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    1. A friend an I are going on vacation in Oxford (UK) next week, with an option to stay longer and travel through England. What places should we visit/things should we do under all circumstances?

      Our current plan is to stay in Oxford for three days, and "go with the flow" for the next four. In Oxford, we have a few plans, but still a lot of free time. For the remainder, we have no fixed...

      Our current plan is to stay in Oxford for three days, and "go with the flow" for the next four. In Oxford, we have a few plans, but still a lot of free time. For the remainder, we have no fixed plans other than to do the WB studio tour in London. Mobility wise we are pretty much entirely free, though ideally public transportation as opposed to renting a car would be good.

      Do you have any suggestions for what we should do in those free days?

      15 votes
    2. The issues with modernizing stories: Cinderella (2015) vs. Ever After (1998)

      Old stories are always being updated for lots of reasons, ranging from trying to appeal to new audiences to correcting toxic depictions to fitting better to the current social or political climate...

      Old stories are always being updated for lots of reasons, ranging from trying to appeal to new audiences to correcting toxic depictions to fitting better to the current social or political climate and more. There's nothing new there. However, one thing I find a bit odd lately, as in the last five years or so, is that a lot of this modernization is actually done pretty poorly in main stream media. We see more forced diversity, queerbaiting, and generally bad storytelling. Not totally sure how I'll do this yet, but I'm thinking of posting stories that stand out to me for better or for worst, starting with a classic.

      There will be spoilers for both movies.

      Cinderella (2015)

      This is one I honestly didn't think worked at all. To be fair, I believe Disney's goal was just to sell a beautiful movie, and not a good story. This whole movie was gorgeous. It was also really boring, which I honestly believe is the greatest sin in storytelling.

      Cinderella herself is "smarter" in this movie than the old classic cartoon. She's well read and has some agency, which honestly makes her more a damsel than the original cartoon for me. In the cartoon, she was an abused child that had no where to go. Her being trapped made sense. In the new one, she's sort of a fighter...who doesn't fight. I didn't get it.

      Another issue is that Cinderella was really the only character they modified, which is why the story is still shallow.

      Ever After (1998)

      This is honestly one of the best modernization of the fairy tale I've ever seen. What worked for me, is that they fleshed out all their characters. Danielle, Henry, the stepmother, stepsisters, everyone! This makes for a much richer story, where characters themselves can be modernized, but still fit the time of the period piece. It's not about dropping a fourth wave feminist into an aged story, but about adding the dimensions that would have still existed then. Danielle is strong, well read, and obedient. Her servitude is not without reason. She's seeking a "mother", and her relationship with her stepmother is more than simply being a slave. The audience is shown the moments of kindness Danielle seeks from her stepmother.

      My quick two-cents. I also find it interesting that Ever After came out over 15 years before Cinderella.

      So what are you thoughts? Any good fairy tale adaptations you can mention?

      8 votes
    3. I just received a Fisher Space Pen and I'm as happy as a Jujube

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

      Look at this beauty

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

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

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

      /rant

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

      23 votes
    4. A group for finance/markets/investing/trading would be nice

      There is a conspicuous lack of that sort of thing here so far. I get that Tildes might not want to be a repository of "hey what stock do I buy" or "Oh my god MU is still going down" but...

      There is a conspicuous lack of that sort of thing here so far. I get that Tildes might not want to be a repository of "hey what stock do I buy" or "Oh my god MU is still going down" but strategy-oriented discussions around positions in markets and the way changes in the world will effect your financial future seems like high-quality content to me.

      6 votes
    5. Do you exercise at home and/or in gym? What's your goal? Favorite exercise?

      I used to be skinny and indifferent to fitness, but a couple years ago decided to try weight lifting at gym. I didn't last long because got bored going there every time. Recently I got dumbbells...

      I used to be skinny and indifferent to fitness, but a couple years ago decided to try weight lifting at gym. I didn't last long because got bored going there every time. Recently I got dumbbells for home and working out with them goes way better for me: instant and full availability, personal shower afterwards, and cozy privacy of home.

      My favorite exercise is single dumbbell pullover lying on a stool, upper body is exercised pretty well, especially upper chest.

      With attention to sufficient meals my weight started increasing and that feels cool, it would be nice to have more confidence and self contentment with a not so skinny body.

      And what's your story?

      20 votes
    6. Black Mirror S3E01 "Nosedive" discussion thread

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 1 - Nosedive A woman desperate to boost her social media score hits the jackpot when she's invited to a swanky wedding....

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode

      Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 1 - Nosedive

      A woman desperate to boost her social media score hits the jackpot when she's invited to a swanky wedding. But the trip doesn't go as planned.

      Black Mirror Netflix link


      Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

      You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!


      If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

      • How does the title relate to the episode itself?
      • Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
      • Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

      Please rate the episode here!

      11 votes
    7. What are you reading this week? #1

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

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

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

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

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

      33 votes
    8. Thoughts on male relationships

      Right now, the number one post on my personal Reddit feed is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9bryj8/straight_guys_of_reddit_whats_the_most_intimate/ Reading through this made me...

      Right now, the number one post on my personal Reddit feed is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9bryj8/straight_guys_of_reddit_whats_the_most_intimate/

      Reading through this made me feel quite a few different emotions, but I would say that my biggest takeaway is disappointment.

      I'm pretty young, being in my late twenties, but I know that the largest Reddit demographic is younger than me. And it terrifies me to see that people who are probably less than 15 years younger than me appear to be far more stricken by toxic masculinity than I was when I was their age. Right now the top response is a story about someone scratching his friend's back during a military deployment. He later mentions that his comrades gave him a hard time for it. Is the idea of machismo so fragile that we cannot take simple actions - even to provide relief to a friend?

      I'll be the first to admit that a single AskReddit thread is not going to be an accurate representation of the levels of intimacy men actually give each other. But the simple fact that it's full of jokes, to me, makes it appear that they are using humor as a defense mechanism.

      The fact that young men have so many barriers preventing them from building bonds with other men in a society often partitioned by gender deeply concerns me. I worry that this is the beginning of a societal issue in the same vein as racism was for our parents and grandparents and will only cause more problems as we age and gain political sway.

      I'm bringing this up here because I would like some perspective on this. I've always been very sympathetic to other people, and my views as a gay man are obviously going to be different from straight men. Where is this toxicity coming from? Is there a way we can stop it, or is it already ingrained in the collective psyche?

      29 votes
    9. Weekly / monthly obscure books topic?

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

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

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

      11 votes
    10. Going to be running a GURPS Infinite Worlds campaign in a few days. Any tips? Suggestions? General RPG ideas to steal?

      I've run a number of one shots before based off GURPS Lite, and I've come to like the system and its versatility. So, I've taken the next step and drafted a couple interested players from the one...

      I've run a number of one shots before based off GURPS Lite, and I've come to like the system and its versatility. So, I've taken the next step and drafted a couple interested players from the one shots into a campaign.

