How can I better engage Tilderinos on my philosophy posts?
I wouldn't say Tildes is wholly uninterested in philosophy, that is certainly not the case. You're a smart bunch full of intellectual curiosity!
I have been making an effort to share more philosophy articles on ~humanities for some time now. They always get a few votes, but discussion is not as common. This is in no way a complaint about our users, philosophy is often highly specific and long-form, and it is hard to predict if a long article will eventually pay off for you.
Generally, philosophy posts that are related to technology, computer science, consciousness/AI, and, to a lesser degree, social change, attract more attention. But there are not as many of those (and I'm personally interested in other stuff too...).
As I said, the purpose of this post is not to complain. I believe the lack of participation in certain topics reflects the size of our community, our most common interests, and our repertoire.
With that in my mind, I would like to know how could I better engage our community in discussions about philosophy. Apart from the themes I mentioned, what are you interested in or curious about?
I could make an effort to include a short introduction or conversation starter on every post, but I'm not sure what is the sentiment regarding that (would that be considered/labeled as noise?). Besides, I'm not a philosopher or anything of the sort, just a layman with a lot of philosophy websites on my feed. So my guess is as good as everyone else's.
It would be awesome if we had a ~humanities.philosophy someday, but I wonder if that is realistic at all...
TBH, I think volume, and the small size of the community might be the biggest factors at play here.
Lately I have noticed you have been submitting 4-5 Philosophy articles a day, and have often been submitting those in rapid succession. Tildes only gets anywhere from 20-50-ish submissions a day in total, so you might simply be over-saturating the market, so to speak.
Not only that, but Philosophy can also be somewhat intimidating for outsiders, since articles and discussions on the subject often have a lot of specialized terminology and concepts being used in them, which can make the meaning of everything being said somewhat opaque to those not familiar with them... which likely reduces the ability and desire of many people to participate in discussions on the subject.
As for what you can do to potentially address those issues, and spark more engagement, my recommendations would be: Instead of submitting 4-5 articles all at once, try at least spreading them out a bit, if you can. Or perhaps instead of submitting so many articles on the same subject in the first place, try finding just one or two exceptional ones a day, and submit those instead. My personal passion is military history, but much like philosophy, I understand that it's a rather niche subject and unfortunately Tildes is still too small for me to post 4-5 topics on it a day, so I only tend to submit a few topics on it a week instead.
You could also maybe try submitting some "entry level" philosophy topics every once in a while too, in order to help people get more familiar with the subject and its concepts/jargon/etc, so that they then start feeling more comfortable and confident participating in more serious discussions on it. And as others have suggested already, including your own comment on your submissions, either a submissions statement or something specifically meant to engage people (in good faith, e.g. by asking your own genuine questions about the subject, or asking for people's opinions on it) could potentially help as well.
Yes, this feels about right.
If I had to characterize the average user here, I'd say we tend to be extremely into philosophy, rather than apathetic about it. Maybe even more into philosophy than anything else.
However, I do find it pretty mentally draining to talk or think about philosophy too frequently. Especially if I anticipate disagreements in a given thread.
Thank you very much for answering.
I was not aware of the daily total of posts, this certainly puts things in perspective. 3 or 4 articles a day didn't seem like much without that information.
The reason I post in rapid succession is that I set aside some time after my daily readings to do that at once, and I want to share them while the articles are fresh in my memory. And, due to personal circumstances, I've been reading more than usual.
But philosophy is rarely topical and there's really no harm in spacing out the posts.
Looking at my submissions, there are lots of articles written for "entry-level" readers -- maybe the majority. But I think I get your point since those articles are generally not introductions.
Another reason why I submitted so many posts was to try to understand which kinds of articles the community prefers.
From your comment and others, it seems clear that it is preferable to submit way fewer articles while setting aside some time to write a short introduction to help readers engage in the content.
Thanks!
Perhaps it might be worth coming up with topic tags for clearly differentiating the "entry level" and "introduction" submissions from the more serious ones, so people know which ones are going to be slightly easier to understand? Since from title alone it can often be hard to tell which is which.
Sounds good. I'm terrible at coming up with tags, though. The tag would have to be descriptive without being "offensive". I guess #entry-level might work but is a bit too specific. #beginner-friendly? I don't know.
philosophy.4noobs! /s ;)Separate
entry level,beginner friendly, orintroductorytags would probably be sufficient. But maybephilosophy.101could possibly work too? It's short, sweet, and gets the idea across sufficiently, IMO. It also has the benefit of being included in the main tag, so should show up along with it in the "important" topic tags section (at least in ~humanities, anyways).I think it's less that Tildes is not engaged with philosophy posts, and more that Tildes is engaged with race / politics / technology posts. I have noticed the same lack of engagement on ~science articles I post, and across the board in many other groups.
