This comes from an article in Current Affairs, which to be upfront is an openly leftist publication. I thought it was an interesting anecdote, especially with the news from a few weeks ago about the woman in Boston begging for people not to call an ambulance for her because she wouldn't be able to afford it (which is also mentioned in the article).

I was in a New York City diner two nights ago and something disturbing happened. It was about 2am, and a woman was sitting alone in the next booth. She was disheveled and possibly homeless, and looked unwell. She had been eating a plate of food, but then sprawled herself along the seat and fell asleep. Someone in the restaurant must have called 911, because an ambulance showed up. They parked directly in front of the entrance and left the flashing lights on, and through the large windows the lights filled the restaurant and were overwhelmingly dazzling. The two paramedics approached the woman and told her to sit up. She mumbled a refusal. They insisted. As she finally sat up, bleary, they told her she would need to leave with them and that she should pay her bill. She replied that she had no money. The paramedics became upset, one of them asking her why she would order food if she couldn’t pay for it, and telling her she’d need to pay before they left. While the paramedics stood issuing her instructions as she muttered and fumbled, a young man at the front of the restaurant quietly approached a server and paid her bill. He then told the paramedics he had paid for her. They looked vaguely annoyed, and told her she should be grateful that a stranger just paid for her. The woman did not seem to comprehend, and just made a noise. Then the paramedics took her out to the ambulance. In the hour or so I stayed in the restaurant, the ambulance didn’t leave, and kept its lights on.

Here’s why I was disturbed: the paramedics did not act like health professionals. They acted like cops. At first, I thought they were cops. Their uniform was similar, and the dazzling flashing lights were like police lights, and had the same bewildering effect. They were more concerned with whether the woman had paid her debts than whether she was okay. They had very clear contempt for her, treating her as a nuisance who was bothering restaurant patrons and needed to be removed. She wasn’t actually bothering anyone, of course; I was sitting in the next booth and had barely noticed her, and there were plenty of spare booths in the diner. But the paramedics were aggressive and unsympathetic in the way that many cops are. Incidents like the one I saw must happen constantly all across the country: homeless people and drug addicts (I don’t know whether the woman was intoxicated or on drugs, though it seemed somewhat likely) not being cared for with compassion, but being “policed” even by those who are supposed to be selflessly devoted to the improvement of health. The flashing lights were totally unnecessary, and made the whole diner feel like a police raid. And, of course, how typical of America that the issue of whether you can pay the bill is more important than whether you will live or die.

What do you think of this? If you've had an experience with emergency medical services, how did it compare?

I noticed that Tildes docs make a point out of using words instead of labels. The stated reason is that icons may be difficult to understand, and I honestly don't get how is this the case.

Icons, when used right, are much more usable and intuitive than any text labels. They are small, distinct, they draw attention and you can tell what they do just by looking at them instead of reading them.

Take the classic upvote/downvote scrollers used on Reddit, Imgur, etc. It uses icons for upvotes and downvotes, but there isn't a single person I know who doesn't know what those mean. It's intuitive and usable. It doesn't require localization. It just works.

In contrast, the "Vote (10)" button on Tildes. It uses text, on a page full of text. It's an important UI element, one of the most used UI elements really, but it's not visually highlighted in any way. The amount of votes, which is an important metric, isn't distinct, making it hard to read. The "text button" style it uses is usually reserved for buttons that are used rarely, such as "Edit" or "Delete", or buttons that open more menus, such as "Edit" or "Reply". It's not intuitive.

Yes, this is a minor thing, but it's minor things that make the overall experience pleasant or unpleasant. And it shows how icons (and highlights), when used right, make user experience better.

Someone on reddit came up with this idea:

a thread statistics page that would show the average age of accounts replying, the top subreddits those accounts use, the frequency of posted replies and how they group up

This would be interesting to see as Tildes scales up as a defensive measure against bots and brigading (once invite-only goes away...if it does)

Website: https://hacksummit.org

Honestly I'm not following this block-chain thing that much closely (apart from knowing the theory of how it works on a basic level) and I'm curious to see if this event can help me get what it is all about :)

Anyone interested in a free pass can send a PM to me (do not reply here please) and it would be interesting if we use this topic to talk about your previous experience with the event or block-chain in general.

