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  • Showing only topics with the tag "suggestions". Back to normal view
    1. Remember display theme preferences even after cookie clearing

      For those of us have our browsers set to clear all cookies upon exit find it annoying to login in the middle of the night only to get our eyes blasted with the white theme. Settings need to dug...

      For those of us have our browsers set to clear all cookies upon exit find it annoying to login in the middle of the night only to get our eyes blasted with the white theme. Settings need to dug around with to switch is to something darker every time. This could be avoided by having the server remember the theme preferences of the users.

      If this is something that's already discussed previously or planned to be worked on internally, please correct me below. Thank you

      10 votes
    2. Per Tilde Tag Based Background Reading Links (wikipedia?)

      If tildes wants to foster deeper discussions I wonder if there should be some mechanism for linking off to external background knowledge. This could possibly be semi-automatic based on the...

      If tildes wants to foster deeper discussions I wonder if there should be some mechanism for linking off to external background knowledge. This could possibly be semi-automatic based on the containing tilde & topic tags.

      If we end up with news discussions around topics like say Israel & Palestine in order for anyone to begin to understand wtf is going on (and so reasonably discuss the current news topic) there's a load of relevant history. It seems like it would be nice to have a link so that a topic from poltics.news with the tag Israel could automatically get some further reading links.

      Wikipedia has the advantage that it's another user driven org so this could have the added benefit of motivating people to fact check & improve it.

      19 votes
    3. Embedded video player

      Hi, It would be nice to have a privacy aware youtube/vimeo/etc video player (by this i mean, not the official one), not sure if this is feasible, but it would be a really good feature (i remember...

      Hi,

      It would be nice to have a privacy aware youtube/vimeo/etc video player (by this i mean, not the official one), not sure if this is feasible, but it would be a really good feature (i remember that there was a website that implemented an opensource player, but i don't recall the name)

      7 votes
    4. What if replying to a comment forced upvoting of the comment being replied to?

      This would help, but not completely fix, two issues that seem to be inherent in the Tildes design: \1 Voting is mostly treated as an "I agree" button. You'll see this in pretty much any thread...

      This would help, but not completely fix, two issues that seem to be inherent in the Tildes design:

      \1 Voting is mostly treated as an "I agree" button. You'll see this in pretty much any thread where there's back and forth discussion. When you reply to a comment you're implicitly saying "this comment is worth engaging with," in which case an upvote is warranted.

      Same thing for topics: leaving a top-level comment should force an upvote for the topic.

      \2 It encourages non-engagement with comments that maybe shouldn't be engaged with. For example, one hot topic of this week has been the calling out of low-effort posts and how the community ought to chill out a bit. By forcing an upvote, it discourages replying to said posts, which makes it more likely that such comments will be ignored and drift to the bottom of a topic.

      Edit: Whether this idea is implemented or not, as long as Voting = "I Agree" this site will become an even bigger echo chamber than Reddit because there are no downvotes to balance out the "I support the message of this topic/comment" crowd.

      19 votes
    5. Tackling the Comment Voting Problem

      I took a break from Tildes for a week and came back to look at things again with a fresh perspective. One of the things I immediately noticed was how the earliest comments are the ones that get...

      I took a break from Tildes for a week and came back to look at things again with a fresh perspective.

      One of the things I immediately noticed was how the earliest comments are the ones that get the upvotes to the top of the comment list, and tend to stay there, even when better comments and chains flow below.

      I started thinking about why this is so pervasive. Not just on tildes, but everywhere. Reddit and tumblr both suffer this issue to a degree. At the end of the day, going through any comments requires a certain amount of time, and a certain approach to the existing library of commentary. If we lock in the amount of time an average person will examine comments (which...is not much), we’re left with the only thing to address: the approach to going through the existing library.

      Plenty of proposals (mostly already done) come to mind. Perhaps you go by most active or most recent comments. Controversial perhaps, or sorting by newest, rather than most popular. Maybe some secret mix of it all (the reddit “hot” formula). What about complete and utter randomness? ...yeah remember that Certain Amount of Time we discussed earlier? It’ll only be a couple posts before the user will switch back to another sort method.

      So what should we try? What HASN’T been tried?

      What about multiple panes? User-selectable, arrangable, 1-4. Vertical columns of different views, updated dynamically synchronously or asynchronously for the most controversial, new, and active. You could see all the views at once, side by side, so that your time switching between views and waiting for page loads evaporates and 100% of that limited attention span is spent on the comments in each of the sorts.

      Having the more rapidly-changing columns (newest, active) update synchronously (every # seconds, configurable) would allow a user to engage those comments in time for the next refresh. The less-rapidly changing columns could be set to be asynchronous- updating as the orders change (top, controversial). This can also be tweaked as the site gets either more or less active as a whole. So what might need to be asynchronous now while things are quiet, can be made synchronous later.

      Again, all of this is just a possibility, or perhaps starting point for a way to address the overall issue of the first comments being the most voted on.

