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    1. Home screen icon for iOS devices

      I made one for Tildes Just name it "apple-touch-icon.png" and place it on the root directory of the Tildes website. Then put this in the head tag somewhere: <link rel="apple-touch-icon"...

      I made one for Tildes

      Just name it "apple-touch-icon.png" and place it on the root directory of the Tildes website. Then put this in the head tag somewhere:

      <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">
      

      This way iOS users can add Tildes to their home screen and get a nice icon.

      11 votes
    2. What's a song that is tied to a specific memory of your life, and what is that memory?

      One of mine is the song Existentialism On Prom Night, by Straylight Run. It reminds me of a time probably about 10 years ago now, late one night, hanging out with one of my friends. We didn't...

      One of mine is the song Existentialism On Prom Night, by Straylight Run.

      It reminds me of a time probably about 10 years ago now, late one night, hanging out with one of my friends. We didn't really have anywhere to go, so we just drove around the back roads north of our town, talking and listening to music. We both really liked this song and I remember us singing it in car. Singing it loud, you know?

      We've lost touch since then, we don't talk anymore, but anytime I hear that song, or anything by the band, I think about her and us driving around.

      21 votes
    3. Accessibility of ~

      I ran a Lighthouse audit for performance and accessibility on a comments page (specifically this one); the results are pretty good on the whole, but there are definitely a couple of things I think...

      I ran a Lighthouse audit for performance and accessibility on a comments page (specifically this one); the results are pretty good on the whole, but there are definitely a couple of things I think ~ could do better.

      Performance

      IMO the performance of ~ is fine; Chrome thinks that the time to first meaningful paint is a bit high (3.1s on a simulated 3G connection with CPU throttling), but I don't know what you can do about that without doing things like inlining all the CSS, which would make the very first page load faster but hurt every request after that. Maybe minifying the CSS/JS would help? I don't know if the performance benefit would be enough to justify the increase in complexity to handle the minification, and you'd also lose the easy legibility of the source (which I personally really like).

      Accessibility

      There's some really small text on ~! The Lighthouse audits I ran don't catch it, but the SEO audit does, and it's not hard to see it with your own eyes either. The suggested minimum size for easy reading in that audit is 16px, which is the current size of all post and comment text on desktop, although mobile only gets 14px (I don't know if this is actually a problem, since you probably hold your phone closer to your face than your monitor).

      Edit: posting this from my phone - yes, the 14px font on mobile is definitely harder to read than 16px would be. I don't know if that's just me (I have a fairly severe visual impairment), but I would definitely prefer 16px text everywhere, not just on desktop.

      There's also a good amount of text that doesn't have a great deal of contrast (even using the default white theme – I'm sure it's much worse with Solarized). This is mostly all the grey text, although Lighthouse also complains about the links when they're on a grey background (especially the "visited" colour, which is much closer to grey than the normal colour).

      Some specific examples: The timestamp and "Link" text for each comment is only 10px, which is a bit small for me, especially with the low contrast on "Link". Similarly, the post timestamp is a bit hard to read.

      The worst offender by far, though, is the "Comment deleted by author" notice (example). It's tiny and grey and incredibly easy to miss, and is directly relevant to the flow of the conversation, unlike the timestamps. I'd really appreciate it if that could be bumped up to at least as large as usernames are currently displayed.

      35 votes
    4. What have you been listening to this week?

      It looks like it's been about a week since the last one, so I'll go ahead and post another! @Whom, your post description was great so I'll just borrow that :) What have you been listening to this...

      It looks like it's been about a week since the last one, so I'll go ahead and post another! @Whom, your post description was great so I'll just borrow that :)

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

      Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

      You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

      http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

      35 votes
    5. UI suggestions

      Some suggestions I think would improve navigation a bit: 1.Comment votes. I think comment votes should appear at the bottom of the comment. The reason for that is is to avoid "copycat voting" (I'm...

      Some suggestions I think would improve navigation a bit:

      1.Comment votes. I think comment votes should appear at the bottom of the comment. The reason for that is is to avoid "copycat voting" (I'm sure there must be another term). I think it's a common effect: you see a comment, you see it has 5 votes while the rest you've been reading have 1 or 2, you start being predisposed to see it as a valuable comment even before reading it, you end up voting it too, etc. Similarly to why the top level reply box is at the end of the thread, I think having comment votes at the end of the comment (or even hidden under an expandable menu, but maybe that's too much) would help users reading comments more open-mindedly. I would even argue that putting the user name at the bottom would be a good idea as well, especially since the user base now is small is easy to adscribe more credibility to some user names than others, which is not bad by itself, but might push a type of "authoritative bias".

