• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity

    1. Let's add (and rearrange?) some groups + a few notes about other short-term plans

      ~tildes.official Text 363 words
      Some really great feedback and ideas came out of the discussion we had about the group structure recently, and while I do want to work on implementing some things from that eventually, it won't...

      Some really great feedback and ideas came out of the discussion we had about the group structure recently, and while I do want to work on implementing some things from that eventually, it won't happen immediately. I'm also not sure if the influx of new users is going to calm down somewhat (which might make some of those changes feel less necessary), but I guess we'll see what happens in the next couple of days as the third-party Reddit clients start actually shutting down.

      Anyway, something that we can do immediately is create some new groups, and/or adjust some of the existing ones. This could encourage some more activity on certain subjects, and also make it easier for people to control what they see on Tildes through their group subscriptions. So I'm looking for input on where you feel there are currently gaps in the groups, or some new ones we could add that feel like we might have enough activity to get started.

      I also just want to quickly mention a few other things I'm trying to work on in the near future (now that I'm finally almost caught up on all the email invite requests). They're things that stagnated over the last few years but are more important to update if the site's activity is going to increase again:

      • Updating the open-source code and development environment, and ensuring people can get a local version running easily to be able to contribute fixes/changes.
      • Reviewing and organizing the issues and existing merge requests in the GitLab repo, so it's more clear what changes are wanted/needed.
      • Doing a pass through places like the Docs site and the group wikis to clean up and update some of the outdated information.

      Let's try to keep the discussion in this topic more centered around suggestions for changes to the groups though, I just wanted to let you know some of the other things I'm hoping to do in the near future.

      Thanks! And I've also given 5 invites to every current user, so feel free to use those if you know anyone else that would like to join: https://tildes.net/invite

      366 votes

    2. New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here!

      ~tildes Ask (advice)
      This thread is officially retired. Please see the new version to ask any new questions. We have a lot of new users joining the site. Welcome to Tildes! This thread is for you to ask any question...

      This thread is officially retired. Please see the new version to ask any new questions.

      We have a lot of new users joining the site. Welcome to Tildes!

      This thread is for you to ask any question you have about the site, from “what is the moderation philosophy?”to “what does that blue line next to some comments mean?” to “what is the general vibe like here?” Tildes has a lot of documentation, history, and embedded social norms that can be daunting or opaque at first glance, so here’s your opportunity to get help with anything you need.

      Questions about anything and everything are fair game. Follow-up questions are encouraged! No question is too simple.

      Also, a quick note: the only person who can speak in any official capacity on Tildes is our admin @Deimos. Everyone answering who is NOT him is just a helpful community member!

      EDIT: To be clear, is perfectly okay to ask any question — even if you think it’s been asked before, or even if you didn’t search for an answer beforehand. There are an overwhelming number of comments here to sift through, so don’t worry about trying to read all of them. Just ask away, and someone will answer you!

      294 votes

    4. Introductions | June 2023, part 1

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      Edit: lots of great discussion here. If you want to post an introduction, please go to the next Introductions topic. It's been a couple months since the previous introductions thread and we're...

      Edit: lots of great discussion here. If you want to post an introduction, please go to the next Introductions topic.

      It's been a couple months since the previous introductions thread and we're getting some new users, so it seems time to start another one.

      This is a place to post an introduction with a few fun facts about yourself. Anyone can post an introduction, new and old members included.

      Also, on the topic of bios, you can read anybody's bio by clicking on their username (if they've posted one), and you can edit your own bio in settings.

      134 votes

    5. Where are you from?

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      I'm curious to know where ~ users are from! I live in the United States in the greatest state in the union (Minnesota, of course!) The land of Target, passive-aggression, and wishing Prince wasn't...

      I'm curious to know where ~ users are from!

      I live in the United States in the greatest state in the union (Minnesota, of course!) The land of Target, passive-aggression, and wishing Prince wasn't dead. Oh, and 10,000 11,842 lakes.

      Edit 9: Super Ultra 2019 Updated Crappy Map of the World

      *Edit- If you'd like to be counted, add a top level comment. I've counted all child comments up to this point, but may not catch all of you. Also, I may slow down here pretty quick.

      Current count:

      Australia: 5
      Austria: 3
      Belgium: 3
      Brasil: 7
      Canada: 22
      Chile: 1
      China: 2
      *Hong Kong: 1
      Croatia: 1
      Czech Republic: 1
      Denmark: 1
      Egypt: 2
      Estonia: 1
      Finland: 4
      France: 5
      Germany: 10
      Hungary: 1
      Iceland: 2
      India: 12
      Ireland: 3
      Israel: 1
      Italy: 3
      Japan: 1
      Kenya: 1
      Kosovo: 1
      Lebanon: 1
      Lithuania: 2
      Malaysia: 1
      Mexico: 2
      Mongolia: 1
      Morocco: 1
      Nepal: 1
      Netherlands: 5
      New Zealand: 5
      Norway: 2
      Philippines: 1
      Poland: 2
      Portugal: 2
      Romania: 1
      Russia: 3
      Singapore: 3
      Slovenia: 1
      South Africa: 2
      South Korea: 1
      Spain: 4
      Switzerland: 1
      Sweden: 3
      Thailand: 1
      Turkey: 1
      UAE: 2
      Ukraine: 1
      UK: 15
      USA: 119
      *Puerto Rico: 1
      Vietnam: 1

      146 votes

    6. What's something you want to understand the appeal of?

      ~talk Ask
      Is there something you just don't get? Something that you have no idea why people like it? Something that baffles you personally, but clearly not everyone shares your neutral-to-negative feelings?...

      Is there something you just don't get? Something that you have no idea why people like it? Something that baffles you personally, but clearly not everyone shares your neutral-to-negative feelings? Now's your chance to ask.

      Here's the way it works:

      1. Someone names something they want to understand the appeal of.
      2. People respond, doing their best to convey why they (or others) like it in a way that's understandable to a skeptical audience.

      This can be anything: musical genres, food combinations, personal habits, life experiences, etc.

      Importantly, this is NOT meant to be a thread about grousing about what other people like. Think of it less as "telling people to get off your lawn" and more "why do those people like to spend time on my lawn in the first place?"

      109 votes

    7. Introductions | June 2023, part 2

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      The previous introductions thread was only a few days ago, but it's getting pretty long and we expect more people. So here's another one! This is a place for new users to post an introduction with...

      The previous introductions thread was only a few days ago, but it's getting pretty long and we expect more people. So here's another one!

      This is a place for new users to post an introduction with a few fun facts about themselves. You will find the post box at the bottom the page. Maybe say hi to someone else you see while scrolling down?

      If you like, you can also write something about yourself in your profile. See "Edit your user bio" on the settings page. Anyone who clicks on your username will see it in your profile. (It appears on the right side of the page.)

      You can find out more about how to use Tildes in this topic: New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here!

      120 votes

    8. Why did you select your username for Tildes?

      ~tildes Ask (survey)
      I always try this name first when signing up for accounts but it is always taken. Listen closely, my friend, because I'm about to blow your mind wide open. You see, 'King of the Hill' isn't just...

      I always try this name first when signing up for accounts but it is always taken.

