I'm used to browsing places like reddit, mastodon, kbin.social and midnight.pub. If I'm lucky I can find something lighthearted, witty or interesting. But there's a lot of outrageous posts as well as personal ramblings that make the effort feel like a slog.

I was slow to get into Tildes because I didn't find much "quick hit" posts, such as a good topical quip. I also wasn't as sure how to navigate to places I might want to post. But I did find it very easy to engage with existing posts.

It's in these existing posts that the transformative stuff happened for me. On other sites, long-form posts were often not in my interest or self-indulgent. But I found myself taking my time here, perhaps guided by the thoughtful comments that I saw already beneath the posts. Looking back, it's like a tone was set that I respected and didn't want to diminish.

The result is that I find the other sites under-stimulating, in spite of their design. Tildes has been really good for helping me reform my internet habits. I don't have that regret of excessive internet use as much now. Thanks to deimos and everyone on the site that makes it what it is.

If I miss one thing, it's using my native language. But at the same time, my gut says that things are good just as they are.

This is a question I eventually ask about every social media site I use(d). I like Tildes, and the discussions here are much more constructive than any other place I've seen, however I've seen it to be true even here. When one doesn't curate their feed, and use the default home page, the negative topics seems to dominate. I'm talking about the topics that talk about problems and what's wrong with something, often with titles implying the awfulness or emergency of such a problem. I think I don't need to elaborate on how this is much more prevalent and extreme on other sites. But nevertheless, it's a recurring pattern even here.

I know the argument that goes that humans are problem-fixing machines, and that there are psychological incentives to focus on problems. However, this seems overly reductive and lacking in explanatory power to me. Outside of internet, this is not a phenomenon I've experienced with people, unless they were mentally going through something very rough. Otherwise, people generally seem to talk about neutral or positive issues. And even while talking about negative issues, the tone often isn't grim, and doesn't leave a depressive aftertaste.

Even on the internet, in smaller spaces and more closed spaces, like chatting servers, this doesn't seem to hold true. Sure, there are politically-oriented, and therefore problem-oriented spaces even there, but most spaces don't seem to be that way. Back when I used Facebook too, while the posts were vain, most of my friends and acquaintances were just interested in sharing and commenting on social lives.

So I think this is a problem that is more endemic to "open" social media sites, with easily accessible and open-to-public spaces, rather than applying to the whole humanity or even every internet space. Its one of my biggest head scratchers about social media sites. So far I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation in the literature either. Doesn't mean there isn't, but I haven't stumbled upon such.

So, I'm interested in your opinions: Why do negative topics dominate on open social media sites, even here, unless curated against? Why is this such a strong recurring pattern for sites structured like this, while it's not in other online and physical spaces and interections I mentioned?

You might ask yourself “monthly mystery commenters”? Well, let me attempt to explain. I have noticed that on a semi frequent basis, someone will reply to me in a comment. The sort of comment that does invite a reply and isn't a stand-alone comment. Yet, in the case of these comments, whenever someone replies they never do reply in turn.

Of course, it is entirely possible for people to decide to not reply and still reply elsewhere on tildes. In this case, however, I noticed that there is a group of people who only ever leave single replies and never respond to any follow-ups. More often than not, I have noticed these are people who only leave a comment once per month or every few weeks. Hence, the title referring to the practice of monthly hit-and-run comments.

It is a bit of a curious pattern, isn't it? To me, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, I get that people sometimes don't want to continue a conversation. But to structurally leave comments to never follow up on replies is entirely alien to me. Even more so for comments that really are replies to other people, not stand-alone comments.

This whole thing has got me scratching my head just enough to make this post. Are they dropping these comments with the best of intentions to return, only to get swept up in other aspects of life? Or is it more about leaving a mark, however brief, to say, “I was here” without the commitment to a full-on conversation? Maybe it's something completely different I haven't even considered.

So, hit-and-runners, what drives you? I am genuinely curious about this and looking forward to any replies.

Edit

This already did get a lot more responses than I ever thought it would get. One observation so far is that a lot of people that replied seem to identify with the title. Yet, so far, for all people I checked they don't fit the type of commenter as I describe in the post itself. It is possible my description just sucks, maybe there is room for a future discussion about commenting based on titles alone. ;)

It's still interesting to read all the different perspectives people have about commenting!

Tiny edit: because of the subject, I almost feel obligated to respond to most people. I really shot myself in the food there :D As that is an impossible task, sorry to the folks I don't end up replying to.

