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What types of content do you want to see on Tildes?
Something you want to follow but don't have the energy to post? Something you want to start but not sure if there's an audience for it? Worry if it'd fit with existing culture? Share your ideas here to gauge interest.
Cold posting can be scary, maybe this thread can help break the ice.
Text only. No memes. The moment memes show up, everything goes down hill.
The quality of conversation on TIldes is superb. Memes would undoubtedly take away from the atmosphere and sophisticated, minimalist, streamlined feel of Tildes. I may be new as a participating member in the Tildes community, but after lurking for well over a year, this place is unique in the manner of content generated. The lack of memes, shitposts, and doom scrolling is refreshing and I hope Tildes continues to grow with such great content.
When you guys say "memes", are you referring specifically to image posts? Because the word meme as I understand basically just means an inside joke that gets repeated. I can't imagine any online community being enjoyable if they banned jokes.
If they come paired with an actual contribution, they’re fine. Purely meme content/comments like copypasta, “this is the way”, etc are discouraged.
So it sounds more like the problem is low-effort content, which (though I agree) seems somewhat hard to quantify. I just want to stress that memes are an essential part of a vibrant community and not something one should to try to ban.
Memes are almost by definition low effort, in that they are an in-reference for the community that a user can reference and reap the social benefits (engagement, votes, etc). I actually don’t disagree with you that having in-references, memes, etc are part of a healthy community, just as having inside jokes can be part of having a good interpersonal relationship. For that reason I would not support an outright ban, but I definitely think meme only content or meme centric content needs to be discouraged. Sure, a well placed reference can be very funny and add to the community, but in 99% of cases they don’t actually do much to further interactions. They’re kind of like social junk food in my mind: fun to indulge in, everyone likes them occasionally, but ultimately not healthy or needed.
Can you not take into account the effort it requires to become familiar with a particular community to the point where you can make a tasteful, referential joke?
I take issue with the claim that memes are low effort by definition. A high quality meme is art; it blends disparate references and sometimes hides the joke under multiple layers of irony. That takes tremendous effort!
This is the message you'll see whenever you submit a post on Tildes:
As a subgenre of comedy, memes can truly be a sublime art, taking, as you say "tremendous effort". I agree with you on that.
Unfortunately, comedy is not really a focus on Tildes, and one might say it is implicitly discouraged on posts unless your joke also fulfills the parameters expressed above. We do lots of jokes in comments and that is a great source of amusement among users.
Thanks, I think this was the distinction I wasn't aware of. Keeping the posts serious and the comments fun is a good balance, and I'm sure there are occasional exceptions, as always.
You get the idea :D
Something about this sentence was funny to me, and I don't know why. I do completely agree though, I think that there's room for art and humor as an expression of that art in pretty much any place - but humor is context sensitive and deeply personal. It's hard to convey to others without a common ground and understanding of the culture that exists between people.
That inherently makes comedy difficult as it is, but especially in a place where we're pointedly saying we want thoughtful interaction. That doesn't make this impossible, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where something could be universally funny and thoughtfully interactive amongst the Tildes base. The comments really are the best place to express that humor.
Ok, maybe ‘by definition’ is too far as you present a good point about the effort needed to understand the norms of a community. That being said I can’t help but feel the rare immaculate meme is the exception that proves the rule. Most memes are not good, and even the good ones don’t really add much to the discussion other than a hearty laugh. Which, to be clear, I appreciate and recognize the need of. A common criticism of this place is that it is too stuffy. Still, given that in general memes are low effort, and given that they don’t add much other than a laugh, I think that they should still be generally discouraged (but not outright banned). I think it’s ok if one website like Tildes doesn’t have everything we come online for, because we come online for more things nowadays than one place can do well.
Well, one thing I already love about Tildes is that you can disagree with someone without it turning into a shouting match. You make a great point that one website doesn't have to tick every box; I think I may just be preemptively mourning the exceptional meme communities on that other site that I'll soon be losing access to.
Time on Reddit has ruined me lol. I read your nice comment, went to go check how many downvotes you had, and how many mean and argumentative responses you got in return just to “buck the system” or whatever.
But it isn’t like that here..like..at all. People are just nice to each other and are able to actually have conversations.
That's how most people are naturally :D
Some environments are made in such a way that induce people to be artificially confrontational.
Yup, on Reddit the comments that got upvoted/rewarded were the snarky and confrontational responses. Either that or an inside joke.
The voting here feels less like we are rewarding the person, it’s more like.. “you contributed to the conversation and had a well thought out response, doesn’t matter if I agree or disagree with you.” It’s kinda like a pat on the back or a handshake for good work. I dunno, that’s the best way I can put it into words.
Regardless, the most important thing is that people here value meaningful conversations and contributions. People actually feel like they are a part of a community. There arent nonsensical unspoken rules like on Reddit, e.g. you type out a super detailed and thoughtful comment, someone responds to your comment with “🗿”, your thoughtful comment now is at -200 and their response is +2.2k
Yeah, I think it's going to take a while to shake some of those old reddit habits. Karma is such an integral part of the ecosystem over there that it starts to dominate how you interact with people. Thankfully the older users here seem to understand that such a transition in thinking isn't going to happen overnight and are willing to cut us newbies some slack.
