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    1. New "voted" formatting - less improved

      I notice that the formatting of my "voted" status on topics has changed. It used to be that, when I had voted on a topic, its vote count displayed with a solid purple block (I'm using Solarized...

      I notice that the formatting of my "voted" status on topics has changed. It used to be that, when I had voted on a topic, its vote count displayed with a solid purple block (I'm using Solarized Light). This distinguished it from topics I had not voted on, which displayed a blue box around the vote count.

      This morning, the vote counts for topics I have voted on are displayed with just a single purple line to their left, while the unvoted topics still display the blue box.

      This change means that my "voted on" and "not voted on" topics aren't easily distinguishable again, like before the change to the big purple box. Again, it's confusing to work out whether or not I have voted on a topic.

      50 votes
    2. Comment tags now affect sorting, more changes coming

      After re-enabling comment tags a little over a week ago and starting to experiment with some effects, I'm going to be adding some more and continuing to adjust as I keep an eye on how they're...

      After re-enabling comment tags a little over a week ago and starting to experiment with some effects, I'm going to be adding some more and continuing to adjust as I keep an eye on how they're being used so far.

      I've just deployed an update that changes the default comment sorting method to one named "relevance" (subject to change, suggestions welcome). This mostly acts like the previous default of "most votes", but also takes into account whether comments have been tagged as certain types. As with the other tagging effects so far, these effects will probably be adjusted or may even be completely changed as we see how they work in practice, but for now:

      • If multiple users tag a comment as "noise" or "off-topic", it will be sorted below comments without those tags. That is, comments that are not noise or off-topic will be prioritized above off-topic ones, and off-topic will be above noise.
      • In addition, comments tagged as "joke" will act as though their vote count is halved. This will just help with de-emphasizing joke comments a bit for now, but I definitely still plan to have filtering/collapsing behavior attached to them eventually
      • The "troll" and "flame" tags still don't have any inherent functionality yet, but I've been using them a little like a reporting function in the background so far, so those tags are helpful to me for pointing out comments that may need attention.

      Let me know what you think of these changes or if you notice anywhere that they seem to be working poorly. There should be more updates and changes to the comment-tagging system coming this week as well, based on suggestions and observations so far.

      73 votes
    3. Should comments be locked after a topic is inactive for a period of time?

      Since activity is the default view when looking at tildes, it seems like bumping a topic all the way to the top after each new comment can get a little abusive after the topic has existed for...

      Since activity is the default view when looking at tildes, it seems like bumping a topic all the way to the top after each new comment can get a little abusive after the topic has existed for quite a while.

      I'm thinking there should be some sort of restriction that after a topic has been inactive for a certain amount of time, it does one of four things:

      1. It closes. New comments cannot be added, but votes can still be added.
      2. A warning appears upon clicking the reply or add new comment button, warning the user that this will bump the topic, maybe giving the option of a silent reply. (no bumping)
      3. As topics progress in age (think more than a week), new comments bump less and less on the list as the topic becomes less relevant.
      4. As a plugin to the trust system, only users with high enough trust can bump topics after a certain date.
      8 votes
    4. Crazy Idea: What if we remove traditional voting on comments entirely?

      Tildes already replaces some of the functionality of downvoting with its tags (troll, flame, off-topic). What if we replaced voting with "positive" tags: helpful, interesting, etc.? This would...

      Tildes already replaces some of the functionality of downvoting with its tags (troll, flame, off-topic). What if we replaced voting with "positive" tags: helpful, interesting, etc.? This would play off of people's indecision when faced with multiple options. A binary decision is very easy - upvoting vs. downvoting. But if you just want to vote on something because it backs up your political opinion you might pause to think for a second if you need to declare the comment "interesting".

      The number of positive tags could still be aggregated into a score. Perhaps we could list the positive tags at the bottom of the comment e.g.: "10 x helpful, 5 x interesting".

      26 votes
    5. Starting to experiment a little with using data scraped from the destination of link topics

      This is very minor so far, but I think it's good to have a topic devoted to it so that people have somewhere to discuss it, instead of having it come up randomly in topics that it applies to. I've...

      This is very minor so far, but I think it's good to have a topic devoted to it so that people have somewhere to discuss it, instead of having it come up randomly in topics that it applies to.

      I've recently started scraping some data about the destination of link topics using Embedly's "Extract" API (Embedly was kind enough to give me a reasonable amount of free usage since Tildes is a non-profit). You can put in the url of an article/video/etc. on that page to get an idea of what sort of data I can get from it, if you'd like to see for yourself.

      I've only just started tinkering with it, and so far the data is only being used in two small ways:

      1. Tweets now display the entire text of the tweet on the topic listing page, similar to the "excerpt" from text topics. You can see an example here.

      2. On topic listings, the date that an article was published will be shown (after the domain name) if the publication date was at least 3 days before it was submitted. There are a few examples in the recent posts in ~misc

        I'll probably adjust this threshold, but I'd like it to be an amount of time where the age of the content might feel "significant". It would also be possible to just show this info all the time, but I think the topic listings are already fairly cluttered so it's probably best to hide it when it's not interesting/significant.

      As I said, these are very tiny changes so far, but there are lots of other possibilities that I hope to start using before long. I've mentioned this before, but something I'd really like to do overall is try to bring in more data about the links where it's possible to be able to show things like the lengths of videos and so on.

      Let me know if you have any thoughts about it or notice any issues, thanks.

      57 votes
    6. the emo rap deep dive - chapter two: dirt

      welcome back, class! i'm actually kinda having fun with this project lmao. dive into the comments and let me know what you lot are thinking! this is the second installation in, what i believe will...

      welcome back, class!

      i'm actually kinda having fun with this project lmao. dive into the comments and let me know what you lot are thinking! this is the second installation in, what i believe will be, a four part series. enjoy!

      in the last chapter, we learned a little about how rap in the 90's began to get a bit more introspective, self-reflective, and focus on some generally harsher, more grating topics. while all eras definitely have their hype music (see: "Nuthin' But a G Thang" x Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg or "Slob on my Knob" x Three 6 Mafia, we slowly began to see songs like "Slippin'" x DMX or "Rock Bottom" x Eminem which slowly began the trend of rappers using their music to really peel back the curtains of their lives, using their music as an escape into catharsis from their daily struggles.

      however, emo rap does seem to have something else happening inside of it. it's not just simply sad or emotionally-charged rap music, that's been around for quite a long time! what's that extra layer that gives us the gritty, rough, and often-whiney nature to modern emo rap? for that, we turn to the name of the genre itself.


      not only did the 90's prove as a time of great growth and evolution in rap, but it saw the expolsion of a new genre of rock music as well. with roots set in the 80's, emo rock first gained major commercial popularity with bands like Green Day and The Offspring quickly moving albums to the tops of the charts with songs like, respectively, "She" and "Self Esteem". as the genre fell face-first into the zeitgeist, we quickly saw a rise of early emo rock groups like Lifetime, Jimmy Eat World, and one of the most influential early emo groups - Texas is the Reason. throughout the decade, the prophecy foretold by the Rolling Stones in their track "Paint it Black" quickly began to unfold. teenagers were wearing black, goth kids slowly started to emerge from the depths of the underworld, and hot topic was finally starting to make money. the foundations and roots of emo have been set, ready and waiting to lead us into the 21st century.


      the year is 2000, and pretty much everything is fucking awesome. we see the launch of the indestructible classic Nokia 3310. we get video games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and of course, Pokemon Gold and Silver. the billboard charts are full names that make us go "oh yeah!" like Destiny's Child, Aaliyah, Erykah Badu, Montell Jordan, 3 Doors Down, Backstreet Boys, Creed, Madonna, and the list goes on and on and on.

