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    1. Civil disagreement (or, how to get people to consider your meta-opinions while not singling out individuals)

      A Short Summary and Introduction Before the Actual Content of This Post: A site—especially a small one, like Tildes—is going to have growing pains. That's natural. It's also natural, and to some...

      A Short Summary and Introduction Before the Actual Content of This Post:

      A site—especially a small one, like Tildes—is going to have growing pains. That's natural. It's also natural, and to some extent, necessary, for users to raise issue with remedies for these growing pains. However, there's a spectrum of correct ways to do this, and a way to not do this. If you aren't interested in—or think you already have a firm grasp on the subject of—this post, you might want to skip it.

      Tildes has reached its first major streak of growing pains, as I'm sure everyone active or lurking's noticed. We've also reached our first few incorrect methods of handling these. There are a few obvious things you shouldn't do, and everyone knows that—tantrums, slurs, personal attacks, etcetera—I'm going to be discussing a less realised one, and ways you could handle it instead.

      Now, onto the good stuff.


      Repeatedly, when handling issues, Tildes has seen a recurring circumstance. User makes post, upset. User namedrops and or subposts a user (the most apt description I could think of for a term lifted off of Twitter—subtweet—for example, "I'm not saying it's Garfield I'm talking about, but there was a suspiciously large orange cat with a mild food addiction with a fondness for lasagne who really pushed my buttons!" and etcetera). User hits "send." The targets of it feel offended, and the poster gets yelled at by the community for hurting people. No one wins.

      The trick to fixing this: stop going out of your way to call out users, directly or indirectly. If you have issue with something someone said, either take it to an administrator, or directly message the user in question (politely, of course.) There's no reason to air dirty laundry in public, and there's no reason to bring personal grievances into the public eye for minor things.

      If you notice an issue, do the above, and nothing changes, wait a short while before making a post on it. There's a fair chance it will resolve itself. If you end up feeling the need to make a post, do not mention individual conversations. Do not give examples from actual conversations; make an analogous example and put it into quote blocks. Never name a name or names, don't allow hate to be directed at anyone.

      We're all (presumably) adults (or close enough,) here. If you have any desire for Tildes to flourish, act like an adult. Passive aggression isn't the behaviour of one. Aim to have better behaviour than the docs recommend; you might slip up sometimes, but you'll never fall too far if you keep that in mind.

      Anyway, if you ended up reading this; thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. I've spent a lot of time handling large forums, and in comparison to most of you, fairly small, incredibly high-volatility subreddits with immeasurably close communities. If you can't get a community to do the above, or something close to it, it's more or less going to be a death warrant for it. We'd all prefer not to have that happen to Tildes, so I—and presumably, most of us—would really appreciate if people made an effort to stop that from occurring.

      Hate to copy reddit's slogan, but really:

      Remember the Human.

      Thanks again,

      Eva.

      27 votes
    2. First legal humanist marriages in Northern Ireland since Court ruling to occur this weekend

      Summary The Belfast Court of Appeal ruled two months ago that weddings in Northern Ireland performed by Humanist celebrants must be deemed legal. These weddings are now starting to be performed....

      Summary

      The Belfast Court of Appeal ruled two months ago that weddings in Northern Ireland performed by Humanist celebrants must be deemed legal. These weddings are now starting to be performed.

      The article contains comments by various people, including two couples about to be married. It also has some background about legality of Humanist wedding ceremonies in other parts of Great Britain.

      Extract

      In June, the Belfast Court of Appeal ruled that humanist marriages must be legally recognised in Northern Ireland. This weekend, the first two legal marriages to follow that ruling will occur.

      Link

      https://humanism.org.uk/2018/08/22/first-legal-humanist-marriages-in-northern-ireland-since-court-ruling-to-occur-this-weekend/

      8 votes
    3. Thoughts on religion

      Let's debate religion. I don't think I've seen this topic on Tildes yet and it might be interesting. My country has practically no visible religion - about 10-15% of our population is religious...

      Let's debate religion. I don't think I've seen this topic on Tildes yet and it might be interesting.

      My country has practically no visible religion - about 10-15% of our population is religious (mostly seniors) - and just a fraction of them does those religious thing like going to church. Religion basically doesn't exist here. We have a lot of nice churches, but they mostly aren't used.

      The thing that I think caused this big amount of atheists (agnostics, ...) is that almost noone is raised to believe in God - in our culture, we don't teach religion at all. Kids are taught that religions exist, but they are not pressed to believe in it such as in other parts of world. They choose what to believe. And God isn't the thing people choose for most of the time.

      Whenever I see anything about USA (discussion, film, serial), I frequently see religion there. When I saw it for the first time when I was young, I thought something like "They still have religion there? I thought USA is developed country". I don't think it anymore, I understand better why are people religious, but still - I'd like to know more about more religious cultures and what effect religion have in other countries.

      22 votes
    4. After a year in Bangladesh camps, Rohingya women are finding their feet

      Summary A look at the situation of Rohingya women living in Bangladeshi refugee camps, with a focus on health, medicine, and education. Extracts Before coming to a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar,...

      Summary

      A look at the situation of Rohingya women living in Bangladeshi refugee camps, with a focus on health, medicine, and education.

      Extracts


      Before coming to a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Rashida had never seen a foreigner.

      [...] the biggest shock she had was when a community health worker suspected Rashida was pregnant again and took her to the clinic for an examination.

      "What I found out that day was that you can stop having babies if you want to," she says. "I had never heard of family planning."

      Rashida has since thought hard and discussed this with her husband. Their shelter is cramped, and their future uncertain.