Not sure if this has already been suggested, but can we get an ability to add ourselves to a post as a "listener" so that we get notifications similar to "N new reply"? For cases where we're interested in following the discussion, but may not have anything to add, or just interested in someone else's thread in the discussion.

I've been trying to get back into game dev recently and I'd love to work with someone if you're up for it. I'm also down to join existing hobbyist projects, although I have a thing I'm currently building at the moment.

• I'm based in SF; I'm willing to work remotely with someone, but would definitely prefer someone in the area.
• I'm a software developer with 6ish years of experience programming, a CS degree and just starting an out-of-college job.
• I've built some small games in the past, mostly in Unity.
• I've got a reasonable amount of UI/UX experience but I'm by no means a professional and none of it is all that game-related.
• I can do some pixel art though I'm by no means an expert.

If you make games for fun and are looking for a partner, feel free to send me a PM or just reply to this.

Similarly, I'd like to also suggest a Tildes ~LFG (looking for group) or other meeting-ish area.

Alright, so in the ideas thread, several of you expressed that you'd like / it would be more active if we went for a listening club that goes for something more general. As I think ~music is in a bit of a rough spot right now and needs a little more to bind it together, I'm going to try and have a bit of a hybrid solution that can hopefully be interesting for a lot of us.

Again, the idea is to come together and listen to the same record each week, discussing our thoughts on that album over the course of that week in these threads. For now, let's make our goal to build a community and become familiar with the thoughts, tastes, and musical histories of each other!

For every odd numbered week, we will listen to an acclaimed or important album of some kind that will hopefully have far-reaching appeal. I'm going to exercise my own judgement in picking these out of the qualifying albums, but expect them to be the OK Computers, A Love Supremes, and Illmatics of the world. If and when we reach a point where we've exhausted too many of these classics, we can restructure or retire this listening club.

For every even numbered week, we will listen to a more obscure record as voted on by the participants of the thread. For an initial guide, as stolen from @Eva, we will define "obscure" simply as not being certified Gold (or anything higher, of course). This is of course a very loose definition of the term, but it's at least a concrete starting place. As ~ gives us a raw vote count, we will do this through voting on comments. All nominations must be made as a reply to my top level comment. Everything else will be ignored, and this will help keep things organized once this voting occurs on a thread that's dedicated to its own week's record. If it becomes necessary, we can vote on an external platform.

I'm open to suggestions on how to change this process, but let's try to run it like this for a little bit. I don't want to get caught in that loop where you have so many tweaks and find so many flaws that you don't end up doing anything at all.

The first thread will be posted tomorrow (Thursday the 21st here) and will continue on from there weekly.

When we start our first record, feel free to listen, comment, and vote throughout the week. ~ gives us an opportunity to bump things and keep discussion going for a bit longer than Reddit, so let's take advantage of that where we can.

You can't talk about stupidity in corporate culture anymore - certainly on Reddit - due to the hoardes of people who will comment saying "They're a business, what do you expect" or occasionally "Capitalism at work" and general low-effort replies. Like yeah, I get it. I know why company x does greedy thing y. Obviously it's to make money. Your comment doesn't contribute to the discussion. Yes companies have to make money but that doesn't mean they should sacrifice all their morals to do it.

So I was thinking the other day -- is there any good reason to allow voting from the main ~'s page? For clarity in this discussion, I'm talking about this view.

Some pro's and con's for removing the vote button from the main page:

Pro:

• Discourages "drive-by" voting. We all (mostly?) know that reddit in particular is notorious for having highly up-voted posts that most users read the headline / top-comment and not the article itself. This is particularly noxious for political posts, as often times a vote on a post is an extension of one's own biases / beliefs, rather than an engagement on the topic at hand. This hasn't reared it's head to the same extent on ~'s yet (this post with 15 votes / and only 1 comment would seem to be the closest I can find), but I think it would be a mistake to think that this sort of behavior wouldn't migrate over from reddit. Other reasons for voting on a post without at least getting into the comments are equally bad e.g.: "Oh, I like that band / song / movie / whatever" -- this is a key driver of recycled content on /r/music or movies or tv etc. This reason alone is enough for me to consider removing front-page voting a net-positive

• The user is forced to enter the comments to vote, wherein they may actually read something that sparks their desire to read the thing / interact with the post. The goal on ~'s is to promote substantive discussion, and I think this would be an interesting tool to try to direct users to said discussion.