It helps that almost all of us came from Reddit as well, so we get what you're going through ;)
Hear hear!
Then make your disparately-referential high-effort jokes in text form.
I loved Reddit subs like espresso or breadit which start discussions around images. I don't need advice animals or funny.
Apparently you can post images as long as there’s an obvious attempt to start an actual discussion. I just asked a similar question on a different thread. Asking for criticism or advice is okay, but no “look what I made” type posts.
Re: user name. As in, Senku Ishigami and Kohaku kind of Dr Stone? :)
10 billion percent!
This thread really took off with some thoughtful discussion and well written explanations on what people mean by memes. My original thought by referring to “memes” entailed images with low effort or minimal time spent simply for a laugh, to make a negative comment on a current event, etc. The “this is the way” - low quality effort posts detailed in the chain describes what I mean as well. The value added to a conversation isn’t their with the low effort input or images. They have their time and place, but are often overused in many communities. I am happy to see the conversation turning into one of quality substance and interesting discussion.
Thankfully, higher-effort content has been the goal since the site's inception. There's no real benefit to posting glib content as though you're performing for an audience - no huge algorithm to feed and no accumulation of Popularity Points per account. This alone encourages more genuine interactions than most places but it still requires active cultivation.
The "joke" label is intended to de-prioritize low-effort comments without it being a huge deal. I like it because I don't think anyone should get in trouble for harmlessly goofing off now and then, but I also don't think those comments should be the most visible within a topic.
i think a little further than that
extremely low effort posts, meme or no, should be stricken from the face of this house
i dont want to be having a good time here only for it to be marred by some complete imbecile posting an inane "DAE think witcher 3 underrated?????" post or something of the like
I really could not agree more. Coming from the doomscroll of other platforms I really appreciate how the format makes me personally slow down and think more than just scrolling past a few headlines, a few memes and then immediately forgetting what I saw.
That's baked in to the core of Tildes:
There are other forms of images and video that aren’t just memes though. I’ve seen some really cool documentaries, old photos/video, art, etc. I suppose it is easier to say “Text only” so you don’t have to worry quite as much on having people be full time mods for content.
That philosophy of Tildes does not say "no images" or "no videos". It says "in-depth content is the most important" and emphasises that this is primarily - but not solely - text-based.
There are plenty of video and image posts on Tildes. There are no memes. Image-only posts are discouraged. If someone wants to post a photo, we expect some sort of explanation or context for that photo, rather than simply dropping the pic on its own.
I wouldn't mind some alcoves for more than text, though. Text is certainly fine but as someone that lived through the BBS and Usenet discussion eras, additional media can be helpful in some cases.
No memes and no low quality jokes in discussions. Finding an intriguing post on Reddit only to discover that the top comments are all jokes or wordplay rather than actual contributions to the discussion is a very disappointing experience, especially when the jokes are all rehashed and reused.
This is exactly what's burnt me out on Reddit, aside from a few of the specific, smaller communities. You can go into a post there and know exactly what joke is going to be made somewhere in the top comments. Often several times.
Finding relevant, interesting information on the topic usually requires a lot of scrolling.
I can get behind “no low effort content.” I will also play devils advocate for a moment.
Isn’t one of the benefits touted here how easy it is to ignore a topic? I could see having something like ~memes and ~memes.images or something to contain that content to. That would allow people that don’t want to see the content to ignore it and would allow the people that want to engage in it to have a place for it.
Why would we create a group to post content that we don't want on Tildes in the first place?
It sounds like some users want that content. My suggestion was to give them a place to do it. It would keep it in once place and would be easily ignorable by people that don’t want to see it. Again, I thought that was one of the touted benefits here..being able to easily ignore any content/topic you don’t want to see.
I personally would probably have it ignored. I have hundreds of subreddits ignored/blocked on Reddit. I also understand that people like different things and want to see different content.
I have absolutely zero interest in hearing about the latest sports, great I can block it and move on with my day. People that wanna talk sports can go on their merry way discussing it in their community.
I assume they're new users, who probably haven't realised yet that Tildes is different to Reddit.
This is why I've repeatedly made the case that Tildes needs to grow but slowly, so that new users can acculturate to Tildes.
I am one of the new people from Reddit and I’m trying to learn the culture here. It certainly is different (in a good way). I don’t think it is fair for 20k of us to show up out of nowhere and demand Tildes to be different than it always has been. I also don’t think it is fair to tell the new users, “this is how things have been, this is how they always are going to be. End of discussion.”
In my humble lurker opinion, the established users having discussions (like on this post) with the new users is a great place to start. I’ve seen some good suggestions from both old and new users here that would make this a better place for everyone. Changes affect everybody though and need to be cataloged, discussed further, and voted on.
Tildes could have closed down new user registration like Lemmy is talking about doing but you guys are still bringing in new people. We’re entering your home here because ours is being uprooted. We need to be respectful of here because Tildes is allowing us in but in turn Tildes needs to give the new people some leniency as we are leaving the place we’ve been living online for the last 7-15 years. Us newbies are trying to find our footing, the eviction notice was a bit abrupt for us.
I’m personally not telling anyone to change anything. I’m just putting it out there that we should keep talking through things with the new influx of users and take a breather if we need to.
