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    1. S H O U T I N G

      Can I use as many headers as I want to completely fill the page with nonsense ? What about just one single header with a lot of text in it? Will it wrap with the same amount of spacing? EDIT:...

      Can I use as many headers

      as I want to completely

      fill the page with nonsense ?

      What about just one single header with a lot of text in it? Will it wrap with the same amount of spacing?

      EDIT: Nope, just a little bit less spacing

      1 vote
    2. Daily Tildes discussion - suggestions for expansions/additions to Docs (and how you can help)

      Today I want to talk about expanding the information available on the Tildes Docs site. There's some info there, but there should be a lot more. Eventually, I'd like that site to include...

      Today I want to talk about expanding the information available on the Tildes Docs site. There's some info there, but there should be a lot more. Eventually, I'd like that site to include information about the site's goals, mechanics and so on, as well as things closer to standard "documentation", such as how the post formatting works, details on the tagging systems, etc.

      One specific thing that I know I'd like to add before long is kind of a "FAQ for mechanics" that can have answers for the common questions that keep coming up, like "why is the comment box at the bottom instead of the top?".

      To help with this, I've now open-sourced the files for both the Tildes Docs site and the Blog here now, so you can contribute to them directly if you'd like to: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes-static-sites/

      @flaque has already written a page to help with Markdown formatting that I'll add soon (but I wanted to see if he'd like to do it as a proper merge request so he gets credit as a contributor). Anyone else is welcome to contribute to the Docs as well, and I'd appreciate the help. However, if you're not sure if it's something that I'd want to add it might be best to ask first before you start writing.

      Outside of that, I'm open for suggestions about what you think would be good to include, or things that are already there that need work. Thanks!

      20 votes
    3. Discussing anonymity on ~

      So one of the things I really liked about the project is point 1 of the privacy section of the Mechanics (Future). Proactive not reactive; preventative not remedial: When creating new features,...

      So one of the things I really liked about the project is point 1 of the privacy section of the Mechanics (Future).

      Proactive not reactive; preventative not remedial: When creating new features, think about what data will need to be stored, and consider how harmful it might be if that data was to be leaked in the future. Is it possible to reduce the amount of data being stored to lower the potential harm? Can the data eventually be aggregated or anonymized so that we're only storing recent data instead of a full history?

      I think a good first step would be to not have a public comment/submission history. Users should evaluate other users contributions based on the conversation the are having/reading, not past submissions.

      This doesn't make you anonymous, but at least it can prevent nosy people from knowing too much. (I get there are valid reasons to want to find other posts by the same user, but I think individual privacy is more important). At least, if not enforced for everyone, this should be an option, making your profile not display your history to others.

      Now, one of my biggest problems with reddit is that it doesn't make it easy for you to stay anonymous and also keep your content on the site.

      Let me explain. I don't like people being able to see my submission/comment history, because I don't want to give the chance for people to identify me if I don't choose to do so personally. It's not about reddit knowing what I like or do (I mean, I use Google, they know everything I do), it's about individuals, about other users knowing things I'm not happy sharing with them for whatever reason.

      There are only two options on reddit: deleting my content (using a script or whatever or going one by one) or deleting my account. This results in me deleting all my comments and submissions on reddit every few weeks.

      Now, I would love to be able to leave most of what I post on reddit online, because sometimes I have really interesting conversations and I try to be detailed and clear and other people might find (some of) my posts useful. But I don't want anyone who knows my username or anyone who sees a comment of mine going through my history. There's too many crazy people. Also, I haven't suffered doxxing, but that's just not nice.

      There are many reasons why someone could prefer to not be identifiable. Just to give some examples that come to mind: people might have an ideology that other users don't like/respect, people might post pictures of themselves (think fitness groups, for example), people might post in local groups revealing their location, people might look for counsel and talk about their personal problems, etc. Putting all of that together might make it easy to identify someone.