      36 votes
    6. RSS/Atom feeds for groups?

      Could we have RSS or Atom feeds that correspond to a given view? There could be two kinds of feeds, one that links to the comments page, and one that follows the link itself. The comments feed for...

      Could we have RSS or Atom feeds that correspond to a given view?

      There could be two kinds of feeds, one that links to the comments page, and one that follows the link itself. The comments feed for ~comp could be https://tildes.net/~comp?rss=comments, and the link feed could be https://tildes.net/~comp?rss=link, or something like that. Ideally this could apply to tags as well, so if I just wanted to see posts in ~comp tagged web, I could view https://tildes.net/~comp?tag=web&rss=comments.

      Several similar sites have this ability, so it's nice to be able to browse them all in one place. (On Reddit you can put .rss at the end of a subreddit for a feed, and on Hacker News and Lobsters it's just /rss).

      What do you think?

      15 votes
    7. Recommend a show based on a person's Anime List

      Quite a simple concept I've seen done on a multitude of anime forums and communities that I feel would fin in great on Tildes. I'm very excited ~anime is finally a thing and we can start filling...

      Quite a simple concept I've seen done on a multitude of anime forums and communities that I feel would fin in great on Tildes. I'm very excited ~anime is finally a thing and we can start filling it with more casual topics and get to know the fellow weeb Tildoos better.

      So the idea is pretty straight forward. You create a new comment branch by posting a link to your Anime List (be it MAL, Kitsune, AL or whatever else) and people who are interested are going to look through it and try to recommend something you might enjoy but haven't seen yet. The hope is, people who get replies on their posts can sort of "pay it forward" and reply to some of the other comments.

      But more than anything else, let's have some fun with this. I'm relatively free today so I'll try to look through as many as I can! :)

      14 votes
    8. Is there any way to move the text box for topic replies to the top of the page rather than after all the comments?

      It took me a while to find where to post a reply to a post, and it was a little annoying to scroll past all the comments to write my own. On the other hand, it does encourage reading the other...

      It took me a while to find where to post a reply to a post, and it was a little annoying to scroll past all the comments to write my own.

      On the other hand, it does encourage reading the other posts before replying, but I feel like that hopefully won't needed on this site.

      7 votes
    9. Building "Board Culture" for each separate group through scrapping the 'front page' view

      Partially inspired by @Amarok's comment on culture specific to /r/listentothis and some thoughts I've been having: how can we make sure that each group (and sub-, and sub-sub-groups, etc) each...

      Partially inspired by @Amarok's comment on culture specific to /r/listentothis and some thoughts I've been having: how can we make sure that each group (and sub-, and sub-sub-groups, etc) each have a sort of identity of their own? In my own experience and opinion having a cohesive identity as a subgroup helps the content quite a bit, as opposed to "just being a subgroup".

      And I have a suggestion: If we scrap the front page as is, and we don't show all the subgroups' content mixed through each other, but stick to either a "classic" forum view, or like 4chan's view where you have to click through to a subforum, people would be forced to visit just that subgroup, and do so consciously. Thoughts?

      7 votes
    10. Given our Non-Profit nature, wouldn't having a "Gold" option make sense?

      Forgive me if this has been posted before, I am still pretty new here. Coming here having the option to "Gild" was something I kinda just assumed would be a thing. Obviously it wouldn't need to be...

      Forgive me if this has been posted before, I am still pretty new here.

      Coming here having the option to "Gild" was something I kinda just assumed would be a thing.

      Obviously it wouldn't need to be call "Gold" or "Gilding", those are just terms from some other site that I know all of us will understand.

      I have always liked the idea of users buying made up medals for topics and comments they felt the need to reward. It gives the users a sense of accomplishment/reward and gets the devs little micro donations.

      Currently the most valuable material in existence is antimatter, so maybe a little "AM" medal?

      EDIT: Something I also meant to mention, but forgot, was the badge system on DeviantART.

      dA has always had these little pixel llama badges that I thought were really cool. The basic concept was/is that you can gift someone a little llama if you think they or their art is cool or for any reason you want. These llamas stack on your profile. People can additionally gift gear for existing llamas and the site occasionally gives out rare llamas (and other badges) for milestones, events or promotions.

      I think a hybrid of reddit's gilding system and a badge system (like dA's) could be really cool.

      27 votes
    11. Saving topics with the ability to add Your Tags

      I see there is an issue open to add a saving feature for topics, which is great! I would like to make a suggestion for this feature. Do you think it would be possible to give users the ability to...

      I see there is an issue open to add a saving feature for topics, which is great! I would like to make a suggestion for this feature.

      Do you think it would be possible to give users the ability to add their own tags to a saved topic?

      A lot of times I search for content related to a project I am working on, and it would be nice if I could tag the topics I find as "project-xyz", as this would allow me find them easily when I come back to reference something. This tag would be useless to anyone else, but having our own personal tags, that only we can see, would be very useful in curating content.