      2.Top level comments count. If we understand top level comments as the main ideas discussed in a thread, maybe it would make sense to show that in the post. Right now, what we get in the submission listing is the title, username, the ~, the tags and the comment number. I wonder how important is having the total comment number shown here. I guess it's an indicator of activity, but maybe it'd be more interesting having the top level comment number, indicating the ramifications of the topic. Total comment count could be maintained as well, or not, or just when entering the submission, etc. New comments could still be shown in the listing. After all, if we are ordering by activity, we care that there is some activity, and total number of comments is not that relevant.

      3.Cascading tags. Not so sure about this one, but I though I'd mention it. When marking a comment Off-topic... I think most usually all comments under that one will also be Off-topic. Maybe it'd make sense that from that point on all comments would be marked as off topic automatically, and possibly collapsed. Right now it seems when there is an off topic comment thread, you just keep seeing off topic tags down the line, which is a bit distracting and probably unnecessary since they are almost surely going to be off topic, so it's probably not necessary for user to try and judge that. Maybe, if it makes sense, this would better be done when the tags are more developed.

      4.Parent link for context. Thank you for adding the parent link! Much needed. However, wouldnt it be better if when tapping a parent link, the end page would be the parent comment (obviously) plus the comment where you tapped the link? What I mean is, to provide better context, I think it'd be better to show the parent and the comment I was reading, with all other comments under the parent AND above the origin comment collapsed. I don't know if that's clear...

      1. Reply - Tag - Vote. Probably a bit nitpicking here, but I think inverting the current order of the Reply and Vote buttons would be a better fit. Since most people are right handed, and the action of voting is (probably?) more common than replying, having the vote button on the right side might be a minor enhancement in usability.

      6.Highlighting OP's comments. Right now, OP's comments are marked by "(OP)" next to the username. I think it'd be better to make the indication more evident. For example, displaying OP's username in a different color or marking the comment with a different color (as with new comments in orange or own comments in purple). I would prefer the username color since it's less invasive while still being easy to spot.

      Anyway, just some ideas I've had in the last few days, hopefully not too ridiculous or confusingly worded.

      EDIT: Sorry for the generic title, I forgot to edit it before sending...

      18 votes
    6. Furries!

      I'm curious how many other furries (if any) have came here so far, and have a couple questions: Which furry communities did you participate in the most on Reddit? Which of those communities, if...

      I'm curious how many other furries (if any) have came here so far, and have a couple questions:

      1. Which furry communities did you participate in the most on Reddit?
      2. Which of those communities, if any, do you think would work well on Tildes?

      Personally, I'm very partial to furry_irl, since there's a lot of friendly discussion in the comments, but I'm not sure the post content would fit very well here, unless fluff content was allowed.

      To anyone confused, this and this are very brief introductions to what a furry is.

      19 votes
    7. Thoughts on something like a ~space group?

      I spend quite a bit of time on the NASA Spaceflight forums and r/spacex and r/space on Reddit, and I was wondering if anyone would be in favor of creating a ~space group or something similar here....

      I spend quite a bit of time on the NASA Spaceflight forums and r/spacex and r/space on Reddit, and I was wondering if anyone would be in favor of creating a ~space group or something similar here.

      As things stand now, I feel like ~science would be the most appropriate place for talk about space, space tech, and rocketry, but the general feeling of that group seems to be multidisciplinary science discussion and news, rather than the cross of news, science, engineering (and a bit of nearly-corporate-espionage if it's r/spacex...) that one usually finds in a discussion/forum about space and rocketry.

      Would the creation of such a group be something others would like to consider? Do you have other thoughts on the matter?

      4 votes
    8. Friend finder thread

      I thought it might be a good idea to make a thread for people to find other people to game with. Remember to put what console you're playing on, or if you're PC, and what games you're looking to...

      I thought it might be a good idea to make a thread for people to find other people to game with. Remember to put what console you're playing on, or if you're PC, and what games you're looking to play! Best of luck to all!

