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How has your first few days on tildes been?
I've been browsing a little bit trying to get the hang of the system, but I find myself forgetting about Tildes during the day.
How has your experience been so far?
I've been browsing a little bit trying to get the hang of the system, but I find myself forgetting about Tildes during the day.
How has your experience been so far?
I love how quickly everything loads.
I agree. I'm in love with the anti-bloat philosophy that has been bubbling up on the web for the past few years, and Tildes is a perfect example of how well it works. No frills, no Javascript laden advertising, no privacy invading trackers. Just pure, unadulterated, high quality discussion and content.
Especially the fact that if you want you don't need js at all.
Tildes uses JavaScript.
It's insane. The site doesn't even "blink" or anything. It feels near-instantaneous.
My average latency is around 300ms, which is about what I'd expect trying to connect to a server in North America, and it still loads amazingly quickly despite that.
In my experience(e.g. moving from digg-reddit), with new websites/forums it will take a conscious effort to regularly check Tildes before it becomes your default go-to website. Once we get to the point where there is regular OC I think the "tide" will have changed.
I have been absolutely loving it so far. Really excited to see some more content coming through! Excited to be a part of the community.
Yeah, it's breaking a years long habit for me. I still check Reddit for headlines, then I open the comments, realize it was a mistake, come to Tildes, and comment here.
I have completely dropped ResetEra though.
If you want more content, start posting! I've been making a deliberate point of posting a couple of new articles every day.
Try sorting by Newest instead of Activity when you run out of content. Or find an older thread with interesting discussion you might have missed the first time around - commenting will bring it back to the top of the front page when sorted by Activity (for better or worse) and often generates new discussion. I still get notifications on threads over a week old because one user will find it, comment, push it back to the top by Activity, then cause a cycle of other users to participate.
Pretty intriguing difference compared to reddit IMO, although I can see the default Activity sort becoming unsustainable once the site grows beyond a certain point. If you have tens of thousands of users with many commenting in old threads, the default sort will look significantly different at almost every refresh of the page. Who knows? Some might find that constant cycling a benefit instead of an issue. You certainly wouldn't have users complaining about a stale front page like you see on reddit.
That's what I'm noticing. Very little white-noise so far.
I'm inviting people that I believe can contribute to tildes instead of lurking. Mostly brazilians, but I did invite some europeans. I'm still worried about an american-centric bias, as shown in this unofficial survey.
I could participate more, but I'm still moderating and organizing meet-ups in /r/brasil. I actually need to take some time from moderating, I noticed that I can't keep up with the news, or my little hobby of editing Wikipedia.
When I first read your comment I thought "well in order to build a sense of community, of course you need to rally around one center ideology or bias" But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that sinking a site too drastically into one specific bias is exactly how the modern social media echo chamber evolved. So yes, I fully support brining in people from all around the world to get in different perspectives (so long as they contribute high quality discussion like you said)
I dunno why I commented, something just clicked after thinking a bit about your comment, which now that I think about it shows the success of Tildes core ideas already ☺
Why worry about an American-centric bias? I have seen this comment (or a variation thereof) several times and I find it discouraging. Tildes is new, give it time for word to spread! People from outside the United States should contribute and participate more, in the future hopefully they do, I personally welcome the different points of view. Besides, Brasil is in South America, we're brothers/sisters!
I guess my biggest pet peeve about American-centrist bias is when it comes to politics. That's where I believe many different perspective would help. I think this thread on /r/TwoX is a great example: "Western women, help me understand". It's worth a reading.
I don't really want to discuss identity politics here, but I don't know if Americans really know that this is kind of a particular issue in the US, and different countries are perceiving this problem in a different way. Sure, Brazil has problems between blacks and white people too, but to argue that they are the same is disingenuous. I believe the two main answers in this thread in /r/AskHistorians might also help explain why I care about it, at least when it comes to politics and society.
That said, a lot of people usually know English and are interested in moving to the US, so they would be interested in knowing the opinion of Americans. And just to be clear, I want to know too! I just don't want an echo chamber here.
I hope I was clear in my message here.
funny thing, we always import things from the US. It's funny. People start using whatever Americans teenagers are hyping. We even imported the whole anti-vax thing D:
To give you a very condensed version, I grew up in a very rural area quite poor. I remember my grandparents did not have electricity, having to use an outhouse, and a hand cranked well for water. I was taught to accept people for who they were regardless of anything else. I was also fortunate later in life to have traveled a lot, and to experience different cultures firsthand, that has definitely helped to shape my perceptions. I still hold onto my beliefs, but I do not discourage alternative points of view, nor do I seek to impose my beliefs upon anyone else.
I think that the true problem is that a great many people are unable to separate emotion from the discussion of beliefs or politics.