Cons

• It's more inconvenient, but hey -- so is putting the comment box at the bottom of the page (and I think that's a good idea on net as well)

• UI inconsistency -- this is a bad thing, but we've got a lot of smart computer people on here. We can probably figure out some way to make this work.

• It doesn't actually force the user to read / listen / interact with the submission, just suggests that they do. But hey, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, eh?

Hanging Questions

• What about voting on ~group pages? My off-the-cuff idea would be that voting on ~music.world.calypso would be a good thing (to promote organic growth of quality posts from small ~groups), but not voting on overarching groups (~music) -- but then the UI issue rears' it's ugly head

• What about comment / submission voting from other places e.g.: user-pages, notifications, inbox replies, etc.

I am an occasional lynx/elinks user and I only have a single complaint about Tildes that prevents me from reading it using those browsers. Threaded comments don't display properly, since the CSS support of these browsers is non existent (lynx) or poor (elinks), the only way to make threaded comments display nice is by rendering them as ul lists. Is it possible to wrap the current article elements inside ul/li elements to make them display nice in text-only browsers?

For comparison, I can get them to display nice on reddit using the old mobile interface. In Tildes threads look flat (those comments are supposed to be nested, link to original thread) and it is difficult to know who is replying to who.

While I also appreciate the ability to read things without marking them as read, it took me a minute to figure out how to mark things as read and now I find it more of a burden than anything. Would it be possible to implement functionality to mark things as read if you click on the message in your inbox?

Sometimes I even reply out of my inbox and it keeps it unread. While I sometimes keep emails I've replied to as unread at work, I can't see any reason I'd want to do that on a social media website. Maybe that's another functionality that could be implemented?

One thing that's always annoyed me about reddit is that sorting a thread by "new" isn't as useful as scrolling down to the end of a discussion on traditional forum software like phpbb. I propose two ways of sorting threads:

• Breadth-first: Exactly the same as the current sort on reddit and tildes. Each nesting level is sorted independently.
  This sort makes it easy to find the oldest discussion of a thread, as well as new top-level comments.
• Depth-first: Newer replies 'bump' threads. The timestamp of the latest reply of any depth determines the sorting of all of the parents.
  This sort makes it easy to find the newest discussion.

I'd like to suggest site search as a Tildes feature. It would be useful to know if a topic has already been discussed by people on the site. For instance I don't know if a search feature has already been discussed.

Or perhaps I noticed a topic I wanted to follow up on later that I can't find now. Or I there was a reply that said something interesting I wanted reference, etc...

Last night before bed, I was posting about some books that I really liked. One of them is called Stay: A History of Suicide & The Philosophies Against It. Another person noted that it sounded interesting, and I started to reply to that user. I got about a paragraph in before stepping back and thinking, "this isn't something I should write here," and deleting everything.

This morning, I rolled over and checked my phone. Anthony Bourdain, died by suicide at 61.. This hurts. I loved Bourdain, his work for years was to broaden our cultural awareness and open us up to new worlds. He was, in many ways, a tangible Star Trek. His death will be mourned by thousands, and that he was taken by suicide will be considered by many, many, other people with suicidal thoughts.

Suicide spreads as a contagion - it can be looked on almost epidemiologically. The way that we talk about suicide is... Telling. It's something that we try to avoid talking about, despite us almost all knowing someone who has died by suicide.

I have worked in mental health for several years and in high acuity settings the past year. I work with people experiencing suicidal ideation every single day. It is often my job to talk around what I consider to be a monster that lives in our heads. To try and convince or guide people away from their monster and take the day for themselves. Some of the people I've worked with have ideation only, sometimes they have had as many as two dozen hospital-resulting attempts in their history. This work is stressful, it's draining. It's very meaningful, especially when change or at least the flash of change is present. It hurts, too, when it isn't enough.

