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Waving goodbye, carrying my bundle on a stick
Just wanted to say goodbye to everyone. Sorry if I upset anyone, and thanks for all the fun little interactions. I didn't really get to know anyone too to well I suppose, but there are some people I'll miss interacting with. The way things have gone over the past week, I've definitely outstayed my welcome. Or the welcome has outstayed me, I don't know.
ta-ra, hope everyone can live their best lives.
i have no clue wtf you did, but I assume since you're doing goodbyes that you could repair whatever damage was done and not leave.
I can't help but wonder if there's any correlation between the people leaving and the admin post earlier this week.
Either way I've neither seen or read about any bad interactions on here to be honest...
Every time there's a post about some drama here I (rarely) know what anyone is talking about lol.
Sure sometimes it's super obvious and all over the front page, but usually someone posts something like this and I'm scratching my head.
I'm pretty sure I'm subbed to everything except sport maybe. I don't read every thread obviously, but like uh, it never seems that bad?
Guess it's all subjective!
Depending on your demographic it might also not see that bad. For context, see this comment thread.
While I'm not the target demographic, I'm also not surprised. Tildes isn't exempt from being an echo chamber or having closed minded people. I can understand leaving for that kind of reason
That's fair. I did see that comment thread but I only skimmed because I found it difficult to related anywhere in the conversation.
I do have the privilege of being a straight, cis, white man and I know it is a lot easier to find a safe space. Appreciate you calling it out.
I think there's a strong motivation to being part of a project with a vision and that you feel is going somewhere, is getting better over time, it gives you hope and makes you overlook current issues. It's not too surprising some people don't want to invest their time into something that is explicitly not evolving anymore.
Did you read something interesting here today? Did you find something useful?
I did.
The past is prologue, the future is a promise. What you get is now.
Right now, for this site, nothing has changed. Any forum like this is a moment in time. It will live, grow and die just like the rest of us. If/When it is done.. that's just fine. We'll find another place. Maybe you'll be the guy who creates it? Who knows, I hope so.
But it'll die eventually too. Then we'll go somewhere else. It's ok. One of you is going to do something good. I have faith in you.
For me communities like this have existed for 25+ years. Usenet, then Reddit, now Tildes. Next who knows. But it will be somewhere. It always is.
I like this comment. I was a bit confused why people wanted to leave just cuz there's no on-going development, this explains it well. It's more about being a part of something that is moving towards a common goal.
I would point out that new alternatives are in rapid development but most (at least in my experience) have very little motivation to try and foster a new community. This is somewhat exacerbated by the onslaught of AI slop recently.
Thanks for putting it succinctly. I've been feeling like that for the last couple of days. Additionally, I don't want to take up any more time or money from someone who might be ready to move on.
To me, it could be just how he feels right now because last time there was a ton of new users at once he did come in and make some changes to support that.
I think its like a low hanging fruit thing, and adding topics is easy, but implementing a whole feature to support people already here who have been here for years is not a low hanging fruit and will not return a whole lot of value, from his perspective. We got through it fine without it last time there were a ton of new users, even.
Someone pointed out to me in the last thread that users do eventually get banned, and thats enough for me to stay.
That’s precisely what people are leaving, but I find it to be a little odd. Everybody in these threads knows now that it’s not hard to add a user script to ignore users. The real bone of contention appears to be not that they do not want to see comments or posts from certain people, but rather that they are more concerned that I or other people will encounter these comments or posts without being censored or made aware of how wrong what they are saying is.
Bad interactions are highly subjective. There are very few interactions on Tildes done in bad faith, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can't be unpleasant for parties involved.
Spending time on Tildes is ultimately a completely optional free time activity, so when that arbitrary personal "unpleasant threshold" is exceeded, people leave. Which is completely understandable.
I leave Tildes every day. Sometimes multiple times a day.
That's what I'm wondering as well.
I wonder if they do realize that wasn't some announcement of placing the website on life support, right?
I mean, it pretty much means that. No development and no growth just the bare minimum is effectively what life support amounts to.
Also see this comment by Deimos himself.
I mean it kind of is in terms of membership. Emailing to get an invite doesn't work and codes aren't being given out to members. So as a newer user I wonder how much to invest here - I can't invite anyone like minded or even suggest they ask.
Having read Deimos' comments this seems to be deliberate; old users will fade out for any number of reasons and new ones aren't really invited. That very much does spell the end of the site, the question is the timeframe.
