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    1. Daily Tildes discussion - "trial" groups?

      ~tildes.official Text 258 words
      I've been thinking a bit about this post about groups that @Kiloku made yesterday, and about how we'll be able to figure out when it's the right time to create a new group. I had an idea (inspired...

      I've been thinking a bit about this post about groups that @Kiloku made yesterday, and about how we'll be able to figure out when it's the right time to create a new group.

      I had an idea (inspired somewhat by how StackExchange's "Area 51" works), and just want to see if you all think it's worth trying sometime, or if there are reasons that you think it wouldn't work very well.

      Every week or two, we could have a thread for "group proposals", where people suggest groups that they think would be good to add and likely to be active enough. If there's enough support from other users (for some meaning of "enough"), we create the group and then give it a while (maybe 2-4 weeks) to see if it actually builds up a reasonable level of activity. If it does, great. If not, we could remove the group and move the posts back into another group with an appropriate tag.

      So for example, if someone suggested a group for fantasy novels and a decent number of other users express interest, we could create ~books.fantasy as a trial. A few weeks later, if it doesn't seem to be working out, we move all the posts from it back into ~books with a "fantasy" tag (and can always try it again in the future).

      I don't know if we'd want to do this anytime soon, but I thought it would make for an interesting discussion anyway, so let me know what you think of the general idea.

      54 votes

    3. Untitled

      ~tildes Text 54 words
      I've been noticing a lot of initial comments nitpicking titles lately. I'm not sure how to improve this, but I believe these posts are generally low effort and negative. Of course if a title is...

      I've been noticing a lot of initial comments nitpicking titles lately. I'm not sure how to improve this, but I believe these posts are generally low effort and negative. Of course if a title is outright incorrect or misleading, it should be pointed out. But where's the line?

      Anyone else notice this? Thoughts? Suggestions?

      14 votes

    5. What have you been playing, and what do you think of it?

      ~games Ask (survey)
      Hey ~ers, I'd like to keep a weekly discussion going on this topic (every Wednesday or so?). Let me know if this isn't something you want to see in the future, I always liked these, but maybe not...

      Hey ~ers, I'd like to keep a weekly discussion going on this topic (every Wednesday or so?). Let me know if this isn't something you want to see in the future, I always liked these, but maybe not everyone does? Last one got a lot of interesting posts, let's see how it goes this time!

      I've been playing Grim Dawn quite a bit lately. I've kickstarted it back in the day, but never got around to really playing it after the early access period. I was burned out on Diablo clones at the time: Torchlight 2, Victor Vran, Van Helsing, etc. I think the break did me good, as playing it fresh is quite enjoyable. There's a good variety of classes and builds, fun abilities, and tons of gear number crunching (playing thunder smashing shaman now). Just the way I like it! I'm hoping to snag one of the DLCs once I reach a high enough level and play with my friends on one of the unlocked hardcore difficulties.

      24 votes

    8. Who was the most influential teacher in your life? And how did they influence you?

      ~talk Text 39 words
      We're finishing up the graduation season which has me thinking about some of the impactful teachers in my life. Who's someone that made a big impact on you? What lessons did they teach you or...

      We're finishing up the graduation season which has me thinking about some of the impactful teachers in my life. Who's someone that made a big impact on you? What lessons did they teach you or passions did they instill?

      7 votes

    12. Is anyone else excited for Gorillaz new album?

      ~music Text 76 words
      Gorillaz has a new album coming out next week, is anyone else really excited? Some of the singles already released from the album: Humility - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5yFcdPAGv0 Sorcerez -...

      Gorillaz has a new album coming out next week, is anyone else really excited?
      Some of the singles already released from the album:
      Humility - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5yFcdPAGv0
      Sorcerez - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40xG4bMr9F4
      Fireflies - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCet4yrfp4o
      Lake Zurich - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68JpPpSc7bs
      Hollywood - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgwE94KZJ7E

      Of them, I think Fireflies has to be my favorite. What's yours?

      9 votes

    17. Any hobbyist gamedevs interested in working on a project together?

      ~games Ask (survey)
      I've been trying to get back into game dev recently and I'd love to work with someone if you're up for it. I'm also down to join existing hobbyist projects, although I have a thing I'm currently...

      I've been trying to get back into game dev recently and I'd love to work with someone if you're up for it. I'm also down to join existing hobbyist projects, although I have a thing I'm currently building at the moment.

      If you make games for fun and are looking for a partner, feel free to send me a PM or just reply to this.

      Similarly, I'd like to also suggest a Tildes ~LFG (looking for group) or other meeting-ish area.

      12 votes

    21. [Language Learning] Telegram groups for practicing languages

      ~hobbies Text 280 words
      I'm an user of group of chat groups called Polyglossia Network, where you can speak with both native and learners from a given languages (and it has lots of languages) So if you wanna join, just...

      I'm an user of group of chat groups called Polyglossia Network, where you can speak with both native and learners from a given languages (and it has lots of languages)

      So if you wanna join, just send a message to @polyglossia_bot (PG's bot) on Telegram and click "Group Links", it'll show you links to every group. I'll leave a list here with the groups from more popular languages just in case, but it might get outdated as sometimes links are changed (to see the full list, send a message to the bot @polyglossia_bot)

      16 votes

    23. The Browns will win the Super Bowl this year

      ~sports.american_football Text 74 words
      The Browns have the best receiving corps in the league right now (upgraded from the worst last year), the Browns have a Journeyman QB who doesn't throw picks (Thanks Kizer), and we have a...

