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    1. What will Tildes users be called?

      On Reddit it's easy -- Redditors. Ending in a vowel, Tildes makes that a bit less straightforward. This obviously is not a super high priority question, but I had the thought a few minutes ago....

      On Reddit it's easy -- Redditors. Ending in a vowel, Tildes makes that a bit less straightforward. This obviously is not a super high priority question, but I had the thought a few minutes ago. Are we Tilders? Tilds? ~rs? Anyone have any ideas that are a bit more creative and easier to say?

      23 votes
    2. Why duplication of links is possible in Tildes?

      AFAIK, reddit does not allow duplication of same link. In Tildes, you can repost same link. Is it deliberate choice or its' discussions postponed? IMO, after a time period (ex. 1 month) same link...

      AFAIK, reddit does not allow duplication of same link. In Tildes, you can repost same link. Is it deliberate choice or its' discussions postponed?

      IMO, after a time period (ex. 1 month) same link can be shared. In this way, some of users that missed link, or a new discovery in the link, can be subjected to interested ones.

      Also I really like reddit's other contexts feature for the same link.

      4 votes
    3. Daily Tildes discussion - why should we allow (or not allow) fluff content?

      Alright, unfortunately I'm going to have to be a grumpy old guy, but it looks like we're going to need to make this decision already. There have been a few "cute animal" images posted over the...

      Alright, unfortunately I'm going to have to be a grumpy old guy, but it looks like we're going to need to make this decision already. There have been a few "cute animal" images posted over the last couple of days, and yesterday we had a request for a devoted group for it.

      So today, I think we need to decide if we want a devoted group, or if we should just disallow this type of content entirely. My personal inclination is that it shouldn't be allowed at all, but I'm open to discussing it. Unfortunately I need to go out for a while shortly so I can't write up too much right now, but here are some quick thoughts on why I feel like we shouldn't allow it:

      • One of the main objectives of Tildes was to prioritize high-quality content. By the very nature of this, it means we're going to have to take a stand against some things that don't represent what we want the site to become.
      • Cute animal content is pretty much the definition of "lowest common denominator". Almost everybody enjoys seeing a cute photo/gif, and that's why it tends to dominate almost every platform it's on. It appeals to a very wide range of people, so it attracts more votes/attention. This is also why we can't really trust "a lot of people want fluff content"—of course they do. We need to make the decision based on whether allowing it is good for Tildes overall, not whether it has wide appeal.
      • It has practically zero discussion value. About the only comments people can make on those sorts of posts are "aww cute", or "lol, goofy dog". Yes, there's a very, very slim possibility that you might get something like "this type of bird has an interesting migration pattern", but if that's the case, a better original post would have been that information in the first place.
      • Being harsh about what we want to allow is probably most important while the site is in this sort of small/invite-only phase. One of the main important aspects of this phase is that we need to build up a strong base culture. That way, when the site starts to grow, people will be coming into a place with an established culture and norms, not a complete free-for-all. So if we want to have a high-quality site, I think it's important to establish that very early.
      • If we're not certain what the right answer is, it's much better to disallow it now and eventually relent later, than to allow it now and have to ban established communities in the future.

      Let me know what you think, but I think it's important that we decide this very soon so we can be more clear about how we're going forward with this and similar types of content.

      147 votes
    4. AskComp: Reactive coding and splitting observables

      I was going to ask this on Stackoverflow but it seems like reactive programming is split into per-language questions (RxJava, RxJS, RxRuby, etc.) and this is a more generic question. How do you...

      I was going to ask this on Stackoverflow but it seems like reactive programming is split into per-language questions (RxJava, RxJS, RxRuby, etc.) and this is a more generic question.

      How do you stream items from one Observable to multiple Observers?

      I have a stream of CSV items, they're mapped to a dictionary/hash table, and then I want to:

      • get the maximum value from this stream
      • process the stream in a different way
      • sample the stream

      Can I call subscribe multiple times and then call the other operators?

      5 votes
    5. A few Off the Bat Thoughts about the Mechanics

      Tags I can totally see nsfw.nude work, but do you think tagging will be done much further? It's relatively much work to tag a thing well, maybe some sort of cross-posting is more rewarding to the...

      Tags

      I can totally see nsfw.nude work, but do you think tagging will be done much further? It's relatively much work to tag a thing well, maybe some sort of cross-posting is more rewarding to the user. Essentially it might be the same thing, but the act of sharing to another tilde feels more rewarding than adding yet another tag.

