The recent history of social media has made me interested in the factors that make online communities successful/healthy, or toxic etc.. This is one of the appeals of Tildes for me. I'm also emotionally invested in seeing a healthy future for the Irish language, which has seen some interesting developments in the internet age but remains in a precarious position as a community language in the country. You can see how these two interests dovetail together. At the moment this is a thought experiment, but later, who knows...

Tips I've got so far:

I've heard that some barriers to entry can increase group loyalty by making members feels slightly "invested" by earning a place in the community

I've also noted that some of the most persistant subcultures operate online but also have a strong in-person element (eg: furries)

There's also the common observation that good moderation is crucial to user experience and therefore group cohesion

Then I got some pointers from the Tildes docs:

• Trust by default, punish abusers
• Focus on user experience, not growth metrics
• Favour deep engagement over shallow/clickbait
• Empower members to make choices
• The golden rule (apply charitable interpretations, don't tolerate bad actors)

So, people of Tildes: what factors do you see as crucial to building and maintaining a strong cohesive online community?

Where do you find support and friendship? Who are the folks who encourage you and add positivity to your life? It can be anything from a local gym to a sewing group to an online forum. I'd love to hear about every's little supportive corners and community networks!

• this was kicked off by the Bro summer waits for us all thread.

I'll try to keep it short. I'm not satisfied with the way I'm trying to contribute to the betterment of humanity and the planet. I want to contribute to my local community, but because of political and health reasons, I can't do that.

My relevant strong points are that I can analyze, synthesize, and write well (have been praised for them in professional academic settings). But the suggestions don't have to be about this.

I've been writing things here and there for years, but I feel like they lack direction. It's just one person putting it out there with very limited reach. I feel like being part of a bigger project could help me effect change better. At the very least, it could help me feel like I'm doing something more tangible.

There was a brief mention of the Amish and their self-sufficiency in the Capitalism topic that got me thinking, so I thought that I'd share my thoughts and start another discussion.

My understanding of the Amish way of life - as someone who is probably thousands of miles away from them - is that they are not really self-sufficient insomuch as they are insular. They don't like to rely on the government, but they heavily rely on their community.

A lot of us here are leftists - some might even go so far as to call themselves socialists or communists. But for the most part we are advocating for government to provide support, and often it's the federal government rather than their local governments. For those of you who do, my question for you is this: why aren't you trying to help out the locals. And I don't just mean your city, I mean your neighborhood or even just your block.

I'm not talking about things like homeless shelters or nonprofits, I'm talking about mutual aid societies. People are complex; they don't just need things, they need people. They need assurance, motivation, and love. These are things that the government does not provide. The US Surgeon General state we are having a lonliness epidemic right now, and that it's majorly affecting people's health. We've had conversations about the lack of a third place but an even bigger problem is the death of our community hubs. It might be a good thing that people are getting less religious, but losing the church was a much bigger hit than people give credit.

We've had many comments in the past deriding "slacktivism". When you throw your voice into the void, you have no real power. But if you put your voice into your town hall, you have tremendous power. Giving money to the government is like having one billionth of a difference to a great many people, but helping out a person in your community is a huge impact in their life which might be the one thing they need to stop them from falling off a cliff. I don't think you'll find anything more socially gratifying.

I titled this "why don't you", but I'm also very much interested in hearing from people who do community work why they do and how they manage to fit it into their lives.

Hello Tilderinos! As I am finally entering the holiday slowdown, I wanted to express my gratitude for the community here.

I ended up migrating here from Reddit during the Apocalypse. Before that time, I would have told you that Reddit was a pretty good place, but after having time to detox and spending time here, I realize it was just better, but still pretty awful. With a few exceptions (like r/3Dprinting), the negativity I would get hit with when posting anything was pretty toxic.

I also set up Lemmy Sync on lemmy.world, but it's pretty much only good for scrolling shitposts and memes. Which sometimes I want, but if I dig into the comments under a topic, the noise factor is so high that it's usually not worth it.

Tildes is really different. The intentionality that people post with, the quality and positivity of the discussion is all amazing. One thing I enjoy especially is seeing reasonable people express views contrary to my own, and being to learn something from them.

This year has been a year of big changes for me. I left a 10 year run at a startup that was starting to lose the plot, becane a stay-at-home Dad to relaunch my wife's career, and wrestled with major health issues. All of that has been pretty isolating, but Tildes has been a bright spot of connection for me.

Sorry if this comes off as excessively cheesy, but I feel like it's a good time to take a moment and say "Thank you!" I am hoping that if something was really helpful to others, that they will take a moment to share it here.