There are absolutely areas that are ripe for discussion, negotiation, evolution. But there are also some hard lines that won't be crossed, some core principles that won't be compromised, that make Tildes what it is. Memes on Tildes is one of those hard lines.
Ignored content still contributes to the culture, the overall climate of a community, and how it is perceived. In one way or another, it will spill and influence it in unpredictable ways.
There is also the issue of who would moderate it and how. Low-effort content creates an environment that is highly attractive to all kinds of horrendous, abhorrent stuff. It is difficult to differentiate between well-meaning jokes and covert bigotry when everything is under a hundred layers of irony.
There's too little to gain and too much to lose.
If someone decides Tildes is not for them because of that, I wish them all the best. We can't please everyone.
The other problem with a potential ~memes group is that memes are worthless without their context, and lumping them all together in a ~memes group would decontextualise them, so that only meta-memes would mean anything.
The problem is that there's plenty of valid constructive ways to use image and video content, but not a strong way of filtering out positive contribution from memes.
There were memes in the beginning, goes downhill when it is taken over by astroturf and government LARPers.
I would love to see people sharing their creative projects.
I miss NoSleep and scifi/fantasy/horror book communities. I would love to see more programming and mathematics discussion.
What if they're really boring projects like building a garden box or making a wooden footpath to a creek, or erecting fencing for pet geese?
The more boring the better ;)
[Bob Barker voice] -- well come on down!
I would actually prefer that because I have so many boring projects on my list of projects that I would find that content more useful. The discussions underneath would be full of valuable ideas too. It would inspire more to actually do those projects on my list I think.
You built a wooden footpath to a creek?? I want to see! That’s so cool!
YAY someone wants to see! XD
I made a post with pictures here -- this feels like when Professor Fawnsworth is telling Fry about his drawer full of assorted lengths of wire lol
Check out their Home and garden thread they had some pictures there :)
Please yes! I want to see your goose-proof fencing ideas!
thread :) it's really not fancy but I'm proud of them
If someone made it him/hersels, I like even boring ones. The making of it is the fun and not boring part and that is what the person would share with us. And someof us, at least me, would loveto see and lear how to make a garden box. I know the direction, I don't know the way.
Would this fall under ~hobbies?
~creative is the group that kind of content can usually be found in. Combined with the user created tag or original content tags, and viola. There is occasionally user created creative stuff posted to ~hobbies when applicable too though.
I was wondering about that. I dabble in 3d printing but it's usually not models I myself created, just ones I found online. So where would that fit best?
I think something like that would fit best in ~hobbies. It’s really common on Tildes to invite others to the discussion, so if you want to share things you have printed you could make a thread for people to share in, and start it off by sharing your own. Based on the level of response, you (or someone else) can always post another down the line to see what people have made in the meantime. This is actually how a lot of our recurring posts originated.
Either would probably be fine. If it's a more creative project (e.g. a character model) I would personally lean towards ~creative, and if it was more practical project then ~hobbies (or even ~design). Regardless of where it is, it should have the 3d printing tag, so people will still be able to find it.
Are you serious about that? I'm a hobby gamedev and I'm just not convinced there's the same outlet for that kind of content here as there was on Reddit.
On Reddit, people could just post some little 5 second video of "Hey I added a new fire effect to my game what do you think" and if you didn't want to see it... why are you subscribed to /r/gamedev?? But here it feels like it's more about long form content and if you upload a video like that, people are like, wtf, i don't want to see that... Why would you post it?
Sorry about the rant it just feels like most of the stuff I used to browse doesn't really have a home here. And that's OK, just trying to figure out the vibe
I think it would work here if you provide a bit more too foster discussion. Describe the process, any interesting problems/solutions, other approaches considered, what specifically you’re looking for input on, etc.
Okay! Thanks for your guidance
I am! I've dabbled a fair bit in hobby game development as well (mostly on the art side of things), so you'd at least have an audience of one.
Interesting, maybe I'll post my next devlog here or something and see what people think!
Seems to go a bit against the top comment on text only, doesn't it?
The presentation makes or breaks it. “Here’s my thing” versus showing a process, asking for specific help/critique, or generally anything additional that will encourage meaningful discussion as a result.
Most people will do a text post on ~creative with links to the images. However, contrary to my belief, image posts are actually allowed. It's just not very common, and you will be expected to provide some text contribution along with it.
If hot links are permitted, I think it would work. Many of my favorite project posts on Reddit were text-based with embedded links or images. (These used to be more common back in the day.)
Hotlinks would be fine. Reddit was once limited to just hotlinks. Then we got inline viewing of hotlinked content, then Reddit started hosting its own content.
More.
I don't want noise, but I want more opportunities to interact. College football and basketball, Chicago Cubs and baseball, space, science, experts, local content, and the like. I want to talk in depth about these subjects with people who will read and think and comment conscientiously, and hopefully spread the conversation within the wonderful environment Tildes offers.
To be honest, noise would be welcome at this point. I've been patient knowing that fostering a community takes time and that invite only was by design to properly allow for that fostering.
But it's been what, 5 years at this point? what's the next big step here? Are we already through the big steps? Are we all but abandoned? What's the general roadmap for this site?
