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    1. Let's give Game of Thrones characters their own theme songs

      The series is done! Let's have a bit of fun with it now that it's over. Choose characters from the show and assign them a popular song based on their story arc, characteristics, or whatever else...

      The series is done! Let's have a bit of fun with it now that it's over.

      Choose characters from the show and assign them a popular song based on their story arc, characteristics, or whatever else you feel like highlighting.

      Example:

      • Daenerys gets Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" because she's grappling with the fact that Jon gives love a bad name (namely, Targaryen). Oh, and she's also shot through the heart.

      Be serious or be cheeky--whatever floats your boat as we sail to find out what's west of Westeros.

      7 votes
    2. What OS do you use and what are your favourite programs?

      I saw back in January that a lot of you were on Linux, I guess I should've expected that considering it's ~comp but I'm curious how the trend is going. But to spice things up a little bit more,...

      I saw back in January that a lot of you were on Linux, I guess I should've expected that considering it's ~comp but I'm curious how the trend is going. But to spice things up a little bit more, tell us about you favourite programs, any hidden gems?

      I personally run a fairly standard Fedora 30 install running gnome and some flatpaks. I'd say my favourite programs are

      Gnome Builder :

      Well, I've been trying to fight the electron uprising while still using a modern and open source IDE and well, I think it works great and looks pretty good too.

      Dino.im (Using the Flatpak PR) :

      It's light, supports XMPP and looks relatively modern, what more could you ask?

      Firefox gnome theme :

      It's not really a program and just really a skin for Firefox but I really like it. It integrates pretty neatly with the rest of the desktop. Can't wait for the Gnome 3.32 changes to come in though since it kinda clashes with the new theme.

      26 votes
    3. Where's the sauce?

      So, I was looking for soy sauce the other day and my grocery store has created a whole new "ethnic" section. This section was near the entrance so I went there first to look for the soy sauce. It...

      So, I was looking for soy sauce the other day and my grocery store has created a whole new "ethnic" section. This section was near the entrance so I went there first to look for the soy sauce. It wasn't there. It was with the other condiments like BBQ sauce. Cool. Then I wanted oyster sauce and that wasn't near the soy and BBQ sauce, but back in the ethnic section...

      So just wondering, where do you expect to find this sort of thing - ethnic and ethnic that's considered mainstream? (I also found tea in like five different places...)

      8 votes
    4. Hierarchical tags: How they're used and working toward a community standard [Draft part 1]

      among the things i have been working on for the past day and change is documentation of the novel uses of hierarchical tags on tildes, how they vary by group (or in the cases here, across most or...

      among the things i have been working on for the past day and change is documentation of the novel uses of hierarchical tags on tildes, how they vary by group (or in the cases here, across most or all of the site), and how we might best begin to standardize, introduce, or deprecate them going forward so we're on the same page and end up with tags that aren't a giant, unfriendly, user-unintuitive mess.

      obviously, though, this is something that should probably include community input since the community generally determines the tags used in the first place; therefore, this is your chance to check my work, suggest additions, removals, etc. to this draft and in the end, hopefully help craft a standard of hierarchical tagging that's simpler, more intuitive, and more consistent for everybody on the website to use so we can reduce future meta discussions on this and make tags better overall.

      this will be done in chunks for convenience purposes (your sake and mine). therefore, if you would be so kind as to try and limit your suggestions to the pertinent tags, that would be most helpful.



