What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
hello,
I've been wondering a little bit about what a well-designed voting system on a website like reddit or Tildes would look like, and as I do not have a definitive answer, I do have a suggestion to make. I've originally posted this on another website, but I thought that it could also be fruitful to discuss this here, seeing that efforts have already been made in that direction (similar features have even already been implemented).
Looking forward to reading you!
I was wondering whether Aether should support downvotes or not, seeing that they are often misused on other discussion platforms to suppress content that is disliked rather than non-contributory or low-quality. People may then not view content that was heavily downvoted, even though it may have been high-quality.
Should we rather use some other mechanism to serve that function? If so, what would it be?
Personally, I'd suggest that we experiment with two-dimensional weighted voting.
In a word, it would allow users to express both whether they agree or disagree with (alternatively, like or dislike) a piece of content (and how strongly so) and whether they think that that piece of content is high-quality or low-quality (and how strongly so).
In practice, it could look like this (for users): upon clicking on the voting icon, a square with two scaled axes would appear. One for the quality of content, the other for the level of (dis)agreeance. A user, who had for instance found a piece of content to be very high-quality, but who somewhat disagreed with it, could then express that opinion by click and dragging right to the top of the square, but somewhat left of its center.
That simple mechanism would therefore allow us to distinguish between those two criteria and better capture the intention behind a vote, and help alleviate the issue of seeing deeply unpopular content being buried despite its high quality. It would also allow users to express how strongly they feel about a piece of content by letting them adjust the weight of their vote. Plus, it wouldn't be too cumbersome to use (in my opinion).
(Voting strongly should be slightly inconvenient or cumbersome to do, so as to deter users from voting strongly every time, thereby rendering strong votes meaningless. In practice, that could mean having to move one's mouse only a little for a soft vote, but more and more as the vote gains more weight.
Axes should also be sticky, so as to make it easy to vote with respect to one criterion only (we shouldn't need to try and aim precisely).)
We could also put in place some additional mechanism to let users rate content with regard to other criteria (how informative it is, or impressive, exciting, funny, etc.). I do not expect users to rate all the content they read, but allowing them to do so could still be useful. They may still bother to do it for content they find especially informative, impressive, etc., and that would then allow other users to sort content with regard to one or several of these criteria and find content tailored to their interests.
(We could then also display for any piece of content a chart (that could look like this) showing how it was rated with regard to all these criteria. That's not really important, but I find that cool.
We could also plot the number of votes as a function of vote strength, find the average vote strength and so on... That would also be cool, and interesting.)
What do you think?
In this thread, people have been starting to post and discuss their solutions to this year's Advent of Code problems.
To help make this easier to organize and discuss on Tildes, I've decided to create a sub-group devoted to it: ~comp.advent_of_code. We can keep this sub-group around for a couple of months or so, and this way we can split into separate topics for each day's problems, people getting started later can still get involved easily, and it will also make it simple for others that aren't interested to avoid the posts (just don't subscribe).
I've automatically subscribed everyone that interacted with that original topic (by commenting in it, or voting on the topic itself or any of the comments), but nobody else. So if you're interested in participating in Advent of Code or discussing it, please subscribe to the sub-group. Posts from the sub-group won't be shown to logged-out users by default either, so any logged-out users that want to observe will need to visit the sub-group directly (or you're welcome to email me and request an invite so you can register and subscribe).
I'll also be setting up scheduled posts to post automatically for each day's puzzle and possibly some other things, but we can discuss all of that inside the sub-group.
Edit: All of the topics have now been moved back into ~comp under the "advent of code.2019" tag, and the group deleted.
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
If you want to be featured in the showcase, please PM me as soon as possible with a quick "I'm in!" just so I can get a headcount to plan around.
All participants have until December 6th to put the finishing touches on their work (or just plain finish up, as I already broke the rules so it's only fair that everyone else gets the same opportunity!)
For those who will be in the showcase, please PM me again by December 6th with the following information:
For the showcase, I will randomly split up participants' work between three threads, posting one thread each day on the 7th, 8th, and 9th. I will post the title, link, and artist statement in the topic itself. Featured creators are strongly encouraged to post a top-level comment in their showcase thread in which you go more in-depth about your work, talk about your creative process and final product, and solicit feedback if desired.
