Thoughts on link aggregators vs communities, and other musings
I recently made a post here on Tildes in ~food about a pizza I made, and linked it to an Imgur album showing part of the process. This seemed interesting to me, and didn't think of it as an image post per-se. While most of the responses were positive, and we talked about pizza-making, it clearly did upset some people who viewed it as an image-only post.
Thinking through things, image only posts can be a bad thing - but there are plenty of good reasons to make image posts as well. Would images always be ok if they are original content? Certainly doesn't completely eliminate the possibility for people to shitpost, but does reduce it considerably.
Would it be acceptable to allow image posts, but require a certain number of words/characters attached to each post? This seems like it would be pretty easy to implement, and forces the user to actually make some effort, as opposed to just "karma farming".
AND ANOTHER THING!
Subscriptions. I would really like to see more specialized groups/communities here, and the current implementation I see is encouraging. ~games now has sub-groups, ~games.tabletop and ~games.gamedesign. This same system could be extended to sports. ~sports.motorsport.formula1, ~sports.esports.leagueoflegends, etc.
I personally think images submitted on their own shouldn't generally be allowed. If people want to post a single image, they should do so in a text topic to provide some more context than a title alone allows for. I could see some exceptions being made for in-depth infographics or particularly high-effort user created work though.
However I also don't see any issue with images in general, especially in text topics, or image albums being posted here. They can often be incredibly interesting and lead to great discussions (like your pizza making album, or my all-time favorite user created post here).
p.s. I think Deimos' own opinion on the matter is also worth pointing out:
The kind of knee jerk, reactionary messages of how tildes is doomed if there's an image-based post like the one OP made is one of the things that makes this space feel rather off putting at times, and why I pulled back from commenting here after first creating my account years ago. Images used in context in a discussion where the OP makes an effort to engage in good faith with the userbase are VERY different from the kind of low effort memes made by drive-by karma farmers.
I tend to be very laconic in general - padding out something that can be summarized in a few sentences to a multi paragraph novel is not something that needs to be done with every comment.
Which isn't to suggest that I need or want the site to change to accommodate me - far from it - but jumping on posters engaging in good faith to point out how they're ruining the site isn't going to help foster any kind of community.
Yeah, me not wanting to discourage people from using the site entirely is why I generally try to take a gentler approach.
E.g. When someone submitted a picture of a Hockey save to ~sports, and also provided a Twitter link to a video of the save in a comment, I asked them if I could replace the submitted image with the Twitter link, and explained why I thought it was a better submission. They agreed, so I changed the link.
It’s okay to disagree with people here about things like image posts, and whatnot. But knee jerk, angry responses is not productive. We should be trying to help people understand how Tildes works, and explaining why we do things the way we do here, not berate them into submission.
P.s. And to be clear, I am far from perfect. I recently went the berating route on a topic about spez that was ultimately removed by Deimos for being inappropriate (the topic, not my comment). I regret that, and am sorry if anyone who read my comment felt I was being overly harsh or mean. But I am genuinely trying my best to be nicer, learn from my mistakes, and not repeat them.
Will expand on this later. Just heading to the gym.
There’s something to be said about resisting growth just for the sake of it, while fostering a community that doesn’t stagnate.
And I'm back! Stopped for ice cream on the way home too!
A few things I'm seeing here:
There is value in discussion that includes images. An example I was thinking of posting myself was around car mods - I've made numerous changes to my MX-5 and was thinking of taking a few pictures and posting a gallery with a discussion prompt on similar mods. Would such a post be welcome? I'm not sure.
Absolutely agree! As a lurker on Tildes for many years, I've noticed the recent emigration from Reddit has made determining existing etiquette on Tildes more difficult to ascertain.
Right now, guidelines regarding content, submission, and comment etiquette are rather vague. Users — new and old — rely on unwritten community norms to determine whether something is appropriate or not. However, unwritten norms can be misinterpreted or uncertain, sometimes even unresolved amongst existing users.
(see: recent contention on whether excerpts for submission statements are considered noise)
Tildes is now generally more active — the community has substantially expanded in size. However, this has caused contention, as it is more difficult to determine existing 'community' norms when the community has grown so much in such a short time.