      Listen closely, my friend, because I'm about to blow your mind wide open. You see, 'King of the Hill' isn't just some ordinary animated series. It's a diabolical government project aimed at documenting every aspect of my life! They've been watching me, tracking my every move, and mocking me through the fictional character of Hank Hill. It's all a clever ruse to hide the truth from the masses!

      In every episode, they carefully weave in details from my life, the people I know, and the secrets I've uncovered. The creators are agents of the government, skillfully disguising their surveillance operation as a simple sitcom. They want the world to think it's just entertainment, but it's so much more!

      Think about it! The show portrays Hank as a patriotic, average American, while I, Dale-ahem uh, Rusty Shackleford, the one who truly understands what's going on, am portrayed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. It's a calculated move to discredit me, to make the truth sound like fiction!

      Every time I see the show, I feel their eyes upon me, laughing at my expense. The characters, the scenarios, they're all just tools to manipulate public perception. It's a mind-control experiment! MAKE SURE YOUR MOUNTAIN DEW IS SAFE.

      But don't worry, my friend. I won't let them silence me. I'll continue to expose the truth, fighting against this government conspiracy, no matter how deep it goes. They can't hide forever!

      Sha-sha-shaaaaa! pocket sand

      103 votes

    9. Introducing Surfboard for Tildes

      ~tildes Text 449 words
      Hello, Tildes Allow me to introduce myself. I came over to Tildes fairly recently after Twitterriffic died and Apollo announced it would shut down. As a relative youngster, I tend to mostly browse...

      Hello, Tildes

      Allow me to introduce myself.

      I came over to Tildes fairly recently after Twitterriffic died and Apollo announced it would shut down.

      As a relative youngster, I tend to mostly browse on mobile.

      While I do appreciate Tildes' philosophy of having a simple website that works well on desktop and mobile, I've always preferred mobile apps. I'm a strong believer that a well-built native application will always provide a richer experience than a website.

      But enough talking.. showing is way more fun - here's a lil' something I've been messing around with:

      Introducing Surfboard for Tildes

      The goal is simple: to be the best way to interact with Tildes on mobile.

      Features

      Surfboard is still extremely early, and is missing many features.

      With that said, here is what it currently supports:

      • Login to Tildes (supports 2FA)
      • Browse topics
      • Filters & sorting
      • Browse comments
      • Advanced rendering is still in early stages..
      • Supports comment collapsing behavior from the web version
      • Reply/vote/bookmark/ignore on topics, comments, & notifications (requires login)
      • Search topics
      • Global search
      • Search within groups
      • Option for in-line images
      • Clean browsing interface
      • In-line markdown preview when composing replies
      • Share topics & comments
      • Notifications
      • View read & unread notifications
      • Reply, vote, bookmark, mark as read...
      • Customizable
      • Toggle settings, set custom gesture actions, etc.
      • Free, as in beer

      The design draws some inspiration from Apollo for Reddit, an app that I loved & am very sad will be discontinued.

      Try it yourself

      I would love to get some feedback from other Tildes users on the app. If you are interested in trying it for yourself, you can get it here via TestFlight

      Surfboard is built for iPhone, and requires iOS 16.0 or higher.

      Inside the app is a 'roadmap' of sorts which is basically a list of things I know are missing, but if there's something you want that isn't listed there, I'm all ears.

      Formatting is a little rough at the moment, although I made enormous improvements on the parsing & rendering there over the last day.

      It should support just about anything you throw at it other than a <details>

      (I'll get around to them, I swear..)

      If you run into issues viewing a post/comment, you can easily open them in an in-app safari window from the menu.

      As mentioned above, it's very early, but it's already becoming my favorite way to browse Tildes. I hope that others will enjoy it as well. Consider it my gift to the Tildes community.

      Cheers !

      Edit:

      The best way to submit feature requests & bug reports is to add it to the issue tracker and/or leave a comment on this thread and I’ll get around to adding it myself.

      Thanks !

      278 votes

    10. A "low-risk" AMA thread for everyone

      ~talk Ask
      Historically, I've found the most interesting AMA's came from seemingly "ordinary" people. (touchmyfuckingcoffee's vacuum AMA's come to mind!) I think that most everyone has one or two life...

      Historically, I've found the most interesting AMA's came from seemingly "ordinary" people. (touchmyfuckingcoffee's vacuum AMA's come to mind!) I think that most everyone has one or two life experiences, points of view, or specialized knowledge that would be fun to share or fun to learn about.

      I've toyed with the idea of hosting an AMA for awhile, but I've been afraid that maybe I wasn't "interesting" enough. Then, I realized that others might be in the same position! So instead of hosting my own AMA, I wanted to make space for a collective "Low-Risk" AMA, that I think would work especially well with Tildes' philosophy and format.

      With that preamble, I'm wondering if you would like to join me in an experiment? Let's make mini-AMA's out of top-level comments, with the Q's and A's as child comments.

      Edit: Wow! I wasn't expecting this thread to have so much staying power! Love all the conversations that are being had. FYI The early posters including myself are still answering questions, so don't be shy!

      191 votes

    11. Redditors of Tildes, which subreddits are you missing the most during the blackout?

      ~tech Ask (survey)
      I am really struggling without r/selfhosted. I truly believe it is, by far, the best community for self-hosters that I have come across. What I am missing most of all is, whenever I search for...

      I am really struggling without r/selfhosted. I truly believe it is, by far, the best community for self-hosters that I have come across. What I am missing most of all is, whenever I search for questions to self-hosting problems - especially for smaller projects - the answers are nearly always found within posts on that sub.

      At least with things like programming, there is stackoverflow and a bunch of other small communities.

      I'm going to end up going to Discord to find my solutions, which is the next big community. But it means having to go on there and ask the question (that has probably been asked hundreds of times before), rather than just searching the issue.

      198 votes

    12. Thoughts on making Tildes groups more independent

      ~tildes.official Text 1318 words
      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other...

      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other things while I have your attention:

      Welcomes and thanks

      Welcome to all the new users! It's been great to see activity here increasing again lately, and I hope a lot of you end up enjoying the site and sticking around. It's really nice to read so many posts and emails from people who are excited about the principles behind Tildes. (And if you're someone who doesn't have an account yet and emailed to request an invite, I hope to get back to you relatively soon—there are about 2000 requests in the queue right now, and I'm trying to gradually work through them over the next week or so)

      I also want to say thanks to all the long-time users who have been welcoming and answering so many questions from the new people. As I mentioned the other day, my time to devote to Tildes recently is more limited, and it's been amazing to find that in practically every thread I open, people have already answered all of the questions (and often more comprehensively and eloquently than I would have). An extra special thank-you as well to @cfabbro and the other people who have been handling the demand for invites via Reddit, and to @mycketforvirrad, the unsung hero of the site who's constantly doing the thankless, almost-invisible job of re-tagging topics and making sure everything is organized.

