The current problem with ~

bee
2018-06-13T16:02:05Z

I had this full submission typed out before I accidentally closed the tab, so if this seems a bit rushed I apologize :)

The current problem with ~ is, in my mind, a lack of shared understanding between the "older" and "newer" users, about what the main focus of the site should be. I was lucky enough to join the site fairly early on, and with the exponential growth of the site, I've noticed a few changes.

There seems to be a "struggle" between link/article submissions and discussion posts. While each have their benefits, in ~'s current state, I do not think it's possible for both to work in harmony with the site.

The benefits of discussion posts are that they encourage community, and well, discussion. Discussion posts are great for the generally serious nature of the site as well. One of my main reasons for leaving reddit was the lack of genuine, interesting conversation that didn't dissolve into meta memes within two comments. On tildes, I've commented more than in my past few years on reddit because of this.

Link submissions don't encourage community or discussion, usually. Not always, but in most cases the user will post the article and move on. The same goes for users coming across it, they will just "upvote and move on", which doesn't seem to be very beneficial to ~ or its community.

The second problem with link submissions is the voting system. Right now on ~, you cannot downvote something. This was fine earlier when most posts were discussion based, but downvotes can be useful for link/article submissions. It can help cut out noise or blatantly clickbait/advertising articles.

I think there needs to be a way to distinguish between these two types of posts, or simply decide what the main focus of the site should be, and stick with that. What are your thoughts on this?

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~tildes/27s/the_current_problem_with

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