1: This can be a link to a website, pictures, blog post, download -- whatever it is that best captures your creative work. It does not need to be the complete work itself, so if you'd rather share only portions or an excerpt, that's fine.
If your work is entirely text, I can include it right in the topic itself on Tildes. Anything else will have to be linked to, since Tildes can't host images or downloads. If in doubt about how best to present your work, let me know in the PM and we can figure it out!
I've been noticing a couple of weird formatting issues with tags on topics. For some posts, the first tag is shown before the metadata, then the rest of the tags are on a new line below. This isn't always the case, and so far I can't find any rhyme or reason for whether it does or not. It's not like some CSS float issue or anything, it's actually creating two <ul>'s. — example
The second issue I've noticed is sometimes the dangling part of a letter like lowercase "g" will be cut off by the footer. It seems like this is caused by .label {line-height: 1.2;}, but it's also inconsistent, and I haven't figured out why. In this example the "g" in "climate change" is not affected.
Maybe it's just me, I dunno. Firefox 70 on linux. I'd create a gitlab issue, except I am very lazy.
So today I decided to ditch instant messaging / texting / whatever in favor of longform emails, phone calls (which I'm terrible at), and proper physical letters.
I want to focus on the physical letters part because that's a skill I'd like to train, but I only have a couple people who it looks like will go through with that. Most will either let me float away (understandably!) or will contact me in the more convenient ways I'm allowing myself to engage in. So after playing Kind Words, I'm thinking that writing to strangers could be a fun exercise! This could be a couple people meeting here and writing letters, or it could be a whole thing, depending on interest. Casual letters are beautiful things, let's try to make some :)
If you want to participate, please post at least the following:
Age group:
Topics of interest:
Country / Region (please don't post your address, that can be done through PMs):
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month," a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.
Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!
Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!
Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. The showcase date is TBD and will be decided by the participants toward the end of the month, once we have a better idea of what we'll need to do wrap up our projects.
Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! If you would like to join, post your goal here. The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.
This is the final stretch! What do things look like for you as we close in on the finish?
What still needs to be done? Are you going to be able to easily finish in time, or will you have to cram things in at the last minute?
How do you plan to spend the few days of wrap-up time? What edits do you need to make or polish do you need to add, if any?
Timasomo was my first experiment in doing a Tildes-based "event." I plan to post a thread at the end of it specifically diving into whether we want to do another Timasomo down the road, and, if so, what changes could be made to the processes and setup, but for now I'm curious as to what other ideas are out there: what other Tildes-based events would be people be interested in?
They don't have to follow the same format as this, and they don't have to be entire months. The format and function are totally open. Would you want to do a Tildes game jam? A poetry contest? A donation drive? Pen pals?
Share your ideas here for what community-based "events" you would like to see here on Tildes.
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
I feel like with our weekly recurring topics, comments are getting posted all over the place. For example, if you want to read about what people think of a particular game, it's going to be spread out among a lot of different topics.
It seems like it might be nicer if in the games group, there were one topic for each game? Similarly for movies or books, or creative projects. This is how we did things on the Well, though there was also a "movies that didn't get their own topic" topic. But it seems like that was a limitation of a system that didn't deal well with having lots of topics in a group.
To support this well, we'd need to make coming back to long-running topics more pleasant to read somehow. With a linear conversation the software can start you off wherever you left off. I'm not sure what's best for threaded conversation?
In short, maybe there should be a way to do things more like forum software and less like Hacker News or Reddit? Or should we just try it out without changing the software?
Given the furor on Youtube over the new COPPA laws and the way they will affect content creators, I'd sort of like to know the opinions of tildezens on the topic of digital regulation. What do you guys think about heavy moderation or even censorship on social media platforms? Do you think it's a necessary way to keep online communities safe for all, or is it stifling open discussion on the internet?
(Not sure if should be placed in here or tech, please don't flame)
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month," a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.
Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!
Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!
Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. The showcase date is TBD and will be decided by the participants toward the end of the month, once we have a better idea of what we'll need to do wrap up our projects.
Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! If you would like to join, post your goal here. The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.
Only one week left! This is your chance to wrap things up or, if you're like me, make up for lost time!