      Essentially, it's a 150 point campaign in the Infinity Patrol setting, based one of the alternate timelines (Gernsback) developing world jumping tech, and the PCs being one of the first teams assembled from said world to scout out and investigate other timelines. The overarching plot is going to be them defending their world from incursions from Centrum and Homeline and building alliances with other parachronically enabled third parties, like Merlin. The main plot hook is going to be a series of kidnappings, by parties including the Homeline Mafia, Reich 5 Nazis, and Centrum. Because of the nature of their travel, all Quanta are accessible by the party, but not as easily as by projector/conveyor. The worlds they're going to be visiting run the gamut from high fantasy to hard science fiction.

      Now that background info's out of the way, basically what I'm asking is: are there any interesting items, characters, or plot beats you've used or seen used in tabletop games that could fit well into this kind of story and setting? I want to put some originality into the worlds they visit so they all feel alive and memorable, and side quests and artifacts are a great way to do that. By no means am I interested only in GURPS stuff, the nature of the system makes it pretty easy to graft in stuff from others.

      9 votes
    11. Four days on

      I've been trying to simplify my life for a few years now, from an environmental and mental health angle. One small change I found made a surprisingly significant difference is wearing an outfit...

      I've been trying to simplify my life for a few years now, from an environmental and mental health angle. One small change I found made a surprisingly significant difference is wearing an outfit for four days at a time.

      Why four days? The original news article that inspired me, had a woman wear the same dress for 1 whole year! That was too much for me. My work has casual Fridays, so this sort just covers me switching to jeans on Friday. At least that was my reasoning when I started. Now, I wear everything for four days at a time regardless.

      Obvious exceptions for if any item is dirty, clothing is not sufficient for weather or if I have to change an outfit for an event. I'm also not super hard on myself, so if I woke up feeling like a different shirt, I will just switch.

      How this helped me? I don't spend any time in the morning thinking about what to wear anymore. Also don't wonder which clothes are clean, and don't accumulate as large a pile of "not clean enough to go back in the drawer" and "not dirty enough to wash" clothes in my bathroom/bedroom. I do laundry noticeably less, as I'm not just dumping my previously mentioned pile into my basket all the time. Clothes I do wash, all fit on my laundry line now, so I just air dry them. Previously, I machine dried anything that didn't fit.

      Surprisingly, no one's really noticed me doing this, and definitely no one's said anything. I did tell a few people a few months in, including some coworkers and family I see everyday. They were shocked, lol.

      This is also a bit of an anti-consumption thing for me. I currently have more than enough clothes, but thought if I reduced the amount I needed day-to-day, what I already own can last longer and I would be more aware of what I actually need to replace when it comes up.

      So, thoughts on this or other things you may have tried to simplify your life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      81 votes
    13. Movie Monday Free Talk

      So since I'm a terrible person and all that I totally forgot to make this post last week so I've decided to wait a week and actually post on a Monday. For those of you that don't know what Movie...

      So since I'm a terrible person and all that I totally forgot to make this post last week so I've decided to wait a week and actually post on a Monday. For those of you that don't know what Movie Monday is, here is the post I made about it.

      Basically I'd like to make a weekly post where myself and other users post comments on what movies they've watched recently and whether or not they recommend it etc. There's no specific format set out for the reviews, so feel free to write one any way you like, whether it's just a few sentences or a whole essay, we'll figure out what works best as we go along.

      So far, the only rules are:

      1. All top level comments should be reviews. (if you have any questions or suggestions on how to do things differently, either send me a private message or post in the discussion thread I linked up above)

      2. No spoilers in top level comments. Ideally any spoilers should be in children comments (with sufficient warning) if you wish to write a review with spoilers, make another comment below your top level comment and write the spoilers there. Anyone who doesn't want to know any spoilers should un-expand the comments at the top before they start reading comments. Hopefully this should allow discussion of both the film and the review without forcing people to see spoilers.

      I know the second rule is a tiny bit confusing, but like I said this is a learning process and we'll see what happens. Anyway have fun and happy film watching!

      16 votes
    14. Tildes, I'm going on a ten day road trip with my s/o, what are some things I should prepare for?

      It's been about a decade since I had a vacation and I have a wedding to attend, so to kill two birds with one stone we will be traveling from Florida to New York by car. Me and my girlfriend of 7...

      It's been about a decade since I had a vacation and I have a wedding to attend, so to kill two birds with one stone we will be traveling from Florida to New York by car. Me and my girlfriend of 7 months will be taking the trip together and its both of our first times taking a vacation in forever.

      Aside from the more obvious stuff like toothbrushes, clothes and condoms (humble brag), what should I think about? After the wedding we'll have nearly a full week to do anything we want or go just about anywhere within reason/distance.

      Here's what I have covered so far:

      • Trip route is planned for there and (somewhat) back.
      • Car oil changed, tires replaced, cleaned & roadside assistance available 24/7.
      • Cat is taken care of, will be well fed and spied on via a security cam.
      • Got lots of good snacks for the road, small cooler with water etc.
      • Will be using airbnb or a somewhat affordable hotel most nights, we're not scraping by but we want to try and spend money on fun stuff instead of rooms.
      • Got plenty of phone charges, plugs, etc for all our electronics.
      • Got an emergency medical kit and a paper US map in the car (For fun, and just in case.)

      So any suggestions, anything I am missing? Anything I can do to make the trip more fun for me and my girlfriend? Any fun road trip things to do between FL to NY would be nice as well!

      13 votes
    15. After a year in Bangladesh camps, Rohingya women are finding their feet

      Summary A look at the situation of Rohingya women living in Bangladeshi refugee camps, with a focus on health, medicine, and education. Extracts Before coming to a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar,...

      Summary

      A look at the situation of Rohingya women living in Bangladeshi refugee camps, with a focus on health, medicine, and education.

      Extracts


      Before coming to a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Rashida had never seen a foreigner.

      [...] the biggest shock she had was when a community health worker suspected Rashida was pregnant again and took her to the clinic for an examination.

      "What I found out that day was that you can stop having babies if you want to," she says. "I had never heard of family planning."

      Rashida has since thought hard and discussed this with her husband. Their shelter is cramped, and their future uncertain.

      "Three children is a nice family size," she says. "After that, I don't want any more. What I want is to learn something. When we go back home I'd like to be able to work, not just look after children."


      Bakoko [a midwife from Uganda] teaches new mothers how to wrap babies and put on nappies. She examines pregnant women to check for signs of eclampsia, the biggest threat to pregnant women's lives. And she teaches women to check for multiple pregnancies, and to care for women before and after they give birth. She has saved numerous lives.


      Link

      http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-25/bangladesh-rohingya-young-women-coxs-bazar-refugee-camp/10161260

      8 votes
    16. What fun examples of cultural differences have you experienced?

      When I was in high school I went to China through an education program. On the plane there I was seated next to an elderly Chinese woman on my left and a mother and daughter to my right. While...

      When I was in high school I went to China through an education program. On the plane there I was seated next to an elderly Chinese woman on my left and a mother and daughter to my right.

