As already mentioned, there was a reasonably successful post about Tildes on Hacker News today, so I've got an email inbox full of invite requests and feedback that I'm about to start going through. This means that I'm about to invite a lot more people, so the activity will probably start picking up shortly.

As part of that, I've created two new groups: ~comp and ~creative. A lot of the people coming from HN will definitely be on the more technical end, so ~comp is intended to be a place where we can post articles about programming and so on without filling up ~tech with that kind of stuff. ~creative was a suggestion that meristele made yesterday, and I think it's definitely something that we needed. Let me know if you think there are other groups we need desperately.

Note that while new users will get auto-subscribed to those groups (for now), I did not go back and subscribe all existing users to them. So if you're interested in either of those topics, you'll need to go subscribe on your own.

Outside of that, please be welcoming to all the new users. And to both old and new users - please let me know what you think and if there's particular functionality I should prioritize. I know that there's a lot of things still missing, but if you're coming from HN you're probably pretty used to that. You can post here or feel free to make separate threads in ~tildes if you want to discuss something in more depth.

Thanks! I'll most likely give out some more invite codes to everyone in the next day or two, so that we can try to keep more activity coming in.

Hey everyone, really happy to see people still coming back, and especially having extremely good discussions like this one about moderation. Here's my vague plans for the next few days:

Finish comment reply notifications and a couple other high-priority items

I've got comment reply notifications mostly done now, and hope to have that out today or tomorrow. Username mention notifications should be pretty simple to add on top of that as well. Other than that, I need to look into fixing a few strange bugs that have been noticed, and would also like to get through a few other things in the backlog (including doing a better job of getting the backlog listed on the issue tracker).

A significant feature I'd like to have soon is making it possible for other people to edit the tags on topics, as well as potentially allowing editing the title or even the link. For this to be possible though, we need to have a sort of log of the changes, so that there's accountability in who's making the changes and what they're doing.

Some more updates/additions to the Docs pages

The most important piece is to finish writing up some info about the "trust system", which is a lot of what we've been discussing in the "Community moderators?" post. This is going to be a really essential part of having the site be able to handle growth, so not having anything about it on the Docs site currently is a really big gap.

I'd also like to do a bit of writing/rearranging of some of the other pages before I get too much public attention, since they're pretty scattered right now and are missing some information that people seem to look for.

Invite more people and/or get some "larger" attention

Once those other updates are done, I'm planning to start actively looking for a bit more public attention, including possibly posting to places like Hacker News or reddit. We're going to need a pretty steady inflow of people to keep the activity level up, so I think really getting the site out there soon is going to be the easiest way to do that. I do want to have the updates/info mentioned above done first though, so that will probably still be a couple days.

In the meantime, I've topped up all existing users to 5 invite codes again, so if there's anyone you'd like to invite please feel free. You can get to your invite codes on this page, which is linked in the sidebar when you're on your user page.

Thanks again, definitely let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, etc.

I think I was confusing about this before, so to be clear up front: Tildes will stay invite-only for the foreseeable future. There's a ton to figure out and build before we can even consider making the site open to the public. Staying invite-only will let us take our time on a lot of the systems and functionality, and build up a good "base culture" before worrying about a massive influx.

However, starting now, we can stop treating it as a secret. Please don't go out of your way to promote/spam it anywhere (and I'm personally still going to take it a bit slow today), but if there are people that you want to talk to about it, feel free. Please try to send anyone to the announcement blog post first, since that's the best explanation of the site's goals.

Edit: I've also tweeted the post from the official account, if that's useful for sharing or anything.

I've also given all the current users 5 invite codes, so you can invite specific people if you'd like to. You can access these on this page, which is linked from the sidebar on your user page. Keep in mind that the site is currently quite minimal and inactive and probably will be for a while yet, so it's best to invite people that you think won't be discouraged by that (and ideally will help by posting things themselves). If you want more invite codes, just let me know and I can give you more.

As always, thanks for being here so far, and please do tell me if you run into issues or have any feedback.

Just a couple quick notes for today:

Updates

I've made a few minor updates to layout and such here and there. I also changed the site's default sorting to "newest" while it's still pretty inactive, since that should make it easier to see the new posts. I'm planning to get an update in pretty soon that will remember which sorting settings you change to (on an individual group basis), so you should be able to adjust that soon if you want to.

Still working on the things I mentioned in this post, hopefully should have a couple of those done in the next day or two. I know the lack of reply notifications is especially painful and hard to keep conversations going at all, so I'm trying to get that in very soon.

Invites + "going public"

I'm inviting some more people directly today, so there will probably be various new faces showing up. If any of you have others that you want to invite, definitely let me know and I can contact them myself or give you some invite codes.