      The Browns have the best receiving corps in the league right now (upgraded from the worst last year), the Browns have a Journeyman QB who doesn't throw picks (Thanks Kizer), and we have a under-study QB who may be franchise QB in the future.

      Furthermore, we have a better than average backfield with receiving backs and "downhill" runners (god I hate that term, it's like corporate speak for "let's circle back"....cliche cliche)...

      4 votes

    24. Anyone here play squash?

      ~sports Ask
      The community here on Tildes is very small just like the Squash playing community. Wanted to see if there is any overlap. So anyway where are you from? How regularly do you play? What's you skill...

      The community here on Tildes is very small just like the Squash playing community. Wanted to see if there is any overlap. So anyway where are you from? How regularly do you play? What's you skill level? What's your main motivation behind playing squash? Favourite player?

      5 votes

    29. Would you visit Westworld?

      ~tv Ask
      Westworld Season 2 is in full swing and I love it so far, but would you live in Westworld if you could? A world with no consequences other than its own societal pressures seems pretty enticing...

      Westworld Season 2 is in full swing and I love it so far, but would you live in Westworld if you could? A world with no consequences other than its own societal pressures seems pretty enticing...

      10 votes

    34. Daily Tildes discussion - starting some moderation

      ~tildes.official Text 396 words
      Alright, this is very late today, but I had some other things to get through first. If you missed it, I locked this topic earlier today (which involved quickly hacking together a lock method...

      Alright, this is very late today, but I had some other things to get through first.

      If you missed it, I locked this topic earlier today (which involved quickly hacking together a lock method because I didn't have one). There was nothing wrong with the subject itself, and some reasonable discussion did happen in it, but overall it was disappointing to see it start devolving into the same old tired arguments, and it was unlikely to go anywhere productive if it had continued. I don't want to focus on that specific post though, and let's (please) try not to turn this thread entirely into a debate about it.

      The thing that I'd rather discuss is that I think this marks the first time I've done any sort of "strong" moderation-like action that wasn't also associated with banning a user (and there have still only been a few of those total). This shouldn't be a shocking or surprising event—introducing some moderation was inevitable if we want to have any hope of maintaining quality, and I'm honestly impressed that we managed to make it a month before it was necessary. From this point, I'm probably going to start doing it a little more (especially as we continue growing), and at least for the near future the actions should mostly be restricted to:

      • re-tagging topics (and I'll give other people the ability to do this as well)
      • editing topic titles
      • moving topics between groups
      • (hopefully rarely) locking topics, or removing topics/comments

      The main thing I'm working on finishing up now is a sort of "topic log" that will show which actions were taken on a topic, and who took them. So for example, once this is deployed, you'll be able to see things like "Deimos added tags x, y, z" or "Deimos changed title to ...".

      So what I'd like to talk about in this thread is just general thoughts on moderation—would you like to see a bit stricter moderation to try to set the bar a bit higher to start? How aggressively should I move topics if I think they don't fit? Do you think we need some sort of global log to list topics that are removed? Opinions on those sorts of questions are welcome, so I can take it all into account as I figure out how I want to approach it.

      62 votes

    50. The identifying terms we use (and the political history behind them)

      ~talk Text 342 words
      Today's political climate has all sorts of terms being thrown around with varying meanings and history behind them. There are Liberals (political ideology for FREEDUM), and Liberals (foreign...

      Today's political climate has all sorts of terms being thrown around with varying meanings and history behind them. There are Liberals (political ideology for FREEDUM), and Liberals (foreign policy), and Liberals (economic policy), and Liberals ("conservatives"), and Liberals ("centrist, anti-absolute monarchists"), and Liberals ("democrats"), and Liberals (some other field that annoys the shit out of me). There are Progressives, and Conservatives, Nationalists, Socialists, Social Democrats, unreconstructed Monarchists, Reconstructed Monarchists, Anarchists, and I'm sure some other political identity that I've missed.

      So, given the rather long list of ways to identify politically, and the just about as long history for those ways to identify politically, I thought we should have a discussion focused exclusively on the political history of the terms we used.

      So, the questions:

      1. What terms do you commonly use to describe yourself and others in your political environment? 
2. What is the relevant history that informs the way you use common political terms to describe yourself and others?
3. Got any links, movies, books, etc., that delve into that history?

      This has the potential to get hairy because of how broad it is, so I'm going to try to remind people of some best practices that I use when engaging in meaningful discussion:

      • Understand before criticizing. - Be able to frame someone's view in a way that they can agree with themselves before critiquing their view. Questions are your friend, but make sure the questions are focused on better understanding someone's view, not on biasing reactions to a view.
      • Assume good faith. - Calling people "trolls" makes me very angry. Don't do it. For any reason. To anyone. If your case is so bulletproof that you'd be willing to call someone out for it here, take it to @Deimos instead. I don't want to read it here.
      • I Could Be Wrong - There is nothing wrong with having confidence in your view, but there should be some part of you that recognizes you can be wrong about whatever claim you make. Nothing is 100%. Absolutely Only Sith Deal In Absolutes, etc.
      11 votes