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  • Showing only topics with the tag "suggestions". Back to normal view
    1. Longer (or configurable) duration for topic read comment tracking

      Comment Visits Setting This data is retained for 30 days. After not visiting a particular topic for 30 days, the data about your last visit to it will be deleted. We've had discussions before...

      Comment Visits Setting

      This data is retained for 30 days. After not visiting a particular topic for 30 days, the data about your last visit to it will be deleted.

      We've had discussions before about long-lived topics, resurrecting old topics, etc. and the general consensus is that they were good and encouraged. Unfortunately, with the limited 30-day memory for topic read-vs-new comments, resurrected posts become a real pain. The current activity-sorted all-time front page has three topics from 2018, each with over a hundred comments. It'd be nice to read the new activity, but that takes either some tedious Ctrl+F with various terms ("minutes", "days", etc.) to find newish comments or re-reading everything.

      I'd like to avoid relying on a third-party extension to handle this (browser and device support, issues with syncing multiple devices, etc.), and I understand the privacy goals. What are people's thoughts on making read-comment memory user-configurable, even if it's just "default 30-days" and "all-time"?

      10 votes
    2. Merge ~tech and ~comp and create a separate ~privacy

      The whole suggestion is in the title. I find the split between ~tech and ~comp to be very overlapping. Such a vast proportion of the content both places is ~privacy -material anyway. Content...

      The whole suggestion is in the title.

      I find the split between ~tech and ~comp to be very overlapping. Such a vast proportion of the content both places is ~privacy -material anyway. Content tagged privacy is effectively rendering ~tech a semi-privacy board as it is now anyway.

      I think the suggested categorization makes more sense than the current organization based on the content actually submitted to tildes now.


      Here's the ~comp privacy tag overview: comp

      Here's the ~tech privacy tag overview: tech

      9 votes
    3. Should Tildes, or its users, try to make "official discussion/review" threads?

      Similar to how other forums go about making review or discussion thread on newly released forms of entertainment. I think tildes would be a pretty neat platform to try and host some of these. More...

      Similar to how other forums go about making review or discussion thread on newly released forms of entertainment.

      I think tildes would be a pretty neat platform to try and host some of these. More so with the discussion nature of tildes. Seems like they would work really well here but I often don't see any pop up. Would anyone like to see them here?

      8 votes
    4. A case for why labels should be removed

      EDIT: I'm only talking about the Exemplary tag Greetings. I'm Alexis, and I signed up for this site back on May 30th, when it was just beginning. However, I have returned and I see something that...

      EDIT: I'm only talking about the Exemplary tag

      Greetings. I'm Alexis, and I signed up for this site back on May 30th, when it was just beginning. However, I have returned and I see something that doesn't seem like that big an issue, but I fear it will lead to the same sort of 'circlejerk' that Reddit has.

      The issue is with this comment. At first, it doesn't really seem that bad - it is a person (we'll call them Adam) replying to someone else (Barbara) who says the subject matter (Charlie) is using white nationalism as a means to cause chaos. Adam takes this to mean Barbara supports Neo-Nazis, as Barbara states the following:

      Hate to say it, but neo-Nazism is better than this, if by a small margin: at least its followers have an ideology.

      Adam asks what "lofty ideology do you think Neo-Nazis" have, including a long rebuttal of this miscommunication.

      The real problem with this is the labels. On the top of Adam's comment: "2x Exemplary". I have not seen any labels whatsoever anywhere else on this forum when I have been browsing it. On a miscommunicative post. Adam seems to claim Barbara is downplaying the issue, despite the miscommunication.

      To see why this is an issue, let's take a second post discussing a network of paedophiles on Youtube. As on 1:14 PM EST, Feb 21, 2019, not a single label is there. This is in spite of communication being just as civil and developed.

      My theory is that the Exemplary labels were not used as a "Well done" to Adam's post, but rather as a "We hate Neo-Nazis as well", or "super-vote". What I fear is that this will lead to an echo chamber where Devil's advocates, such as Barbara, are shunned for things from a simple miscommunication to having 'wrongthink' and defending ideas that people think should not be.

      Let me be clear: I am not conservative or a Nazi. If anything, I am a socialist - but it shouldn't matter. You should be allowed to discuss the pros and cons of relevant political views as long as it is in a civil manner.

      35 votes
    5. Vote box should be on the left-hand side

      Why? My mouse, as well as my vision, are focused on the left. The vote box feels like its light years away on a 16:9 screen. It's on the opposite side of the screen from everything else I might...

      Why? My mouse, as well as my vision, are focused on the left. The vote box feels like its light years away on a 16:9 screen. It's on the opposite side of the screen from everything else I might click in the GUI. Its a waste of time/movement.

