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    1. Making an apk that just links to a Hermit Lite app

      I've been using the Hermit app for Android to make a lite app for Tildes. It's awesome. Just one main problem. Because of some Android limitation shortcuts aren't allowed to be put in the app...

      I've been using the Hermit app for Android to make a lite app for Tildes. It's awesome. Just one main problem. Because of some Android limitation shortcuts aren't allowed to be put in the app drawer. I wanted to keep it there to make everything more organized. Does anyone know if it's possible to make an apk (so it can go in the app drawer) that will just link to my Tildes lite app?

      6 votes
    2. Concatenated tags - how do they work?

      I have a question about the technicalities of tagging, now that this ability is going to be spread around. I don't understand how concatenated tags work. I've seen occasional instances of tags...

      I have a question about the technicalities of tagging, now that this ability is going to be spread around. I don't understand how concatenated tags work. I've seen occasional instances of tags that look like "abc.xyz", and I've seen technical discussions about tags like this, but I've never really been clear about what this does. What does a tag like "abc.xyz" mean? How does it work?

      7 votes
    3. Users can now be (manually) granted permissions to re-tag topics, move them between groups, and edit titles

      It's a bit late tonight (for those of us in North America, anyway) so I'm not sure how much attention this will get today or how many people I'll start granting permissions to yet, but it's now...

      It's a bit late tonight (for those of us in North America, anyway) so I'm not sure how much attention this will get today or how many people I'll start granting permissions to yet, but it's now possible for people-who-are-not-me to start helping with some moderation-like tasks.

      As of right now, these abilities are restricted to (and I can grant each individually):

      • Changing the tags on topics
      • Moving topics between groups
      • Editing topic titles (I may not actually give anyone this permission yet)

      All these actions will be logged publicly, and if any of them are taken, they'll display in the topic's sidebar, in the "Topic log" (which you have to click to expand, and will only show up at all if anything's been done). I've changed the tags on this post so that you can see an example here.

      For the immediate future, these permissions will be getting granted manually, will apply site-wide (not to specific groups), and will probably only be given to people that specifically express interest in helping with these tasks. I've written about grand, vague plans for a "trust"-based system that will hopefully help with doing this automatically in the future, but for now we'll have a more rudimentary trust system. Here's how it works:

      1. I trust you, and give you access to more powerful tools.
      2. If you abuse it, I take the tools away, and don't trust you any more.

      It's not very sophisticated, but I think it should do the trick for a while.

      So if you're interested in helping keep things organized, please let me know (post here or send me a message if you prefer). I'd probably prefer if you had at least some history of submitting well-tagged/titled topics to appropriate groups, but it's not necessarily required.

      Edit: I would prefer that you have at least been around on the site for at least a week or two though. This is mostly important because the tasks are mainly organizational, so I think it's best if you've had some time to get accustomed to what's "typical" on Tildes for tags, which types of posts go in which groups, and so on.

      109 votes
    4. Suggestion: Tag-shortcut-buttons on post create page

      So there is a basic flair in use for the nsfw and spoiler There was also a recent discussion about using tags to warn about content in posts...

      So there is a basic flair in use for the nsfw and spoiler There was also a recent discussion about using tags to warn about content in posts https://tildes.net/~tildes/50o/trigger_warning_tag_special_flair

      Would it help to have buttons for the common "standard" tags next to the Tags entry on the post creation page? So e.g. there could be an nsfw-button and a spoiler-button below the text field

      • The buttons could be styled with the same flair as the corresponding tags
      • The buttons could simply append the tag to the text in the field.

      A few plus points:

      • This would help encourage people to use these important tags correctly (they will be reminded visually that the tags exist when creating a post, and clicking the button is easy which will reduce the effort required)
      • Also it would avoid typos where e.g. someone types "nfsw" and the flair will not be applied (fyi: I had to re-read that 3 times to be sure I correctly mis-typed the word)

      And some potential downsides:

      • Might it encourage people to just click the buttons and skip correctly tagging their post?
      • If more of these "standard" tags were added it might get cluttered

      What do you think?

      5 votes
    5. A general introduction to Tildes

      Lots of new folks seem to be coming in these past days, so I wanted to make a post that compiles some useful things to know, commonly asked questions, and a general idea of tildes history (short...

      Lots of new folks seem to be coming in these past days, so I wanted to make a post that compiles some useful things to know, commonly asked questions, and a general idea of tildes history (short though it may be). Please keep in mind that tildes is still in Alpha, and many features that are usually present such as repost detection haven't been implemented yet.