I don’t understand what you mean? Each account can generate invite codes which allow new members to join. You can access them on this page
You only get a limited set of them. Once they run out they are out. In the past Deimos has topped them up at times but that never has been a given.
Nope, I've just checked mine and there's none either. Maybe when you joined that was the norm but not for the more recent joiners it seem.
I have 10, haven't deployed any, and arrived with the Reddit API wave a couple years ago.
I see your account is from April of this year. I may be wrong, but I thought it takes some time before a new user is potentially given invitation codes.
I saw Deimos' thread like everyone else. But perhaps I missed something. I know he said Tildes isn't looking to grow, but I didn't think that meant zero growth. But maybe I missed him clarifying in the comments. As far as I know, those who have available codes can still send out invitations (I have some still and I've been re-upped a couple times over the last few years). There's still the r/tildes thread that @cfabbro monitors.
In many ways, Tildes was never pro-growth. Or at least hasn't been in a looooong time. Probably since even before I got here in 2019. The fact that the site pop doubled in 2023 was because of an external reason, not anything Tildes did or decided to do. That was all reddit shenanigans and people looking for a new home. Many Tildoes just decided to respond to the call and send out invitations. That wasn't an official Tildes push as far as I'm aware.
I took his post in the literal sense: He's not planning to add any new features, and kindly told people to drop it (i.e. the posts about new tags and features). That was it.
Maybe I also missed some messages between the lines, but I didn't take away that he's planning to kill off Tildes or let it die. It's just on maintenance mode, that's it. Not every piece of software needs to receive new features every year to be considered "alive".
That’s my reading too. I joined this site when a typical post had 0 comments and <5 votes. Ever since the reddit API wave, this place has seemed downright bustling in comparison. Things can continue on as they have been the last few years for ages, I’m genuinely a bit surprised at the worry that post has caused. I’ve had to go back multiple times to make sure I didn’t miss something saying our days here are numbered.
That was my first thought too, but this comment gave me second thoughts.
I don't know how else you can realistically interpret this:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/1vjt/any_significant_changes_to_tildes_are_extremely_unlikely#comment-iepk
Which is exactly the same thing I've been doing for somewhere around 5 years now. It's strange to see this being treated as an inflection point, it's effectively no different from how the site has been for a very long time already.
Thank you for clarifying!
I think for a lot of people it's a bit like an important relationship that's no longer receiving effort from the other party. Confirmation that it will never receive any effort again is always a pretty big deal, even if no practicalities change.
I know you’re meaning “effort” to refer to changes to the site, but I’d suggest using a different term/analogy because Deimos most definitely is putting effort into this place.
Largely thankless effort, at this point, given that he’s basically doing only the least enjoyable activities (moderation, maintenance activities, etc.) that draw a lot of criticism.
Except that a lot of people are here exactly because this place doesn't change. I've been here since 2018 and there was never any groundbreaking new feature and that's exactly how I like it. The design gets out of my way.
I joined during the reddit api wave, and this is how I read it, things will simply continue as they are and if it goes away it goes away, which should be fine.
One of the reasons I love this site is because it's as laid back as it is.
That’s exactly what I said lol. It’s been that way since I first joined.
I'll give you one of my invite codes if you want to invite someone
The admin post appears to have been a response to two posts asking for additional negative labels for comments, one asking for a “misinformation” label, the other asking for a “one-sided” label that would additionally act to make the comment less visible. Those, in turn, seem to have been motivated by the posters’ experiences over several threads, but the ‘jar-opening’ thread seems to have been a frequently-cited example. The implication from some supporters of those ideas is that they would leave if something was not implemented. I expect others may want to leave simply because of the sense of increased hostility surrounding those discussions and the ones that motivated them.
I must have missed this jar opening thing. I’ve seen it referenced a few times but I have no idea what it was about.
It's here.
(I couldn't find the thread at first, then remembered that I ignored it because it was so
weirdcontroversial.)I see. It looks like it spawned a lot of discussion. I wonder, would that have been better if all the wrong opinions were moderated out of existence, or had community notes attached by the correct thinking people explaining the truth?
I think the idea is that we never would’ve gotten to that point. Problem comments would’ve been moderated early on, and half the back and forth wouldn’t exist, and things would all be a little bit more chill. There’d been a desire for enhanced moderation for ~lgbt for years, and for ~life.women since its inception.