      Hierarchies in Tags and Tildes

      Yes! I love hierarchies for how they scale.
      Do you think the one-dimensional nature of such a "taxonomy" will get problematic, or is it merely a corner case? I might have "food > recipes" and "food > restaurants" or I might have "recipes > food" and "recipes > chemistry". Again I feel like cross-posting is essential to solve this duplication issue. Maybe this as another chance to improve on reddit: if cross-posts just reference a single post there would be just one big discussion.
      Cfabbro is part of the team? "We were actually considering allowing multiple ways to access the same groups. E.g. ~literature and ~lit going to the same top level group" sounds good.

      Comments

      I think "most votes" has a strong bias towards early comments. Ideally you'd give a new comment the reason of doubt, and make it more visible until a good rating about is has been established. For this you'd have to track up-votes per "seen".
      Sadly it's really hard to track these implicit down-votes ("read but not up-voted") and generally it obfuscates how the site works. I still think it's worth thinking about, especially if you might derive trust/reputation from the up-votes at some point.
      Otherwise commenting on rising stories is the an easy way to farm karma (I tried it on HN to see how the down-vote mechanism works, which is unlocked at 200 karma). Here I also agree with you, that this process should not be 100% automatic.

      Group-specific trust

      If tildes are nested, will reputation (eventually) be inherited up the hierarchy?

      Filter-Bubble (found your opinion in some discussion about it):
      I agree again, good communities are bubbles. I think the "no-downvotes" will help a bit so controversial stuff can rise.

      Links

      I also like your decision to not allow text on links. I really like how HN moderators improve link-titles sometimes to get rid of clickbait or inaccuracies.

      I will give some UX feedback later, when I got used to tildes a bit.

      9 votes
    6. Post your setup!

      A thread to post your desktop (or laptop) setups - what OS you use, what desktop environment you use, what window manager you use, what editor you use, what terminal emulator you use etc.

      24 votes
    7. A little thing that might form some trouble (phising)

      As can be seen in this post in ~test it is possible to secretly refer to another webpage than the one actually typed. It's not the biggest priority as of now, but it would be nice to see this...

      As can be seen in this post in ~test it is possible to secretly refer to another webpage than the one actually typed. It's not the biggest priority as of now, but it would be nice to see this fixed before Tildes will go live.

      In case the ~test post gets deleted, here's an example:
      https://innocent.site/

      7 votes
    8. What Have You Been Listening To This Week?

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! Maybe we can make these threads a thing here. Feel free to give...

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! Maybe we can make these threads a thing here.

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

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

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

      15 votes
    9. Can we have a monochrome color theme, please?

      The "Black" theme looks pretty OK, but monochrome white/grey-on-black would be fantastic! Nothing against a few colored spots, as long as the text has a high contrast! All the vision-impaired...

      The "Black" theme looks pretty OK, but monochrome white/grey-on-black would be fantastic! Nothing against a few colored spots, as long as the text has a high contrast! All the vision-impaired users will thank you!

      9 votes
    10. Let's talk about that annoying thing we all don't want to think about: funding.

      Tildes does have bills to pay. The donations are open, but I'd like to go beyond the basic donations for a moment. Right now, tildes has server costs, and also the lead developer (Deimos) is...

      Tildes does have bills to pay. The donations are open, but I'd like to go beyond the basic donations for a moment.

      Right now, tildes has server costs, and also the lead developer (Deimos) is donating his full time to the project rather than working for someone else. He can't do that forever, so if we want him full time, we need to get him paid by the non-profit. In the future, that cost is probably going to expand to larger server costs, multiple developers, possibly community managers and other staff - though nothing ridiculous like reddit with 300 people doing marketing.

      When we talked about funding, we wondered if we could get all users to toss in one dollar a month, and if there were enough users (millions) even reduce that to one dollar a year. Now that we have a lot of new people here, I'd like to ask what everyone thinks of those funding ideas, and if they have any other good ideas on how to raise money to pay for whatever tildes' costs are.

      66 votes
    11. Thoughts on addressing the filter bubble (echo chambers and "fake news"), scalability and free speech

      Hi there! First things first, I just want to say thank you for the invite, but more importantly, thank you for taking the time to create this platform. I, as I imagine most people on here, have a...

      Hi there!