I spontaneously came up with Tildesians, but I have seen others, including Tilders and Tildren.

Edit, I was hoping to surface a variety of nicknames, so thanks for your input, I like to play with language. It's fun.

I was part of the reddit exodus, and I just discovered that when I sign out of my account, I'm still able to browse RIF from my phone. But my feed was no longer curated by me, so I saw what most people see when they visit that site from the "sort by hot" option of browsing.

I was a bit shocked. Almost every other top post was something ragebait-y. Something filmed to get you upset, to get your heart rate up and release something pleasurable in your brain. The comment sections followed suit, with folks bashing people in the videos(deservedly most of the time) and hundreds of upvotes following.

I believe what I'm witnessing is the real life version of the "10 Minutes Of Hate" described in Orwell's 1984. People enjoy getting mad. We've all felt it - an increase in heart rate but something, maybe dopamine being released at the same time, and a need to share that anger with others.

I don't like it, and I don't see it stopping. An entire generation has been raised on videos and stories designed to upset them and evoke this feeling.

Where do you think Tildes will be in 10 years? Will it still be around? How will the world be different from today? Do you think the world will be a better place? Be as positive or morbid as you want. Or, just say something, share something, post a link, tell a joke, give some advice. Then in ten years we can all come back to this thread and have a laugh... hopefully.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've been on there way too much the last couple of weeks. I had always planned to use Reddit in my google searches because google sucks without it now, but I've been spending time talking there.

My niche interest in question is visual novels. There are very few places on the internet where you can discuss them. There was recently a final translation patch released for the Tsukihime Remake. I beat it and wanted to talk about it! Reddit has a Tsukihime subreddit. I don't know if there is any other English community on the internet that wants to talk about Tsukihime. It's niche enough that I know of no one in person who has that interest either. Without Reddit, where do you even look for an alternative?

I feel like I'm going continue being drawn back for similar things even if they are less niche than visual novels. For example, I wanted to talk about Final Fantasy XVI. I could have made a post about my thoughts here and maybe I would have gotten good discussion about it. Slipped my mind honestly. But I was drawn back to Reddit where there are thousands of people wanting to talk about it right this second. An alternative could have been Gamefaqs, but its a bit more toxic and I hate the style of forum (unthreaded, every post in chronological order, only way to follow conversations is with quoted text. Is there a term for that kind of forum?)

Does anyone else feel themselves feeling a similar pull?

I've been a reddit user for a long time, it scares me how big the number is (death is marching my way quickly).

Before reddit I was on digg, and before that, usenet (before google ruined it). God I miss usenet. I know it technically still exists, but it seems to be mostly binaries and spam.

But the new interface really stinks, and since they've killed .compact, I decided it was time to go. (There were dozens of us using i.reddit.com! Dozens!)

And like the title says, it's a lot like kicking smokes. I was pretty jonesd the first couple days, and the experience comes like an impulse (Brain: "I'm bored! Check Reddit!"), followed by my conscious, no thank you, followed by, "What? No! We have to check reddit! Have to! We must do it now! Now! NOW!" followed by a gradual diminution in intensity of that same message, then a period of life, then repeat. The repeats slowly diminish in frequency, duration, and degree, so that now, only once or twice to I want to hit it.

A couple exceptions: I still check my relevant geographic reddits once in a while, and if relevant, I'll add "reddit" to my google results. I also use stackexchange and wikipedia more for some of those informational reasons, but those two, due to their labyrinthine and fiefish rules constrain content. Another discussion. There are also certain, ah, visual distractions for which reddit is still a good source (and for that I use teddit.net, thanks friendly tilderino!).

To ease withdrawals, I've been clicking tildes a lot more, also slashdot, and fark, and also ibooks. I'm proud of myself, and happy I've done it.

A moment of reflection-why do I like these sites so much? And why not facebook, twitter, etc.? I do like to argue, occasionally even as a third grader, but facebook and twitter have plenty of opporunity for that sort of thing. No, the difference is that reddit (and tildes, and usenet) are structured around ideas, whereas facebook etc. are structured around personalities. I'm an introvert, smarter than most people I encounter (at least along certain axes, many of which may be of dubious merit), curious and interested. Interested in ideas. Which is not to say I do not find people interesting, or do not value close, intimate, personal relationships. But I like to talk about ideas, and most people do not, except on places like reddit and here.

Perhaps I will start my own substack now.