      the 2000s saw an absolute unit of a revival of the newly restructured emo genre, quickly launching off massively influential tracks like "All the Small Things" x Blink 182, and we even see the creation of the first emo-centric record labels across the late-nineties and early naughts. this means that a lot of the emo bands of the time had not only better representation and access to the innerworkings of the industry, but better access to resources which would help them promote and distribute themselves as well - this is what allowed a lot of bands to leap and bound right into the hot topic t-shirt wall.

      one of the bigger labels we came to see was Vagrant records, moving to quickly sign groups like The Get Up Kids, Hot Rod Circuit, Dashboard Confessional, and Saves the Day. with the internet in their toolbox, some major corporate sponsorships funding the whole gig, and a huge amount of confidence in the future of emo, Vagrant set out on what's considered to be one of the most influential projects in the (still) early days of emo when they launched a nationwide tour with every band in their label in tow.

      shortly thereafter, Jimmy Eat World launches the biggest single of their career "The Middle", Dashboard Confessional break heavy into the mainstream, and Madison Square Garden goes absolutely wild for Saves The Day, Blink-182, Green Day, and Weezer.

      emo is starting to get big, and people are starting to realize that there's money to be made here.


      this brings us now to the mid-ish 2000s. everyone's on myspace, everyone's got a motorola razr, everyone's getting into skating or bmx, and every chick with jetblack black hair or fishnets is going absolutely fucking crazy over Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco. this is the part where the big money steps in and major record labels start signing a lot of emo bands left and right. this massive cash injection into the industry saw the rise of a lot of bands which would go on to not only define the industry, but to define the middle school and high school lives of a great number of their listeners. as the emo singularity entered the phase of it's big bang, we saw the rise of a number of stars like Taking Back Sunday, Simple Plan, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and many many many deep breath many others.

      fueled by industry investments, teen angst, and a desire to be different, this led to an explosive rise in popularity for the genre, with many songs quickly moving to RIAA gold/platinum status and Billboard chart success like "Misery Business" x Paramore, "Miss Murder" x AFI, or "Check Yes Juliet" x We The Kings. this massive influx of success inspired some of the best parties, most genuine moments, and most cringiest photographs of our many young lives. very frequently this music was used as an escape for those who felt that their problems were going otherwise unrecognized or misunderstood, who felt that they were sad or alone, who hated the seeming lack of control that they had in their own lives - constantly living under the legislature of parents, school systems, or cops that always seemed to hate us edgy confrontational teenagers.

      however, like Sam Smith would come to say, "too much of a good thing won't be good for long." what happens when a star shines too bright? what happens after a supernova?

      things go dark.

      it's now that we begin to enter the part of this whole movement that we've all repressed - and it starts with bracelets.


      sigh.

      it's 2010-ish.

      vuvuzelas are hilarious, "TiK ToK" x Ke$ha is topping charts, and highschools everywhere are full of Silly Bandz and sex bracelets. we've reached a point of absolute pop culture saturation with the emo vogue. while songs of the previous era like "Welcome to the Black Parade" (linked earlier) or "Dirty Little Secret" x The All-American Rejects still hold an anthemic position in the musical zeitgeist, by and large, emo simply was no longer enough. the all-black motif was drab and dark. the music didn't cut deep enough, the lyrics didn't hit hard enough, the vocals weren't powerful enough. we needed something stronger, something more powerful.

      this desire for harder hitting music led to an underground rise of hardcore bands like La Dispute and Pianos Become the Teeth. these bands were very much hitting in the right direction, blending the angst and yearning of modern emo music with the strength of metal instrumentals and vocals hit home with a good number of people still looking to hold onto the last bastions of the emo movement.

      and, as we've seen before, as this demographic loves to live fast and hard, the remodeled emo genre quickly skyrocketed into popularity with bands like Asking Alexandria, Bring Me The Horizon, and A Day to Remember rushing to the forefront of the movement. the rough, gritty nature of the instrumentals paired with the phenomenally screamed vocals seemed to add several more layers of separation between what we were listening to, and the "traditional" music we had been brought up listening to. this was new, this was edgy, but more importantly, this was ours. this was music that we knew the lyrics to, music that we could sing along with because we'd teach ourselves how to scream-sing when we had the house to ourselves, and music that, most importantly, we were pretty damn sure our parents weren't going to get into. they started using myspace, we left for facebook - abandoning the customized purple, black, and sparkly profile pages of yore.

      however, there was something missing here. this was music we could connect to, sure. we were glad to have the songs we did to relate with! even still, we got greedy. connecting to it wasn't enough. we needed music we could fuck to. we needed eyecandy. we needed music that was brutal, strong, and beyond comprehension. we got gluttonous.

      now we begin to enter the scene age. flashy colors and attitudes replace the black nature of the previous era. ostentatiously hardocre and brutal instrumentals (or alternatively, very pop-y, electronically inspired instrumentals) back vocals sang by artists who's image was crafted under nature and umbrella of being unconventionally attractive to this new audience. this led to projects such as "You Aint No Family" x iwrestledabearonce, "Sex Ed Rocks!" x SMOSH & ISETMYFRIENDSONFIRE, and (oh god,) "Bree Bree" x Brokencyde.

      i know my language here is pretty overtly negative, not to make it seem like i hate every band from this era. i actaully like iwrestledabearonce, and a lot of these bands hold a great amount of nostalgia in my life. tracks like "Knives and Pens" x Black Veil Brides were anthemic of this late-stage emo-rock era, checking a good number of the boxes above, and drawing attention to the struggles of people of this era. for example, it can be said that the way emo-rap heavily goes about drawing attention to drug use/abuse is very analogous to the way that a lot of this late-stage emo rock draws attention to self-expression and self-harm.

      this era was loud while it was here, and saw the popularity of a lot of projects like the following before it quickly died out around 2014/2015:

      We Butter The Bread With Butter

      "Wake Up" x Suicide Silence

      Pierce The Veil

      Sleeping With Sirens

      and, often, scene music held no semblance of it's metal roots at all! you may remember hits of the era like "DON'T TRUST ME" x 3OH3!, "Shake It!" x Metro Station, "Good Girls Go Bad" x Cobra Starship, or "Sexting" x Blood on the Dance Floor.


      palette cleanser: "Dirty Diana" x Michael Jackson (The Weeknd Cover)

      so here we've arrived. the year is 2014, and the billboard is topped with pharrell, meghan trainor's debut single, "Shake It Off" x Taylor Swift, and the debut tracks from the likes of Lorde and Sam Smith.

      ...and some guy named Young Thug?

      Wait, who's this Bobby Shmurda guy?

      2 Chainz?

      YG?

      something's a-changing... where's the industry headed?

      find out next time on the emo rap deep dive - chapter three: dirty sprite.

      12 votes
    7. I just spent about an hour trying to have a civil discussion on Reddit, to no end. It really makes me appreciate Tildes.

      Everything I said was heavily downvoted, even though I was making valid points and 90% of the replies were mockery or useless dribble. The few people that attempted to engage in discussion with me...

      Everything I said was heavily downvoted, even though I was making valid points and 90% of the replies were mockery or useless dribble. The few people that attempted to engage in discussion with me were either just has heavily downvoted as me (even though their views were opposing mine) or were unable to do it in a logical or civil manor. It wasn't even a really controversial topic, my opinion is just something that is in contrast of the greater "hivemind".