      First things first, I just want to say thank you for the invite, but more importantly, thank you for taking the time to create this platform. I, as I imagine most people on here, have a love-hate relationship with reddit. Clearly the site has had a tremendous impact, in many ways positive, but with many things structurally and fundamentally holding it back. I've been a subscriber to /r/RedditAlternatives/ for a while, and there have been very few sites that have compelled me to learn more and actively take part in them, and yours is of course one of them. I just got done reading all of the articles on your docs page and was very pleased - "finally", I thought, someone who's taken into account all of the articles on the internet that have been written about designing and building communities, from both a social and technical perspective, and put it into practice. You've addressed many issues that are often ignored by the platforms themselves and done it in a brilliant way so as to ensure that our voices are heard first and foremost, and I think that's just awesome.

      Okay, now that all the praise is out of the way... :P

      I did notice something that was not addressed in the docs pages, so I'll be blunt and simply ask: how do you plan to address the filter bubble, or rather, do you plan to address it at all? Maximizing user freedom regarding which communities you want to see content from seems obvious, but that inevitably ends up with users being stuck in their own bubble. reddit already has an infamous reputation of being an echo chamber, and gives users tools to make it an even bigger echo chamber. A long time ago, there was a commonly held belief that the internet would bring us closer together because it would force us to expand our worldviews and interact with people as people, not knowing where they're from or who they are (the "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" saying about anonymity). As reddit moves more and more toward becoming a social network like Facebook and less like the pseudonymous and anonymous internet discussion forums of old, this problem has only gotten worse, to the point of having real-world political and social consequences (especially with the increasing deluge of so-called "fake news"). I'd really like to hear your take on it.

      I do have other concerns, namely: scalability, and the stance on free speech. The donation model has worked well for Wikipedia, but, well, they're Wikipedia. They're an incredibly important resource and people have clearly valued their resource so as to have sustained their model, mass donation drives with Jimbo Wales' face plastered all over the site notwithstanding. If tildes becomes the Wikipedia of internet discussion platforms, I am sure many people will find it valuable enough to donate to, though I am still not sold on how sustainable it really is.

      The stance on free speech in the announcement blog post also has me concerned. As you mentioned, it is a difficult topic; that much is clear. I am mostly just curious as to where the lines are drawn in regards to how "threats, harassment, and hate speech" are defined. With an absolutist position like "we are 100% pro-free speech", things are very clear and simple, whereas any other position, I believe, comes down to the whim of the moderators/admins. Certainly most people will generally follow the golden rule and abide by basic common sense and decency (i.e. "don't be a dick"), but when discussions get heated I think it's important to not have a reasonable fear that you're going to get permabanned because you hurt someone's feelings (just as an example).

      All these issues aside, I am very excited about the development of tildes and hope you & the community can come up with excellent technical and social solutions to these difficult problems.

      Thanks for taking the time to read this!

      (p.s. apologies for not posting this in the daily discussion topic, thought it warranted its own topic)

      edit: formatting

      26 votes
    12. Do you have any opinion about cultural exchanges?

      Hello tildes, sorry if this is the wrong ~tilde to ask about it. I have been a mod of /r/brasil for almost a year now, and recently became a mod of /r/europe. One of the things that I really kept...

      Hello tildes, sorry if this is the wrong ~tilde to ask about it.

      I have been a mod of /r/brasil for almost a year now, and recently became a mod of /r/europe. One of the things that I really kept me on Reddit were the AMAs (I loved the Obama and Bill Gates AMA) and cultural exchanges. You see, since 2015, /r/brasil organized this event between different national subreddits like /r/de, /r/AskAnAmerican, /r/singapore, /r/portugal, /r/CasualUK, etc. You can see the full list here. Also, we're currently running one cultural exchange with some Canadian subreddits (link). I really like how the Internet can still help us learn different perspectives, new music, food, and some funny banter between countries.

      When I see people lamenting the current state of the Internet, I try to point them out to this kind of thing, because I genuinely see good things. I see opportunity to learn, to understand, to gracefully disagree or agree with someone.

      When I first found out about tildes I thought, "how can we do this kind of awesome event between different cultures and nations?", and I guess there's no way to do this unless it's relevant for the context of a post. In a way what I want to say is, "there's more to internet discussions than the US and their issues".

      Anyway, I guess this way kind of a ramble, kind of a question to y'all.

      13 votes
    13. Tildes Monocle (aka sticker AKA gold)

      Make it possible to donate in exchange for placing a monocle, sticker or gold star cough on a comment. It's karma and it's an instant way to donate to keep the site afloat. Also donating could...

      Make it possible to donate in exchange for placing a monocle, sticker or gold star cough on a comment. It's karma and it's an instant way to donate to keep the site afloat.

      Also donating could give the donater a special sticker on their username like "supporter" or something.

      12 votes