Daily Tildes discussion - finding a balance between discussions and quality links

External links are essential to a discussion based website as they bring in more ideas that users may have never ended up discussing themselves. As long as the content being linked is interesting (a rather subjective feeling I know), fits within the specific tilde and has the possibility to spark a discussion I think it should be welcomed. The fact that you enjoy an article and feel that others might enjoy it as well warrants a linking to said article as there is a high chance someone will want to discuss some part of the article.

Half of the conversations I’ve had with people have begun because I mention something I’ve read or seen online. It’s perfectly fine for a discussion to be sparked by an external source and not our own wandering minds.

In terms of balance between links and text based submissions, I don’t feel like there needs to be any. Like you mentioned at the moment there does seem to be a higher amount of discussion based posts, but I see this as a positive thing. The community is already becoming extremely good at creating its own discussion starters which only encourages others to do the same.

Discussing external sources is great, but discussing ideas created by other users is even better, as they are original thoughts. When users see a positive reaction to their own ideas, this will persuade them to post more. More posts leads to more discussions, and so on.

A simple sorting system between links only, text only and both would be convenient for those looking for external content, internal content or a mix of both.

I think the core problem is that high-quality content is often high in calories. That Wired article you posted is at least a 10-minute read. I posted what I consider a great piece of journalism yesterday but frankly that's at least a 30-minute commitment to actually digest. If someone posts a 15-minute video, well, then, you're in for 15 minutes before you can decide (fairly) if you want to vote on it or not. If Tildes is all high-quality content, then I'll only have time to digest/discuss a handful of links a day.

Meanwhile, a post like "what do you think of blockchain?" requires no time to jump into a discussion. However, it is no guarantee of a good discussion, either. I think good articles are better starting points for good discussions, but by their nature it'll take too long for everyone to actually read it.

I don't have an answer; at this point I'm just trying to better define (to myself) what I see as a crucial issue with a site limited to only high-quality (but high calorie) content.

Would making a “vote” count as activity help pull things back toward the middle between links and discussions?

I agree- I want both, and I also want something that encourages people to hit “Vote” as well...we have 4-figure membership but I don’t think I’ve seen a single 100+ vote post.

I don't think external links are inherently low effort, but that feeling does comes across when we get a spam of them, which to be fair hasn't happened except for those specific couple days that started this topic. I believe seeing a bunch of 0 comment 0 vote postings might point to an issue with content. However, I think people should continue posting whatever they want. Let the users decide what we want to read, vote comment on.

An optional textarea for a statement would be fantastic, but this also plays into the benefits of the tagging. An interesting tag might be something great to subscribe to if tag subscriptions are a thing down the road.

A balance is great, but I think it's important to consider what an imbalance would look like.

A) There are no external links, but the site is populated by discussions.
B) There are no discussions, but the site is a link-dump.

I phrased that with a little bias, of course, but A) has, to me, much more value if we'd hypothetically be forced to choose.

A great idea but also I think that requiring a statement with a link should be determined by the group it's posted in, there's trade-offs either way.

If you post a link with a statement you influence the discussion and potentially alter the conversation. You're manipulating the direction of the discussion.

Of course the positive effect is more pronounced for linked content that doesn't have an obvious clear discussion associated with it.

Each community seems to cultivate it's own personality so I doubt using examples of other sites will be very accurate in predicting the outcomes here at Tildes, ultimately I think this is going to be a trial and error as to which format promotes constructive high quality discussion.

There are some people in that thread (and some other similar ones) with an opinion that external links are a bit inherently "lazy", or even unnecessary if they can't trigger a discussion. I disagree pretty strongly with that

Thank you for clearing that up! :) :) :)

I like the idea of having a submission statement, even if it's only one sentence or something. It's nice to know why the poster thought the article was interesting before deciding whether to read it.

I don't think we should necessarily require it, but I do encourage everyone who posts links to add a short comment to their topic.

I'm pretty happy to read your take on this. It actually clears up some questions I had about posting.

I posted this comment in another thread just now in response to /u/Ark, but I thought it would be disingenuous to not include it here too:

I am still a bit torn between keeping tildes discussion focused only or a mix of content, but honestly if tildes wants to separate itself from other sites like Reddit, it may be for the best that it becomes discussion based only.

Given /u/Deimos' post on the subject yesterday, it's obvious there's confusion between what different subgroups expect to get out of this site, and even between what those subgroups expect versus what his vision for this community is. I think this is in part based on the Docs. When I joined Tildes, I took this part:

In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important

This includes linking to articles on other sites, posting text topics on Tildes itself, and the comment discussions. In general, any changes to the site that will cause "shallower" content to gain an advantage should be considered very carefully.

to mean that this site had less of an emphasis on link aggregation and more of an emphasis on in-depth discussion and in-depth links. Yesterday's clarification by /u/Deimos gave me a different impression of the ultimate goals of the site.

I think part of the difficulty with wanting a good balance of link aggregation and in-depth discussion in a community like this is that the former is much harder to guide than the latter. In striving for a balance like that, it seems like communities like this one ultimately set themselves on a trajectory to becoming Reddit-like clones because people's idea of what constitutes as quality, non-discussion-inducing links differs vastly.

What's more, the people who are looking for that kind of link aggregation experience seem to already be primed from other communities (like Reddit and its predecessors) for the kind of experience they're trying to recreate. It's not that they aren't trying to improve on it, but it's still working off the same fundamental model.

To that end, it wasn't the link aggregating aspect of Tildes that intrigued me enough to join, it was the aforementioned emphasis on depth and discussion. I'm curious to see what this balance will look like on Tildes.

I think this will naturally balance itself.