      While talking with the daughter and mother at some point the elderly woman became involved. She spoke cantonese and my mandarin was limited so the mother helped to translate.

      The elderly woman took out paper and pen from her bag and began to have me write me characters. Some time after, she put her hands on my face and began to massage it in circular motions. It was strange but pleasant because clearly her intentions were good. I looked over to the man who was leading my fellow students, and got a thumbs up as he mouthed "just go with it".

      I'd never experienced such caring from a complete stranger. It was a lovely introduction into their culture and genuine happiness to share it.

      23 votes
    17. Followup on standardization of tagging music genres

      So, as a followup to the music tagging thread from a few days ago, I would like to propose the following for discussion. Should all musical posts be tagged with at least one high-level musical...

      So, as a followup to the music tagging thread from a few days ago, I would like to propose the following for discussion.

      1. Should all musical posts be tagged with at least one high-level musical genre?

      The consensus from the last post appeared to be a yes on this. Please note:, this doesn't mean that anyone who submits a track is required to go look up / determine the best genre themselves. If they choose not to, one of the tag mods may do so for them while browsing. Further, we seemed to reach a consensus last time that in the future it would be best to automate this step as completely as possible.

      1. Which tags do we want to use?

      I / @Whom have done some digging and found several different schemes we might use as a basis. For convenience, I've reproduced them in a table for you below:

      <html> <head> <body>
      FreeDB Discogs Wikipedia Allmusic Rate Your Music
      Blues Blues Blues Blues Ambient
      Classical Brass & Military Classical Classical Blues
      Country Children's Country Country Classical Music
      Folk Classical Electronic Electronic Comedy
      Jazz Electronic Folk International Country
      Newage Folk, World, & Country Hip-hop Jazz Dance
      Reggae Funk / Soul Jazz Latin Electronic
      Rock Hip-hop Reggae Pop/Rock Experimental
      Soundtrack Jazz Religious R&B Field Recordings
      Latin Rock Rap Folk
      Non-Music Traditional Reggae Hip Hop
      Pop Industrial Music
      Reggae Jazz
      Rock Metal
      Stage & Screen Musical Theatre and Entertainment
      New Age
      Pop
      Psychedelia
      Punk
      R&B
      Regional Music
      Rock
      Singer/Songwriter
      Ska
      Sounds and Effects
      Spoken Word

      </body> </html>

      I think ideally we will be able to come up with (say) a list the size of wikipedia, allmusic or discogs such that determining the right genre isn't much of a burden on tag mods. In the future, we could expand this or even start inheriting the RYM genre hierarchy (e.g., Ska -> 2 Tone, Jamaican Ska, Spouge, Third Wave Ska)


      So with that out of the way, I think the best way to proceed is for each of you to either:

      A) Build a list of your own with one of these as a basis. We can count up how many people include a genre an count as a vote for it's inclusion.

      Or

      B) Argue for / against a specific genre's inclusion.

      Sound good? Did I miss anything?

      15 votes
    18. I finally finished a novel

      I've finally finished writing something. It's been about four years since I actually finished something nicely. I'm entering the editing phase, which generally takes longer... But I'm a bit...

      I've finally finished writing something. It's been about four years since I actually finished something nicely.

      I'm entering the editing phase, which generally takes longer... But I'm a bit excited.

      Hopefully this is an acceptable thing to talk about, and I'm going about things the right way.

      So... To spin off into discussion, here's two things:

      A part of the story:

      The ground rose up and struck Raul in the face.

      He blinked, stumbling backwards, seeing his master standing nearby.

      The old man was glaring, his hands clutched around a brightly coloured stone.

      Raul opened his mouth to question, but the old man was whisked away to a distance hillside, and the boy found himself tumbling head over heals backwards down a hillside.

      He scrambled onto his knees, staring as he found himself on the shore of the lighthouse.

      His master placed a solid hand on his shoulder, and muttered gibberish.

      Raul glanced up, but found himself staring at the light of the lighthouse.

      Spinning.

      A bright light, round and round.

      Lightning struck him, and Raul screamed, stumbling backwards.

      The rod lay in front of him.

      He tore his gaze away with effort, and saw his master, hands outstretched, the stone of red, gold and silver floating between them.

      Almost as astonishing, the stone was clean.

      A hammer hit him between the eyes.

      Raul found himself stumbling behind his father, watching as the old man struck stone, separated it, revealing the river of solid copper within it.

      "Boy!"

      I'm hoping I've got the grammar at least semi-right. My illness means I can forget words, or my brain can replace words at random with others that it thinks are related.

      Any guidance or critique is welcome. (I'd give a bigger quote... But this is probably more than enough to discuss.)

      The build script I'm using:

      #!/bin/sh
      
      set -e
      
      if [ -z "$1" ]; then
        echo 'Please provide an output file name.' >&2
        exit 1
      fi
      
      tmp=$(mktemp)
      
      echo 'Building...'
      
      cat title.txt > "$tmp"
      echo '' >> "$tmp"
      cat LICENSE.md >> "$tmp"
      echo '' >> "$tmp"
      cat Prologue.md >> "$tmp"
      
      for file in 0*.md; do
        echo '' >> "$tmp"
        cat "$file" >> "$tmp"
      done
      
      for file in 1*.md; do
        echo '' >> "$tmp"
        cat "$file" >> "$tmp"
      done
      
      echo 'Converting...'
      
      pandoc --toc "$tmp" -o "$1" 2>/dev/null
      
      rm "$tmp"
      
      echo 'Done'
      

      title.txt is basically just YAML markup for pandoc. The other files should be fairly obvious.

      I'm silencing pandoc's output, because I make use of a self-reference to add comments to the Markdown, that get killed by the parser and never make it to the output:

      [//]: # (This is a Markdown comment. Isn't that cool?)

      However, as all the references point to themselves, pandoc warns.

      I'm using pandoc this time around, because it produces fairly clean files. I've used GitBook and Calibre in the past, and though the ebooks they produce work and look okay, the amount of crazy markup they produce means the books lag on some ereaders.

      However, that does make a lot of back and forth. Building, checking output, rebuilding, etc.

      20 votes
    19. Which character from a tv show do you admire and want to be more like?

      I'll go first. I'm currently rewatching Veronica Mars right now and find myself really admiring many of her traits. She is witty, sarcastic, intelligent, and capable. I think what sets her apart...

      I'll go first.

      I'm currently rewatching Veronica Mars right now and find myself really admiring many of her traits. She is witty, sarcastic, intelligent, and capable. I think what sets her apart from many other female protagonists is that she is not a martyr. If someone wrongs her, she will stand up for herself and in most cases get even. Her need to "get even" probably isn't actually a great personality trait, but I find it kind of refreshing.

      Does anyone else wish they were more like a certain character on tv?

      20 votes
    20. Do we really need to add summaries to posted articles?

      This seems to happen quite a lot here. Someone will post an article, and then add a comment with an extract from the article, or a summary of the article. Or someone else will come along and...