      Reminders

      Also a couple of reminders and things to keep in mind:

      Whether you're an old or new user, if you haven't set up a recovery email address on your account, I highly recommend that you do. A lot of people who registered years ago are trying to come back this week and finding that they don't know their password any more, and it's much simpler if they did this. (The site itself really should encourage this more strongly—it's done in a secure and privacy-friendly way, and it's impossible for me to use it to send you any email because there's no way for me to see the actual address)

      It's already been brought up in various threads a lot, but I also want to emphasize that Tildes is not the same as Reddit, and is not trying to be a "replacement" for Reddit. There are a lot of similarities between the sites, but there are also a lot of differences. The site structures are different, many of the site mechanics here work differently, and the types and style of posts that are appropriate are not the same. Please try to look around at the site and the docs and get a feel for the place, don't assume that things will work the same way here as they do somewhere else (or that they should).

      One other aspect that's different between the two sites that's coming up a lot is that Tildes does not have user-created groups, and the groups aren't "owned" or run by specific users. Currently, the only person with "true" moderation powers anywhere on the site (like the ability to remove topics and comments) is me. This isn't because I want to keep absolute control or anything like that, but Tildes has been very quiet for the last few years and more moderators haven't been necessary. If the activity stays at this level or keeps increasing, we will probably need to add more moderators soon. And related to that, the actual main topic that I wanted to talk about:

      Should we try separating the groups more?

      Even though Tildes has almost 30 groups, until now, it's really always just been one community. New users are automatically subscribed to all groups and need to manually unsubscribe if they don't want to see the topics from that group, and logged-out users see everything when they visit the homepage as well. Most users stay subscribed to almost everything, with only some of them unsubscribing from more-niche interests like ~anime.

      I've always intended to make the groups more independent, but the site's activity has generally been too low for that to be feasible. All of the groups needed to be able to reach all of the Tildes users, but there have been significant downsides to doing it this way.

      One of the main consequences (which is becoming more obvious over the last few days) is kind of ironic: by showing all groups to all users to increase activity across all of them, it actually discourages activity in any individual one. For example, I follow video game news closely, and it's currently a very busy time with tons of events and announcements. But I wouldn't want to post all of those announcements to ~games, because it would completely flood the site and annoy everyone.

      I think we should probably take advantage of this current high activity level to try moving the groups towards being more independent spaces. This would involve switching away from the current "opt-out" approach to an "opt-in" one, and would probably need updates to a few different sections of the site to support it.

      A lot of the new users have been asking to add new groups for things they're interested in (sometimes very specific, niche things), and this would allow us to try some of them out more easily to see if they'd be able to sustain themselves. One of the benefits of the groups+tags system here is that it's relatively easy to test something as a group, and if it doesn't work out, all of the posts can just be merged back into a "more comprehensive" group as a tag.

      I've also been receiving a decent number of messages from Reddit moderators that are investigating whether they will be able to migrate their community to a different platform. I've had to tell them that the current structure of Tildes wouldn't easily support it, but making the groups more independent would change that.

      So overall, I'm looking for general feedback about whether we should try this soon, and if there are any major concerns we should be careful about. I also have three specific questions I'd like input on, related to how it could be implemented:

      1. What should logged-out users see on the homepage? Just a list of links to individual groups, and they have to pick a specific one to see any posts?
      2. Should logged-in users still have a homepage made up of all their subscribed groups mixed together (Reddit-style), or should we lean further into the separation by requiring groups to be viewed individually (forum-style)? (I think I'd want the mixed style to be available long-term, but maybe starting without it would help establish the individuality more strongly?)
      3. How should we transition existing users over to the opt-in approach? Should we effectively treat everyone as a new user, and get them to select the groups they're interested in from scratch? Or should we do something like use their activity (voting, posting) to pre-subscribe them to some groups?

      Thanks, please let me know what you think. The current growth and activity is a great opportunity for us to try some new things on Tildes that would be able to move it forward, and I hope we can figure out ways to do it well. (And if it ends up not working, we can always change things back)

      I've also given 5 invites to every current user, so feel free to use those if you know anyone that would like to join: https://tildes.net/invite

      (Edit: and to set expectations, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to reply to anything substantially, but I'll absolutely be reading all the discussions)

      533 votes

    14. Reddit CEO pledges to not force subreddits to reopen. Admin team then immediately threatens moderators who closed their subreddits with removal.

      ~tech Text 265 words
      In this article from The Verge posted today "While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s...

      In this article from The Verge posted today "While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that"

      Ironically mere minutes before this article went live, Reddit admins posted this to /r/modsupport.

      "Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team."

      This statement not only completely contradicts what was "pledged" by Spez, but is also a very clear threat to subreddit moderators telling them to fall in line or get replaced by someone who will.

      More articles that came out today about this subject:

      Kotaku: Reddit's CEO Is Just Making Everything Worse

      NBC: Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, saying he'll change rules that favor ‘landed gentry’

      MacRumors: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts

      ARS Technica: As the Reddit war rages on, community trust is the casualty

      NPR: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company'

      The full Verge interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman isn’t backing down: our full interview

      397 votes

    16. Proposals for new groups - July 2019

      ~tildes.official Text 444 words
      It's been over a year now since we first talked about adding some more groups to the site (and ended up adding several). I think the current set has mostly worked well since then, but some people...

      It's been over a year now since we first talked about adding some more groups to the site (and ended up adding several). I think the current set has mostly worked well since then, but some people have mentioned being hesitant to post as many topics as they want to on some subjects due to not wanting to flood out the more-general groups, as well as feeling like some subjects also don't fit into the existing ones.

      So let's do another round of suggestions. New groups can be either top-level ones (if that seems to make the most sense) or a sub-group of an existing one (for example, this group, ~tildes.official is a sub-group of ~tildes). The functionality of sub-groups is a little weak right now, but I'll be working on that over the next few days to get it into better shape in case we end up adding some new ones.

      The general process from last time seemed to work fine, so I'm just going to copy that:

      Proposing a group

      If you want to propose an idea for a new group (either a new top-level group or a sub-group of an existing one), make a top-level comment with the following information:

      1. The proposed name for the group, and a short description of its purpose/subject.
      2. 3 examples of topics that would be appropriate to be posted in that group. These can be existing posts already on Tildes, or hypothetical new ones. Just example titles/links is sufficient, it should just give an idea of what sort of posts you're expecting the group to get.
      3. A "failure plan" - if the trial group doesn't work out, what should we do with the posts from it? For example, should they be moved into an existing group or groups, with a particular tag?

      Supporting a proposal

      To express your support for a proposal that someone else made, post a reply to it, saying something like "I would post in this group" (assuming you actually believe you will). I don't want to interpret votes on a proposal as support, and for a group to be successful it really needs people to post to it, so I think it's most important to get at least some indication that there are users that will post in the group if it's created.

      I'll let this topic run for at least 3 days before making any decisions, so don't feel like you need to rush. General questions or thoughts about groups are welcome too, it doesn't need to be entirely proposals. I've also topped given everyone 10 invites again as well. Thanks!

      74 votes

    18. What's something you have always wanted to know about being LGBT (but were maybe afraid to ask)?

      ~lgbt Ask
      Introduction Gender and sexuality are complex, personal topics, and asking questions about them can often feel invasive or even offensive. Discussions about them can be tough to navigate,...

      Introduction

      Gender and sexuality are complex, personal topics, and asking questions about them can often feel invasive or even offensive. Discussions about them can be tough to navigate, especially online, where people's guards are often up and hostility and harassment are common.

