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    1. Autocomplete for topic tagging is now available

      ~tildes.official Text 267 words
      This is something that's been requested and worked on for a very long time, and should help a lot with the consistency of tags that people use on topics. It's also another significant feature...

      This is something that's been requested and worked on for a very long time, and should help a lot with the consistency of tags that people use on topics. It's also another significant feature that's been added by an open-source contributor: Shane Moore (whose Tildes username I actually don't even know) has been working on this on and off since last July, and has put up with me being slow to review and requesting some major changes to it over that time.

      It applies to both the tagging field for new topics as well as the one for editing existing topics' tags, and the list of tags that show up for autocompletion are the 100 most commonly-used tags in each individual group (so the suggestions are different between ~tech and ~music and so on). This is just based on pure frequency at the moment (as in, the 100 tags that are on the most topics in that group), but in the future we could probably improve this to specifically include tags that have been getting used more recently, instead of looking at all time.

      The interface can probably still use some work, and it's likely that there are some bugs and other issues with it, but as I've said before, Tildes is supposed to be in alpha! I haven't been adding nearly enough frustrating issues or breaking things, and we're all getting complacent with having a site where most things work!

      Let me know what you think of it, and if you notice any issues. And thanks again for all the work and patience, Shane!

      69 votes

    22. Do you ever feel like you want to learn everything?

      ~talk Text 253 words
      Do you ever feel as though you want to learn everything? I enjoy learning. I wouldn't say I crave it but I love finding out about new things or learning how to do something I don't know how to do....

      Do you ever feel as though you want to learn everything?

      I enjoy learning. I wouldn't say I crave it but I love finding out about new things or learning how to do something I don't know how to do. Almost anytime I see somebody talking about or doing something that interests me I think, "I could learn to do that" or "I should read up about that." This ranges from anything to my own personal pursuits (of which I have too many due to this feeling and thus never sink enough time into any... different topic) to my friend's career paths or interests, to all of you on Tildes, you cool bastards. My partner is studying medicine. Shit, I haven't learned anything bio/health-science related since college Freshman year Chemistry class but I was just googling "free [biology|physics|intro to medicine] textbooks online" because what she's learning sounds awesome and like some really beneficial stuff to know about. Every time I read the "What are you doing this weekend" or similar threads on here I just think... damn, I'd love to contribute to open source maps (shoutout u/hungariantoast) or play that game or learn to fix up my car or ... you get the idea.

      Does anyone else feel this way? How do you cope? Want to vent and relate? I know of priority lists, I have made plenty and they have both helped and not helped me solve this. I guess I'm just destined to try learning everything forever.

      31 votes

    28. Do you have certain genres/bands for certain moods? If so, what are they and why them in particular?

      ~music Ask (survey)
      I, personally, have a lot of music I listen to, but I can't just throw anything on when I want to jam. I have certain bands and certain genres whenever I'm feeling strongly one way or the other....

      I, personally, have a lot of music I listen to, but I can't just throw anything on when I want to jam. I have certain bands and certain genres whenever I'm feeling strongly one way or the other. Sad usually gets (to name a few) The Smiths, Blue October, or Motion City Soundtrack. Angry gets Periphery, some early Coheed and Cambria, or some early Incubus. Happy might get Weezer, Fleetwood Mac, or Polyphia. To name a few examples.

      Or sometimes, I'm just feeling a certain band/sound and nothing else for days at a time. At the moment, it's been Thank You Scientist. If you can't put bands to emotions, what have you stuck on repeat lately?

      14 votes

    30. Crisis of identity for a guy given no direction

      ~talk Text 840 words
      Hey Tildians, This is going to be a really long post that is an ongoing search and conversation I am having with myself. Its going to be about religion and culture. Sorry for the shitty title, I...

      Hey Tildians,

      This is going to be a really long post that is an ongoing search and conversation I am having with myself. Its going to be about religion and culture. Sorry for the shitty title, I am really bad at coming up with titles, I tend to ramble a lot.