      One way this could be done is by having a new section named "Your Tags" that appears under the existing "Tags" one, in the sidebar for a topic. Then on the Saved page, the sidebar could list all your unique tags, and clicking one would filter the topics.

      Anyway, just throwing out an idea. I can add a comment to that GitLab issue, if this is a possibility and something people are interested in.

      11 votes
    12. Idea that could change Tildes - Agree/Disagree buttons

      At first I didn't want to post this idea, because its pretty big change, but I think I'll post my idea here, thanks to @kiyoshigawa. Here is my comment that pretty much sums up my idea. My idea...

      At first I didn't want to post this idea, because its pretty big change, but I think I'll post my idea here, thanks to @kiyoshigawa. Here is my comment that pretty much sums up my idea.

      My idea is, that when people read something, and they agree/disagree with it, they want to express their agreement/disagreement (this is covered in this thread). When you want to express disagreement, you have to, because it's no downvote here, comment to disagree with some opinon. But when you want express agreement, and you don't want to comment (or simple 'I agree' wouldn't add anything to the debate), you just hit the upvote button. And that's problem, as the Vote button should serve as "quality content here" indicator, not "popular content" indicator. We've seen it on Reddit, where the effect is even larger because of the downvote button.

      So my idea is - Add agree/disagree buttons. These buttons doesn't have to do something - I even think, that it'll be better if they didn't do anything. But they'll help users express themselves, so when someone agrees with me, but doesn't want to simply say "I agree", he can hit the 'I agree' button - and he won't hit the vote button. This way, popularity won't affect the "quality" score of the post.

      Edit: As @Kat, @Kijafa, and others said, maybe add only agree button - not the disagree one. I think they might be right, disagree button might have negative effect, as now users have to express disagreement via comments.

      Edit 2: Thank you all for discussion. You made me change my mind about disagree buttons, you are right - it'd be used as downvote and would probably suppress discussion. However, I'm still curios about the "I agree" button and if it would decrease of usage Vote button to express agreement.

      28 votes
    13. Quotes should have more contrast (default light theme)

      Quotes serve two purposes: 1) Replying to a specific part of someone else's comment, and 2) introducing new information from an external source. Replying to a specific part When replying to...

      Quotes serve two purposes: 1) Replying to a specific part of someone else's comment, and 2) introducing new information from an external source.

      Replying to a specific part

      When replying to someone, the current low-contrast black-on-gray style makes sense because it's redundant info.

      However, when quoting an external source, my eyes tend to gloss over the quote, which is unfortunate. Current workarounds are: mild editorializing by bolding certain words; or paraphrasing the source, which is often a waste of time or can be misleading if someone misread the original.

      In summary, my inner thoughts say:

      I suggest we make quotes higher contrast, so that the ones introducing new info can add to the conversation, rather than be ignored due to visual de-emphasis.

      Quotes from external sources often imply authority and that their author has given a topic a lot of thought. Therefore they are valuable to include in a conversation and should carry the same weight as text written by any random user.

      Edit: Screenshot of this post using light theme: https://i.imgtc.com/wVdoFN6.png

      3 votes
    14. New comments column

      One of the more frustrating things about posts that become popular on reddit, is when you get to them several hours later when they have 1000+ comments. You'd love to give input, but know it'll be...

      One of the more frustrating things about posts that become popular on reddit, is when you get to them several hours later when they have 1000+ comments. You'd love to give input, but know it'll be lost in all the traffic. No one ever scrolls to the very bottom to see the newer comments.

      What if the sidebar displayed a handful of newer comments, with the main comment section remaining as it currently is? Think of it being similar to Amazon reviews, where the newest reviews are displayed on the right. This way you get to see both the most popular and newest comments at the same time.

      7 votes
    15. When subgroups come out, each group should have a .ask or .asktildes subgroup.

      With so many threads asking about what operating system people use, favorite music, favorite tv-shows, etc, I feel like this is a good subgroup for all of the groups (other than maybe tildes and...

      With so many threads asking about what operating system people use, favorite music, favorite tv-shows, etc, I feel like this is a good subgroup for all of the groups (other than maybe tildes and talk).

      8 votes
    16. Require decluttering clickbaity titles?

      I suggest we require decluttering clickbaity titles. The rule can be: if the title leaves you asking "Which X?", include that X in the title; if it asks you "Why X", change it to "X Because Y". It...

      I suggest we require decluttering clickbaity titles. The rule can be: if the title leaves you asking "Which X?", include that X in the title; if it asks you "Why X", change it to "X Because Y". It can be a spoiler, but I'd rather have an idea of the content than the suspense, which with this sort of articles is almost never really gratifying. What do you think?

      26 votes
    17. Thoughts on a ~comp survey of some sort?

      After seeing the "what OS do you use?" thread earlier, I was wondering what everyone here on ~comp would think of a sort of group demographics survey. I think that it would be super interesting to...

      After seeing the "what OS do you use?" thread earlier, I was wondering what everyone here on ~comp would think of a sort of group demographics survey. I think that it would be super interesting to see the data on things like preferred OS, main programming language, preferred text editor/IDE, device OEM, etc.

