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6 votes
-
From Xenogears to Xenoblade: The history of Monolith Soft
5 votes -
In a 5-4 ruling, Supreme Court sides with religious groups in a dispute over Covid-19 restrictions in New York
20 votes -
Covid-19 is a symptom of a planet that's been pushed past a tipping point
13 votes -
Invid - iOS app for Invidious (sideloaded, no jailbreak necessary)
8 votes -
In My Dressing Gown
The sky is clear except for some soft grey clouds beyond the hill The early setting sun shines orange on the woods and the houses that sit atop the ridge Not a single bird crosses the pale blue...
The sky is clear
except for some
soft grey clouds
beyond the hillThe early setting sun shines orange
on the woods
and the houses
that sit atop the ridgeNot a single bird crosses
the pale blue sky
though I can hear
their chorus
and a gentle wind blows
cold
on my faceI can smell the traffic
from the road behind my house
mingling with
the earthy smell of trees
from the field in frontNeither my hot black coffee
nor my dressing gown
are enough
to keep the
cold
at bay
on this
the first truly frosty day
of the year7 votes -
What did you do this week?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do...
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
5 votes -
David Fincher’s impossible eye
6 votes -
How do you think software services should be monetized?
A year ago, I asked if people would pay for social media platforms and search engines if they could guarantee no data collection and no ads (although in hindsight, I wanted to ask people for...
A year ago, I asked if people would pay for social media platforms and search engines if they could guarantee no data collection and no ads (although in hindsight, I wanted to ask people for basically all software services) and people overwhelmingly said no. Given how Facebook is dealing with the election and YouTube has taken control of monetization for the sake of more advertisements, I wonder what do people think is the right way for software makers to make money.
18 votes -
Black Mesa: Definitive Edition - The final major update for the fan-made re-imagining of Half-Life
19 votes -
Opposition MPs in Denmark have urged the government to dig up millions of mink that were buried in mass graves amid Covid-19 fears
4 votes -
Austrian village of 'Fucking' decides to change its name
15 votes -
A route planner specifically for cycling routes
11 votes -
European Parliament votes for right to repair
19 votes -
How triangles shrank France and the first modern map | Map Men
8 votes -
"Brilliant" plans to win WW2: How France planned to win the war against Nazi Germany
7 votes -
Google using Core Web Vitals in their search rankings will be a positive change, but developers should be careful not to fixate solely on those three metrics
6 votes -
How Dutch plant breeders built our brussels sprouts boom
7 votes -
Damian Salazar - Still Loving You (Scorpions cover) (2015)
4 votes -
Primary Lemmy instance enables federation
13 votes -
YouTubecore: The old, ambient, largely-Japanese music that's become a smash hit on YouTube with the help of its discoverability algorithms
15 votes -
Tool for adding trigger warnings to links
6 votes -
How can we change the site's structure/mechanics/patterns so that we're not discouraging posting "too much" on particular subjects?
Over the weekend, @skybrian posted a topic about feeling like you're posting "too much" if you submit too many links on the same subjects. As I said in my comment in there, I've definitely felt...
Over the weekend, @skybrian posted a topic about feeling like you're posting "too much" if you submit too many links on the same subjects. As I said in my comment in there, I've definitely felt the same way sometimes, and I think we should try making some changes that can improve on this.
One of the most common complaints about Tildes is that there isn't much content overall, and that most of it's very "general interest". This is largely because of how the site is set up now, where instead of having different communities, we basically just have one community that's lightly categorized by the groups. It's mostly the same users posting and discussing topics, regardless of which group they're posted in. This is totally fine and has worked well in a lot of ways, but it's also limiting in other ways, especially that it basically discourages posting "too much" about any particular subject because that will be annoying to all the users that don't want to see so much of that content.
One of the best ways that Tildes will be able to grow is by being a place that's known for having good content on different topics. When I started /r/Games on Reddit, I was one of the heaviest submitters for quite a while, making sure that the subreddit was always full of the type of high-quality content I wanted to see. There weren't many viewers or commenters initially, but continuing to consistently post a lot of good content attracted more and more people, and eventually it became self-sustaining.
We need to be able to take a similar approach here, but the current structure of the site is preventing it. For example, I'm one of the most frequent submitters to ~games (I've submitted about 1/3 of the topics in the last month), but I usually try to only post 1 or 2 topics there per day. I could easily submit 10-20 most days, but I know that will annoy a lot of users that don't care that much about games. That feeling isn't a good thing—it prevents any group from being able to "take off" individually.
So to improve this, I think we're going to need to make some changes, and/or figure out some new patterns that we can use.
First of all, I think it may be time to switch away from the current "opt-out" setup for groups (where you see everything by default) into an "opt-in" one where you have to specifically choose what you're interested in. This is something I've always planned to do eventually, because I think "forcing" everyone to see things that they're not especially interested in is both harmful to quality and causes a lot of strife. Switching will absolutely have some downsides too though, including that the activity in the more-niche groups will probably drop even more.
