So far I only managed to find two online communities in which people are able to hold a productive discussion and share interesting stuff - Tildes and LessWrong. Do you know if there are any other great online spaces like this?

I tried finding other alternatives to reddit, which is what got me here. I still love the content of the subs that I followed and am not wanting to really step away. I'd like to as a matter of my own principles... but I still want it. So much knowledge has been amassed on that platform.

Do you guys still mess with reddit regularly? If not, how?

I've heard much about the great Digg migration but I found Reddit through different means.

Any of you hear of mfisn? It was my Reddit before Reddit. A bare bones link sharing community where a number of registered users could share links. Unregistered users could suggest links that I guess a registered user could approve? I remember sharing links to movie trailers there. I found Reddit years later after googling it and finding a Reddit post asking about it. And that's how I fell into Reddit.

I discovered mfisn through cookiethievery, a yourethemannowdog-esque page that had a rotation of repeating animations set to a short music loop. And I vaguely recall finding that through an AIM buddy's profile...? Either that or albinoblacksheep.

Any of you have a traceable lineage of Internet communities you've passed through? What were your pre-Reddit internet go-to sites? Are they still around?

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 was inspired to say this in a different conversation, but having said it, I want to say it more loudly/noticably.

A few, not many fellow newcomers to Tildes have made comments comparing it unfavorably to Lemmy/Kbin or Squabbles. We have options and there will likely be many more. To steal a good quote from a totalitarian dictator, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom.

Tildes vs Lemmy/Kbin or Squabbles reminds me of the disagreement between the Ents and the Entwives. Some people prefer gardens. Some people prefer the wilderness. Some like both. I am grateful that Deimos created this nifty site for me to play in.

http://www.tolkien.cro.net/talesong/ents.html
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/wiki/philosophy/index

I'll admit that I am a new user to Lemmy as a way to replace reddit in my free time, so a lot of my opinions will be relative to it. So far I've found it decent. I won't comment much on the UX or functionality, since I think it wouldn't be fair to criticize a fairly new platform in that way. I won't try to compare it to Tildes either, since I think they are very different in scope and purpose. I will say that the discussions in tildes are higher quality than both reddit and lemmy on average.

Overall the experience for me has been hit or miss. Joining a smaller server relevant to my interests was a good move. I joined SDF's instance and the people there are very friendly, and I enjoy the tech-forward posts. Throughout the fediverse as a whole, the discussions felt shorter and not as good as even reddit.

The posts and discussion on the larger instances to me felt a little immature. Generally I came across a lot of: (1) hyper-contrarians--it reminds me somewhat of linux/oss forums that skew younger. Lots of circlejerking the common themes/in-jokes/ideals of the free-software circles. (2) reddit-bad circlejerking (3) mediocre memes

I also came across a few very thoughtful discussions related to the fediverse regarding its place in the world, the sort of content that would do well, and the culture of its members. I'm very excited to watch the more niche communities grow. I'll admit that I miss reddit somewhat for music discovery and the smaller genre subs (although not enough to spend my time there again).

After a few months, I haven't felt compelled to visit reddit nor really Lemmy all that often, since I think both suffer from the same immaturity and hivemind thinking.

What do you all feel about Lemmy so far? Any good community recommendations? (Especially for music :) )

There was one which i found a long time ago via a post on r/nexpo or something similar about a subreddit which appeared to be some sort of cult, i dont really remember the details now though. Also, apologies if this isn't the right board.

Akin to this: https://tildes.net/~tech/1670/redditors_of_tildes_which_subreddits_are_you_missing_the_most_during_the_blackout

What can we leave behind?
What should we leave behind?

For me, the one BIG thing is the stupid puns.
Threads full and full and full of puns, one after the other.

Case in point:
https://tildes.net/~movies/16bf/chasing_horse_faces_sex_assault_charges

I can so live without that side of reddit.

edit: Yeah, that "thread" is two comments long, but I just got reddit flashbacks just seeing those.

Mine is a Facebook group called ALDI Aisle of Shame. I don't know if it's okay to link to it, so I'll just let you all google it if you want to check it out!

Not too long ago on /r/femalefashionadvice, someone mentioned a product in a comment section and I went to look for it online. This lead me to said group and the place was so unexpectedly incredibly wholesome..! It is the silliest thing. There are more than one and a half million members all praising the quality of ALDI products, and posting pictures of their hauls.

Recently, a trend was to post pictures of your dog and even a pony in hats gotten from ALDI and it is just so much fun! Even women doing the Spiderman meme in real life as they spot each other with the same outfit from ALDI.

PS: I am aware Tildes is text-focused so please let me know if this many images in a post is against the spirit of Tildes! Wasn't sure if it's ok to include images in a text post like this.

I, clearly along with many others, recently left Reddit and have personally decided not to return unless it sees drastic, lasting change. However, this has made it clear just how reliant I was on the site for multiple aspects of my life, ranging from local and world news, to hobby related announcements, to perspective, advice, and memes directly from marginalized communities. In Tildes I've already found some of what I've been missing, and I'm sure I'll find more as the community continues to grow, but Tildes doesn't have the same setup to allow for finding the same niche communities that I once had (nor should Tildes ever need to have that).