      14 votes
    18. Suggestion: easy button to switch to night mode

      Just wanted to suggest that it would be nice to have a toggle switch button either next to our username or at least on the right in the User Menu after you click your username. Having to go all...

      Just wanted to suggest that it would be nice to have a toggle switch button either next to our username or at least on the right in the User Menu after you click your username.

      Having to go all the way into settings every evening is a bit awkward.

      27 votes
    19. On post text in post listings

      I'm going to keep it brief, because there's not a lot to talk about: The font size and lightness makes it really hard to read the text for posts. It could be easier to read by changing these...

      I'm going to keep it brief, because there's not a lot to talk about:

      • The font size and lightness makes it really hard to read the text for posts. It could be easier to read by changing these aspects.

      • Could disabling the inline text for posts be added? I wouldn't mind if I had to view the comments page for a post to read it as I'd read the post if it interested me, so currently I have to scroll past it instead. It makes the post listings harder to skim through, especially because it's hard to read the text on them.

      • It made me think of another point; maybe some kind of middle option where text can be associated with a topic, but there could be another field where a brief summary that's more descriptive than the title is placed, or just truncate the post text and explicitly show that there's more.

      5 votes
    20. A hopefully non-spammy experiment in public self-improvement

      I made an embarrassingly verbose post yesterday attempting to put into words and seek advice on difficulties in executing sustained steps towards building a future. It's something I've struggled...

      I made an embarrassingly verbose post yesterday attempting to put into words and seek advice on difficulties in executing sustained steps towards building a future. It's something I've struggled with all my life, coasting along, with the mirage of action towards goals forever ahead, always tomorrow, or next week, or when I get home. I think Pink Floyd wrote something about missing the starting gun.

      (...Goddamn I haven't listened to Pink Floyd in years. That's some good stuff right there.)

      Anyway reading and replying to the (much appreciated) comments from you lovely people got me thinking and, frankly, a little bit motivated to be an agent for some change. However something I've learned to notice by now is that that initial drive tends to have a nauseatingly short half-life. So how can we regularly stir things up to keep the reaction going?

      So here's what I'm thinking: Starting a short weekly post in ~talk detailing what I've worked on or otherwise accomplished (or not accomplished) from Monday to Sunday open to input, encouragement or criticism. Actually, if other people would be interested in committing to something like this I'd almost prefer to make it a public thing where people (including myself) can log their weekly progress in the comments of a thread dedicated to such a thing.

      Obviously this is a bit rough around the edges so I'll think about it this week and pending suggestions or objection will probably put the first one up next Sunday or Monday.

      I think this might be a Neat Thing, yeah?

      4 votes
    21. How about a "view edit history" for posts?

      I feel like this would be good for transparency. It's a feature Facebook used to have and then took away— but I think something that either shows each edit's version in a timeline, or a diff, or...

      I feel like this would be good for transparency. It's a feature Facebook used to have and then took away— but I think something that either shows each edit's version in a timeline, or a diff, or just a "first and final revision" comparison would be nice.

      I'd prefer the first suggestion (a chronological version history), but any form of viewing a comment's history would be really appreciated!

      12 votes
    22. Follow a Tilderino suggestion

      Currently it isn't too difficult to follow people and their posts. That will likely change as Tildes participation grows. I for one would appreciate a feature to follow individuals and their...

      Currently it isn't too difficult to follow people and their posts. That will likely change as Tildes participation grows. I for one would appreciate a feature to follow individuals and their posts. I realize this is likely low on a priority list and since I'm relatively new, my apologies if this has been suggested before.

      Thanks for all the hard work.

      4 votes
    23. Suggestion: As a general guideline, posts relevant only to one country should have that in the title i.e "Your voting data has been exposed" vs "USA voting data exposed"""

      If you want to make the site diverse then people need to stop writing as though the audience is one country. Obviously it doesn't count if they're posting in a geographically relevant group eg....

      If you want to make the site diverse then people need to stop writing as though the audience is one country. Obviously it doesn't count if they're posting in a geographically relevant group eg. ~news.usa

      43 votes
    24. Have ‘all time’ be the default option when setting thread sorting in groups

      I know that users can manually set this option as default, but it can be confusing for newcomers to only see, say, 4 threads in the whole group when there are many more than that. This makes it...

      I know that users can manually set this option as default, but it can be confusing for newcomers to only see, say, 4 threads in the whole group when there are many more than that. This makes it easier to navigate content (especially with a smaller community with less being submitted), is two less clicks for someone who wants to see older submissions, and is easier for new users who may have not found the ‘time sorting’ setting.

      15 votes
    25. Putting the name on the bottom of the comment

      Did you consider putting the name on the bottom of the comment? As tildes invites for high quality discussions witch tend to incent longer comments than elswhere i think it might be better suited...