      In order to help clear the air and provide a safe space for honest and genuine dialogue, we have assembled a cross-section of Tildes' LGBT community to whom you can ask questions. These volunteers have agreed to open up about their experiences, identities, and knowledge.

      In this thread, you will be able to ask our panelists questions regarding anything you've ever wanted to know about being LGBT. Our goal is to provide you with meaningful answers, not judge you for your questions! For the purposes of this thread, LGBT refers to the umbrella term under which all minority gender and sexual identities fall.

      Guidelines for Participation

      Asking Questions
      • Questions will be afforded the principle of charity. Ask any questions you've ever wanted to know, especially those you might feel are "not okay" to ask elsewhere.
      • Feel free to ask informational questions (e.g. "What does 'pansexual' mean?"), experiential questions (e.g. "Are you out to your family? If so, how did they respond to you coming out?"), and opinion questions (e.g. "What are your thoughts on the various LGBT acronyms?").
      • You can ask questions to the whole panel or to specific members. If asking specific members, please ping them using an @username mention in your comment.
      • Follow-up questions are allowed and encouraged.
      • Not all questions have to be serious! It's totally okay to ask fun, non-serious stuff too.
      Giving Answers
      • Panelists have the right to pass on any question they do not want to answer. While they might give a reason for passing, they are not required to do so.
      • Similarly, not all questions will receive answers from all panelists. We have a large group and don't want to overwhelm everyone with 10+ responses to every question.
      • Each panelist is speaking from their own experience and perspective, so you might find conflicting information in responses to a question, and that's okay! We're a diverse group of different people, not a unified monoculture!
      Additional Notes
      • The panel's make-up is based entirely on who volunteered and is not meant to be representative of all identities under the LGBT umbrella.
      • Similarly, any one panelist's voice should not be taken as representative of the opinion of all those who share their identity.
      • Please remember that these panelists are choosing to share intimate and often difficult personal information. Please respect their disclosure in your responses -- they are putting themselves out there for you!
      • If you do not wish to see or participate in this thread for whatever reason, use Tildes' ignore topic feature to hide it from your feed.

      Panelists

      Here are the users who will be answering your questions:

      @Algernon_Asimov
      @CALICO
      @Cleb
      @emdash
      @Gaywallet
      @kfwyre
      @patience_limited
      @reifyresonance
      @ShilohMizook
      @Silbern
      @tindall
      @Whom

      You can get more information on each in their bios below:

      Full Panelist Bios
      Name Identity Preferred Pronouns Bio
      @Algernon_Asimov Gay man I'm "Algernon". I'm a middle-aged gay man living in Australia. I came of age during the 1980s, when "gay" meant "Got AIDS Yet?".
      @CALICO Pan & Poly, Male-shaped, Agender, Non-transitioning Trans None/No-preference Late-20's, military brat, former military, current gov't contractor. Historically lived all over the US; in the past 18-months I've lived in three states and two non-US countries—currently Afghanistan. Out where it matters, closeted where it doesn't. Unmarried—probably forever—in a LT/LDR currently with just one person. Shameless hippie, hobbyist, & aspiring author.
      @Cleb Genderfluid (Agender & Femme, also fine with just Non-Binary) They/Them, She/Her Early 20s, American, white, closeted in real life. Grew up in very conservative & religious area, still live here. Can talk about growing up like that, my struggle with fluidity/internalized transphobia/gender as a whole, things relating to trans culture on the internet, and any of the other standard fare trans and gender-nonconforming person questions.
      @emdash. If you wanted to find my real name and social media profiles, you probably could, but keep it to yourself and don't be a dick, okay? Gay cis-male He/him Early 20s (wow there's a theme emerging) guy living in New Zealand. Software engineering degree, but I hate the industry, so working on my own business and studying to be a pilot instead (aka the backup plan). I also fly a paraglider for fun. I've always lived in New Zealand, but would love to live overseas. Have the Tinder/Taimi profile tuned to a fine fucking art (IMHO). Out to friends, family aren't informed since I'm not particularly close to them anyway.
      @Gaywallet pan, poly, enby (nonbinary) they/them Early 30s, lived in California my whole life. Currently have 5 partners and feeling quite polysaturated. Big into raving, psychedelics, and general hippy stuff but with a queer focus. Out to friends and family, but not fully flying my flag at work (work in progress to happen this year).
      @kfwyre gay cis male he/him/they/them Teacher. Happily married. Living in the US, and grew up in a very conservative Christian area. Came out in my 20s and dealt with severe depression and fallout with family.
      @patience_limited Queer; intersex non-binary they/them/she/her Mainly in the sidebar. US, 50's, raised near a university town, married. White(ish).
      @reifyresonance transfemme, queer, poly she/they 19, living in the southern US. Studied in China for a year and did a field research project on marginalized queer identities in Shanghai nightlife (talked to people in gay bars), so if anyone wants to hear my (white, American) thoughts on that, I'm game :). I also got to help start an LGBT organization at my school there! Spent the last six months or so doing computer programming, and was part of the workplace LGBT affinity group. (Also, general transgender questions.)
      @ShilohMizook (Shiloh) Bisexual, lean mostly towards guys. Cis male. He, Him. 17, I go to a Catholic school in Florida, but the people there are pretty accepting, so I'm out to everyone. My parents try to avoid the subject. I've never actually met another non-straight guy in real life, which has kind of frustrated me, but it's okay.
      @Silbern Gay male He/him I'm an early 20's white guy with Asperger's Syndrome studying Computer Science. I come from a military family, so I've traveled a lot and lived in many places that were across the spectrum in gay friendliness. I currently live in Hawaii, which might be relevant both for my answers as well as possible time zone limitations.
      @tindall bisexual transgender female she/her Software engineer just getting out of college and into my first long-term full-time gig, at a company making cancer screening software. Grew up all over the place (East Coast, then Texas, then California) and I'm now in the Midwest. I care a lot about making the world a gentler and more supportive place for everyone, and I try to apply my skills to do that.
      @Whom (...and Scarlett) Trans lesbian She Early 20s, raised in the rural US (Wisconsin) studying English Education. Oh, and white. That's the important bits for context. I'm very familiar with current youth trans culture on the internet (which is so pervasive within the community that it's necessary for understanding what it's like being young and trans), so I'm well-equipped to answer questions relating to that or, of course, the trans experience as I see it. I might also be a decent resource to ask about how mental illness (particularly depression, severe anxiety, and light dissociation) fits into the whole picture.

      The door is open. Ask away!

      80 votes

    19. Nostalgia -- what programs do you miss?

      ~tech Ask (survey)
      What are those programs that you used back in the day (or even recently!) that you look back on fondly and think about how they once were-- or worse, programs that seemed to have just up and...

      What are those programs that you used back in the day (or even recently!) that you look back on fondly and think about how they once were-- or worse, programs that seemed to have just up and disappeared?

      What made me think of this question, for me, was Opera. It had everything: browsing, RSS, and torrenting all in one browser. However, a lot of sites loved to break in it since it was the least supported and I eventually moved to Firefox (then Chrome, then Firefox...). Looking at the browser now-- and unsure if I'm just picky or its a case of enshittification, or both-- I'm just "meh."