      I know we are not where I think most of us would like to be just yet, but I had not been back on Reddit for a while and I feel like I made a good decision by distancing myself from the Reddit community. I really enjoy the community we are building here.

      Anyway, I kinda just felt like I needed to post this. I know it's not really high quality content (and I honestly had no clue where to post it), but I wanted you guys to know I appreciate all of you.

      39 votes
    8. Topic tag filtering question

      I was testing topic tag filtering and it didn't seem to work as I expected. I was trying to filter out a topic with a main.sub style tag, but without a main tag. I set the filter to main expecting...

      I was testing topic tag filtering and it didn't seem to work as I expected.

      I was trying to filter out a topic with a main.sub style tag, but without a main tag.

      I set the filter to main expecting everything nested undeneath that to be hidden, but it did not.

      Is that just not implemented yet, or am I just not understanding the feature correctly?

      6 votes
    9. the emo rap deep dive - by earlgreytea. chapter one: sprite.

      howdy there folks! there's been a new breed of rap/hip-hop coursing through the industry in recent years. some songs riding the wave up to the crest in the industry, and gaining some popularity,...

      howdy there folks!

      there's been a new breed of rap/hip-hop coursing through the industry in recent years. some songs riding the wave up to the crest in the industry, and gaining some popularity, some artists intermingled in major controversy, and most relevantly, a lot of really sad late-millenial-early-gen-z kids getting together to cry in the dark, hug each other, dance until their bodies hurt, and get absolutely fucked up.

      this wave, as you can tell by the title of the post and my ceaseless, shitty, un-asked-for poetry, is that of

      #emo rap.

      (edit: as i was writing this i realized that i started to write for a really long time, so i'm just going to leave this at chapter one for now. if you want me to keep going, or if you saw any big ol' lies in here, feel free to let me know in the comments downstairs!)


      chapter one - sprite. the crisp history of emo rap.

      the modern evolution of emo rap is a lovechild of two unexpected homes - the montagues and the capulets. (sorry.)

      the first origin source is from exactly what the name of the genre suggests - emotional rap. in the 90s, the world of rap was vastly different than it is today. rock music was very much still the cultural zeitgeist, most kids daydreamed of being rockstars, and rap lyrics could be seen bouncing between the usual subjects: struggles of racism/classism, or bragging rights over the monetary, the loud, and the beautiful. the quality of life in the inner cities or housing projects, who had the best shooters, gang representation (east side / west side), or just how damn good weed is.

      it goes without saying that, since the birth of the genre, rap has had the capacity to be very introspective and reflective on the lifestyle and living conditions of the artist who'd penned the track. however - it, to my knowledge, was not all that common to see artists focusing on internal struggles, the pressures they faced to succeed financially for the sake of themselves and their families, the pressures they faced to perform well under their labels.

      very early examples of these more self-reflective types of songs come from the big dogs themselves.

      "Trapped" x Tupac Shakur speaks very much on the idea of being "trapped" inside of his neighborhood. this very politically charged song gets right into the perspective of Pac himself, and more importantly, the raw emotion flowing through his head as he looks around his day to day.

      "Suicidal Thoughts" x Notorious B.I.G Biggie himself coming out with one of his most vulnerable tracks he'd ever produced. this relatively short song proves to be very dense and curt, with the man himself talking about how he doesn't believe he's fit to get into heaven, how he believes his mom would have rather aborted him, and contemplating the effects that his death would have on those around him.

      tracks like these set the stage for the next wave of introspective rappers to take the stand, and interestingly enough, our three biggest culprits all seemed to be involved in some form or fashion in the music of the others.

      jumping from the nineties to the naughts, we see our next field of rappers entering stage right - kanye west, kid cudi, and drake.

      one of the first major albums to set the stage for the emo rap that we very well could see carrying the rap torch into the next decade, was none other than kanye west's "808s and Heartbreak". with features from kid cudi, we see kanye exploring a lot of heartbreak, loss, and loneliness on this record. for example, we've got tracks like "Bad News" where it seems like ye recants moments of his finding infidelity in the girl of his dreams, with lyrics like

      Didn't you know
      I was waiting on you
      Waiting on a dream
      That'll never come true
      
      ...
      
      Oh you just gonna
      Keep another love for you
      Oh you just gonna
      Keep it like you never knew
      

      over the next two years after 808s' release, we see cudi come out with a series of small records under his "man on the moon" project, featuring absolute earworms like "Day N' Night" and some of his deepest work like "Soundtrack 2 My Life". over the course of the project we hear cudi very often speaking on topics like depression, the death of his dad, and lots of drugs that were used as a means of escape from his own head.

      and in the next year, drake drops what (i would) consider to be his big-break record "Take Care". after his debut album saw a good deal of commercial success, and got drake a good amount of fame for himself, "Take Care" as an album serves as a bit of cathartic introspection for a young drizzy - often touching on topics like failed relationships, materialism, and loneliness. (mostly though, a lot of heartbreak. i think this is the album that gained drake a lot of negative attention in the rap community for being "soft", and "a bitch". i disagree, but hey, toxic masculinity, what ya gonna do.)

      the most notable songs off of take care came to be "Marvin's Room" with lines like

      Guess she don't have the time to kick it no more
      Flights in the morning
      What you doing that's so important?
      I've been drinking so much
      That I'ma call you anyway and say
      Fuck that nigga that you love so bad
      

      and of course, the title song of the album "Take Care" featuring topics of trust, heartbreak, and this yearning for someone's heart, at the expense of your own emotional wellbeing.

      'Cause that truth hurts, and those lies heal
      And you can't sleep thinking that he lies still
      So you cry still, tears all in the pillow case
      Big girls all get a little taste
      Pushing me away so I give her space
      Dealing with a heart that I didn't break
      

      and with these tracks leading us well into 2012, it's officially been made socially acceptable for rap to reach this level of introspection. yes, you will still catch shit for being "soft" (though less-so nowadays i find), but with absolute industry influencers like ye, cudi, and drizzy, it would be hard to argue that there's no place for this kind of music or these kinds of lyrics in the modern rap scene.

      the tone has been set, and we look onward to the next six years of rap music. what's to come of it? will there be more heavy r&b influence like we saw in Take Care? will electronic beats like we saw in 808s, or futuristic production styles like we had in Man in the Moon take charge? will these trendsetters who have now allowed rap to get interpersonal, raw, and introspective in a new field be paired with some new, unexpected style and add a brand new face to the game?

      join us next time for chapter two: dirt.

      bishop.

      14 votes
    10. I just received a Fisher Space Pen and I'm as happy as a Jujube

      Look at this beauty I've been wanting a cool pen that I could carry around and for the price I've read that these ones are the best to acquire (Zebra F-701 was a strong contender but I saw so many...

      Look at this beauty

      I've been wanting a cool pen that I could carry around and for the price I've read that these ones are the best to acquire (Zebra F-701 was a strong contender but I saw so many people "modding" them that it looked like it would require some extra effort).

      For all the shit that goes in this world and all the toxicity on the internet, I'm fascinated by how easy it is to find a forum dedicated only to pens. It's just marvelous. Like I know it sounds stupid, but it's almost fucking magic. I remember growing up my only source of esoteric information like "what is the best pen for me" was Gabe, the guy in the paper store next to my parents' apartment, who spent the day reading magazines about modeling, arts and crafts, etc.