For those on the receiving end of it, probably? Again, referencing previous talk about it.
Yeah that whole thread was a dumpster fire. I feel a little better going back and reading it and seeing all the posts below mine that were also dumpster fires.
I also feel kinda good that I finally saw the drama everyone is talking about, I usually miss these things.
I kinda feel like the drama history and having people “in the know” is part of what creates community.
Heated interactions, but not bad ones. Be yourself, you might offend, learn something, move on. These are the rules for online e discourse, homey.
Its a hard lesson to learn, but so long as you're ready to change your mind as often as you're prepared to stand your ground on things you believe in, then it really doesn't matter how others react. Who cares.
Love the ones who understand this and fuck the rest ;)
The aversion of some users here to see anything that disagrees with their world view or be challenged on anything they believe is very strange to me. I'm seeking the opposite, I want my views challenged, they NEED to be challenged for me to continue to become a better person with a more mature world view. I just want that done in a respectable manner, which is usually what I see on this site and something you don't see as much on Reddit, where things devolve into a gross nightmare quickly.
Agreed, I think it comes down to some sort of difference between people viewing tags on this site as some form of isolated and protected community that shouldn't have to deal with people not already holding some baseline of ideas vs people taking the site as a public whole and commenting wherever they feel they have something to say. There's decent arguments for both but the site has never thrown it's weight behind one identity or the other so we rehash the same issue repeatedly between the micro-cultures.
I've certainly had many of my ideas challenged and changed over the years on here, but sometimes to get there I had to engage in a manner that challenged people's beliefs and necessarily lead to passionate debate. I'm not sure my account would survive that today.
In recent years I've mostly learned those areas of Tildes simply don't want that sort of debate which would give them the opportunity to influence me, so I just filter the tags. Not worth the accusations of bad faith, invading a community, or JAQing off when that's how I've had my good faith debate and learning process perceived before. Nowadays the moderation feels much harsher as well at least from the long term user's I've seen banned here when they had an off day or struck a specific topic wrong, I feel like if I hold what may be a controversial opinion I have to be at my absolute A game when making the argument and have to sign up for two days of debate in order to engage at all and have it come across as good faith.
Instead I usually just chill my own speech and stick to other topics, but I don't really think that's been healthy for the diversity of the site as a whole and it's certainly prevented me from engaging in debate that would have otherwise further developed my worldview.
There are certain topics I also just avoid here due to the same issues, it's unfortunate because I like the back and forth with people, I'm also a passionate person who likes to argue, sometimes playing devil's advocate because it makes me think, but always willing to shake hands and walk away agreeing to disagree no matter how heated things become. As long as respect is maintained I'll debate anything, sometimes passionately.
I remember a class back in highschool where the teacher picked a somewhat (for highschool) polarizing topic and each student had to pick a 'side' and debate it. Once we had picked our sides the teacher announced the teams we were on would now hold the opposite position they signed up for and would have to debate from that opposite point of view. I learned a lot in that debate.
I like to argue with people online as long as they aren't trolls. Sometimes it's hard to tell. But more than once I've changed my mind based on what someone else has said online. It's a good thing!
In real life I do software development and we have design meetings. In the past I used to do these with people I'd worked within person for a few years. We would have intense arguments about whatever design thing, sometimes raising our voices. Then we'd go to lunch together because none of that was personal, we were just passionate about the work.
Later I had similar meetings with people I didn't know very well. I had some online meetings and traveled to their office. I thought the meetings went find but I disagreed with a lot of what they were doing and let them know. A few days later I was called into a meeting with my boss and her boss and they told me I had some formal complaints against me. They didn't accuse me of being verbally inappropriate or anything but they somehow thought I was trying to undermine them.
Anyway on tildes I have occasionally posted things where it would be reasonable to have a lively argument and there is maybe a few upvotes and no replies. So it feels like an echo chamber which can be a bit boring if you'd like people to expose you to new ideas.
BTW I'm not trying to conflate people getting upset about some topic at work with some of the political things that are happening in the world. In politics there are people that are actively trying to silence or disappear groups of people. And there's rightly sensitivity in those areas in online forums.
“Challenged” is the key term here and points to why nobody enjoys this. In these situations nobody involved is actually being challenged. These are mostly arguments that happen over and over and over again all over the internet all the time, largely deploying the same tropes and often the exact same references and analogies and turns of phrase. People aren’t so much engaging in a discussion as they are slotting into a recurrent pattern that unfolds like a practiced line dance routine.
