Just the fact that it's even happening is amazing to me. There are cute Trump/Kim impersonators out and about, performances, Dennis Rodman is present, it feels really really exciting... i just don't even have words for how wonderful this will be if it ends up how I am imagining - not just for the USA, but for North Korea, South Korea, and the whole world.

It's better to be friends.

Also, I really hope the USA establishes an embassy in Singapore. That would be such an easy win.

edit: i found some relevant links:

• https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/trump-kim-handshake-summit-history
• live feed: https://www.c-span.org/video/?446916-1/us-north-korea-summit-underway-singapore

edit: for those curious about the significance of Dennis Rodman, here's a CNN interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS494th_Js4

I was on Facebook today and saw a video being sent around with the background and caption on the image I captured: https://i.imgur.com/uUvN7JS.png

I took a look at the comments on the post, and as expected found this sort of stuff: "She must hoping trump will come and give her a pickle tickle or a medal. These are the people who should be thrown out of the country."

So, I look it up and it turns out that this video is from 2014 (source of news report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0UUmTARaOc) which was during the Obama administration and has nothing to do with "Trump's america'". And watching a news report and the original video never shows anything about the black individual having a white mother, that's just further perpetuating race baiting to get people angry and heated over this as they're also trying to make it seem like it just happened. They even captioned the Facebook post "Think racism is dead in America? Watch this."!

What do we do about things like this where this is so clearly being used to further an agenda, but the actual content isn't indicative of that agenda at all? This is apart of an epidemic of misinformation used to drive opinions that sickens me to see so many people falling for, it really does.

For the last couple of days I've been visiting the site several times a day and leaving after 10 minutes or so.

It's not that the site is bad or the discussion isn't good, but there's been a big lack of discussion I'm interested in. I don't like to take place in discussion of politics, or religion, or LGBT, or whatever. For me, the forums always were a place to meet new people to talk to, without it being a date or making friends or anything, just a friendly talk. Not that there shouldn't be a place for talking about world problems, but I get much more enjoyment from small issues or just getting to know other people.

Which is why I haven't been very active here for the last couple of days. There is all this LGBT talk and Trump and catastrophes. Even in the ~talk, there are 'Homosexual marriage legal or illegal?', 'Do you think school uniforms should be in all American/Canadian schools?', 'It's a Piece of Cake to Bake a Pretty Cake: LGBT+ Discrimination'. There is a fair share of smaller conversations, but they are mostly things I'm not interested in: 'What's your favorite documentary?, 'Advice- Best Tablets for Interactive Training' ― or things I don't know enough about to discuss, like 'How to gauge the degree of someone's self-awareness?'. This leaves very few posts I'm interested in, and I can hardly engage there because everything I could've said has already been said before I saw it.

Everything above is why I was mostly active in my own posts when I first joined as well. And I wanted to create this post to express this frustration(?) with lack of content, and I'm sure a lot of other lurkers will agree with me on that (whether or not they have different interests) ― I'm writing this post for them, too. I have no idea how you'd fix this problem or if it's even fixable, but I think it's important to state it so more active people can notice and so I have someplace to be active on ~.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is stepping down, and there are rumors he intends to run for office and possibly the presidency. A frequent Trump critic, he would presumably be running as a Democrat if he entered the 2020 race. He seems to be staking out a position in the center of the party, criticizing the idea of a government jobs program or single-payer healthcare.

Would you vote for him in a primary or general election? Does America need another businessman (albeit a successful one) president? How economically progressive should the Democrat's candidate be? Discuss.

One of the more looming stories over the American political climate these days that takes over pretty much everything else is the special investigation into the Trump campaign and potential collusion with Russian attempts to influence the US presidential election of 2016. There is a lot of information in the public domain about this story, including most recently Mueller seeking a revision of Paul Manafort's home confinement release after alleging that Manafort attempted to contact potential witnesses to conceal evidence relating to the various charges he faces.

You can find a decent overview of most of the publicly available information on the related wikipedia page.

