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Daily Tildes discussion - general feedback/questions
I'm falling behind on a few things (open-sourcing, multiple updates/fixes, replying to emails/messages/etc.), so I'm going to be a bit lazy with the next few daily discussions. There are various interesting discussions going on in ~tildes as well, so I think there's plenty even without an in-depth daily post for a bit.
This is a very simple one: feel free to give any general feedback or ask questions, especially things that you feel are minor and probably not really worth starting a new topic about.
I appreciate any thoughts as always, and thanks for all your patience on the things I'm behind on.
Is it possible to have a community wiki for Tildes? Not only will it alleviate reposts regarding policy, conduct, FAQs and so on, but also have everything in one place in a timely manner. I know you have a docs link, but a lot of the questions being answered in these threads aren't logged, or consolidated anywhere.
Also, I just love wikis.
I think eventually having user-managed wikis for groups will be essential as a way for communities to organize their information/resources. I don't know about having an overall one for the site right now though, it would probably have to be something separate that's quick to set up, I don't know of one that would be simple to integrate really quickly.
Edit: I guess we could use the GitLab wiki? We're already using it for issues (and source code, soon), but I don't know if it's any good or worth using.
It doesn't have to be a permanent solution right away. Something to just collect all these things we're hashing out in these threads before they're codified in the Docs section.
So long as there's a quick way to get to it from the website. Ideally it should exist on this website though.
Feedback:
Deimos, I think your brainchild is forming up nicely. I'll be interested to see if the beta looks like what you were aiming for with your alpha version. I hope you're getting the feedback you expected. It seems like many people want many different things. If Tildes.net remains non-profit and becomes sustainable, that in itself would be a mighty achievement.
Right now, there is one thing that would make the whole experience better. A
hidebutton.I really don't want to keep seeing certain topics appear at the top of my feed all day that I have zero interest in, but I want to stay subscribed to that ~ group. However, I have unsubscribed from most of the groups, because that's the only way I could hide certain posts.
I dreaded that "word association" post in ~misc when I first saw it. I just knew it would become a thread that wouldn't die. Sure enough, it's still active more than 3 days later. Anyone using an "all time" option for their sorting will always see that thread. It just won't die.
And it's fluff.
That probably wouldn't be too difficult to do soon. Do you think there's a better term than "hide" though? I've seen a fair amount of confusion related to that on reddit where people think by hiding a post it'll stop other people from seeing it too (maybe just not allowing people to hide their own posts would mostly fix that though).
"hide for me"
I can't think of a way it could really be phrased in a single word that indicates it is no longer visible only to the individual user. I'm not sure why a user would assume that hitting that button will prevent other people from seeing it...
Maybe a "collapse" button, and then a single entry that has a list of all hidden topics that can be clicked to expand it and view them? it doesn't sound ideal to me, but shrug
After consulting a thesaurus, those are the ones I like.
Edit: and a few more
I like dismiss, with the option to later "recall", if one wishes.
That or "forget".
Why not use "block post"? People know what blocking a user means: they won't see that user any more. By extrapolation, blocking a post would mean you don't see that post any more.
Blocking kinda implies a negative though. I don't block posts on reddit, I just hide the ones that I'm done with.
Every single day I hide 100+ things. After having read/looked at them, I'll hide them to no longer have them as part of /r/all.
This functionally keeps you on top of what is newer and most recent, things you have not yet seen.
I might want to go back to things later, and I don't really want it to be in a "blocked" place. Not really for any functional difference but purely for the psychological reasoning - I have no negative towards those posts.
"Don't show this." is more accurate and neutral. It can be used for blocking or for just removing from the feed.
I'm surprised "Filter" isn't suggested here already.
dampen, going with the waveform theme
Probably something like dismiss or suppress. What would be neat would be to have a page in your settings that shows a list of topics you have suppressed. That way you can go back and unsuppress them if you need to.
“Ignore”?
Perhaps "dim" or "dark"?
The most annoting thing right now is, that when I select posts from last 3 days, I'm not able to see older posts, maybe on another pages. Could you just do it the way, so 3-or-less-days old posts will somehow be sorted like now, but as soon as all 3-days-old posts are displayed, show even older posts? So posts from last 3 days will be on top and older posts below them. This is an issue in less active tildes, where are just very few posts shown.
My second idea, but very in-the-future: As seen in Amarok's comment and following replies, I think it would be great if we could somehow trigger bots (when API is released, if bots will even be allowed) via comment/post directly, so bot would get info about request directly and could directly reply, instead of having to look for it's commands the old way. I also suggest handling bot replies the way, so by default, only user that summoned the bot could see bot's response.