      Settings

      First of all, check out the settings page if you haven't yet. It's located in your user profile, on the right sidebar. There are different themes available, the account default is the 'white' theme, which you can change. I recommend setting up account recovery in case you forget your password, and toggle marking new comments to highlight new comments in a thread. There are more features available but you should go look in the settings yourself.

      Posting

      You can post a topic by navigating to a group and clicking on the button in the right sidebar. Tildes uses markdown, if you are not familiar with it check the text formatting doc page. Please tag your post so it is easier for other people to find, and check out the topic tagging guidelines. Some posts have a topic log in the sidebar that shows what changes were done to the post since it was posted. You can see an example here. Some people have the ability to add tags to posts, edit titles, and move posts to different groups. They were given the ability by Deimos, see this post.

      Topic Tags

      You can find all posts with the same tag by clicking on a tag on a post, which will take you to an url like https://tildes.net/?tag=ask, where ask is the tag you clicked on. Replace ask with whatever tag you want to search for. You can also filter tags within a group like this: https://tildes.net/~tildes?tag=discussion, and it will only show you posts within that group. Clicking on a tag while you are in a group achieves the same effect.

      You can also filter out posts with specific tags by going to your settings and defining topic tag filters.

      Comment Tags

      Comment tags are a feature that was present in the early days of tildes, but was removed because of abuse. There were five tags you can tag on someone else's comment: joke, noise, offtopic, troll, flame. The tags have no effect on sorting or other systematic features; they were only used to inform the user on the nature of a comment. The tags would show up along with the number of people who applied them, like this: [Troll] x3, [Noise] x5

      People used these tags as a downvote against comments they disliked, and because the tags appeared at the top of a comment in bright colors, they often would bias the user before they read the comment. The abuse culminated in the first person banned on the website, and the comment tags were disabled for tweaking.

      As of September 07, 2018, the comment tags have been re-enabled and are experimented with. Any account over a week old will have access to this ability. The tagging button is located on the centre bottom of a comment. You cannot tag your own comment. Here are the comment tagging guidelines from the docs.

      Currently, the tags are: exemplary, joke, offtopic, noise, malice. The exemplary tag can only be applied once every 8 hours, and requires you to write an anonymous message to the author thanking them for their comment. Similarly, applying the malice tag requires a message explaining why the comment is malicious. The tags have different effects on the comments, which you can read about here, and here.

      Search

      The search function is fairly primitive right now. It only includes the title and text of posts and their topic tags.

      Default sorting

      The current default sorting is activity, last 3 days in the main page, activity, all time in individual groups. Activity sort bumps a post up whenever someone replies to it. 'Last 3 days' mean that only posts posted in the past 3 days will be shown. You can change your default sort by choosing a different sort method and/or time period, and clicking the 'set as default' button that will appear on the right.

      Bookmarks

      You can bookmark posts and comments. The "bookmark" button is on the bottom of posts and comments. Your bookmarked posts can be viewed through the bookmark page in your user profile sidebar. Note: to unbookmark a post, you have to refresh first.

      Extensions

      @Emerald_Knight has compiled a list of user created extensions and CSS themes here: https://gitlab.com/Emerald_Knight/awesome-tildes

      In particular, I found the browser extension Tildes Extended by @crius and @Bauke very useful. It has nifty features like jumping to new comments, markdown preview and user tagging.

      Tildes Development

      Tildes is open source and if you want to contribute to tildes development, this is what you should read: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

      For those who can't code, you might still be interested in the issue boards on Gitlab. It contains known issues, features being worked on, and plans for the future. If you have a feature in mind that you want to suggest, try looking there first to see if others have thought of it already, or are working on it.


      Tildes' Design and Mechanics

      In other words, how is it going to be different from reddit? Below are some summaries of future mechanics and inspiration for tildes' design. Note: most of the mechanics have not been implemented and are subject to change and debate.

      1. Tildes will not have conventional moderators. Instead, the moderation duties will be spread to thousands of users by the trust system. [Trust people, but punish abusers]. More info on how it works and why it is designed that way:

      2. Instead of subreddits, there are groups, a homage to Usenet. Groups will be organized hierarchically, the first and only subgroup right now is ~tildes.official. Groups will never be created by a single user, instead, they will be created based on group interest [citation needed]. For example, if a major portion of ~games consists of DnD posts and they are drowning out all the other topics, a ~games.dnd subgroup would be created - either by petition, algorithm, or both[citation needed] - to contain the posts, and those who don't like DnD can unsubscribe from ~games.dnd. There is currently no way to filter out a subgroup from the main group.