With all of that said, what gaps are you currently experiencing? Have you found any good sites or resources that have helped you or might help others in the thread?

I signed onto Reddit six years ago because that was where I could discuss stuff I liked intelligently. Due to social awkwardness and poor conversational skills, I feel like I contribute nothing to the conversation anywhere, on forums or IRL. I even signed up for Stack Exchange, Hacker News, and Ars Techinca for discussion, but they all look like you need a Ph.D. to contribute anything meaningful?

Am I alone on this? How can I be a productive part of the conversation?

Further questions:

• If you go by both, do you ever mix them or do you keep them totally separate?
• Do you let your real life friends, family and peers know about your online pseudonyms?
• For people building an online presence as a kind of brand, how does this impact your choice?

tl;dr IDK what happened before, but r/antiwork is public now (again?).

I just stumbled across this tildes thread from 2 weeks ago [EDIT: crap ... 1 year and 2 weeks ago; mixed up my "current year" setting] ... which is right on the border between "keep posting in that thread" and "it's too old, start a new one" ... so here we are.

I'm familiar with the ideas, but never heard of that specific subreddit before. Looking through the Fox interview, I must be missing something, because I don't understand what all the fuss was about. What "mistake" did the mod make in the interview? Why did everyone suddenly hate her? etc. Seemed perfectly innocuous to me (apart from, why even bother with Fox).

But that aside, the previous thread indicates that r/antiwork was effectively bullied into going private. Looking at it this morning, it is not private. I am assuming that they just recently de-privatized it?

On a side-note, top comment on the thread is about not supporting r/cringetopia ... which ... that subreddit is private. Is that also new? It had me confused for quite awhile this morning, trying to figure out which subreddit was actually under controversy and forced to go private.

Hey folks.

May someone recommend a good web dev community out there for quality discussions?

Right now I'm using Vue for a project and I'm wrestling with architectural decisions. I'd love for a place where I can discuss different approaches' trade-offs and merits.

Many thanks. :)

Many of you might be familiar with the popular and massively growing antiwork/work reform movement that found a home in the r/antiwork subreddit. Well, recently, the founder of the subreddit was invited on Fox news for an interview and it went about as well as you could expect (We shouldn't support r/Cringetopia) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc

Sub is now private, an offshoot called /r/WorkReform has been launched and everyone hates the old mods now.

At some point we recognized the signs of desperation. My wife and I had been running to the window like puppies for a glimpse of any unusual traffic. We caught ourselves bingeing on news articles, as if saturating ourselves with reporting could somehow make us relevant to a world that saw less and less of us. We even resorted to calling my mother. After listening to 90 uninterrupted minutes of narration regarding her most recent routine doctor’s visit, we broke down. We resolved to end the isolation that was slowly killing us. Then the pandemic hit.

Our biggest stumbling block is figuring out how can we make friends online using only privacy-respecting platforms and software? We would like to see some friendly faces in real time without being simultaneously, you know, mined. Could anyone in the know share suggestions?

Edit: I'm grateful people are considering this. Thank you! I find it helps to ask people what their ideal solution would be, no matter how far-fetched. So, in response to that: My dream platform/venue/project would meld aspects of Lunchclub with The Human Library. I have stories to tell. I would love to video chat with fully-clothed individuals drawn from all over the world, chosen based on their stories and ambitions. It would work the way a good host does. You know, "Greta once had the job of getting sweat stains out of Bruce Springsteen's guitar strap. You two should swap cleaning stories, since you work at that drycleaner's, right, Butchie? Is it true it's a front for the mob? Oh, excuse me, I have to disinfect the pizza guy. I'll leave you to it." Maybe I should flesh this out more.

Heya!

The question is rather straightforward. Even though I said smaller, size doesn't really matter for this - the focus is more on the community aspect rather than it being small. Here's my non-exhaustive list (in no particular order):

1. Tildes - This is unsurprising. It's definitely large for a "small" community, but it's managed to preserve it's culture very well, which is rather impressive. It's cozy and has high quality discussion.
2. Various Discord servers and IRC channels. This one is harder to pinpoint, to be honest. As far as IRC channels/Discord servers goes, some of the more niche gaming ones are probably some of the nicest environments. IRC-wise, I really haven't managed to find any particularly active ones, outside of the ones for the next list member...
3. tilde.town and probably the larger tildeverse. Not affiliated with Tildes, but generally just... a nice place to be. It's rather quiet a lot of the time, but their main IRC channel is, frankly, quite great. When it's active.
4. A lot of Mastodon instances, although of course not all. The fediverse is generally a nice place to be, although politics on there is kind of mushy and one sided. Genuine interactions on there, however, are extremely common and sorting by the global timeline is quite nice (most of the time.)
5. rateyourmusic is a nice community of those who are passionate about music. It's quite nice overall, though.

There's definitely a lot I've missed out, mainly because I probably don't know about them.

So, what are some of the smaller (or not) communities that you enjoy?