      So, what I would like to propose is a way to leave my content online if I wish to and giving other people the option to read it in the future, without it being publicly tied to my username.

      How could this be done? Well, I think users should be able to anonymize their participation in a thread individually and throughout the site. There could be an button (on every thread for thread only anonymization and on your profile for full site anonymization) that you tap and your username is replaced all through each thread with a randomly generated username (it'd be great if the username is consistent within the thread, so people reading would know its the same person).

      These usernames should be words, ideally, not difficult to parse by humans. Of course this would generate a great number of usernames, but there are some solutions.

      One could be using something like Google Docs uses when several anonymous viewers are watching a document. Each gets a name (RedFox, whatever) which is consistently used throughout the thread. The same username (RedFox) can then be reused in another thread for any other anonymous user. (So RedFox wouldn't be referring to the same person in different threads, but to two random, anonymized persons).

      I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to generate these (similarly to how reddit gives you suggestions to new usernames when you open an account).

      Also, in order to avoid the admins having to reserve many usernames in advance, these usernames could have a special mark (like *RedFox or °RedFox, or ~RedFox~, for example). This way, a new user can register any available name without interfering with these anonymous usernames. A thread could have some non-anonymized user called RedFox and an anonymized user called °RedFox (or whatever mark is used).

      In any case, the user should be able to access all of their submissions and comments on their profile even after anonymizing, being able to edit or delete them if they wish to.

      Ok, I think that's it, I hope I was clear. I'm also not gonna be able to log in again until tomorrow. So please, go ahead and discuss and tell me what you think and I'll come back when I can.

      EDIT: User karma should not be public either. I can make an argument for it tomorrow if needed or we can discus it on another thread.

      42 votes
    4. Promoted or featured links above regular link list (with a different sort/filter)

      Posted about this earlier (I think in the thread about default sort order) and it came up in the ~science thread on what killed Reddit AMAs:...

      Posted about this earlier (I think in the thread about default sort order) and it came up in the ~science thread on what killed Reddit AMAs: https://tildes.net/~science/py/how_reddit_killed_science_amas#comment-3e1

      Basically having a "featured" or "promoted" set of links above the usual links that are:

      1. limited to a small number of posts
      2. use a different sort order than whatever the user has selected
      3. filtered by tag

      This would make it possible for ~science (as an example) to always have the latest 3 AMAs (posts tagged with AMA) show up above the other set of links and would solve the problem that r/science AMAs had on reddit where they had to compete in the regular list of links.

      4 votes
    5. Maximum width of comments on wide screens

      When posting a comment, the width of the text seems limited. When I removed the max-width from the p and li element, it filled the box as I expected it to. (Source) To me, the second one looks...

      When posting a comment, the width of the text seems limited. When I removed the max-width from the p and li element, it filled the box as I expected it to. (Source)

      To me, the second one looks better. Some padding left and right could be added, but I certainly wouldn't use a fixed maximum width there (A percentage would be fine, I guess).

      Edit The seems seems to apply for posts as well.

      8 votes
    6. Vocal Harmonies Playlist

      I have always enjoyed songs with rich vocal harmonies and structure. Last night I decided to make a playlist that collects the best ones that I've heard. Unfortunately, I realized I don't actually...

      I have always enjoyed songs with rich vocal harmonies and structure. Last night I decided to make a playlist that collects the best ones that I've heard. Unfortunately, I realized I don't actually know that many off the top of my head.

      Please, share your songs with me.
      The playlist I have so far is here (spotify link).

      13 votes
    7. What if we got rid of votes entirely?

      There are no downvotes (which is a very good idea) and we are sorting by activity anyway. So what if we took the next logical step and got rid of the entire voting system? Please hear me out! :)...

      There are no downvotes (which is a very good idea) and we are sorting by activity anyway. So what if we took the next logical step and got rid of the entire voting system? Please hear me out! :)

      (1) Up-voting does not encourage quality postings (see, for instance, https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/data-mining-reveals-how-the-down-vote-leads-to-a-vicious-circle-of-negative-feedback-aad9d49da238 ; yes the article also covers the up-vote).