      I work overnight so I usually play around 1 pm to 4 pm weekdays (I know, weird hours). Anyway my. Xbox gamertag is TreeBone. I have been playing a lot of fortnite lately but I also get into Halo 5, Overwatch, and on steam I've been playing Don't Starve Together. I'm up for anything though! Drop me a line.

      11 votes
    9. Comment Collapsing: It'd be nice to be able to do this from the bottom of the comment too.

      I use Reddit Comment Collapser -- it's pretty great. I can finish off a thread if I'm done reading even though it keeps going. On Tildes, you can only collapse from the top, which can be annoying...

      I use Reddit Comment Collapser -- it's pretty great. I can finish off a thread if I'm done reading even though it keeps going. On Tildes, you can only collapse from the top, which can be annoying when there are many long posts in the thread above and you just want to move onto the next.

      If there were layered bars on the left of each comment, from top to bottom, that I could click to collapse, I would be so happy.

      11 votes
    10. Introductions | May 2018, part 3

      I saw that the 2nd thread by @vibe was dying so I decided to post a new one. Howdy, my name is Odin, or /u/alibyte. I go by alibyte on absolutely everything (except here). I moved here because I...

      I saw that the 2nd thread by @vibe was dying so I decided to post a new one.

      Howdy, my name is Odin, or /u/alibyte. I go by alibyte on absolutely everything (except here). I moved here because I was sick of the blatant political bias on Reddit and the massive echo chamber it became. I'm looking forward to the future of this place :)

      37 votes
    11. Some suggestions

      Hey there! I'm pretty new to this whole website, but I figured I would chip in on suggestions I have as I go along. I will likely be editing to add more suggestions to this as I go. Put the "leave...

      Hey there! I'm pretty new to this whole website, but I figured I would chip in on suggestions I have as I go along. I will likely be editing to add more suggestions to this as I go.

      1. Put the "leave a comment" box at the top of the comment section, not the bottom.

      2. Something I noticed as I am writing this, I don't see any sort of formatting guide. While there may not be any sort of formatting yet, like italics (maybe that's italicized?) or bold, if I remember right, markdown is something besides just plain text, right? If I'm just doing a big dumb here, lemme know, haha.

      3. When I was automatically logged out from spending some time away, I found that when you log in, you aren't redirected back where you were attempting to go, but rather, back to the tildes homepage. It's be nice to be redirected to your original destination.

      Edit: 4. When you reply to a comment in your unread page, it should be marked as read.

      12 votes
    12. What things in gaming do you not agree with or do not like that the general audience enjoys?

      Of course no one likes microtransactions (I feel dirty for typing that), low-effort cash grabs, and all the funny stuff 'early access' games have done. Tell me about things that you're certain...

      Of course no one likes microtransactions (I feel dirty for typing that), low-effort cash grabs, and all the funny stuff 'early access' games have done. Tell me about things that you're certain everyone but you likes, or maybe not even something you don't like but don't agree with.

      23 votes
    13. markdown

      hi some code bold, bolder, bolder, bolder how bold can we go ~tildes paragraph red? spoiler! George kills Lenny line breaks do what? hi lo foo^bar table foo def foo(): print(42) more code:...

      hi

      some code
      

      bold, bolder, bolder, bolder

      how bold can we go

      ~tildes

      paragraph

      red?

      spoiler! George kills Lenny

      line
      breaks
      do
      what?

      hi

      lo

      foo^bar

      table
      foo
      def foo():
          print(42)
      

      more code:

      indented code sucks
      

      one, two, three, four

      ~strike?~ or strike?

      a

      b

      c

      d

      e
      f

      ####### g

      setex heading

      setex subheading

      rules:




      +++++++++++

      1 vote
    14. "Parent" links added to comments

      This isn't a huge update, but it should make navigating around the larger comment threads a little easier. There's now a "Parent" link in each comment's header (unless it's a top-level comment),...

      This isn't a huge update, but it should make navigating around the larger comment threads a little easier. There's now a "Parent" link in each comment's header (unless it's a top-level comment), right after the "Link". This is also present on user pages and in your notifications as well, for if you'd rather jump to the parent instead of the comment itself.

      When you're using it from inside a comment thread, I also added some extra behavior to it: when it jumps you up to the parent comment, it will add a "[Back]" link at the end of that comment's header, which you can click to jump back to the comment you clicked "Parent" from. This can be used in a "chain" as well - you can click "Parent" multiple times to go back up a few levels in a thread, and then use the "[Back]" links on each one to get back down to where you started.

