TLDR:

I need a website that let's signed in users vote on each others photos, and stores that data on who voted for what in a database.

Background

I run a facebook group of about 2,000 members. This group is designed for analog (any non-digital format) photographers to swap high quality artistic prints with each oter. The community was essentially dead and the admin wanted to throw in the towel so I took over. We've made progress, the group growth jumped by over 500% in the first month after I took over.

Right now trading prints doesn't work well. People make a post using the facebook selling format, and those who are interested comment with the image they'd like to trade for. The problem is that the posts get limited visibility due to facebook's algorithms, and stale posts hang around. All of this reduces over all activity, and the majority of posts don't end up in a trade.

My solution is to do a trade event with everyone participating at the same time. Since facebook doesn't lend itself to this I'd like to whip up a quick site for the event. My time is so limited these days I really don't have the capacity to build something from scratch, and the group certainly doesn't have any other developers to help out with it (it skews heavily on the older side).

I'd like to find an open source project that lets users sign in (sign in using facebook would be a bonus) and upload/vote on images. After the voting closes, I'll write code to pair everyone up in a way that optimizes for everyone getting to make a trade. If Alice votes for Bob's image, and Bob votes for Alice's image, they would get paired up to make the swap.

I feel okay writing the code to map out swaps, but I'm pretty terrible at web design and especially at front end design. I've looked across github, but I wanted to reach out and see if anyone could recommend something that I might of missed.

I don't expect to have 2,000 members participate, I think it may be as few as under 100, so hopefully I won't need to worry about scale.

Thanks in advance for the help!

From today, I've decided to write at least something every day until the writer's block frees me of its hold. I face this from time to time and don't really understand what to do, there is no cure really except hoping that something will happen or some inspiration will strike at some point causing me to write something.

One of the reasons could be that I'm a computer programmer and mostly blog about technology topics. But programming isn't really a topic or subject on which you can keep churning out rivers of literature, can you? It's a very exact and precise science just like mathematics and I feel most things that must be written about it are already written. In fact, I pretty much feel the same way about any kind of topic, we are literally swimming in oceans of information already! That's probably one of the reasons that keeps me from writing. I don't want to unnecessarily add my useless pennies to great literature contributed by people who are wiser and smarter than me.

But then the question arises what should I write about or blog about? I can write about nothing in particular and whatever that comes to mind (like I'm doing now) or I can write a research or news article or something. But I don't know how exactly people go about that. Most articles today are opinion pieces anyway and mine will probably be the same. But where do these "opinion writers" get their information from? There have to be some primary or base level sources. What are they? Can you recommend some good ones?

Another thing that keeps me from writing freely is all the environment you see on the interwebs these days which is just so toxic and discouraging, isn't it? It's not just about having a thick skin anymore but you live in a constant fear of getting canceled for something as trivial as your mere mentioning of some individual (about whom you may not even be fully aware of). I have to think a million times before writing something if this will offend any netizen or not, my guess is that many other writers must be going through the same thing and this is what results in the infamous contemporary expression, Self-Censorship!

If you're going to constantly self-censor yourself and kill many great ideas when they're just in their infancy, I don't think you'll be left with a lot of creative stuff to write and you may not even feel like writing anymore. Self-Censorship beyond a basic extent (like filtering of abusive words and phrases, etc.) is counter-productive and should be highly discouraged in my humble opinion.

Other natural antagonists like lethargy, laziness, procrastination, etc. also need to be blamed, of course! Sometimes, I don't find the motivation to read or do further research on a topic. Without reading, you can't get enough material to write, a good writer must be an avid book worm also. I feel sure I can contribute a lot to the literary world some day and I've decided to keep battling with my proverbial pen (actually the keyboard!) until the day it happens.

I think that's enough for today, might come up with another great wall of text tomorrow! Sorry if I wasted your time.

So there's something interesting I’ve been seeing on social media, and was wondering if anyone here might have any insight into this.

I’m assuming you all know the story, but I’ll sum it up. 2016 Depp and Heard divorce. It’s implied that Depp was abusive of Heard and then TMZ obtains video of Depp yelling and throwing cabinet doors around. Depp is still in good standing with the industry, but a year later MeToo happens and the Depp stuff is now evaluated with that climate.

Depp seems to be still getting work, including Fantastic Beasts, but then Heard publishes an op-ed in the Washington Post claiming to be a victim of domestic abuse by Depp, who she only refers to as a former husband.

The internet largely backs Heard, that mixed with Aquaman being released around the same time as the op-ed, becomes a launching pad for her career into the mainstream.

Then in early 2019 new evidence comes out that Heard was abusive towards Depp. A shift on the internet becomes prominent. People start to side with Depp and in early 2020 (still pre-pandemic) phone recordings of Heard admitting to hitting Depp were released.

Suddenly the “woke” standpoint, in terms of the online culture war, became to believe Depp. At least for the most part, there were still some corners of the internet and personalities who were still calling Depp an abuser. But still, things tilted in favor of Depp. Even when the UK trial against The Sun didn’t go his way, the stance was largely pro-Depp.

Then the U.S trial happens. And things shift again. Suddenly we get articles begging people to believe Heard.

Even when progressive news outlets and journalists defended Depp they would get dog-pilled by other left-of-center people. This included Shure getting called a fake feminist and a Republican.

So what happened here. Why did Depp’s position in the online culture war change, or was it ever changed to begin with?

I just joined, and although it’s not extremely active, I love Tildes already! Firstly, the user interface. This is what the reddit redesign should’ve been. Clean, simple and lightweight. Loading a post on new reddit takes 10 seconds or so, because of all the useless JavaScript, but posts loads instantly here. And there’s no ads here, which is a nice bonus.

I also like the fact that it’s much calmer here, people focus on through-provoking discussion instead of attacking each other.

To everyone who works on Tildes, keep up the great work! I’m sure this has been asked many times before, but do you ever plan on allowing anyone to register in order to grow Tildes?

I was granted access to DALL-E today and I'm wondering what's a good place to collect and share silly computer-generated photos? I have quite a few places already that will do this, but none seem quite right:

• Twitter - It works, but I'm not sure I want to mix photo sharing with other stuff.
• Mastodon - My account is mostly inactive and I'm hardly following anyone I actually know, or who does much picture sharing.
• Facebook - I don't really want to spam the relatives.
• Google Photos - I use this for sharing personal photos with immediate family. I made an album for MidJourney but it isn't quite convenient enough.
• Tildes - no direct photo sharing here! I could link to an album, though.

So I've returned here after being gone for about a year. I didn't "leave" on purpose, just got distracted with some life stuff.

I'm happy to be back and to see the community is still as awesome as it was before. I'm also happy to see that on the technical side the site is still super minimalist and easy to use.

But what do you feel has changed here in the last year? Are there more users? Have the topics shifted? Are the opinions of users trending in a certain direction?

I'm really happy to be back and thanks for keeping me updated! :)

Back in April we had this thread about Slow Social, a social media platform that only allows one long post per week. I've tried it out but friend discovery is woeful, so I think we could use a thread to share usernames and do some networking. See if we can't get a few of us into using it. If you like the idea and haven't made an account yet, now's the time.

Post your Slow Social username below, and any specific topics you might be posting about.

I love mailing lists! They are my preferred way of discussing interesting topics with people. Please share your favourite lists, and any directories or search engines you know of. 🙂

• nettime - net art and media crit
• JISCMail - UK academic listserv