Rather than new users learning existing norms, new users may end up learning norms influenced from other new users, differing from the norms learnt by existing users — causing friction between existing users and new users. Without formalised guidelines, each wave of new user migration will alter unwritten norms.
A text-based site similar to Tildes in function, Hacker News, has clear guidelines that are supported by not only the moderator, but also affirmed by the community. Due to the specificity of these guidelines, it cleans up confusion regarding norms, and users are generally understanding when notified about contravening these guidelines.
HN has been mostly successful in imparting these norms into new users over the years, as they are constantly reaffirmed whenever new users see the moderator (and community) gently addressing contravening comments with specific guidelines & link to guidelines.
If you have the time to read the few other submission and comment guidelines from the site I've linked, I recommend it. Many of them are thoughtful and good inspiration for formalised guidelines on Tildes.
I would even suggest reading its content guidelines. Although Hacker News is much narrower in scope compared to Tildes, it shows how Tildes could make a clear distinction of the types of content that is on-topic and off-topic.
From your previous comment:
Tildes should have a rule that addresses this affair. These comments aren't on-topic, doesn't assume good faith from the poster, derails existing conversation, and is ultimately isolating for new users who sincerely acts in good faith — particularly given that image-based submissions aren't even a clear or resolved community norm.
A good guideline that may address this could be inspired by the following:
Although Tildes doesn't have a submission labels system or clear content guidelines yet, such a rule is a good foundation for addressing this issue when these are introduced.
One of the things that reddit sports subs did really, really well was provide a curated feed of individual highlights that were relevant league-wide.
I don't want to read an article to learn why a bases-clearing triple was worth watching or have to click in to a text post in order to click on a link to the highlight. An accurate title, upmodded by others as a worthy submission, should be sufficient.
I hope that, in time, there will be a place for such here. Definitely not an image though, unless it's an extraordinary circumstance such as a screengrab that definitively settles a controversial play.
Yeah, being able to quickly and conveniently watch highlights after major events, and discuss those events afterwards, is one of the things I miss most about /r/MMA. So I share your hope that some day we can have ~sports subgroups that will allow that content to be posted here too.
I think the biggest pitfall for the "image posts" problem is that submissions require a mod/admin judgement call on each post, and can't be readily addressed with a blanket rule. Defining "content" or "substance" for an image post is nearly impossible and the OP will overwhelmingly overestimate the content in their post as opposed to any standard that a third party may feel it falls short of.
The easiest rule is a blanket ban, and requesting that the OPs link to the image(s) from within a text post; however - like you're noting that will kill some excellent content when the image or album are worthwhile content in their own right.
I don't think a ban is entirely necessary, but if low-effort standalone image posts do become a recurring problem then we could always just specifically ban standalone images without banning album submissions. E.g. Prevent imgur.com/*.jpg|.png|.gif posts, but not imgur.com/a/*. I don't think it will come to that, but the option is always there should we need it.
Well said!
Let me preface my comment by apologizing for sounding like a stuffy old-timer, but I think it's worth bearing in mind that some differences between here and reddit are not accidental.
The way I see it, image posts can slightly raise the ceiling for discussion on this site, but there's a major risk of them significantly lowering the floor. And as people have previously mentioned, image posts are much quicker to consume than text posts, further amplifying this risk.
If we want to keep images around, ideally we should have rules that
With that list in mind, I'd encourage everyone to browse the top 20 or so posts on /r/all. Which of those posts would you keep? What rule would you use to filter them out? Alternatively, could we somehow prime those submissions such that higher quality discussions organically emerged?
Maybe we can do better than reddit. Maybe if we placed links to the images in the middle of a text post, hidden in periods and scattered across multiple paragraphs, we could focus the discussion some. (Or maybe there's a less ridiculous way to encourage discussion.)
But I think it would be difficult to have a rule that consistently managed to separate the wheat from the chaff, and for that reason a blanket ban might be best.
Okay, decided to do this exercise. The ones I'd keep for a platform like Tildes would be:
#3: Joe Biden elected president of the United States (Link to news article)
#9: This is what happens when one company owns dozens of local news stations (Video of several news stations repeating lines almost verbatim)
#12..... to an extent: If this is you: Fuck you (Image of people hoarding toilet paper at the beginning of COVID. By 'to an extent', I mean I think the picture is worth sharing if it's accompanied with a different title, something like that. Could easily be replaced by a news link about hoarding.)