You know what’s going to be said before they say it. They know what you will say before you say it. Even if you try to do something different, like trying to cha cha real smooth instead of a slide to the left, the next move will still be a slide to the right because that’s how the dance goes. You might think you’re saying something new or different or slightly more nuanced than the usual routine but it won’t matter because that’s not what anyone is getting out of your contribution. Oh did you think you were doing a little shimmy shake instead of a cha cha? Well it looks like a cha cha to me so fuck you. And get real, a shimmy shake is just a cha cha by another name.
Clearly most people don’t actually like the dance. Nobody actually likes the cha cha slide either. We just do it because it’s the thing to do. Sorry if you got your foot stomped.
Fair point, but what is the alternative, we just never discuss these issues?
I totally agree with you that these online 'discussions' are just the same points being repeated ad nauseam, but I often find myself revisiting them anyway because every so often someone will bring up a new point or new piece of information I never considered before. Over time these points can and have added up to me changing my opinion.
There’s a time and a place for things. For a group that, while not explicitly a safe space, leans toward such, that maybe isn’t the time or place to “debate” trans women in sports. At most, I could see discussion of messaging strategies and on how to convince average people to accept trans folks in sports and more broadly.
If you felt that other users were attacking a core component of your identity, even if it was “respectful,” would you want them to continue, or would you want them to stop? If they continued doing it even though you told them you didn’t like it and why, would you be okay with that?
It really depends on what the debate is, I'll pick one of the VERY contentious topics on this website that I really never wade into.
Should Trans people be allowed to be exist in our society and live their lives as they see fit? Not a valid area of debate.
Should Trans women be allowed to compete in professional sports as a women? Open to debate.
The first question would absolutely be attacking someone's 'core component of their identity', the second one not whatsoever.
The biggie is that for a lot of trans users on this site (many of whom have left due to this very back-and-forth debate), point 2 is invalidating and shouldn’t be up for debate. On top of that, they are rightfully suspicious (even if they don’t give one iota on sports) that it is merely an excuse to push the Overton window on trans issues to the right.
That is what I think is a problem, those are the kind of topics we NEED to debate in a respectful manner. The answer is not black and white in my opinion. (I'm also not interested in debating that topic at all right now, especially here). Once we stop debating and talking to each other we stop learning and growing.
I really hate touching this at all, but as someone who just agreed with you earlier I think my perspective might be valuable and I need to get into the details a bit to do it.
This is actually one of said areas I wandered into many years ago in my need to iron out the details of every nuance of a debate, and that I was then accused of bad faith in or taken as if I was attempting to shift the overton window to the right as mentioned.
It's also one where I can consider my viewpoint solidly changed if not fully articulated.
It's now my opinion that yeah, there is probably still nuance to be found in the question of competitive fairness, but that no it really is never worth engaging with as an intellectual exercise in a public space when any passerby may seize the argument to further attack trans people.
The impact of it is not high enough to warrant public discussion outside of spaces that specifically need to discuss it like sporting organizations, and that discussion should really be limited to people involved in or qualified in those areas.
Where public policy debate needs to happen when laws surrounding it are proposed, really only those voices should be doing any of the enumeration of ideas and proposals of solutions. Anyone else touching the topic simply comes with too much risk of harm and anyone unaffected touching it should be argued against purely by pointing out it does not affect them. It wouldn't be hard to imagine someone entering this very thread and starting the argument in earnest before accidentally incorporating other talking points that are frequently used to amplify anti-trans legislation even if that's not how it may be used here.
Ironically though, I never would have come to this opinion without my initial unwelcome debate in that micro community on here. It leaves me still struggling slightly to square the proper solution here. Today's rigid moderation standards built from exhaustion would, if applied to that thread (deleted - don't bother), likely have left me banned today.
Sure, maybe that is a topic that needs debated in a respectful manner…
But I don’t think this forum is the place to do that, and I think many of the folks that regularly hang out in ~lgbt don’t want to debate it either. But when it gets brought up, they feel the need to step up for themselves or for others around them, and IMO that can get pretty tiring to do. And I think it is exactly that kind of topic that is driving people away, because they just want a place to hang out where they don’t have to debate about those sorts of things.
