Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely
I've been assuming that this is fairly apparent since nothing significant has changed here in years now, but I suppose it's best to be explicit.
There is no intention to do anything like:
- Actively attempt to attract more users
- Implement new functionality or change existing functionality
- Change the site's structure
- Give any other people access to moderation/admin abilities or control of the site
Or anything else of a similar level. The site has basically been in "minimum maintenance mode" for a long time, and I do not plan to start investing more time in it or otherwise trying to reinvigorate or reinvent it. I recognize that a lot of information and documentation on the site does not reflect this, but almost all of it was written aspirationally nearly 10 years ago, and those aspirations failed. To be clear, I definitely don't consider Tildes a failure—I'm proud and happy that we were able to create a small community that people (mostly) like being a part of. I enjoyed building it, and it's great that the community has managed to sustain itself for so long, but it's not the same as the goal that most of that writing had in mind. I should remove or update a lot of it, but there are very few new users and almost everyone here already knows how things work.
I'm certainly happy to continue keeping Tildes running while people want to keep hanging out here, but you should only do that if you are satisfied with the state of the site. If you are unhappy with Tildes' current functionality, structure, design, userbase, culture, or any other major aspect, you should probably look for a different community (or start one, anyone can!). You should not pin your hopes on any major changes happening here.
(Recommended ambiance for this comment: A crackling campfire at night under clear skies in a remote part of the Nevada desert)
I dunno, does that make anyone else a little... sad?
Sure, the site works great, I'm not debating that. If you pressed me on the issue, I don't even think I could think of a feature that I'd want added or changed. Tildes is fine as is, and I certainly aren't missing anything.
But hearing that out loud, Tildes is in minimum maintenance mode, even though I know it true in my heart of hearts, is... bittersweet. I dunno. Mark this as noise, but it feels kinda weird to say. Yeah, this is the little camp of tents at the side of the information superhighway, and yeah, eventually it'll be over, and we'll all pack up and move on to somewhere else, that's how these things work. That's how we got here.
I just hope it's not anytime soon.
I'm going back into my tent. See you all tomorrow.
Actually it makes me pretty happy. Specifically the part of not wanting to attract new users. Tildes changed a lot during the Reddit API wave of new users. Having more than 100 votes on a thread would have been insane back then. 30 comments in one thread was a milestone achieved maybe once a year. Now we pass both of those regularly.
Back then, I didn’t think that there was a way to expand without destroying or diluting what made tiles great. I am very happy to say that I was wrong. There were some especially rocky patches in the first few months, but things have settled out now. Tildes isn’t the same as before, but it has kept what made it good: honest, open discussions.
But now, I do think we are on the edge of the popularity we can handle. I may be proven wrong again, but I don’t think so. Tildes is not a Reddit replacement. I am happy to have my one small pleasant place on the internet.
It’s been this way since before the 2023 influx. Deimos only updated some stuff, such as adding the society tab, as a result of the new users. But this is the norm.
Oh, I know. I've been here for a while. It's just... different when we hear our fearless leader say it. Half joking here, but it... made me feel something. I dunno. Humans are weird like that.
I get what you mean.
For any other Silmarillion fans, it made me feel like how, after the Valar conducted the War of Wrath and imprisoned Morgoth in the timeless void, Manwë made it very clear to Elves and Men and everyone else left alive that there would be no more divine intervention.
This is it now, no more restructuring of the circles of the world, make of it what you can.
It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just nice to think that, in a time of great need or strife, gods will ride in with thunderous might to save things. And sure, they occasionally lightly put their thumb on the scales if they notice things going really badly wrong - like sending the Istari when Sauron started his alt-right podcast that led to full on fascism.
But mostly, they're in Aman, focusing on things that they enjoy and make them happy. I don't know a good word in English to describe that feeling.
Thanks for this. Is there options for continuity? What happens if you're gone? I'm sure you've thought about funding options? Can you share those thoughts?
Perfectly ok by me. I don't want the nice local pub to suddenly change its menu and become a franchise or something like that.
Thank you for the clarification and thank you for creating and running the site. It's the best anonymous online community I know of!
Good on you Deimos. Tildes is the only “social media” I use. And if it ever changed from what it is that would be a mistake in my opinion.
...i'm not a tildes-hound but i must confess that i visit lemmy only when i'm craving trashy engagement; i appreciate the more selective tone cultivated here...