      HTH!

      28 votes
    6. Idea: ranking alternate links to prevent linkspam and improve access to quality sources

      I was reading this thread and the important concept of finding the original source came up. I think two things that a lot of content aggregators run into as they grow is people will often post...

      I was reading this thread and the important concept of finding the original source came up. I think two things that a lot of content aggregators run into as they grow is people will often post links from low-quality sources, and when a big newsworthy event happens a lot of similar links from multiple sources appear at once. Obviously not a big problem here now, but it may happen as Tildes grows.

      Both of these issues often require significant moderator input, either through deletion of duplicates or banning of unsavory sources. One way we could instead approach this issue could be to allow for "alternate sources" to a story. For example, if a user is unsatisfied with a link to a news article, they could submit an alternate source to the thread that would show up in the discussion. If enough other users prefer that source, it could replace the link in the OP. The original source would still be visible, but all alternate links themselves could be ranked within the thread.

      It seems the primary focus of Tildes is to be a discussion board, and so in my mind that means the link that engages the discussion doesn't matter much -- if we are voting on individual links anyway, this could be a way to automatically compile multiple similar threads into a single discussion.

      13 votes
    7. An option to hide topics from the front page.

      As per subject - it'd be nice to hide topics from the front page. The use case is very simple - if I see a topic that I have no interest in, I'd rather for its spot to be taken by some other topic...

      As per subject - it'd be nice to hide topics from the front page.

      The use case is very simple - if I see a topic that I have no interest in, I'd rather for its spot to be taken by some other topic that currently sits "below the fold".

      Hiding a topic should remove it from the front page only, but leave it visible on the group page. It would also probably make sense to mark the topic there in some way and have an "unhide" option there.

      Alternatively, have a switch for the front page to toggle between "full view" and "view without hidden topics".

      12 votes
    8. When will there be a group for photographers?

      Hey everyone! I'm pretty new here, and I'm already enjoying this place, but I was wondering when there will be a group to post photos. I take photos and I'm sure some of you do as well, and I...

      Hey everyone!

      I'm pretty new here, and I'm already enjoying this place, but I was wondering when there will be a group to post photos. I take photos and I'm sure some of you do as well, and I thought it would be cool to be able to share the photos we take and get honest feedback on them like we have honest discussions in the news articles, share tips and tricks, and generally have another way to connect.

      I know generally photos are kind of taboo, as places like instagram have kind of ruined it and turned every single person with a camera on their phone into a photographer, so I get it if you have reservations. I have some myself, but I still want to take the chance.

      Idk, I thought it would be cool. If not, then whatever, I ain't picky about this place I enjoy it very much.

      22 votes
    9. Few thoughts on the index page design

      Freshly minted user here, so here is a bit of feedback from the first hour of using ~s. #1 Having topic-info line below the topic-text-excerpt block creates some usability friction, because if the...

      Freshly minted user here, so here is a bit of feedback from the first hour of using ~s.

      #1

      Having topic-info line below the topic-text-excerpt block creates some usability friction, because if the the excerpt is large-ish, then the "xx comments" link is pushed way down, sometimes below the fold.

      https://imgur.com/FUwKHo7.jpg

      This is an issue (at least for me) because it interferes with efficient selection of topics to read.

      You spot a promising topic, you open excerpt, skim through the top part, if it still shows promise, use the "xx comments" link to open it in.

      Key point is that I would very rarely read the whole excerpt before deciding to see the comments. However with existing layout the "xx comments" link sits at the very bottom of the excerpt, requiring scrolling down, correcting for an over-shoot (if the link was below the fold) and then zeroing in on the link.

      In comparison, if the link were to stay above the excerpt, it will be within few pixels from where my mouse is after clicking on the "open excerpt" triangle.

      #2

      If this were my site, I would probably just swapped topic-meta with topic-info, like so - https://imgur.com/fJ3tKxc.jpg.

      The rationale here is that meta carries information that is less important and less frequently used/needed that topic-info. I know that I would be more interested in the comment count and the topic age than in tags.

      #3

      The topic-text-excerpt font size is too big. The index is nice, compact and has a very light feel to it. Then you click to expand the excerpt and it's like - WOAH, HERE'S SOME TEXT FOR YOU.

      12 votes
    10. Tildes should not use hard line breaks for line endings

      I'm new to Tildes, but I've been using Markdown-based comment systems for more than a decade: both Reddit and GitHub. My programming blog has been written in Markdown for the past 8 years. Overall...

      I'm new to Tildes, but I've been using Markdown-based comment systems
      for more than a decade: both Reddit and GitHub. My programming blog has
      been written in Markdown for the past 8 years. Overall I've probably
      written several novels worth of content in Markdown in my life.