Note that I'm not going to pretend I'm not completely in the know, and my experience is more based on the media groups more than stuff like the political and meta parts of the communities. Maybe those parts get sufficient activity.
additional caveat: I know right now there's yet another blackout movement going on in Reddit, so I'm NOT saying to take advantage of that discontent. I remember the Voat days and that tends to be the worst time to invite potential discussions that won't just be at best complaints about reddit and at worst... well, the Voat days.
I've thought about this a bit before. Tildes has certainly gone through some very quiet periods. But its never been dead, and that's an important distinction. I think until recently, I was "deep down" still hoping for this to be the new Reddit, and once I came to terms with this being something else entirely my discontent with its activity levels dropped off. I view it now much more like I used to view old BBS forums for whatever niche — a nice community, small but knowable.
Which isn't to say I'm not excited for it to grow! But I'd take the slower quiet discussion I've had here over the years to faster noise any day. Just my two cents of course.
Hey, I just joined this week, but I agree with this sentiment. This struck me much more as a forum and I feel like I can comment on something more than a few hours old and still have it been relevant, which is much appreciated.
And actually get read too, thanks to the Activity Sort and Collapse Old Comments features. Which is how I immediately found this very comment of yours, 23 hours after the original Topic submission. That's my favorite thing about Tildes too. :)
2 days later and still finding relevant comments here! Definitely pulling on the old forum feels with periodic longer checkins.
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/740 ;)
Is it culturally okay to engage with older conversations here? Or is topic resurrection frowned upon?
Yep, it's okay. That's why the activity sort exists. I would generally advise people only do it if they have something meaningful to contribute to the old discussion or topic though. Please don't just respond "LOL" to an old joke or something like that. :P
If that's the will of the people and the creators, it is what it is. I don't necessarily mind a quieter but not dead forum, but I will admit that I am a bit disappointed in some of the pitches I remember reading long ago on Reddit. Ideas reddit would never realize with its scale but that could really change how we look at operating forums in general. But to date I'm sure I've seen any of those ideas come to light.
I'll see if I can hunt down the post. It was made 6 years ago but I'm pretty good at retracing my steps.
EDIT: Shame, I think I found the exact post and comments that excited me for the site. But it looks like the user deleted their account and all their comments.
There were initial ambitions and hopes that Tildes could be big. However, it was always envisioned to be a different type of big to Reddit, with a different culture and different processes to support that culture.
However, despite those ambitions, Tildes never grew in the way that people hoped. It just never took off in a big way. Instead, it stagnated.
For many people, that stagnation became comfortable and cosy. They stayed, and they enjoyed the intimacy of interacting with a smallish group of people.
For some people, that stagnation was disappointing. They moved on.
So, Tildes today is mostly populated by people who are happy with it being cosy and comfortable, and the ambitious people have mostly moved on.
However, that's not fixed in stone. Populations can and do change over time. And some people still have hope that Tildes can still turn around and become larger and more active. It's still possible, even if it doesn't seem likely.
Ha, I don't think the site is in THAT bad a state given that it's still invite only. There are much deader fully public sites with zero barrier to entry in making your own account.
I guess I just wish for some roadmap, or at least (de)-confirmation of some of the bigger questions. Does Tildes want to leave invite-only long term? Will it let users establish their own groups (or at least sub-groups)? If so, is there a proper moderation scheme for that inevitable growth to keep the culture in check? Will there be opportunities to make anonymous comments (at least anonymous to common users) without creating a bunch of throwaway accounts? is Tildes open to providing API's for potential extensions/3rd party apps/data crawling?
It's a bit of a shame that these were all questions I asked 5 years ago but I don't feel much closer to a concrete answer.
I know some people are saying that now is a bad time to try and grow Tildes because of all the discontent caused by Reddit, but why? The rules and plans that were made to help steer the platform toward the kind of culture the creator had in mind are still there, so why would welcoming “Reddit refugees” (I don’t know where I read that but I like the alliteration) be a bad thing?
I know Reddit is (in)famous for its memes and doom scrolling, but there are a lot of support communities, as well, that became vital to many during the pandemic. I’m very new here, but I think those communities would fit right in at Tildes.
Because, right now, there's a flood of people running away from Reddit, to seek out another Reddit.
That's different to people looking for a content aggregator that's unlike other aggregators they've seen.
The first group wants this to be another Reddit. The second group wants this to be the best Tildes it can be. The goals of each group are different.
If you have the link to the post, I believe there are a few websites that can show you the deleted comments. Way back machine is also worth a shot, it sometimes is able to back up a thread in its entirety.
Sure you can have your hand at it: https://old.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/8nj5kj/an_exreddit_administrator_is_aiming_to_create_the/
I tried a few methods, but this is also bad timing due to Pushshift getting cut last month. But maybe there is still hope for much older comments.
Didn't think of Wayback machine. That one may work
For me, part of the appeal of Tildes is that it is slow. You can't get lost scrolling because there are usually only 4-8 new posts and a few comments in each. It's easy to stay up to date. The other benefit of a small community is that you know most of the players and it's easy to give them benefit of the doubt. People are accountable for their interactions. I'm pretty happy with how Tildes has been running, even when it is quiet, but I also understand I may be a minority.