      Did you consider putting the name on the bottom of the comment? As tildes invites for high quality discussions witch tend to incent longer comments than elswhere i think it might be better suited to have the name on the end of the comment.

      This has some advantages:

      • It's easier to notice the autor of a good long text
      • When starting to read a comment you don't now the autor yet, so its easier to rate the content instead of the person
      • It looks a lot more like a letter, which suits tildes well I think

      Maybe it's just me coming from reddit where you close to never meet the same autor twice, so reading the names of the autors does not really matter, and as tildes uses a very similar design I just never seem to notice the name and always have to scroll back up afterwards.

      14 votes
    26. Suggestion: when clicking on an external link, open it in new tab

      It would be nice to have that functionality (at least as an option), so that the thread doesn't close. I personally instinctively close the tab after I am done reading instead of going back, which...

      It would be nice to have that functionality (at least as an option), so that the thread doesn't close. I personally instinctively close the tab after I am done reading instead of going back, which can be really frustrating after the realization I have nothing to read now (yeah, I know, CTRL+SHIFT+T, reopen last closed tab etc etc, but it's much more convenient to hit CTRL+W and be back where you stopped reading the thread).

      30 votes
    27. History of Technology and the MIT Course Catalog

      I've been watching the history of M.I.T., STS 050, which repeatedly makes the point that the M.I.T. course catalogue is (mostly) ordered by date of creation, particularly through the first 15 or...

      I've been watching the history of M.I.T., STS 050, which repeatedly makes the point that the M.I.T. course catalogue is (mostly) ordered by date of creation, particularly through the first 15 or 16 items.

      There are some twists. Materials (3) was originally "Mining and Metallurgy", Brain & Cognitive Science (9 was originally "Psychology". But as an outline of technology, and possible ~tildes topic organisation framework, it is useful.

      3 votes
    28. Moving the "Post a Comment" text-area to the top of the thread

      Hello, it's exciting to be here during the formation of this amazing new site! After interacting with the site for a short period of time it became increasingly apparent that the ability to...

      Hello, it's exciting to be here during the formation of this amazing new site! After interacting with the site for a short period of time it became increasingly apparent that the ability to comment on a thread at the highest level requires the user to scroll to the very bottom of the page.

      There are benefits of this approach, to be sure, such as encouraging the user to actually read some of the existing comments before adding their own ideas to the discussion. It's possible, and ever more likely, that what they are trying to say has already been said and they would be better off joining an existing high-level thread to further the discussion rather than fragment it.

      Personally, I think the placement of the comment-box feels hidden when it's so inaccessible in a large thread. This feeling would only become more prevalent as additional users join the site and fill the comments-section to the point where you aren't sure it's worth scrolling.

      There are definitely pros and cons but I strongly believe users would approve of a more accessible way to submit top-level comments.

      8 votes
    29. Suggestion: Ability to save/favorite posts and comments

      A lot of the time I'll see a discussion I don't have the chance to participate in the moment I see it. It would be nice to be able to "save" it so I could revisit later without having to hunt....

      A lot of the time I'll see a discussion I don't have the chance to participate in the moment I see it. It would be nice to be able to "save" it so I could revisit later without having to hunt. Similarly, being able to do the same for comments would be handy for when someone links to something I want to follow-up on or fully explore when I have more time at hand.

      Even if only implemented in localStorage per client, I feel it would be a useful addition.

      11 votes
    30. [Suggestion] Use sortition for moderation ?

      In governance, sortition (also known as allotment or demarchy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. The logic behind the sortition process...

      In governance, sortition (also known as allotment or demarchy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. The logic behind the sortition process originates from the idea that “power corrupts.” For that reason, when the time came to choose individuals to be assigned to empowering positions, the ancient Athenians resorted to choosing by lot. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was therefore the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of true democracy.

      Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power (citizens' juries or citizens' assemblies).

      The mechanics would be something like this: users report a post/comment, when there's enough reports the systems randomly selects 3/5/7/... currently active users and ask them to determine if the reported post contravene to the rules. The decision is then automatically taken with a majority rule.

      Why ?

      1. It's the only system that scales (to my knowledge). More users mean more content to moderate, but since the users are also moderators the system works at any scale. Systems that don't scale lead to all kind of problems when the number of users become large.
      2. It's very robust to manipulation. As moderators are chosen randomly it's very hard to coordinate or try to influence the decisions.
      3. It promotes a participatory attitude and a sense of responsibility in the users. There's no "them against us" (the bad mods against the users).
      21 votes
    31. Feature request: Listening to post option

      Not sure if this has already been suggested, but can we get an ability to add ourselves to a post as a "listener" so that we get notifications similar to "N new reply"? For cases where we're...

      Not sure if this has already been suggested, but can we get an ability to add ourselves to a post as a "listener" so that we get notifications similar to "N new reply"? For cases where we're interested in following the discussion, but may not have anything to add, or just interested in someone else's thread in the discussion.

