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Guidelines for Tildes
Hello there!
I just received my invite a few minutes ago and I'm happily exploring the site right now.
As many others, I came over from Reddit looking for a better alternative.
I tried to find some information about the current guidelines but wasn't really able to find anything of substance.
Apart from being civil with each other, what's the official ruleset and how can we as testers contribute?
Thank you!
Well, looks like I missed that one. Thanks for the info!
Tildes has minimal rules at the moment:
As well as informal guidelines—akin to reddiquette—that show up when you create a new post:
It's entirely possible only @Deimos can answer this, but I'm new here so I'll just ask: how does this apply to block quotes? Say you're having a discussion with someone, and you pepper your reply with quotes from their comment, commenting line-by-line, so that your comment contains their entire post as a whole (which happens quite often on all kinds of discussion forums). I know that's not malicious, but if they later decide to delete it, anyone can reconstruct their post from your quotes, and thus you've prevented them from deleting or editing their content. You've deliberately re-posted their comment, which they retroactively "want to be deleted."
I'm obviously not Deimos, but I do note the presence of the word "maliciously" in that rule. If I'm block-quoting you in order to reply to various points in your comment, that's not malicious. That's just a natural part of the to-and-fro on an internet forum.
However, if you write a comment and I manage to capture a screen-shot of it before you decide to delete it, and then I post that screen-shot... that's malicious. You tried to delete your comment but I won't let you.
If I go a step further and create a script that trawls Tildes and captures every single post and comment, then reproduce all those posts and comments on www.tildes_deleted.net... that's malicious. (For context: there are scripts that do this for Reddit. I didn't just make this up.)
The presence of that word "malicious" seems to indicate that it's not just about block-quoting. It's about going out of your way to make sure people can't delete their own content.
Agreed, and I mentioned that in my post, but it leaves the unfortunate fact that I've still prevented that user from deleting what they (now) want deleted, whether the intention was malicious or not. I suppose it's pretty much unavoidable. The only solution I can think of is to delete all child comments, but that's removing people's words, which is obviously not a good solution.
There is that black-and-white all-or-nothing approach to this issue, under which we should never ever reproduce any part of a deleted post or comment.
However, I believe that Deimos' rule has more nuance in it than that. It doesn't say "do not ever attempt to counteract other users' attempts to delete or edit their content", it says "do not maliciously attempt to counteract other users' attempts to delete or edit their content". To me, that use of "maliciously" makes a big difference.
This rule seems to be aimed at preventing people going on a witchhunt against someone, and dredging up "evidence" to support their attack on their victim (behaviour that I have seen on Reddit, and which Deimos has almost certainly also seen there).
I've seen that as well; it's all over reddit. I have to say, after reading the docs in full, I'm impressed with his vision for this place. I've already spent all of my reddit time here today, which I consider a really good sign. Cheers.
Looks like I had to dig in a little deeper before posting. Thanks!
I choose to believe you're the StarCraft player Strelok.
Anyway, I'd throw in that outside of the the docs for posting and comment guidelines, things are mostly up in the air. You'll see a lot of different opinions on what kind of content should be on the website, and just know that that's exactly what you're getting: opinions. We're all trying to figure out what exactly high quality posting looks like together, so you don't have to take someone's word for it. Once you get settled in, you can contribute to that conversation just as much as the rest of us.
I really don't want to let you down, so here is a totally irrelevant piece of information:
The first protagonist of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is named Strelok.
Thanks for the insight, the journey begins.
Check this old post for past notable threads: https://tildes.net/~tildes/r5/were_starting_to_see_a_lot_of_repeat_questions_so_let_me_make_an_introduction_to_tildes_post_for
Everyone else has already sent you the rules, so I'll just say hi, and welcome fellow Tilderino!
Just so you know for the future, posts about Tildes, like this one, are better suited to ~tildes. That's what it's for: "Meta discussion about Tildes itself, including questions, suggestions, and bug reports"
To expand on this, @Strelok, you can browse the list of groups accessible via the home page side bar and see descriptions of the type of content expected for each of them :)