      This seems to happen quite a lot here. Someone will post an article, and then add a comment with an extract from the article, or a summary of the article. Or someone else will come along and summarise the article.

      This is pointless clutter.

      On a site where we're hoping for high-quality discussion, we should expect people to actually read the articles they're discussing. If the article's so long that it needs a summary, then reading that summary isn't going to give people a good enough insight into the detail of the article before they start discussing it.

      It also has the effect of misleading readers. They see an article post, read the article, and then notice that someone has already commented on the article. When they open the thread to join in the discussion, they discover that the existing comment is nothing more than a summary of the article they just read. They opened the thread for nothing.


      EDIT: I give up. Lesson learned! I am the odd one out here. It is not normal to read articles beforing opening the comments sections. Summaries are desired, even preferred, here on Tildes.

      I shall adjust my behaviour accordingly:

      • I will start including summaries & extracts in my article posts.

      • I will not waste my time opening posts that have only 1 comment.

      I'm not going to reply here any more.

      21 votes
    21. When is euthanasia acceptable? Where do we draw the line ethically?

      I recall recently seeing an article posted that was related to euthanasia, and I started thinking about the subject. I see both potential pros and potential cons associated with it. For example,...

      I recall recently seeing an article posted that was related to euthanasia, and I started thinking about the subject. I see both potential pros and potential cons associated with it. For example, there's the concern about family members or authority pressuring an ill person to opt for doctor-assisted suicide to ease financial burdens, for instance. There's also the benefit, on the other hand, of allowing someone who is terminally ill or guaranteed to live the rest of their life in excruciating pain the option to go out on their own terms. With proper oversight and ethical considerations, it generally seems to be an all-around ideal to provide an "opt-out" for those who would only continue to suffer and would rather not prolong it, as a merciful alternative to forcing them to live it out.

      But then there are some trickier questions.

      As a disclaimer, I spent nearly a couple of decades struggling through depression and have been surrounded (and still am surrounded) by people who struggle with their own mental illnesses. Because of this, I'm perfectly aware of the stigma and subpar treatment of mental illness in general. With that in mind, I completely recognize that there are certain conditions which are, at this time, completely untreatable and result in peoples' quality of life deteriorating to the point that they become perpetually miserable, particularly with certain neurodegenerative diseases.

      Thus, the question occurred to me: wouldn't such a condition be the mental health equivalent of a terminal illness? Would it not be unethical to force someone to continue living under conditions in which their quality of life will only diminish? Shouldn't someone who has such a condition, and is either of sound enough mind or with a written statement of their wishes from a time when they were of sound enough mind, be able to make the same decision about whether or not to opt to go out on their own terms?

      And yet, as reasonable as it sounds, for some reason the thought of it feels wrong.

      Is there something fundamentally more wrong about euthanasia for mental health vs. euthanasia for physical health? Is it just a culturally-learned ideal?

      More importantly, what makes euthanasia acceptable in some cases and not others? Which cases do you think exemplify the divide? Is there something more fundamental that we can latch onto? Is there a clear line we can draw? Is psychology itself just too young a field for us to be drawing that ethical line?

      I'm genuinely not sure how to feel about this subject. I would be interested in hearing some other thoughts on the subject. The questions above don't necessarily have to be answered, but I thought they could be good priming points.

      24 votes
    22. Civil disagreement (or, how to get people to consider your meta-opinions while not singling out individuals)

      A Short Summary and Introduction Before the Actual Content of This Post: A site—especially a small one, like Tildes—is going to have growing pains. That's natural. It's also natural, and to some...

      A Short Summary and Introduction Before the Actual Content of This Post:

      A site—especially a small one, like Tildes—is going to have growing pains. That's natural. It's also natural, and to some extent, necessary, for users to raise issue with remedies for these growing pains. However, there's a spectrum of correct ways to do this, and a way to not do this. If you aren't interested in—or think you already have a firm grasp on the subject of—this post, you might want to skip it.

      Tildes has reached its first major streak of growing pains, as I'm sure everyone active or lurking's noticed. We've also reached our first few incorrect methods of handling these. There are a few obvious things you shouldn't do, and everyone knows that—tantrums, slurs, personal attacks, etcetera—I'm going to be discussing a less realised one, and ways you could handle it instead.

      Now, onto the good stuff.


      Repeatedly, when handling issues, Tildes has seen a recurring circumstance. User makes post, upset. User namedrops and or subposts a user (the most apt description I could think of for a term lifted off of Twitter—subtweet—for example, "I'm not saying it's Garfield I'm talking about, but there was a suspiciously large orange cat with a mild food addiction with a fondness for lasagne who really pushed my buttons!" and etcetera). User hits "send." The targets of it feel offended, and the poster gets yelled at by the community for hurting people. No one wins.

      The trick to fixing this: stop going out of your way to call out users, directly or indirectly. If you have issue with something someone said, either take it to an administrator, or directly message the user in question (politely, of course.) There's no reason to air dirty laundry in public, and there's no reason to bring personal grievances into the public eye for minor things.

      If you notice an issue, do the above, and nothing changes, wait a short while before making a post on it. There's a fair chance it will resolve itself. If you end up feeling the need to make a post, do not mention individual conversations. Do not give examples from actual conversations; make an analogous example and put it into quote blocks. Never name a name or names, don't allow hate to be directed at anyone.

      We're all (presumably) adults (or close enough,) here. If you have any desire for Tildes to flourish, act like an adult. Passive aggression isn't the behaviour of one. Aim to have better behaviour than the docs recommend; you might slip up sometimes, but you'll never fall too far if you keep that in mind.

      Anyway, if you ended up reading this; thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. I've spent a lot of time handling large forums, and in comparison to most of you, fairly small, incredibly high-volatility subreddits with immeasurably close communities. If you can't get a community to do the above, or something close to it, it's more or less going to be a death warrant for it. We'd all prefer not to have that happen to Tildes, so I—and presumably, most of us—would really appreciate if people made an effort to stop that from occurring.

      Hate to copy reddit's slogan, but really:

      Remember the Human.

      Thanks again,

      Eva.

      27 votes
    23. What artists do you wish would go back to their roots/an older sound of theirs?

      What band that you like/used to like makes you wish they would go back to what they used to do? Personally, I wish Maroon 5 would put out more stuff like Songs About Jane. They had a really chill,...

      What band that you like/used to like makes you wish they would go back to what they used to do? Personally, I wish Maroon 5 would put out more stuff like Songs About Jane. They had a really chill, jazz-y, very Jamiroquai-esque sound that I dig the hell out of but now Levine's dedicated to pop music full time.

      Hardmode: No Weezer

      24 votes
    24. Moderator tools: what do you have and what should be the immediate priorities?

      I don't want to get too high in the clouds with moderating philosophy. Instead I want to talk about action steps that can be taken in the very near term to improve moderating. Especially so long...