As an example, if another person disagrees with your point of view, or does not accept your belief in a certain matter, then it is taken as a personal attack rather than just a difference of opinion. I personally feel that individuals are entitled to disagree with one another, its part of what makes the world an interesting place, and merely disagreeing does not mean we must become mortal enemies.
Speaking of American exports, when I was abroad I made it a point to not do things that were familiar, meals for example. I was always amazed at how often I ran into those familiar things in spite of trying to avoid them, like a Burger King restaurant in the middle-of-nowhere in Turkey, and watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond playing on the airport television while waiting on my flight out of Bahrain. Seemed like there was no escaping it!
Totally agree with you here. My point is my previous comment is that people often can't separate emotion from reason in some topics, or they don't believe in separating emotion when commenting. Sometimes, when I disagree with someone, I'll reply, but if that person reply to me again, I usually don't answer back, since I already said I disagree, or don't have anything to add. I think a lot of people do that because they don't want to get into arguments in the internet.
And yeah, Burger King and Subway is everywhere. There's three Burger King stores in my city alone. They are all bad and take more than 15 minutes to cook! Where's the fast from the "fast food", America?
When I see that it will devolve into an argument, that there is no reasoning with the person, I always tell myself that was the signal to take a break from the internet for the day. I usually close the browser and find something else to do with myself after that. Fast food? The only "fast food" is from the Mexican restaurant across town! Well, that or a disgusting buffet. I try to just cook at home the majority of the time, if its bad and takes forever then I am the one to blame!
While reddit might be US-centric, I sure wouldn't mind a bit of discussion about Brazilian politics, how about you?
I'm almost two weeks in, but I'll weigh in. I like ~ in that it is a different type of site than reddit. Much more focus on discussion, and things don't devolve into jokes and meta quickly. That said, I feel like there is very much still a place in my internet diet for reddit, mostly for images and subs that require a larger community to draw from and get a specialized group.
I have also noticed the quality of discussion and candor the users maintain in their responses; I enjoy it tremendously! I feel safe posting things here, like the community isn't going to try to tear apart whatever I have just said. Its very refreshing!
Hopefully with time it doesn't devolve into jokes and meta as I think it won't for a while there's a possibility it could. It takes time for meta to develop.
I normally have two or three pinned tabs in my browser at all time, that kinda forces my normal internet usage. Before, that was Reddit and Facebook. A couple days after I got my invite, I replaced Reddit with ~ and I spend a significant portion of my internet time here. I still use Reddit occasionally, but it's more for when I want to see what's going on with a particular topic, which is more suited to a site where everything gets posted.
Although, I also got in a lot of arguments. That's an easy way to not forget about a site, I guess.
I really really like the simple look. I hope they keep it, and at most give people a textbox in there settings page to put in CSS if they want different colors.
I'm currently using Stylish to customize the color scheme (and other styles) on the site.
@Diemos, if you see this - official Monokai support would be great :P
I've been here for a few weeks now, but I've been enjoying it more within the past few days. Things are much more active now and we're starting to feel like an actual community. The fluff-adverse nature of ~ fosters discussion, which I've desperately sought the past couple years on the internet. We're still young, and rough around the edges, but I like where things are going.
I already check ~ more often than reddit, outside of r/politics & and r/worldnews anyway.
I think the best part so far is coming late to a conversation (like I'm doing now) and still having a chance to be relevant.
I agree so much with this, It might be a side effect of a smaller user-base, but I enjoy the smaller discussions that aren't updating every minute and having the time to step away an come back and pick up where I left off.
I think it is largely an effect of activity sort, which encourages people to read new comments in a post days after its creation.
Yuss! napoleondynamitesuccesskidmeme.jpg
Same, it bugs me that the ~ categories are so broad and there isn't really a way to make new ones. The best parts of reddit are usually pretty specific like r/tf2 and such.
Besides that its not bad, just not as interesting.
Places like /r/tf2 require a significantly larger user base than 2k people site wide to support it. If ~ keeps growing groups like that will eventually exist here but for now they would just be ghost towns so what’s the point in having them?
Imzy suffered greatly from allowing open groups creation before they had the user base to support them. They wound up having 10x as many groups as users since everyone rushed to create their own favorite little niche communities. This made the entire site seem empty and unused.
Give it time, ~ will get there eventually. This is just an alpha, after all, and the site has only been going a month now.
That brings back memories of GeoCities and Webrings.
The entire concept of ~ seems to be very similar to the old usenet discussion groups.
I love the idea of the site and I like the way it's being run. I enjoy the integrity behind it and the opportunity and transparency. It feels like it's what I wanted in an online forum.