Some bots could useful to Tildes, for example bot that would compile and run code, ~comp would use it a lot for various programming challenges that are there.
EDIT: 3rd thought: Could we have list of post tags (privacy, facebook, youtube, tildes, ...) so users will primarily use the already used ones (autocomplete?) instead of half of the posts having
fbtag and the other halffacebooktag - simillary how the tag system works on Stack Exchange. This could help with searching a lot.I don't even code but the idea of a mini compiler bot is super cool to me.
Sorry, I don't think I understand this request. If you want to see posts older than last 3 days, why not just pick a longer time period? You can save a default period for your home page and each group individually.
The problem, I think, is the disconnect that people see with the shorter time period sorts.
I invited someone the other day. They went to ~sports and said, "LoL there is only one sports post!" I had to explain that that wasn't the case; there was just only one that met his criteria.
I think that people expect pages to always be filled with content, especially if people are coming from Reddit. I'm not sure of what the solution to this looks like, or if it's just a matter of prompting people to expand their time period if there's less than some number of posts that meet the criteria.
I think part of the issue is the default settings; it shouldn't feel like default settings restrict us from seeing the content that exists. I've adjusted all my defaults, but what I really want is something like:
I'm not sure if that's exactly what should happen, but I do think that an iteration on top of the current defaults would be a good idea.
The proposed way would put older content below the content inside the specified period, not treat it all the same.
IMO, this feature would be nice as I often want new content to be preferred and still see old content below it rather than a mostly empty page, but just the issue is that its a straight cutoff of age rather than some kind of 'best' or 'hot' algorithm.
Because then on top are week old posts, which I've already seen 10 times. As @aphoenix said:
So something like this:
Just automatically extend selected time period untill my front page is full. Group posts into groups 0-1 days, 1-3 days, 3-7 days. At the top of the front page show posts from 1st group, then posts from 2nd group and then posts from 3rd group.
I'd love to see an expansion of the Code of Conduct to highlight specific actions that aren't tolerated on Tildes. I think the listed actions are an awesome start, but I think there's more that should be there. For example, there's nothing there about illegal content, pornographic content, and other forms of harmful content. There's also nothing about the actions that have caused bans thus far, so I think documenting those as things not to do would be great. I also think having documentation on how the Code of Conduct is enforced would be good.
I also think that there should be some sort of communication of the Code of Conduct/Content Policies prior to a user using the site. As it stands right now I think you're able to accept your invite and begin contributing without ever knowing there's a Code of Conduct.
I think some of that (e.g. illegal content) is covered here, in the terms of use.
Oh, yeah you're right. Still, I think it should also be in the Code of Conduct since I think a lot of people (including me apparently!) don't read the Terms of Use.
Doesn't it tell you when you sign up to read it though...?
ToS are a bit like EULA's. No one actually reads them.
When they're 60 pages long in size 4 font, sure. But what's wrong with Tilde's...
Didn't say there was anything wrong Tilde's. Just saying that most people don't read them.
I disagree. I think if there is going to be a code of conduct and a separate terms of use, the terms are the longer, explicit, CYA version while the code of conduct should be the approachable, at-a-glance place for people to quickly have the opportunity to get an idea of what the community is like... only as long as it needs to be, and as short as possible.
"Don't post illegal stuff," belongs on the former, in my opinion. If somebody really isn't clear about whether that is covered under "don't be an asshole," they probably didn't read either document anyway.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I felt like picking you up on the fact that you're begging the question about whether or not illegal/pornographic content is actually harmful.
Yeah I definitely could have worded this better. I don't believe pornographic content is harmful (at least a lot of it isn't!). I meant it only as an example of content that isn't allowed.
I think "objectionable content" might be a better descriptor.
Please make the difference between a post I have voted on and a post I have not voted on more visually distinctive. Occasionally I'll vote for a post thinking I haven't voted for it yet, and find its number of votes decreases because I'm removing my previous vote. I'd like to see something a bit more distinctive for posts I've voted on.
Will you limit the number of tags a post can have, and if so to what number? I can imagine people will start using them similar to Instagram hastags where they include every tiny thing, but I think limiting the number of tags would be good as it would force the user to simply enter the overall topics the post covers.
I'm not sure if we need a strict low limit, but there should probably be some sort of reasonable limit set, yeah. Once other people can edit tags they can always just remove all the excessive ones if someone does that though.
True, I think putting some reasonable cap, say around 10, would then make the persons job to remove the unnecessary tags a bit easier.