      Hope that helps, let me know if you notice any weird behavior or have any feedback about it.

      Edit: completely unrelated extra note - hey, we've made it to 3-char topic IDs already (this one is 103)

      21 votes
    15. How can non-native speakers improve their english writing skills?

      I'm not a native speaker, but from browsing reddit, understand 95% of what I read / hear. I also watch TV Shows exclusively in english. However, when i write a comment or something in english, it...

      I'm not a native speaker, but from browsing reddit, understand 95% of what I read / hear. I also watch TV Shows exclusively in english. However, when i write a comment or something in english, it always feels like it doesn't really "flow".

      How can i, or other non-native speakers improve our writing skills?

      15 votes
    16. Suggestions from a new user

      Hi all. Registered several days ago and this is my first post. After reading around this group and the blog, I'm very excited for the tildes project. It's not just another reddit-style forum but...

      Hi all. Registered several days ago and this is my first post.

      After reading around this group and the blog, I'm very excited for the tildes project. It's not just another reddit-style forum but actually one of its own taste and style. I have some suggestions for the project and would like to share them with the community. They are the result of years of redditing with numerous frustrating experiences and few shower thoughts.

      1. Voting power should not be taken for granted. The ability for me to vote must be in some way tied to my contributions to the discussion. This can be implemented in a sort of formula that takes into account the user's 'score' and 'activity' which results in a finite number of votes at the user's disposal. The more you contribute the more voting power you get, and the more quality you provide in your contributions the more votes you get to use.
      2. Deleted posts or comments must be reflected in a user's score. One of the bad effects of having a user score is the tendency to 'karma whore' in order to increase that score no matter what. The result is low effort posts and comments. Having a system in place that removes from the user's score if their posts/comments get deleted would act as a constant reminder to the minimum level of quality required.
      3. Mods should not have dictator power over their groups. Sure they must have elevated accounts to run their groups, including the power to remove or ban, but they should not be invisible. There has to be an approved system where users can have the collective power to revoke the elevated account powers of a Mod if they reach a certain threshold. Not sure how to implement this exactly, may be through voting by the users of a group who have high scores or reputations. One of the cancerous ailments of reddit is the invincibility of Mods.
      4. The availability of formatting tools and embedding in posts. This is 2018 and inserting a photo, video, table in the body of a post should be easily implemented. Constrictions on the use of certain attention-grabbing formats (eg. large fonts, ascii art, emoji) should be also be implemented to deter low effort contributions.

      Here's to hoping this project flourishes into a much-needed hub for quality content and discussions on the internet.
      Cheers

      Edit: Not sure why the first point is indented or how to fix it.
      Edit2: Fixed.

      4 votes
    17. Daily Tildes discussion - general plans for the week

      Like I did last week, I'm going to use the Monday post to talk about the general plans for this week: Finish up the remaining pieces to open-source the site's code. I was hoping to get most of...

      Like I did last week, I'm going to use the Monday post to talk about the general plans for this week:

      1. Finish up the remaining pieces to open-source the site's code. I was hoping to get most of this done last week (and did get a fair amount done), but there's still some left. I'm pretty confident this will happen sometime this week.
      2. More fixes/updates that we need to be able to continue the growth smoothly. I think I figured out the issues with staying logged in, and that's definitely been a big annoyance for a lot of people. Major other ones that I want to get done soon are improvements to notifications (adding a "mark all as read" or similar), allowing people to set their default sorting options for topic lists, some improvements to make navigating large comment threads easier, and probably the beginning of some filtering/searching based on tags. I'll probably also add a couple more groups that people have been requesting.
      3. More updates to documentation and information. There are a couple of merge requests open already that I need to include, and then need to do some other updates that people have pointed out are missing or otherwise confusing.
      4. Grow some more! We've closed off the mass invite-request threads on reddit for now since we were getting way too many requests, but Tildes keeps getting mentioned in various places (like this thread today), so that's bringing in a fair amount of attention. We'll probably go for another burst later in the week, but for the moment I've given everyone 3 invite codes again that you can use to invite others (friends, or just people on reddit or other sites if you see them expressing interest or think they'd be interested). You can get the codes here: https://tildes.net/invite

      That's it for now, I think. Let me know if you have any thoughts about any of this, or recommendations for other things that need to get worked on in the near future.

      52 votes