      99 votes

    20. Daily Tildes discussion - banning for bad-faith/trolling behavior

      ~tildes.official Text 243 words
      I've just banned the user @Hypnotoad for some repeated bad-faith behavior. Some of this is still visible in their history if you want to look, but some has also been edited or deleted which will...

      I've just banned the user @Hypnotoad for some repeated bad-faith behavior. Some of this is still visible in their history if you want to look, but some has also been edited or deleted which will make it less obvious (this post explains some of it, not all). I also know their reddit account (but hadn't looked through it previously) and there's a bit of bigotry and general poor behavior there as well.

      No, I did not send them a warning, and no, I don't intend this ban to be temporary. I know that some of you will think this is too harsh, but to be honest, some of you are way too forgiving. It will be completely impossible to maintain any semblance of a high-quality community if we have to constantly give low-quality, trollish users the benefit of the doubt. Good users don't want to (and shouldn't have to) spend most of their time on a site trying to educate other people how to behave. That gets tiresome extremely quickly, and results in the good users just finding somewhere else to spend their time instead.

      So... in terms of discussion topics, feel free to give opinions on this specific ban, as well as thoughts about how this type of decision should be made in general. Having some standards is absolutely necessary though, Tildes can't possibly serve as both a high-quality discussion site as well as a "troll education space".

      126 votes

    21. What game(s) do you love that you never see brought up in conversation?

      ~games Ask
      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      I was playing Motorstorm: Arctic Edge emulated on my Vita and realized I have literally never seen it brought up or discussed online.

      Motorstorm is a dead franchise, but the console games I occasionally see talk of but never the psp version. I think it did a great job of capturing the feel of the game on the go and has a banger soundtrack too. I played it a ton back in high school on my psp and still boot it up from time to time for a quick hit of adrenaline fueled racing.

      I'm sure others have similar games, maybe it's a "bad" game that you love or just an oldie lost to time.

      90 votes

    22. What consumeristic and somewhat pointless hobby do you have?

      ~hobbies Ask (survey)
      The one thing that I personally really got into was mechanical keyboards. It all started with one cheap secondhand Corsair RGB mechanical gaming keyboard that I got when I was 15. I thought it was...

      The one thing that I personally really got into was mechanical keyboards. It all started with one cheap secondhand Corsair RGB mechanical gaming keyboard that I got when I was 15. I thought it was the coolest thing ever because it was shiny and loud. That led to many different keyboards and keyboard accessories. Notable ones include:

      • GMMK Pro 70% keyboard with a metal chassis
      • Anne Pro Bluetooth 60% keyboard
      • A set of keycaps, which alone cost more than multiple non-fancy keyboards
      • A couple of hand-soldered macropads that I never got around to using

      ... The list goes on. It was fun, but after buying the keycaps, I realized that, for the sake of my bank account and financial stability, I had probably acquired enough keyboards for the time being.

      What is your costly and somewhat pointless hobby/obsession?

      126 votes

    25. What's your SILLY unpopular opinion?

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      By putting the word SILLY in the title, I mean SERIOUS ISSUES such as those are strictly prohibited: politics religion abortion capital punishment gender politics anything else that usually causes...

      By putting the word SILLY in the title, I mean SERIOUS ISSUES such as those are strictly prohibited:

      • politics
      • religion
      • abortion
      • capital punishment
      • gender politics
      • anything else that usually causes trouble or heated discussion
      • anything that could lock this thread

      Allowed subjects:

      • movies
      • television
      • technology
      • love
      • food
      • animals
      • any seemeling stupid thing that will definetely NOT cause any kind of heated discssion
      49 votes

    26. So far this site has been mostly politics-averse, but I am curious if I am alone as an MAGA/Trump voter/supporter in a sea of reddit mods

      ~talk Text 519 words
      I've seen a few remarks here and there that have implied sort of matter-of-factly that places like /r/The_Donald have no redeeming value, the community members are awful (and undesirable to have...

      I've seen a few remarks here and there that have implied sort of matter-of-factly that places like /r/The_Donald have no redeeming value, the community members are awful (and undesirable to have here), their ideas are all reprehensible, etc. I assume that this is mostly just due to the demographic coming primarily from popular reddit mod teams where being anti-Trump is sort of an unspoken requirement - but I don't really know for certain.

      It reminds me a little of this woman in a class i had once, who spoke to me about atheists, assumed I was christian just as a matter of course. It's kind of an awkward situation to find yourself in. I don't identify as an atheist, but if someone is mildly insulting atheists, it's uncomfortable. You have to be a covert conservative (or covert center-right, or even left-leaning Trump voter) or else you risk being blasted/flamed/mocked/etc. in places like reddit.

      Part of what attracted me to Tildes was the sales pitch that it is to be a community for civil conversation, no hate-speech/bigotry. I think that's a perfect environment for political discussion - far more than shit-flinging and nuclear downvoting on /r/politics. So even if I'm the only MAGA person here, maybe there's a chance we can actually have civil conversations on topics we might initially disagree on...?

      Edit: wow! Really happy to have these conversations with folks. Sad that i haven't encountered any fellow (public) Trump voters/supporters yet but very pleased that things have been civil as advertised. ;) Apologies for slow responses, trying to give proper thought and consideration to all the comments!

      Edit2: gotta head to bed. sorry to anyone i haven't responded to questions from. feeling a bit like a novelty "And here's our token Trump voter. ha ha, he sure is a quirky one, isn't he, that crazy dictator-enabler!" xP. I'll try to answer any questions I've missed tomorrow. Sleep well, all (well, all who are going to sleep before I get back).

      Edit3: Thanks for the open engagement, all you people who live in a different reality!

      Still a bit bummed there aren't any MAGA friends here yet, but I've been blown away by how cordial most of you have been (i hope we can retain this culture into the future of the site). For those who are just coming in and don't want to read everything, I'd say a tl;dr of the conversations I've had below is:

      • most people here want to engage with others on important topics without the shit flinging,
      • some people express disbelief that someone can not be a bigot or racist and vote for Donald Trump,
      • I've been repeating in various conversations the Laurel and Yanny thing is a great metaphor for the polarized camps experiencing different realities, seeing different movies on the same screen.

      I'm continuing to try to reply to questions, and in the spirit of not provoking heated emotions I have been trying not to argue any of my political beliefs except that both sides are seeing different realities.

      90 votes

    28. Unpopular opinion: Capitalism is a better ideology than socialism or communism because greed is a more tolerable emotion than fear/envy

      ~talk Text 616 words
      I'm someone who typically leans on the left of center on political spectrum but today, I realized something intrinsic to human nature and its emotions that made me consider shifting my compass...

      I'm someone who typically leans on the left of center on political spectrum but today, I realized something intrinsic to human nature and its emotions that made me consider shifting my compass towards right of center (capitalism).

      The core thought process here is asking yourself this fundamental question of which human emotion or tendency gives rise to these ideologies.

      Capitalism is primarily driven by human greed, be it the greed to put tasty food on your table or better your living standard by getting a new equipment or acquire more stocks in some limited company. Greed for more resources is the motivation here.