Someday when I leave for good, I'll very likely say r/politicalcompassmemes. The place has always had a right-wing presence but at some point pretty long ago it just became the dominant POV and the place is now solidly a no-go for minorities and 95+% of leftists unless they were turned into a term of 'endearment' on 4chan first like how 4chan users call themselves autists and whatever. The place is also pretty bad at sourcing the articles it posts about purported leftists doing ridiculous things. I have mostly looked at the place from the POV of "rightwingers saying stuff" for quite some time now, but I haven't gotten around for leaving for good because occasionally there's a moderately critical post of the sub and that I am accustomed to the jargon used more often there that's less commonly used elsewhere.

Hey all, I think we're getting a lot of new people over the past and next couple days thanks to Reddit's latest ideas of how to manage a social media website.

First of all, welcome! Tildes caught your eye probably partly because of its community / friendliness and we'd all like to keep it this way.

Recommended reading:

• All the documentation is on docs.tildes.net. Most of it is current.
• The philosophy page especially will answer some of your immediate questions
• Since you're here and like the site, think about donating :)

Some personal words: Tildes is not Reddit. But, at least if you're anything like me, it can replace Reddit as your own online social/discussion outlet.

Tildes aims to:

• Grow slowly, not exponentially.
• Elevate the discussion, not lower the bar
• Offer an alternative, not be the new Reddit

I don't think this has been much of an issue so far with this community, but I expect that with time people will be more and more likely to not read the linked article before commenting. We've become so primed in general to consume information on the Internet in a way that makes us feel overconfident in our understanding based on just a few details, that I think it would be useful to have a soft reminder to actually read and engage with the things you're responding to instead of offering a "hot take".

I remember I came across it here, probably posted by @Deimos in the course of a thread about Tildes' philosophy. The essence of the blog was that the truly nice, sweet people among us that make online forums a better place with their positive interactions are more sensitive to tensions and negative interactions than the average person, so they'd be likely to leave at a lower level of trolling than most of us would, resulting in a net negative for everyone on the site. Could have sworn I bookmarked it...

I just joined, and although it’s not extremely active, I love Tildes already! Firstly, the user interface. This is what the reddit redesign should’ve been. Clean, simple and lightweight. Loading a post on new reddit takes 10 seconds or so, because of all the useless JavaScript, but posts loads instantly here. And there’s no ads here, which is a nice bonus.

I also like the fact that it’s much calmer here, people focus on through-provoking discussion instead of attacking each other.

To everyone who works on Tildes, keep up the great work! I’m sure this has been asked many times before, but do you ever plan on allowing anyone to register in order to grow Tildes?

Thanks

After about a year-long absence I've hopped back on to Tildes again. There wasn't anything about the platform that made me "leave", it was purely external things in my life. With online communities, you really don't expect people to recognize you from day to day, but people here do and it's one of the things I love about Tildes.

What has absolutely shocked me is that after being gone for a full year people recognize my username. They have been incredibly kind and welcoming. They are happy to see me again. They remember the photography posts that I made and said they look forward to seeing them again. They remember the hard times my family was experiencing and have wished me well.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I'm being serious when I say that this reception has made me tear up. I've never experienced this before in any community, anonymous or otherwise. In all of the noise of the internet I never really expected my voice to be heard, much less be remembered by anyone. I never anticipated strangers to care beyond the time it takes to comment on a post.

I am completely overwhelmed by this reception. This is the kind of place that I thought had gone extinct on the internet. All of you have made me feel like I matter, and I don't think there's any way I can ever express my gratitude for this.

Since I'm posting anyway, I'll give a quick update for everyone.

Family

My family is doing amazing right now. Both of my sons have flourished and made so much progress. I've been around other foster/adoptive parents and the transformation that has happened for them in such a short amount of time is nothing short of a true miracle. Neither of them has needed inpatient psych care for almost two years now, and my oldest is now able to go to a special school that can meet his needs. My youngest who has struggled his whole life with social interaction now has several friends and even a best friend. My wife and I's relationship, which was on the verge of total destruction is now back on track and stronger than ever. I really appreciate the awesome support this community gave me during the worst year of my life.

Photography

I also fell out of photography during that time, but with the new stability I have rebuilt my darkroom in our new home and I'm picking it up again. It has gone from a fun hobby to a driving passion, and I'm now partnered with a mentor who has decades of experience. With his guidance, I hope to start producing gallery-quality material. I don't know that I'll ever submit to a gallery, it's really just a personal goal to start making things I can be proud of.

Again I can't thank everyone enough for all that you've done for me. I'm excited to be here and get plugged back into this awesome place!