      I'm currently going through a crisis both of faith and cultural identity. Not because I am questioning either, but because I have never had either. I'm a white man from america. Growing up as a kid, my parents gave me the option to look at religions and choose one if any that spoke to me. None did, so I didn't go for a long time. In high school I attended Methodist Church every weekend because I felt pressured by my Boy Scout troop to be Christian, the Methodist Church let us use their church for our meetings despite none of the troop being members of the church, and the priest there at the time was a really great guy that I liked a lot. I spent a lot of time talking about faith with him and eventually, he said to me "let's face it, you don't believe the things I am preaching. That is completely fine. You're welcome in the church, it'll always be home, I'm always here to talk about faith or life or anything, but you don't believe in Christianity and you owe it to yourself to try and find something you do believe." And he was right, I didn't. So I studied a few things here and there and none ever stuck. So I've just been agnostic. But I desperately want to believe in a religion and have a sense of community and just, something to tie my individual beliefs to the world and know other people feel the same way I do.

      Similarly, I grew up pretty much "American". I know my heritage is from Ireland, Poland, UK, Croatia, Germany because I did reports on ancestry in school, but they've never been a part of my identity. We never talk about being from Poland other than explaining to people why my last name is spelled the way it is (WHICH IS STUPID BECAUSE IT'S NOT A WEIRD SPELLING OR PRONOUNCED DIFFERENT THAN IT LOOKS). It just isn't a thing. I've always envied my friends whose families are very proud and invested in their heritage. And that's not for a lack of trying, I've tried to get invested in them, but there aren't really communities around me for it, my family doesn't give a shit, and even if I did, I'm like 15% everything so it doesn't feel like I'm REALLY from that culture. I guess that's why some people are so extreme about being American. They're such a mix of so many different European countries that if a parent isn't invested in a specific culture, it's hard to identify with any single one, so they rally behind America. It is all they have.

      I don't know. It's very weird crisis that came out of nowhere in the stupidest ways (rewatching avatar and then having a crisis of faith looking at a chacra candle in a used book store). I've realized that I am paralyzed by the lack of a foundation of my identity. Personality traits and political views and hobbies are all malleable and change over time and so what I define myself as now could be completely gone and irrelevant in 2 years time and something about that terrifies me. It makes me wish there was something I could tie myself to that doesn't change, like what country my family is from. And if not that, an felling like I undestand the world around me would be great, and something religion provides. Also, the community wouldn't be something I'd hate to have.

      Tangentially to this, I'm having a weird relationship with faith in another way. I keep finding myself gravitating towards budhism. I don't know why, but it just is what I keep ending up looking at. I have 6 different bibles, a torrah, and a quran that I've read. None feel quite right. I keep ending up reading more about budism. But I feel SO WEIRD about it. It feels like I'm that white dude everyone hates that wont stop talking about budism. I don’t know. I know I shouldn’t let the outside world’s perceptions affect my religious views. But that doesn’t mean it is easy not to.

      Guess to make this more of a convo I’ll ask some questions to generate discussion:

      Religious folks: How has growing up with a religion effected your life? Do you think you’d be a drastically different person without it?

      Atheists: How weird does this sound to you? Did you go through a similar crisis before landing on atheism

      People who grew up with a strong cultural identity: How has that effected your life? Are you generally happy that you have that identity and community? Were there ever times you wished you weren’t a part of it?

      26 votes

    32. Adjustments to the experimental single-reply-flattening & user-page sorting is now available

      ~tildes.official Text 535 words
      We've had an experimental method of avoiding deeply nested comment threads in effect for a little over a week now, and while I think it's useful in some ways, it's definitely also pretty confusing...

      We've had an experimental method of avoiding deeply nested comment threads in effect for a little over a week now, and while I think it's useful in some ways, it's definitely also pretty confusing in some cases (as multiple people have pointed out to me).

      I've made two changes to it now that should help quite a bit:

      1. The flattening will now only happen when there won't be any "sibling" comments after the flattened thread.

        This is to avoid what seemed to be the most confusing case (it's a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try): Previously, you could have a thread where a comment has a few replies ("A", "B", "C"), and the first one has a string of single replies ("A2", "A3", "A4"). If the flattening applied, you would have all 6 comments displayed on the same level, in the order of A, A2, A3, A4, B, C. It was very difficult to tell where the "A subtree" ended and it went back to siblings of A—you had to look for where comments stopped having the "(Reply to above comment)" note on them.