I get what you mean, but I do want to emphasize that I am kind of between your perspective and the "modern social media" perspective. I don't want nor need dozens of new posts per hour with thousands of comments in them. But still, I'd say a few dozen posts and a few hundred comments a day would be nice. Inevitably I won't be interested in most, so a few dozen would be enough to hopefully give one or two topics I want to engage with every day, (so ~ a dozen a week) and a few others that are just enlightening to read even if I don't have anything to discuss directly.
Using ~games as an example: It strangely does actually have a dozen posts in the last 24 hours. But under most other normal days, it'll simply have 4-5 posts with maybe 2-3 comments on average per post. There's not much discussion going on at all outside of recommendation threads. There is a Tears of the Kingdom thread, for a game with hundreds of hours of content that will likely be talked about all year around the internet, and it currently sits at 43 comments after 3 days.
I can't really call it a "dead forum", but if that's the upper boundary of discussion for what may likely be one of the most discussed games of the year, this place may not be what I personally desired. Especially since I mostly want to talk about more niche genres/mechanics that aren't even 0.1% as popular. What hope do I have getting responses and discussion going if the biggest game can't even garner 100 comments?
That's my perspective here and why I wish for more activity. Hard do dive deeper when even the "mainstream" is sparse.
Honestly, I at least would be more interested in deeper dives, and they would generate more activity. Only one person is really needed to say "TotK is good," and then we can move on to talking about how star fragments can let you fly forever or how Autobuilding an amalgamation of fruit will let you harvest trees without needing to climb because it moves all the fruit into position from anywhere in the build radius.
Yeah, those deep dive/mini guides are some of the best parts of specific communities. But I'd feel guilty flooding a place as general as ~games with specific game tips like those above (both of which are genius btw). Just because I'm addicted to TOTK doesn't mean other will be. Definietly one reason to at least experiment with sub groups.
Existing users can technically filter that out by filtering "Zelda" or even just "TOTK", but I know that custom tagging isn't always accurate. a sub-group would be self tagging.
I would fully participate in a ToTK thread like that. We’re still do early in the game even though we’ve put around 25 hours into it at this point. I want to know more tips and tricks without spoilers so I’ve been avoiding a lot of things I normally watch/read, and even have that sub on Reddit filtered out since it’s full of spoilers).
I also absolutely love this game, it’s what I wanted BOTW to be and it makes me as happy as that one disappointed me.
The thing is, the way to show that there's demand for a sub-group is to talk enthusiastically about your interests. Those particular tips might be too light on their own to deserve a post apiece, given how little useful discussion I think would come out of them, but starting a TOTK discussion post is a great start. Bring the content you want to see, and it'll shape how Tildes grows.
Related-unrelated but one of the things I love the most about TotK is how I feel like a genius for building a apple-collection auto builder, just to find out everyone else had the same genius idea. It's a beautiful feeling, being part of the zeitgeist.
To be frank, I don't have the cachet to say that. You've been around for 5 years, I've been around for less than 5 days. Saying you want more noise is fine, but I can't say that XD
I'm part of the diaspora. I'm not trying to make Tildes a Better Reddit in the way that Reddit was not trying to be a Better Digg. All these sites are their own things. I just want to help be a part of helping Tildes grow while keeping the obvious ethic alive. It's fantastic here, and I don't want it to change - but growth often does bring change.
Woodworking, metalworking, art, crafting, gardening, mycology, and environmentalism
I would love a mycology subject! really want to get into mycology as a whole, starting with doing some indoor mushroom growing next year.
Travel related content. None of that travel SEO stuff, but I would like to learn about interesting places fellow Tilderinos have visited recently (or not so recently).
We've had a couple of great threads recently posted by people who were going to be traveling and wanting advice about their destination. There hasn't been as much travelogue content, but it could be encouraged.
Oh, I second this! I would love this. My partner and I host couch surfing peeps a lot, and it's always a joy to show off why we love our city.
I've been one of the more pervasive content creators on a programming forum on Reddit -- I'm interested in continuing this in Tildes -- to be honest I'm only here because of the recent fiasco with 3rd Party API costs, but I'm interested in using this platform. Is standard markup supported? Inline images? 'Code' formatting?
Above the reply box there’s a ‘formatting help’ link that describes (I think all?) the available options. No inline images of any sort, but there’s lots of supported markdown including ‘code’ tags (with language specifiers) and some html tag support as well.
Niches. That's what I used reddit for. Specific programming languages, things related to specific cities, particular video games, hobbies. Tildes is much better than reddit for conversation about news/general interest topics, but hacker news fills that a bit as well.
There's plenty of interesting stuff on tildes, but low odds I come across a topic I particularly care about in a day
This type of thing comes with size I think - hard to have niches when even larger interests are not fully represented. That being said, I don’t let the lack of niches stop me from posting about my niche interests, as you never know who else might share them! Plus seeing other people here talk about their niches has exposed me to many I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. That being said I do get what you’re saying.
Yeah, this exactly -- just niche content about "Hey I figured out a new use for this relic in Peglin" or "Wow the background character in these three Simpsons Season 1 episodes has such weird eyes" or whatever. It's not even that like the communities are underdeveloped, it's that I'm not convinced there's a place for them in tildes's architecture?
Would I just post some weird-ass niche Peglin thing to ~games, or would there be a ~games.peglin eventually?
You would post to ~games with a
peglin
tag. If that became a popular enough thing, it could become a subgroup one day.That said, I’m not sure if those specific examples would be great unless you can think of some meaningful discussion coming out of them beyond general acknowledgement.