      "Three children is a nice family size," she says. "After that, I don't want any more. What I want is to learn something. When we go back home I'd like to be able to work, not just look after children."


      Bakoko [a midwife from Uganda] teaches new mothers how to wrap babies and put on nappies. She examines pregnant women to check for signs of eclampsia, the biggest threat to pregnant women's lives. And she teaches women to check for multiple pregnancies, and to care for women before and after they give birth. She has saved numerous lives.


      Link

      http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-25/bangladesh-rohingya-young-women-coxs-bazar-refugee-camp/10161260

      8 votes
    5. Reddit releases more details about the upcoming changes to Reddit Gold

      If you missed it, Reddit recently announced some major planned changes to Reddit Gold. It's pretty vague and confusing, but my summary was: The current gold system is basically: When you have...

      If you missed it, Reddit recently announced some major planned changes to Reddit Gold. It's pretty vague and confusing, but my summary was:

      The current gold system is basically:

      • When you have reddit gold, you can disable ads and have access to a few extra features.
      • You can buy gold for $4/month or $30 if you buy 12 months at the same time. You can also buy "creddits" for the same prices, which are basically stored months of gold and can either be used on yourself or to give gold to other users.
      • Giving gold to other users is called "gilding". You can gild individual posts on the site, which puts a gold icon on that post and gives the author a month of gold.

      Now, from what I can understand, this is the new system:

      • Reddit gold is now called "Reddit Premium". You can buy it for yourself for $6/month. There are no bulk discounts any more, so a year of Premium will cost $72. Existing subscribers can keep their current pricing as long as they're subscribed before the change.
      • When you have Reddit Premium, at the beginning of each month you will be given some amount of "Gold Coins". These Coins can be used to give "awards" to other users' posts.
      • You can give 3 different types of awards to a post, which each cost a different number of Coins:
        • Silver Award - costs the fewest number of Coins; adds a silver icon on the post; the author receives no further benefits
        • Gold Award - costs more Coins; adds a gold icon on the post (same as current icon); the author receives some small number of Coins (not Premium)
        • Super Gold Award - costs the most Coins; adds a "spectacular" icon on the post; the author receives a month of Reddit Premium
      • Gold Coins will be purchasable in bundles separately from Premium, pricing not announced.

      Today they released more info in /r/lounge (here's the post if you have reddit gold to be able to view it). The summary of the new post is:

      • "Super Gold" has been renamed "Platinum"
      • If you have any creddits, you have the choice to convert them to months of Premium membership before Sept. 10. If you don't, they'll be converted to 2000 Coins per creddit.
      • You get 700 coins per month for having Premium.
      • The awards that you can give to posts have these coin costs/benefits:
      Award Coin Cost Benefits
      Silver 100 Coins Silver icon next to comment or post; a lingering sense of disappointment that you didn’t get Gold
      Gold 500 Coins Gold icon next to comment or post; additionally, recipient receives 100 Coins
      Platinum 1,800 Coins Platinum icon next to comment or post; recipient receives one month of Premium membership (which includes 700 Coins)

      And there will be the following "Coin Packs" available for purchase:

      Price Point Coin Package Discount % What You Can Buy
      $1.99 500 Coins N/A 5 Silver Awards or 1 Gold Award
      $3.99 1,100 Coins 10% 11 Silver Awards or 2 Gold Awards
      $5.99 1,800 Coins 20% 18 Silver Awards, 3 Gold Awards, or 1 Platinum Award
      $19.99 7,200 Coins 43% 72 Silver Awards, 14 Gold Awards, or 4 Platinum Awards
      $99.99 40,000 Coins 59% 400 Silver Awards, 80 Gold Awards, or 22 Platinum Awards
      52 votes
    6. Feature Request: Can we get a reply button at the top of every post?

      I spend far too much time looking for a reply button before I realise I have to scroll to the bottom. Also, it'd be a lot less work in big threads, where you might be scrolling for a while to get...

      I spend far too much time looking for a reply button before I realise I have to scroll to the bottom.
      Also, it'd be a lot less work in big threads, where you might be scrolling for a while to get to the reply box.
      Yes, I'm that lazy.
      I noticed that sometimes I don't engage if it's a big thread because of this, if the topic being discussed is only of passing interest for example.

      4 votes
    7. Lets discuss tags, again

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each...

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags

      I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each one I thought I'd make a few top level comments instead, hopefully with others doing the same for anything tag related they'd like to see discussed.

      20 votes
    8. Black Mirror S2E02 "White Bear" discussion thread

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode Black Mirror Season 2 Episode 2 - White Bear Victoria wakes up and cannot remember anything about her life. Everyone she encounters refuses to...

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode

      Black Mirror Season 2 Episode 2 - White Bear

      Victoria wakes up and cannot remember anything about her life. Everyone she encounters refuses to communicate with her.

      Black Mirror Netflix link


      Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

      You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!


      If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

      • How does the title relate to the episode itself?
      • Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
      • Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

      Please rate the episode here!

      11 votes
    9. Learning to Program

      Hi folks, I figured this would be a good place to ask a rather simple question. Where do I start to learn to code? I'm in high school, so I have (some) time to dedicate to it, and it seems there...

      Hi folks,

      I figured this would be a good place to ask a rather simple question.

      Where do I start to learn to code?

      I'm in high school, so I have (some) time to dedicate to it, and it seems there are a plethora of websites/resources out there, so I ask: what do you recommend, and why has it worked for you? I have no prior experience. I believe that this would really help out in the long run, as I will graduate high school with an Associate's Degree in Business. Thank you!

      EDIT: Thank you for all your responses! I'll start with Python and move on from there. You guys have been a great help, and I'll vote you up or reply.

      26 votes