      That is also why I am so excited about tildes. If we manage to minimize toxic behavior while increasing in content, this could be like having specialized Gabes about different topics, like going to your local store and seeing that friendly face that tells you "what's up boss" and just gives you info about the best socks you'll ever see, or the most obscure way to buy great glasses for cheap. I was just reading the thread on non-tech workers. Imagine if we could share our knowledge without putting our egos in the middle, how much power we could attain if we just stop clashing against each other. Like for example I just learned a bit about the world of pulp novels thanks to @koan and they are like "oh yeah I write maybe a novel a month no big deal" wtf!!!! And they are freaking humble about it!! I'm sorry I'm melting down a bit here but sometimes it feels like everyone takes this stuff for granted and then proceeds to behave like assholes (especially when I browse reddit or facebook feeds) and it makes me so angry and sad.

      /rant

      But for real, stop and think about the internet sometimes, it's like stopping and looking at the stars and realizing how vast the universe is.

      23 votes
    11. Reddit, Tildes and their culture/behavior surrounding jokes. What are your thoughts on them?

      Do you sometimes find yourself typing up a joke reply typical of Reddit but then remember this is Tildes and stop? I do it quite often (less and less the more time I spend on the site, however)....

      Do you sometimes find yourself typing up a joke reply typical of Reddit but then remember this is Tildes and stop? I do it quite often (less and less the more time I spend on the site, however).

      I'm even doing it less and less on Reddit itself. Like, yeah, the puns is one of the things I used to love about Reddit the most when I first joined. But that's sort of the problem.

      There's always new people joining and finding the beaten-to-death jokes hilarious and so they upvote them. Which means, after one year or two 90% of Reddit jokes are old to you and have been repeated ad nauseam.

      Not only that, but since they're a quick and sure way to gain others' approval (via karma) people often try to force them anywhere. No matter how inappropriate they are at that time, how forced and out of place they look. To the point that they're often the first child comment of serious comments asking serious questions.

      Which means that if you're interested in reading the serious answer to that question you have scroll down past the joke, and that's even provided there's an actual answer. And I'm pretty sure many questions are left unanswered because whoever has a relevant serious answer won't feel like wasting their time typing up a reply no one will see because it will be buried under the joke reply.

      With that said, what do you think of “silly” or “witty” jokes on Tildes? Do you think they should be encouraged? Discouraged? That nothing should be done about them? What about the ones that get repeated ad nauseam, are they even controllable?

      I also just remembered there was talk about introducing a “joke” tag that would allow users to not see them if they don't want to or to see only jokes if they so wish. What do you think of this tag proposal? I think it could be very, very useful.


      Disclaimer:

      There is a chance that some users will interpret this post as some form of rant or an attempt at policing the site even further. I just want to state that my objective with this post is to spark a general and open discussion about this topic, to gauge the opinions of other users and get a feel for what the general community thinks about them (if there's an overwhelming majority that shares an opinion, or if the community is highly fragmented with regards to the topic and if so, in what proportions... etc), to see if there's anything that we can do about it or if there's anything that should be done at all, for example. I am not trying to spark controversy or drama and I mean my post to be one that's constructive, friendly, in good faith and respectful and not on that's toxic or negative or disrespectful.

      40 votes
    12. Japan starts space elevator experiments

      Article: https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/japan-starts-space-elevator-experiments-2018-08/ HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17898152 I know some people here have...

      Article: https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/japan-starts-space-elevator-experiments-2018-08/

      HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17898152

      I know some people here have strong opinions about space travel, which came up during the Elon Musk topics on Tildes. I wonder if, based on the limited information we have, people think Japan is taking the right approach with the space elevator; whether the cost estimate ($9 billion) sounds reasonable; and if you think they can succeed?

      21 votes
    13. Feature proposal: Real-time moderation transparency page (vote in comments)

      Proposal: Create a new page where all users can view all moderation actions. This would make transparency a core part of the platform, hopefully avoiding any misunderstandings about mod actions. A...

      Proposal:
      Create a new page where all users can view all moderation actions. This would make transparency a core part of the platform, hopefully avoiding any misunderstandings about mod actions.

      A new page, maybe called tildes.net/moderation, is available to all registered users. I am not sure where the link to should appear on the site, maybe on the user's profile sidebar?

      This page contains a table of all possible moderation actions. The actions may include: deleted topics, deleted comments, tag modification, moved topics, edited topic titles, banned user, locked topics. (this begs the question, what are the possible mod actions, and that they must be codified.)

      Very roughly, the table columns might include: Date, User(being mod'ed), Mod Action(a list of possible mod actions), Mod Action Reason (either a text field, or a list of possible reasons for this action), Link (null if action is a deleted topic.)

      I think that the user who did the moderating should not be publicly listed for now, to avoid drama?


      Some of the related Topics: (please make a top-level comment with any others)

      Could we have a stickied list of all bans with reasons included?

      Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban


      Please vote for the comment which best reflects your position on this proposal.
      As a bonus question, please make a top-level comment if you have general comment about my format of voting on comments. Would you prefer a straw poll on a 3rd party platform? Is there a cleaner way to do this?

      Edit: added "banned user" to actions list, I probably missed others, let me know. Also added the obvious locked topics.

      23 votes
    14. What are you reading this week? #1

      What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about. Edit: I have two "votes" currently, including mine, for the...

      What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about.

      Edit: I have two "votes" currently, including mine, for the questions below. Currently I have 2 votes for bi-weekly, two for on Fridays, and the other voter has agreed that I keep making these posts. So, I've scheduled the next "What are you reading this week?" discussion for the 14th Sep Fri.

      P.S.: This is the first instance of what I want to make a weekly recurring topic. I've asked here yesterday whether would people like it, and because that suggestion was supported w/ upvotes and comments, I decided to go ahead and start doing this. Because this is the first such topic, I'd be glad if you could answer these questions too: (1) weekly, biweekly or monthly; (2) on fridays or on mondays; (3) who should post these topics, me, or someone else? Any suggestions and objections are welcome!

      My intention is that I post this topic every Friday from now on, with these contents (w/o the postcriptum here), and usually start it out with a comment on what I'm reading. IDK if the discussion on moderators is concluded and what sort of a decision has been made, but in any way if you think someone other than me would be a better fit for doing this, please tell me.

      33 votes
    15. Weekly / monthly obscure books topic?

      Edit: Or, preferably, just a "What are you reading this week/month?" sort-of topic, per the suggestion of the commenters. I've just stumpled upon this topic where people shared some "obscure"...

      Edit: Or, preferably, just a "What are you reading this week/month?" sort-of topic, per the suggestion of the commenters.

      I've just stumpled upon this topic where people shared some "obscure" books they've read. I think that that sort of topic would be nice as a recurring feature. Do you share my view? If yes, how would we go about actually doing it?

      11 votes
    16. Standardising tags: "eu" or "europe"?

      Are we using "eu" or "europe" for topics about Europe? I think we need to pick one or the other. I prefer "europe". EDIT The people have spoken, and the vast majority is in favour of "europe" (not...

      Are we using "eu" or "europe" for topics about Europe? I think we need to pick one or the other.

      I prefer "europe".


      EDIT

      The people have spoken, and the vast majority is in favour of "europe" (not "eu") for topics related to continental Europe. Topics related to the European Union itself can be tagged "europe.eu" (as per @nothis' excellent suggestion.

      14 votes
    17. If you have the "mark new comments" feature enabled, old comments will now be collapsed when returning to a thread

      The "mark new comments" feature (which isn't enabled by default) has two main functions: From the listing pages, it shows which topics have new comments (and how many) On the comments page, it...