#15..... to an extent: Leaked Drone footage of shackled and blindfolded Uighur Muslims led from trains. As a German this is especially chilling. (Video of...well, it's in the title. Same caveat as the above, ideally.)
#17: "Everybody's trying to shame us" (Video of one of the Capitol guys talking about how they should be treated with respect, cut with various videos of police brutality in the BLM protests)
Well, the first thing to note is that only one of my selected posts is an image (although I hemmed and hawwed about including #18: Private Internet Access, a VPN provider, takes out a full page ad in The New York Time calling out 50 senators.), and the one image post I chose was something I thought would be better as a link to a news article. In fact, #12, #15, and #18 all fall into that sort of category, where I think the information is valuable to be shared but I'm not 100% sure whether just posting the image/video is the best way to go about it.
I guess, preliminary filtering mechanism:
That leaves #5 (My cab driver tonight was so excited to share with me that he’d made the cover of the calendar. I told him I’d help let the world see), which potentially falls under no selfies? Although it's a photo posted of someone else; #10 (Heat index was 110 degrees so we offered him a cold drink. He went for a full body soak instead), which potentially falls under no pets; #16 (Gas station worker takes precautionary measures after customer refused to put out his cigarette), which potentially falls under no memes - or maybe 'no memes' could be expanded to 'no posts that are purely for the sake of comedy?; and #19 (At a protest in Arizona). Although, actually, #18 and #19 probably both fall into the same "to an extent....." category I put #12 and #15 into, where it's like fine, but context/whatever.
Maybe a catch-all rule/guideline that things should be posted for the purposes of discussion (not pure praise or outrage or whatever), and if your image/video doesn't accomplish this on its own, add text?
By priming discussion, as mentioned, I see that as most necessary with 12, 15, 18, and 19. Maybe even 17 as well, I was uncertain about that one. That's the kind of things where it seems to me that context given, or a question, or an article, or something would improve it. That seems to me like it could just work with a not-insubstantial text post accompaning the video/image, and by 'not insubstantial' I don't mean like a couple of paragraphs, just not something like "I made this" or "Thoughts?" or whatever.
Note: Edit primarily for the sake of including links to the posts.
Instead of trying to judge the post, could the response to the post be judged and a decision made based on that by an admin/mod?
For instance, without even looking at the image, if you see discussion going on in the comments, doesn’t that indicate the content is worthwhile? However, if all the comments are simple compliments of the image, that would indicate something else entirely.
There's only one person on this site who has the power to remove posts, and it seems a bit unfair to ask him to review every image post and determine whether it's "worthy" of this site. That's a rather subjective call, and moreover not one that I think anybody could make consistently.
Sorry to come back so late;
I think this is not a great way to set a baseline rule. It's an excellent standard for looking at grey-area stuff that's not clearly on either side of some other, different, rule.
As a baseline rule, there are two big problems with that standard.
The first is that it means moderation only happens [time] after being posted. Users generally expect that content they feel should clearly be outside of rules is addressed by moderation, and the concepts around the 'fluff' principle that's object to the discussion here mean that those posts would already have managed to impact other "better" content by the time it's clear how the conversation is shaping up.
The second is that it takes the responsibility for the rule adherence of posts away from the person clicking "submit" and makes it the community's problem. It's up to other people to say substantial and interesting things so your post doesn't break rules, and if no one with anything interesting to say shows up that day, your post was bad. This IMO also results in a lot of user/mod drama because then "mods didn't give it a chance" or "it's not my fault, why are you punishing me" and similar.
Starting point rules for content should focus on the content directly and not on the possible behavior of third parties.
You do make a very good point, and I get it: the more clear cut a rule the easier it is to both follow and enforce.
I think I was trying to say that posters should be given the benefit of the doubt, and good intentions assumed until proven wrong. However, I know that’s incredibly naive and probably difficult to do on a large scale.
I do agree with you and recognize that drama is the last thing anyone needs.
If you change "especially" to "only", I'm on board!
An image or gallery that is framed by text (not in a quote-only orphan comment, but in the main body of the topic!) is great content for Tildes.