      I don't want to get too high in the clouds with moderating philosophy. Instead I want to talk about action steps that can be taken in the very near term to improve moderating. Especially so long as Deimos is the only one with most of the moderating tools at their disposal, I think it's crucial to make sure it's as painless as possible.

      So far it looks like Deimos has these moderating tools available to him:

      1. User bans
      2. Comment removal
      3. Thread locking/removal
      4. Title/tag editing (and this ability is shared by many of us as well)

      Am I missing anything?

      The three next tools I would hope are coming next are:

      • A reporting mechanism, where users can report comments and threads that they think should be removed.
      • A feedback mechanism for reports, telling users that a report they gave was acted on.
      • A note taking system for the moderator-type person, shareable with all other moderator-type persons at that level, with an expiration date probably around 30 days.

      Now I'll talk about why. First, the reporting mechanism. While it's still possible to keep up with everything that gets posted, I don't necessarily think it's the best use of Deimos' time to read literally everything, especially as the site expands its userbase and presumably activity level and depth. The reporting system at first should probably just be a button, maybe eventually with a pop-up field allowing the user a brief description why their reporting, and a queue that gets populated with comments and threads that get reported.

      Coinciding with a report queue/option should probably be an easy, rudimentary system for providing feedback to those whose reports led to moderating action. At first, an automated message saying something like "thank you for reporting recently. Action has been taken on one of your recent reports" without any relevant links would do fine, and we can leave the particulars of how much detail to add for later discussions.

      The last thing I think should help things considerably in the immediate term is a time-limited user tracking tool for the moderator-type person. As things scale, it isn't always going to be feasible to use mental bandwidth remembering each username and the relevant history associated with their behavior. A good note-taking tool with an auto-timed expiration date on notes would be a good way to address what can easily become a hugely mentally taxing role at almost any scale. This tool should let Deimos take a discrete note for himself (and other moderators at that permission level and higher) connected to a user regarding any questionable threads or comments that were yellow/red flags, or any other moderator action taken against a user within the last X days/months (the particulars don't matter to me as much as that there is an expiration date to these notes). This should let the moderator type person focus on the broader history of the users they're looking at before making a decision, without having to go searching for every relevant comment from the past 30 days. Fewer problematic users at scale should fall through the cracks and more users that might just be having a bad day can be let off with comment removals and/or warnings.

      Are these priorities fair? Are there design elements you would want to see in the immediate term that would help reduce the burden of moderating? Are there problems with these tools I'm suggesting that you would want to see addressed?

      19 votes
    25. To a select minority of less than ten people: please stop getting judo'ed into defending white supremacy

      (EDIT: Those in the comments have asked me to remove specific names. I have replaced names with emoji that I like.) We recently had: a thread whose OP defended a confederate statue erected by...

      (EDIT: Those in the comments have asked me to remove specific names. I have replaced names with emoji that I like.)

      We recently had:

      • a thread whose OP defended a confederate statue erected by white supremacists on purely apolitical grounds
      • a thread whose OP defended scientific racism on purely apolitical grounds

      I'm really annoyed. If you really want to defend something that looks to everyone else like white supremacy, please avoid:

      • Claiming to be apolitical while disagreeing with someone's politics. If you're telling someone else "your political stance is wrong," you're having a political opinion. "You're being too political" is a political opinion the same way "there is no God" is a religious opinion. This happened like a kajillion times in both threads.

      • Granting benefit of the doubt to white supremacists or sources only used by white supremacists. Example: In the confederate statue thread, 🦇 effectively said "OK, so the builders of the statue hired a white supremacist speaker to commemorate it -- but they're not white supremacists and neither is the statue." Seriously, come on. And stop citing the spokespeople of white supremacist groups to prove they're not white supremacists -- they intentionally tone down that shit for the media, which is why you look super tone deaf when people post actual accounts of things they did, like holding town hall meetings about how great lynchings are when they thought no one was looking.

      • Claiming you'd agree with whoever's arguing with you, except for one inconsequential fact you never mentioned any other time. Example: In the confederate statue thread, 🦈 said that he wouldn't mind if the statue had been taken down legally -- but every other time it came up he said it was wrong to take down the statue at all, because that was whitewashing history.

      • Calling leftists "childish" and "easily-offended." Words like this do have a place in politics, but you've been misusing them. I read both threads front to back -- one or two people ended their arguments with "I'm offended" but basically everyone also said "here's why your view of the world is wrong" or "here's why this is bad and it hurts people." When you start your post by saying "oh, how childish!" and then just repeat the thing you said in the first place, you're basically saying "I'm not listening."

      • Accusing leftists of being unwilling to grapple with the facts. Again, this is allowed and fine when it's true, but you've been abusing it. For instance, in a thread by 🦐 on The Bell Curve the original poster claimed The Bell Curve was state-of-the-art, and leftists were ignoring it. That's not true: there was a huge leftist response immediately after it was published, from academics and popsci guys too. Several people linked leftist articles and takedown videos, which he ignored. Maybe the leftists are wrong, but it's not that they ignored it.

      Here are some of the ways you were possibly tricked into believing white supremacists:

      • They told you their sources were good, and instead of checking, you believed it.
      • They told you left-wing sources were shrill and unresearched, and instead of checking, you believed it.
      • They told you there was a conspiracy against their viewpoint and that's why the criticism isn't credible. (For The Bell Curve, it's the political correctness conspiracy -- for statues, it's the easily-offended liberal masses.)
      • They told you there was more nuance to the situation than it looked like and made an emotional appeal. Intelligent people like to imagine there's no way things could be as simple as they look -- "not everyone would be smart enough to uncover that this apparent act of white supremacy was, in fact, politically neutral!" -- so you believed them.
      • You are probably a little bit racist. (Or even a lot racist.) You might not be racist enough to hate black people, but you might be racist enough to find white supremacists more credible than their victims, even though you know the historical facts say their victims were telling the truth.

      Here are some preemptive comments:

      • I don't want to censor anybody. This thread is not censorship.
      • I do want to shout bad opinions down with better opinions. People who support free speech, which I think is most of the people on this website, also want this. This is an example of me trying to do that.
      • Yes, leftists can do all the things I listed. (And yes I'm a leftist.) When I go to a site like Twitter or Tumblr I see left-wingers saying all kinds of horrible, unsupported shit they heard from their idiot hippie friends. It's frustrating and sickening and it's a giant part of the reason I don't go on those sites very often. But on this site I only saw right-wingers doing this stuff, not left-wingers. That kinda surprised me because usually it's the side with the biggest groupthink bubble that says really stupid stuff and keeps on trucking.

      Thank you and sorry for the long, mean post.

      79 votes
    26. Weekly Writing Prompt Group - Prompt 0 - The Road Trip

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

      Voting has closed for this week's topic.

      The prompt is...

      The Road Trip

      Some questions to help you get started:

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

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

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

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

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

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


      Things I may change:

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

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

      11 votes
    27. Extremely basic search added

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

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

      Details/limitations:

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

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

      118 votes
    28. Weekly Writing Prompt Group - Week 0 - Open Voting for the Weekly Prompt

      This is week 0 of the Weekly Writing Prompt Group (WWPG). After asking about interest, I've decided to try running this. This is week 0, so I'm trying to see what works and what doesn't. Feel free...