      The "mark new comments" feature (which isn't enabled by default) has two main functions:

      • From the listing pages, it shows which topics have new comments (and how many)
      • On the comments page, it puts an orange stripe down the left side of the new comments

      These are both extremely useful (and you should probably enable it if you don't already have it on), but it was still a bit hard to find the new comments in larger threads, even with them marked. You had to just scroll around and look for the orange stripes.

      I've deployed a new update now that makes it so that when you go back to a thread that has new comments, all the old comments will be collapsed, except for the direct parents of the new ones. I've also updated the appearance of collapsed comments so that you can see the first part of the text of the collapsed comments.

      No behavior will change if you're not using the "mark new comments" feature, and if visit a thread for the first time or go back to a thread with no new comments, all comments will be expanded as normal. Remember that you can also use the new "expand all comments" button added last week to quickly uncollapse all comments if you want to.

      Edit: And if you really don't like it, you can disable it now with the second checkbox at the bottom of the settings page: https://tildes.net/settings/comment_visits

      Let me know what you think, and if you notice any issues. This should make navigating large threads a lot easier, and there are also some other interesting possibilities with the "individually collapsed" comments that I'm going to be working on soon. One thing I definitely want to do is add an indication of how many comments are in a particular collapsed chain, since right now you can't distinguish a single collapsed comment from one with (potentially many) replies.

      81 votes
    18. Lets take a personality test!

      One of my favorite topics in Psychology is personality and there happens to be a very good Five Factor test that is free to the public domain with all 3,000+ items available for download. Some...

      One of my favorite topics in Psychology is personality and there happens to be a very good Five Factor test that is free to the public domain with all 3,000+ items available for download. Some notes about the IPIP NEO-PI:

      Purpose of this On-Line Inventory

      • The primary purpose of this on line inventory is to educate the public about the five factor model of personality.
      • More specifically, the report explains the likely consequences of one's standing on five broad personality domains.
      • These broad domains cover normal differences in personality that should be obvious to people who know you well.
      • Secondarily, this inventory estimates your standing on the 5 broad domains and 30 subdomains of personality.
      • The inventory does not reveal hidden, secret information about you nor does it assess serious psychological disorders.
      • The report is designed to be objective, not pleasing or flattering.
      • Measurement error, misunderstandings, carelessness, and mischievous responding can invalidate the report.
      • If knowledgeable acquaintances disagree with the test results, then the results are wrong.

      Link to the questionnaire:
      https://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/

      More about the International Personality Item Pool:

      https://ipip.ori.org/

      24 votes
    19. 100‐Word Writing Challenge № 2: “I can see [them], but [they] cannot see me.”

      We now have the opportunity to continue our 100-word writing prompt fun :) @Kat, the initiator of this writing club, nominated me as her successor as this round's topic keeper (or if we allow some...

      We now have the opportunity to continue our 100-word writing prompt fun :)

      @Kat, the initiator of this writing club, nominated me as her successor as this round's topic keeper (or if we allow some fantasy, the "queen of stories", as in the Decameron). I'm very happy, honoured, nervous ... and so eager to read your contributions!

      As a reminder of the rules, let us make the written piece exactly 100 words. Next weekend, I'll pass the garland to one of the writers, and they'll become the monarch of stories, bring to us a new topic.

      This week's prompt is in the title:

      I can see [them], but [they] cannot see me.

      Here the pronoun they, in the brackets, is a generic one. It can be anyone, anything, or ... let us know :)

      11 votes
    20. Feature Request: Can we get a reply button at the top of every post?

      I spend far too much time looking for a reply button before I realise I have to scroll to the bottom. Also, it'd be a lot less work in big threads, where you might be scrolling for a while to get...

      I spend far too much time looking for a reply button before I realise I have to scroll to the bottom.
      Also, it'd be a lot less work in big threads, where you might be scrolling for a while to get to the reply box.
      Yes, I'm that lazy.
      I noticed that sometimes I don't engage if it's a big thread because of this, if the topic being discussed is only of passing interest for example.

      4 votes
    21. Lets discuss tags, again

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each...

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags

      I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each one I thought I'd make a few top level comments instead, hopefully with others doing the same for anything tag related they'd like to see discussed.

      20 votes
    22. The most forgotten rule of Tildes, and why I'm leaving

      I considered sending this only as a PM to Deimos, but since it actually involves the community and Deimos has no real control over it, I think it's better suited as a public post. Users are always...

      I considered sending this only as a PM to Deimos, but since it actually involves the community and Deimos has no real control over it, I think it's better suited as a public post.

      Users are always quick to point to the "paradox of tolerance" clause in the Tildes vision:

      Tildes will not be a victim of the paradox of tolerance; my philosophy is closer to "if your website's full of assholes, it's your fault".

      But I believe there's an even more important clause, right in the actual Tildes Docs:

      If people treat each other in good faith and apply charitable interpretations, everyone's experience improves. (emphasis mine)

      A lot of users here, including some well-known power users, are quick to call "Hate!" where there is no actual hate. Controversial statements are quickly interpreted to their most extreme. Yes, there have been some hateful incidents here and I won't deny that, but a lot of well-meaning discussions are lumped into the mix and shut down because they might lead to hate or because they are associated with hate.

      Honest discussions, political or otherwise, can't be had in a climate like this. Echo chamber, hivemind, circlejerk... call it whatever, but that's where things are heading.

      For the record, I absolutely agree with this part of the Tildes vision, as written by Deimos:

      I believe that it's possible to support the ability to freely discuss important and controversial topics without also being obligated to allow threats, harassment, and hate speech.

      Threats, harassment, and hate speech have no place anywhere. But sadly, instead of supporting controversial topics as written, it seems certain topics will have no place here because they are controversial. Tildes right now is not the Tildes we were promised, and seems to be veering further away by the day.

      If this is the Tildes everyone wants, that's fine of course. But to me, it's no better than Reddit.

      46 votes
    23. Should deleting comments be the standard behaviour, or can we consider a less censored approach by default?

      I often stumble in to threads with entire comment chains deleted. I assume most people here have faced the same situation as well, either here or on reddit. I'd like to see a move to locking...

      I often stumble in to threads with entire comment chains deleted. I assume most people here have faced the same situation as well, either here or on reddit.

      I'd like to see a move to locking comments rather than deleting them by default. That would mean no further replies to the comment or any other comment in that chain, no one being able to delete or edit their comments, no one being able to add or remove votes to a comment, etc.

      I understand for particularly egregious comments removal is completely necessary (especially when it goes hand-in-hand with banning users), but a lot of times comments are deleted as a means to prevent long argumentative back-and-forth chains that spam and derail topics, as well as antagonize users.

      In a lot of cases I feel like deleting the comment only further serves to hide what is unacceptable behaviour (even if that behaviour should be obvious), rather than setting an example for the userbase.

      30 votes
    24. The Correspondant - A different business model for organizations producing journalism.

      I just watched an interesting This Week in Startups interview with the CEO of a nascent but successful new "news" organization from the Netherlands called De Correspondent. They are launching a...

      I just watched an interesting This Week in Startups interview with the CEO of a nascent but successful new "news" organization from the Netherlands called De Correspondent. They are launching a new US-based company called The Correspondent, which has some high profile supporters. This list includes Nate Silver, William Julius Wilson, Rosanne Cash, and some others.

      Their business model allows them to attract high-quality journalists by optimizing for journalistic integrity and independence. They have around 60,000 members paying around $70 per year in the Netherlands. They do no advertising business and are a for-profit corp with a dividend cap of 5% to make themselves unattractive to VC-type investors. The CEO claims they "ignore the news," meaning that they try to avoid the sound-bite quips that can be very distracting. They do not report on individual's scandals, instead focusing on systemic issues.