I found people's reactions to your pizza post quite odd. There's a lot to discuss when it comes to pizza but people seemed to ignore the beautiful pizza you made and focused on the fact that you had a different type of post not usually seen on Tildes. That being said, I think your proposal makes a lot of sense. Like @Gekko said, as long as image posts don't devolve into some sort of karma farm and absolutely flood out text discussion posts, I think they can be a great addition to Tildes.
I think everyone is having a bit of struggle with change. For those of us that have been here a while, we are seeing a site that we used change with an influx of people; for those who have recently joined from reddit, they are dealing with a site that approaches things differently. It's growing pains all around! On top of that, I do see a lot of people making suggestions to make things more reddit-y and a lot of the long timers like Tildes because it's not like reddit, so when a post is perceived as being reddit-y it can elicit negative feelings. I think that's part of what @mailerdaemon experienced.
I don't think that we need to change things, necessarily. Even revisiting that post, there ended up being a fair amount of discussion and some of it was about pizza and not about Tildes. I think that some of the discussion was a bit vapid, which is my only real critique, but I have noticed that has happened on a lot of posts and is not limited to pictures of pizza.
I also think that old-timers might lose track of the fact that there is a very social aspect to Tildes as well, and that was showcased on the pizza post. For example, there were several "oh, nice pizza, how was it?" style comments on that post, and some people listed that as the sort of thing that they didn't like, but that kind of simple (and I guess I called it vapid above) comment can actually start conversations and even friendships if people allow them to. It's not really different from @cfabbro pinging me on a video they know I'll like, or having in-jokes between long time users; they're small parts of the community.
Anyways, long story short, I think everyone should chill out a bit. Me included.
Ah that makes a lot of sense actually. As someone that recently switched from Reddit, I've been trying my best not to treat Tildes like Reddit. Your point about the simple, short comments people left on the original post is interesting. I never really considered the social aspect to it and never considered how conversations could start off simple and then blossom into something more.
I do think Tildes will struggle with them. Short, friendly comments contribute to the atmosphere, but are also antithetical to substantial comments.
Comment labels should ideally make them unobtrusive, so I'm certain they'll have a place and everything will be okay.
I'm also a recent reddit refugee. Although most of my time there was spent on technology and gaming subs offering assistance or asking for help. I also lurked askhistorians and really enjoyed reading the well written posts. I'm enjoying my time here and one major benefit is I'll be growing my vocabulary. I had to look up vapid and antithetical. So thanks to all who have accepted us newcomers. I hope we can contribute and grow the community without alienating those who have been here a long time.
I think that’s such a great point about forming friendships, and I think you can also extend that to fostering discussion. When people form friendships are they more likely to discuss an article (“oh @aphoenix posted that, I enjoyed chatting with them, let me comment on this and see what they have to say”)? Are they more likely to discuss in good faith (“this guy couldn’t be more wrong but we had a good interaction the other day so let me assume it’s genuine ignorance rather than wilful”)? I don’t know the answer to these but I suspect yes to both
I was one of the more negative commenters on that post, mainly just stating that it didn't seem to be a post that fostered discussion. However, I apologized to OP because my reaction was unreasonable. Truly, it is just pizza, and it wasn't a bad post. I also realized that as a new user, it's not exactly my business to tell people how to use this site just yet.
I know you already know this, but it has been quite a strange couple of weeks for long-term reddit users. We are witnessing our beloved communities burn up in flames, and those of us who still visit reddit are seeing thousands of comments from fellow users who condemn the protest. These users apparently have no idea how the site is actually run, have zero respect for mods or long-term users, and it is becoming clear that those people are probably the same users who have long been clogging up our subreddits with low effort posts and memes after refusing to read the rules or understand how a community works before participating.
Enter Tildes - My experience has been that I quickly shifted from being sad about the loss of reddit, to realizing Tildes is much better for the type of content and culture I enjoy. It is truly all of my favorite parts of reddit, without any of the things I don't want, like low effort posts, lots of images, short comments, memes, and repetitive jokes/puns. So when people like me see something that reminds us of those aspects of reddit, there is a fear that too many reddit users are migrating here, in some cases literally requesting features that would turn tildes into a reddit clone.
However, the admin clearly has a handle on things and this site is run with a lot of intention, so I've adjusted my perspective and there's no need for me to be so reactive about a simple post like OP's.