      7 votes
    32. Suggestion: Change the subscribe button to make it more clear whether a user is subscribed

      The subscribe button is very attractive, but it's a little hard to tell the difference between "Subscribe" and "Subscribed" Options: Use more dissimilar colors Change text for subscribed users to...

      The subscribe button is very attractive, but it's a little hard to tell the difference between "Subscribe" and "Subscribed"

      Options:

      1. Use more dissimilar colors
      2. Change text for subscribed users to say "Unsubscribe" like another site does. Alternatively, change text for unsubbed users to say "Not subscribed".
      7 votes
    33. 2-factor authentication

      A lot of the newer websites and services now offer 2FA so I was wondering if Tildes has any plans to do that? No idea how hard it would be to implement but I feel like that would be a welcome...

      A lot of the newer websites and services now offer 2FA so I was wondering if Tildes has any plans to do that? No idea how hard it would be to implement but I feel like that would be a welcome addition for many people.

      I'd also be happy to hear people's thoughts on this an if you guys think the website actually needs this. In my mind more security is always better than less security.

      36 votes
    34. Suggestion: Improving post findability

      I was reading a discussion about this on here earlier today, and I've already lost it! 😬 Sorry if this is just creating more noise, but we clearly need better ways to find content. The search...

      I was reading a discussion about this on here earlier today, and I've already lost it! 😬 Sorry if this is just creating more noise, but we clearly need better ways to find content. The search feature will go a long way, but here are some other ideas:

      Tag search. On any topic with tags, the tags should be clickable links to URLs like https://tildes.net/tag/elder+scrolls. This page would show all topics that use that tag, with sort and filter options. There should be a way (maybe built into the search form) to type any tag and jump straight to this page.

      Recently viewed topics list. Reddit shows a sidebar listing the last n posts you viewed. It's admittedly a little creepy seeing your history displayed like that, but it's a useful way to jump back into conversations for follow-up later. The old Reddit design had a "clear" button to delete the history, but curiously that is no longer present in the redesign. (Privacy features like that should not be overlooked here.)

      Saved topics. Another feature from Reddit. Every post has a "Save" link below it, that adds the post to your personal saved posts list, which can reached from your profile. Saved post lists are only visible to the users that own them.

      Repost detection. I really like how Ask MetaFilter helps posters make sure their content is fresh before they publish it. The submit button under the new post form is labeled "Preview" and clicking it shows what the post will look like before publishing it. This gives posters the opportunity to proofread and ensure their text formatting is correct. More importantly, the site scans the content of the post and displays a list of five possible existing posts that match it:

      The following previously-posted questions might be related to the question you're asking. Please take a look before posting to see if any of these answer your question.

      This flow adds an additional click before you can actually post, but I think it's for the best. The slowdown politely nudges you toward considering the quality and originality of what you're about to say, without being overbearing. The main MetaFilter site also checks all URLs you enter to see if anyone has posted them before. Note that these tools don't prevent anyone from posting, they just empower users to avoid reposting and reinforce good posting behaviors.

      Repost flagging. I have a half-baked idea about allowing users to flag topics as reposts, but I haven't seen this implemented before. This would be separate from voting. A user wishing to flag a topic would be asked to provide the URL of an existing topic it duplicates. This wouldn't affect the topic itself, other than to add a small banner to the top of the page: "n users flagged this as a repost of the following topics: [list of links]". Then anyone would have the ability to [agree], [disagree], or append a link to the list. Public consensus would affect the future of the topic... if enough others agree the topic is redundant, it could be auto-deleted or just algorithmically prioritized lower than non-reposts. If enough disagree, the flag could be auto-removed from the topic. The usernames of the flaggers should be public, and there should be a way to view both a user's frequency of flagging and whether consensus agreed with those flags. Accountability would be important for this sort of system.

      Ability to subscribe to users. I saw the other feature request for a "friend" mechanic. I agree with the commenters who said it would be too much like a social network. However, I could see a use case for a "Subscribe" button on a user's profile page, just like the ones on group pages. This would cause all topics posted by that user to be included in your main page, even if they are in groups you aren't subscribed to.

      I'd be interested to hear your feedback on these suggestions, as well as other ideas specific to increasing content visibility.

      10 votes
    35. A question about design and comment threads

      I am an occasional lynx/elinks user and I only have a single complaint about Tildes that prevents me from reading it using those browsers. Threaded comments don't display properly, since the CSS...

      I am an occasional lynx/elinks user and I only have a single complaint about Tildes that prevents me from reading it using those browsers. Threaded comments don't display properly, since the CSS support of these browsers is non existent (lynx) or poor (elinks), the only way to make threaded comments display nice is by rendering them as ul lists. Is it possible to wrap the current article elements inside ul/li elements to make them display nice in text-only browsers?

      For comparison, I can get them to display nice on reddit using the old mobile interface. In Tildes threads look flat (those comments are supposed to be nested, link to original thread) and it is difficult to know who is replying to who.

      15 votes
    36. Ensuring users read documentation

      There have been many, many, many threads over the past few weeks in which users (some new, some with a few posts under their belts) ask questions or make suggestions about items that are...