So let's try to wrangle with all that public information. Please list, vet, and weigh the evidence you think is most important when it comes to the Special Investigation of the Trump campaign. Does it look like collusion with Russian electioneering happened or is this story mostly about finding incidental crimes of sloppy political first timers? What role do you think Russia played or tried to play in the 2016 election based on this publicly available evidence? What evidence would you like to see before making a judgment?

Recent news has made it plain that President Trump intends on going through with his much discussed plan of implementing tariffs on many sources of steel and aluminum imports to the US. This seem as good a time as any to ask a question that begs for evidence: Are trade wars good, and who benefits?

There is good reporting out there that analyzes the likely impact of this particular steel tariff, so feel free to find it and use it in your own argument (there are figures the administration has produced and figures that other studies have produced using the same source material). There are also plenty of other tariffs out there throughout history that have been studied and discussed. Because these sources can sometimes conflict, please be aware that your choice of what sources to use may need to be justified.

You may have heard that Roseanne Barr made a horrible comment/joke on her Twitter account - this lead to the cancelation of her show, Rosanne.

Then, Samantha Bee made a horrible comment/joke on her show about Ivanka Trump that has prompted an apology, and an advertiser exit (so far).

If Samantha Bee is canceled too, does the punishment fit? Did Rosanne deserve to see her show canceled? Is there (or should there be) a limit to what comedians can say on TV or online?

Note: Typed this out on mobile, so may need corrections later. Edit: Added links, corrections. Edit again, update Bee's details.

On the heels of President Trump pulling out of talks with North Korea over nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula, the United States' pending withdrawal from the Paris agreement (coming soon! ... the day after the next presidential election), and the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, combined with ongoing Russian and Iranian leadership in resolving the Syrian civil war and Chinese leadership in talks with North Korea, we seem to be heading toward an ambiguous point in international geopolitics.

So this question is simple and nasty: Is the United States on its way to losing its status as the unquestioned dominant world power in the international order?

If it is on its way off the top of the food chain, who will challenge it? Are we returning to a cold war-style era or are the lines shifting and different? If the United States is not on its way to losing its dominant status, how might it maintain its footing in a world that seems increasingly disillusioned with it?

It's been an interesting couple of weeks while we all decompress post-reddit and think about the future of democratic online forums. Most of the relevant topics have already been discussed in multiple threads, and rather than having repeats, I'd like to invite everyone to comment on these threads themselves - and to read the comments that are already there. You'll find most of the solutions we've been thinking about explained in some detail, and we do want your feedback on these ideas to help make them better.

I suggest you bookmark this page. This thread is getting a bit lost in the shuffle, and it's really the best nexus of information about tildes we have at the moment. It'll take you quite a while to read all of this, so since we don't have 'save posts' here yet, a bookmark will have to do. We're also updating the links here as new discussions form. If you think a discussion should be added here, please reply to this thread with the link and I'll take care of editing it into the main post. When you see new users asking repeat questions, please link them to this post. Thanks for your patience while we work through all of this. :)

Let's get started.

• A group is its own worst enemy. This will help you think better about online community management. Also, if you haven't yet, play The Game Of Trust.

• Community Moderators? How do we moderate effectively, and fairly? Do we moderate at all? (everyone should read this monster) Also, see round two.

• How do we handle communities that get too big? It's a doozy, the inverse of reddit.

• Do we allow Fluff content? Just how do we select for quality instead of popularity, or even define quality, anyway?

• Do we allow for political content? How do we handle one of the most heated categories of discussion? Also see the followup.

• What do we do about "Fake News?" And you thought politics was hard? :D

• Can we create new ~groups? Will users be able to create them? Yes, eventually... but it's not that simple.

• How do we stop bots from wrecking the place? What about the bots that are useful?

• Why exactly is my comment box at the bottom, rather than the top? We have reasons. ;)

• Anonymous posting? You betcha. Privacy is not just a buzzword.