      Journalists are required to share their stories with the members as they are developing. Stories are not guarded secrets while in development unlike traditional news organizations. This allows members to contribute to the stories via a form of curated crowdsourcing. For example, they reached out to members when doing a story on Shell, and found a few members who had access to the company which led to discovery of Shell's own internal Inconvenient Truth type video which was made in 1991.

      The CEO also mentioned that he always includes a developer or designer in story discussions so that the latest investigation and presentation tools can be used on a story from day one.

      Please take a look at the links and let me know what you think of this model, and its chances in the US market. I am pretty excited for anyone trying anything new in this space. What do you think? Would you pay for something like this?

      Edit: I'm not sure if there is a better ~group for this topic, please move it if there is. Also, formatting, phrasing, and clarity.

      Here is a direct link to the CEO's Medium account with more information.

      15 votes
    25. Weekly Writing Prompt Group - Prompt 0 - The Road Trip

      Voting has closed for this week's topic. The prompt is... The Road Trip Some questions to help you get started: Who is the traveler? Why are they traveling? Where are they going? Are they going...

      Voting has closed for this week's topic.

      The prompt is...

      The Road Trip

      Some questions to help you get started:

      Who is the traveler?
      Why are they traveling?
      Where are they going? Are they going anywhere?

      The questions are only meant to help you get started. Make it happy or sad, adventure or horror, romance or tragedy. Go where your imagination takes you. Don't feel constrained by what may seem to be the obvious response to the prompt.

      Please keep your submissions between 1000-2000 words (for reference, this topic section is about 200 words), make sure to properly format to Tildes when submitting to the submission thread.

      Submission thread will be created on Wednesday, Aug 29, EST.

      Please feel free to use this thread to brainstorm or share ideas or post any other comments you have about the writing prompt group.

      Have fun everyone! I can't want to see what you create!


      Things I may change:

      I may do away with topic voting if/until the group gets big enough, and I'll just post a weekly prompt.

      Depending on the number of submissions, I may increase the max length.

      11 votes
    26. Allow users to set their own comments to default collapsed?

      Sometimes I comment and I'm low effort and jokey or a thread develops that ends up unnecessary... And now we have a whole in joke (sorry Kat, I started it & you earned it!). Anyway, perhaps it...

      Sometimes I comment and I'm low effort and jokey or a thread develops that ends up unnecessary... And now we have a whole in joke (sorry Kat, I started it & you earned it!).

      Anyway, perhaps it would be nice to add an option to set your own posts to default collapsed? We might also want an option to hide all collapsed in topic? Or do these features just encourage low effort fluff and I should just learn better self control?

      Edit> OK This obviously isn't clear:
      I was suggesting an option to set one of your comments & it's chain to collapsed for all other users by default.

      7 votes
    27. Extremely basic search added

      Okay, okay. We really needed some sort of search, so I decided to just get an extremely basic version out today. It's very limited, but it should work for now and can be improved as we go forward....

      Okay, okay. We really needed some sort of search, so I decided to just get an extremely basic version out today. It's very limited, but it should work for now and can be improved as we go forward.

      Details/limitations:

      • Currently, the search only includes the title and the text of the post (if it's a text topic). It doesn't include the tags, the group, the link, the author name, comments, anything. Only the title and text right now.
      • There's no way to restrict the search to specific group(s) yet. Just full-site search.
      • All searches are "all of these words". There's no phrase-searching yet, or "X or Y", or anything else.
      • The search results page is just a quick hack on the normal topic listing page and will probably display some things weirdly in some cases (like the message when there's no results).

      It's a start though, and certainly better than not having any search at all. There will probably be a lot of minor issues, but let me know if you notice anything especially broken with it.

      118 votes
    28. Personal Wikis

      I have been looking for some software where I can brain dump all the things I need to remember on a constant basis so I can easily find it again in the future. A personal wiki basically. I am...

      I have been looking for some software where I can brain dump all the things I need to remember on a constant basis so I can easily find it again in the future. A personal wiki basically. I am wondering what any of you tilderians are using?

      The things I am looking for:

      Absolute requirements:

      • Open Source: I want to be in control of the data myself, and I want to be able to hack on it myself as the need arises.
      • Self Hostable: Goes hand-in-hand with with open sourceness, I want the data to live on the server in my apartment, under my own control.
      • An API of some sort so I can programmatically add/read/modify data.

      Nice to haves:

      • Revision history of some sort.
      • Common/simple data format for easy backup and longevity.
      • Web interface, with mobile compatibility.
      • Lightweight as possible, so I can run it on a low powered server.

      Does anything know anything like that?

      Options I have heard of:

      Here is a previous discussion on the topic @ Lobste.rs

      25 votes
    29. Does eSports content belong in ~games or ~sports?

      This post is meant to provoke a discussion and possibly find a resolution or at least set an expectation as far as where to post esports content. I don't really have an opinion either way but...

      This post is meant to provoke a discussion and possibly find a resolution or at least set an expectation as far as where to post esports content.

      I don't really have an opinion either way but would like to discuss the topic, because it seems like not setting an expectation might lead to similar content being posted to one or the other of the two communities when all the content would be prefered in one community to make finding things easier.

      19 votes
    30. Tag Use

      Let's talk about what tags we should be using and how they should be used. For those of you who haven't yet read it here is the doc page on tags. Here's what I'm looking at so far: Talk: I removed...

      Let's talk about what tags we should be using and how they should be used. For those of you who haven't yet read it here is the doc page on tags.

      Here's what I'm looking at so far:

      Talk: I removed the talk, discussion, and conversation tags from the topics in ~talk in accordance with "Don't add a tag that's the same or very similar to the group that you're posting in." If you're in ~talk of course you're having a discussion or conversation. (There are exceptions that are about conversation such as "How do you discuss open minded topics with close minded people?"). I tagged some "How was your weekend" type topics with casual conversation.

      What do you think about talk and/or discussion tags in other groups?

      Question: As I understand it, question should be ask Update: done

      Meta: I would define meta as topics about the site or ~ the topic is posted in. Since ~tildes is entirely meta, meta is redundant here. Most of the meta topics elsewhere are about the ~ they are in. As an example of something I think is mistagged, I wouldn't tag the ~lgbt introduction topic meta since it isn't about the ~ . Update: removed meta from ~tildes topics.

      I wanted to get some feedback before I continue so I don't make a mistake unilaterally retagging something that I shouldn't.

      What are your thoughts on these tags? What other tags do we need to talk about? What strategies are you using for tagging and retagging?

      24 votes
    31. The ~tech wiki

      As mentioned here @Kat has made a wiki for our communities to be able to have some resources, and something to point at. There's the ~tech bit to it, that I've started working on a tiiiiny bit. I...

      As mentioned here @Kat has made a wiki for our communities to be able to have some resources, and something to point at.

      There's the ~tech bit to it, that I've started working on a tiiiiny bit. I was curious what sorts of topics you'd like to have there. Not just things that you know a lot about (by all means, if you have knowledge throw it in there!), but also if you need more info or something, or would like more resources! Maybe we can help each other out a bit in this thread, and codify things into the wiki if there's some resolution?

      10 votes
    32. Do you sometimes get upset about Reddit's petty downvoting?

      They say downvotes don't mean anything. But I disagree. To me, it feels like a stranger coming up to you on the street, slapping you in the face and walking off. All the while you don't even know...

      They say downvotes don't mean anything. But I disagree. To me, it feels like a stranger coming up to you on the street, slapping you in the face and walking off. All the while you don't even know why and just stare in confusion.