      There have been many, many, many threads over the past few weeks in which users (some new, some with a few posts under their belts) ask questions or make suggestions about items that are explicitly discussed in the documentation. Additionally, the documentation contains a lot of thoughtful items discussing the goals of the site and the mechanics for achieving those goals. The documentation is an integral part of this community, yet many people don't seem to be reading it.

      How can the community help ensure that users read and understand the documentation prior to becoming a member of the community? A potential solution could be to have a short quiz based on the documentation, which would ensure that users at least skim it.

      Any other ideas?

      27 votes
    37. Thoughts on collapsible code snippets?

      One thing I ended up realizing is that for e.g. code challenges in ~comp, there could be threads with a lot of code blocks that could easily take up a ton of screen real-estate. Something like the...

      One thing I ended up realizing is that for e.g. code challenges in ~comp, there could be threads with a lot of code blocks that could easily take up a ton of screen real-estate. Something like the following isn't so bad:

      /*
          This is a short multi-line example that doesn't
          take up much screen real-estate at all.
      */
      

      But, what if the average comment for a particular topic has several of these with 100 lines or more? This could make navigating the comments really cumbersome as the number of comments grows. In the case of code challenges, lengthy code snippets could be very common, and collapsing the comment threads may not be the desirable course of action--in collapsing the thread for navigational convenience, you lose the ability to view and contribute to discussions. Hosting the code elsewhere risks links expiring or becoming lost or broken, and it feels like a clunky workaround to try to avoid inconveniencing other users.

      With that in mind, what are your thoughts on having these code blocks display in a collapsed state by default with only a preview of the code block showing? Is there any support for this idea? If so, should this be implemented as part of Tildes itself or as a client-side extension of some sort? Are there any concerns about this?

      (If there's general support for the idea, but opposition toward adding it to the Tildes code base, I may get off my lazy ass and try to hack something together.)

      13 votes
    38. Suggestion: subscribing with notifications

      Over on ~creative, the idea of a regular photo challenge came up, which I think is a great idea and I'm looking forward to having a go at. But I'm notoriously bad at remembering to keep track of...

      Over on ~creative, the idea of a regular photo challenge came up, which I think is a great idea and I'm looking forward to having a go at. But I'm notoriously bad at remembering to keep track of stuff like that.

      What might be useful to help solve that problem would be the ability to subscribe with notifications. So I can get a notification - perhaps in 'unread', perhaps in a separate area - when a post is made with the tag creative.photochallenge.annouce or in the group ~creative.photochallenge, meaning I don't forget about that week's challenge announcement.

      This could be useful for other things you want to keep track of: music.newreleases or hobbies.geocaching or whatever particular thing you're slightly more interested in than just being subscribed to it.

      8 votes
    39. What do we think of an app? (iOS and Android)

      I was wanting to look into how to make one for this website because I'd like to browse on my phone. We got a lot of tech people here. What do you think? Edit: I know it's not likely now, but I...

      I was wanting to look into how to make one for this website because I'd like to browse on my phone. We got a lot of tech people here. What do you think?

      Edit: I know it's not likely now, but I mean in the future. Is this something we could do when this turns open-source?

      21 votes
    40. It needs to become clearer what Tildes is about and how it differs from Reddit. Im part of the problem.

      Ok so I have been really interested in Tildes and yesterday I was looking at the /r/Tildes subreddit and low and behold I was in time to comment in the invite thread and get one. This was great I...

      Ok so I have been really interested in Tildes and yesterday I was looking at the /r/Tildes subreddit and low and behold I was in time to comment in the invite thread and get one. This was great I have been really excited to see what it was like.

      So I hope on and get familiar with the layout, look at some posts and some comments. Really digging it, I want to say it has a minimal vibe but that is only because I'm used to so many sites having a gajillion buttons, notifications, chats, garbage, ect. It's clean for lack of a better word.

      I decided I should contribute to the community and see what posting is like. I remembered a simple joke which gave me a chuckle the other day:

      'I like my Women like I like my golf scores. In the 80's with a slight handicap.'

      With the hectics of the real world, I didn't have much longer to look around any longer and had to go.

      When I checked back later people seemed against the posts, after reading the comments I was conflicted. It seemed like such a tame joke and people were saying they didn't want to see jokes on Tilde. I had a bit of a think and realised the problem, of course, that one post by itself is relatively harmless and ok but if you allow posts along those lines it becomes very spammy which is exactly why I don't like reddit as much anymore.

      Jokes are a relatively low effort post, you could come up with several poor ones in a minute, that's what twitter is for. However, if people come and see that jokes are the norm it will likely encourage them to post them as well, and it resorts to a huge unbalance in quality posts.

