I'm not a native speaker, but from browsing reddit, understand 95% of what I read / hear. I also watch TV Shows exclusively in english. However, when i write a comment or something in english, it always feels like it doesn't really "flow".

How can i, or other non-native speakers improve our writing skills?

Hi all. Registered several days ago and this is my first post.

After reading around this group and the blog, I'm very excited for the tildes project. It's not just another reddit-style forum but actually one of its own taste and style. I have some suggestions for the project and would like to share them with the community. They are the result of years of redditing with numerous frustrating experiences and few shower thoughts.

1. Voting power should not be taken for granted. The ability for me to vote must be in some way tied to my contributions to the discussion. This can be implemented in a sort of formula that takes into account the user's 'score' and 'activity' which results in a finite number of votes at the user's disposal. The more you contribute the more voting power you get, and the more quality you provide in your contributions the more votes you get to use.
2. Deleted posts or comments must be reflected in a user's score. One of the bad effects of having a user score is the tendency to 'karma whore' in order to increase that score no matter what. The result is low effort posts and comments. Having a system in place that removes from the user's score if their posts/comments get deleted would act as a constant reminder to the minimum level of quality required.
3. Mods should not have dictator power over their groups. Sure they must have elevated accounts to run their groups, including the power to remove or ban, but they should not be invisible. There has to be an approved system where users can have the collective power to revoke the elevated account powers of a Mod if they reach a certain threshold. Not sure how to implement this exactly, may be through voting by the users of a group who have high scores or reputations. One of the cancerous ailments of reddit is the invincibility of Mods.
4. The availability of formatting tools and embedding in posts. This is 2018 and inserting a photo, video, table in the body of a post should be easily implemented. Constrictions on the use of certain attention-grabbing formats (eg. large fonts, ascii art, emoji) should be also be implemented to deter low effort contributions.

Here's to hoping this project flourishes into a much-needed hub for quality content and discussions on the internet.
Cheers

Edit: Not sure why the first point is indented or how to fix it.
Edit2: Fixed.

Solo is not doing so hot in the theaters right now, despite the good reviews. Here's hoping that positive word-of-mouth can save it. But what I've noticed online is a huge amount of people placing most of the blame on the divisiveness of The Last Jedi. While I never claimed that the Last Jedi was a perfect movie and it definitely has some serious flaws, I feel like the hate train for that movie is hugely overblown online compared to what actual people out in the real world think. So I figured I'd check in here and see what the general opinions are on The Last Jedi.

EDIT: shit, anyway I can fix that title?

Now that the ABC TV show Deception has aired its season (and series) finale, I wonder if anyone caught this show and what they think of it. Do you think it had any potential?

For me, someone else suggested I seen it, so I watched it with very low expectations and it was good enough for me that I caught every one of the 13 episodes.

I was just thinking about something that I've noticed being an issue in a few cases on reddit. If you accidentally post something that's wrong or misleading, you might decide to edit the comment/post to be more accurate, once something was pointed out to you.

But lets say that you posted some tidbit like "David Firth is demonetized from youtube.. god i hate youtubes recent trend", which was along the lines of the things I'm talking about. But then weren't fully up to date on the story anymore as Firth had been re-instated.

With the post getting 90% of its upvotes before the "e: he's reinstated now", it's rife for accidental victimless misinformation. And once you make the correction (let's not make it 100%), you cant really go pm'ing everyone because that's annoying, and not everyone that saw it commented on it.

I'm not actually sure how much of an issue anyone else thinks this is so I'd be glad to hear if you've got a perspective on it.

The best thing I can think of is to give a little notification to people who have interacted with the post (or viewed it in the last certain amount of time?) so that you can evaluate the comment again. This isn't ideal because you'll be clued into everyone's spelling corrections.

A friend suggested a edit "pull request" thing where anyone could propose an edit, and then empowered users could approve the changes. Perhaps, if this is actually an issue and not just an over-caution, this could be rolled into that. If an empowered user thinks that it's worth pinging everyone that interacted with that post directly (vote/tag/comment) once the edit is pushed.

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.

Okay I haven't slept in almost 24 hours so I'm not exactly thinking straight but I was wondering:

What is that one thing in your life that makes everything better? It can be philosophical or it can be something others might consider "small", but I am geniunely curious on what makes you happy.