This behaviour is thankfully not common on tildes? But like, I understand that if they try to pass off as their own argument. But what with the preface "I ask ChatGPT" and then end with "I don't know enough about topic" or "What do you think". What do they think how that contribute to the discussion? If OP want to ask ChatGPT-like answer, they can just log on and do it right there and then. And they clearly know the stigma and drawback of it (at least I hope so), but still believe it has enough factual information in the answer despite having little or no knowledge of the topic in question (Otherwise they will edit the output or outright just provide it).

(Sorry, if this come out not clearly, I am not very good as convey my idea, even in my native language)

Edit: Well, given there's already a vaguely positive reception to the idea, I've went ahead and set up the server! It's by no means a finished product yet, but it's at least a start!

Here's the link: https://discord.gg/FqArkERU2U

About a year ago, I was running a pretty active, small community board game server and it was a lot of fun until most of the regulars got busy with life.

After that, things happened and it fell by the wayside, but my time here with Tildes makes me really want to bring it back, I just wanted to gauge interest first. The idea is that anyone could set events, anyone can invite people, etc. Obviously, it wouldn't be an open server, but one in the same vein as Tildes, but in board game community form.

Specifically, things like hidden role games and other more complicated games really feel like they shine when there's a solid group of regulars that are able to teach newbies how to play.

(And selfishly, this would be a great way for me to learn new board games, as well)

I've always been interested in entrepreneurship, and I think I want to get serious about doing something. I checked out the Millionaire Fastlane forums, and it's just completely saturated with the whole "grindset" BS. I tried reading a couple of threads, and my eyes almost rolled out of my head. 🙄

I've also hung around on the entrepreneur subreddit, and it just seems like a bunch of people without much experience trading unproven advice and people trying to sell courses.

Does anyone know of a better community? I'd like to find some friendly, welcoming adults with actual experience to talk with. Are entrepreneurship and hustle culture always a package deal?

I've noticed that Tildes generally has a way more levelheaded and even friendly caliber of responses compared to many other social media sites that I've seen. I'm genuinely curious as to why this is. I regularly see the same article posted here that I also saw on say Lemmy, but over there the comments tend to be more hostile and explosive. Meanwhile, disagreements on Tildes rarely get THAT heated (at least as far as I have seen), even on posts involving very intense and personal subjects like politics or war. Even the disagreements and arguments I see on Tildes tend to be more respectful and level-headed, so much so that it's jarring to me to see the comments on some other site where someone's response to a user they disagree with is just straight name-calling.

Is it the invite-only nature of it? The lack of downvotes? The moderation? Confirmation bias? The demographics of the people here? Pure luck? Something else entirely?

Take a look at the Tildes Statistics site. Couple things:

1, and most obvious: there has been a decline in users over the past few days for the first time that I'm aware of.
2: (I was going to make this point before the user decline occurred but it's probably moot now) Due to the scaling of the Y-axis, it appears that there is healthy user growth in the site. But if you look at the numbers, we're talking about user growth of roughly 60 people over the past month.

I know we want controlled growth, and I know we don't want to open it up to the masses. But we also want this site to succeed (i.e. provide interesting discourse and keep people coming back on a regular basis). I don't believe success can happen when growth is stagnant (or, declining!)

I don't think that the conversations are necessarily stagnant per se, in fact there's an impressive amount of thoughtful discussion relative to the size of the user base. But if a given topic is too niche (e.g. MLS football or MUDs, two of my interests), the odds of finding like-minded users to discuss with is obviously lower.

Is it time to consider some sort of growth campaign (one that is not reactionary a la the Reddit API changes) in order to infuse some new life into this awesome site?

To preface, I have accounts on multiple link aggregators, three microblogging platforms, and I have my own (transiently online) blog. I'm a member of more niche Discord servers than I can count, and I'm in a few other nooks where people generally seem to gather and talk. Despite all that, I find that it's incredibly rare that I ever actually participate in any of the discussions that I see taking place, and that's something that I think I'd like to change.

I think part of the problem is that I grew up in the formative years of the "modern" net, and was always taught that you should be careful about what you say online (and, implicitly, that saying nothing is probably even better), lest an axe murderer track you down and explodify your tibia while you sleep.

So, does anyone else, or have stories about, posting anxiety? Anyone gotten over it? Am I just crazy?

I have, at times, experienced that opinions I share online fails to win people over, to the extent that the essence of the thread transforms from that of an exchange of ideas into that of a shitstorm.