A big part of our education attempts is to be able to talk about the monster. It isn't easy for someone experiencing suicidal ideation to talk about it. There are fears that they will be seen as attention seeking - they are! It is a just thing to seek attention when you feel that you're losing the battle. There are fears that they won't be taken seriously - and often they are not. We minimize our problems to bad days or bad weeks or bad years. We say, "Just get over it," and sometimes people simply do not have the capacity to do it by themselves.

We would never, ever, tell someone with a broken arm to get over it without treatment. We would never, ever, tell someone with a bone protruding from their leg that they were just looking for some attention. And yet, this is how we approach mental health.

I have been suicidal myself, somewhere in the haze of depression that clung to me for about five years. Even as I write this, I feel the urge to minimize it and say, "but never to the severity of those I've worked with." Simultaneously minimizing my own experience and serving to stigmatize those that I serve. The monster's power lies in its language. The more we refuse to talk about it, the more we isolate, the more control it has.

I went to counseling for sixteen weeks, and was only minimally invested. It took me another two years after having left counseling to start using the tools. A big part of my own ability to hold on was the book, Stay, because of its humanistic approach to prevention, one that does not rely on religion. An unfortunate thing about working in mental health is that I now understand what it is to plant a seed and not know if it will grow or not.

Anyway, I wanted to write something about this when I saw the news this morning. One of the major themes of Stay is that suicide is theft not just from your friends and family, but from yourself. I have not felt suicidal or depressed for several years, and I can say that this theft would have been true. Except it doesn't include just my friends or family, but the people that I've interacted with and helped with similar thinking styles along the way.

I encourage you, if you think a friend or colleague is struggling, ask the questions. "How are you feeling today?" You never know how this might help. Do you feel like someone you know might be suicidal? Ask the question. Asking someone if they are feeling suicidal is not a significant trigger that may cause them to commit - though this fear often stops us from asking. Consider, they live with the monster every day, how welcome it must be to have someone else recognize it?

I will leave off with Hamlet's Soliloquy. I have never been huge on Shakespeare, lacking time to read. I read this as well in Stay, and now I listen to it frequently. I even had the opportunity to use it in a Group I lead the other day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYZHb2xo0OI

When you’re universally beloved (or just posting a lot of open-ended discussion threads, one of the two), you can get a lot of replies in your inbox, and it can be a pain to mark them as read one by one. It’d be nice just to be able to zap them all.

Or, if there’s a way to do this already, please let me know.

Warning, this is a rant. Feel free to criticize me.

1. As ESL speaker, there's a "butt" in the name.
2. SSB is the protocol, you have to download client called "patchwork" which is not an attractive name either
3. After setup patchwork, idk what to do next except staring at a blank "timeline" something
4. So I grabbed documentations (you need manuals to use a god damn social network software), obviously you have to join pubs to dive in.
5. After joined pubs, you start to stare list of "pubs followed you/someone else joined the pub" message explode.
6. After a awkward self-post on "#new-people", I learned that you have to follow others to get content. So am I supposed to follow thousands of strangers on the Internet for a good degree of influx content?
7. After several rounds following, I still dont get how to make new friends. I mean by what? I cant judge if I should follow someone because of random recent posts.
8. So I started to search for stuff. The search is mostly broken, the results are not in chronological order, only English alphabet works, I dont know if reply someone's 2 year old post is polite or not. Engaging a conversation but expect no response feels wrong.
9. The only way to tell if a "channel" is popular or not is through the search box. The "all channels" page does not show numbers at all.
10. Channel names are a mess. The plural form and alternative spellings are killing me. I always feels worried that I might miss good content by not thinking of what creative "channel" names people invent. When making posts it gets worse, you have to paste dozens of bullshit channel names just in case.
11. There's no way to tell if the software is functioning or not. Sometimes it took up to ten minutes busy downloading stuff, the rest times it's totally static. F5 does not work, Cmd+R reloads the whole electron app frame.
12. When downloading stuff, I totally do not want old posts. There's not way to filter that.
13. There's an "Active Channels" on the left side of the software, it jumps indefinitely for no reason. When I click one of the channels, I see old posts without any "activity". Again, you have to follow people in that channel to get fresh content.
14. There's search for name tag function. Maybe there are people social with each other just by lookup Internet IDs. Since names can be the same on Secure-Scuttlebutt, you have to use public keys to identify people accurately.
15. It's written in Nodejs/Javascript. I lost my motive to contribute.

