back, to just the ones i felt i had really connected with in some way. Some others i removed for different reasons even though i had interacted with them. I'm testing what affect it has on my experience with the community here.
Good point. Is it possible to maintain the sense of community by keeping one's number of connections to a certain number. Quality vs. quantity. What is the general target number that seems to work? I'm at 36 followers and follow 32. Seems just right for me.
I wonder if the Dunbar number has been applied to online communities yet... On twitter you can follow thousands because there is no real discussion, its a stream of soundbites. On Facebook its people you know in real life and the number is inflated with old friends from school, distant family, acquaintances you rarely meet; the real number of people you connect with is likely much lower than your total friend number. On hubski it might be different (which is why i'm doing my little experiment) but then again maybe it isn't, only time will tell. I would say that there is a fairly central core of members here who post most of the topics and comments, they are familiar with each other and that leads to a real sense of community. I would guess that that core of members hold everything together but there is an upper bound on the number it can support before another core is needed to ensure the sense of community.