Curiously, this is seldom caused by me having controversial views. I’m not especially hateful, and I don’t hold any conservative core ideas, such as advocating for an even less equal society or attacking or belittling various minority groups. If it were just that, then there would be no mystery; my views horrible, and for that reason, they provoke a strong reaction. But despite this not being the case, my views, which are truly very civilised and boring indeed, are sometimes intepreted in interesting ways.

I think the issue is me not expressing myself as well as I could. Assuming this to be the case, what follow is my own notes on how to better get your (mine) ideas across without misunderstandings.

Beware of the shortcoming of contemporary writing

Most of todays readers do not read. Rather, they impatiently give the text a quick glimpse, their brain already craving the next bit of novelty. I've noticed this in myself when I impatiently select random random test when trying to get my brain to read a text online. What's more, those who write has begin taking into account that their audience does not read. This has spawned a peculiar writing style which, for the first time in history(?), is designed not to actually be read, but merely glimpsed through.

It mostly consist of short paragraphs.

Often just a single sentence.

Sometimes two sentences. Maybe three. Four sentences are considered the max.

To help readers easier skim through it.

Read more: How can you write web content that people can skim?

If actually read, it has a staccato-like feel.

Almost like free verse poetry.

There are other characteristica too.

• Scattering links throughout.
• Inserting “Read more about“ references to other articles.
• Inserting list such as this one.
• Adding heaps of headlines.

I guess pretty much everyone have seen this particular style, and, to some degree, adapted it themselves. So there is a tendency to naturally try to boil everything down to a single, ultra-short paragraph. However, human language is not computer code; trying to destill a deeper set of ideas down to a Xwitter-length sentence will inevitably cause its fragile essence to be lost in translation. There is a reason why books are the length of, well, books, and not just the SparkNotes summary thereoff.

To build upon this idea, note that most dog-whistles comes in the form of a single, short sentence, as the shortness, unlike computer code, make it vague, opening it up for multiple interpretations. Indeed, some dog whistles doesn’t contain any words at all, but consists of a single emoji, such as “milk” or “the OK sign”.

If you write about more elusive fluffy ideas, ideas where your angle runs the risk of being read the wrong way, your writing has to go all the way, fully exposing your point with absolute clarity. You have to show it from every angle to make your vision travel through the written words and into the mind of the reader.

Sleep on it

If you aren’t sure you got everything right, no rush. You can always wait a bit, and go over it later.

Don’t accidently target other users

Lets say that someone posts the notorious recipe “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, and say that they don’t think society should go vegan because a balanced diet is better than a green one. You just happen to have a bunch of replies to that. For one thing, flesh food is not traditionally balanced, but centered around the meat, with everything else being mere decoration. Also, there are lots of protein sources other than meat. But most importantly, the vegan movement is not about what is the most healthy diet, but about it being morally wrong to kill a sentient creature just to eat its meat.

But this is a general argument about veganism. If you write it as a reply to someone recomendinging a “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, you’re essentially calling them a bad person.

So don’t reply. If you want to push your point, at least wait a bit and then create a new post, so you don’t target a specific user.

Don’t drink and post

Nope. Just don’t.

Avoid provocateur headlines

I might have given this post the headline “How to speak honestly without being banned for misogyny, racism, transphobia, and fascism”, or maybe “I was banned and censored on tilde.net. Here’s my conclusions.” Headlines which are undeniably more juicy, more clickbaity, if you will. You can almost smell the raising adrenaline. Controversy! Read all about it!

To me, this is hard to resist, because I really love the aethetic of blatant, vulgar marketing. But it also tends to backfire more often than not.

Also, even if the actual content of my post is okay, people who have experienced racism or transphobia might not be super thrilled about me playing around with racism and transphobia in my headline. Saying something “jokingly” is still saying it.

As an aside, me being temporary banned and having my posts deleted was what inspired me to write this post. I don’t have anything much to say about this itself, other than I would have liked it if removed post had a line about the reason for removal, and I would also note that, if you get banned, the red text bleed into be backgrund in a way which is aestetically displeasing.

Diversity reading

You might try mentally test reading your post from the perspective of groups which play a role in the content of your post. After all, if you talk about someone, you should be able to say it to their face. Also, it is entirely possible that your post will be read by those you talk about.