      Like, I'd get it if the person was being rude, or impolite, or aggressive, or insulting, or racist, or misogynistic... Hell, even a very bad joke. But simple, innocent comments just casually sharing an opinion or a personal experience just get so aggressively downvoted. Why?

      The particular sub that inspired me to make this post is r/android. Very simple comments without presenting judgement or making claims... just sharing their personal experience on a smaller topic about a certain phone will get a downvote. Why? As if to tell this person that their experience is wrong? That this didn't happen? I don't get it.

      And this extends to the whole community, or at least most of it. It's just so toxic, immature and petty. Like, if you hate what someone said so much, why not at least tell them, so maybe they won't do it again or at least so they know why they're getting spat on the face.

      But the lack of explanation and the mere booing from a faceless crowd is just so hearbreaking. Like, this is how crowds behave. That's why lynchings and mass rapes in war times are a thing. And it's just such a shameful aspect of the human character.

      On Tildes, if you don't agree with someone, you cannot just downvote them to shut them up and hide their comment for others to see. No, rather, you have to tell them how it is you think they're wrong. And, while this has the potential of leading to nasty arguments, it also has the potential of leading to productive discussions.

      How many of those comments that you often see downvoted are just innocent remarks that were completely misinterpreted by a first person and then the Hivemind just took it from there?

      I mean, even if someone is saying something that is downright not true, but their tone doesn't come off as aggressive or rude, why downvote them instead of telling them? A downvote won't send them a notification. So they're likely to move on with life without knowing that that thing they think is true isn't. If you tell them, however, you can help this person learn something and combat misinformation.

      By replying to this person, you're giving them a chance to better explain themselves. It's a lot less hostile, while being more productive and positive.

      Plus, if upsetting and trolling people is what they want (like those few “professional reddit trolls” who just try to amass downvotes instead of upvotes) then they're out of luck in here. If their comment is obvious trolling, they'll just get ignored. Or well, maybe they do upset someone and get a heated discussion, but without the fishing for downvotes.

      People cannot just downvote you to prove you wrong and go about their day feeling all superior and righteous. They have to tell you how they think you're wrong (or how they think your comment is irrelevant or how they don't like it) and in doing so expose their views up for external judgement.

      The lack is probably the main reason that attracted me to Tildes.

      By the way, I'm mostly referring to discussions way down in the thread between two people. I mean, how petty and aggressive do you have to be to downvote someone on an inactive thread just two minutes after they added their comment and just before you reply to them? I mean that way you're making it clear that it was you who downvoted them. So you're intentionally setting up a hostile atmosphere before the discussion even starts. That's just so toxic and emotionally draining.

      How do you feel about downvotes on Reddit and their lack on Tildes?

      29 votes
    33. Input wanted about title-editing, especially by topics' authors

      It was a bit of a side topic in the thread last night about giving other people access to some organizational tools for topics, so I wanted to have a more specific discussion about how we should...

      It was a bit of a side topic in the thread last night about giving other people access to some organizational tools for topics, so I wanted to have a more specific discussion about how we should handle title-editing.

      Editing titles is definitely a useful ability, both for being able to fix typos/mistakes as well as remove editorialization or misleading phrasing, or even update the title later if the story progresses and the original title is no longer correct. However, it can also be confusing or mis-used—the title is the main way that we (the users on the site) identify a particular topic, and when the title changes it can be difficult to recognize what happened.

      So I just want to have a general discussion about how we should handle title-editing, and especially whether we should allow people to edit their own topics' titles, and if there should be any restrictions on that. For example, should a topic's author only be allowed to edit the title in the first 5 minutes? Should they always be able to edit it, like they can always edit the post text itself? Maybe it varies, based on their history/account-age/something-else?

      One thing to keep in mind is that this doesn't need to be a system that's immune to abuse. If someone uses the title-editing to change a popular ~music post's title into a Star Wars spoiler or something, we don't just shrug and go, "oh well, they're allowed to edit titles, nothing we can do." We edit the title back, and either take that ability away from them or ban them from the site entirely if it was done maliciously. Trust people, but punish abusers is a good approach in my opinion—we don't need to hobble features constantly to try to make them un-abusable.

      Also, whatever we decide to do doesn't necessarily need to be kept forever. We can always try something, and if it obviously isn't working very well, we just change it. Decisions about how the site works don't need to be final, it's very difficult to predict how features will actually be used in practice.

      Anyway, let me know what you think. Thanks.

      38 votes
    34. 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
    35. 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
    36. Thoughts on restricting tags?

      Often when I go to post, I have to check first what the most commonly used tag is for the thing I want to post. There is quite a bit of tag duplication/proliferation. Granted, this could also be...

      Often when I go to post, I have to check first what the most commonly used tag is for the thing I want to post. There is quite a bit of tag duplication/proliferation. Granted, this could also be dealt with in part by suggesting tags as the user types, but:

      What do you think about having a specific set of tags to choose from, and when there are a handful of posts about a specific topic, new tags are added by administrators? This is essentially the way Lobsters works, and I think it works pretty well.

      On one hand, this could reduce tag proliferation, but on the other hand, it could also corral people into only posting about certain topics that are sufficiently similar to existing tags.

      8 votes
    37. Suggestion: Filter topics by ones I've participated in?

      Probably most appropriate for the "Activity" tab. I would love to be able to click some kind of toggle that only showed topics that I've started and topics that I've commented in. Not sure how...

      Probably most appropriate for the "Activity" tab.

      I would love to be able to click some kind of toggle that only showed topics that I've started and topics that I've commented in. Not sure how taxing this would be on the server, but figured I'd throw it out there for consideration. If it's been suggested before, sorry. No search function yet!

      14 votes
    38. Feature Idea Survey and Discussion - Browse by Topic Tag List - please vote in the comments

      This feature already exists to a large extent thanks to Deimos's implementation of discovery by clicking a topic's tag. However, it might also be useful to list all of the topic tags aside from...

      This feature already exists to a large extent thanks to Deimos's implementation of discovery by clicking a topic's tag. However, it might also be useful to list all of the topic tags aside from specific topics as a user may not find a topic with their favorite tags very easily. As I understand it, Deimos wants to keep the group list from growing too quickly, and this would allow another way to discover one's micro-interests.

      Mockup of the 1 button added in the sidebar.

      On click of that button the user would go to a page similar to https://tildes.net/groups - but it would list topic tags. In place of subscribers count, there could be a total count of topics with that tag. In place of subscribe/un-subscribe buttons could be Filter/Un-filter buttons. I think that the list should be sorted by count of related topics, descending.
      1 This new tildes.tld/tags page would likely require pagination, and maybe a text input for a super-simple filter/search that would just change the SQL query where clause.

      Once the user clicks the name of the topic tag the user would go to the existing page tildes.tld/?tag=tag-name. example: https://tildes.net/?tag=linux


      What do you all think of this? Any other ideas on implementation? Any issues I did not consider?

      As in my last post in this group, please vote on the comment which best reflects your views on the feature. Then add any comments as to why you feel that way, or qualifications on your vote in a reply. If you have questions or ideas prior to voting, please make another top-level comment.

      If you want me to add an Ambivalent vote, let me know, but I thought that it was not that useful of a metric last time.

      edit: added 1

      edit2: Took a while to bring it back home, but:

      The impetus for making this feature proposal was this new user's topic. This user was looking for specific content which did exist on Tildes, but it was not obvious to them. It was only organized by tag, and they were looking for it by group. How were they to find it in the current top-level org? Specifically, here is my comment that relates to this feature.

      12 votes
    39. What do we want as a community?