      This is week 0 of the Weekly Writing Prompt Group (WWPG). After asking about interest, I've decided to try running this. This is week 0, so I'm trying to see what works and what doesn't. Feel free to make suggestions!

      Vote for the prompt you like most by adding a 'vote' to the prompt in the comments. Writers and non-writers, are encouraged to vote:

      The Necronaut:
      Who is the traveler in the after life? What do they see? Why are they there? Are they alone or part of a team? Was this an accident? or an organized, international endeavor?

      An Audience of None:
      Who is the performer? What are they performing? Are they truly alone? Is there a watcher after all?

      The Road Trip:
      Are they going towards or away from something? How are they getting there? What happens if they arrive? What happens if they return?

      Vote closes tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug 21, 10AM EST.
      Submissions will be accepted on Wednesday, Aug 29, EST (~9 days).

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


      This will be different from other writing prompts in three ways:

      1. You are encouraged to take your time with the prompt. After a prompt has been chosen, I will post another thread after a week for submissions to that week's prompt.

      2. I will personally read and provide feedback to every submission in the submission thread. It will be more than just a "good job" or acknowledgement. I will highlight things I liked, didn't like, how I think things could be improved etc.

      3. Selection of the prompt is open to everyone, even non-participants. I hope this will encourage the greater tildes community to follow the WWPG and to participate by reading and commenting on the creative works of the writers.

      What I feel separates this style of prompt from others is that it encourages writers to let their ideas breathe and it provides a creative outlet for writers who may be intimidated by the faster nature of other writing prompts.

      Another aspect that I feel makes this unique is the promise of feedback. I believe that if you take the time to really work on something, you should get something back. To make this possible, there are some things that I need from you:

      1. The submission must be completely original. In the future I may post more fan-fictiony prompts, but I want to encourage brand new ideas from the writers.

      2. Keep the length of your submissions between 1000 and 2000 words. This is to make it easier for me to read (as we continue I may extend the length). This should also keep you well within the 50,000 character limit.

      3. Avoid shopping large tracts of your writing as the goal is provide new works on the submission date. However, feel free to brainstorm ideas.

      4. Make sure to properly format to tildes. Feel free to also post your stories to your personal blogs etc., but I will only provide feedback for work posted in tildes.

      12 votes
    29. Programming Mini-Challenge: TicTacToeBot

      I've seen the programming challenges on ~comp as well as quite a few users who are interested in getting started with programming. I thought it would be interesting to post some 'mini-challenges'...

      I've seen the programming challenges on ~comp as well as quite a few users who are interested in getting started with programming. I thought it would be interesting to post some 'mini-challenges' that all could have a go at. I'm certain that many of you might find these pretty straight forward, but I still think there's merit in sharing different approaches to simple problems, including weird-and-wonderful ones.

      This is my first post and I'm a maths-guy who dabbles in programming, so I'm not promising anything mind-blowing. If these gain any sort of traction I'll post some more.

      Starting of with...


      TicTacToeBot


      Info

      You will be writing code for a programme that will check to see if a player has won a game of tic-tac-toe.


      Input

      The input will be 9 characters that denote the situation of each square on the grid.

      • 'X' represents the X-player has moved on that square.
      • 'O' represents the O-player has moved on that square.
      • '#' represents that this square is empty.

      Example:

      |O| |X|
      |X|X|O|    The input for this grid will be O#XXXOO##
      |O| | |
      

      Output

      The expected output is the character representing the winning player, or "#" if the game is not won.

      (e.g. The expected output for the example above is '#' since no player has won)


      29 votes
    30. Has anyone else found it progressively harder to get into new music?

      In the past, I used to find something like twelve new bands a month that I loved; then I'd go through bands they'd tour with and pick up a few bands from that, bands that were on whatever...

      In the past, I used to find something like twelve new bands a month that I loved; then I'd go through bands they'd tour with and pick up a few bands from that, bands that were on whatever compilations they were on (think the old Fat Wreck comps that used to come out a few times a year), and however else.

      Nowadays, it's more like twenty-four new bands a year that I find myself enjoying. It's so frustrating, because there's no shortage of new music coming out! I just...can't get myself to like much of it.

      Any of you guys experiencing something similar?

      23 votes
    31. Proposal: Weekly neologism thread

      I'm a terrible writer, in part because I've got that epistemophiliac adoration for obscure, archaic or onomatopoeic words, word-play, and more pedantry than most audiences can bear. That being...

      I'm a terrible writer, in part because I've got that epistemophiliac adoration for obscure, archaic or onomatopoeic words, word-play, and more pedantry than most audiences can bear.

      That being said, I think it would be a fun exercise to create and justify new words. A broad range of examples can be found here.

      I'm suggesting this both to give serious writers new tools, and as a light-hearted lower-but-not-low effort community-building exercise to include those who don't consider themselves writers yet.

      Rules:

      1. Any subject matter, though I'd prefer we kept this SFW.
      2. The "logos", or rationale, of the neologism should need little explanation, or be presented in the context of usage, e.g. "asshat", "we're not leaving town, we're staycationing this year."
      3. English language is not required - if you can make a logical creole word and provide English justification, that's fine.
      4. Please Google to ensure originality.
      5. Puns are going to happen. If that's a problem for you, please refrain from complaint unless you feel there's unnecessary cruelty outside the bounds of Tildes' terms of use.

      Here's a starter:

      mortlifting - abusing the occasion of a celebrity's death to make an unrelated political point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Anyway, let me know what you think. Thanks.

      38 votes
    34. Advice on Google's OKR Framework

      I've hard a lot of great results using Google's OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework in my roles leading technical and product teams. I've been tasked with bringing this framework across my...

      I've hard a lot of great results using Google's OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework in my roles leading technical and product teams. I've been tasked with bringing this framework across my organization, including to teams like marketing and business development.

      My main issue recently has been around defining the key results of the projects that our teams are going to be pursuing. All of the advice I've gotten in the past has been to ensure that KRs are quantitative, NOT qualitative. This has been at odds with some of the projects the marketing and business teams are planning on working on. These are projects like...

      • create a new marketing plan given the new budget constraints
      • audit the distribution process to increase our information about the retail sales process

      The push back I am getting is along the lines of "when I create the new marketing plan, the project will be complete, and therefore it's just whether or not I finished the plan that matters." i.e. if the objective is finished then the project is a success. My point of view is that ALL projects should have metrics attached to them, and if we can't measure the progress then we cannot show the added value to the business as a result of our effort.

      The natural response is: what metrics would you attribute to projects like these? And THAT'S where I could use help. Coming from a product/tech background, my understanding of marketing, biz, and operations leaves something to be desired.