      3. Tildes is very privacy oriented. See: Haunted by data


      Tildes History/Commonly answered questions

      I recommend you check out this past introduction post by @Amarok before anything else, it's a bit outdated but contains many interesting discussions and notable events that have happened on tildes. @Bauke also tracks noteworthy events each month on his website https://til.bauke.xyz/. Also see the FAQ in the docs. Other than that, the best way for you to get an idea of how tildes changed over time is to go to ~tildes.official and look at all the past daily discussions.

      Below are some scattered links that I found interesting, informative, or important:


      If anyone thinks of a link that should be included here, post a comment with the link and I'll edit it in.

      Markdown source for this post: https://pastebin.com/Kbbh7pYU (outdated, and probably will not be updated unless someone explicitly asks for it)

      To the rest: have fun!

      57 votes
    6. Any good text adventures?

      I've been starting to play some interactive fiction and I was wondering if any of you have any suggestions for good games. So far I know about Zork and Anchorhead.

      10 votes
    7. I created an APK wrapper for Tildes if anyone wants to use it.

      If this is against the rules, I'm sorry and I'll take it down immediately. I just found it easier to use an app instead of going to the website every time I want to check out Tildes. I didn't...

      If this is against the rules, I'm sorry and I'll take it down immediately. I just found it easier to use an app instead of going to the website every time I want to check out Tildes. I didn't actually make it myself, I just used this website: https://gonative.io, so if this gets taken down you can just use that link to make one for personal use. It's on Google Drive so I think it automatically gets scanned for viruses if you're worried about that.

      Here is the link to the APK: https://goo.gl/Ynu4c7

      18 votes
    8. ~music Listening Club 9 - The Man Machine

      Sup yall, we're here in week 9! It's time for another classic record discussion: Kraftwerk's The Man Machine! (or Die Mensch-Maschine) Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your...

      Sup yall, we're here in week 9! It's time for another classic record discussion: Kraftwerk's The Man Machine! (or Die Mensch-Maschine)

      Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with The Man Machine. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

      If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

      Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment! Feel free to do something fun, dumb, or special in celebration of our tenth week!

      8 votes
    9. Black Mirror S1E03 "The Entire History of You" discussion thread

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode Black Mirror Season 1 Episode 3 - The Entire History of You In the near future, everyone has access to a memory implant that records everything...

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode

      Black Mirror Season 1 Episode 3 - The Entire History of You

      In the near future, everyone has access to a memory implant that records everything humans do, see and hear.

      Black Mirror Netflix link


      Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

      You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!


      This is the last episode of season 1. I hope everyone is enjoying it so far!

      If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

      • How does the title relate to the episode itself?
      • Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
      • Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?
      15 votes
    10. Two-factor authentication is now available

      Another excellent open-source contribution has been deployed today - @oden has added two-factor authentication support (via TOTP apps like Google Authenticator). Here's the code, if anyone wants...

      Another excellent open-source contribution has been deployed today - @oden has added two-factor authentication support (via TOTP apps like Google Authenticator). Here's the code, if anyone wants to take a look.

      If you want to set it up for your account, the link is available on the settings page. If you do, please please please write down or store the backup codes that it gives you after you enable it. If your phone dies or you otherwise lose access to your 2FA device, you won't be able to recover access to your Tildes account.

      On that note, I wanted to ask for input about whether I should be willing to bypass 2FA for people if they've set up the email-based account recovery. People will lose access to their 2FA device and not have the backup codes, and I don't know if just telling them that I can't help them is truly the best thing to do. Allowing it to be bypassed does lower the security, but sometimes it's a reasonable trade-off. One possibility is adding a security option that people could enable for maximum security, like "Do not bypass 2FA for me under any circumstance, I promise that I've kept my backup codes".

      Let me know what you think about that, as well as if you have any concerns or notice any issues with the feature. Thanks again, @oden!

      74 votes
    11. How malleable are personality traits, if at all?

      Under the right inputs opinions and worldviews can be changed relatively easily, but what about the more subtle stuff underneath? Can a workaholic with a strong drive later in life become...

      Under the right inputs opinions and worldviews can be changed relatively easily, but what about the more subtle stuff underneath? Can a workaholic with a strong drive later in life become lethargic? Can an innately introverted person later in life become innately extroverted?

      Those aren't the best examples, but that said my intuition would be that these tendencies are too deep rooted to be significantly altered and can only be superficially mitigated against one way or another.

      If this is to a degree incorrect I'd love to hear some anecdotes.

      10 votes