      I've already noticed that Tildes has made a serious mistake in its
      handling of line endings: All line endings are treated as hard line
      breaks
      . This diverges from CommonMark and most uses of Markdown in
      practice. If I wanted a hard line break, I'd put two spaces at the end
      of the line, as specified by both CommonMark and the original Markdown.
      Line endings should be otherwise be soft.

      GitHub made the same mistake with its "GitHub-flavored Markdown," though
      fortunately this mistake has been limited to issues. GitHub README.md
      files don't have this behavior, nor does GitHub Pages. It the only other
      Markdown system I've used with this flaw.

      Why does this matter? If I'm writing more than a single sentence, I
      never edit my comment inside my web browser. I edit it using my text
      editor of choice, Vim, since it's far more comfortable. I don't even
      have to copy-paste the text between applications. Instead, I have an
      add-on, Tridactyl, that does this seemlessly and effortlessly.

      Hard line endings just don't work well with long prose — exactly the
      type of content that Tildes is encouraging — particularly when edited in
      a proper text editor that knows about paragraphs and can do its own line
      wrapping. Editing long lines is annoying and takes extra care. That's
      why we have soft line endings after all.

      I'm leaving all my line endings in this post so that you can see the
      mess Tildes makes with it, with the ragged right-hand side due to font
      differences. If I had written this in nearly any other Markdown system,
      the text would have flowed into the page without issues. It is a mistake
      for Tildes to do differently. This sort of compatibility issue is
      probably going to be annoying enough to keep me off the site.

      23 votes
    11. Suggestion: Color the names of new users differently.

      Many websites like hacker news, lobsters and stack exchange put an indicator next to usernames to show that the user is new. This lets regular users know that this user may need some help fitting...

      Many websites like hacker news, lobsters and stack exchange put an indicator next to usernames to show that the user is new. This lets regular users know that this user may need some help fitting in and following the rules.

      What does everyone think about such a feature on tildes?

      16 votes
    12. Thoughts on permanently limiting the number of people who use tildes?

      It used to be considered an honor to become a default subreddit. Then when it was seen what happens when a sub became a default (tons and tons of people came flooding in filling the threads with...

      It used to be considered an honor to become a default subreddit. Then when it was seen what happens when a sub became a default (tons and tons of people came flooding in filling the threads with what were often mediocre comments and destroying the sense of community) becoming a default lost it's shine. The same can be said about Reddit as a whole though. It's extremely impressive that it's become such a huge website, but at the same time, it's not a small, quaint town. It's now just another place for the masses to congregate (both for better and for worse).

      Right now Tilde is a small website. And a smaller website means a stronger sense of community. smaller threads means that your comment is more likely to be read. less upvotes (or just votes in this case) but when you do get one or two it means more. Smaller also means that you're more likely to talk to specific people again and again (as opposed to just a new totally random person each and every time).

      Tilde said no NSFW. No porn. I agree with that. A bajillion porn sites out there, no need for another one. Well...There's a number of massive social media websites as well out there as well. The number of users on them are puffed up by bots, but they're still going to have millions upon millions of actual users.

      I put forth that same basic question here as to what Tilde should become. If all it does is say no to NSFW stuff (essentially the exact opposite of voat) then, to put it bluntly (and kinda cruelly) it will in time just be some Reddit clone. If however the makers decide to keep it very small, and permanently so, I think we could foster something special and unique. Not something that's exclusive (I don't know about any of you but it's certainly no amazing prize to have a one on one interaction with me :-P) it would just be a way to create a small community that I get the sense that a lot of people on here desire. less memes, less sh*tposting, less a lot of stuff that doesn't actually contribute to any sort of actual interesting conversation.

      Please don't tear my head off, but I look forward to seeing what people think of this.

      38 votes
    13. I would be fine if ads were implemented to help fund Tildes

      What are people's thoughts on ads? I feel that if they are implemented in the right way they can be very unobtrusive and not take away from the viewing experience. If they can help fund the...

      What are people's thoughts on ads? I feel that if they are implemented in the right way they can be very unobtrusive and not take away from the viewing experience. If they can help fund the project down the road I would personally not be against them.

      20 votes
    14. Suggestion: Filter by Domain

      One of the issues I had with HackerNews was that the front page was dominated by articles from major publications that imo were often written by journalists out of their depth. I think having a...

      One of the issues I had with HackerNews was that the front page was dominated by articles from major publications that imo were often written by journalists out of their depth. I think having a filter by domain feature would help users avoid certain publications that they know they won't enjoy reading.

      9 votes
    15. Are there any thoughts for a notification system or a mobile app?

      While browsing through the Tildes documentation, I stumbled across this in the Technical Goals section: Tildes is a website. Your phone already has an app for using it—it's your browser. Tildes...