TL;DR barrier of harvest is wayyy too high.

Anyone else using/tried secure-scuttlebutt? What are your thoughts?

It's a slight inconvenience to have to scroll past dozens of comments just to reply to the thread. What do you guys think? Does having the ability to quickly jump into the conversation stifle discussion? I can see if some people feel that it should be necessary to read a more posts before posting in the thread, but I also think that a lot of people will just hit the END key or scroll past comments without really paying attention to them (if they just want to quickly reply).

I'd like to suggest that the default view for topics look something like the image below, with expanded top level replies, and collapsed lower level replies. And have an option under each reply that would expand the next level of replies below it, continuing this behavior on down to the lowest level comments. There could even be an "Expand all below this comment", although I don't show that in this illustration.

That would all readers to quickly read through many or all of the direct responses to the topic before deciding which responses to dig into deeper. It would also help direct responses which aren't listed near the top get more exposure. The site could even be coded to delay loading lower level comments until an expand link is clicked, reducing page sizes and improving load times.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0u6vuopufierijp/TildesDefaultThreadDisplay.png?dl=0

For the uninitiated, Surströmming is an infamous heavily fermented herring.

Below is my experience with it. Happy to answer any questions :)

Preparations

I “smuggled” (more on this below) it from Sweden a few months ago and yesterday evening my brother, a brave (or naïve) soul of a schoolmate of his, and I (not to mention our dog) opened it up near the river. We chose the riverside and the night time strategically, of course.

As was advised to us by a friend, we also took a bucket of water with us. Not – as some may wrongly assume – to vomit into, but to open the tin under water. Due to the fermentation continuing in the tin, it builds up pressure and when you open the tin, it inevitably and violently discharges the bile water. The best way to avoid it spraying your clothes is to open it under water.

The tasting

Since this was an impromptu action, – other than the bucket – we came only half-prepared. As condiments we brought only a little bread, a shallot and three pickled gherkins.

The hint with the bucket was greatly appreciated, as the opening of the tin was the most vile part of the whole experience. So if you plan to try it, do get a bucket! It stopped not only the bile spraying us, but also diluted most of the putrid smell that was caught in the tin.

Once opened and aired, the contents of the tin were actually quite recognisable. Fish fillets swimming in brine. The brine was already brownish and a tiny bit gelatinous, but darkness helped us get past that.

As for the taste and texture, if you ever had pickled herrings before – it’s like that on steroids, married with anchovies. Very soft, but still recognisable as fish, extremely salty, and with acidity that is very similar to that of good sauerkraut.

Washing the fish in the pickle jar helped take the edge of – both in sense of smell and saltiness. The onion as well as the pickles were a great idea, bread was a must!

In summary, it is definitely an acquired taste, but I can very much see how this was a staple in the past and how it can still be used in cuisine. As a condiment, I think it could work well even in a modern dish.

We did go grab a beer afterwards to wash it down though.

P.S. Our dog was very enthusiastic about it the whole time and somewhat sullen that he didn’t get any.

The smuggling

Well, I didn’t actually smuggle it, per se, but it took me ¾ of an hour to get it cleared at the airport and in the end the actual carrier still didn’t know about what I was carrying in my checked luggage. The airport, security, two information desks and the main ground stewardess responsible for my flight were all in on it though. And in my defence, the actual carrier does not have a policy against Surströmming on board (most probably because they haven’t thought about it yet).

