A lesser known feature of Tildes that is VERY useful:

You can ignore any topic on Tildes! There are two ways to do it:

• From the main page, click Actions ▼ then Ignore this post

• From the topic itself, click Ignore

The topic will leave your feed, never to be seen again (unless you want to or made a mistake, in which case you can see it under Your ignored topics on your user page and remove it from your ignore list).

Use this to cut down on clutter from your feeds by eliminating high-activity topics you are not interested in.

It will also mute notifications from that topic as well, so it’s a good way of disengaging from a conversation if you wish.

I saw a few longtime users in other threads who were unaware of this feature until today, so I figured I’d make the PSA.

Go ahead everyone, try it on this post!

Ignore it, PLEASE!

Now that the site has gotten a little busier, I’ve noticed a few shifts in how I've engaged with the site and jotted down notes on things that I've noticed might be nice to have. We already have a "what don't you like" thread I know, but this is more like "what didn't I notice when the place was a lot quieter" sort of thing.




Edit bumps for megathreads

I recently created a megathread for the Apple VisionPro reviews. But I realized that if I continuously edit in new reviews as they come in, the thread won’t bump. I’d need to actually post each time a new review comes in AND edit it into the self-post. It might be nice if I could choose to bump a self-post if I’m making a substantive edit to the content. Though I can see the opportunities for abuse here so I wonder if there’s a more elegant solution for it besides just occasionally posting when there are updates.

Following/Subscribing to Topics

Yes topics get bumped as conversation happens in them, but with the level of activity we have right now I’m having trouble keeping up with conversations I’m actually invested in following. Bookmarks are good, but there’s two issues. One is that they’re hidden in a folder off to the side. So it’s easy to forget to check them. Two is that they’re currently serving dual purposes, they can either be for saving specific topics because I think they’re good enough that I might want to reference them again or they can be because I want to keep up with the conversation in them.
I’d be interested in separating the functions a little bit. I’d like to be able to bookmark topics as a “save” function but also “subscribe” to topics to get alerted up top when there are new posts the same way I am alerted to stuff in my inbox. Alternatively, just having an “unread” count next to the bookmarked topics link and sorting the list of bookmarks by acitivity might do it.



A Drafts section

This post right now I mostly composed in a note-taking app because it’s a collection of random thoughts I had while using the site the past couple of weeks but didn’t want to post until I had time to marinate on them. Being able to save drafts directly in Tildes would have been a nice feature. It would also be good for replies since it gives you a chance to be like “Hmmm, do I really want to engage with this conversation right now?”



“Shortlisted” groups

The list of groups is a bit long, especially when you’re scrolling it on mobile. People might not (and probably don’t) actually care about all of them. It might be nice if we could “star” a group to have it show up higher on the list or have all non-starred groups in a collapsed list.

Choosing groups from the new post view instead of posting from the groups view

Since groups are currently being treated more like “super-tags” than separated communities, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to designate the group in a dropdown menu above the tag bar when we’re posting instead of needing to go into a group to create a new post. In some cases, I might think a self-post belongs in one group but by the time I’m done writing I realize this ~humanities post is really more of a ~life post. This will, of course, depend on the outcome of the “treating groups more as separate entities” discussion.



Subscribed topic tags

Filtered topic tags is a nice feature because it’s one interaction mode that serves dual uses. You can both remove a selected class of content from your main feed but then you can also navigate into it to see ONLY that content. This basically lets you use it alternatively as a “favorites” option instead of an anti-favorites option. (I guess this is less of a feature suggestion and more of an observation for a non-obvious use of the function.) We could, maybe, separate out the list of filtered topics by why you’re filtering. Either “I don’t want to see this stuff” or “I want to be able to specially focus on this stuff.”

Built-in invite request form

Currently to get an invite you have to ask on Reddit or something. Maybe we should have a page where people can request invites within Tildes so we aren’t reliant on having to pick-up flotsam from other social media platforms. The downside, of course, is that you can’t vet people. So this invite path would probably be the lowest priority and only handed out during quiet periods where noxious posters can be handled quickly.