      While browsing through the Tildes documentation, I stumbled across this in the Technical Goals section:

      Tildes is a website. Your phone already has an app for using it—it's your browser.

      Tildes will have a full-featured API, so I definitely don't want to discourage mobile apps overall, but the primary interface for using the site on mobile should remain as the website. That means that mobile users will get access to updates at exactly the same time as desktop ones, and full functionality should always be available on both.

      This got me thinking. Despite Tildes preferring mobile browsers over an app, is there still a chance for one? I usually avoid using websites on mobile unless I must, as mobile websites generally don't have the full functionality of the website. Labelling comments 'Exemplary' and 'Malice' on mobile is an example of what doesn't work (there's more), and it's usually very unresponsive for some of the things that still do work. Also, there aren't any notifications on mobile websites and some people, me included, have cumbersome browsers that make the feel of using the website slow and laborious.

      Another thing is, if the app has no chance of happening, could Tildes get desktop notifications? I usually like to respond to replies to my topics and comments as quickly as possible and I'm not a fan of the whole 'constant login to check my notifications' thing. Email notifications aren't possible because of Tildes' privacy belief.

      33 votes
    16. Open comments and links with a single click

      I browse my front page on Tildes, and I see an item I'm interested in. I also notice that it has comments. I think "I'd like to read that article, and then look at the discussion about it." To...

      I browse my front page on Tildes, and I see an item I'm interested in. I also notice that it has comments. I think "I'd like to read that article, and then look at the discussion about it."

      To open the link and read the article is one click, on the title. Then, after I've read the article, I have to go back to my front page, find the item again, and click on 'X comments'. This doesn't work if I'm scrolling through the front page and selecting a few items to read later.

      Alternatively, I can click on 'X comments' for each item, and then go to each post's comments page and click on the URL to read the article.

      Either way, it's two clicks and a bit of extra navigation.

      Could there be a way to click on an item and open the article and the comments page simultaneously?

      9 votes
    17. Isn't the number of groups too restrictive?

      I know that tildes is still a small community (sub 9k) but I find the number of groups too restrictive. I am mainly a redditor so I am used to subscribing to many subs, most of which are not...

      I know that tildes is still a small community (sub 9k) but I find the number of groups too restrictive. I am mainly a redditor so I am used to subscribing to many subs, most of which are not "main" subs.

      For example, shouldn't there be a group for "countries", so one could post in countries.germany or countries.finland in the future? Also, how come there is no videos? I can understand the reasoning that a video is (almost) always about a given subject but where should I post, for example, a video of "ASMR"? Should it go to health? Should chess posts go to "games" or "sports"?

      I find this idea of groups a bit too comfusing, perhaps because I am used to subreddits..

      Maybe it is not a bad idea to create some kind of map, with an handy link in the site, so one knows in which group one should post a certain something.

      27 votes
    18. Suggestion: add an *optional* short-text bio blurb on user profiles

      Now that user profiles have history, it would also be useful, like Hacker News and Reddit, to have a short plain-text bio blurb that users can optionally fill out. It'd be great to let users...

      Now that user profiles have history, it would also be useful, like Hacker News and Reddit, to have a short plain-text bio blurb that users can optionally fill out.

      It'd be great to let users provide some context about themselves.

      What do you folks think?

      20 votes
    19. Suggestion: ~wikipedia

      There's one HN custom I really adore, and it's the random, interesting wikipedia articles that are posted and sometimes upvoted to the front page. cf:...

      There's one HN custom I really adore, and it's the random, interesting wikipedia articles that are posted and sometimes upvoted to the front page. cf: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org

      This curated discovery of some obscure facets of humanity. Picking random articles from that list, for example, on the game Nomic; the Pineapple Express term in meteorology; or the British plan to build an aircraft carrier out of pykrete, which in case you didn't know is a mixture of paper and ice.

      I was planning to try to help kickstart this here by posting articles with a special tag but I'd actually like to get people's thoughts on this, and if it's something others are interested in, suggest adding a ~wikipedia tildes to encourage this here more officially.

      15 votes
    20. Filtering specific users

      Currently, we can filter posts based on topic tags, is there any chance we could get the same based upon users? Preferably for comments and topics. There are times when I might be interested in a...

      Currently, we can filter posts based on topic tags, is there any chance we could get the same based upon users? Preferably for comments and topics. There are times when I might be interested in a sub-tilde group, but for one reason or another, not a specific user's content in that group. Is this a bad idea?

      16 votes
    21. Suggestion: Adding the group list to the sidebar even when you are on a particular group

      Hi, finally got the chance to join tildes. I am loving it so far but there is just one small suggestion. When I am on mobile and on a particular group, for eg ~music and want to switch to ~books,...