How's it been going? Tell us where you're currently at!
With any creative process, there'll always be unexpected flashes of brilliance or unexpected fizzles for what seemed like good ideas. Have you encountered anything that didn't go like you wanted it to, or something that up and surprised you out of nowhere?
What is this final week going to look like for you?
This week's discussion focus is more functional than the others, as there are two main areas I want to get everyone's thoughts on:
Officially, creative work for Timasomo should end at the end of the day on November 30th, but I want to give some time for people to put finishing touches on their work and get it ready to share. How much time do we need? Should I just keep the weekly rhythm going and make the even officially end on that next Friday, the 6th? I'm open to any and all ideas here, some of which might be influenced by what we decide on the item below:
I'd also like to hear people's thoughts on how we can best show off our work. I have a few ideas:
I like the idea of having all the works "under one roof" in a single topic, but I also like the idea of having each work being its own topic. I even think it could be neat to coordinate a "showcase schedule" where, say, only one work gets posted per day until we go through everyone's contributions. This would space out discussions rather than flooding ~creative with everything all at once, but I don't want people at the end of the line to feel cheated from their moment in the spotlight if people get sick of seeing a new Timasomo post each and every day.
Nothing's decided yet, but let me know your thoughts!
If anyone has anything they want me to add to this post or suggestions for the next one, let me know either here or by PM!
This is a privacy-related update that I've always intended to implement on Tildes, and I finally spent some time on it this week.
Keeping eternal records of everything that every user ever voted on is some of the most sensitive data that sites with a voting system have. Your voting history says a huge amount about you, your interests and opinions, and can even serve as a decent proxy for showing what times you were active on the site, what posts you were reading, and how long you spent reading the comments on each of them. In exchange for these major privacy implications, you get the tiny benefit of being able to tell which old posts you voted on (if you even go back to old posts).
So now, to match up with Tildes's general approach of deleting as much sensitive data as possible after 30 days, the voting on posts closes when they're 30 days old. After a post's voting is closed, the records of which individual users voted on that post are deleted, but the count of how many votes there were is kept. So old posts will continue showing their same "scores" exactly the same as before, but there will be no record of which individual users cast those votes.
However, this isn't a purely positive update: the main downside is that the voting does need to be closed (otherwise there would be no way to prevent people from voting again after their first vote is deleted), which prevents the occasionally useful ability to vote on old topics or comments. Overall though, voting on older posts is extremely rare, with less than 1% of the votes on Tildes ever made on something that was over 30 days old at the time of voting.
When the "delete old sensitive data" job runs for the first time after this update later today, 97% of the voting data in the database will be deleted. That's a massive decrease in the amount of sensitive data the site is retaining, and something that most sites would never consider doing, because of the value of that data for behavior analysis and ad-targeting.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
Rather than post this new season's episodes individually as they came out, I decided to wait until it was complete before I submitted anything. The final episode came out yesterday, so here is the season in its entirety. Enjoy!
Here are all the episodes in order:
What Makes the Perfect Thanksgiving Meal? | Making Perfect: Thanksgiving - Prologue
Brad and Andy Try to Make the Perfect Turkey & Cranberry Sauce | Making Perfect: Thanksgiving Ep 1
Molly and Carla Try to Make the Perfect Mashed Potatoes & Gravy | Making Perfect: Thanksgiving Ep 2
Chris and Rick Try to Make the Perfect Stuffing | Making Perfect: Thanksgiving Ep 3
Claire & Christina Try to Make the Perfect Thanksgiving Sides | Making Perfect: Thanksgiving Ep 4
Claire & Brad Make the Perfect Thanksgiving Pie | Making Perfect: Thanksgiving Ep 5
The BA Test Kitchen Makes the Perfect Thanksgiving Meal | Making Perfect: Thanksgiving Finale
p.s. The reason this is a text topic is because it turns out the BA playlist of this season, which I originally submitted, is out of order and so I decided to delete that and resubmit this.