      Just got invited here and looking at the content of the front page, Tildes is basically a "poor-man's version" of reddit right now. That's OK: it's a new community and I imagine a big part of...

      Just got invited here and looking at the content of the front page, Tildes is basically a "poor-man's version" of reddit right now. That's OK: it's a new community and I imagine a big part of users are coming here from reddit so they're doing what they're used to doing on social networks, that's only fair.

      However, more than that, looking at the groups, they are set up pretty much similarly to reddit's default subs - if not on a 1:1 basis, at least in the general tone: pretty casual, daily life topics, big focus on entertainment media, etc. Maybe again this is, by design catering to the people who are bound to be incoming from reddit, so they can immediately relate to a similar user experience. Good.

      So I think it's fair to say that it's proven that Tildes can be "like reddit". It kinda looks like reddit, it kinda feels like reddit. That part of the deal is covered. Now, what can makes us different? I doubt anyone here has no ambition besides being a soft-fork of reddit.

      What topics make you tick? What sort of online discussion makes you go "that's the good stuff"? What subjects are you truly passionate about? I'd like to know what the community here is all about, whether the current ~groups represent their interests and passions or not and, hopefully we could come up with some less generic ideas for new ~groups out of the discussion.

      EDIT I realize Tildes has a specific policy of "lesser active groups are better than a billion inactive groups" but at this point in time a good selection of groups would really help define the identity and content, not to mention promote quality discussion that actually aligns with people's interests. Hopefully seeing common trends in the replies would allow us to identify a few potential new groups, perhaps.

      36 votes
    40. Do many of you use Kanban in your personal life?

      Edit: Typo in Topic. Read it as "How many..." or "Do many of you..." A Kanban board is a work and workflow visualization tool that enables you to optimize the flow of your work. Source I am using...

      Edit: Typo in Topic. Read it as "How many..." or "Do ~many of~ you..."

      A Kanban board is a work and workflow visualization tool that enables you to optimize the flow of your work. Source

      I am using the NextCloud's Deck app to manage my Kanban board, just got started. Other Digital boards: Cryptpad (has kanban board) and Taiga. I know only these implementation and all of these work well.

      Update: I am no longer using it.

      10 votes
    41. Thoughts on religion

      Let's debate religion. I don't think I've seen this topic on Tildes yet and it might be interesting. My country has practically no visible religion - about 10-15% of our population is religious...

      Let's debate religion. I don't think I've seen this topic on Tildes yet and it might be interesting.

      My country has practically no visible religion - about 10-15% of our population is religious (mostly seniors) - and just a fraction of them does those religious thing like going to church. Religion basically doesn't exist here. We have a lot of nice churches, but they mostly aren't used.

      The thing that I think caused this big amount of atheists (agnostics, ...) is that almost noone is raised to believe in God - in our culture, we don't teach religion at all. Kids are taught that religions exist, but they are not pressed to believe in it such as in other parts of world. They choose what to believe. And God isn't the thing people choose for most of the time.

      Whenever I see anything about USA (discussion, film, serial), I frequently see religion there. When I saw it for the first time when I was young, I thought something like "They still have religion there? I thought USA is developed country". I don't think it anymore, I understand better why are people religious, but still - I'd like to know more about more religious cultures and what effect religion have in other countries.

      22 votes
    42. Suggestion: list of recent comments in the topic sidebar (mockup inside)

      See image for what I mean: https://imgur.com/BGzLKGq Basically, it can be hard to track new comments made in an old topic. In the recent one about tulpas, I checked in every so often to follow...

      See image for what I mean: https://imgur.com/BGzLKGq

      Basically, it can be hard to track new comments made in an old topic. In the recent one about tulpas, I checked in every so often to follow ongoing discussions but had to keep skimming the entire topic every time just to spot the new comments.

      If there could be a kind of "recent comments" in the sidebar, it would save a lot of time and make it much easier to stay on top of evolving discussions: just click the comments you haven't seen.

      13 votes
    43. Which password manager do you use and recommend?

      I currently use Lastpass, and while I'm overall happy with what I have right now, some issues (like slow firefox support, android functionality that only works arbitrarily) makes me want to look...

      I currently use Lastpass, and while I'm overall happy with what I have right now, some issues (like slow firefox support, android functionality that only works arbitrarily) makes me want to look at other solutions.

      I have heard about other popuar managers like Keepass and Bitwarden, but haven't made the plunge yet. So I thought I could kickstart a discussion on this topic.

      Which password manager do you use or have you used? Why do you recommend it (or not)?

      28 votes
    44. Per Tilde Tag Based Background Reading Links (wikipedia?)

      If tildes wants to foster deeper discussions I wonder if there should be some mechanism for linking off to external background knowledge. This could possibly be semi-automatic based on the...

      If tildes wants to foster deeper discussions I wonder if there should be some mechanism for linking off to external background knowledge. This could possibly be semi-automatic based on the containing tilde & topic tags.

      If we end up with news discussions around topics like say Israel & Palestine in order for anyone to begin to understand wtf is going on (and so reasonably discuss the current news topic) there's a load of relevant history. It seems like it would be nice to have a link so that a topic from poltics.news with the tag Israel could automatically get some further reading links.

      Wikipedia has the advantage that it's another user driven org so this could have the added benefit of motivating people to fact check & improve it.

      19 votes
    45. What if replying to a comment forced upvoting of the comment being replied to?

      This would help, but not completely fix, two issues that seem to be inherent in the Tildes design: \1 Voting is mostly treated as an "I agree" button. You'll see this in pretty much any thread...

      This would help, but not completely fix, two issues that seem to be inherent in the Tildes design:

      \1 Voting is mostly treated as an "I agree" button. You'll see this in pretty much any thread where there's back and forth discussion. When you reply to a comment you're implicitly saying "this comment is worth engaging with," in which case an upvote is warranted.

      Same thing for topics: leaving a top-level comment should force an upvote for the topic.

      \2 It encourages non-engagement with comments that maybe shouldn't be engaged with. For example, one hot topic of this week has been the calling out of low-effort posts and how the community ought to chill out a bit. By forcing an upvote, it discourages replying to said posts, which makes it more likely that such comments will be ignored and drift to the bottom of a topic.

      Edit: Whether this idea is implemented or not, as long as Voting = "I Agree" this site will become an even bigger echo chamber than Reddit because there are no downvotes to balance out the "I support the message of this topic/comment" crowd.

      19 votes
    46. Where are my fellow rhythm gamers hiding?

      From the old-school Beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution, to the widely popular Guitar Hero and Rock Band, to more recent additions like Crypt of the NecroDancer, and Thumper, I've been a fan of...

      From the old-school Beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution, to the widely popular Guitar Hero and Rock Band, to more recent additions like Crypt of the NecroDancer, and Thumper, I've been a fan of rhythm games for years. Hopefully a lot of you out there feel the same way, and we can share and discuss our favorite games in this post.

      I think it might be a good idea to keep top level posts about single games (or game series / similar games, i.e. Dance Dance Revolution, Pump It Up, and In The Groove can all be one topic, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band can be one topic, etc.), so they can be discussed in that thread specifically to try and keep the discussion organized. This post should work until there's enough of us to make a ~games.rhythm sub-tilde.

      I'll make a couple topic posts below to get things started, but feel free to add your own for any games you want to discuss as well. If you do make a top level post, please provide a brief description of the game for those unfamiliar with it.

      Edit: I updated my post to read ~games.rhythm above, as I originally posted in ~hobbies. Deimos has now moved it to where it should have been. Cheers!

      11 votes