• Can we think of a better name than votes? Not really, not yet. Got any ideas?

• Funding - how do we pay for all of this? Nothing is free, after all. No ads, no pay to play, but what else could we do?

• Tildes Gold? No, something much better - the exemplary upvote, because you need a limited use vote to highlight the things you think are top quality. If we all use them together, it just might work.

• What changes need to be made to the comment tags before they are re-enabled? It's a tough problem.

• Should we make the site publicly visible? For users without accounts to read.

• Moving the vote count to the vote button. It's the little things.

And, of course, our first ban. In fact we're up to two now.

It's not all serious, though!

• Drop by and introduce yourself. Also see round two and round one.
• Where are you from? Quite the diversity in countries already!
• Our first Trump thread. Went better than expected.
• What about cultural exchanges? Great idea there.
• First impressions? Once you've slogged through all this, tell us what you think about the site. ;)
• Some simple user scripts. It's not RES, but it's a start.

Please do take some time to browse through everything in ~tildes. It's a cross between theoryofreddit, ideasfortheadmins, and announcements. That's where we talk turkey. There's a new discussion there every day.

I also want to make one important contrast about what this site intends to be.

Reddit and Voat: Democratic republic based on popularity. 'Free speech' forums.
Tidles: Democratic meritocracy based on quality. 'Civil speech' forum.

Enjoy yourselves, post some content, make some new friends. This sweet honeymoon phase won't last forever, and it's one of the best parts of a new site. Remember, as long as you're civil here, you are never going to have any problems.

I've seen a few remarks here and there that have implied sort of matter-of-factly that places like /r/The_Donald have no redeeming value, the community members are awful (and undesirable to have here), their ideas are all reprehensible, etc. I assume that this is mostly just due to the demographic coming primarily from popular reddit mod teams where being anti-Trump is sort of an unspoken requirement - but I don't really know for certain.

It reminds me a little of this woman in a class i had once, who spoke to me about atheists, assumed I was christian just as a matter of course. It's kind of an awkward situation to find yourself in. I don't identify as an atheist, but if someone is mildly insulting atheists, it's uncomfortable. You have to be a covert conservative (or covert center-right, or even left-leaning Trump voter) or else you risk being blasted/flamed/mocked/etc. in places like reddit.

Part of what attracted me to Tildes was the sales pitch that it is to be a community for civil conversation, no hate-speech/bigotry. I think that's a perfect environment for political discussion - far more than shit-flinging and nuclear downvoting on /r/politics. So even if I'm the only MAGA person here, maybe there's a chance we can actually have civil conversations on topics we might initially disagree on...?

Edit: wow! Really happy to have these conversations with folks. Sad that i haven't encountered any fellow (public) Trump voters/supporters yet but very pleased that things have been civil as advertised. ;) Apologies for slow responses, trying to give proper thought and consideration to all the comments!

Edit2: gotta head to bed. sorry to anyone i haven't responded to questions from. feeling a bit like a novelty "And here's our token Trump voter. ha ha, he sure is a quirky one, isn't he, that crazy dictator-enabler!" xP. I'll try to answer any questions I've missed tomorrow. Sleep well, all (well, all who are going to sleep before I get back).

Edit3: Thanks for the open engagement, all you people who live in a different reality!

Still a bit bummed there aren't any MAGA friends here yet, but I've been blown away by how cordial most of you have been (i hope we can retain this culture into the future of the site). For those who are just coming in and don't want to read everything, I'd say a tl;dr of the conversations I've had below is:

• most people here want to engage with others on important topics without the shit flinging,
• some people express disbelief that someone can not be a bigot or racist and vote for Donald Trump,
• I've been repeating in various conversations the Laurel and Yanny thing is a great metaphor for the polarized camps experiencing different realities, seeing different movies on the same screen.

I'm continuing to try to reply to questions, and in the spirit of not provoking heated emotions I have been trying not to argue any of my political beliefs except that both sides are seeing different realities.