Okay! Thanks for your guidance, makes sense. Sounds like I'll need to find other more niche communities for that kind of stuff
I love the discussion aspect I'm seeing most so far here, and while I understand the concern about memes and the like, sometimes they do spark interesting talks. I also would love to have some more local area groups come into being for news etc (but I am aware that will take time and saturation of people from those places i.e. Australia news etc). The internet is a vast place, and the saturation of USA news and politics is sometimes overwhelming.
So long as, like others mentioned, low effort posts are fewer than the good discussions being had I think it will trend in a positive direction. I am also loving that (as far as I have seen so far anyhow) that there is little to no divisive, hateful content that is designed to evoke that "hate" reaction that algorithms seem to favour. The fact that is apparent is very comforting to me, especially as a woman and part of the rainbow crew.
Also, I am aware that I am a very new user here, so take the above with however many grains of salt necessary ;)
I'm Australian but live in the UK, and find it difficult to keep up with news from the antipodes. If you post good-quality Australian content to ~news, I'll be grateful.
I think I understand the thinking in limiting subforums (subtildes?) until theres more userbase, but I think allowing subforums outside of whats here already would be more conducive to growing the userbase. Build it, and they will come. I'm probably not going to post anything that would belong on, say, personalfinance or fire, until those specific forums actually exist.
I think that's the slower way of "building" it. People like to know they're in the right place, or are in the community specific to what they're asking. If it comes down to having to choose your preferences by groups you wish to subscribe to and tags you wish to filter - I'll be honest, having done quite a bit of UX work, etc... the average user won't understand or isn't going to do that and will just move on to something else.
Speaking for myself, I'm really hoping for the subforums to open up, because I don't really want to keep interacting in forums like "books" or "videos" but would rather participate in forums more specific to my interests.
Yes, but the thing to keep in mind about Tildes is that it is explicitly not geared towards volume or speed, it's geared towards quality. That takes time, there's no getting around it.
I don't think limiting the subjects does anything to enhance quality, but does the opposite.
The problem I see is most people, like me, simply won't post things unless the category already exists. Allowing those categories to simply exist would be a catalyst for content to fill that space.
The idea is that you can cater the front page to your preferences by choosing the groups you wish to subscribe to and the tags you wish to filter.
In practice, groups function more like categories, and they can have subgroups of their own. There is no limit to the number of subgroups they can have, so there are lots of spaces for growth. But I don't believe we will ever have ultra-specific groups as Reddit does, and groups will never be entirely independent sub-communities of their own.
By combining tags and groups, there's lots of flexibility on how you can use Tildes!
And welcome :D
I'll be honest - if it comes down to using categories and tags, I don't believe the average user will understand and/or do that, and it gives me a little less hope this site will grow big enough to facilitate most peoples interests that are more specific than the categories already here. Including my interests. I do love it here though
I know what I don't want... inline GIFs that automatically play. Or inline images that load automatically at all I guess. I like the way RES handles them - click to expand image links.
I do want more local tildes (city based). ~Australia, ~Queensland, ~Brisbane... If you want local content, where's the current place to see it?
How about absolutely no inline things at all, ever? :)
While that may change in the future, up until now we don't have enough users to justify localized groups such as those. We use tags for that!
And welcome :)
Hey... there is some inline elements, like the tweet text and topic-text expandos. ;) But yeah, there will likely never be any embedded image or video submissions on Tildes.
"How can @lou reveal he can't code without saying he can't code?". :P
Haha, no worries. I was just being pedantic and giving you a hard time. Everyone knew what you meant (including me). ❤️ :)
Content on Tildes is organised around topics, rather than geography. So, news about Australia is in ~news, information about Australian sports is in ~sports, documentaries about Australian history are in ~humanities, and so on. And, then the posts in each group tagged with a location, like "Australia.Qld.Brisbane".
https://tildes.net/~news?order=new&tag=australia&period=all
https://tildes.net/~humanities?tag=australia
https://tildes.net/~sports?tag=australia
I feel Reddit significantly nosedived once inline graphics became possible. As long as you had to link them (and only some browser addons allowed loading them inline) it was much better as you naturally focused on discussing the image linked, not on the "lulz"-part of it.
I wonder how this could be cleanly done. I like that tildes does not have freely created groups, but of course to do something like that you'd normally want it. Maybe we could have a single group for "city local", but that has persistently saved tag-filters for just that group? So that when you click into it, and you have previously selected that you only want to see the tags Hamburg, London and Rotterdam in that group, then that's what it'll be set to again?
Right now this is made using tags. If and when we get enough users for local groups to make sense, they may be added.
The main subreddits I usually hang around in are /r/soccer and /r/selfhosted, so anything like that would be great. Hopefully in the future there will be the ability to create your own groups to be more specific. I think that would probably get me coming back to this site more often than reading through ~sports or ~tech.
I think for a replacement for /r/selfhosted, people could post under ~tech but then use a "self-hosted server" tag along with other tags like "media serving", "cloud storage", "remote access", etc. to match the flairs available there.
With you on that. I thought I was dumb and just couldn't figure out how to subscribe to an NFL dedicate group, but I guess there just isn't one.