      I am in favour of removing all kinds of jokes that come in the form of a standalone post (if they are in the comments I feel they should remain ok). Some were saying they were ok with a dedicated ~jokes however I thought about it and feel this would be a poor decision, it still leads to people like me who can easily make low effort posts. The problem is that the number of good jokes will be rare in comparison to bad jokes it would be a net loss in terms of quality, sure you could moderate out the poor jokes but humour is subjective and that leads to all sorts of opinion based complications that are best left alone.

      While I myself agree with this sentiment I still posted a dumb joke. Why? Because I didn't know. Admittedly only 4 people voted on the post and the comments aginst the post were much higher than the post itself it is still essentially spam on the feed. (The only reson for not deleting it is so others can see its negative response). Now I have posted this im very aware not to do this. However I still made this mistake while Tildes is a closed invite system, when it is no longer closed off it could be very easy for low effort posts to take over. The community needs to make sure we inform these people who make these posts and don't vote on them, or we should inform the users much better about what tildes stands for.

      Just my thoughts, interested to know what the community thinks.
      My original dumb joke post

      62 votes
    41. Suggestion: Require explainations in order to tag a comment/post

      Tags [noise, troll, flame, off-topic] got abused and used as an "I disagree" function. What if Tildes requires an explaination/argument for why the comment/post is either noise, off-topic,...

      Tags [noise, troll, flame, off-topic] got abused and used as an "I disagree" function. What if Tildes requires an explaination/argument for why the comment/post is either noise, off-topic, trolling/flaming. This way we can hold taggers responsible and accountable for the tags and to some degree see if the tag is reasonable or misused. All the reasons for the tags can be gathered on a "discussion" page for the thread, a bit like Wikipedia's talk pages for each entry.

      If you've made it this far I'd love to hear your thoughs, reactions and critiques.
      And for those who've made it this far: Enjoy this photogenic cat

      4 votes
    42. Simple suggestion: Two different types of 'new' sort for comments

      One thing that's always annoyed me about reddit is that sorting a thread by "new" isn't as useful as scrolling down to the end of a discussion on traditional forum software like phpbb. I propose...

      One thing that's always annoyed me about reddit is that sorting a thread by "new" isn't as useful as scrolling down to the end of a discussion on traditional forum software like phpbb. I propose two ways of sorting threads:

      • Breadth-first: Exactly the same as the current sort on reddit and tildes. Each nesting level is sorted independently.
        This sort makes it easy to find the oldest discussion of a thread, as well as new top-level comments.
      • Depth-first: Newer replies 'bump' threads. The timestamp of the latest reply of any depth determines the sorting of all of the parents.
        This sort makes it easy to find the newest discussion.
      9 votes
    43. Can we get a ~finance group?

      Please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no good fit for topics ranging from personal finance, investing, portfolio management, budgeting, running a business, markets, etc. Seems ~finance or...

      Please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no good fit for topics ranging from personal finance, investing, portfolio management, budgeting, running a business, markets, etc. Seems ~finance or similar could be a catch-all for a massive category of topics that don't have a place currently.

      6 votes
    44. What if tildes remaned invite only?

      But was just really generous with giving out invite codes to its users, even host invite request threads where anonymous (non-registered) users can request an invite or something? I think this...

      But was just really generous with giving out invite codes to its users, even host invite request threads where anonymous (non-registered) users can request an invite or something?

      I think this could work and would help with the whole tree aspect tildes is holding on. Everything leads back to a tree. Groups, users, tags even mods and admins. Perhaps even keep the tree visible to only people in said tree and mods/admins, depending on user privacy settings.

      What would the benefits of remaining invite only and cons?

      28 votes
    45. Suggestion: Move vote counter to a consistent location

      Hi! This is a minor suggestion, but when you're browsing Tilde, the vote button for comments is located at the bottom left, underneath posts. Makes sense right? Well unfortunately, this doesn't...

      Hi! This is a minor suggestion, but when you're browsing Tilde, the vote button for comments is located at the bottom left, underneath posts. Makes sense right? Well unfortunately, this doesn't apply to your own comments, where the vote counter appears in the top left, at the beginning of the post. For consistency's sake, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to move vote counts on individual comments down to where the vote button normally is, so vote counts are always displayed in the same location?

      4 votes
    46. Suggestion: Have academic flair for qualified users. PhD etc..

      I think this idea strongly aligns with Tildes philosophy of promoting "quality content", what is more quality than knowing a poster is qualified to make their claims. It separates the...

      I think this idea strongly aligns with Tildes philosophy of promoting "quality content", what is more quality than knowing a poster is qualified to make their claims. It separates the pseudo-science from the science.

      I understand it is perhaps a cumbersome process to verify qualifications but the reward in return for having verified experts validated is hard to overstate.

      I propose the flair be global and not restricted to within a group(as opposed to reddit) because if we're certain the individual has credentials that still remains in effect when they comment across disciplines. It also removes redundancy and allows the individual more freedom to branch to other communities.

      The idea being if someone has a PhD in math they can flair their name with something like "PhD: Math" per post if they wish. As this is a voluntary addition (not collection) of user-data I don't think it goes against Tildes philosophy.

      12 votes