      Hi, finally got the chance to join tildes. I am loving it so far but there is just one small suggestion.
      When I am on mobile and on a particular group, for eg ~music and want to switch to ~books, I have to go back to the main page to access the list from the sidebar.

      I know, I know, I could just type in the url but wouldn't it be better if there was some way to access the group list from any page for easier navigation. Perhaps adding it in the existing sidebar or a separate sidebar on the left side.

      12 votes
    22. Suggestion: Create a ~ for the discussion of communities

      I am new to Tildes so please forgive me if this has been discussed in the past but it seems to me ~tildes has a fair amount of people interested in the psychological processes and dynamics of...

      I am new to Tildes so please forgive me if this has been discussed in the past but it seems to me ~tildes has a fair amount of people interested in the psychological processes and dynamics of communities as it related to feature ideas for Tildes.

      Perhaps it would be interesting to have a place to discuss these sort of effects in online communities (social media sites, forums, multiplayer games, social platforms like Seconds Life, IRC,...) and offline communities in a broader context, not just limited to its immediate effects on Tildes itself.

      8 votes
    23. On underlining links in prose

      By default, no links are underlined in the Tildes interface, as far as I observed. I suggest that we underline the links that are in topic texts and comments. It is a nice visual clue in prose,...

      By default, no links are underlined in the Tildes interface, as far as I observed. I suggest that we underline the links that are in topic texts and comments. It is a nice visual clue in prose, and allows to distinguish between two consecutive links. Currently I'm using the following snippet in a userscript to achieve that:

      // Underline links in prose.
      document.querySelectorAll(".comment-text a, .topic-text-full a").forEach(
        function (elem) { elem.style="text-decoration: underline;"; });
      

      The rest of the links function like buttons, so it's not that important (or even unnecessary) that they be underlined. What do you think?

      8 votes
    24. Parent links?

      Just a few hours ago I was thinking about how much I miss parent links from Hacker News, and now I see that they have suddenly appeared on user pages and in topics. Did Deimos just roll out an...

      Just a few hours ago I was thinking about how much I miss parent links from Hacker News, and now I see that they have suddenly appeared on user pages and in topics. Did Deimos just roll out an update, or have I been blind this whole time?

      4 votes
    25. Two Timespan suggestions

      I've been here all of 24 hours, so there may be good reasons for the current design decisions, but as a newbie, two things are making me a little crazy. Times in Days and Hours. When a post is new...

      I've been here all of 24 hours, so there may be good reasons for the current design decisions, but as a newbie, two things are making me a little crazy.

      1. Times in Days and Hours. When a post is new and active, "4 hours" makes sense. but "187 days, 4 hours?" That just makes it harder (at least for me) to spot "fresh" posts. I suggest dropping the hours on anything older than 1 or 2 days.
      2. The dropdown "Activity from" goes from "3 days" to "all time". This seems extreme. Yes, I see (and tried) the custom, but its not intuitive, and its not fast, compared to selecting from a dropdown. I would like to see "week" and "month" as options below 3 days, because good conversations often evolve at a thoughtful pace, but I'm less interested in commenting on something 187 days old vs 1 week old.

      This is a nice place, well-designed, and it's great to see troll-free convo's taking place! The lack of Karma hunters is also welcome! I hope it works out!

      24 votes
    26. Exemplary tags and anonymity

      I have to say I love the required little message that comes with the label. It actually gives an idea why it was added. Thing is, I've received a couple of Exemplary tags that either addressed me...

      I have to say I love the required little message that comes with the label. It actually gives an idea why it was added. Thing is, I've received a couple of Exemplary tags that either addressed me directly, or where I would have loved to know who wrote the message.

      Would making them optionally-anonymous instead of always-anonymous be interesting to anyone? I certainly don't mind if people know who it is when I assign it.

      17 votes
    27. What if we eliminated "ownership" of link topics?

      It's been a while since we had a topic to generally discuss potential site mechanics, and this is one that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, so I thought it could make a good...

      It's been a while since we had a topic to generally discuss potential site mechanics, and this is one that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, so I thought it could make a good discussion.

      This recent "Suggestions regarding Clickbait and misinformation" topic originally started me thinking about this, because a lot of the potential ways of dealing with those kind of topics involve modifying link topics in some way—changing their link to point somewhere else, editing the title, adding additional links, etc. However, one thing I've noticed on the (rare) occasions where I've performed those kind of actions is that some people are extremely protective of the posts they submitted, and can get upset about even minor title edits because it's changing their post. Some users have deleted their posts after they were changed, because they didn't like the change.

