Tildes End-of-Year 'Awards' 2024
Happy end of year, everyone!
I saw a comment today on Tildes that reminded me of a type of thread that I really enjoyed back on Reddit: end-of-year awards. Those were typically in individual subreddits and involved a lot of specifics and inside jokes related to that community, but I think Tildes is a small enough place where we could do one site-wide. (Full disclosure, I am not sure if this is a great idea and am open to any and all suggestions.)
Brief explanation:
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For starters, there are no actual awards to give out, sorry. Just some pats on the back and maybe some street cred to go with it.
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The purpose of the thread is mostly to highlight cool, helpful, and interesting things or users you've seen here on Tildes in the last year. This thread is hopefully a gateway to those interesting posts/comments/discussions that you might have missed.
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Top-level comments should be an award category (for example: Most Interesting Thread, Best Discussion, Most Helpful Comment, Funniest Joke, Most Helpful User, Best Prediction, Favorite Recurring Thread, etc.) Note that none of these examples are negative because again the goal of this thread is to highlight awesome stuff that others might have missed over the last 12 months.
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Responses to those top-level comments should be the actual nominations, preferably with a link to said comment/thread, and a quick explanation as to why you think it deserves recognition.
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Upvotes serve as the votes for each category, though I encourage you to vote for as many nominees as you'd like since the awards aren't real and the points don't matter.
That's pretty much it. I'll post a few comments as examples, but hopefully it should be pretty straight-forward. Feel free to add your own award categories, and please nominate as many users/comments/threads as you'd like!
If this thread helps at least one person discover a helpful thread from 6 months ago that they might have missed, then I'll consider it a success.
Coolest Build on the Minecraft Server
I nominate @mintysaurus with this epic build
Unfortunately not viewable on the web map, so you'll have to visit in game to see the whole thing. :)
I nominate @Evie's base, but Minty's base is a close second for me
It was really hard for me to pick just one! I'm glad you nominated as well.
@GravySleeve's volcano. In general Gravy does a really good job in having their builds be an experience for the community (volcano roller coaster, haunted house, and Christmas village)
Most Educational Post ?
Sorry if I am not allowed I am just curious.
Excellent category! And yes this is totally allowed, nice nomination for nominations!
Longest Discussion
US Election Distractions Thread. Tons of really interesting conversations in there. Learned some really cool stuff about linguistics and picked up a few youtube recommendations from that thread.
What small questions do you have that aren’t worth a full topic on their own? - Sept 18 /u/kfwyre
(this category can empirically be measured and ranked, but I'll still humbly submit this one as representative for folks not into US politics)
Well can it actually be empirically calculated? Because are all of the side conversations still part of the same discussion? I'm just here to sow chaos
You activated my trap card.
https://tildes.net/?order=comments&period=365d&unfiltered=true
ordered by number of comments descending, during the past 365 days (shsss close enough to 365)
I dodged your trap card, my point was "what is a discussion" because it doesn't say "most comments!"
Funniest Joke
I'd like to submit the entire /u/TheMeerkat Tildes survey 2024 thread,
Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024?
highest jokes per word density I've encountered this year on Tildes, linked to a survey filled with more jokes, with bonus promise of both more jokes to come upon tabulation and recurring next year *chef's kiss
My favorite part from the survey
Except for you. I'm your mom. Go clean your room.
New lore unlocked
But Mooooom I wanna go to Tildes with my friends! @kfwyre has a post about favorite books with a prime number ISBN that I wanna post in.
New topic series:
Fun fact: this would exclude any book with the older ISBN-10. Because of the way the check digit is computed, the sum of the digits is always a multiple of 11.
Okay fine, I’ll change it over to: What are your favorite books in which the sum of the digits in the ISBN isn’t a prime number? 😂
In all seriousness, that’s a genuinely fun fact.
I did research on check sums in grad school (mostly CRCs) so it's always a point of interest for me.
But also, in the early 2000's, I had to sort out how the ISBN check digits worked. I wanted to catalogue all the books I owned, mostly so I could haunt Half Price Books and avoid duplicates. So I wrote a little library database application using PHP. Because this was pre-smartphone, it would generate an alphabetized list that I would print out and take with me.
To populate the list, I used a CueCat left over from when Radio Shack was giving them away. The admin interface would accept the raw (obfuscated) digit stream, decode it to the barcode number.