Just needs time to grow I guess.
Yeah, I really think the ability to subscribe to a tag (in your case, nfl) would be huge for the functionality of the site.
Sure, hockey, soccer, baseball, etc., are all "sports", but their fanbases are all so radically different that collapsing them into one group doesn't make sense in this case, in my opinion.
I'm also hoping for this. r/NFL was half the reason I was on reddit.
There is currently no need for that, but there's nothing preventing a ~sports.soccer (or any other sport) if there is enough content for it.
If that doesn't happen, the
soccer
tag is your friend ;)What is this "soccer" you speak of? I only know football, and the Americans have their own tag for that bizarre, hand-egg, concussion contest game of theirs. ;)
Yes, football is the correct way in my culture as well. But I'm so used to US English that I don't really mind anymore.
Eh, there are so many codes of football, and the word 'soccer' was coined in England from 'Association Football', and is analogous to 'rugger' for Rugby football.
I too am a regular r/soccer visitor, though I mostly only lurk. There are two of us who made it here! I also visit my club's sub incessantly, but I have little hope of finding a replacement for that off Reddit.
Yep, I also frequent r/fcbayern. I have tried some other of my club's "fan" websites and they just don't feel the same as the subreddit.
Something with r/personalfinance and r/DataisBeautiful
I would love for people to share more of the things they’ve created! It sounds like we have a very diverse and talented bunch here already and it would be neat to see what y’all are up to!
I would like to see people that work in business, marketing, management, and people in leadership talking about the difficulties and intricacies of their jobs. IT environments are remarkably anti-management, anti-marketing, and anti-business, but it stands to reason that there must be lots of interesting smart people in those fields and I would love to see their points of view on things.
I work in marketing. Specifically to lawyers. The biggest thing I can say about my job is I fucking hate lawyers. They don’t know how to use computers even when they’re my age (32). I’d love to get more into technical stuff, and I know it’s out there, but I would love to read more about how stuff works than actually doing it. Maybe I’ll see some of that around here without the condescension of not being a coder.
I work in marketing / advertising, would love to see more discussion around that in a forum not full of shills and bots.
It would be nice to have a place to discuss without people who are so far up their company’s ass they’ve drunk the koolaid of their brand. It would also be nice to disseminate various marketing techniques so others can be aware of them. Just because I work in marketing doesn’t mean I approve of the incessant advertising 24/7 everywhere.
Do you have any particular topics of interest in tech? I'm certainly no coder, I'm a network engineer, but I might have some interesting and/or niche YouTube channels or other resources of a topic you're interested in I could recommend.
Nothing specific. I just want to be able to understand more thoroughly what can be done and what is used to do it, if that makes sense? I’ve been trying for a very long time to learn to code using various applications. I can do basic html from my MySpace/LJ days, and even did it to some extent on a drupal website for maintenance at a previous job, but I would love to just understand various types of code better, even if I can’t code.
I watch a lot of YouTube (and have premium because I hate ads that much) so I would be more than happy to watch more. I love watching Atomic Shrimp get into the nitty gritty about some of his engineering-type endeavors so, anything like that will be awesome.
Well, my particular niche is Wi-Fi, so if you're interested in how data gets transmitted via wiggly air, here's a couple YouTube suggestions. I'm not 100% sure how accessible they are to someone who doesn't have a background in it, but personally I don't tend to mind watching things I don't know much about? I absorb what I can and end up with a list of things to google at the end lol.
7Signal posts a lot of videos about various topics, some of their content gets a little into marketing because they do sell a product, but a lot of it's quite educational.
Wireless LAN Professionals is a group that runs regular conferences about Wi-Fi, and they post all the talks from the conferences online. I think these tend to be more fun than 7Signals, because the talks are generally less formal and the attendees of the conferences vote on what they want to see talked about.
I love that! I have actually often wondered how that works so I appreciate the information. I also am someone who will watch/listen to content and absorb what I can!
I've worn a lot of different hats over the years, including a peculiar position at the intersection of IT, law, business, and healthcare. I've seen quite a bit of the guts of how corporations function. Spouse works with Fortune 100 company marketing teams on their websites. I've managed an IT team reporting directly to C-suite. All I can say (without going into specifics that might identify us further) is that those experiences have made me even more anti-management, anti-marketing, and anti-business.
I'm "retired" to a purely technical position these days. It's a deep relief to have gotten out of that hateful world into a role where I can actually build and fix things again. No more worrying about how to tiptoe around Machiavellian sociopaths, greedheads, Dunning-Kruger and Peter Principle exemplars, pathological liars, and the weary, irritable few who actually keep things working.
This is not an exaggeration - I suspect it's fundamental to most organizations, capitalist or otherwise. Imagine this model if "Always Cheat" keeps winning. Tildes tries to keep the trustworthy cooperators, so there may be issues with non-overlapping cultures.
As to the composition of the Tildes user population, I'm not sure it's ever going to have specialist "forums" that invite business, law, management, and marketing professions for extended discussion. Tildes invites have mostly been seeded in sub-Reddits where technology professionals gather. Early on, there was greater diversity as the first invitees brought in their social networks, but it may be a while before there's that second wave of wider invitation from the current user influx.
I want to see non-US-centric news of the world. I really enjoyed /r/Anime_Titties for news.