      On the other hand, the Communist and Socialist ideologies are primarily driven by much darker emotions of fear and envy. The envy is that the "rich capitalist" has a lot more resources than I have, and/or the fear is that the wealth inequality may increase even more due to inflation and my resources will naturally decline over the due course of time.

      Despite the world being an unfair place and such fears even having some validation in economic data, I want to still insist that even though both emotions are roughly in the same realm of darkness (and beneath the realm of positive spiritual emotions like love and compassion), greed is way more preferable than fear/envy.

      We can understand this with the help of an often used analogy of Would you rather your Foe be an X or Y?:

      If you're lost in a forest, would you rather be chased by a Lion or a Cheetah?

      I remember reading this anecdote or puzzle many years ago somewhere. Most people would answer Cheetah here as it would seem a less ferocious animal than Lion. However, when you consider that Cheetah can climb trees while Lions can't, you might reconsider that answer as you might get lucky if there is a tree around which you can use to climb and save yourself. However, what really makes Cheetah more ferocious is that it kills just for survival. Cheetah doesn't care if it's hungry or not, it sees you as a threat to be eliminated just due to some innate tendency (fear?). On the other hand, a Lion is more likely to kill you only if it's hungry (greed for meals?).

      Would you rather your foe be a ruthless capitalist or a ruthless communist?

      A ruthless capitalist is the Lion in above example. They might come after you but only if the cost-benefit analysis of coming after you makes sense and they materially gain something like money, wealth, data, etc. But a ruthless communist, on the other hand, would come after you regardless and blinded by the ideology just because you own more resources (or fall in a higher income strata than them). A ruthless communist will always try to shame you while reminding you of your "privileges" regardless of who you are because their ideology is powered by fear.

      If we talk about religious ideologies like Christian Supremacy, Zionism, Islamist, Hindutva, etc, they also roughly fall in this same category as Communist/Socialist, they're also primarily driven by fear. As you climb up the wealth ladder, the fear of blaspheming your religious doctrine declines and the fear of losing the already acquired wealth increases - which is very much a positive fear because this fear doesn't harm anyone, it merely seeks to preserve and protect.

      We know there is massive wealth inequality in this world, it isn't just or fair in any manner. But the way towards betterment is using the path of higher emotions like love, compassion and even positive greed and not the darker emotions of fear and envy. Wouldn't you agree?

      67 votes

    30. What is your favorite TV show that you rewatch often?

      ~tv Ask (survey)
      Almost everyone has one, a TV show that they love so much that they rewatch it every once in a while. For me, it has to be Band of Brothers. In my humble opinion this is the very best miniseries...

      Almost everyone has one, a TV show that they love so much that they rewatch it every once in a while. For me, it has to be Band of Brothers. In my humble opinion this is the very best miniseries mankind has ever produced. I love every scene of every episode and by now I know the entire show by memory. I still rewatch it once a year. People call me insane and don't understand why and to be honest neither do I. Whenever I come across a post about this show or hear a piece of the music I just have to watch it again.

      I was 13 when the show first aired on TV and I watched it every week with my father. We're both WW2 buffs and consume every piece of media that has anything to do with it. Band of Brothers was right up our alley. Not only have I watched the show more times than I can keep track of, I also read all the books written by the men of Easy Company just to learn more and find out about what the show got wrong. The show has some errors but I still love it.

      Enough about me, what is your favorite show to rewatch? How often do you rewatch it? What triggers your need to rewatch it? :)

      Edit: thanks for all the cool replies guys. It's my first day on Tildes and I'm really liking it here so far. I just want to reply to everyone but the site is telling me to slow down!

      94 votes

    31. Game recommendations, specifically

      ~games Ask (recommendations)
      This is a thread for game recommendations, but not just any standard game recommendations. This is a thread for game recommendations where you have a very specific thing that you're looking for....

      This is a thread for game recommendations, but not just any standard game recommendations.

      This is a thread for game recommendations where you have a very specific thing that you're looking for.

      Maybe you're looking for a certain type of experience that can't easily be summarized with genres and tags. Maybe you're looking for a game that will evoke a particular feeling that's hard to put into words.

      Whatever you're looking for, share your desired specificity below, and let people try to recommend games that fit it.

      58 votes

    32. Not entirely sure how to fill the void Reddit has left

      ~talk Text 225 words
      With the Reddit blackout, and me deleting my account, I'm not entirely sure how to fill the void that Reddit has left. I'm using Tildes and Kbin as a replacement, and they're amazing for...

      With the Reddit blackout, and me deleting my account, I'm not entirely sure how to fill the void that Reddit has left. I'm using Tildes and Kbin as a replacement, and they're amazing for discussing the topics I'm interested in, but I had grown to rely on Reddit for keeping up with the news topics that interest me; gaming, tech, astrophysics, hip hop, fantasy novels, and many more. And while alternative communities exist for each of my examples, they aren't the one-stop-shop that Reddit had become for me. On top of that, my initial reaction to a lot of questions or queries would be to Google "Steam Deck vs ASUS Ally reddit.com" (for example), to get some first hand community opinions. I know that it took Reddit many years to get to such a point, and that I can't expect any new alternative to be at the same level right now. I've thought about trying to get into RSS feeds, which I've never tried, but again my gut reaction would be to look on Reddit as to what are the best sources to add. I don't have much of a point to my ramble, just wanted to vent and lament that I'm kind of lost without Reddit at the moment; it had become such a useful and ingrained tool in my life.

      243 votes

    35. The number of votes on comments is no longer visible (for the next week)

      ~tildes.official Text 365 words
      I want to try another experiment today, and unlike some other times when I've referred to something as an "experiment" and ended up just leaving it around forever, I'll set a specific time limit...

      I want to try another experiment today, and unlike some other times when I've referred to something as an "experiment" and ended up just leaving it around forever, I'll set a specific time limit on this one.

      For the next week, the number of votes on comments will be completely hidden. This applies to everyone and all comments, including your own. I'm not even cheating for myself with admin permissions, I can't see comment vote counts any more either (unless I look it up manually in the database, but I won't do that).

      There's no functional change: you can still vote and sorting will be affected exactly as before, but there's no way to see how many votes a particular comment has. Topic voting is staying unchanged, with the counts still visible.

      I know that some of you are going to hate this. I think that I'm probably going to hate this. But I want to try it, because I think visible vote counts have both positive and negative effects, and I want to try and sort through those a little. Tildes is still small enough right now that almost all threads can be fully read through easily, so the voting isn't really that significant, and this is a good time to try it.

      Here are the main things I'd like to think about, and want to hear from you about:

      • In what cases does not being able to see the votes make things more difficult for you? Are there particular threads that you feel like you need to see the vote counts? Why?
      • From a less functional perspective, when does not being able to see the counts feel better or worse?
      • Can you think of other ways that we could accomplish the positive aspects (ones that are lost by hiding the counts), without showing an actual vote count?

      Thanks, let me know what you think. Initial reactions/thoughts are good, but I'm also interested in your thoughts after a few days, once you've gotten a little more accustomed to it.

