Daily Tildes discussion - thoughts on recruiting
We've had a few topics related to recruiting new users come up over the last few days. I won't link to them specifically (and at least one has been deleted as well), but they've included ones that recommend relying less on reddit, seeking out more people of different demographics, and a few other recommendations related to how and where we should be looking for more users.
So for this topic, I wanted to ask to see if people have specific recommendations for reaching other potential users. Reddit is definitely the simplest from my perspective, because I have a fair amount of name-recognition there and also a lot of connections with mods and users. I'd love to reach out to other groups of people as well, but that often comes off as pretty spammy from someone that doesn't have a pre-existing relation, so I'm not sure how it could be done well.
So any recommendations are appreciated, and I've also given all existing users 5 invite codes again, so feel free to invite some people if there's anyone you think would be a good fit. You can get them here (and as always, feel free to message me if you want more): https://tildes.net/invite
Also, I haven't done it yet, but after this discussion the other day, I think I'm going to stop showing info about who users were invited by. Multiple people are saying that the current situation is preventing them from inviting others, and I don't think that's a good thing. I'll make another post in ~tildes.official once I've done that (should be today).
I'm not sure how popular/unpopular of an opinion this is, but I think Tildes is growing a bit too fast, and I've seen a noticeable decline in the quality of some posts since I first joined.
Yeah, I agree with you in some ways (and this post a week ago was inspired by that feeling). We definitely need to get some more features in soon to help, but I don't think letting the site stagnate in the meantime will help much either. We're in an awkward stage where I think the site is still so small that people aren't very comfortable with submitting much.
I think it's also a matter of just giving new users time to acclimatize to the site. With every wave of new users ~ will probably see a slight decline in quality since not everyone who arrives here knows what to expect... and I think many assume this is just a reddit alternative intended to be basically a clone but without the hate speech. However as the established user base grows and new users comes to terms with the culture here they can then start helping more new users get acclimatized that much faster and ~ can eventually start taking waves of new users faster without needing so long to equalize in between each. Rinse, repeat and you got yourself a healthy site with a good culture being fostered. ;)
This is spot on.
Users of every service do not use the service in the way the existing community uses it when they first join.
They do not read the guidelines. They do not read the rules.
They make mistakes and then they get pointed towards the guidelines or rules. They then adjust their behaviour. As they find that other people dislike what they're doing they adjust and adjust until people like what they're doing. This brings them into the existing culture.
The trick is to bring people in and give them enough time to become part of the culture before the next. Never having the trickle of people being higher than a negligible negative effect they have while they are being assimilated into the culture. If the trickle is too high they displace the existing base and create their own culture. If the trickle is too low you're not growing fast enough to maintain a suitable growth rate to retain your userbase overall long enough before they give up.
It is a careful balance.
Speaking of features, is there any progress update on how open-sourcing Tildes is going? I'm sure everyone is fine with delays (you're already doing a great job running the site :) ), just wondering if there could be a quick status update.
I'm excited to see how development will go once users start contributing.
Still slowly plodding forward on it. There have been a few things I've had to spend more time than expected cleaning up, since they're a bit unusual (like postgresql table inheritance) and ended up with them causing some strange behavior while creating a dev environment.
I'm getting there though.
That's funny, I was thinking just the opposite. As of this moment ~tildes.official shows 3298 subscribers. That's a really small number of people for a general forum, especially when one considers the 1% rule. Also, I can tell you from experience that as time goes on registered users gradually become inactive. For example, r/beer on reddit has over 338k users, but it has less overall activity than subs a third that size due to many of those user accounts no longer being active. At its current size, Tildes probably needs to average 5 new users per day just to offset users deleting their accounts and the ones becoming inactive/less active.