That is what I was really getting at in my original comment, it seems some people on this site are just looking for echo chambers/safe spaces, and that is something I'll never understand or seek out. I'm not saying those people can't have that, it's just not what I am looking for when I joined Tildes, I was looking for mature respectful debate, no flames wars, no trolls.
Yeah some of us (well, I'll speak for myself here, in particular) definitely don't see this as some neutral debate club that needs to be open to all ideas or that level of discussion on some topics. It really is a difference in how we view what Tildes is or what we want Tildes to be. And if that's what Tildes wants to become, it is free to do that, I'm not really entitled for it to be any certain way, but it will cease to become a place I want to be
I think of it less like some big open free speech debate forum and more like a community and those things are very different, and I have personal requirements for communities I decide to be a part of
I was mainly looking for a place to find like minds and other people that make cool things or share interests in music or electronics or whatever. Similar to how I used to use other forums (which I also did not use for debate). Whether it be tea, coffee, or whatever, and maybe some discussion of more dense topics that affect our lives. But I did expect it to operate a particular way as a baseline, even if views differed within the brackets of that baseline
Part of what made me stay around is that for the most part it seemed to provide a relatively welcoming space for LGBTQ+ users (as one example) and kept out most of the horrors that absolutely wrecked a lot of other places ex-Redditors landed
I don't fault people for having their guard up and wanting to leave when they experience what amounts to bad faith "just asking the question" contrarians or whatever else smuggling in what amounts to misogyny or transphobia or whatever else under a facade of good faith or things being "open to debate". There indeed may be the occasional actual good faith question on something like this, but enough people have experienced bad faith BS masquerading as otherwise, or they simply think it's not something at a baseline that this place needs to be open to
And there is toxicity, plenty of it passive-aggressive, brewing beneath Tildes whether anyone wants to admit it or not. Having peoples' genuine concerns labeled as noise/off-topic is incredibly toxic, etc.
I don't want to make any assumptions here. But is it possible that it is because you belong to a majority demographic? I don't think that echo chambers are healthy, at the same time I do think that groups like ~lgbt deserve to be safe spaces for people who fall under that group. The same for ~life.women. At the very least, if you do not belong to the demographics of one of these groups recognize that sometimes those places are not for you to debate on.
I guess I'll reference this thread one more time
I think this is an area where the site's design hurts that intention though. Groups are not truly segmented like subreddits are, and activity sort pushes their contents into everyone's feed regardless of interest. Back when /r/all was actually a reddit-wide community of sorts, subreddits acting as safe spaces would purposefully exclude themselves from it to avoid people wandering in from popular posts. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Tildes has that at all without individually manually opting out of those groups?
Even in the jar opening thread, the offending user didn't realize they were in ~life.women until they had already approached the thread from an angle not befitting a safe space.
I mean, you don't need to subscribe to them. I don't see anything from ~life.women simply because I don't fall under the target demographic. Same for ~lgbt, I might check either out by browsing to them directly out of curiosity but I have them turned off from my feed exactly because I think people deserve their own spaces. And given the demographic I fall under, my space is already the majority of the internet.
It might be a failure of design that people don't realize groups actually work a lot like subreddits as you can just subscribe and unsubscribe. They are not fixed topics though and frankly the sidebar says as much
There is a bunch of groups I am not in. Either because I have no interest in them or because I feel like I would be intruding if I did participate there too much.
You need to unsubscribe from most of them them, including, as far as I can tell, both lgbt and life.women, and perhaps more surprisingly, even niche groups like games.tabletop and creative.timasomo, which I certainly don't recall adding myself to. It feels like existing users get added to many new groups by default, as well, though it is hard for me to tell.
You need to understand that they are there, and which one a post is in, from a tiny link on equal footing with tags, the number of comments, and so on, and then, on the topic page, somewhat confusingly in separate text, away from the topic, at the top of the screen, much smaller than "Tildes".
You need to realize that, even though all default and user interface choices seem to suggest that they are on equal footing to tags and not really separate communities, even though the documentation explains that groups are not user-created or controlled, and their creation is motivated on a subject basis by commonly-used tags, even though there is officially nothing akin to reddit's idea of different standards and communities in different groups, a crowd of regulars in the comments of some groups see those groups as being specific communities, not just glorified tags.
In some sense, to me, it feels like a core conflict at the heart of tildes is that some, especially more casual users, and the design and the documentation, seem to interpret the groups as topics, while others, including many in-crowd users, interpret them as communities. That the site itself no longer evolves, and hasn't for some time, means that this conflict cannot be resolved.