It may also be best to switch away from "Activity" being the default sorting method. Again, this is something I didn't really expect to keep as the default forever, but it's been helpful while the site is small. However, having every new topic show up immediately in the most prominent position on the site just makes it even more annoying for people that aren't interested in the subject. For them, the top of the site keeps getting taken over by posts they don't care about. We're seeing this happen with ~music right now, because some users are trying to make it more active—which, again, should be a good thing—but I know that it's annoying some others.
Some other things that might be worth considering include making it easier and more obvious that you can ignore individual topics and tags, adding new options for creating and filtering different "views", adjusting site behavior so it balances how many posts it shows from each group (but that would likely be confusing), etc.
Another related topic I wanted to bring up (which @skybrian mentioned and I think is an interesting idea) is that we might be able to use "megathreads" more extensively somehow. For example, maybe having a megathread on a particular topic is a better way to judge the demand for a group/sub-group on a particular topic. Right now it's hard to do that because there isn't really any dedicated place to post if you're interested in something specific, but we might be able to encourage more activity by using a megathreads as almost a "testing ground".
For example, if someone's particularly interested in woodworking, it would feel awkward to post a bunch about it in ~hobbies and effectively take over the group with woodworking content. But if there was a "woodworking megathread", it would be both more encouraging and contained (and easily ignored by other users), and if that thread started getting consistent activity from multiple users it would be a good indication that a ~hobbies.woodworking group would probably be able to stand on its own.
I don't really have any particular plans for that kind of thing yet, but I think it's a possibility with a lot of potential, and we might even be able to find some ways to improve how megathreads work to support it. I'm definitely interested in hearing thoughts about how we could enhance threads to make them work especially well for that, including better ways for users to find and know about megathreads they'd want to read and participate in.
I feel like this was a fairly scattered post with a lot of different thoughts in it, but overall I'm just looking for feedback or other ideas for ways we can adjust so that the site can keep growing and increasing in activity smoothly. This is important to figure out, and I think we're reaching the point where it's starting to become more urgent to do it soon. Let me know what you think.
66 votes -
It ain't easy being Sonic
7 votes -
Nominations for the 2020 Steam Awards are now open
9 votes -
How do we avoid future authoritarians? Winning back the working class is key.
16 votes -
Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. Here's what left him empty-handed.
3 votes -
Games from my inbox: Apocalypse 2020 edition
4 votes -
Protect domains that don’t send email
13 votes -
Amazon's reported surveillance of workers could break Australian law, union says
7 votes -
Grouper - Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping (2008)
4 votes -
A visit from The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk
14 votes -
What programming/technical projects have you been working on?
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
9 votes -
Videos on anthropology?
A friend of mine asked me for good videos on anthropology. I'm at a complete loss. I have several good youtube channels for history, but finding anthropology-related content is surprisingly...
A friend of mine asked me for good videos on anthropology. I'm at a complete loss. I have several good youtube channels for history, but finding anthropology-related content is surprisingly difficult.
Any recommendations?
6 votes -
How Readup knows whether or not you've read an article
7 votes -
Why China's largest volcano is so unusual
9 votes -
Redesigning the intubation box to better protect first responders
4 votes -
Visa wants to buy Plaid, and with it, transaction data for millions of people
12 votes -
Patrick Collison's bookshelf
4 votes -
IMO the text used for formatting/markdown shouldn't count towards the character limit in user bios
I made a new bio recently and here been tweaking it for a while and hit the 2000 character cap and messed with some of the formatting and wording for it to fit in. Thing is, you don't read...
I made a new bio recently and here been tweaking it for a while and hit the 2000 character cap and messed with some of the formatting and wording for it to fit in.
Thing is, you don't read markdown formatting. My bio has quite a bit of formatting and the text with the formatting is ~1960 characters, but the text you read is only ~885 characters (according to word counter), or less than half that. I feel like that's not how it should work.
8 votes -
US President Donald Trump pardons Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Russia contact
22 votes -
The universal geometry of geology
10 votes -
How Nintendo has hurt the Smash community
11 votes -
Xbox Series X/S vs. PlayStation 5 - A direct comparison and the Ars launch-month verdict
13 votes -
‘Deadpool 3’: Marvel Studios and Ryan Reynolds tap the Molyneux Sisters to pen the sequel
5 votes -
Penguin Random House to buy Simon & Schuster
5 votes -
Diego Maradona: Argentina legend dies aged 60
13 votes -
What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was...
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
5 votes -
COVID-19 USA Deaths: Field of Flags - Mask Up, America
7 votes -
How a $17 billion bailout fund intended for Boeing ended up in very different hands
4 votes