The sentiment of "rapid growth" and change seems like a common theme of the internet. People like self-sustaining communities but the issue is it requires a huge audience to always be active which creates problems of overgrowth and community change and all that. Stagnation or the new users outnumber the old users that made the platform great
I struggle with this on my Discord server too :(
I have to agree with this, I think before the growth of the site is dealt with the quality control and also major guidelines of the site should be dealt with first. Once these are in place, let the invites fly. Making sure the foundations of a house are set firmly in place is a lot more important in the long run then building the house quickly.
Maybe it's not the amount of users we are inviting, but the demographic group from which we are inviting. HackerNews might be worth another attempt, but they are certainly no easy converts, because they tend to be happy with HN. Then, the less technology/gaming/nerdy-stuff-oriented reddits might be interesting. (Not meant to be condescending; I'm rather nerdy myself.)
I agree.
I think posting an announcement style thread on other popular message boards is a good idea, but honestly I’d be interested to see just how effective giving out invites to people will be. I can already think of a few friends who I know would be interested to join, and each of them possibly has more friends and so on.
Trying to get more people to join by asking around online may result in a temporary increase in numbers, but I reckon letting the invite system slowly work its magic is more likely to result in the desired growth. Plus, posting around sites does mean pretty much anyone can ask for an invite. Not necessarily a bad thing per se, but at least with the invite system you can be relatively certain that a good user will invite more good users.
I agree that just letting the invite system work might be one of the best ways to ensure continual growth and an influx of vetted participants. I'm a member of another similar community, Lobsters, which currently has over 9000 members, all of which were invited from an initial set of around 300 users. With the number of users we have now, I have no doubt we can continue to grow via word of mouth.
I think one of the bigger issues is making sure the community is and remains an inclusive space that people want to be active participants in. This includes both focusing on rolling out anti-abuse features and encouraging participation in all its forms.
I think getting users onto the site should be relatively easy to do and at a good growth rate, keeping them on the site is another thing.
The best way to ensure people stay is just keeping the content and the discussions going. I’m pretty talkative on message based sites in general, but with tildes I’m trying to be as active as possible which I think it’s essential in encouraging others to participate, especially this early on.
The issue with it continuing to be by invite only is that people are likely to be friends with other people that are similar with them. This would perpetuate the liberal/white/male dominated vibe of tildes. I think once we have a nice balance among users, the invite system will work really well.
I think the balance at the moment is pretty good as shown by a post earlier, and hopefully this balance will be maintained as the invites get sent out. For me personally, I’m intending to invite people not because they think the same way as me but because I know they are good logical thinkers who will want to get involved in interesting discussions. This should be the primary criteria when deciding who to invite, but making an attempt to invite friends of yours who think differently to you is also a plus as it increases the overall diversity of the site.
It’s impossible to say how balanced the user base should be as it depends what your definition of balanced means. Should each group be the same percentage as every other group? Or should it be more representative of the balance of groups in the real world? I say as long as all groups are decently represented, the userbase is doing well.
I think the 86% male statistic is the most concerning.
It sounds like you're doing a good job of being thoughtful about your invites. However, generally speaking, people tend to have similar values as their friends, and most people won't go out of their way to avoid this selection bias.
I definitely don't think we should try to be "perfectly balanced" (not sure how that would even look), but I do think it's important to be somewhat representative. Otherwise, minority voices will be washed away and this place will become an echo chamber (in some regards).
Agreed, I think the site can do a lot better in that regard, for starters I was talking to my sister about the site the other day and genuinely seemed interested so I’m definitely going to send her an invite. She’s also a lesbian so hopefully the lgbt community already on the site will have another user to represent them.
True, I can imagine most people will just invite their friends but it’s always good I think to consider what tildes is primarily built on and give out your invites accordingly. Whether other people do this or not is another question entirely.
As long as every group is represented at a reasonable level I think we’ll be able to avoid the echo chamber and get everyone into discussions with a variety of viewpoints.
Thank you. Because of this, I will invite more people than I would have without this change.