      So... what if we made it so that link topics don't really "belong" to any user in particular? We'd absolutely still want a record of who originally submitted the post to be able to notice behaviors like spamming certain domains, but other than that, if it's a good link/story, does it matter much which user submitted it?

      Here are more unorganized, general thoughts about some of the things this might affect and would need to be considered:

      • Text posts would remain as-is, since in that case the submitter is also the author/source of the post.
      • On that note, it could be a bit weird to lose the connection in cases like a user submitting their own content (such as a blog post that they wrote). Maybe we'd need some way to indicate that, through a standardized tag or something (or even a checkbox when submitting)?
      • Are there other cases where the submitter is important and associated with the content?
      • We could use the space in topic listings where the submitter's username is currently displayed to show different, more relevant data instead. For example, maybe the domain could move into that space instead of being after the title in parentheses, or it could display other info like the name of the actual author of the linked content, the channel name for YouTube videos, etc.
      • If the submitter no longer owns the post, they'd probably no longer have control of deleting it. When could that be an issue?
      • How would this affect user pages? Should links that the user originally submitted still be visible there, even if they're no longer considered posts that the user "owns"?

      Please let me know any thoughts on the overall idea, any of the above questions, and also feel free to point out other aspects of it that I've surely missed.

      (And unrelated, but I've bumped everyone back up to having 5 invite codes available, which you can get from the invite page. I'm still working towards making the site publicly-visible fairly soon, and will hopefully post more info about that before long.)

      79 votes
    28. What if we could "vouch" for users?

      I know the trust system is far off. However, I think a really interesting point to include could be the ability to "vouch" for a user via a profile button. Generally, this should be if you know...

      I know the trust system is far off. However, I think a really interesting point to include could be the ability to "vouch" for a user via a profile button. Generally, this should be if you know them off-site or you recognize them as a great contributor here.

      There shouldn't be any indication to the user that someone has vouched for them-- that makes it easy to manipulate, allowing for more of a tit-for-tat with randos.

      There should also be a number of factors involving the invite tree here (user 1 is the person whose profile button was clicked; user 2 is the clicker vouching for the other person here)--

      • Did user 2 invite user 1? If so, it's worth a little
      • Did user 1 invite user 2? If so, it's not worth much
      • Are users 1 and 2 completely unrelated in the tree? That's worth the most.
      • Older accounts provide more trust when vouching.

      This way, it's harder to manipulate, too.

      What do you guys think about this? Obviously it'll be a lower priority than the primary trust system, and will take a while to get the mechanics sorted, but I think it will be a worthwhile addition in the future

      e: meant to add that trust given should be directly correlated to the trust of the person vouching; new users shouldn't even have an option to vouch, at least until their trust is x or they've been around for a few weeks.

      13 votes
    29. Suggestions regarding clickbait and misinformation

      One thing (amongst many) that always bothered me in my 6+ years of using Reddit was their lax rules about posting clickbait articles and straight up misinformation. In my opinion this was...

      One thing (amongst many) that always bothered me in my 6+ years of using Reddit was their lax rules about posting clickbait articles and straight up misinformation. In my opinion this was something that contributed to the rise of radical communities and echochambers in the website.

      In this post I'll talk about Clickbait, Unreliable studies, and Misinformation. I'll give examples for each one and suggest a way to deal with it.

      Clickbait-

      Let's start with the most benign one. These days most big websites use clickbait and hyperbole to gain more traffic. It's something that they have to do in order to survive in today's media climate and I sort of understand. But I think that as a community in Tildes we should raise our standards and avoid posting any article that uses clickbait, instead directly link to the source that the article cites.

      An example would be: An article titled "Life on Mars found: Scientists claim that they have found traces of life on the red planet".

      But when you read the original source it only states that "Mars rover Curiosity has identified a variety of organic molecules" and that "These results do not give us any evidence of life,".
      (This may be a bad/exaggrated example but I think it gets my point across.)

      On Reddit the mods give these kinds of posts a "Misleading" tag. But the damage is already done, most of the users won't read the entire article or even the source, and instead will make comments based on the headline.
      I personally think that these kinds of posts should be deleted even if they get a discussion going in the comments.

      Unreliable studies-

      This is a bit more serious than clickbait. It's something that I see the most in subjects of psychology, social science and futurism.
      These are basically articles about studies that conclude a very interesting result, but when you dig a bit you find that the methodologies used to conduct the study were flawed and that the results are inconclusive.

      An (real) example would be: "A new study finds that cutting your time on social media to 30 minutes a day reduces your risk of depression and loneliness"
      Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-instagram-snapchat-social-media-well-being-2018-11

      At first glance this looks legit, I even agree with the results. But lets see how this study was conducted:

      In the study, 143 undergraduate students were tested over the course of two semesters.