Hah! I was considering making a thread earlier (also I just joined and am majorly procrastinating so excuse any inflated post volume)
My q: reporting, how does that work? Especially at different tiers, e.g. from you-need-to-know-now (cp), to 'you might want to look at this' (someone self-promoting a bit too much?), and everything in between. The docs say to send an email, but I don't want to fill your time if it's something semi-inconsequential, or something that could be looked at in a few days.
Aaaand a quick edit for two thoughts: first, thanks for everything! Secondly, have things been run past someone with eye sight issues, i.e. using a screen reader?
There isn't a reporting system yet (they'd all just have to go to me anyway, so it's not much different from sending me a message), but eventually it should be able to go through the trusted users in a particular group first to see if it's something they can deal with or if they need involvement.
A few people have given a bit of input about it, but nothing very formal. There are some things I know I need to improve already, and hopefully as we get some more people involved we'll get more input on this side of things from people that know more about the topic than I do.
Next time you come around to design thoughts I hit on an interesting one. I was browsing /r/cyberpunkgame and was struck by how much I prefer the background of a page being textured. It's far nicer than a single block of colour - easier on the eyes.
I like it so much I really want it to become something commonplace online. It's pleasant like the texture of a page of paper in a book.
I'm confused. Does your /r/cyberpunkgame not look like this? There's no textured background there, unless I'm misunderstanding you.
You'll need to visit old.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame if you have opted into the redesign. The redesign of reddit removes all custom css. Don't get me wrong, lots of the rest of the design leaves much to be desired, but the background specifically and text on the textured background is just... Pleasant.
Thanks for the reply. I couldn't find it in the docs, and do tell if you'd prefer I start a new thread to ask this, but what are the thoughts on, besides the trust system, moderation systems? What will the reach/limits be, will there be tiered systems, etc?
I have one more, maybe a bit controversial, suggestion. What about removing the link-type post? It looks just like something from Reddit, that doesn't belong to Tildes. Reddit is news (and meme) aggregator, while Tildes is more like discussion "forum". I think that link-type post with no text (own opinion) doesn't belong to tildes as it's usually just low-effort post with low (or no) discussion value. This could be replaced by system that would allow only text posts, but OP could select a link (or first link in post would be selected?) and it'll act like the link post, but with much more discussion value.
Link to some game trailer with title being just the video name doesn't add anything to Tildes. Posting your opinion to the game and adding link to video is constructive post and it's much better than the previous one.
What do you think about this?
Tildes is an aggregator for both links and discussions as well. Right now it's more tilted towards forum-like activity (probably mostly because of "Activity" sort being the default), but it's definitely not meant to be exclusively that.
There has been a lot of discussion around this already, such as here, here, and here. It's a contentious issue on Tildes, to say the least.
The best justification of link posts that I have seen is this post by @Deimos.
i would discontinue my support for a reddit clone without link aggregation. without it, this place is nothing more than yet-another-curated-forum, of which there are already plenty
i want tildes to be a "user curated link aggregator with threaded discussion", the oldschool definition of reddit, pre-monies.
I think a notification for when a user tags you would be nice. Someone tagged me yesterday for example - I only saw it because I went back to the thread later on.
That's one of the many items on Deimos' to-do list. :)
Do you need any help? I'm a dev and have worked on/am working on projects as the sole dev and I know how helpful having a 2nd/3rd/4th set of eyes on both the code and the design can be.
I'm sure I'm not alone in being willing to offer hours of work for free.
Please feel free to reach out anytime! You're doing great work on this site so far!!
I definitely do, which is why I'm trying to get the code open-sourced soon. I'm sure it'll help a lot overall, but it'll also add work in other ways since I'll need to be reviewing code and answering development questions and so on. That'll probably be heaviest at first though, and eventually I'm sure other people will be able to answer most of the questions and help with review as well.
Many of us are eagerly awaiting the open-sourcing of the site.
Wishing you the best of luck in getting everything done that needs to get done to get there!
Something I've noticed is that there actually is no search feature, as far as I can tell. It would be nice to be able to search through the site for any posts you may have missed. For example, I wanted to see if there's any posts about ham radio. However, I can't exactly call it up in a search, and as Tildes is not publicly visible, I can't just search "ham radio site:tiles" on google. It would be quite a handy feature to have.
I like it a lot here! It's fascinating how pretty much anything interesting in the 50+ subreddits I'm subscribed to finds its way to Tildes without there even being specific categories for it yet. I'm a believer!
Will there be any way to subscribe to tags, similar to subscribing to subreddits? For example I'd like to subscribe to linux in ~comp rather than seeing all posts in ~comp (this isn't an issue now because Tildes is a small site, but in the future I'd like to only see stuff from specific tags).