Hmm, I've only thought of tildes as something like reddit. Obviously, with better potential and mission statement, but ultimately in the same vein, ie. link/discussion aggregator. Generally, those people that want something like reddit are already on reddit (it's one of the top sites on the internet, after all), and that only those dissatisfied or curious are pursuing alternatives. If you want them here, you need to be where they are, on reddit.
At least, that's what I think. Any thoughts?
I agree. Reddit as a concept was wonderful. It introduced many mechanics which fostered good and easy to follow discussion. I personally find the way threads are structured on there and how subreddits function to be a big contribution by reddit to meaningful online discussion. While a lot of tildes users want the site to be differentiated from reddit I personally see nothing wrong if tildes were to become a better iteration of reddit and it has a lot of potential (nonprofit, open source) to achieve that goal.
I think because of the different focus, different content will and should be preferred on ~. I come here for discussion, whether that be from a self post or a link. For me, reddit is mostly for pictures and stories, as well as some computer hardware subs centered around /r/buildapc. I don't see those things coming over here any time soon, and not all of them should. I'm not sure how a primarily picture based community can foster good discussion and not just more images, but I would be excited to see it happen.
I don't see any reason it should be public. And the more I think about even showing it to users privately, might still be bad. I don't see any reason for us to really need that info. I just would hate to invite people and realize they were out there being racist or obnoxious in anyway. I think getting rid of us seeing it is the better way to go.
Oh sorry, that was bad wording on my part. I don't really mean "private", I mean "not shown to anyone". Even being private would still have some of the same issues that are preventing people from wanting to invite others. I'll edit and rephrase that.
No I understood you. I was basically saying this exact thing. I agree it would still have issues.
The only demographics I see lacking that matter (from an American perspective) are women and the right. Given how the populations of both these groups on Reddit are orders of magnitude larger than the present Tildes population, I don't really see sticking to Reddit as something that will be meaningfully negative. While invites will surely bring in more worthwhile people, I imagine people are going to tend to invite those who are like them.
I recommend announcements on subs like twox and conservative and so on.
Also, this probably comes down to resources as to feasibility, but I think it'd be more desirable to invite as freely and widely as possible and deal with any potential problems that come, in whatever way, than to try to avoid potential problems via limiting and filtering potential incoming users.
I vehemently disagree with this. The worst possible outcome of limiting and filtering potential incoming users is that the growth could be minimal. The worst possible outcome of giving out invites freely and widely is someone causing someone else harm (possibly even fatally so). Since the trust system isn't in place, I don't think now is a good time to experience explosive growth. Before we start loosening up the invite filter, we need to have robust anti-abuse mechanisms in place.
I see what you might mean, but I very much doubt that there'll be many meaningfully harmful consequences, or at least that the likelihood will come anywhere near the degree of risks we all accept regularly all the time, never mind on internet communities like this. And if someone says or does something harmful on Tildes at this point, I figure that'll near universally be a lot less consequential than the same on Reddit, with far more people who are generally far more impressionable, by age if nothing else.
Besides, with that sort of thinking, may as well say the worst possible outcome of limiting and filtering potential incoming users is that some slip through the cracks anyway and cause someone else harm (possibly even fatally so), so forget it all.
But I imagine I vehemently disagree about what constitutes legitimate harm and abuse than most here anyway.
In any case, I probably misspoke with the 'as possible' part. I don't mean opening the flood gates and letting anyone who wants in. Just that I'd rather err towards accessibility. Eventually, I'd rather have a forum with 5 million people at an 8/10 overall thoughtful discussion rating (if we can quantify such a thing) over 50,000 at 9/10. And my internet experience tells me that extended periods of exclusivity rarely works out well for the long-term success of such projects. But Tildes isn't very old yet, so I don't see much harm in being restrictive for a bit longer.
I'm not entirely certain I understand this. Would you be willing to elaborate on how someone would harm someone over tildes? Do you mean like bullying someone into suicide?