      (And as is pretty usual with "official" posts now, I'm using this as a good time to top everyone back up to 10 invites)

      128 votes

    37. What is your most annoying (minor) movie trope?

      ~movies Ask (survey)
      What is a relatively minor trope that is in way more movies than it should be that just bugs the crap out of you? For me it is knowing that the driver/pilot AND copilot of any vehicle will get...

      What is a relatively minor trope that is in way more movies than it should be that just bugs the crap out of you?

      For me it is knowing that the driver/pilot AND copilot of any vehicle will get killed when the antagonist and protagonist are in a vehicle together. No pilot ever uses autopilot either so the plane just goes into an instant death spin immediately afterwards.

      59 votes

    38. Comment tags have been re-enabled to experiment with, input wanted on plans

      ~tildes.official Text 506 words
      This has been a long time coming, but the comment tags have now been re-enabled. I want to treat this as experimental, and potentially make a number of changes to them quickly based on seeing how...

      This has been a long time coming, but the comment tags have now been re-enabled. I want to treat this as experimental, and potentially make a number of changes to them quickly based on seeing how they get used. A few notes about how they're set up now and what I'm planning to do with them, followed by some questions that I'd like input on:

      • The main change I want to experiment with is turning the comment tags (mostly) into a system where they're invisible, but cause effects. That is, instead of having the actual tags show up on each comment like they were before, they'll now be something that's "in the background", but can have different effects on comments that get tagged.
      • Currently, tags will only have an effect if multiple users apply the tag. This may change eventually if we start granting more weight to certain users that have a consistent history of tagging, but for now it means that a single user tagging a comment won't do anything unless other user(s) also apply the same tag.
      • As of the time I'm making this post, you can apply tags, but they don't have any effects yet. This will change very soon (probably even later today), but I wanted to get input on potential effects and get a baseline idea of how they start getting used before I turned any effects on.
      • Currently, anyone whose account is at least 7 days old will have access to comment tagging. This is to try to make sure that people have at least a bit of experience on the site before they start using the tags.

      Now, questions that I want input on:

      • What effects do you think might work well for the different tags? I don't want to bias the ideas by explaining a bunch of my own ones up-front, but an example of the sort of things that I'm thinking about is making it more difficult to reply to comments tagged "troll", such as by requiring the user to click through a dialog box like "Other users have tagged this comment as a possible troll, are you sure you want to reply to it and feed the troll?"
      • Is the current set of tags (joke, noise, offtopic, troll, flame) reasonable, or should we consider adding or removing some of them?
      • Now that the comment tags aren't being shown, should we consider changing them to more detailed descriptions? It was somewhat important to have shorter, "snappier" names for them before to keep them compact, but if they're not going to be shown often that may not be necessary at all. For example, "noise" could be changed to something more like "doesn't contribute to discussion".

      Let me know what you think—the comment tags are definitely one of the important aspects of the site, so I'm excited to start experimenting with them again and am confident that we can figure out a system for them that will work really well and help encourage quality discussions.

      102 votes

    39. What silly thing do you argue about with your significant other?

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      I don't think my wife and I are that weird here, but we have jokingly exaggerated arguments about stupid things we don't really care about. For example, She loves desserts a la mode. I have an...

      I don't think my wife and I are that weird here, but we have jokingly exaggerated arguments about stupid things we don't really care about. For example, She loves desserts a la mode. I have an apparently hot take that a la mode makes the hot dessert cold and the ice cream melted, and ice cream is better on the side.

      Does anyone else do this, and if so, what do you argue about?

      85 votes

    40. 2020 US Presidential Election Day - Discussion Thread

      ~misc Text 62 words
      This will be a noisy thread. Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see it in your feed. We have a thread here in ~news that's more focused on articles and events, but I also want us...

      This will be a noisy thread. Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see it in your feed.

      We have a thread here in ~news that's more focused on articles and events, but I also want us to have a more conversational space to process the day. Consider this an open forum for your own thoughts and feelings.

      50 votes

    42. Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban

      ~tildes.official Text 297 words
      After reaching a nice milestone yesterday of over 1000 users registered, we've followed it up with a slightly less nice one—I've now banned someone for the first time. This almost certainly won't...

      After reaching a nice milestone yesterday of over 1000 users registered, we've followed it up with a slightly less nice one—I've now banned someone for the first time. This almost certainly won't happen with every ban, but I'm going to be quite transparent with this one since it was the first one, and it gives a good starting point for a discussion today.

      Trying to be transparent about this one is actually a bit funny, because the user I banned was named "Redacted" (really, I promise!). I had removed his comments from the thread, but I've un-removed them for now so that you can see exactly what I banned for: https://tildes.net/user/Redacted

      There were two reasons that I decided to ban him:

      1. Those last 3 comments, all in the ~talk thread. That thread has been a bit heated in places, but overall it's been civil and going pretty well. He came into it without being involved in the discussion at all and went straight to personal attacks.
      2. He went through and tagged almost all of Mumberthrax's comments as some combination of "troll", "flame", and "noise"—sometimes even all 3 tags on a single comment. That's just blatant misuse of the tags, with no possible reasonable excuse. (Note that I've already removed all his tags, so you won't be able to see them any more)

      So that's a pretty clear case of being an asshole, in my opinion. Let me know what you think—I'm not sure that there's any particular focus for the discussion today, so we can just talk about this specific case as well as banning/removing in general since this is the first time I've had to do anything (and I was just saying how nice it had been).

      161 votes

    43. Meet Your Tildes Neighbour: August 2023 Edition

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      Time to try something new! Remember the human. It's the golden rule, and knowing your neighbour helps a lot. This post is an opportunity to meet your fellow humans behind the screen/username, in a...

      Time to try something new!

      Remember the human. It's the golden rule, and knowing your neighbour helps a lot.

      This post is an opportunity to meet your fellow humans behind the screen/username, in a format somewhere between the "introduction" posts and the "casual AMA" one.

      Format: One top-level post per participant. Talk a bit about yourself (what you want Tildes to know about you), and pick one particular thing (hobby, passion, subject you studied) you really want to talk about.

      My engagement: I won't leave any top-level post unanswered for too long. But the goal is for others to interact so hopefully everyone's involved, not just me :)

      85 votes

    44. Redditors of Tildes .. what is the thing you can live without?

      ~tech Ask (survey)
      Akin to this: https://tildes.net/~tech/1670/redditors_of_tildes_which_subreddits_are_you_missing_the_most_during_the_blackout What can we leave behind? What should we leave behind? For me, the one...

      Akin to this: https://tildes.net/~tech/1670/redditors_of_tildes_which_subreddits_are_you_missing_the_most_during_the_blackout

      What can we leave behind?
      What should we leave behind?

      For me, the one BIG thing is the stupid puns.
      Threads full and full and full of puns, one after the other.

      Case in point:
      https://tildes.net/~movies/16bf/chasing_horse_faces_sex_assault_charges

      I can so live without that side of reddit.

      edit: Yeah, that "thread" is two comments long, but I just got reddit flashbacks just seeing those.

      100 votes

    45. Keyboard thread

      ~hobbies Ask (survey)
      Hey guys, anyone else into keyboards? Would love to hear about what you use or experiment with, I've only been into the hobby a few months so I am still pretty new. I'd love to hear your guys set...