“Only New” filter for comments


I mentioned this issue with the Arc browser that makes it so the “collapse all old replies” function breaks if I open it in a background tab. Maybe it might be nice to also have this as a button I can trigger next to the Collapse replies and Expand all buttons. Or, if it doesn’t over-complicate the UI, maybe even a way to “collapse all before [datetime]” with the last session time pre-filled in. Or perhaps more like a clock that you can wind backwards in 30 minute or 1 hour increments.



Rethinking time-limit on Exemplary labels


I think it’s crucial that these remain a rare commodity, but with the current volume of good posts the 8 hour limit is feeling mighty constraining. Although previously the time limit didn’t feel like a constraint at all because there legitimately wasn’t much to label. Not sure if this should actually change or not, maybe the time limit can stretch or compress based on how active the site has been over the past X hours.



Add a “Funny” modifier to the “Joke” label

The effect on sorting should be the exact same and it should be invisible to everyone, but I just think it would be fun and would also encourage people to label jokes as such (trick folks into narcing basically). Maybe when there is a reputation system in place it can be used to adjust how big of a negative weight your joke posts get. Funnier people get dinged less.

Rethinking the necroposting warning

With more people here there are more active conversations and topics seem to remain active a lot longer. In topics like the one for questions from new users it’s so active it feels kind of silly to see the “this topic is over X old” warning. We do want to encourage maintaining conversations as long as they’re going so maybe we should suppress this warning on active topics (like ones that have had more than 5 posts in the past 3 days).

Improved search


I know search is hard, but it is difficult to find old stuff. I’ve been trying to dig up examples of old posts or previous conversations on things when answering questions and I’m often trying to wrack my brain for specific phrases from conversations a year or more ago. It just doesn’t work for this. Discord search works pretty well and gives you modifiers for who posted, where, around when. I get the potential for abuse here, but maybe enable this kind of deep search for my own post history and nobody else’s?



Mark direct messages as unread

Exactly what is says on the tin. Sometimes people ask you something and you need to come back to it later.



Tag cloud

Knowing what to tag things as is intimidating for newbies and old heads alike. There need to be mechanisms to make this more approachable. I think perhaps if, underneath the tag bar we just displayed a “word cloud” of the common tags sized according to frequency it might help get people started. The word cloud would have to be per group and maybe refreshed per day based on a rolling-sample of the last 100 posts.

Put a vote button on the bottom of the post for self-posts.

Seriously, do you realize how much scrolling I have to do to go back up and upvote kfwyre when he posts something like this? It's especially a hassle on mobile.

So if you want to encourage people to post more content, please take time to occasionally check the New sort. If you leave a comment on new topics you are interested in and want to see more discussion on, it will help them thrive. No pressure, and please don't just leave a comment for the sake of commenting, but just a gentle reminder to try your best to look out for the newly submitted content, and the people who submit it.

Happy Tildying everyone. :)

As an old, I prefer the old reddit. Which, lets be honest, has been going away for a while.

But so long as I could browse on my phone via i.reddit.com, I was happily entertained by time there.

No longer. And I'm saddened by it. It was an imperfect community, but its good parts are replicated nowhere else as far as I can tell, Tildes notwithstanding. Although, if Tildes were maybe 2-3x as busy and had more para-reality* fans, it'd be really darn close. I am still sad, and sad that we can't keep awesome things that generate a lot of community benefit but low income (see also, usenet). Probably, it's a good dead cow.**

*As a true believer (tm), I hesitate to use the word conspiracy, because it has gained so many negative associations with far right absurdity and violence. Among the more serious members of the community, we have yet to come up with an easy to use term. Another thing in the world I am sad about. For the record, I don't believe the election was stolen, but I also don't believe Kennedy was assassinated by Oswald, or at least not him alone.

**if anyone is interested, I relay the story of the Wise Man, the Poor Family, and Their Cow.