I mean, they can be both as far as I am concerned. To be frank, even if they are "just" topics. If you as a man find yourself in the ~life.women topic where women are sharing experiences about not being to do something. Then maybe it is just not all that cool to start mansplaining why things are the way they are.
If people then give a strong signal of "hey, we do see this as a community for us", there are two options. Respect the request, or start talking technicalities about it technically being a topic. In my mind it is a no brainer.
As I have said elsewhere as well, if someone tells something about their experiences in life you probably don't want to it as something that needs correcting. Most people get annoyed by that, some groups just have to deal with it more often making it more exhausting.
If anything I do see a split between people getting hung up on what the technical specifications say versus what in practice has happened.
I should note that I am not trying to defend some of the comments in the jars topic and similar situations, and people not respecting the community after a discussion about it is a different problem, as are comments that would really have been a problem anywhere on Tildes.
Yet I feel like there are people here who are telling something about their experience of Tildes' design, and rather than their experience being listened to, they are being corrected. I don't see the problem as one of getting hung up on 'technical specifications'. The design here doesn't work well for users who are not experienced with Tildes already and who are not regulars here. You are talking about people finding themselves in a group's topic: that assumes they understand that the post is in that group, that they know what a group is, that they realize that, as far as I can tell, they might have been added to a new group automatically, and that they realize that different groups might be different.
The practical problem is that the design is very unlikely to change at all. But perhaps the more direct acknowledgment of the frozen nature, even if that acknowledgement itself required readers to already understand the unspoken context around it, might allow the community to come up with ways to make the situation clearer.
There's the different but somewhat connected matter that, to me, Tildes feels like it has evolved from an attempt to build a more thoughtful large-scale online community to being a new design of a traditional online forum, with conversations having the context of known regulars and relationships, and understood and evolving social conventions. It can be rather confusing for those of us who aren't here as regularly.
I might point out that this post itself is a post that has gone out to everyone who hasn't removed themselves from ~talk, and a number of the top-level comments are people who have no idea what it is about. I still think there is probably quite a bit of the context here I don't know. It comes as a response to an official announcement to everyone on the site that, as far as I can tell, was in direct response to two specific conversations that it never mentioned. Comments involved in the discussions often seem to expect that readers will specifically know who the commenters are, and know some past context that I think many of us often don't know.
Are all groups truly opt-in? It's been far too many years for me to remember the onboarding process, but perhaps I just selected subscribe all when I first joined? Or subscribed with the intention of wanting to see viewpoints from women without realizing it was intended as a safe space as on the groups screen it has no description.
I have been here for a long time as well. Some of them are certainly opt out, I think some are opt in.
Regardless, it is possible to adjust your preferences.
I definitely belong to a majority demographic, I'm not hiding that. My partner considers herself lgbt and her son is currently in a long term relationship with a non-binary individual. I am a supporter of everyone's right to live their lives as they see fit. I don't want to be painted as someone who doesn't stand for that.
I fully support any group that wishes to make themselves a 'safe-space' where they can truly relax and not have to worry about outsiders coming in to challenge them. I should revise my previous comment, saying I do not understand why people would seek out 'safe-spaces' is ignorant. I can totally understand lgbt people just wanting to talk among themselves and not having to worry about the constant barrage of 'questions' and whatever other bullshit, it would get extremely exhausting. Maybe those communities should be private and invite only, like some subreddits are, I don't think we can do that here, but at least the entire site is invite only.
Absolutely not my intention, I was referencing it in context of you saying not to understand it as it is quite hard to not see details.
A safe space doesn't need to be a private closed space. It does require people who aren't the core demographic to be aware of that and act as guests. That's my read anyway.
It would be helpful if these groups had a disclaimer that they're intended as safe spaces with no outside participation.
I unsubscribed from both now, but I wasn't aware about this before.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that they are off limits. But I do see myself as a guest whenever I end up in a tildes group about a specific demographic I don't fall under.
I won't get into it, but I am a queer woman that doesn't like safe spaces. I understand why some people value them. I personally come to Tildes for discussions, not hug boxing. While people should be conscious of their biases and background, I don't want to limit contributions either.
To be clear, I am not talking about absolute safe spaces. I am talking about respecting and recognizing that some conversations you simply have nothing of value to add from the outside. I guess, respecting the room.