      For the marketing plan, I suggested a metric could be to reduce the monthly marketing budget from $current to $future. For the distribution audit, I suggest we track the # of insights/recommendations we produced as a result of the audit. The pushback was that these metrics "didn't really matter" and that "how can we set a goal on insights - even one good insight could be worth a lot, but I could come up with 4 crappy insights just to achieve a numerical goal."

      I'm a bit at a loss. I understand their point of view, and I really feel in my heart that we need to be pursuing measurable KRs. Do you have any advice?

      6 votes
    35. Any Rustaceans in the House?

      I'm just starting to get into the ecosystem by going through the Book of Rust, and then maybe playing with Parity. Just wondering if anyone else has been through this yet and is up for some...

      I'm just starting to get into the ecosystem by going through the Book of Rust, and then maybe playing with Parity. Just wondering if anyone else has been through this yet and is up for some conversation!

      11 votes
    36. Interest in a weekly or biweekly writing prompt?

      One aspect of the Writing Prompts subreddit that frustrated me the most was that the submission that got the most responses was often the one that was submitted first. I found that in order to...

      One aspect of the Writing Prompts subreddit that frustrated me the most was that the submission that got the most responses was often the one that was submitted first. I found that in order to ensure that I got feedback and criticism, I often found myself rushing or submitting sloppy work so that I could submit first. Often times I would ignore prompts I liked because other posts had already taken off.

      I’d like to try something here that addresses some of those issues. I imagine it working like this:

      1. The first post would be a number of prompts that participants would choose from to be that week’s prompt.
      1. After a prompt is chosen, I wouldn’t accept submissions for one/two weeks to give people time to develop their ideas and submissions.
      1. A new post would be created for submissions for the past week’s prompt and providing a new list of potential prompts for the following week.
      1. Go to 2...

      So long as it is practical, I will read and provide feedback and constructive criticisms for every submission.

      I hope this encourages people to develop fledgling ideas as they have the time to let their ideas breathe and they have the promise of feedback at the end of it.

      Of course this isn’t meant to replace other casual writing prompts.

      Edit:

      For those interested a few questions:

      1. Is one week enough time to write?
      1. Would it be better for the writing time to include the weekend?
      1. Would you be okay with certain restrictions like 1,500 words? Is that too many words? Too few?

      Edit2:

      Okay, I'll try to set this up!

      Over the weekend I'll think up some prompts. Here's how I see it rolling out right now. Feel free to suggest other things as it's all fluid right now. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

      1. Monday, Aug 20, I'll post three or four prompts. I'll leave voting up to participants? Or maybe allow the whole Tildes community to vote on the kind of story or theme they would like to read (hopefully to bring writers more feedback)?
      1. Tuesday, Aug 21, I'll announce the weekly prompt. Remaining prompts with good support will be carried over to the following week? Remaining prompts with little support will be removed from the pool?
      1. The following Wednesday, Aug 29, I'll open a thread for the past week's submissions and post a pool of three or four prompts to choose from.

      Not sure how voting for prompts will work, I'm thinking of posting the possible prompts in the comments and using Tilde's voting system.

      17 votes
    37. Is there any interest in a weekly movie review thread?

      So this is something I've been thinking about doing for the last couple weeks, but I've been super busy working on a project and haven't had too much time, and I didn't want to start something if...

      So this is something I've been thinking about doing for the last couple weeks, but I've been super busy working on a project and haven't had too much time, and I didn't want to start something if I couldn't commit to it. Now that my project is almost finished I've got more time to both watch movies and talk about them with random internet strangers, which is why I'm here now asking about a weekly movie review thread.

      I watch maybe two or three films a week, but often struggle to find anything worth watching. And so for all of you out there with the same problem, I'd like to start a discussion thread where users post a movie review on one film they've watched recently and children comments are free to discuss the review, the movie, or just ask questions in general about the movie.

      Here are some questions I have about how this would function, and I'd like your opinion on them.

      Is this something that users here actually want?
      Like I said earlier, I feel like this could be a helpful tool for people wanting to watch a few things but not knowing what to watch, but there are plenty of reviews and things like that out there, and this might not be something that users here want.

      What should be included in the review?
      To me what immediately comes to mind is a very imdb style review (with no spoilers) that comments on directing, acting, set, camera angles, etc. Maybe giving it a rating out of 10? How long should it be? I don't read a whole out of reviews though so I'm not 100% sure the best way to go about this.

      How often should we have a discussion thread?
      I'm thinking a weekly thread would be nice, probably on Monday for two reasons. First, it allows anybody who's busy over the week day but has some time off on the weekend for films and writing reviews to write one, and secondly, it means we can call it Movie Monday, which sounds better then Movie Tuesday :p

      Any other questions or things that need to be discussed for this to work well?

      18 votes
    38. Making an apk that just links to a Hermit Lite app

      I've been using the Hermit app for Android to make a lite app for Tildes. It's awesome. Just one main problem. Because of some Android limitation shortcuts aren't allowed to be put in the app...

      I've been using the Hermit app for Android to make a lite app for Tildes. It's awesome. Just one main problem. Because of some Android limitation shortcuts aren't allowed to be put in the app drawer. I wanted to keep it there to make everything more organized. Does anyone know if it's possible to make an apk (so it can go in the app drawer) that will just link to my Tildes lite app?

      6 votes
    39. Concatenated tags - how do they work?

      I have a question about the technicalities of tagging, now that this ability is going to be spread around. I don't understand how concatenated tags work. I've seen occasional instances of tags...

      I have a question about the technicalities of tagging, now that this ability is going to be spread around. I don't understand how concatenated tags work. I've seen occasional instances of tags that look like "abc.xyz", and I've seen technical discussions about tags like this, but I've never really been clear about what this does. What does a tag like "abc.xyz" mean? How does it work?

      7 votes
    40. Users can now be (manually) granted permissions to re-tag topics, move them between groups, and edit titles

      It's a bit late tonight (for those of us in North America, anyway) so I'm not sure how much attention this will get today or how many people I'll start granting permissions to yet, but it's now...

      It's a bit late tonight (for those of us in North America, anyway) so I'm not sure how much attention this will get today or how many people I'll start granting permissions to yet, but it's now possible for people-who-are-not-me to start helping with some moderation-like tasks.

      As of right now, these abilities are restricted to (and I can grant each individually):

      • Changing the tags on topics
      • Moving topics between groups
      • Editing topic titles (I may not actually give anyone this permission yet)

      All these actions will be logged publicly, and if any of them are taken, they'll display in the topic's sidebar, in the "Topic log" (which you have to click to expand, and will only show up at all if anything's been done). I've changed the tags on this post so that you can see an example here.

      For the immediate future, these permissions will be getting granted manually, will apply site-wide (not to specific groups), and will probably only be given to people that specifically express interest in helping with these tasks. I've written about grand, vague plans for a "trust"-based system that will hopefully help with doing this automatically in the future, but for now we'll have a more rudimentary trust system. Here's how it works:

      1. I trust you, and give you access to more powerful tools.
      2. If you abuse it, I take the tools away, and don't trust you any more.