        Some people suggested that we use a more obvious indicator of the flattened threads (which might still be a good idea), but this case should now be avoided entirely, which should reduce a lot of the potential confusion when threads are flattened. This also means that the flattening will apply in fewer cases overall, but it should still work for the most common and impactful case of a long string of single replies going back and forth.

      2. As mentioned in the original announcement, one of the nice parts of managing to do the flattening entirely in CSS means that it could easily start at higher thresholds on larger screens, so that threads aren't flattened as early on desktop/laptop-size screens as they are on mobile. I've applied this now, and it should now be very rare to see a flattened thread if you're using the site on a PC.

        If you want to see this in action, you can go to a thread where flattening would apply (the ~tildes.official thread about "source info" is still a good one), and try resizing your browser window to see how the flattening kicks in and adjusts at different sizes. If you're using Firefox, an easy way to try this out is to press Ctrl-Shift-M to go into responsive design mode, and you can easily resize the viewport or set it to specific sizes.

      Other than these changes to the flattening behavior, I've also merged in another open-source contribution that adds alternate sorting methods on the user page. These only appear when you're on the Topics or Comments listings (not the default "mixed" page), and allow you to sort by the other methods available, such as "most votes". Note that since those Topics/Comments pages are only available to logged-in users, viewers without a Tildes account won't be able to use these alternate sortings. Thanks for the work on this, JediBurrell (whose Tildes username I don't know either)!

      Let me know what you think of these changes and if you notice any issues with either of them.

      37 votes

    39. This week's album and EP releases

      ~music Text 1170 words
      ...Sunday isn't that far from Thursday... ...I'm sorry! Here's a list of a lot of things that came out in this past week, mostly up through Friday. Of course, there's no way to be completely...

      ...Sunday isn't that far from Thursday...

      ...I'm sorry!

      Here's a list of a lot of things that came out in this past week, mostly up through Friday. Of course, there's no way to be completely comprehensive with this and I avoided including things where information was too lacking, so feel free to mention anything that isn't on here that you think is worth mentioning. Beyond that, if you have any thoughts of any of these albums, it would be great to hear them :)

      AJR - Neotheater (Electropop, Trap [EDM]) || Song.link - Spotify

      Alan Parsons - The Secret (AOR) || Song.link - Spotify

      Aldous Harding - Designer (Singer/Songwriter, Contemporary Folk) || Song.link - Spotify

      Amon Tobin - Fear in a Handful of Dust (Electroacoustic, Progressive Electronic) || Song.link - Spotify

      Aries - Juramento Mantarraya (Art Pop, Indie Pop, Psychedelic Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Awaken I Am - The Beauty In Tragedy (Post-Hardcore) || Song.link - Spotify

      Bailen - Thrilled To Be Here (Indie Rock, Americana) || Song.link - Spotify

      Bear's Den - So That You Might Hear Me (Indie Folk, Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Billie Marten - Feeding Seahorses by Hand (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

      blackbear - ANONYMOUS (Alternative R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

      Black Zone Magick Chant - Voyage Sacrifice (Ambient, Drone) || Song.link - Spotify

      Catfish and the Bottlemen - The Balance (Indie Rock, Post-Punk Revival) || Song.link - Spotify

      Chelou - Out Of Sight (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Claude Fontaine - Claude Fontaine (Psychedelic Pop, Bossa nova, Pop Reggae) || Song.link - Spotify

      Co Cash - F.A.C.T.S. (Trap Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

      Craig Finn (of the Holy Steady) - I Need A New War (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

      The Cranberries - In the End (Pop Rock, Alternative Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      The Damned Things - High Crimes (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Danko Jones - A Rock Supreme (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Delsbo Beach Club - A burger in Åkersberga (Indie Pop, Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      DJ Nate - Take Off Mode (Footwork) || Song.link - Spotify