Take the rules for being a good listener, then invert them

Listening is a skill which most people haven’t learned. So when you speak your mind, it is worth taking precautions for the likely scenario that your readers will not follow the rules for the optimal listener. So let’s try inverting the rules:

When listening to others, always give their view the most generous intepretation —> If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

Truly listen to others and try to understand them before giving your answer —> Assume that people will skim through your post.

I want to point out that (in bold and uppercase just for the heck of it) I DON’T SAY THIS TO WHINE ABOUT BAD PEOPLE READING MY POSTS UNFAIRLY. Nope, absolute nope. My point is the exact opposite; I have a deeply held belief that any writer or author who is “misunderstood” could have avoided it by writing better. The writer should be expected to know his audience and know how to write in circles around any potential misintepretation.

Got that? Ok. Let’s look at what we can do to address those two issues.

If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

When writing a post, I sometimes get the notion that something I write might be taken the wrong way. But then I forget about it, because I’m busy building a clever metaphor finding just the right word. And without fail, my post get misinterpreted in exactly that way I thought it would. So always listen to that little voice. In my experience, it is seldom wrong.

This is not just to avoid you getting trashed online. Another more important aspect which is typically overlooked, is that if your post can, somehow, be misinterpreted in horrible ways, it may also be read as such by people who truly hold those views, people who then sees you as an ally. You really don’t want that.

Sometimes it is a simple matter of changing your phrasing. Other times, directly stating what you do or do not believe is in order.

Assume that people will skim through your post.

While you can’t predict exactly how our post is going to be skimmed through, It is likely that they will have read your headline. So use that as leverage to push your most important points, or the general vibe of your post. Your first paragraph is likely to be read too. If your post is longer, you can also add subheaders with key info. You can also use the inverted pyramid structure, leading with the information any reader must know, followed by things which will grant them greater understanding, and ending with the interesting nice to know stuff.

This is what I got so far! If you got any advice of your own, please share!

I'm looking for an article that was posted on Tildes in the last year I believe, on online communities and moderation.

I think it was a link to someones personal blog and the author was female. It talked about the challenges of moderating communities with free speech as a core value, because all it takes is a few bad actors pushing that to it's limits and it completely derails the community and puts too much strain on moderators.

The article itself was very good, but I also remember the discussion on tildes was a very good read as well. I have tried searching tildes, using google and chatGPT4 and while I can find a lot of good threads related to this topic, I can't seem to find this one with the article.

Does anyone remember this article/thread?

I realize it's maybe a long shot and it's just a vague memory, so I apologize if this is an annoying post, but it doesn't hurt to ask?

There was a brief mention of the Amish and their self-sufficiency in the Capitalism topic that got me thinking, so I thought that I'd share my thoughts and start another discussion.

My understanding of the Amish way of life - as someone who is probably thousands of miles away from them - is that they are not really self-sufficient insomuch as they are insular. They don't like to rely on the government, but they heavily rely on their community.

A lot of us here are leftists - some might even go so far as to call themselves socialists or communists. But for the most part we are advocating for government to provide support, and often it's the federal government rather than their local governments. For those of you who do, my question for you is this: why aren't you trying to help out the locals. And I don't just mean your city, I mean your neighborhood or even just your block.

I'm not talking about things like homeless shelters or nonprofits, I'm talking about mutual aid societies. People are complex; they don't just need things, they need people. They need assurance, motivation, and love. These are things that the government does not provide. The US Surgeon General state we are having a lonliness epidemic right now, and that it's majorly affecting people's health. We've had conversations about the lack of a third place but an even bigger problem is the death of our community hubs. It might be a good thing that people are getting less religious, but losing the church was a much bigger hit than people give credit.

We've had many comments in the past deriding "slacktivism". When you throw your voice into the void, you have no real power. But if you put your voice into your town hall, you have tremendous power. Giving money to the government is like having one billionth of a difference to a great many people, but helping out a person in your community is a huge impact in their life which might be the one thing they need to stop them from falling off a cliff. I don't think you'll find anything more socially gratifying.

I titled this "why don't you", but I'm also very much interested in hearing from people who do community work why they do and how they manage to fit it into their lives.

I'm new to Tildes, and searched for this question but didn't find a topic covering this. I've read the instructions, and I know comments that contribute to the topic are much more desired here, and that, in theory, you shouldn't just comment something another commenter has said. Does this apply to thanking another commenter, or even the original poster of a thread? Say someone replied to me with a useful comment. Should I rather thank them or just upvote them? Would the former increase noise.

I know I'm unlikely to get an absolute anwer, but I'd rather ask the community for pointers than assume.

