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.

When I joined, I was excited by a site that aims to be something different to reddit. However, it seems like there's a large influx of people who seem to either want a reddit 2.0, or are influenced by reddit culture enough that it carries over here.

Maybe limit the invites from reddit for a bit until the current set of members have some time to settle in?

Right now there's a lot of discussion ongoing about community culture, building Tildes' attitudes as a community into something that is solid enough to withstand waves of new users without being disrupted too heavily by newcomers that have yet to learn the culture.

But what of mod culture?

This topic isn't only for those that have mod experience, there are plenty of users with experience talking to mods that have their own negative stories. Over on reddit the actions of one mod team affect the brand-image of all modteams on the entirety of reddit. One bad action by a mod that occurs in a default subreddit backed up by the other mods in that subreddit becomes (in the eyes of users) the behaviour of all "reddit moderators".

Often I see mods making things far far worse by being one of the most combative and hostile in-groups on the site. Talking to users in a manner that is best described as the way the worst teacher in school talked to teenagers as if they were 4 year olds, not listening to anything a user is actually saying and dismissing them outright because they're the user and they're the moderator. I understand some of it comes from difficult interactions with genuinely toxic individuals that waste enormous quantities of time better put towards better things. However what I see are moderators approaching every interaction with every user with criticism as if they are almost certainly the same-old toxic user. This is not the case.

This is exceptionally important here on Tildes because it won't be a mistake to take the actions of one moderator and have it colour your image of other moderators on the site. When the site holds responsibility for moderator actions due to oversight and control then the actions of all moderators are going to be considered the actions of the site and the rest of the mods.

So, how do we want our mods to talk to users? How do we want them to interact with users? What controls can be put in place to appreciate quality moderation? What can stop quippy mods that shut down valid discussion with 1 line reductive answers? Etc etc.

What is good moderation and what is a good moderator?

Personally what I try to apply to my own behaviour is to actually LISTEN to people and act as an equal, or at least present the appearance of listening. The thing that bothers people most feeling like something they care about is dismissed.

What are the many issues that you've see in moderator behaviour (in front and behind the scenes) and in what ways can Tildes go about things differently to stop them?

I'm sure this thread exists somewhere already but in my searching I couldn't find it. My hope is that we can brainstorm some good ideas in addition to what deimos has already proposed.

The recent discussion about lobste.rs reminded me of the fact that they use an invite system to limit the effectiveness of spammers and manage an invite tree to see the relationship of user accounts. A modified invite tree system would go a long way to help the trust system be more effective while not being stifling.

While it (unmodified strict invite system) would definitely make it more difficult for people to join the site the benefits of such a system cannot be overlook. Even a naive system where we would limit new accounts to require current users to "vouch" for new ones would have noticable benefits later on down the line. The main benefit of this is that users who are a source of consistently inviting troublesome accounts could be held responsible. The added benefit is that you would be a little more conscientious of the people you invite as it would affect your reputation as well.

The naive approach to this system would be a strict invite tree-based site. The only way you could get an new account on tildes is to get an invite from a current user of tildes. Like lobste.rs this woud be a very good deterrent but also (possibly unnecessarily) stifle growth. Such a system is a good starting point but I believe since a lot of effort will be put into making the trust system effective, we can do better if we put in some creative brainpower and work.

Possible ideas/tweaks for an invite tree-based system :
Parent account = person who invited user
Child account = person who was invited

• Users could create new accounts without an invite but would be severly limited in the rate they could post content (1 post a day), make comments (5 comments a day), etc. At any point they could be "vouched" for by a parent account with reputation (become child account) and those limitations would be lifted as though they had an invite from the beginning.
• User reputation would be impacted by child accounts (invite more, more likely to be punished as a result of children's bad behavior) to discourage individuals from becoming invite mills without repercussions.
• If a parent account is banned all child accounts would be demoted to "uninvited" status, child accounts would be encouraged to build up reputation to lose child status and become an independent (reputation-wise) parent account. Accounts would still be historically linked to parent accounts to pinpoint bad behavior down the line if it occurs.