But to answer the question, yeah, I think that accompanying your posts with a leading question, almost along the lines of what shows up in ~talk would certainly help drive the conversation. I personally always appreciate it when the poster either grabs some context-relevant paragraphs or writes a little bit about their takeaway from the article - it provides a good jumping off point for a whole discussion.
Some time ago I saw people complaining about these quotes, one of them even said they mark it as noise. So I don't do that as frequently as I used to. But maybe philosophy is a worthy exception to that.
Out of curiosity, why do you think people feel the need to respond to the poster’s take on an article rather than the content itself? I usually try to keep my comments to providing background or context that might help people get more out of the article. I specifically avoid putting my own spin on it because I don’t want to color people’s read on it with my own take before they have a chance to take it in for themselves unvarnished.
One thing I have noticed is even when there is engagement people tend to bike shed on stylistic stuff or drag various nitpicks in the piece (e.g. complain about the headline, complain about writing style, speculate on the author’s intentions.) So it’s rarely any kind of discussion on the content of an article itself. It’s kind of frustrating.
Oh dear. Since I have been mentioned and am guilty of making “frivolous” comments instead of addressing the article content itself, I figure I aught to weigh in.
Personally speaking, I am more interested in the people here than I am in the content most of the time. I find value in the conversations we have here, so I am more likely to read an article if there is already a discussion going on. That’s not to say that my behavior is consistent; I’ve purposely avoided certain popular but controversial conversations and I have read/viewed many submissions with zero comments, in which case I may have left the first comment.
The last time I left what NaraVara would describe as a frivolous comment (which just so happens to be a mrbig post), it was a criticism of the title given to the article. And to be completely honest, the reason why it was about the title was because it was what I considered to be the most interesting part of the article. The actual content felt like common sense, something that I would have imagined the average Tilder already had learned through their life experience.
Frankly I never would have thought it were bad to talk about the incidentals of whatever gets posted. Incidentals are also part of the package and are just as valid to criticize as the text itself. After all, the text does not exist in a vacuum. Even the title and formatting affects how you view and process the text.
I'm guilty of the bikeshedding. Sometimes I think the content does kind of speak for itself - perhaps it's an old topic to me - and I'm more interested in the personal take of your average tilderino. Faced with an empty comments section, I'm likely to note something small and beside the main point, cause that's all I personally have to offer.
Edit: Atvelonis makes some great points. Yeah, most of the time I'm not willing to put in the effort these philosophical pieces require for deep discussion. How can I sure others will too? How do I know the thread'll be around after I've thought about it for a few days? I do put in more effort here than I would on reddit simply because I have that little bit more faith in y'all.
Yeah, that is a good idea. I'm kinda obsessive and sometimes it is hard to write an introduction like that without it taking a lot of my time. This is something I need to correct. "Go with the flow", as they say.
Sometimes I share stuff not to say something (or even to endorse something), really, but rather to benefit from the better understanding others' comments bring. So I'm often not exactly versed in the subject either.
Thanks!
I generally enjoy your posts! Though more in that I like reading and thinking about the topics. Recently the post on holes was one I really liked since it illustrates something I've not thought much about. There wasn't any discussion on the topic and you didn't provide any guide for opening a conversation. Sometimes that's fine and convos get started organically. Sometimes it's easier (as others mention) if you give things a bit of a push/direction :) ie. What question do you want answered? What is your stance on the subject?
I personally probably won't engage that much, but please know I do appreciate the links!
Yes, for sure, those are good points. Thank you very much!
Don't sell yourself short, there's no shame in being a lay philosopher. As someone who has always had interest in philosophy but never studied it, I wouldn't mind if I was put in the same category. I could see it now, lounging at a sidewalk café, pontificating at passers-by.
I personally find articles that relate philosophical concepts to everyday activities or aspects of culture (e.g. football 😁) the most interesting/easiest to start a conversation on. Maybe that stuff would fall under the philosophy 200s. I also lean more toward Eastern philosophy than Western, so I'm probably more likely to engage those topics of theory simply as I'd have less background work to do.
Think about the topics that earn the most "engagement" here (and likely elsewhere). Usually, very divisive topics that devolve into some form of shallow tribalistic argumentation. If your philosophy posts aren't providing an outlet for that type of expression, well... you can probably expect low levels of participation.