As for acquiring this rotten fish in the first place, I saw it in a shop in Malmö and took the least deformed tin (along with other local specialities). When I came to the cash register with grin like a madman in a sweetshop, I asked the friendly young clerk if she has any suggestion how to prepare it, and she replied that she never had it and knows barely anyone of her generation who did, apart from perhaps as a challenge.

I know this doesn't happen often, but I've seen it happen a few times and I think it would be useful to have a notifications page for edited comments. When someone replies to me I get a notification, I can reply to it and/or mark it as read, and forget about it. Sometimes the person that replied to me edits the comment to add extra information, but since I've already marked it as read I may never see the added info. I'd like to receive a notification whenever one or more editions are made to a reply I received that I've already marked as read.

I've found that it's difficult to keep track of threads I found interesting but are no longer highly active, especially without a search function. My suggested solution is the ability to subscribe to updates on a topic/thread (whatever you want to call it) and enable easy access to checking up on the thread for updates without having to receive a direct reply to my comment on the topic. If this already exists and I'm just blind, let me know!

Example thread: https://tildes.net/~talk/1gd/how_would_you_describe_this_person

At this time, sorting by "newest" has PBuddy's reply to Emerald_Knight (posted 34 minutes ago) listed after my top-level comment (posted 54 minutes ago). I think the "newest" sorting method should place PBuddy's comment (and therefore Emerald_Knight's top-level) above mine.

[Edit: Por que no los dos?]

Seeing as we're still a small community, I see a lot of familiar faces in every thread.

So if you want to know what other people noticed about you, comment on this post. And reply to others with description of them. I'll try to be active here for several hours also.

I think it would be fun to have an ~anon group, with the feature that all topics and replies are shown as being posted by 'anonymous'. It might need more active moderation than other ~groups though, and it would need to develop its own identity so it isn't just an anonymous replica of the rest of ~s.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I see an notification for a new unread reply. I open the unread replies page. I click on 'link' to go to the thread to see the context, and reply if I feel so inclined.

But that notification doesn't go away. The reply that I clicked on and read is still showing as unread. I have to click on "mark as unread" to make the notification go away. However, if I do that before I click through to the thread, the reply disappears and I can't click through to the thread. So I have to go to the thread, read & reply, then go back to my unread replies page to mark the reply as "read".

If I've clicked through to the thread where someone replied to me, then you can safely assume I've read that reply.

I've been browsing Tildes a bit today and, overall, am enthusiastic about what I've seen. However, while reading a thread, a thought popped into my head that was evocative of an issues Reddit and other tree-based systems suffer from — thread freshness and activity over time both decay quickly.

While reading the thread, I thought "I would comment, but there already seem to be a lot of comments here. If I reply to a specific tree, then that limits people who might see it and respond. Even a top-level comment probably won't be likely to get much of a response."

On Reddit, this leads to repost after repost of the same content in brand new threads, as the activity level of a thread decays and the thread is lost. It looks like one way you intend to combat this is with different sorting methods (Newest, Activity) over various time periods (all time, last 3 days, etc.). Do users feel that this will be effective enough itself, or do they have other ideas to combat this issue?

The way I generally see it, linear threads often beat out tree threads when it comes to keeping threads alive without users having to read through a lot of crap to figure out what the current topic of discussion is, and where it's taking place. (Linear threading models to think of are phpBB, vBulletin, IP.Board, and their ilk. Tree threading models are sites like Reddit, Slashdot, or Shacknews. There are also hybrids, like Metafilter. Please share other examples and their pros/cons.)

In a tree system, I've often experienced the following sequence:

1. Read all top-level replies
2. Read most sub-level replies
3. Find where in the tree the most recent discussion is occurring
4. Realize it's not coherently taking place in one tree
5. Decide not to reply

While in a linear threading system:

1. Read past 2–3 pages of replies to get caught up
2. Add a reply

Alternatively, the linear threading sequence can also be:

1. Read entire thread to see how it's evolved over time
2. Add a reply

An added benefit that is usually concomitant to a linear threading system is that threads are easy to "reactivate" (AKA gravedig) — simply add a new reply and the thread gets bumped up the stack for all users. This is not an exclusive benefit of a linear system. It could likely be made to work with a tree system too. The Activity sorting method may be related, though it's unclear how this functions.