So I've returned here after being gone for about a year. I didn't "leave" on purpose, just got distracted with some life stuff.

I'm happy to be back and to see the community is still as awesome as it was before. I'm also happy to see that on the technical side the site is still super minimalist and easy to use.

But what do you feel has changed here in the last year? Are there more users? Have the topics shifted? Are the opinions of users trending in a certain direction?

I'm really happy to be back and thanks for keeping me updated! :)

I'm not sure if this goes here or in ~talk, so if it needs moved, that's fine.

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about why I use Tildes.

As noted in my bio, I left Tildes for an extended period of time, after getting embroiled in some heavy arguments that, in the scheme of things, didn't matter. Such arguments consistently make me feel worse; I get into them on this account, too, though I do try to use uBlock Origin and the tag filter to keep out of the threads that will most obviously affect me.

But I can't seem to leave Tildes entirely. Even when I log out on all devices, I keep opening the site. Even when I had no account, I kept typing til<Enter> in the address bar and coming back.

So, why?

--

First, Tildes is what I love about the web. It's complete but uncluttered; it's featureful but not bloated; it uses client-side interactivity to improve the experience but does not break or reimpement default browser functionality. Overall, it's a good piece of software, designed to create, catalog, and discuss documents, like God Tim Berners-Lee intended.

Second, and more important, Tildes is a community. It's a community like my college dorm was a community; I know people here, and while I definitely don't like all of them, I recognize the personalities behind the names. Leaving, and diving mostly back into the world of Twitter and Mastodon where conversations are short, ephemeral, and deeply restricted, feels like losing relationships, no matter how damaging and negative some of those relationships are.

I don't know if gaining this understanding means I'll be able to - or even want to - drop the site again. We'll see. But I would love to know why y'all use it. Is it a community for you, too?

Reading HackerNews and saw that some mentorship software launched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20656223 and someone mentioned another software as a service that does mentorship: https://mentorloop.com/

Now I'm wondering where the mentorship for leftists and leftist organizing is.

And I'm wondering if anyone else feels like most of the good ideas that leftists have slowly trickle into businesses but in ways that can be controlled by executives/managers. Their "features" include these slogans:

Tools to Turn Human Resources into Superheroes

Don't let employees slip through the cracks
Stay on top of hundreds to thousands of mentoring interactions in a way that still feels personal. Check in on employee relationships, give them the right nudges they need.

What's your take? Is there a need for more mentorship and peer to peer training/collaboration amongst anarchists and communists? Is that realistic? Or is this something that we just need to be on the defense against and form our own networks outside these systems of control?

Before we get started, PLEASE, no political agenda harping, shit posting, trolling, etc. This is something that is on a sharp increase right now in the Bay Area and I'm genuinely wanting to hear other people's thoughts and opinions on this.

The homeless camps have officially reached an out of control level. There is no denying this. Trash and used hypodermic needles litter the streets. Drug use and sales is seen on street corners near the camps. I personally have seen residents of the camps painting graffiti in broad day light. There are unsafe cooking set ups causing explosions and fires putting residents at risk and leaving charred remains for weeks at a time. Cite: https://evilleeye.com/news-commentary/public-safety/explosion-home-depot-homeless-encampment-rattles-emeryville-west-oakland-neighbors/

What is going on here? How come cities are not cleaning this stuff up? I realize that if the city did conduct some massive eviction/clean up, the residents would just move somewhere else. But what about the trash? Can't that be cleaned up? In many places, I've seen it up to the ankles of people walking around in the camps.

I truly don't know what the non-camp residents are suppose to do? Do we just turn a blind eye and let the trash pile up? Or do we demand action to keep our streets clean and safe?

As the title says, thank you to everyone who participated in the philosophy thread that I put up the other day. It was really great to get to talk to people about interesting questions and see the different ideas have on issues like determinism versus free will.

I'm really loving this site because of the great, reasonable discussion that's been going on, and I hope that we keep it going!

P.S. If anyone has some more interesting philosophical questions, please make a post about it! Based on the response to the thread the other day, I think a ton of people would be interested in discussing with you. I know I would be.

I'm curious how many other furries (if any) have came here so far, and have a couple questions:

1. Which furry communities did you participate in the most on Reddit?
2. Which of those communities, if any, do you think would work well on Tildes?

Personally, I'm very partial to furry_irl, since there's a lot of friendly discussion in the comments, but I'm not sure the post content would fit very well here, unless fluff content was allowed.

To anyone confused, this and this are very brief introductions to what a furry is.