Do we though? Are we a committee charged to establish baseline rules on a competitive sport? Are we engaged in that sport or with the community around it? Are we specifically informed about the nuances of athletic performance in those sports and the impacts, if any, of various medical procedures? Are we people who undergo those medical procedures and might have some information and input about what the likely effects would be?
In most cases many of us are spectators to these things looking from outside. It might be interesting or satisfy some morbid curiosity to understand the contours of the discussion for those impacted, but ultimately it’s not like the world needs to hear the opinion of Random Joe nor does Random Joe need to endure the burden of assuming responsibility over other peoples’ lives. Were we legislators we’d have that responsibility, and we’d be obligated to bring in experts with the relevant information and listen to testimonials from those affected and decide on what trade-offs we ought to make.
But does a comment thread on the internet do any of that? And if having that argument is just engendering bad blood and sowing discord within the community, is it worth it to persist?
Think of the original debates around gay marriage, I don't think we finally got that win because experts informed our governments and they changed the laws based on empirical facts, it was that the public's opinion on gay marriage changed over time, and a lot of that was probably due to being directly exposed to healthy gay relationships and discussion among the populous. I know I personally watched many people's opinions change on that topic due to lively debate and now that policy has wide support.
One of my proudest moments as a Canadian was Canada being first when it came to legalizing gay marriage.
I wish so much that this were true. Our government representatives are some of the worst offenders.
And it was certainly exhausting and draining for those couples to have to keep being "good representation" and calmly persuade people to believe in their fundamental goodness and humanity.
And they're still calling queer people predators, groomers, and child molesters and trying to overturn the court decisions protecting our rights.
I try to engage in persuasive educational conversation, but it's exhausting to do the same thing over and over and have no one look at actual data, for example. I can cite a dozen sources and I know people don't read it because it's too long. But it's equally weighted with someone who says "obviously common sense says that gay people can't get married because they can't have babies" (hypothetical).
I still do it. I'm sure I'm annoying to some for it. But misinformation uncontested is often agreed with.
If everyone listened to the anti-abortion preachers they'd think clinics are pulling fully formed viable fetuses out of a uterus while cackling madly and sacrificing them on an altar to Satan. And if that is the only messaging, even in a small community, opinions will shift. I do what I can in response.
But does a conversation in a largely closed internet community do that? I was moderating a politics and current events forum during the peak of the gay marriage debate. We had a dedicated thread for debating the topic and everyone in it was well armed and armored for battle. But if there was a post where someone from a country where it was legal popped in to share that they got married, someone showing up to say “that shouldn’t be legal!” would have been told to cut it out. That’s just yucking someone’s yum.
Modern social media has a tendency to collapse social contexts so everything is personal “I’m happy for you” and also THUNDERDOME at the same time. So the burden of being tactful requires more sensitivity.
This explains the issue better than I ever could
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/1vjt/any_significant_changes_to_tildes_are_extremely_unlikely#comment-iec5
It’s not about disagreeing, though I have caught some holier than thou users on here who think they’re right because they’re righteous, but thats not the thing everyone is in a twist over.
Thank you, I'm going to read that for sure.
You not seeing them doesn't mean they aren't there. That links to someone asking about it in the thread from Deimos with several people giving context to what you are saying.
It's all very tame as opposed to the rest of the net. Oh well, everyone has their own limits.
Seems like in the notorious jar thread nobody had any ill intent but as a whole it may have been interpreted as dismissive by the reader who's predisposed with an opposing viewpoint.
That says a lot more about the sad state of afairs the rest of the net is in. But also doesn't mean that people should just accept everything here.
It is not even really about intent, as I tried to describe here.
As I said there as general advice, if someone tells something about their experiences in life don't see it as something that needs correcting. Most people get annoyed by that, some groups just have to deal with it more often making it more exhausting.
I did actually read it, twice, and agree with every word
I think what Peter may have meant is that on the rest of the internet they come out and just say the words “women don’t deserve to have tools made for them cause they belong in the kitchen” or something along those lines with a lot worse language.
What Ive noticed about Tildes that probably makes it really hard to moderate is that no one does that, instead they pour 1000s of words into “sealing” or whatever you call it, methods a lot harder to catch and punish, or, “tame”
True true. But just because the dumpster outside looks like... well a dumpster doesn't mean that your house doesn't need tidying up is basically what I am saying. And, if I am not mistaken, also part of the signal that was given by those feature request threads. Not so much that they wanted those exact features, but at least have some consideration if the house maybe has gotten a little bit more dustier.