      (2) Anecdotally, up-voting discourages quality postings. I have often been frustrated because well-thought-out comments (by me or by others) got one hundredth of the up-votes of a strategically placed "lol" or something similarly trivial. People upvote things that evoke an emotional response, not things that make them think. (Source lost, unfortunately.)

      (3) Up-votes are time-critial. Being the first one to comment often assures getting the most up-votes, which can lead to (2), to "first" posts, and to quick posts instead of well though-out comments.

      (4) (Edit!) Up-voting can create an echo-chamber, because quality if measured by popularity.

      All in all, voting is just a social media habit without any benefit and with the possibility of a large detrimental effect on posting quality. Old-school Web fora and Usenet worked fine without it and quality was (arguably) superior.

      Would you really miss the option to vote? Is it worth the detrimental effects?

      Please discuss!

      Edit: fixed the link to the article. Thanks!

      45 votes
    8. Speedart for May 22 to 28th!

      As there has been positive response, let's get the party started! Speedart created in 60 minutes (or less, but not more!) during this week is welcome in this conversation. You can do as many as...

      As there has been positive response, let's get the party started!

      Speedart created in 60 minutes (or less, but not more!) during this week is welcome in this conversation. You can do as many as you like, out of any media. In homage to the folks over in ~music, I'm going to use music as my theme this week - but you do you and have fun!

      A couple of thoughts:
      ~ Out of courtesy to your fellow posters, please consider social appropriateness, pornography legislation, and giving a heads up in the post if there is gore and/or nudity.
      ~ One of the best gifts you can give to someone who has the joy or courage to post their work is appreciation of their efforts. :)

      GO! ARTIFY!

      23 votes
    9. Can a solution to massive carbon emissions include nuclear energy?

      One of my frustrations with political threads generally is that they are often too broad to be meaningful in terms of policy discussion. So I thought I'd narrow the topic of discussion. I am quite...

      One of my frustrations with political threads generally is that they are often too broad to be meaningful in terms of policy discussion. So I thought I'd narrow the topic of discussion. I am quite interested in political discussion and this seems a fine enough place to have it as any.

      So let's talk: Nuclear energy policy!

      With the Paris accord attempting to have countries pledged to reduce their carbon footprint to keep the globe from warming past 2 degrees above industrial era temperatures, it seems like a lot of countries have a whole lot of work to do in a rather short period of time. Maybe the US decides to commit to some informal reduction in carbon emissions eventually. Maybe it doesn't. Here we're talking about shoulds.

      So for non-US people: how should a given country go about meeting their commitment to the Paris Accord?

      For the US peeps: 1.) should the US bother trying to reduce carbon emissions and 2.) how should it go about doing it?

      For everyone: What place does nuclear energy have in an energy portfolio that reduces carbon emissions?

      24 votes
    10. Suggestion: "Mark as Read" should not fade out the box

      Instead of fading the replies after clicking on "Mark as Read", it should just remove it immediately. It's really, really time consuming to have to mark 40 something replies as read. I know this...

      Instead of fading the replies after clicking on "Mark as Read", it should just remove it immediately. It's really, really time consuming to have to mark 40 something replies as read. I know this can be solved with a "mark all as read" button, but I do actually want to go through and read all of them.

      10 votes
    11. We should have more actionable entity for tags

      To give you an example list: Everyone should be able to add tags to topics, not just OP in creation Tags are useful but only if they are correct. OP could not get the right tags but the community...

      To give you an example list:

      • Everyone should be able to add tags to topics, not just OP in creation
        Tags are useful but only if they are correct.
        OP could not get the right tags but the community as a whole could fix it over time. That would help browsing tags that actually reflect the content of the topics.
      • I should be able to tag my own comments. Sometimes you know you're posting off-topic or just a joke.
      9 votes