Automatically* dammit auto-correct!

I often use the notifications to reply to comments directly, opening the context link in another tab if needed. I after replying I have to explicitly 'Mark as read'. I think it makes sense to automatically mark a notification as read when replying to it.

If this is a common use I will happily create an issue for it on GitLab.

So, new here and looking around but haven't seen this addressed yet (though could be wrong! Happy to be linked if I missed something)

One common failure I've seen in online communities of various sorts is that moderation tools don't get grown in parallel with user tools and abilities, rather they lag behind, and are often in the end built by third parties. This is the case with Reddit, but also in a bunch of other areas (e.g. online gaming, admin tools were often built to basically provide functionality that users realised were needed but makers did not).

I get the impression there are plenty of reddit mods here, so can we discuss what are the key features needed to moderate communities that would be better built in than coming from third party tools (RES, toolbox) . A lot of these aren't needed with 100 users but with a million they become pretty crucial.

My initial thoughts:

• Something not dissimilar to the automod
• Group user tagging (shared tagging visible to all mods, tags can be linked to specific discussions/comments)
• Ability to reply as a 'tilde' not as an individual
• Ability to have canned responses/texts (for removals, for replies to user contacts)
• Some sort of ticket-like system for dealing with user contacts to mods (take inspiration from helpdesk ticket systems)
• (added) space per tilde for storage (tags, notes, bans, canned text etc) of reasonable size.

Plenty more to add I am sure but wanted to open the discussion.

Maybe this has already been talked about but there isn't a search so I can't tell (I know it's being developed when the API goes public) but right now when I get a reply in my inbox the only link I have is to the entire post not the specific comment. Right now the site is small enough that it isn't a huge deal to scroll down and find my comment but it is something that eventually needs to be added

Hey guys, I hope this is the right place for this idea. So, given the more structured community and higher required levels of contribution, I thought writing a collective story could work out. I've done this before on other forums and it's always a blast.
So, the way it works is, I'll start the story off, and then whoever sees it first will continue with anywhere from just one more sentence to multiple paragraphs. Just reply to the directly previous segment. To avoid homogenization, try not to contribute multiple times without letting other people go perhaps twice in between. With all that in mind, let's get started!

Rufus smacked his forehead as he went to sit down at his computer- he'd forgotten about his date.

I know we're not trying to copy Reddit, but their system of just clicking anywhere on the inbox message and it marking it as read is really nice and easy. Having to find the exact "Mark as Read" gets pretty tedious to me.

Thoughts?

Some suggestions I think would improve navigation a bit:

1.Comment votes. I think comment votes should appear at the bottom of the comment. The reason for that is is to avoid "copycat voting" (I'm sure there must be another term). I think it's a common effect: you see a comment, you see it has 5 votes while the rest you've been reading have 1 or 2, you start being predisposed to see it as a valuable comment even before reading it, you end up voting it too, etc. Similarly to why the top level reply box is at the end of the thread, I think having comment votes at the end of the comment (or even hidden under an expandable menu, but maybe that's too much) would help users reading comments more open-mindedly. I would even argue that putting the user name at the bottom would be a good idea as well, especially since the user base now is small is easy to adscribe more credibility to some user names than others, which is not bad by itself, but might push a type of "authoritative bias".

2.Top level comments count. If we understand top level comments as the main ideas discussed in a thread, maybe it would make sense to show that in the post. Right now, what we get in the submission listing is the title, username, the ~, the tags and the comment number. I wonder how important is having the total comment number shown here. I guess it's an indicator of activity, but maybe it'd be more interesting having the top level comment number, indicating the ramifications of the topic. Total comment count could be maintained as well, or not, or just when entering the submission, etc. New comments could still be shown in the listing. After all, if we are ordering by activity, we care that there is some activity, and total number of comments is not that relevant.