I have to say, I laughed when Deimos commented on that post telling people to "relax," because he's completely right.
Ehhh as a general principle I dislike hard and fast "rules" like this because it creates the expectation that as long as it's on the right side of the line it's okay. I prefer "rules of thumb" that aim at the intent of the rule and rely on people to interpret it well. Like "image posts should be focused on promoting discussion."
Also the average comment criticizing any individual post for not being up to the quality bar is, almost by definition, more deleterious to having a good discussion space than the "bad" post itself. If it becomes a systemic problem it's worth having a larger conversation about how to systemically discourage it. But just hectoring people for falling short of (never directly stated and variously interpreted) expectations is unhelpful.
To some extent isn't that the purpose of not having downvotes? To encourage people to express (appropriately) their disagreement of something in a way that is thoughtful and requires effort rather than just downvoting disagreements which take no effort or thought?
It might even be made worse by the site not having a more streamlined way to mass ignore things if such content that others disagree with swells, it would seem to me that people are incentivized to react quickly and sharply to such content because the user lacks the ability to efficiently control for them once they crop up more.
Yeah expressing disagreement is fine, but a lot of “this isn’t a good enough submission” type talk isn’t really constructive criticism right? It’s just sort of “I think what you did stinks.” That’s deflating for the person who posted it. A more constructive response, that would preserve the spirit of trying to maintain the space as one for worthwhile discussion, would be to try and steer the image post towards being a good discussion by raising a discussion prompt. That would make the one who posted the image get ideas about how to up their posting game in the future.
For example, I saw this Father’s Day post. and my initial reaction was that merely wishing people happy Father’s Day wasn’t really much of anything as a discussion prompt. But instead of shitting on someone for trying to spread some good cheer I just gently steered them towards an approach that might have worked better. And they took my suggestion and edited their comment which prompted a bit more discussion in the thread as a result.
I completely agree.
I'm not gonna lie, the amount of "you're not worthy" reactions is scaring me. That's unlike Tildes, and reeks of an aggression typical of the other site.
Overzealous new users shaming other new users for not being "Tildes worthy", while most older users, that might have reason to complain of a culture shift, are actually super chill and accommodating.
I see the beginnings of an elitist, hostile trend and I don't like it.
Your comment reminded me of the only time I ever had an issue with a mod/subreddit rule in 12 years at reddit. The rule was well-intentioned and aimed to keep comments respectful, by disallowing first person perspective entirely. The sub was centered around ADHD and mental health, so the idea was that when an OP would ask "what can I do to improve my sleeping schedule," commenters wouldn't be allowed to say "I just exercise everyday and that helps me sleep," and instead would be encouraged to keep in mind that their own personal experience may not be the end all be all, and tailor their comments with OPs unique situation in mind.
However, in practice you just started to see comments that were clearly written in first person perspective, just awkwardly edited so they technically met the requirement: "Some people just exercise everyday and that helps them sleep." You'd see it happen in real time, where someone would comment using I pronouns, the mods would ask them to fix it, then the comment would be reinstated with awkward changes, instead of "I" they simply used "my friend" or "people." From my perspective, it became so absurd that it had devolved into the practices of earlier internet drug forums that used acronyms like SWINM/SWIN ("someone who is not me/someone who I know.") Furthermore, many of the comments that complied with the rule still came off as condescending and holier-than-thou, since you could tell exactly what the person meant before editing to satisfy the rule, and the rule failed to encourage them to truly edit the tone of their comment.
As someone who always takes great care to write comments thoughtfully and kindly when commenting about mental health or offering someone advice, the rule felt a little like an insult to the community's ability to function civilly, which was generally made up of pretty well-behaved, mature individuals. Eventually I grew tired of reading and writing the awkwardly phrased comments, and saw myself out.
Yes, as in life, it would be much easier if there was only one rule/law/restriction, and it simply said "Don't be an asshole".
I think your proposal makes sense, images can be important media to pair with messages and are great for encouraging discussion. So long as Tildes maintains it's structure of not distinguishing users in any meaningful way (such as encouraging karma farming by indicating a user's karma) there shouldn't be an incentive for low-effort farming engagement posts. It gets tricky when people want to use this website like a social media platform and celebrate their personal successes. I'd love to talk about pizza with you, but if everyone here who made a pizza posted about it, it would fundamentally change the food group. Right now, it sort of rests on the community to determine what a worthy and valuable post means.