As a former mod of /r/suicidewatch let me tell you from first hand experience, that happens far more often than you would ever think possible or hope against occurring. There are unfortunately a lot of pathological assholes out there who think toying with people in crisis is a fucking game of some sort. :(
Even right at this very moment there is a vicious troll the mods there are struggling to deal with who is doing exactly that and trying to encourage people to kill themselves through PMs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/829s50/sorry_folks_weve_got_a_troll_please_message_the/
This is what I meant with 'comes down to resources as to feasibility.' Don't see the problem of one out of however many thousands being such a jackass worthy of affecting decisions when they can already roam freely on so many sites, and a handful of mods can shut down such problems quickly until there's much more activity.
Not a fan of the whole 'place limitations because of what worst case scenario shit some tiny fraction of a percent of those limited might possibly do' mindset.
Yeah, neither am I. But I think being cognizant of potential abuse is important as is giving moderators (trusted users) full support in dealing with problematic users like with the dickwad "trolling" /r/suicidewatch and /r/depression right now. For the longest time /r/suicidewatch was completely on its own on reddit when handling issues like that and I still think they don't get very much support... but I know that on ~, even with limited resources, @deimos can likely do better.
Agreed. I really don't know how the Tildes system works/has been proposed to work for these sorts of things so I should search for those threads that surely happened before continuing to speak on this subject. But I'd just hope ideally, things are designed more around the effect of knowing doing sick shit like that gets you dealt with hastily rather than there being universally restrictive policies with the intent of stopping such things happening at all.
Well, "Trust people, but punish abusers" is in the Overall Goals document for a reason. ;)
I'll be cautiously optimistic, but that is great.
And, from a non-American perspective, I'd like to see more non-Americans here (as well as other demographics, like women and different politics and so on). That Year Zero demographic survey showed that Americans comprise over 60% of the users here, but they certainly don't make up 60% of the world's population. (Surprisingly, I just learned that Americans are more than 60% of the Anglosphere, which I didn't expect! However, they're only 25% of all English speakers around the world.)
It would be nice to have more of a mix here. For example, that survey showed that only 2% of us are Australians. Many other countries had only 1 or 2 representatives. I'd like us to mix that up a bit (not that I know how to achieve that).
EDIT: Duh. I do know how to get more non-Americans here: I need to invite some of my friends here in Australia! But I've been reluctant to do so because I don't want my real-life friends knowing my internet identity. I'll wait until Deimos removes that inviter-invitee relationship information from our public profiles. I already have two people in mind who'd fit in quite well.
Definitely. I'm American by passport and spirit, but by ancestry and current residence I'm the only representative of this country. I didn't mention it though as I also have no idea how to meaningfully remedy it, plus I don't know how well all the language barriers would play out. Though it would certainly add a lot politically, since the US is fairly unique and isolated on that front.
I think that invites is a good system, but to improve plurality of users a method that could be adopted would be that make the site be able to be read by everyone without being able to register. One of the reasons that the majority of the userbase is composed of redditors is that only redditors know of this project and even then they don't know what kind of discussions are actually taking place because you can't really view the content without joining. I think making the site accessible to view, not to join, would show what kind of a project this is and encourage cross site posting which will help reach out to a broader demographic. They could request invites through email and could be approved at a rate you feel appropriate.
I agree with you but before going there I think we need to have:
It's not a case that this two things goes together and I'm honestly concerned in not seeing any update about them in quite some time.
While both of those are important I don't see how making the site public for reading only would detract the site progress. Like I think (and please correct me if I'm wrong) currently invites are being handed out on reddit invite threads without background checks on users so giving a limited number of invites to people outside reddit shouldn't have any detrimental effects on the quality of the website. What I mean is that rather than giving 1000 invites on reddit, hand out 750 invites on reddit and 250 to other sites by email (I realise that redditors can email too) or some other method. Even if it doesn't attract users from other websites (worst case scenario) I think it would help in popularising (probably the wrong choice of words) the site on subreddits other than those primarily concerned with technology as relevant discussions could be linked to them. As for your second concern I think it's mostly due to the very small dev base and the dev wanting to do it right rather than rushing it through and lowering content quality/user experience. I'd rather have features delayed than be poorly implemented.