I feel you. I lurk on YouTube but have not actually logged in for years at this point. I just read and move on.
Thank you for this post. I had wondered if you'd open the door to allowing others to push proposed features, but ah well. The site is perfectly functional right now, any new features would basically be "bonuses" rather than absolutely crucial (well, maybe besides a "block user" feature).
Thank you for all your hard work maintaining the site! I do second the question about the plans for continuity though. Really hoping there's not a bus factor of one.
I don't necessarily need a full documentation overhaul, but it still sounds a bit somber hearing this out loud. What were the true aspirations, and why does it feel like the site fell short of those?
Was it a matter of budget (Times, money, and Man-hours)? I know the design of the site was made to limit explosive growth and thus prevent an Eternal September effect, but was there still hope for more growth than what happened? Is it a simple matter of personal life perspective changing over the last 9 years?
"Sad" isn't quite the word I'd use to describe my feelings here per se. I knew for a while in my bones as announcements became more sparse that some features I was hoping for weren't coming. But more "unfulfilled". I just would like to get a better perspective of what plans were imagined and why they felt they fell short. A small retrospective for future potential social media creators who want to defy the factors of modern social media that Tildes did.
Melancholy or somber is how it feels to me.
Sounds great! I, personally, am not opening Tildes immediately after closing it because I am hoping against hope that it will somehow be different. This site encompasses the entirety of my social media diet. I would have happily stayed at the old site, had they simply let it be what it was. Then again, this place is way better, so I guess it all works out eventually.
Ngl seeing this in bright orange as soon as I opened up the website made me laugh
Fine by me, I'm very happy with the minimalist structure. I don't need or want more than Tildes offers: users submitting and commenting, like the forums of old.
My hope is that nothing changes and this lovely place far outlasts all the other "social media" sites.
My only suggestion is that there should be some plan in place in case of an incident (database gets deleted, sharp increase in bot spam, DDOS, etc.). Let's make sure there are no existential risk to this community.
As someone who's making a new platform, I really empathize with the sentiment.
It's very taxing on 1 person to create anything with a certain bar for quality. Tildes is a non-profit that just makes it even harder as it would take a ton of donations for this even to work. With every new feature there's an increasing amount of nuance and details you gotta look at because the overlap with existing features keeps increasing. We have a lot of technical folks here, so all of this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
I'm not sure what sparked this post but I for one am very grateful that Tildes exist.
Feature-wise, I think for a text-only forum, it's extremely well designed. I can't think of much to add. The design is minimum, by design.
There have been several threads lately discussing feature adds such as block users, new labels, and pronoun tags next to usernames.
Ah I see. Yea I guess I'm not on here as much. Hmm, just my opinion but most of these doesn't seem to be necessary and might actually add ways to reduce discussion.
Blocking someone feels nice cuz its most likely someone who disagree with and you don't want to deal with again. But if everyone starts doing that and only view comments by people they agree, how does one get out of one's own echo chamber?
For me, blocking/hiding helps me tailor my own level of engagement and often makes it healthier. It also keeps topics or behaviors or just certain things out of sight which just provides a better experience. It's the same reason I block certain tags- just taken to a user level. This might be a hot take but I'll make it: sometimes echo chambers aren't even a bad thing. It just depends on how deep it goes and in what direction and if harm is caused by that. (There are plenty of "opposing opinions or views" to my own that I've already heard ad nauseam and never need to hear again or remotely entertain for as long as I live and encountering them isn't going to make me budge the slightest so it's useless, and is nice to be able to essentially force myself not to engage)
The assumption of an "if everyone will do that" problem is a big leap though, those that want to have involved drawn out conversations on certain topics won't use a block option so widely, and so on.
As much as echo chambers can sometimes become a bad thing, I don't feel the need to perceive rescuing or preventing people from entering their echo chambers as a noble goal (not saying you do, but some do)
I think such a feature will yes reduce discussion potentially, but in beneficial, not detrimental, ways. I don't perceive of 'in-depth discussion by everyone on every topic' something necessary to preserve. If people stop engaging and doing that feels beneficial, that's okay IMO. If I want to step out of my own echo chamber and encounter things I disagree with at a fundamental level, it is because I'm making a willful effort to do so and the more options sites give me to do that on my own terms the better.