      Mostly group non-specific tags

      There are also a number of tags which are more general and occur or can occur in several or all groups on the website. Some of the more common conventions of hierarchical tags that are generally not group-specific are:


      economics. and similar tags

      The economics tag can occur in several groups, most often ~science, ~news, and ~misc. While it can take hierarchical tags, standalone economics is usually fine. Nonetheless, with specific branches of economics like microeconomics and macroeconomics, hierarchical tags should probably be used (thus economics.micro, economics.macro, economics.applied, and so on). Examples of this in action (and further specification under this scheme) are:

      • economics.trade (economics and trade)
      • economics.micro.urban (urban microeconomics)
      • economics.policy.employment (economic policy with respect to employment)

      However, when placed in ~science, the standard is always socialsciences.economics over economics. to align with the standards of tagging in that group, thus socialsciences.economics.trade instead of economics.trade. Given that economics. in this case is itself a hierarchical tag, it may be pertinent to break off the last hierarchical tag into its own tag where it would lead to three consecutive hierarchical tags, like so:

      • socialsciences.economics.micro and urban areas
      • socialsciences.economics.policy and employment

      law.

      The law tag takes a very large number of modifiers and can be used in just about every group due to the fact that law generally transcends the current set of groups Tildes has. Historically, topics related to law have been tagged in the [modifier] law format (i.e. medical law, copyright law, us law, and so on); however, this has generally been phased out by the community in favor of using hierarchical tags for the modifiers. Therefore, with respect to pre-existing tags, constructions like medical law should be deprecated in favor of law.medical. In addition, the following tags which do exist should be converted accordingly:

      • medical law (convert to law.medical)
      • international law (convert to law.international)
      • labor law (convert to law.labor)
      • employment law (convert to law.employment)
      • antidiscrimination laws (convert to law.antidiscrimination)
      • copyright law (convert to law.copyright)
      • maritime law (convert to law.maritime)
      • environmental law (convert to law.environmental)
      • gun laws (convert to law.guns)

      All single modifier tags should follow a pattern like this. In other words, if you were going to tag something as "abortion law", you should do law.abortion instead of abortion law. Currently well established tags following this format are: law.citizenship, law.international, law.labor, law.marriage, and law.juvenile.

      The following tags with location tags in them (and similar tags like them) should be converted slightly differently from the above tags. Instead of being rolled directly, the locator tag (or what would be the locator tag) should be broken out from the tag, and the tag that is left should have its modifier turned into a hierarchical tag if possible. Thus:

      • usa federal laws is converted to law.federal and usa. (To elaborate in this case, the usa is separated, leaving federal laws which can be converted into law.federal)
      • us law is similarly converted to law and usa
      • european law is converted to law and european union

      However, this should generally not be done with tags which refer to specific laws. For example religious neutrality law, blue laws and safe haven law are tags which should not be converted to use hierarchical tags because it makes little sense to do so.

      There are also two specific tags which should generally not be rolled, which are martial law and law enforcement. Martial law is mostly used to refer to a specific state of affairs rather than an actual subset of law, so it makes little sense for this to be grouped into the law tag, while law enforcement is not really law in the sense being tagged here and is also covered by other tags like policing; using law.enforcement for this purpose would also be ambiguous, since it more likely would refer to enforcement of legal doctrine.

      The use of the sharia law tag is ambiguous. Since sharia is de jure a form of law, it would make sense to roll it like the other examples so that the tag is law.sharia; however the two uses of it on Tildes are sharia law and there is currently no real consensus on whether or not to roll it in this manner.


      nsfw., trigger., tw., cw. and similar tags

      nsfw., trigger., tw, and cw. are all universal tags that have been used in one form or another to separate out content which might be objectionable and which are still useful for these purposes. Although all four have been used, the community has largely settled on a standard of using trigger. over tw. and cw. with potentially triggering content primarily for reasons of clarity (the trigger. tag also been put forward by Deimos previously as a way of handing potentially triggering and objectionable content). nsfw. is also sometimes used, but this is less frequent and usually carries a different implication than trigger. does.

      As mentioned above, if you are using intending to use a tag of this sort, the preferred option in almost all cases is trigger. over tw. or cw.. For all intents and purposes, tw. and cw. should be considered mothballed and previous uses of them should probably be converted into trigger. at some point (particularly the duplicates tw.death, tw.suicide, and tw.selfharm).