Yeah, that is what makes it difficult and probably also why it to some degree is even more frustrating to those on the receiving end.
I think this is also part of why the requested features have retreated from "please more robust moderation" years ago to "please let me block certain people" or "a way for the community to label frustrating behavior". Even if others think that those particular feature requests might cause more problems than they solve, or not solve the problem in the first place, the fact that they're being asked for probably means that there's a real felt need. And I've been here long enough to know that this is definitely not the first time that this conversation has been had.
Oh for sure, this isn't a new thing. For TaylorSwiftsPickles it was basically a hail mary just trying one last thing because I know she was already considering leaving for a longer time.
In fact, I realized earlier today that a lot of the regular people (good people imho) I would have seen on these discussions in the past simply were not there this week.
And yes, people come and go in online communities. But even as someone who is not in the affected groups myself I have noticed Tildes becoming a bit less diverse lately. Simply looking at the topics alone there is a lot more "tech" and "tech adjacent" topics compared to other ones. Just to double check I went over the groups now and this really seems to be the case. Even food has basically a tech related story (sort of) as the last post that barely is about food.
Honestly also makes me wonder where all other non tech people went online.
Unfortunately it feels like the only people interested or capable of building these spaces have a certain hotspot of interests. Bigger social media platforms are able to exploit that more than people think. Lemmy is great if you love ProgrammerHumor - not so much for everyone else.
It's largely earnest - most people if asked if they are interested in music, food, art, fitness etc, would probably agree. Places like Tildes often feel compelled to create these sections despite their ubiquitous under-use. It's not enough to simply create a subspace for that thing and pat yourself on the back for accommodating many interests.
I love Tildes, but it certainly feel like a softer, more conversational HackerNews at most times.
I think the answer of where they went is Reddit, Instagram, TikTok. Mastodon does pretty well. I'd love if there was another answer.
I think you misread what I meant. While I largely agree with your overall assessment in relation to the internet as whole. On Tildes specifically these space were more active in the past and I have noticed that they have slowed down.
I also agree with this. But that is also overall a more recent movement. While always have tech folks around, it didn't use to be this dominant on Tildes.
I understood - I would probably lump myself in with the group that had non-tech interests that distanced from Tildes over time. My point is that it's easy to take these spaces for granted, but when they feel second-class, people will seek elsewhere.
As you mentioned, when tech related things within these groups end up with more engagement, it's becomes clear where the community would rather discussion to go.
Something like Tildes's heavy text-only focus, something that is core to its identity, is probably at odds with certain interests. There's isn't anything inherently wrong with that, but I think these spaces need to be honest on what kind of people its actually built for before being satisfied that its casting a wide net. People will soon leave when small things stack up and make it apparent who has to fight harder to share or have their content engaged with.
No.
Fyi, a bundle on a stick can also be called a bindle.
Well, this is disappointing. I’ve seen a few people say they’re leaving since Deimos’ announcement that tildes development is done. For me Tildes is its community, not its ongoing development. If everyone making an impact leaves, then yeah, it’s over.
That said, I understand being told nothing will change in the face of growing enmity between users over social issues is demoralizing. You’re not wrong to want to move on. I just wish yall would stay.
You're still welcome to stay and be kind and encourage others to do so. I can at least say for myself we've not had bad interactions together.
Wait, why are you leaving?
Goodbye stranger. I don't know your story, but I'm sad to see you felt unwelcome and I hope you find better out there.
Hey stranger I don't think we interacted but I nudge you to explain just a bit more before you leave so you don't leave all of us in suspense. :) But if not, good luck on your journey!
Question: Can Tildes not allow any new users at this point?
If you have invite codes in your profile they will work
I got in by emailing Deimos, in-between /r/Tildes invite waves during the Reddit API panic. (I think it was Deimos, anyway)
Finding the email wasn't terribly difficult, just a tad buried in the FAQ.
Idk if he would still answer those emails today, but between that being a potential option, Tildes invites distributed between current users and the sporadic "invite request rounds" on /r/Tildes, (46 rounds total, latest being a month old) I would have dared to say that Tildes was growing at a rate that was successfully combating the "Eternal September" syndrome.
I guess I would just watch /r/Tildes to see if another batch of invites gets distributed in the following months.
Who dis?