Disclaimer: I'm a novice and this is a half baked idea

Recap

The Caesar cipher is fairly straight forward as it just shifts letters along by a set amount. This means that it's quite easy to brute force. There's only 25 offsets, after all. Try to decode this to see what i mean:

Plqfh 3 foryhv ri jduolf, dqg frpelqh lq d vpdoo erzo zlwk pdbrqqdlvh, dqfkrylhv, 2 wdeohvsrrqv ri wkh Sduphvdq fkhhvh, Zrufhvwhuvkluh vdxfh, pxvwdug dqg ohprq mxlfh. Vhdvrq wr wdvwh zlwk vdow dqg eodfn shsshu. Uhiuljhudwh xqwlo uhdgb wr xvh. Khdw rlo lq d odujh iublqj sdq ryhu phglxp khdw. Fxw wkh uhpdlqlqj 3 foryhv ri jduolf lqwr txduwhuv, dqg dgg wr krw rlo. Frrn dqg vwlu xqwlo eurzq, dqg wkhq uhpryh jduolf iurp sdq. Dgg euhdg fxehv wr wkh krw rlo. Frrn, wxuqlqj iuhtxhqwob, xqwlo oljkwob eurzqhg. Uhpryh euhdg fxehv iurp rlo, dqg vhdvrq zlwk vdow dqg shsshu. Sodfh ohwwxfh lq d odujh erzo. Wrvv zlwk guhvvlqj, uhpdlqlqj Sduphvdq fkhhvh, dqg vhdvrqhg euhdg fxehv.
bonus points for a program that takes the above text and outputs the shift I used without any human input

My dumb idea (didn't work, my bad. They're in normal Caeser cipher now)

I like the simplicity of the shifting characters but having it always be in one direction, and always being the same offset makes it easy to notice the pattern and decode.

If we have the shift value determined by the length of the current word, and the direction of it dependent on if it's a vowel or a consonant.
a pirate is nothing without his ship becomes
b jolgnk kq gvmapgz ppmavbm elp odml so we still have a visibly Caesar-y cipher, but we'll know it's not a true Caesar cipher.
The offset changes for every word and then is applied based on each letter in the word. If it's a vowel, then the encoded value is shifted upwards but if not, it slides down.

For the purposes of the below tomfoolery; prime numbers are consonants and the rest are vowels.

A Valley Without Wind 1 and 2 Steam Key:
B qjsbuf jt opuijoh xjuipvu ijt tijq
FWR0H-GQM7B-5344H

Aces Wild: Manic Brawling Action:
C rktcvg ku pqvjkpi ykvjqwv jku ujkr
K5R0H-29NPM-A3OTE

Age of Empires Legacy Bundle:
D sludwh lv qrwklqj zlwkrxw klv vkls
69PQW-UY3H7-7SQWT

AI War + 4 DLC packs & Tidalis Steam Key:
E tmvexi mw rsxlmrk amxlsyx lmw wlmt
KO99D-73JZ2-XNIK3

AI War: Vengeance Steam Key:
F unwfyj nx stymnsl bnymtzy mnx xmnu
7M2I8-I99N9-6E9F2

Alan Wake Collector's Edition Steam Key:
G voxgzk oy tuznotm coznuaz noy ynov
6ZNJ5-BIVFN-6ZSDZ

Alan Wake's American Nightmare Steam Key:
H wpyhal pz uvaopun dpaovba opz zopw
7RERD-4ACYN-TCDQ2

Amnesia: Dark Descent Steam Key:
I xqzibm qa vwbpqvo eqbpwcb pqa apqx
VGEO8-OU48X-MU7BL

Anachronox:
J yrajcn rb wxcqrwp frcqxdc qrb bqry
3589L-YGF9V-NKGW0

Anodyne:
K zsbkdo sc xydrsxq gsdryed rsc crsz
9HW7H-7Z73Z-6302D

Anomaly Defenders:
L atclep td yzestyr hteszfe std dsta
ICPIB-M63TI-9Y96V

Anomaly Korea:
M budmfq ue zaftuzs iuftagf tue etub
QMPZ2-JUK8B-JRK3V

Anomaly Korea:
N cvengr vf abguvat jvgubhg uvf fuvc
30R9T-C02AA-7DQLG

Anomaly Warzone Earth:
O dwfohs wg bchvwbu kwhvcih vwg gvwd
38UM9-Z26PH-Q4VAU

Anomaly Warzone Earth Mobile Campaign:
P exgpit xh cdiwxcv lxiwdji wxh hwxe
54TYN-AU26Q-5AGGY