My use case:
I watch videos (YouTube) and listen to audio (Podcasts) as a major part of my weekly media intake. I would love some sort of generated Tildes Playlist . IANADev, but it sure would be nice if Tildes was able to parse, scrape, and categorize media posted as topics and in comments. Then present them to me with a date filter, and allow separating audio only and video media. Maybe something like tildes.net/?tag= but at tildes.net/playlist. I guess it would be nice to be able to sort media by tag as well.
Possible other use case:
Accessibility?
I see that some videos are already being tagged "videos." So there already is some organic interest in this special category, right?
What do you all think, is this useful?
From a dev perspective, is getting that correct enough difficult? Does Embedly categorize audio only and video?
edit: in the playlist view, there should of course be a link back to the topic or comment where the media was found. Also, @Deimos, I certainly don't want to take Tildes away from the text-first/only direction of the site, but sometimes I am doing stuff conducive to audio/video media intake like cooking, driving, etc. It would be cool to be able to easily consume it then, and come back to comment later.
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
If you look at the ~talk group you'll see that most it is questions and a few other groups also have significant amounts of questions. Wouldn't that warrant it's own group?
Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month," a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.
Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!
Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!
Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. The showcase date is TBD and will be decided by the participants toward the end of the month, once we have a better idea of what we'll need to do wrap up our projects.
Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! If you would like to join, post your goal here. The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.
Halfway through!
How's it been going? Tell us where you're currently at!
With any creative process, there'll always be unexpected flashes of brilliance or unexpected fizzles for what seemed like good ideas. Have you encountered anything that didn't go like you wanted it to, or something that up and surprised you out of nowhere?
With seven days down already, what do the next seven look like for you? Let us know where you're headed.
Where do you draw your inspiration from? What other creative works have inspired you? What creative works do you hope your creation emulates, channels, or stands alongside of? I know it can come across as lofty to compare your own work to those of "established" art, but compare away! No need to be modest!
If anyone has anything they want me to add to this post or suggestions for the next one, let me know either here or by PM!
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
This topic got me thinking on this. Nowadays I'm not a very emotional guy but in the past some movies completely wrecked me. My Girl, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blue Gate Crossing (cried from the movie theater till the bus stop), The Hottest State (which quite literally accelerated the end of one of my relationships) and Stand by Me are examples of movies that made me cry like a little baby. But also some anime, like Rec and Kare Kano, and books like The Sorrows of Young Werther. What about you?
Occasionally, especially for newer users, I'll see a post in a section of the site where it doesn't belong, sometimes without (proper) tags. What's the best way to bring this to the attention of folks who can fix it? Leaving comments is messy and distracts from the discussion, but right now it's the only method I know of to bring up the issue.
Apologies if this belongs in ~tech, that group is more on topic than ~talk but I think it’s for news and links more than open questions. (Edit: Looks like it's been moved to ~comp, I guess that works too.)
I’m looking for an HDMI switch. It needs to support at least 4K resolution and have at least 10 input ports. It also needs to have Toslink audio out. Remote control support is a “nice to have” but physical buttons are fine too.
I’m having trouble locating a product like this online. Not sure if I’m just using the wrong terms or if it doesn’t actually exist. Can any Tildes gearheads give me a pointer here?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month," a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.
Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!
Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!
Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. The showcase date is TBD and will be decided by the participants toward the end of the month, once we have a better idea of what we'll need to do wrap up our projects.
Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! If you would like to join, post your goal here. The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.
One week down, three to go! Why does it feel like we just started but also like there's not a whole lot of time left?!
How's it been going? Tell us where you're currently at!
With any creative process, there'll always be unexpected flashes of brilliance or unexpected fizzles for what seemed like good ideas. Have you encountered anything that didn't go like you wanted it to, or something that up and surprised you out of nowhere?
With seven days down already, what do the next seven look like for you? Let us know where you're headed.
How do you make time in a busy schedule for creativity? Do you find it hard to balance your creativity with other life demands? Do you have any tips or tricks that enable you to put more time and effort into your output?
If anyone has anything they want me to add to this post or suggestions for the next one, let me know either here or by PM!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month," a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.
Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!
Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!
Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. The showcase date is TBD and will be decided by the participants toward the end of the month, once we have a better idea of what we'll need to do wrap up our projects.
Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.
Timasomo begins whenever it hits 12:00 AM on November 1st, wherever you are on the globe. Dive into your projects! Here's the task list for this thread:
In the last post, we all talked about what we were aiming for. Now is the time to set a specific goal that you intend to commit to. Be both optimistic and reasonable!