In short: It will be too easy to have "low quality / bad faith" content without a system that allow the community to manage it.
Hypnotoad showed how easy it was to create topics that actually got lots of traction but in an unhealthy way.
Those topics would be detrimental and not representative of the content we want here, if seen on the front page by a visitor that want to check what kind of content we have here.
I don't know who Hypnotoad is or what he did (I'm very new to this site) but I get what you mean. You want the site to be presentable before presenting it.
Hypnotoad was the third person banned from this site. (Bans are still so rare and new that they're being announced & discussed individually. That'll change as we grow.)
Just to clarify, you brought everyone's total to 5, you did not give everyone 5 more, correct?
Yes, that's right.
Just to clarify, is there any mechanism to prevent users from cresting Alt accounts rather than using the invites to invite new users? Or is the invite system relying on the honour system?
There's no prevention, but I can investigate if something strange seems to be going on. It's a hard thing to do well, you can't really prevent people from creating alts without inadvertently also preventing roommates, family members, etc. from being able to create accounts.
Yeah, you're right. I just hope it's used properly so the site can grow and become a good place for discussion. Thanks for all the hard work btw.
Don't worry too much about people you know not being interested quite yet. IMO it's not your fault either. The site is still in its infant stages, it's lacking many features people take for granted on other sites and the topics being discussed are largely still internal/meta ones, which not everyone is interested in or wants to deal with. Give it time, wait for ~ to grow a bit and those same people who rejected your offer before might suddenly be knocking down your door to get an invite. ;)
I don't think recruiting elsewhere would be terrible. I agree with most comment re:diversity and such. I've so far heard you've posted on reddit & HN, and you've got a twitter account.
You could try lobste.rs, the fediverse (mastodon in particular, since it's the largest)… I think the diversity issue is often just an issue of all new tech, it tends to be nerdy white dudes from the US (not meant disparagingly, since I largely fit that description). And I think just by the fact you're thinking (coding it into the site, but also codes of conduct, and philosophy) about it you've shown quite a bit.
Anyways, this might be really harsh but I was thinking about this: the trust system, can it somehow be linked to/influenced by who you've invited and how they perform? e.g. say a consistently large %e of people you invite end up being trolls, would that affect your trust level?
I’m new here (1 week) but have you considered not doing anything and just letting the site grow naturally? I was actively searching for reddit alternatives and found this place after trying about 10 other sites that didn’t really appeal to me. Maybe just simple posts in r/redditalternatives so people who want to leave reddit know this site exists? Why try to grow so rapidly?
The biggest reason is that we need to reach a level of base activity where people want to keep coming back. If the site's not active enough, it won't grow, because whenever new people join they'll see that it's not very active, get bored quickly, and not bother checking back in. There has to be enough activity on a variety of topics to keep people interested, and that mostly comes by having more people around.
There are more than 3,000 users here right now (3,254 people subscribed to ~tildes as I type this), and Deimos has "given all existing users 5 invite codes". That's well over 15,000 invite codes floating around. How much more volume are you thinking of than that?
How many are typically used in situations like this though? I think if 1/10th is sent out I'd be surprised. (considering, also, the amount of those accounts that are unused already)
Even at 1/10th, that's about 1,500 invitations - a 50% increase on the current population.
Also, there's no guarantee that the "promoter" being suggested up-thread would send out more than 1,500 invitations.
There's not really a "role", but I can give anyone any number of invite codes. How would you actually do that though? I don't think you'd want to just dump a big pile of codes out publicly, so would it just be a different method/recipient for requests?