      Hey guys, anyone else into keyboards? Would love to hear about what you use or experiment with, I've only been into the hobby a few months so I am still pretty new. I'd love to hear your guys set up and what got you into it, how it's evolved.

      Currently rocking a Keychron Q2 (65%) with Tecsee purple panda switches and Drop MT3 Cyber keycaps - Co piloting this is a KBDcrafts Addams numpad with their s2 engine switches.

      I do also have a keychron Q8 (Alice) in transit - I plan to swap the switches to the KBD s2 engine switches as I am really liking them on the numpad. I ordered this model because my carpal tunnel issues are what awoke me to the mechanical keyboard world, the alice layout isn't perfect but better than standard for ergos it looks like.

      Early on in the hobby I was convinced I'd be a tactile switch guy, but the s2 engine switches really changed my mind on liking linear, eager to try a full board with them.

      This got rambly, but would love to hear from others into the hobby!

      71 votes

    46. Group updates for July 2023

      ~tildes.official Text 1045 words
      As I'm sure some of you have already noticed in your sidebars, I've just added a bunch of new groups based on the discussion we had last week. That ended up being a very large discussion with a...

      As I'm sure some of you have already noticed in your sidebars, I've just added a bunch of new groups based on the discussion we had last week. That ended up being a very large discussion with a ton of suggestions, and while we can't add everything, I am adding a fairly large set of groups this time. Some of these are definitely experimental, and I expect that we'll need to make some more adjustments based on how they actually do in practice.

      Before I get into the specific updates, there are a few general things I want to mention first:

      Many of the discussions about groups turn into debates about how things should be organized in the hierarchy. I want to try to clarify that the hierarchy is not intended to be some kind of perfectly logical system, or that there should never be any crossover, etc. The groups are more of a social organization method, like "for people interested in X".

      For example, a common suggestion is to add something like an "entertainment" top level group that could contain ~games, ~music, ~tv, etc. This makes sense from a logical perspective, but not if you're basing it on interest. Someone's interest in gaming content doesn't really have any influence on them being interested in talking about music. There are similar reasons for other cases like having ~comp outside of ~tech and ~anime outside of ~tv, even though they feel like they should fit inside. The current hierarchy certainly isn't perfect for this either (for example, ~hobbies is extremely broad), but it's the general idea.

      As part of this, I also want to mention that something being a sub-group instead of top-level shouldn't be seen as being "less important" or somehow inferior. As a convenient example, ~tildes.official is one of the most important groups on the site, but it was the first sub-group (and the only one for a year). It's not significant yet while we're still subscribing everyone to all groups by default, but when we move away from doing that, it could actually be an advantage to be a sub-group, since it would give a larger audience to its content through the parent one(s).

      And finally, I want to mention that expanding the groups (and having higher activity in general) makes it more pressing to improve the capabilities for controlling subscriptions, filtering out groups and tags, and so on. This is something I want to treat as a high priority as I get back into Tildes development. I know there are also some existing problems such as topics from sub-groups being shown inside the parent group even if you're unsubscribed from them, and I'm hoping to resolve that one this weekend.

      Anyway, on with the changes and some brief comments on each. Note that I still need to do some administrative tasks like adding descriptions to the groups and moving old topics into them, and will be doing that over the next day or so.

      • Added ~comics, ~engineering, ~transport, ~travel (everyone auto-subscribed)
        The subjects of these groups are currently kind of awkward to fit into the existing groups, and I think there's potential for good content and discussion in all of these.

      • Added ~life sub-groups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~life)

        Whether to create groups for men and women took up a lot of the air in the suggestions topic (and was the source of some strife—please don't restart that in here). I think it's worth trying them, but it's definitely an experiment. I also think it's important to have them be sub-groups, because having a common parent group enables posting similar topics without feeling like posting in one of them is a binary choice. Much like ~lgbt, moderation will be somewhat stricter for posts in these groups (and yes, we need a way for the site itself to indicate that).

        ~life.pets also needs some clarification: this will not be a group full of images. There will be a weekly scheduled post for posting photos and casual chat about pets (the first one will post tomorrow), but separate topics like that will be removed. The standard content in ~life.pets should be of a similar quality level to the rest of the site, such as articles, requests for discussion/advice, and so on.

      • Added ~sports sub-groups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~sports)

        This is also fairly experimental, and I don't know if we'll keep all of these sub-groups. I'd like to see if this can help encourage more posts about specific sports. I also don't like the name ~sports.american_football much at all, but I don't know what a better option is. Should we just call it ~sports.nfl? That's not quite right either.

      • Added ~health.mental (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~health)
        A lot of the topics in ~health are about mental health, and I think having a clearer separation could be useful (including having a more clearly defined space for stricter moderation, as mentioned before).

      • Added ~humanities subgroups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~humanities)

        History topics are probably the most common subject posted in ~humanities currently, and I'm curious if these subgroups will help encourage posting both more history and more non-history.

      • Removed ~games.game_design (topics merged into ~games)
        This group has always been quite inactive, and I don't think the few topics in it still need their own separate space from ~games right now.

      That's it for this time. If there were other suggestions that you were hoping to see that weren't added this time, don't take that as an indication that we won't add them someday. But this is already a lot of new groups (likely too many), and I had to stop somewhere. Let's revisit in a month or so once these new groups and the new users have had some time to settle.

      And as usual when making a ~tildes.official post, I've also topped up every current user's invites to 5: https://tildes.net/invite

      295 votes

    47. Tildes Game Giveaway Thread: Holiday 2022

      ~games Text 210 words
      Important: This will be a noisy thread. If you do not wish to see it in your feed, please use the "Ignore" feature to hide it! Tip: If the large number of comments are cluttering up the thread and...

      Important: This will be a noisy thread. If you do not wish to see it in your feed, please use the "Ignore" feature to hide it!

      Tip: If the large number of comments are cluttering up the thread and you just want to see the main giveaway posts, click "Collapse Replies" at the top of the comments.

      @teaearlgraycold's recent INCREDIBLE giveaway idea reminded me that we were due for our usual holiday giveaway thread. Y'all presumably know the drill, but if you don't, check out some of our old threads!

      Gifters

      Post your available games, the platform and method of delivery, rules for your giveaways (e.g. first-come first-serve, random draw, etc.), and any additional info or requirements. Feel free to get creative!

      Giftees

      Request giveaways according to the gifter's guidelines!

      Rules

      Anyone can choose to be a gifter, giftee, or both! Giveaway rules are set by individual gifters, but there are handful of guidelines everyone should follow:

      1. No grey market keys! Only giveaway games from reputable sources. If you're not sure what this means, please ask.
      2. Requests for games should be done in the thread, but if the gift is a key, those should be delivered by PMs only. Please don't post keys publicly, even obfuscated ones.
      27 votes

    50. What types of content do you want to see on Tildes?

      ~tildes Ask (survey)
      Something you want to follow but don't have the energy to post? Something you want to start but not sure if there's an audience for it? Worry if it'd fit with existing culture? Share your ideas...

      Something you want to follow but don't have the energy to post? Something you want to start but not sure if there's an audience for it? Worry if it'd fit with existing culture? Share your ideas here to gauge interest.

      Cold posting can be scary, maybe this thread can help break the ice.

      79 votes