Some people like seeing where their creativity takes them, and some people like having a formal process to follow. If you're the type that needs a plan, set one up an share it here (if you want to).
Evaluate yourself as a creator. What are you good at? What do you need to really focus on? How strong is your follow-through? Forecast how this will go for you and try to plan around your own strengths and weaknesses.
This won't be as necessary at the beginning when optimism, resources, and stamina are all at their highest, but it's always fine -- nay, encouraged -- to post positive, uplifting, and supportive comments to others in Timasomo. Even if you are not participating, you can always cheer others on!
I will be posting these threads every Friday. Feel free to keep a running thread within the post of how things are going for you. It's okay to come back and re-post in here with updates.
With that said, these posts might get a little cluttered so some might prefer their own conversation space, or would just rather have one that they're directing apart from mine. If you'd rather make your own topic about your project or anything related to Timasomo, feel free! I encourage multiple Timasomo posts over the course of the month, not just these weekly check-ins. Just make sure you tag your post "timasomo" so we can easily find it.
If anyone has anything they want me to add to this post or suggestions for the next one, let me know either here or by PM!
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
Developing topic, don't see any news sources on it yet. Lots of pro-CCP troll issues being opened, as well as people starting to open issues going against the original trolls. (e.g. pro-HK protester messages)
Tildes is much like Hacker News and Reddit in that article previews are limited to just headlines. (Well, there are tags, but they're de-emphasized since they're hidden by default.)
While they are very concise, a problem with headlines is that we rely on them too much. Even good ones don't really tell you what the article is about. In cases where it's hard to read the article (because it's paywalled or whatever) the conversation can be based mostly on the headline rather than the substance of the article. On Hacker News there are often mini-disputes about whether the headline is clickbait or not, and what's a better headline. "Headline is misleading" is a pretty common complaint.
I'm wondering if we could add a bit more information? One possibility would be a "Subtitle" field. Lots of articles have subtitles that are somewhat more informative, and doing a copy-paste is pretty easy.
Another would be to have a "pull quote" field. This requires a bit of editorial judgement by the submitter about what's the best pull quote, but I think that's okay. It's still copy-paste so at least they don't have to summarize anything in their own words.
For the last few days I've been posting a pull quote as the first comment whenever I post an article, and I think it works fairly well, except that the summary says "1 comment" when actually nobody commented - it's just the pull quote. Also, having an explicit field for the pull quote might allow better UI possibilities, like you could put them under the headline in the topic list.
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit. Previous topics Previous topics are listed in the wiki.
On Sunday, I took the site down for a short downtime to upgrade the database from PostgreSQL version 10 to 12. One of the main reasons I wanted to do that upgrade was to get access to a new search function, and I've updated to using it now, so we have multiple nice new search capabilities available.
These should all be pretty familiar since a lot of other search systems and search engines have similar capabilities with the same syntax:
This all works both through the main site topic search (at the top of the sidebar) as well as the new search for your own topics/comments.
I'm going to write a page for the Docs with info about these capabilities, but I think I want to try to find a full specification of what's supported first to make sure I cover it properly. The PostgreSQL docs are pretty vague about it, so I'll probably need to take a look in the actual code.
Please let me know if you notice any issues with it, or if anything's confusing that I should make sure to document.
And as usual, I've given everyone 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
Two updates today:
This is another contribution from @deing, who's been working on this one for a while. It ended up being more complicated than it originally seemed and still has a few minor oddities, but I think it ended up coming out quite well.
When you're on the Settings page, there's now a "View theme previews" link just below the theme-selection dropdown near the top. That will take you to this new Theme Preview page. The blocks with the theme names at the top give you a quick idea of each theme's color scheme, and you can click them to change the whole page's theme and see what it looks like on the example topics and comments below.
I should also mention that Gruvbox themes (with Light and Dark variants) were added about a month ago by @lugubris. I don't think I ever announced those being added, but you can easily check them out here now.
@mrbig's recent post with multiple suggestions reminded me to work on this one. You know the drill: it's minimal, the interface is a little weird, etc. but you can now search your own topics and comments (separately).