Obviously a lot of effort has already been made by people a lot smarter than me to make such systems work and I think we can draw on that for tildes as well. I tried to look for some peer-reviewed papers and graduate level work about creating such a system but didn't come up with anything useful, perhaps you'll have better luck.

The show premiered on Audience Network a couple of weeks ago.

Seems to be a classical CIA show, more in line with 24 than Homeland, I think. So if you miss the CTU, you might like this. It's not as fast-paced so far though.

Dialogue is acceptable and acting is generally good. Nothing spectacular visually.

There was some amount of conflict and the tension builds up during the episode, with the mandatory cliffhanger ending.

Nothing disruptive in general, but entertaining and with maybe some potential.

The main character is too much of a hero (too much of a good guy) to be able to achieve some depth, IMO. He's too smart, too honest, too humble, too attractive, etc. That's my biggest grip once I accepted the show doesn't seem to want to create anything new, but was certainly watchable. I'm gonna watch the second episode now and see if it gets better

I'd say 7/10, but maybe it's just because I usually enjoy the genre. So maybe 6/10 trying to be more objective.

I've been thinking a lot about busking for money recently.

Here's some backstory:
Currently a broke but talented musician that just moved to a city. Looking to spread my music and earn a bit for myself while I'm at it.

Music is very important to me and spreading myself out and making my sound vulnerable is something I'm very hesitant about doing. I came here to check out if anyone reading this has ever busked and can point me in the right way to start doing so, or if anyone has any comments and suggestions /AGAINST/ doing so. I've never experienced it myself but some of my favorite musicians have bettered their lives and finances by playing music on the street.

While reading up on what it takes to run this site, it just occurred to me that the site is hosted on one server with one network connection. Adding a CDN or cloud based DDOS protection would run contrary to the "no third party" thing we've got going on here, so that doesn't seem like an option.

So I got to wondering, what would happen if a malicious actor were to sic a botnet on us? I imagine the outcome would not be good. Do we have any strategies to deal with this?

What do you guys think are the best albums released so far this year? Obviously this is subjective, I'd just like to hear some of your opinions :-)

My favourites out of the ones I can remember are:

• Kids See Ghosts by Kids See Ghosts
• Egg on face. Foot in mouth. Wriggling Wriggling Wriggling. by Crywank
• Moe Moe by Moe Shop
• Little Dark Age by MGMT
• Veteran by JPEGMAFIA

I'm using an Android phone with Chrome 65.0.3325.109 installed.

There's an option in this browser to add a page to the home screen. This creates a shortcut on my home screen. When I tap on that shortcut, it opens the saved page in Chrome.

I had done this with Tildes. However, I deleted the shortcut and made it again. The behaviour has now changed.

Previously, this shortcut opened Tildes as a tab within Chrome. Now, it opens Tildes as its own separate "application". It's not in Chrome. That means I don't get the functionality that comes with Chrome, such as opening a link in a new Chrome tab. In this pseudo-application version, I'm stuck with only one window. I can't open other tabs. I can't simply copy links from one Chrome tab (news website) to another Chrome tab (Tildes).

Did you change something in the past week or so? Can you please change it back? I want a shortcut to a web page to open something that behaves like a web page, not a stand-alone application.

A sentence from this article on Ars Technica about the new Android Messages web interface really jumped out at me:

Android Messages started as a simple SMS app, but, with the Web client, it is turning into Google's ninth messaging service after (deep breath) Google Talk, Google Voice, Buzz, Google+ Messenger, Hangouts, Spaces, Allo, and the Slack-like Hangouts Chat.

Nine different chat services from a single company is just wild. How did Google let such an important aspect of the Android platform become such a mess, and what should Google do about it?

I've gone through quite a few of the music streaming services now. I was on Rdio for a long time until it (sadly) shut down, switched to Spotify for a while, then to Google Play Music, and as of yesterday I have access to YouTube music (which it sounds like is intended to replace GPM before too long).

From a quick glance at YouTube Music I'm a bit worried—the "library" functionality seems pretty limited, and the search isn't really working as I'd expect. It also doesn't seem to have any connection with my GPM collection or playlists.

I think it's been out in the US for about a month now, has anyone been using it? Any thoughts on it so far or suggestions about using it?