      Dub Trio - The Shape of Dub to Come (Math Rock, Dub) || Song.link - Spotify

      Dylan Scott - Nothing to Do Town (Dylan Scott) || Song.link - Spotify

      El Momo a.k.a Mario Maher - Sueños reales (Hip Hop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Ezra Collective - You Can't Steal My Joy (Jazz Fusion) || Song.link - Spotify

      Farruko - Gangalee (Reggaeton) || Song.link - Spotify

      Foxygen - Seeing Other People (Glam Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      George Benson - Walking to New Orleans (Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues) || Song.link - Spotify

      The Get Ahead - Deepest Light (Americana) || Song.link - Spotify

      Guided by Voices - Warp and Woof (Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Hannah Cohen - Welcome Home (Art Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Hardline - Life (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Hembree - House On Fire (Alternative Rock, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Hillsong United - People (CCM) || Song.link for "LIVE/VISUAL" - for "LIVE" - Spotify

      IamSu! - Its Always Pure Love (West Coast Hip Hop) || Song.link - Spotify

      In the Valley Below - The Pink Chateau (Indie Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Jackie Mendoza - LuvHz (Indie Pop, Psychedelic Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Jacob Latimore - Connection2 (Pop Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

      James TW - Chapters (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

      JJ Cale - Stay Around (Blues Rock, Country Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation - Sacred Dreams (Art Pop, Psychedelic Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Josh Ritter - Fever Breaks (Indie Folk, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Justin Garner - Imprint (Contemporary R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

      Justin Moore - Late Nights and Longnecks (Contemporary Country) || Song.link - Spotify

      Kelly Finnigan - The Tales People Tell (Soul) || Song.link - Spotify

      Kevin Abstract - ARIZONA BABY (Alternative R&B, Pop Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

      Kevin Morby - Oh My God (Singer/Songwriter, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Kiefer Sutherland - Reckless & Me (Country Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Fishing For Fishies (Boogie Rock, Psychedelic Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Lamb - The Secret Of Letting Go (Art Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Local Natives - Violet Street (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Lord Dying - Mysterium Tremendum (Sludge Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

      Maddie & Tae - One Heart To Another EP (Contemporary Country) || Song.link - Spotify

      Marina - LOVE+FEAR (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Marissa Nadler And Stephen Brodsky - Droneflower (Singer/Songwriter, Ethereal Wave) || Song.link - Spotify

      Matt Martians - The Last Party (Alternative R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

      The Mountain Goats - In League With Dragons (Indie Folk, Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

      NBA Big B - 5th God (Trap Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

      New Years Day - Unbreakable (Alternative Metal, Alternative Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Nick Murphy (AKA Chet Faker) - Run Fast Sleep Naked (Indietronica) || Song.link - Spotify

      Nils Lofgren - Blue With Lou (Heartland Rock, Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

      Olivia O'Brien - Was It Even Real? (Contemporary R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

      OLSSON - Tropical Cologne (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      OMB Peezy - Preacher To the Streets (West Coast Hip Hop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Otoboke Beaver - Itekoma Hits! (Hardcore Punk) || Song.link - Spotify

      P!nk - Hurts 2B Human (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Party Favor - Layers (Trap [EDM]) || Song.link - Spotify

      Peakes - Absent In Person EP (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres (Indie Pop, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      The Pilgrim - Walking Into The Forest (Psychedelic Rock, Folk Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Pure Bathing Culture - Night Pass (Dream Pop, Chillwave) || Song.link - Spotify

      Radical Face - Therapy EP (Indie Pop, Folk Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Rob Thomas - Chip Tooth Smile (Pop Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Rodrigo y Gabriela - Mettavolution (Acoustic Rock, Flamenco nuevo) || Song.link - Spotify

      ScHoolboy Q - CrasH Talk (Pop Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

      Sid Le Rock - Scenic Route (Electronic, House) || Song.link - Spotify

      Sneakk - SAY LESS (Contemporary R&B) || Song.link - Spotify

      SOAK - Grim Town (Singer/Songwriter) || Song.link - Spotify

      Spotlights - Love & Decay (Post-Metal, Atmospheric Sludge Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

      The Story Changes - To Hell With This Delicate Equation (Alternative Rock, Emo-Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Sublime With Rome - Blessings (Ska Punk) || YouTube for "Light On" - for "Wicked Heart" - Spotify