3.Cascading tags. Not so sure about this one, but I though I'd mention it. When marking a comment Off-topic... I think most usually all comments under that one will also be Off-topic. Maybe it'd make sense that from that point on all comments would be marked as off topic automatically, and possibly collapsed. Right now it seems when there is an off topic comment thread, you just keep seeing off topic tags down the line, which is a bit distracting and probably unnecessary since they are almost surely going to be off topic, so it's probably not necessary for user to try and judge that. Maybe, if it makes sense, this would better be done when the tags are more developed.

4.Parent link for context. Thank you for adding the parent link! Much needed. However, wouldnt it be better if when tapping a parent link, the end page would be the parent comment (obviously) plus the comment where you tapped the link? What I mean is, to provide better context, I think it'd be better to show the parent and the comment I was reading, with all other comments under the parent AND above the origin comment collapsed. I don't know if that's clear...

5. Reply - Tag - Vote. Probably a bit nitpicking here, but I think inverting the current order of the Reply and Vote buttons would be a better fit. Since most people are right handed, and the action of voting is (probably?) more common than replying, having the vote button on the right side might be a minor enhancement in usability.

6.Highlighting OP's comments. Right now, OP's comments are marked by "(OP)" next to the username. I think it'd be better to make the indication more evident. For example, displaying OP's username in a different color or marking the comment with a different color (as with new comments in orange or own comments in purple). I would prefer the username color since it's less invasive while still being easy to spot.

Anyway, just some ideas I've had in the last few days, hopefully not too ridiculous or confusingly worded.

EDIT: Sorry for the generic title, I forgot to edit it before sending...

Hey there! I'm pretty new to this whole website, but I figured I would chip in on suggestions I have as I go along. I will likely be editing to add more suggestions to this as I go.

1. Put the "leave a comment" box at the top of the comment section, not the bottom.

2. Something I noticed as I am writing this, I don't see any sort of formatting guide. While there may not be any sort of formatting yet, like italics (maybe that's italicized?) or bold, if I remember right, markdown is something besides just plain text, right? If I'm just doing a big dumb here, lemme know, haha.

3. When I was automatically logged out from spending some time away, I found that when you log in, you aren't redirected back where you were attempting to go, but rather, back to the tildes homepage. It's be nice to be redirected to your original destination.

Edit: 4. When you reply to a comment in your unread page, it should be marked as read.

On Reddit, the reply notifications come with a "context" button, which will bring you to the topic and show a limited set of replies, to establish the context in which the new comment was made. From what I can see, there's no such feature on Tildes (yet). I'd like it if we could get a feature like that so I can easily read back what someone replied to, so I can understand the context behind it, and possibly reply again.

#Edit: OK, I am terribly unaware of the "Mark as Read" option. Thank you to @Spel for pointing this out. I feel so dumb right now, so please accept my apology for being unaware. I just thought that reading the messages would mark them as read, so please forgive me. :( However, the other thing definitely doesn't work for me.

As the title suggests, no matter whether I come back to the site from desktop or mobile, every single time I have to login in again.. even if I had just been on the site five minutes prior. It's not too much of an inconvenience, but it's not working for me.

I don't know how to post my Chrome details, but I am on Win 10 with the latest Chrome build. As for mobile, I am accessing it from Android 7.0 through the latest Chrome on there.. I've already cleared my cache to see if maybe that would fix it, but sadly it did not.

I hope it doesn't come off as me complaining, but I just wanted to let your team know of the issue I've been having.

Sorry, I skimmed the sidebar and announcement posts and whatsoever, but didn't find anything where to post.

Found a simple bug, which may also be a feature:p

If you delete a comment, you can't press reply on that same comment again, where you previously deleted your reply from. If I vote that comment after deleting my comment reply is again clickable.

Thanks for your attention. Have a great day. :P

€dit:
I'm using a phone, with webview browser. (Entering into Google search and using that view instead of a browser)

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.

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

Hello,

https://tildes.net/notifications/unread shows only the unread notifications.

If I have marked all comment replies are read, that link will show me an empty page.

So I thought that visiting https://tildes.net/notifications/ should show me all the past replies to my comments, but that's returning 404.

So, is there a place where I can see all the read notifications/replies?