Many news sites and aggregators are dominated by easily digestible images, short articles, and lists. Where the content is quality, often
the conversation is hostile or lacking. Hubski is a platform that encourages thoughtful dialog, and enables people to have complete control over
the content they see.
On Hubski, you can follow people, tags, and domains. Your feed is the result of who and what you follow. Posts are not voted upon. Posts propagate
across the Hubski community by sharing and resharing.
If people post content you are not interested in, it will have little impact on your experience. If you don't follow a user, you will
not see their posts. In addition, you can filter specific people, tags, and domains to keep them out of your feed, even if someone you follow
shares them.
Another difference is the "speed" of the site. Users are encouraged to slow down, digest, and discuss the topics fully. Commenting on
older posts is similarly encouraged. The Hubski algorithm will inject that old post back into the feed whenever the discussion revives.
Hubski allows people to post their own original content without hiding their identity. You can read more about this in Personal Content Isn't A Sin.
Hubski users follow one another. This fosters relationships around shared interests and conversation. Content propagates throughout Hubski
when people share it with their followers. Following people allows for serendipitous content discovery and encourages a high level of discourse.
People have the ability to curate their own experience on Hubski; external moderation is not needed. There are no mods on Hubski. When someone posts
content you aren't interested in you can "filter" them, when someone posts comments that you find offensive, you can "mute" them. On Hubski, you choose
what you want to see and what you don't.
Your feed is displayed when you are logged in. It contains posts by people, tags, and domains you follow. When you click the hubwheel on a post, it
shares the post with your followers.
You can view all posts using the global feed. Exceptional content can be found under badges. Each time a user fills up their hubwheel, they receive a badge that they can give away to reward a post or comment.
Following other people encourages everyone to take care with the content they post or share and results in a more diverse and serendipitous
feed. You may follow someone specifically because they post great music. However, you will also see posts about things that user also finds interesting.
You are exposed to a more diverse set of ideas and may explore a point of view or learn about something you normally wouldn't seek out.
Many people assume that this could result in a site full of "power-users,". However, when a site's primary motivation is quality discussion and not
points, the concept of a "power-user" is vastly diminished. There are popular people on Hubski, but you don't have to follow them. In fact, you
can specifically filter them.
Another misconception is that following people creates an "echo chamber." In fact, we feel that communities centered around topics are much more likely to become echo
chambers, as people of like minds gather in the same place. It's very rare that an atheist subscribes to a Catholic board or vise versa.
By following people that are looking to post, share, and engage with thoughtful content, the diversity of content and perspectives tends to be greater.
Badges: You receive a badge each time you fill up your hubwheel. You can fill your hubwheel by making posts and comments. When you have a badge, you can award to
outstanding posts or comments by clicking the "+!" symbol. You can see how many badges you currently have to give, content you have badged in the past,
and badges your have received by going to your profile. You can view all badged content
here.
Email Alerts: Hubski can send you email alerts when someone replies to your posts or comments or when you get a new follower. In your settings, you can choose which alerts
that you would like to receive, if any.
Save: The save link bookmarks a post but doesn't share it. This is useful when you want to save a post to read later, or to make a personal list of posts that you like.
New comments on saved posts will show up in your notifications.
Hide: The hide link removes a post from your feed. You can see the posts that you have hidden in you "settings" and unhide them there.
Stick: Sticky posts allow you to stick a post to the top of your feed. It will remain there until you decide to "unstick" it.
Filter: The filter link lets you keep a specific user, tag, or domain out of your feed. Hubski gives people full control over what you see and don't see. For example,
you can follow #politics but filter #cnn.com to perfectly tailor your feed to your liking. You can see the people and tags that you filter in your settings,
and can choose to un-filter them there. To filter oscar, click on oscar's name, and then click "filter oscar".
Mute: The mute keeps a specific user from commenting on your posts or replying to your comments. You can see the people that you mute in your settings, and can
choose to un-mute them there. To mute oscar, click on oscar's name, and then click "mute oscar".
Hush: Hushing a user will sort that user's comments to the bottom of a thread that you are viewing. In essence, a hushed user's comments fall more quickly to the bottom of a thread.
Hushing is anonymous. No one knows who has hushed them.
Tags: Any time you submit content you can add up to two tags. Tags only use alpha-numeric characters and no spaces. You don't need to include the "#", it will
be added for you. Special characters are not supported in tags. Tagging is an art form. Feel free to be creative!
Community Tags: Anyone in the Hubski community can add a community tag to a post, or suggest a different community tag. Users don't have the ability to create or edit community tags
on other people's posts until they have filled up their hubwheel once.
Personal Tags: A personal tag is your own individual tag that only you can use. A personal tag can be created by adding @ to the end of the tag. For example, if oscar enters music@, the tag #music.oscar will be created. Personal tags can be followed and filtered just like other tags. Community tags cannot be personalized.
Styles: Hubski comes in all different color schemes! You can change the style in your settings panel. Currently, the styles available are: Clean, Dark, Snow, Spring, Office, and Ugly.
Shoutouts: If you put a user's name between two @'s (example: I just talked to @oscar@ about this) in a post or comment, they will be notified that you mentioned them. Shouting out
is great if you think a user would enjoy the content posted, for referring to a previous comment or post by another user, or for updating users on an ongoing thread (book club,
photo contest, etc). It is inappropriate and considered spammy to shout out long lists of Hubski users simply to call attention to your post or comment.
Global Feed: The global feed shows everything posted to Hubski. You can see it here: https://hubski.com/global. You can also sort by the number of shares by clicking the hubwheels on the secondary
navigation bar or by using the URL format: https://hubski.com/sglobal?id=8
Chatter: Chatter shows all the comments on Hubski. You can see chatter in your neighborhood here (just replace oscar with your username): https://hubski.com/chatter?id=oscar. Like global, you can
see all comments, and sort by number of votes a comment has using the secondary navigation bar or using this URL format: https://hubski.com/globalchat?id=8
Quick Quotes: If you double click a paragraph from a comment you are replying to, it will automatically be placed in the reply field as a quote.
RSS: Hubski has RSS feeds which make it easy to stay up to date with Hubski via your favorite RSS reader. You can add your personal Hubski feed, chatter feed, or global feeds here: https://hubski.com/rssfeeds
Tutorial: New people are automatically invited to click through the tutorial when they first join Hubski. Existing users can access it by the bottom bar by clicking "tutorial." This gives you a
brief walkthrough of the functionality of Hubski using intro.js.
Magnet Links: Magnet links typically contain information for files downloadable from P2P networks. In short, they are normally used for torrents. In fact, magnet links will not function unless you have software that
employs them. Magnet links are functional on Hubski.
IRC: The semi active, unofficial Hubski IRC.
Print View: You can view any post as a "print" link by clicking on the "print" button below the content. It works best with text based posts, like this one:
https://hubski.com/print?id=115193Lists: You can build a list of posts and comments, by listing their pub ids in the url as such:
https://hubski.com/list?id=121862,121323,121447,1,1133,5584,82163,82210Zen: Zen mode can be turned on in your settings. Zen is a unique Hubski experience that changes all hubwheels to a beautiful icon designed by sounds_sound. What can be learned?
Embedded Videos and Images: You can embed videos and images by pasting the direct link to the image (ie: http://i.imgur.com/gQg4Bwv.png) or the direct link to the video. Image URLs (.png, .tif, .gif, and .jpg) will embed automatically. Youtube and Vimeo links
will also automatically embed.
TMI: The TMI page features a variety of information about Hubski and Hubski users. You can view it
here.
The best way to get a feel for Hubski is to try it out. If you are interested in good conversation,
join us.