      SUNN O))) - Life Metal (Drone Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

      Teen Daze - Bioluminescence (Chillwave) || Song.link - Spotify

      Tesla - Shock (Hard Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Tiny Fighter - Tell Me EP (Indie Rock, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Trade Wind - Certain Freedoms (Alternative Rock) || Song.link - Spotify

      Various Artists - For the Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO Series Game of Thrones) (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Various Artists - UglyDolls (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Walker Lukens - Adult (Pop Rock, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      The Well - Death And Consolation (Stoner Rock, Doom Metal) || Song.link - Spotify

      Winnetka Bowling League - Cloudy With A Chance Of Sun EP (Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      YFL Kelvin - Neva Lookin Back (Trap Rap) || Song.link - Spotify

      Your Heart Breaks - Drone Butch Blues (Indie Folk, Indie Pop) || Song.link - Spotify

      Spotify Master playlist, all albums (minus the two 'various artist' sets above)

      Notes:
      If you spot any mistakes please let us know.

      Thank you to @Cleb, @cfabbro, and @Amarok for the help!

      Hillsong United - People || has two versions? live and live/visual. linked both since they have different results.
      Sublime With Rome - Blessings || album not due til May 31. linked 2 youtube singles, and spotify has 4 tracks.

      18 votes

    43. Experimenting with a way of avoiding deeply nested comment threads

      ~tildes.official Text 555 words
      One of the difficulties with a nested/tree commenting system is finding a way to deal with threads that get very "deep", when people continue replying back and forth under the same threads. The...

      One of the difficulties with a nested/tree commenting system is finding a way to deal with threads that get very "deep", when people continue replying back and forth under the same threads. The deep threads end up getting indented very far, and this looks bad, can be hard to follow, and wastes a ton of space (especially on smaller screens like phones).

      I'm not a huge fan of any of the ways that I've seen other sites try to handle this, so I've been trying to figure out if there might be any other possibilities that would work well. I've noticed that in most of the cases where a thread gets very deep, a lot of the depth comes from back-and-forth replies, where there's only one comment on each "level". So I'm testing a method that will flatten those sections out and just put a note on each comment that it's a direct reply to the comment above it.

      Specifically, the current method (which is now live), works like this: if a comment is at least 4 levels deep and only has a single reply, don't indent the reply any further. Instead, keep the reply at the same indentation and add a note at the top of it indicating that it's a reply to the above comment.

      I managed to implement this entirely through CSS, by writing what's probably the worst best chunk of CSS (really, SASS) of my life, which I want to show off here. If you don't know CSS and can't read this, trust me, you're better off:

      .comment:not([data-comment-depth="0"]):not([data-comment-depth="1"]):not([data-comment-depth="2"]):not([data-comment-depth="3"]) {
  &[data-comment-replies="1"] {
    & > .comment-tree-replies {
      margin-left: -1px;  // compensate for border

      & > .comment-tree-item > .comment > .comment-itself {
        & > .comment-text::before,
        & > header > .is-comment-deleted::before,
        & > header > .is-comment-removed::before {
          content: "(Reply to above comment)";
          font-size: 0.6rem;
          font-style: italic;
          margin-right: 0.2rem;
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

      One of the really interesting things about implementing this entirely in CSS is that we can easily change what level it happens at based on screen size. So I have it set to always start at depth >= 4 right now to help with testing and deciding whether it works well or not, but if we decide to keep it I could easily change the threshold to higher on desktop and keep it lower on smaller screens.

      As an example of how it works, the previous ~tildes.official thread works really well. @Amarok and @cfabbro had a long discussion about music metadata that went very deep. The thread ends up 16 levels deep, but this new change makes it so that it only indents by 5 levels instead of 16. Here's a comparison between how the end of the thread looks on my phone: before this change vs. after this change (yes, something's not quite right with the indentation lines yet).

      Let me know what you think. I'm mostly concerned that this might make it a little harder to follow long threads since the information from the indentation is lost, but I think we need to test it out in real threads for a while to see if that actually ends up being significant or just takes a bit of getting used to.

      76 votes