Currently, my plan is to start going more public tomorrow or Wednesday, trying to spread the announcement post out a bit more and get more people invited. I'll probably give all of you some invite codes at that point too, whether you want them or not. If you have particular suggestions for where you think I should (or shouldn't) try to get attention on the post, let me know.

Thanks, it's really great to see some people getting started using the site.

Hey folks, thanks for trying things out so far. I know it's in a bit of an awkward phase right now where everything is inactive, but this should improve as more people join. Unfortunately I've had some bad timing today with fun things like a surprise early-morning trip to the vet, so I haven't been able to pay as much attention today as I wanted to.

Anyway, a few updates:

Site mechanics

I did manage to spend some time writing up a page that explains some of the basic site mechanics, which is here: https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics

Hopefully that helps explain things a bit better, since so far you've just basically had to try things to figure out what they are. Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about the info on that page.

Issue tracker

There's not much there yet either, but I set up an issue tracker here on gitlab (which is where I'll host the site's code eventually): https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues

I'm not expecting anyone to register on there and submit issues or anything, but that will be kind of the "formal" location for issues and plans (and I'll transfer things there that get reported on the site itself).

Invites and other plans

So far, I've only invited people that already knew what I was working on and that I've been talking to about it. Today and over the weekend, I'm going to start inviting some more specific people that I'd like to have involved but I haven't previously talked with about Tildes. While doing that, I'm also going to be working on the things mentioned in this post yesterday: https://tildes.net/~tildes/a/high_priority_things_to_fix_add

If any of you have suggestions for people you'd like to invite (who won't be turned off by an inactive site), please let me know. I can contact them or give you some invite codes.

Early next week, I'd like to start trying to get some public attention and expanding more quickly. This will probably include posting the announcement blog post to some places, as well as giving you all some invite codes. I don't have very specific plans yet though, so again, please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Thanks again, and please keep posting a bit just so we can get some base activity going - if you read an interesting article or anything, just take a minute to post it here as well. Like I said, I know it's a bit awkward for now, but it will get better.

Welcome to the alpha version of Tildes! If you haven't read it yet, please start with the announcement post on the blog, since that explains a lot of my goals and general plans for the site: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes

Also check this page for some info about some of the basic mechanics in place: https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics

Beyond that, there are some other pages on the Docs site with a fair amount of information, and I'm working on gradually adding more to them.

Please don't spread this too much yet

I'd still like to keep it a bit quiet for the first little while, so I can make sure nothing explodes and pay more attention to the site instead of having to worry about who's talking about it and where. It's fine if you want to mention it to some people, but please ask them not to spread it around much as well. If you do tell people, it's probably best to send them to the announcement post as an intro.

It won't have to be this way for long - this upcoming week, I'm intending to start trying to get some more public attention.

Things that are missing, coming soon, etc.

There's still a ton missing, obviously. Some functions have been disabled deliberately for now as well, because I'd like to see how things work without them before we start jumping to too many conclusions about what we "need" and how to use the site. I hope to have regular discussions about a lot of these ideas so we can figure out exactly how best to implement some things.

Make sure to check on your userpage (by clicking your username in the top right corner or sidebar on mobile) - there are a few things in the side menu on there that are useful, like the light/dark theme toggle.

There's a post here with some specific things I'm working on in the very near future: https://tildes.net/~tildes/a/high_priority_things_to_fix_add

If you just want to experiment, please use ~test

I set up a group named ~test that's specifically for trying things out and making a mess. It's the only one that you're not auto-subscribed to when you register (so that your home page isn't spammed up with the stuff from there).

Please feel free to test things out in there, try to break things, whatever. I may periodically wipe it just to get rid of a lot of the garbage, so please don't post anything in there if you're not okay with it disappearing at any time.

How you can help

One of the best things you can do would be to just post things. Getting the initial activity going on the site will be one of the most important steps, so please just post things here (and comment on others' posts).

I'd also appreciate any feedback, posts about bugs you discover, etc. You can just post anything like that in the ~tildes group as well.

Inviting other people

If you have other people that you'd like to invite, I think we should be able to start doing that very soon. I haven't given anyone their own invite codes yet, but it's something that I can do. If there's people you really want to get in right away, please let me know and I can give you some codes or otherwise help get them in. Message me here on Tildes about it, email me at deimos@tildes.net, or send me a message through Discord/Slack/whatever and we can figure it out.

Please expect some turbulence

Please keep in mind that, for the most part, this has been a one-person endeavor so far. I'm the developer, sysadmin, designer, writer, lawyer, manager, chair of the non-profit board, etc. I'm not very good at a lot of these things.

There will definitely be some roughness for a while, whether it's awful design/UI choices, the site crashing and staying down for a while until I can get it back up, etc. Thanks in advance for your patience, it's all only going to get better from here.

I'm excited to finally be able to let people see what I've been working on. Thanks for being here at the start with me!