I'm mostly just musing to myself, but I like the idea of having images in addition to a core text topic for thread discussion.
I get that, and absolutely appreciate it. The fact is though, that most of us are coming from Reddit and will expect the same features and functionality. We just need to take a step back and think about each one on it's own merits. Some may be good, some may be bad.
"Fourthly" would be correct here.
A few thoughts. I saw your post after it had some amount of comments which, as you referenced, were a mix of interaction with the subject matter and with the format. What was confusing for me is that I saw comments on the format and merit of an image post, including your defense that you had posted some info about the pizza, before I got to the comment where you had actually provided that content.
This feels to me like another instance of the same problem behind the orphan quotes discussion. In the spirit of Tildes putting the comment box at the bottom encouraging people to read before posting, it’s weird that the comment that goes with the content, which should ostensibly be read before commenting, is not right upfront with the image link.
I like to think of Tildes as a kind of digital cafe or salon, with a set of conversations du jour. You enter the cafe, then you peruse ongoing conversations that are interesting to join. Sometimes you start a new conversation.
I think that certain kinds of content are not conversations but are more like announcements or shoutouts.
Do you have thoughts on how you would like to see those other types of content handled?
It's a good question. I'm not sure how to handle it formally or systematically. I think it's just a social skill people already have or can learn. People learn to read rooms at parties and other social functions.
I think during this growth phase, there's a cultural adjustment period and there are various posts going up, like this most recent one, that try to align the culture.
I think that if it were up to me, I would restrict invites until the newest cohorts settle in, then Tildes could be ready for more.
I think a text post (like blog post) with embedded image or images would be fine. Your thread is a perfect example.
People are so scared of image posts.
Image posts don't matter. However, the are expensive which is probably the real reason to be reluctant.
The moderation of those posts is what matters.
I agree that images can be part of a good text post. I think the only "mistake" you made there is by posting the text as a comment. Tildes does allow for a combination post that has both text and links which would have made it stand out less as an "image" post.
The "hybrid" mode actually just puts the text as a comment when it is submitted, so it's entirely possible that @mailerdaemon did exactly what you suggested.
Oh my bad, I thought I had seen posts where it was part of the main post?
Hmm, I thought I did do that. I'll need to go back and look.
So here's where I think the confusion is.
If you post a link then your text automatically comes in as a comment. If you want a text with links, then you want to do a self-post and embed the link as part of the text of the post without putting anything in the "link" bar.
It's not intuitive TBH. Probably worth it to discuss ways to have image-heavy self-posts without confusing people into just having a link-post point to an album.
Seems like I was mistaken in what the result will be if you do that. In that case there is nothing wrong with how you posted that imho.
When you create a topic there are three fields to be completed. The combination of fields you complete determine the type of topic you’re making.
Title All topics must have a title. This is compulsory.
Link A field for a URL linking to an article or video or other off-site content. This is optional.
Text A field for adding text to your post. This is optional.
If you complete:
Link but not Text - this creates a simple link topic: the topic consists only of an off-site link.
Text but not Link - this creates a simple text topic: the topic consists only of user-provided text.
Link and Text - this produces a complex link topic: the topic consists of an off-site link plus user-provided text. However, the user-provided text is not incorporated into the actual topic, but is split off into a stand-alone comment.
Also: https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/wiki/instructions/posting_on_tildes
CC: @mailerdaemon
I do not think more than one level of sub-grouping is really required, considering the relatively low overall site activity. You can easily go for a few hours without a post or comment in ~games, for example. It's also more rigid. If I want to make a topic about some League of Legends tournament, do I post on ~sports.esports, or ~games.moba? Funnily enough, without specialized communities it's pretty clear the topic should go on ~games, since people who want to discuss a videogame would generally congregate there.
On that other site, people just repost without a problem, since the communities are so massive, but the local format benefits from every new topic being original, and that is why communities themselves should be distinct, broad and as few as possible.
It will be. Have patience. :)
Tildes is still in alpha-testing. It’s an unfinished product. Set your expectations accordingly.