      The main established tags under the trigger. banner are:

      • trigger.death
      • trigger.selfharm
      • trigger.suicide
      • trigger.sexual violence
      • trigger.rape
      • trigger.assault
      • trigger.child abuse
      • trigger.transphobia
      • trigger.homophobia (not used yet, but presumably applicable due to trigger.transphobia's existence)

      These are self explanatory for the most part, and cover most bases; however, if you feel that a particular topic is likely to be triggering for some people, it would be courteous to tag it accordingly in line the above tags. (Do also note that all of these tags can be and often are applied as standalone tags instead of being grouped under trigger. due to the fact that trigger. has waxed and waned in popularity over Tildes's existence.)

      If you are intending to post graphic content, or content which has the potential of exposing people to graphic content (broadly construed) and want to tag it accordingly, nsfw. is generally preferable over trigger.. nsfw. is quite rare, but one example of it in action is the nsfw.racism tag on Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board due to the exceptionally racist content screencapped as a part of the submitted article. nsfw.sex is also seen on Do Police Know How To Handle Abuse Within Kinky Relationships? due to the explicitly sexual nature of the article's subject, but this is more of a courteous measure than a necessary one--a qualified nsfw tag is generally not necessary, and if one is a moderator will most likely add it after the fact.


      hurricanes., cyclones., and typhoons.

      Tropical cyclone news generally fits into several places, most often ~news, ~enviro, or ~science. Generally, the standard for tagging tropical cyclones, whether they are hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, or other similar storms is to use the applicable term for the storm in question, and then use a hierarchical tag for the storm's name. Actual examples of this are:

      This is relatively straightforward, and covers the nomenclature of all existing basins. However, some basins have not been represented on Tildes thus far, so here are the two cases where standards overlap for reference:

      • the Pacific hurricane basin and the South Atlantic basin would both be represented by the same standard as the Atlantic basin (thus, hurricanes.patricia for the Pacific Hurricane Patricia and hurricanes.catarina for the South Atlantic Hurricane Catarina)
      • the Australian, North Indian, and South Pacific basins would be represented by the South-West Indian basin's standard (thus, cyclones.tracy for Australian Cyclone Tracy, cyclones.fani for North Indian Cyclone Fani, and cyclones.gita for South Pacific Cyclone Gita).

      For convenience purposes, storms which are named but have not hit hurricane status should probably still be referred to with the corresponding cyclonic storm tag for their basin, even though they have not formally reached hurricane, cyclone, or typhoon status.

      If there is no name to refer to (i.e. a name has not been designated for the storm), a hierarchical tag should probably not be applied at all, since that would get messy and likely necessitate updates. With storms that have only nicknames or lack a name under the nomenclature since they predate cyclone naming (for example, the 1938 New England Hurricane) there's really no best way to do things, however, using a truncation of the nickname may be the most preferable option (for example: hurricanes.1938 new england).

      36 votes
    5. The end of our first campaign

      Ive been playing D&D for the last year with life and stuff happening it's taken us a full year to finish the campaign, something that should not have taken as long as it did but honestly it's been...

      Ive been playing D&D for the last year with life and stuff happening it's taken us a full year to finish the campaign, something that should not have taken as long as it did but honestly it's been an absolute blast. I've met new friends, gotten to know a co-worker better and picked up a new hobby (mini painting) our DM has gone all out over the last few months, he started off by making 3D maps for us to play on he made tiny little styrofoam blocks and made house's, towers and all that fun stuff.

      The biggest thing be did was have a map printed, he was going to draw it all out on a king single bed sheet, got five minutes into drawing it and his wife asked "can't you find someplace to have that printed?" and this is what he came up with when we got together again.

      This thing is ridiculous in size. I've thrown in a few other photos from the night and have a small adult and cat for scale.

      21 votes
    6. What have you been listening to this week?

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as...

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

      Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

      You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

      http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

      Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

      16 votes