22
votes
Repost check
I may have inadvertently created the first repost in Tildes in ~comp and was wondering if there are plans for a notification on posting a new topic that has already been posted.
I know that this sort of check is easily 'bypassed', but personally, had I know it had been posted already I would have voted & joined the existing discussion.
I think if we could detect the same URL, at least in the same group, maybe even with a time modifier of within the last week, it would help consolidate the discussions.
I agree there should be a repost check, but to add on to what you already said:
I think it should be taken a step further that Reddit does not have and mayyyyybe after a certain time period has passed, the repost check can come off? Like say.. maybe six to twelve months maybe? Just an idea.
I totally agree, I think that that time for the repost check to come off should help to ensure that the content is not on here all the time, however new users still get to see it as they might not recognise it as a repost.
That's exactly what I meant by 'within the last week', i.e. if the same URL was posted longer than <time> ago, then allow the repost.
That's actually something reddit does in the redesign. It has to be implemented by the subreddit mods, but they can limit reposts for up to 90 days.
It's been a feature on Reddit for almost four years, not just in the redesign :)
Usually by hacky workarounds, if I'm not mistaken. The redesign baked it into the site.
Ah, I see! Thanks for the bit of insight!
One of my co-mods on reddit has written a bot that hashes image content and can detect near matches, which is great for catching cropped/slightly altered variations of images. Very handy for ~50 subs, but at scale, could be costly in terms of storage.
~Meta.TwoTildesUsersOneCup
This has been brought up a lot, but it's much needed. I've seen so many repeat topics and were only at ~1600 users. IIRC @Amarok tried to fix this with a faq topic, but the activity sort made it fall out of view.
The docs, announcement page, and the faq topic would be good required reading, but I'm not sure if forcing everyone to read it is a good idea. Thoughts?
To clarify, when you say you have seen many repeat topics, do you refer to general discussion threads or external links? As mentioned elsewhere in this topic, I would like to see a warning/reminder that a specific link has already been posted as a topic in the group to be able to join the already on-going discussion
Are we referring to repeat links? If that's the case it could probably be easily fixed as suggested, but I think the issue is inherent in 'links' rather than 'repeat', as the community is discussion based rather than content based, and links are content.
If we're referring to repeat topics, that's a lot harder to fix as there really isn't a way to compare topics with previous ones to check for reposts. But more importantly, should we? How many times have we had the same conversation with different people, or even the same person?
I was referring to the repost of links.
As you say, this site is meant to foster discussions over (other) content, and I would have preferred to be directed to the previous topic where I could join in the already-existing discussion than split it.