I don't know if it's too big or not big enough yet. I was getting a lot of great discussion and member involvement my first few days here. I really felt like I was part of a group and what I said mattered instead of being a number in an endless series of numbers.
However I made only one post and it was about finding people to play Xbox games with and it received around 12 votes and one comment. I had the same problem with reddit, except it was just a comment, and that actually got down voted. I'm not trying to be cynical here, I know I'm just a small sample size but it kills my morale when the big posts are sounding like "what's your favorite thing?" posts, speculation threads, and popular videos.
I just try to connect with people and have a meaningful experience and I hate getting lost in the wave of populace. Do people really want to talk about the new fallout trailer more than find cool people for their online gaming? Maybe I just don't fit in? Maybe I'm being overly sensitive and I should try more? I don't know. I'm not trying to be cynical I do like it here I just want to feel like part of a community.
Give it time. I think the reason why you probably didn't get much response is because at 3k users ~ is just too small to support such a post yet. Also keep in mind the majority of users here so far are techies and programmers so likely PC players, if they game at all. E.g. The last console I owned was a 360 and I only used it to play a handful of console exclusives and then it just collected dust.
But take heart, the fact you got 12 votes shows that even though they may not be console gamers, people were trying to help your search for people to play with get visibility... which is a good sign. And a few months from now it will probably be a different story and there may be enough console gamers here where such an effort can bear fruit.
Thanks for your input. I assumed that the user amount Tildes is at now would be plenty to facilitate a post such as that. I'm not entirely disheartened, I simply want to have a deeper connection with the people of the site.
Yea that makes a lot of sense. I guess I wasn't actually interacting with the entire userbase, but a small subset. I actually thought that would help my cause. It would be more personal and less formal because it was a small niche of gamers instead of thousands of people reading it carelessly. Thanks!
See it from this point:
300 users means that a little portion of it will be online at the same time. If the biggest topics got 100 votes over a week or so, you can assume that there are 10-20 people online at any given moment?
On top of that, the "activity" don't help you at the moment unless the topic you posted is getting traction and people are posting or voting.
Apart from that, I don't know others but I'm not so happy to give my online contact around, even if it's just for playing online for twosimple reasons:
Also, I play on PC when i have time, but I don't know the majority of the community (or better, those 20 online the moment you post).
Post that get attention are the ones that ask for open ended question to which the community can answer over a medium-long period of time. Asking "let's exchange xbox id" is not gonna get the same attention of "what's your opinion of abortion" of course.
I understand your last point about open ended questions and I guess that's my complaint. I am okay with giving my online contact around and I was hoping for a place where others might as well. On other sites you are weary because there are thousands or millions of users and you don't want to hand it out randomly. Here there is less and the atmosphere and personality it has been promoting seemed like a good place to try this.
As for your point about different levels of interest, I wasn't expecting the thread to be a catch all e.g. "Here's my gamertag, let's play," but a more nuanced and discussion based exchange. "Do you play competitive overwatch or are you looking for a teammate for overcooked? Do you want to do party chat with a chill person while we play different games?" I suppose I should have made that apparent in the post. Thanks for your feedback.
You made me realise the last console I owned was the Sega Dreamcast. I guess after the failure of it, I couldn't bring myself to purchase another console, that and I generally had (and still have) more fun playing PC games.
I'd say I've transitioned to a 50/50 split of reddit/tildes. I'm pleasantly surprised that ultimately all news posts I care about on reddit also end up here, despite having only 0.0001% of the user base. That says a lot.
I'm liking it a lot, the speed the site loads at is the best bit for me so far simple and fast it'll like the forums of old.
Though I do feel a bit left out since I'm not very computer savvy and I seem to be surrounded by smart tech people and coders, but I'll just keep nodding along until you accept me.
^ This! XD
But all of the artsy folks are starting to trickle in for me, so keep your fingers crossed! :D
I think with time that will be diluted to normal slightly obscure forum levels.
I like the no-bullshit approach to the interface. I also like the fact the conversations don't immediately toilet-flush into meta-munching or the usual 'irrelevant joke to derail the entire thread' nonsense.
It feels 'more mature' from a reading standpoint. I find myself considerably less annoyed by the experience compared to reddit. I feel like I have to 'endure' the reddit session to be able to read what I want/need to read. Here on Tildes, I may not have access to the same range of topics, but what I do consume is considerably more palpable.
It's an interesting little corner of the internet. The simplicity is refreshing. I currently use it more than Reddit, but Reddit has its place.
Enjoying it a lot. The discussion here is MUCH more personal. There are no memes/spam/jokes. It's real discussion with real people. I keep coming back.
I just joined a few minutes, ago, and I think that it's already great! The website is sleek, modern yet bare-bones, and it just loads so damn fast, so it's my kind of place. Reddit's started to get a lot worse recently, so I needed a mature part of the internet who doesn't need to crack jokes every time they can, like Reddit.