      After three weeks, the students were asked questions to assess their mental health across seven different areas

      Basically, their test group was 143 students, The test was only conducted for 6 months, and the results were self-reported.

      Clearly, this is junk. This study doesn't show anything reliable. Yet still, it received a lot of upvotes on Reddit and there was a lot of discussion going. I only spotted 2-3 comments (at the bottom) mentioning that the study is unreliable.

      Again, I think that posts with studies like this should be deleted regardless if there is a discussion going in the comments or not.

      Misinformation-

      This is in my opinion the biggest offender and the most dangerous one. It's something that I see in political subreddits (even the big ones like /r/politics and /r/worldnews). It's when an article straight up spreads misinformation both in the headline and in the content in order to incite outrage or paint a narrative.

      Note: I will give an example that bashes a "left-leaning" article that is against Trump. I'm only doing this because I only read left-leaning to neutral articles and don't go near anything that is right-leaning. Because of this I don't have any examples of a right-leaning article spreading misinformation (I'm sure that there are a lot).

      An example would be this article: "ADMINISTRATION ADMITS BORDER DEPLOYMENT WAS A $200 MILLION ELECTION STUNT"
      Link: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/trump-troops-border-caravan-stunt

      There are two lies here:

      1. Trump administration did not admit to anything. (The article's use of the word 'Admit' is supposedly justified with 'They indirectly admitted to it'. I personally think this is a bad excuse.)
      2. Most importantly, the 200 million figure is pure speculation. If you go to the older article that this article cites, the 200m figure comes from a speculation that the operation could cost up to 200m if the number of troops sent to the border is 15,000 and they stay there for more than 2 months.
        In reality the number of troops sent was 8,500 and they stayed for only a few days/weeks.

      A few days after this article was published it turned out that the operation costed 70 million. Still a big sum, still ridiculous. But it's almost a third of what the article claimed.

      The misinformation in this example is fairly benign. But I've seen countless other articles with even more outrageous claims that force a certain narrative. This is done by both sides of the political spectrum.

      Not only do I think that we should delete these kinds of posts in Tildes, in my opinion we should black list websites that are frequent offenders of spreading misinformation.
      Examples off the top of my head would be: Vanity Fair, Salon.com, of course far right websites like Fox News, Info Wars and Breitbart.
      A good rule in my opinion would be: If three posts from a certain website get deleted for spreading misinformation, that website should be blacklisted from Tildes.

      In conclusion:
      I think we should set some rules against these problems while our community is still in the early stages. Right now I don't see any of these 3 problems on Tildes. But if we don't enforce rules against them, they will start to pop up the more users we gain.

      I'll be happy to know your opinions and suggestions on the matter!

      32 votes
    30. Allow anonymous posting in some groups?

      Crazy Idea™: You know what might be neato, but I have no idea how it could be implemented... if Tildes could have groups where truly anonymous posting was allowed, though it would require...

      Crazy Idea™: You know what might be neato, but I have no idea how it could be implemented... if Tildes could have groups where truly anonymous posting was allowed, though it would require authentication. Use cases: ~talk about something embarrassing, or ask questions for which on Reddit you would make a throwaway. Maybe this user permission was only allowed after some threshold was met? If it was truly anonymous in the database, then notifications on replies probably could not work, right?

      Would that be useful at all? If so, probably low priority I know, but just a thought.

      10 votes
    31. Would it make sense to make the default activity period be a function of the recent activity on the site, and in each group?

      I am a bit lazy, and I also seem to like the default 3 day filter on the activity feed... but, sometimes a person less lazy than I responds to a topic of mine which is older that 3 days. These are...

      I am a bit lazy, and I also seem to like the default 3 day filter on the activity feed... but, sometimes a person less lazy than I responds to a topic of mine which is older that 3 days. These are usually good responses. These folks clearly played with the time filter. Other users are missing out on these responses.

      I agree that a 3 day filter may be the ideal filter at the normal activity level of Tildes at large, at this point. But Tildes is still really fluctuating in activity, as may other sites based on the codebase. This may be an even bigger issue in specific groups.

      Would there be any workable and beneficial way to make the default time filter a function of recent activity? This may apply to the main feed, and each group feed. This would help in site/group times of low activity, and might scale to the much higher activity of the future.. does this make any sense at all?

      Would it be better to make the default time filter a function of activity, instead of a arbitrary setting which an admin selected?

      Edit: the list box label might default to a dynamic “recent”, or similar, and then still have the other options of “last 1 hour, last 12 hours,” etc...

      9 votes
    32. Suggestion: a way to identify extra-good topics

      We have the "Exemplary" label for comments, which identifies comments as particularly good, and even boosts their ranking within threads. Now that we've had this for a while, I keep finding myself...