I am a little fuzzy on the details, but I think the CueCat omitted the check digit from its output. So I had to recompute it to get a valid ISBN. Then it could pull metadata on the books from the Amazon API, batching ten books at a time to avoid hitting API limits. There was still a lot of manual entry and cleanup, but it let me catalogue the hundreds of books I owned in a long weekend and easily update the catalog with new books.
u/Notcoffeetable's suggestion for a hand signal to let other drivers know you're going straight, as opposed to turning.
Most Helpful User
/u/talklittle for making a whole dang app for our community
Literally the whole reason I ended up here. Three cheers for Tildes in general. Three cheers for @talklittle today.
Wait what where ?
https://tildes.net/~tildes/1kcm/three_cheers_for_tildes_app_updates_and_feedback_november_2024_version_1_2_lets_you_save_comment
u/cfabbro for always posting mirror links to articles and generally being a positive presence all over the site!
Tildes would not be the same!! Three cheers and a couple of beers.
❤️ :)
/u/mycketforvirrad for tagging probably nearly ALL tildes threads and making the filter system work
u/kfwyre for always posting great threads related to video games. I've found some great games in the last year thanks to a lot of those sales threads and general game discussion threads. The hidden gems threads especially has a ton of great suggestions!
/u/chocobean
You know how AI writing often comes across as cold and soulless? Well, chocobean is the complete diametric opposite of that. I always feel like I’m seeing the human behind her words.
She is a consistently positive presence here, engaging with everyone in good faith and curiosity, always wanting to learn more, and always writing in a way that’s eminently warm and personal.
I’m nominating her for most helpful because I think she helps to set the tone and temperature of this site at large. Her positive presence helps our entire community.
Most Helpful Comment
u/DynamoSunshirt's lengthy list of practical advice relating to getting the "Honda Civic of bikes". Great info for anyone interested in cycling more but doesn't know where to start.
awww I was lowkey interested in motorbikes. Hopefully I'll post that one myself one day if ppl are interested
/u/l_one Remote Area Medicine / First Aid training vis-à-vis tools
Wow, super informative and very detailed!
Awww!!
I feel unreasonably happy and appreciated right now. Thank you u/chocobean!
Most Helpful Thread
If you had up to US$250 to get one person into a hobby you're interested in, what would you do to get them started? from /u/ChingShih
a sort of starter pack for starter packs thread -- thread also doubles as a "who to ask for what" for folks who do decide to get into a new hobby
I remember that thread, but didn’t even think to refer back to specific users for questions about their expertises!
Thanks for the nomination! :)
(Saying thanks because I'm not voting for myself.)
Oh, I remember that one! It had a great discussion on self-hosting.
My experience buying a used low-range EV a year later from u/DeaconBlue
I had been interested in an EV for a long time but never really took the plunge. That thread answered a lot of questions I had, plus some other questions that I asked as followups. Specifically things related to charging, storage, and daily usage. And now a few months later my wife and I sold both of our ICE cars and now drive an EV.
I’m gonna be a dad! from u/ViridianDream
Lots of great advice from other dads. Even though I have no interest in having kids, I loved reading through everyone’s experiences and wisdom.
Best Recurring Thread
(accidentally posted this in the wrong thread a second ago, whoops)
Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news
Thanks u/mycketforvirrad! I look forward to this thread every week. Plenty of unusual stories in them. I also get a kick from the auto-generated "Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like X, Y, and Z".
I'd like to nominate the video thread for this one. There have been a couple of videos that I wanted to share but didn't think warranted a whole topic, and the video thread is a nice place to put them without guilt.
The one in ~creative!
Tildes Book Club
u/boxer_dogs_dance is getting us to read and talk about great books on a regular basis, which is already awesome all on its own!
That said, the topics also have good participation and momentum, and the Tildes style of long, thoughtful commenting works really well for book discussion. I always appreciate the book more after I read what people here have to say about it.
Most Interesting Self Post
u/RNG investigates bitcoin town
He saw a news post on Tildes and decided to take a trip to investigate things in person. Super compelling!
u/mat’s series on building his bed
It is SO cool and SO cozy, and getting to follow the process from start to finish through mat’s excellent explanations and photo documentation is quite a treat.