Thanks for contributing to Tildes, guys, and I hope it doesn't get fucked when it implodes with popularity. It's nice and cozy here, just an unadulterated and pure site.
I am really enjoying it so far. Only been here for a few days in any meaningful way, but it already strikes me as a much more mature community than Reddit, which is the replacement I have been looking for.
There are some things I will still need Reddit for, like highly specialised topics which simply require a gigantic userbase (and even then still only have a few thousand members of which again only a tiny fraction posts).
As other people mentioned, it feels as though there is much less of a chance of interesting or serious topics immediately turning into meme/joke threads, and also I am hoping for less of an American bias indeed.
Really looking forward to seeing this community grow. A grown up place on the internet would really be quite something.
Using it instead of reddit.
Since I joined I used reddit probably 2-3 times just to check some cat's picture.
I'm really enjoying Tildes, it's been great to actually see people discussing things. Reddit feels like it's in control by various large groups (white supremacists, government, corporations, etc) trying to push their agenda. Actual calm discussion is lost in it all. Just looking at the news ~ it's night and day. The discussions have been civil and haven't turned into anti-china/anti-black/anti-muslim/whatever circle jerks.
I'd really like to see more international posters though, to get news from countries that are not allies of the west to provide different perspectives of events that are reported . I feel like my perspective is severely limited because I only get news from western sources.
Also, I'm happy so many of you play DnD.
It feels odd to me that vote button is to the far right from the title of the post, but I guess this might be intentional. Also, is it weird that this interface kind of looks BETTER on mobile? In the browser it's sooo wide.
If you like it tighter, you can resize your browser (it's responsive design). But the hilarious part is that so many users complained about the desktop interface being too narrow which is why it was widened in the first place. :P
And yes, the vote placements are entirely intentional to discourage voting before actually reading.
I really don't want there to be many posts of pics/gifs/etc or perhaps even allowed. I think that it makes everything go the way of quick little web-narco hits of fun instead of provoking any real discussion.
Well you're in luck then. Because it's almost certain at this point that memes/pics/gifs are not going to be allowed at all. ;)
See:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/jz/daily_tildes_discussion_why_should_we_allow_or_not_allow_fluff_content
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/1oz/daily_tildes_discussion_quality_concerns
I'm a bit disappointed that memes are in the same category with pics and gifs. There's a lot of fluff that is so much better than memes. Like things found in /r/hmmm, /r/Birbs, /r/AnimalTextGifs. With lots of quality restrictions, it could be okay to have fluff.
Tildes ought to be a complement to reddit, not a replacement. You go here to find good discussion, you go to reddit to find your animal memes or whatever else is easy to consume. Thus, tildes should be a place to escape from the memes, jokes, and other low-effort posts.
What I'm arguing is not all fluff is low-effort. Mostly memes are, I'm not saying we should allow memes. And no, I'm not speaking about animal memes, /r/AnimalTextGifs are much better than that and seem to require quite a bit of effort to make.
Whilst I may have slightly misunderstood your point, I do understand that not all fluff is low-effort, I just prefer not to see it, and when we can filter posts by tags, I'll more than happily do so.
I've got an issue where all the text is jumbled up in to the top left of it's cell until I scroll down. chrome for iOS
Yeah, Safari is a massive POS. And all iOS browsers are essentially just Safari reskins since Apple forces every browser on the platform to use their renderer. I have the same issue on my iPhone and iPad, but until Apple updates Safari to fix the issues and support CSS Grid properly, there is not a whole lot @deimos can do. :/
It's worth noting that the renderer is open source, and you can get a custom WebKit working fairly easily in the iOS Simulator. It might take a while for the changes to go live, but it is possible to fix things yourself. That said, I'm sure @deimos has better things to do with his time!
Grid never invalidated the older, tried-and-tested layouting methods, and I personally think it's a bit risky to use grid or flexbox without proper fallbacks for older browsers.
Developers seem to have very skewed assumptions in regards to how people use the Internet, and what they use it with... Everybody who makes Internet, should read this: https://sonniesedge.co.uk/talks/dear-developer
There is a fallback. The site looks reasonably fine on browsers that don’t support CSS Grid. The issue is Safari has some sort of weird rendering bug that upon first render of a grid layout squishes it all up until a rerender takes place... hence why all the issues disappear as soon as you scroll down or tilt the screen.
It's been super, thanks for asking!
Mostly good, but disappointing to see transparent racist concern trolling not only being ignored but being actively welcomed as good posting.
If I may ask, where is this racist concern trolling?
Well, if trolling is welcomed as good posting, maybe it's really, really unsuccessful trolling.