I'd also suggest merging ~tech and ~comp, because there is so much overlap. In fact, maybe they should act as regular tags; it's quite often there is overlap in ~tech, ~comp, ~games, etc. What if I want to talk about games supporting Linux, or game development, do I post in ~games or ~comp?
Nothing formal planned for it yet, but it's a possibility. I'd be a bit concerned about the possibility of tags meaning different things in different groups, so the subscribing might end up getting a little excessively complex, like "I want to see the
linuxtag fromcompbut not fromgames", and so on.I disagree with this, ~comp is generally far more technical with topics that are only of any interest to programmers and other similar people with high technical knowledge. Most of them wouldn't be interesting at all to people that just want to read general tech news. There's not much harm in having too many groups, and we don't have to be super strict about the nesting even if something seems to "belong" inside another one.
A suggestion, perhaps auto-tagging for cliche overused phrases. Reddit's chock-full of them, would probably cut through a certain percent of garbage and fluff if we could filter them out.
What is Tildes stance on how easy it should be to create an account? If the overall goal is quality content and a friendly environment, should emails from places like 10 minute mail be blocked when a user tries to sign up? Or does that go against the privacy / anonymity this site wants to promote? Does this site value anonymity or a certain type of environment more?
If Tildes will promote / support throwaway accounts, it would be cool to have a checkbox in the sign up process labeled this will be a throwaway. That way it can be tracked and possibly have a feature to push notifications to their main account. Just have something like a check box that says will this be a throwaway account and then another box that says what is your main account's username. And then have some kind of verification through email or whatever. Obviously this would have to be done using the honor System so maybe it's silly. But I can see people using it. There could even made me be a tag indicating it was posted using a throwaway which would maybe even make post look more provocative.
Will having more than one account be promoted - for lack of a better word? And I don't ask that planning to have more than one account, I just asked that out of curiosity.
And I know the linking of accounts like that might seem scary because people who have a throwaway don't want to be associated with their main account. But I mean that's only something the admins would ever see and the admins can see your IP address anyway. So if they see two accounts with the same IP address they're going to assume it's the same person. I mean how many people are actually using a VPN just to create a throwaway account. But then again it would be optional anyway so they wouldn't have to opt-in if they didn't want to.
For the forseeable future, the site's still invite-only, so it's pretty difficult for people to sign up. The registration process also doesn't require an email (and I don't intend for it to ever require one), so blocking based on email address source wouldn't work.
Instead of adding something to the registration process for throwaways, I'd rather just allow users to choose to make posts anonymously. We've talked about this a bit before (never too formally, just in a few different threads), but that would have all the benefits of keeping it linked to the main account like you mentioned and make it so that people don't need to create a bunch of throwaway accounts.
I like that take on it. Being able to post anonymously would solve a lot of problems. Thanks for the response.
Edit period not question mark
I really just started reading the site today, and so far exclusively on mobile.
Here are a couple pain points:
When I get to the bottom of a post, I have to scroll all the way back through the comments to get to the top of the page on order to navigate to anywhere else. Either a floating top nav or floating circle near the bottom left that insta-scrolls back to top of page would alleviate this.
After having scrolled to the top of this page and deciding to post this comment, I realized there is nowhere up there to create a top level reply, and had to scroll all the way back down!
Similarly, I would appreciate a link to go to the root/original comment to scroll up to the start of a comment thread. Right now there's a link for getting to a comment's parent, I would like one that links to the original reply - the comment's parent's parent etc.
I'd say that seems unlikely at this point:
Daily Tildes discussion - why should we allow (or not allow) fluff content?
How do we ensure the site stays un-fluffy?
What groups and subgroups should we allow before there's too much fluff on Tildes?
What's Wrong With Fluff?
Daily Tildes discussion - quality concerns
The closest compromise I can think of it is a group with pictures of uncommon animals along with a long description on the animal. Would not resemble /r/aww at all
Like /r/awwducational? I'd argue against it. I just went to the first item on their front page (about the platypus, some info on them, and a pic on steve irwin) and the comments are:
I'll stop there. I think, and this might sounds really harsh, that it either won't work, or it might be done using incredibly strict moderation, which doesn't scale well. And that leaves out that people don't tend to like moderation strict enough to cut out half the conversations. I would suggest, and this might be a loophole, making a blog with interesting content about animals and posting a link to wherever on here (~science maybe) with your newest blog post, if you'd be so inclined.
i will be pushing for these kinds of things. i get the feeling that most people here, like that asimov guy, just dont understand the filtering process or how powerful it might be.
they only want content they like, which is really, really fucking stupid.