      It's not very sophisticated, but I think it should do the trick for a while.

      So if you're interested in helping keep things organized, please let me know (post here or send me a message if you prefer). I'd probably prefer if you had at least some history of submitting well-tagged/titled topics to appropriate groups, but it's not necessarily required.

      Edit: I would prefer that you have at least been around on the site for at least a week or two though. This is mostly important because the tasks are mainly organizational, so I think it's best if you've had some time to get accustomed to what's "typical" on Tildes for tags, which types of posts go in which groups, and so on.

      109 votes
    41. A general introduction to Tildes

      Lots of new folks seem to be coming in these past days, so I wanted to make a post that compiles some useful things to know, commonly asked questions, and a general idea of tildes history (short...

      Lots of new folks seem to be coming in these past days, so I wanted to make a post that compiles some useful things to know, commonly asked questions, and a general idea of tildes history (short though it may be). Please keep in mind that tildes is still in Alpha, and many features that are usually present such as repost detection haven't been implemented yet.

      Settings

      First of all, check out the settings page if you haven't yet. It's located in your user profile, on the right sidebar. There are different themes available, the account default is the 'white' theme, which you can change. I recommend setting up account recovery in case you forget your password, and toggle marking new comments to highlight new comments in a thread. There are more features available but you should go look in the settings yourself.

      Posting

      You can post a topic by navigating to a group and clicking on the button in the right sidebar. Tildes uses markdown, if you are not familiar with it check the text formatting doc page. Please tag your post so it is easier for other people to find, and check out the topic tagging guidelines. Some posts have a topic log in the sidebar that shows what changes were done to the post since it was posted. You can see an example here. Some people have the ability to add tags to posts, edit titles, and move posts to different groups. They were given the ability by Deimos, see this post.

      Topic Tags

      You can find all posts with the same tag by clicking on a tag on a post, which will take you to an url like https://tildes.net/?tag=ask, where ask is the tag you clicked on. Replace ask with whatever tag you want to search for. You can also filter tags within a group like this: https://tildes.net/~tildes?tag=discussion, and it will only show you posts within that group. Clicking on a tag while you are in a group achieves the same effect.

      You can also filter out posts with specific tags by going to your settings and defining topic tag filters.

      Comment Tags

      Comment tags are a feature that was present in the early days of tildes, but was removed because of abuse. There were five tags you can tag on someone else's comment: joke, noise, offtopic, troll, flame. The tags have no effect on sorting or other systematic features; they were only used to inform the user on the nature of a comment. The tags would show up along with the number of people who applied them, like this: [Troll] x3, [Noise] x5

      People used these tags as a downvote against comments they disliked, and because the tags appeared at the top of a comment in bright colors, they often would bias the user before they read the comment. The abuse culminated in the first person banned on the website, and the comment tags were disabled for tweaking.

      As of September 07, 2018, the comment tags have been re-enabled and are experimented with. Any account over a week old will have access to this ability. The tagging button is located on the centre bottom of a comment. You cannot tag your own comment. Here are the comment tagging guidelines from the docs.

      Currently, the tags are: exemplary, joke, offtopic, noise, malice. The exemplary tag can only be applied once every 8 hours, and requires you to write an anonymous message to the author thanking them for their comment. Similarly, applying the malice tag requires a message explaining why the comment is malicious. The tags have different effects on the comments, which you can read about here, and here.

      Search

      The search function is fairly primitive right now. It only includes the title and text of posts and their topic tags.

      Default sorting

      The current default sorting is activity, last 3 days in the main page, activity, all time in individual groups. Activity sort bumps a post up whenever someone replies to it. 'Last 3 days' mean that only posts posted in the past 3 days will be shown. You can change your default sort by choosing a different sort method and/or time period, and clicking the 'set as default' button that will appear on the right.

      Bookmarks

      You can bookmark posts and comments. The "bookmark" button is on the bottom of posts and comments. Your bookmarked posts can be viewed through the bookmark page in your user profile sidebar. Note: to unbookmark a post, you have to refresh first.

      Extensions

      @Emerald_Knight has compiled a list of user created extensions and CSS themes here: https://gitlab.com/Emerald_Knight/awesome-tildes

      In particular, I found the browser extension Tildes Extended by @crius and @Bauke very useful. It has nifty features like jumping to new comments, markdown preview and user tagging.

      Tildes Development

      Tildes is open source and if you want to contribute to tildes development, this is what you should read: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

      For those who can't code, you might still be interested in the issue boards on Gitlab. It contains known issues, features being worked on, and plans for the future. If you have a feature in mind that you want to suggest, try looking there first to see if others have thought of it already, or are working on it.


      Tildes' Design and Mechanics

      In other words, how is it going to be different from reddit? Below are some summaries of future mechanics and inspiration for tildes' design. Note: most of the mechanics have not been implemented and are subject to change and debate.

      1. Tildes will not have conventional moderators. Instead, the moderation duties will be spread to thousands of users by the trust system. [Trust people, but punish abusers]. More info on how it works and why it is designed that way:

      2. Instead of subreddits, there are groups, a homage to Usenet. Groups will be organized hierarchically, the first and only subgroup right now is ~tildes.official. Groups will never be created by a single user, instead, they will be created based on group interest [citation needed]. For example, if a major portion of ~games consists of DnD posts and they are drowning out all the other topics, a ~games.dnd subgroup would be created - either by petition, algorithm, or both[citation needed] - to contain the posts, and those who don't like DnD can unsubscribe from ~games.dnd. There is currently no way to filter out a subgroup from the main group.

      3. Tildes is very privacy oriented. See: Haunted by data


      Tildes History/Commonly answered questions

      I recommend you check out this past introduction post by @Amarok before anything else, it's a bit outdated but contains many interesting discussions and notable events that have happened on tildes. @Bauke also tracks noteworthy events each month on his website https://til.bauke.xyz/. Also see the FAQ in the docs. Other than that, the best way for you to get an idea of how tildes changed over time is to go to ~tildes.official and look at all the past daily discussions.

      Below are some scattered links that I found interesting, informative, or important:


      If anyone thinks of a link that should be included here, post a comment with the link and I'll edit it in.

      Markdown source for this post: https://pastebin.com/Kbbh7pYU (outdated, and probably will not be updated unless someone explicitly asks for it)

      To the rest: have fun!

      57 votes
    42. I created an APK wrapper for Tildes if anyone wants to use it.

      If this is against the rules, I'm sorry and I'll take it down immediately. I just found it easier to use an app instead of going to the website every time I want to check out Tildes. I didn't...

      If this is against the rules, I'm sorry and I'll take it down immediately. I just found it easier to use an app instead of going to the website every time I want to check out Tildes. I didn't actually make it myself, I just used this website: https://gonative.io, so if this gets taken down you can just use that link to make one for personal use. It's on Google Drive so I think it automatically gets scanned for viruses if you're worried about that.

      Here is the link to the APK: https://goo.gl/Ynu4c7

      18 votes