To use it, go to your own user page and click into either "Topics" or "Comments" from the top, you can't still be on the default "All posts" view. When you go into either of the individual post types, there will be a search box at the top, and you can use that to search your own posts.
Just like the overall site search, the search always works as "look for all of these words", so only include multiple words if you want to find posts that contain all of them. I'm hoping to upgrade the PostgreSQL version that I'm using fairly soon, which should make for some easy enhancements to search, so hopefully soon we'll have some more capabilities there.
Let me know if you notice any strangeness with the search results.
And as usual, I've given everyone 10 invites, accessible on the invite page
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.
If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this week?
If a top-level comment is collapsed by default (presumably due to "noise" tags), replies to that comment will still trigger the "1 new" text on the topic, but won't be visible when you visit the thread - and there's not even any indication that you should expand the noise-tagged comment to see a reply.
Would it be possible(/desirable) to show the red indicator next to collapsed comments if there's a new comment underneath them?
I've noticed a trend (with Reddit, but I don't exclude the possibility it could be happening elsewhere) that people post a topic, then a day later they delete it. I've always been of the opinion that the best use of a discussion forum is to leave an answered topic for future posters to find. Especially when a community is hardcore anti-repost.
Am I the only one who gets annoyed by this, or have others come across this too?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
A few pretty quick things to talk about today, with some input wanted on each:
As announced last week, the site now has native scheduled topics (which need to be configured by me). There have been a couple of these posted now, with the most recent one being today's "What are you reading these days?" topic in ~books.
Here's the schedule that I have set up right now. Times are in UTC (Pacific time is UTC-7 and Eastern is UTC-4).
| Topic | Timing (UTC) |
|---|---|
| ~talk - What are you doing this week? | Monday, 15:00 |
| ~games - What have you been playing? | Monday, 16:00 |
| ~tv - What have you been watching? | Tuesday, 16:00 |
| ~anime - What have you been watching/reading this week? (Anime/Manga) | Wednesday, 16:00 |
| ~books - What have you been reading lately? | Every second Thursday, 16:00 |
| ~creative - What creative projects have you been working on? | Every second Thursday (alternating with ~books), 16:00 |
| ~talk - What are you doing this weekend? | Friday, 15:00 |
| ~music - What have you been listening to this week? | Friday, 16:00 |
These were all pre-existing topics that had been getting posted consistently. The timings are a bit arbitrary, but somewhere around 16:00 is usually the time the site starts getting more active each day, and I went with every 2 weeks for ~creative and ~books since I think people don't change through those as quickly.
There are a few other topics I think would be good too, let me know what you think or if this is starting to be too many:
One other question I wanted to ask, since I'm doing some work related to it: Is there any reason for people to still be able to post new top-level comments in old recurring threads? I'll definitely still allow posting replies to existing comments so conversations can continue, but I can't really think of a reason why anyone would need to post a new top-level comment in any thread except the newest, and may just disallow that to keep people from inadvertently posting in the old ones.
I deleted the three ~science subgroups (~science.formal, ~science.natural, ~science.social) and moved all the topics back into ~science. These were confusing (I had to keep checking which branch certain subjects were in), and the activity level across the science groups really isn't high enough to need 4 groups.
I also deleted ~hobbies.automotive and moved the (very few) topics from it back into ~hobbies with an automotive tag. The group was getting less than one topic posted a week, and doesn't seem necessary yet.
One other change I want to make but haven't yet, because I want input first: I think I'd like to move ~creative into a sub-group of ~arts. What do you think of calling it ~arts.original? Any other possible names that would work better as "content created by the poster?"
Finally, I've also just deployed a change that starts showing a "content type" on each topic. Currently it doesn't do anything other than get displayed in the listings, but the plan is to be able to use this for searching, filtering, and similar purposes. This will be able to cover the common requests like "I'd like a way to see only videos", and will also make some other things easier to customize (for example, there's no need to show word count on Ask topics).
Here's the list of content types that are shown right now, but I'm fairly sure that I'm forgetting about some others:
Update on Oct 11: if a type for a link topic isn't detected, it will display "Link"
What other types of content get posted to Tildes that aren't covered in there?