For me, it's not that I would block/hide everyone that I have the smallest amount of disagreement with (though trust me, I get it, I probably come off as someone that may indeed do that). There's a lot of nuance to how/why/which topics/what behaviors/what conversations/etc I would take action on. And if people wanted to use it that way they could, and more power to them if that helps them curate the experience they want, but there's more to blocking/ignoring than just "they disagree with me in some way". I've already explained this elsewhere, but it's useful in a number of ways and lot of it isn't even some direct personal anger or anything.
That said, I'm just discussing the option in general, which means this is kinda off-topic now I guess? Or at least tangential, because said things are not going to be built-in to Tildes. I can and will use scripts/extensions/etc to achieve the experience I want, however.
Hey look happy to discuss this even though we're probably not gonna agree. That's ok.
I think your general point is that blocking is often used as more of a curation mechanism instead of anger/reactionary mechanism. My take is that curation should really be used on themes / communities and less on people.
I'm of the view that generally you create a community like IRL when people are in a room and you can't "block" someone in a physical room. I look at this from a very meta community view. Your view seems to be more that from a consumer of a forum, I want to have options on how to consume content and if that doesn't hurt anybody else, why not and a lot of people probably share this view. This I don't disagree.. I think we just look at this differently.
Re echo chambers. Again I just have a different view. I think echo chambers are significantly unwelcoming to new users so I like forums that are designed against it. I also understand that its of course very nice to chill and vibe with people you like and agree with. :)
Gotcha- we indeed just view it from completely different angles and that's okay.
I really, in no way, want my online experience of communities and discussions to be that close of a simulacrum of how they operate in the physical world. Especially since there is so much that physical proximity entails (body language, barriers to escalation, lack of anonymity, some extra levels of human connection) that digital communities can't replicate (and they don't need to try to)
I think the digital world is a different beast altogether and should be approached as the different beast it is.
(and to me, for echo chambers, the point that they sort of weed out some new users I actually find to be a good thing. It happens in a very well self-policed Discord community I am in and works very well there and even with our 'echo chamber' there's still a variety of differing views and opinions on various things, it's just that the community has boundaries and some 'base views' that we won't budge on and if you're a new user and you really don't vibe with the atmosphere we have, or can't really stay in those boundaries, it's beneficial to everyone that you don't stick around, basically)
Yep and I totally get it. I mean its a complicated topic because as you said if its a nice niche community with its own rules and vibe, echo chamber is not an issue. But on the other end, there are hordes of communities on Reddit where "if you don't believe in X or do Y" => "you're a horrible human being". Even that might be OK if its niche but what if its a popular community like /r/science (just random example, I don't frequent this one to really know).
Another dimension is that because I'm making a forum as a passion project, most of the time I'm thinking about forums from the "moderator" or "admin" standpoint not from a user standpoint.
Cheers.
@deimos I’ve noticed slower and lower moderation from you.
Please reconsider allowing a few trusted individuals greater moderation privileges.
Simply allowing them to lock a thread before you can decide what to do might help.
Fair, I suppose that does settle it. This website gave me lots of things for a while - even including friends I met irl - and particularly due to the efforts of @teaearlgraycold with his mc server. It was fun while it lasted, but I guess the time has come at last.
If someone really wants to stay in contact with me, send me a PM so we discuss whether we have any overlapping platforms or whatnot (not that I'm expecting to receive more than 3-4 at best). I'll otherwise abandon this account and my alts in roughly a week, but I'll continue logging onto @teaearlgraycold's MC server until it shuts down for this season.
Met vriendelijke groeten,
The Lactobacillus Lady
Wait, why are you leaving?
/offtopic, but FWIW whoever labeled this as noise is a jerk. Another swing and a miss for labels I guess.
Several of her posts were marked noise lately including multiple on-topic contributing ones. So yeah, it is a real jerk thing to do.
fyi that you can counter "noise" labels by upvoting, IIRC at a ratio of 4:1. So, upvoted.
This makes me so sad. I don't post here often but I've always appreciated your contributions. I wish you all the best.
Is there a possibility of you allowing others dev/admin rights?
Fourth line, no intention.
Brain fart
So if you like the bones of the site and how it works your best bet is probably to fork it and build your own.
You will need to seed an initial community and build it up from there, which would probably be the toughest part once you set up a reliable hosting solution.
I’ve considered doing this myself to spin off a page specifically for professional networking in the civic tech world. But I just don’t have the time to dedicate.