I get a lot out of browsing Tildes and all the conversations here. This is in keeping with the Tildes philosophy of high-quality content and conversation.

In the spirit of quality discussion, context is everything and reference points matter. I have found my own thoughts nudged many times here, and often the comments and points of view lend entirely new perspective to the content (and are sometimes more interesting).

While I appreciate the discussions, there are often links to an article, a video, a blog, or anything really, with no context and little description.

So in the spirit of conversation, I'm asking if there could be "conversation starter" comments for posted links. I'd like to know why this video or that blog is different from just randomly finding some link online. Why is this link on Tildes? What makes it interesting or important? What are we talking about? Where is the quality conversation?

Is that too much, or would that be reasonable? Thoughts?

Disclaimer: I don't quite know how to address the topic, so I want to state I'm trying to approach this with sensitivity; I hope this might lead to a helpful and insightful conversation on a potentially difficult issue. Apologies if I don't quite get it right!

I noticed the absence of a name I'd become familiar with on Tildes and wanted to start a discussion on how the community should handle situations where a person of community renowned abruptly departs.

The user in question is @daychilde, who is one of the users I'd seen around quite a bit. I've been on Tildes for quite a while now, and would like to think I've had a positive - if not vast - contribution. Overall, I probably read more than I respond; I bring this up because I am aware that I probably represent the voice of a significant portion of the userbase here: I'm figuring stuff out as I go and probably am not in the loop on the majority of stuff going on on Tildes. All in all, I don't recognise a lot of names on Tildes, but @daychilde is/was a character who stuck out and seemed to have a significant impact on the community.

From what I deduce, @daychilde has been banned some time in the past week, and I thought it worth discussing given there are at least a couple of things left in the lurch as a result that people might seek information on. The ones that have crossed my vision are the following:

https://tildes.net/~tech/1od9/personal_offer_do_you_have_a_website_based_project_youve_been_wanting_to_do_but_worried_about_cost
and
https://tildes.net/~life/1n7e/daychildes_walking_thread

At the risk of broaching a difficult topic - I'm not looking to cause drama or speculate - we should probably discuss the fallout of a situation like this. Hopefully at the very least this topic might be something others can find if they also become aware of the departure of a notable person and are looking for confirmation or where might be appropriate to discuss any fallout that might occur.

For @daychilde in particular, this website seemed to be a resource that helped him manage his life. I wonder if we should consider whether there is some duty of care to users to depend on Tildes in some capacity?

There are also people who might be looking to discuss the hosting that he had offered/agreed, and might now be left in the lurch.

Unfortunately I don't have solutions, but I didn't see any discussion or information on this kind of a topic, nor any precedent for this kind of a situation!

Opinion

Video links go unwatched.

This gets even more true the longer the videos are.

I think it helps to post a 2-3 line summary of what people can expect to find in the video.

There is just too much content in the Internet for many people to watch a video, just because it is posted, even if it has an interesting title.