Aquaria Steam key:
Q fyhqju yi dejxydw myjxekj xyi ixyf
3853A-YSB4J-6243A

Awesomenauts:
R gzirkv zj efkyzex nzkyflk yzj jyzg
DH9T5-BWOQC-KB6TB

Awesomenauts:
S hajslw ak fglzafy oalzgml zak kzah
RNRJ0-CPT4O-S9UHE

Awesomenauts Cluck Costume:
T ibktmx bl ghmabgz pbmahnm abl labi
VOWWW-QTR3Q-EAS9J

These are encoded using a Caeser shift. The line under the title is a fixed phrase (a pirate is nothing without his ship) for aid in the bonus points

I can post my code if it turns out to be unsolvable (like a bug https://trinket.io/python/dabf2b61f9), but if not; I can also keep going from letters A to Y (sans U) over the weeks with my humble bundle reserves (plaintext or not). I've had these keys for far too long and I'm never going to actually use them, but I also noticed a surge of keys being donated here so figured I might as well change it up.

Have fun

The book Code Complete changed me as a programmer and as a person. It is the best book I have ever read and if you're a programmer I highly recommend you read it.

The book was so good that after having read the pirated version of it I just had to give the author its money's worth. The problem was that almost nobody sells a PDF version of the book - Amazon sells it as a Kindle book, but I prefer PDFs (can use my chioce of software to read it). After searching for a short week I finally found a seller that sells a PDF version. I have never been so happy to find a legal PDF version of a book. Having been a pirate in my teens I'm proud of having gone to such lengths to the right thing. That's all. Just wanted to share this with you.

TL;DR: Instead of pirating a book because I didn't find a legal PDF version spent time searching for a seller and bought it legally.

Would there be any way to tag users so people you've interected with would pop out a bit more in a thread as their name would have a teg beside them or you could tag your friends so even if you forget their name it could pop up somewhere and you'd know it.

I managed to stumble upon https://tildes.net/invite today, but it doesn't seem like it works. The page itself says that I can generate invite codes, but it doesn't seem like there is anything on the page that I can interact with to invite other users. Is this intentional?

The default "activity" sorting means that topics which lead to a lot of conversation tend to get bumped to the top. It seems like, in the long run, controversial topics will end up drowning out topics where the link itself is interesting but doesn't provoke people to react with a comment. I find that a lot of the most interesting links for me on other sites are the ones with the fewest comments.

I think it could be worthwhile to experiment with different default sorting, or even different mechanics. For example, Everything2 has a feature where, at a certain rank, users are able to add pages to a "Cool User Picks!" sidebar.

The current solution, custom sort ordering, doesn't seem like it will scale very well. People will tend to vote on the posts they see; if most people sort by activity, most of the votes will go to the most active posts anyway.

Anyway, just food for thought. I don't think this is super urgent, but it seems like something that would be good to think hard about and get right in the long term.

Having notifications only go away when clicking Mark As Read is a really cool feature. However, once you start to get a large amount of these notifications, this can become a pain.

Could a 'Mark All As Read' button be added that solves this feature?

Tildes seems to promote older threads much more than Reddit (which I like). With that said, will there be a feature similar to Reddit where after X length of time, the post is archived and can no longer be commented/voted on?

My wife just found a candle that was gifted to her by a coworker that contained this phrase and it caused somewhat of a debate about its destiny, which made me wonder... are we discussing religion and/or the lack thereof here? /r/atheism became a circlejerky hive of scum and villainy, can we do better? Or is a topic so inherently divisive inherently beyond reproach? Can emotion and anecdotal experiences ever compete on even footing with logic and reason?

What are your go to workout songs? For me it's usually a toss up between the Doom 2016 soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm932Sqwf5E) and The Lifa album from Heilung (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BsKIP4uYM). Both get me super pumped and make me want to get active.