This is specifically about voting on comments, and not articles. I think voting for topics is clear and intuitive.

I've noticed that, while reading users' comments on topics, I have a tendency to think "This is right, so I will vote it up," or "I agree with this, so I will vote it up." I'm not sure I should be doing this, or rather, I'm not sure that's the best use of my ability to vote on comments. I always worry that sites I frequent will morph into echo chambers, and I want to avoid that for this site. I want to encourage expressing alternate viewpoints, because exposure to alternate views helps me grow a human. The vote button is a low-effort means of accomplishing that, and I intend to use it as such.

I think the vote button should be used on comments that enhance the discussion, and help engage people, and not necessarily only on comments that make me feel happy, good or righteous. So, lately, I've been trying to explicitly vote up comments which have replies, especially ones which have several replies, but aren't voted as highly as their children or peers. If someone's comment can engage several people to reply and contribute positively to a conversation, then that comment is worthy of being seen and so I vote it up. I do this regardless of whether or not I agree with the substance of the message.

I've noticed a trend where there will be a low-voted comment with many replies. These aren't trolling comments, because if they were, then they would be removed. These are comments which are engaging people and furthering the conversation, but it seems like the community doesn't value these comments due to their low vote count. This leads me to suspect that the number of votes on a comment might be merely a tally of the number of people who agreed with it.

So, I'm curious. Do you vote on comments?

How do you decide to vote on a comment?

How should we collectively be using the vote for comments?

(As an aside, I also wonder how the psychology of reading comments would change if vote tallies on comments were hidden.)

I've found I need to use the noise label a lot more than I used to.

Given the influx of new user, this was to be expected in some way but I also found that, at least in the first couple of weeks, new people were behaving a lot better.

So this is a friendly reminder to try to keep the noise level low. Recurring themes I would like to see less of:

• Shallow dismissals / dismissals based on zero evidence.
• Pointless cynicism
• Taking cheap shots

I don't want to see these being normalized. If this isn't you, then great, but this post is also for you: It's an invitation to (very politely) call these things out when you see them.

Lately, I've started posting a bit on twitter as much as I do here. What I've found is that I used to just pour my heart and post anything I wanted earlier but since I've got a couple hundred followers now (many folks I often interact with have started following me), I always keep wondering what they will think as they see this new post on their timeline.

Another thing is that many of those folks are from different countries and issues pertaining to India (which I'm often tempted to post on!) may not even be relevant to them. Further complicating the issue is that the tastes, cultures, morals, ethics, etc. vary greatly between the Orient and Occident. How aware are Western folks about the politics and happenings in this part of the world, especially India and surrounding regions? Of one thing I'm sure is that there is an ample scope for misunderstanding here, of one another's perspectives. The kind of things and views which are popular or even acceptable here may not be in other parts of the world and vice versa.

One of the obvious filters I apply to all my conversations is the "political filter" (in the sense of electoral politics) which I think is a wise thing to do. Politics has this very nasty habit of dividing people who are very well meaning of one another and come to the discussion in good faith otherwise. I don't think a person should be cancelled due to their mere opinion (however radical or unacceptable it might be). We can disagree however strongly we want and as long as the other person reciprocates, it's a win-win for everyone, right?

Hello Tilderinos! As I am finally entering the holiday slowdown, I wanted to express my gratitude for the community here.

I ended up migrating here from Reddit during the Apocalypse. Before that time, I would have told you that Reddit was a pretty good place, but after having time to detox and spending time here, I realize it was just better, but still pretty awful. With a few exceptions (like r/3Dprinting), the negativity I would get hit with when posting anything was pretty toxic.

I also set up Lemmy Sync on lemmy.world, but it's pretty much only good for scrolling shitposts and memes. Which sometimes I want, but if I dig into the comments under a topic, the noise factor is so high that it's usually not worth it.

Tildes is really different. The intentionality that people post with, the quality and positivity of the discussion is all amazing. One thing I enjoy especially is seeing reasonable people express views contrary to my own, and being to learn something from them.

This year has been a year of big changes for me. I left a 10 year run at a startup that was starting to lose the plot, becane a stay-at-home Dad to relaunch my wife's career, and wrestled with major health issues. All of that has been pretty isolating, but Tildes has been a bright spot of connection for me.

Sorry if this comes off as excessively cheesy, but I feel like it's a good time to take a moment and say "Thank you!" I am hoping that if something was really helpful to others, that they will take a moment to share it here.