      We have the "Exemplary" label for comments, which identifies comments as particularly good, and even boosts their ranking within threads.

      Now that we've had this for a while, I keep finding myself want to do the same for topics. I'll read an article and want to give it an extra boost because it's better than average.

      I'm ready for an equivalent to the "Exemplary" label for topics.

      30 votes
    33. Proposal: tag own comments as offtopic, joke or noise?

      Sometimes one may knowingly add a comment that should be tagged as one of those, and sometimes I see people say (me included) things like "BTW this should be tagged <as such>." Maybe allowing a...

      Sometimes one may knowingly add a comment that should be tagged as one of those, and sometimes I see people say (me included) things like "BTW this should be tagged <as such>." Maybe allowing a user to tag their own comment proactively with these three tags would be useful?

      Edit: My main focus is the offtopic tag because I think that it's not necessarily bad or low-quality. Partially off-topic content can be very interesting and useful. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the use of that tag, was it intended for completely off-topic stuff in the first place?

      Edit 2: I've opened an issue on Tildes Gitlab for this.

      21 votes
    34. News and articles linked on Tildes

      I've been thinking about my experience on Tildes with news and articles. It's mostly been seeing high quality content and discussion that I'm happy with. However for the sake of this, I want to...

      I've been thinking about my experience on Tildes with news and articles. It's mostly been seeing high quality content and discussion that I'm happy with. However for the sake of this, I want to discuss avoiding something negative.

      Lately I've noticed news and articles with headlines that I feel are biasing in nature and potentially inflammatory.

      I would guess that we're all pretty familiar with this method in general. At some point when a forum/aggregate becomes large enough it provides an profitable opportunity for third parties to distribute content. Or an individual is pursuing their fulfillment of a personal ideal.

      I have a few suggestion to handle the issues productively.


      News sources that put a higher priority on traffic versus their reputation tend to do so consistently. It would be valuable for users to be required to tag the parent domain when posting external links to allow users to discern sources case by case using tags.

      Blocking something a news source versus <inciting-phrase> has the benefit of allowing higher quality sources mentioning the same topic to have an impact on the user. That's potentially very valuable in encouraging informed perspective.


      Linking news and articles for commercial or personally motivated reasons is posted on subs that have a marginal relation. E.g. Posting a story on Mike Pence denouncing all white men working in agriculture in an agriculture sub. The connection can certainly be made but I don't think that's a good way of organizing that information. I think it would be more productive to post that in a news or news/political thread. Having the ability to choose when we see and engage with that type of content is important. It benefits the individual and encourages healthy and engaged communities.


      Blocking users ( I wasn't sure if this existed ) Alternatively, a system for linked content reputation per user. But I think that's a bad solution overall.
      I meant filtering users content and comments as a preference for users. I'm not talking about site wide.


      I'm curious if other Tilde users agree with my issues or suggestions.

      13 votes
    35. Marker after labelling?

      When you label a comment, at the moment, you don't get any sort of feedback or indicator that you did so (or at least, I didn't). Maybe after you label a comment, and after Tildes has successfully...

      When you label a comment, at the moment, you don't get any sort of feedback or indicator that you did so (or at least, I didn't). Maybe after you label a comment, and after Tildes has successfully registered the label, it could display something? Maybe like a little green circle or replacing the word "label" with something like "successfully labeled!"?

      10 votes
    36. Suggestion: that there be only one all-inclusive topic type on Tildes.

      At the moment, there are two types of topics that can be posted on Tildes: Link topics, which consist of a title and a URL. Text topics, which consist of a title and text. These two types of topic...

      At the moment, there are two types of topics that can be posted on Tildes:

      • Link topics, which consist of a title and a URL.

      • Text topics, which consist of a title and text.

      These two types of topic are supported by having three input fields for new topics: Title; Link; Text.

      I propose that we combine these two topic types into just one topic type. The submission page for all topics will include only two fields: a title field and a general all-purpose text box. The submitter will type a title for their post, and then put anything else into the general all-purpose box.

      If the submitter is posting off-site content, they can put the link to that content in the all-purpose box. If they want to provide a summary of the off-site content, they can write the summary in the all-purpose box, with the link.

      If the submitter is posting their own original content (no link), they can type their text into the all-purpose box.

      The single all-purpose box includes everything that is currently split between the Link and Text boxes. When the topic is posted, everything entered in that all-purpose box is displayed in the main body of the post.

      At the moment, summaries of off-site content are usually being posted as comments under the main topic, as a result of a change made a few months ago. These comments merely clutter up the thread. If these summaries were in the post itself, that clutter would be reduced.

      One topic type, one streamlined submission page, one place for all topic content.

      18 votes