I understand how filtering can work. I've worked in IT. Don't assume ignorance.
That wasn't my point. My point was not whether the website can handle or filter "fluff" content. My content was that the people using the website don't want "fluff" here. And, based on what Deimos has written, it looks like he doesn't want it here, either. You need to read those threads that I linked in my comment:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/jz/daily_tildes_discussion_why_should_we_allow_or_not_allow_fluff_content
https://tildes.net/~tildes/1lz/what_groups_and_subgroups_should_we_allow_before_theres_too_much_fluff_on_tildes#comment-fvi
https://tildes.net/~tildes/1mm/whats_wrong_with_fluff#comment-g5d
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/1oz/daily_tildes_discussion_quality_concerns
It's not about what I want. This is Deimos' website. It will be run the way he wants. And he seems to not want cute animal pictures here.
oh, wow, nice to see you represent EVERYONE, and their definition of fluff
i stand by my opinion that your opinion shouldnt dictate the entire sites content when filtering will be quite capable of keeping your feed clean.
how can you be so upset by content you would not even see??
quit assuming your opinions are everyones
Is there a reason your posts are all so hostile in this thread?
I would suggest reconsidering the tone of your posts and consider making your point without so much hostility. Remember that behind every user is a real life person. Would you talk to people like this face to face?
We are all working to create a community of quality content and comments. Im assuming no one here wants comments on the level of r/politics where you either agree or you're wrong.
I totally 100% agree: my opinion should not and can not and will not dictate the entire site's content. Only Deimos' opinion will dictate this site's content - he's the owner, the developer, the administrator, and (currently) the only moderator. What he says, goes. And I showed you what he said. (Did you read it?)
Did you even bother to read those threads I linked?
yours, less and less so. i cant wait for a user filter
There have been a few threads about people not knowing the direction or rules/suggestions that you(Deimos)/we want. These have usually been new users.
There was talk of better onboarding. I am all for that.
I actually set my mobile bookmark to tildes to https://tildes.net/messages/conversations/1u7 so that I would be reminded of some stuff each time I open the site.
Though a bit heavy handed, maybe you could set it so that the page that loads first is a set of guidelines that the user sees until they figure out how to turn it off in their settings. The steps for that would be explained at the bottom of this onboarding screen. The link to go to the normal homepage should also be at the bottom, to encourage reading the brief guidelines.
My implementation probably sucks, but I hope you get the direction I am getting at. Put the guidelines in users’ faces for a while.
I think it was the wrong call to shut off discussion in the thread I posted. Isn't Tildes more focused on communal moderation? Yes these discussions can be messy, but they're important and will result in a stronger community.
In theory, yes. Those systems aren't present yet.
Is that thread, or rather it’s topic question, something that can be brought up again when these systems are in place? I likewise think it should have been left open, despite having not yet found grounds on which to agree with OP’s proposal, and am curious about whether trying again may be allowed.
One thing that really, really would be great (IMHO) would be a function that displays the headlines of all unread postings (just the headlines, please!) in a group (or even for all groups) and another functions that marks all unread postings as read.
Yes, this would basically be the way a Usenet newsreader works! :)
Yes, I know that this probably conflicts with tildes' principle to collect as little data as possible. Make it an opt-in then!
Edit: Oh, and the one-line-per-thread, no tags, no votes, no nothing overview would still be on the top of my wishlist!
Is there a way for me to see content from every group, including ones to which I don't subscribe (similar to Reddit's "Popular")? I'd like to check in from time to time.
No, I don't intend to implement something like that (and will stop auto-subscribing people to everything before long too). I think people should need to specifically choose what topics they want to see, constantly putting content in front of people that didn't choose to see that type of content is harmful to the communities that it came from. Here's a post I wrote years ago about how that approach doomed /r/gaming to low-quality content.
That reads as a different situation, because you refer to content being put unwillingly (and selectively) on people's front pages, where downvoting is possible, and community standards are different (mostly absent). I'm referring to an /r/all of sorts you have to click over to from the front page, where downvotes don't exist, and people actually get banned for being terrible.
The thing is, as sub-groups get built out it will be hard to learn about ones you might find interesting if you didn't want to subscribe to the umbrella.
E.g. if I had unsubscribed from ~tildes, as I was inclined, I never would have noticed that ~tildes.official was created. Now I subscribe to ~tildes.official and got rid of ~tildes.
I just noticed you can't comment if you don't subscribe to a group, so that's another deterrent to the situation you described.
You can. I've locked one thread (which there isn't any real indication of), so you're probably looking at that one.