My experience, becoming a contributor, and other thoughts/questions.
I have been using Tildes for about a week now. I have come over from Reddit where I am primarily a lurker. I lurk because I often feel my thoughts and opinions on topics and discussions have been touched on because discussions are already hundreds of comments deep by the time I arrive. The biggest positive with Tildes is the fact that the community is currently small and I read the post/sarticles that interest me instead of jumping straight into the comments to be given a synopsis. I now read more than just the headline.
I still have not found my 'voice' in regards to posting comments related to articles/stories that I have read. I think it is because I haven't found a discussion that I am really interested in. I have posted a couple of news articles that provide information about the part of the world I am in but, while they interested me, I didn't feel the need to discuss their contents further so I didn't add any comment to start a conversation to the post.
Regarding providing some more content to the site. My hobbies include, like everyone else, traveling, reading, and photography. I am no where near being an influential voice in any of these! I am not interested in having a travel blog or a website but I would like to provide information, incase someone else here is interested or has experiences too. For example, I recently took a short weekend trip from Bangkok, Thailand to Ayutthaya, Thailand. I rode the train, visited the sites, visited a bar, ate some food, and stayed the night. I want to provide a write up on my experiences and thoughts of this trip. Is a post in ~hobbies with the tags of: thailand, ayutthaya, bangkok, train the way to go?
What do y'all think?
Sharing photographs - Taking pictures is another hobby I share with everyone else. I enjoy sharing pictures I am proud of. I tend to post to r/nocontextpics, because I like their rules of no back story in the title. I also post to location specific sites. I do this to show off my pictures and to feel good from earning points. I do not post pictures to facebook very often because I like having the feel of anonymity. I don't want to be perceived as a pretentious twat. How does everyone feel about picture posts in ~hobbies with the tag(s) like: location, device used, etc..
My problem would be not 'spamming' photos. With the age of the site, and my brief interaction with it, no one wants to see 2+ picture posts from one user in the ~hobbies group.
Any thoughts on etiquette or rules for picture posts? Allow: Yes/No?
Feel free to post content to your heart's content as long as it doesn't break any rule. I am sure many people will like it :)
Thanks!
I'd love to see something like that. :)
Just to add, if we post a certain thing that doesn't already exist here - like specific content or topics - we're opening the chance for other members to express interest in those things. Who knows, your photo albums could even spur on the creation of a new group...!
This is new, fresh territory. It's ripe for people like you with new content and ideas. :)
Thank you. :)
Shameless Plug
I'd suggest you tag that post with something like "travel", so people know what it's about and will be able find it in future when they search for travel-related photos.
Also, in future, you might want to write more informative titles, like "My travel photos from Asia".
Thank you for the advice.
Firstly: Seeing as this is a discussion about Tildes itself, it's probably more suited to ~tildes. (Maybe you could message Deimos and ask him to move it for you. Or delete it from ~talk and repost it there yourself.)
Secondly: I'm going to refer you to a section of the Tildes documentation entitled "In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important". Your suggestion about writing up your experiences travelling seems like a good fit with this. To my mind, posting photographs does not seem like a good fit with this. However, you might try ~creative, as this seems like a better home for photographs: photography is an art, and ~creative is for "Arts, crafts, and other DIY-ish things". I see there are already a bunch of images there.
I was wondering where to put it and thought the same as you but here we are! @Deimos would you prefer to move this discussion or have me delete and repost?
That sentence is what caused me to include about pictures. I have not come across any photo posts but have not entered ~creative yet.
Thanks for the feedback and perspective.
User-tagging doesn't work on this site yet. Deimos might read this thread (he reads a lot of threads!) but you would probably be better off sending him a personal message to get his attention.
Thank you again!
As a counterpoint, photo-essays are a thing, and I would consider a well-made example to be in-depth content. Most likely fitting in ~creative.
I'd say that standard photography can be too, assuming there's a submission statement about subject matter and possibly composition
[EDIT: I just took a look at @Dondo's post called "My Photos". While the album includes some wonderful shots, I'd like to hear a bit more about the journeys, what we're looking at, and the composition before I'd call it an in-depth submission]
First of all I want to tell you that just because you felt like waiting a week to see how things works and taking the time to open a topic just to have a straight discussion, put you already ahead of lots of users that just jump in, create a topic with zero content and complain where criticised.
About your questions, I think that the only suggestion I feel like giving is to not create a "link topic" but instead a text topic in which you can give some context to the picture you're going to share.
A simple paragraph in which you explain where, when, how, why of those set of picture is going to go a long way in stimulating a response from the community that goes over simply giving a vote to the topic (votes which are meaningless right now apart from having your post go up in 1/4 of the default listing.
I firmly believe that every post in tildes should come with some words from OP explaining why it's worthy of being shared, instead of just being a link. It's a persona view of course but I don't want tildes to become another link aggregator. There are already plenty of aggregator out there.
Did you see this comment by Deimos about posting links here?
Yeah, and as I wrote "I" don't want it.
I don't want to start this discussion again, here. My point is that if we don't encourage topic links, they will still happens but in a more controlled way.
If you encourage it, people will just feel justified in turning this place in a link dump.
When posting a link topic you can also include text. It becomes a top level comment.
Right, I forgot about that recent change.
My point being, do not just dump a link and go away.
There has also always been the option to post a link as a text post. Write some text, and include your link as part of that.
Thank you. This makes sense and I appreciate the feedback. I will do this on my next photograph post.