Same here, and it would be even better here on Tildes, without the bots and CCP shills.
I gotta say, though, the way that sub got its name is just classic "Reddit is broken, go get your tools" DIY fixing.
I had no idea, that subreddit is what it is. What is the story behind it getting that name? Enlighten me with the lore.
The full story is here, and it's well worth the read. There's more and better elsewhere, but this is a good start. Full of drama, conflict, stupidity, and the kind of jaw-dropping shit that makes you realize as you're pulling your jaw back up again that if you're gonna do that enough times you should really be passing buttery popcorn goodness through it. The linked timeline above actually starts at the peak of the conflict, and about half of it takes place within three days. But I'll start at the beginning.
The TL;DR is that the original r/worldpolitics sub, where people ostensibly went to discuss world politics, changed over time. It got to be sort of carelessly managed, then not really managed at all, with some sort of anarchist flavor to it that led to the sub being overrun with a good amount of porn (including the sub banner) with a trend toward hentai. This river of porn and discussion thereof flared up at some point around a specific post involving a controversially indeterminate-aged young anime girl with impressively sized 'tracts of land,' so to speak, and the internal conflict reached a crisis. At this point the people who really wanted to discuss world politics broke off and created r/anime_titties, and that is now the default world politics sub. Still a lot of bad actors (conspiracy theorists, CCP shills, etc) but no hentai, no porn, and very specifically, no anime titties. Then r/worldpolitics got banned, then got unbanned, and is now full of porn just like it always wanted to be. The End.
EDITED TO ADD: I found another longer but better TL;DR here.)
Sorry it took me so long to see this and reply; over the last couple of days I deleted 10 years of Reddit content across accounts. They're still alive, but I've only left a single month of history on this one (same name) and depending on what reddit does next week I think that's the end. I really, really struggled with it morally, because there's a large part of me that feels an obligation to those I helped and who helped me, and those who will come behind me looking for the same. But what I am supporting by leaving it there is too much for me, so in the end I decided to just zap it. I used the GDPR data I requested last week to do it; redact.dev has a tool where you just plug in the GDPR zip file which locates the old content, and then API calls do the rest, so I figured I better git 'er done while I still could.
I feel a great deal lighter, surprisingly enough. Really glad I did it.
I agree, this site seems like it’s uniquely suited to host this type of news and I hope we see more of it. As an American, it’s hard to get news from the outside world without a specific American tilt to it. I loved anime titties for the great news content it had, but the comments were hard to stomach often.
It really is. And I get a good chuckle every time I'm reminded of that story, so thank you!
Bonus points if the group is also called anime_titties?
Just to keep the in-joke alive which by that point will be really difficult to explain. 😅
But yeah, much like what I said above about city-local discussion, country-local news would ideally have a way where a single group exists that has persistent tag-filters for just that group so you can select any number of countries and that filtering is persisted for each time you go to the group.
One thing I've really liked reading through on Reddit is the scuffles threads on /r/hobbydrama. In a way it's a small area of Reddit that actually has a similar feel to what Tildes seems to be like - long, winding and niche discussions which can go continue for days rather than getting caught up in getting as many upvotes as possible with low effort replies. Anyway, maybe there's a possibility to have a monthly thread on ~hobbies with a 'what's going on in your hobby at the moment?' theme? I've found it's a nice way to hear what other people are passionate about and without having to know all the background already.
On another note, it would be cool to see a space for feminism/ women's rights. Although /r/TwoXChromosones does have its issues, I did appreciate that there was a place on Reddit that was focused on women's perspectives and it feels like there isn't one place on Tildes for that. Like stuff about abortion rights would probably go in ~news but I guess feminism would be in ~humanities ? I'm not sure I fully understand tags yet, but if I were to post things in those two different groups and give them the same tag would I be able to find them in the same place? Or do tags operate as sort of subgroups within specific groups?
Not really. Not specifically. Maybe. :P
The history or philosophy of feminism would be in ~humanities, because ~humanities is the umbrella category for history, philosophy, religion, and so on. However, a news story about feminism would go in ~news. Reviews of a new book written about feminism would go in ~books. A discussion about the intersection of feminism and queer rights would go in ~lgbt. Expressing feminism in life, marriage, and how raise children as feminists would go in ~life. General questions about people's opinions on feminism could be raised in ~talk.
The slices of content are different on Tildes than on Reddit.
My understanding is that tags go across groups? so you would be able to find them in the same search I think.
The mods here are really good about helping you retag and move posts though so don't stress too much on whether you're posting it in the "right place" if you're doing your best.
I wonder if there could be some general "informative write-up" group or subgroup for posts like on /r/hobbydrama, because those really are informative. Not just about the drama, but about the communities and niche hobbies themselves. Some of the posts from there don't feel like drama, but more like articles about internet history, major sports events and controversies, theme park shenanigans, how a game's development got so screwed up, etc. I think the sorts of explanations you find of ongoing events on /r/outoftheloop could also fit in such a group/subgroup.
I think the main concern would be whether there would be enough posts (and people willing to write them) to merit a whole (sub-)group. I'd love to see some more serious discussions of some of the topics and events that have been covered on hobbydrama.
Be the conversation you want to see in the world? If you post a writeup that would have fit in r/hobbydrama to ~hobbies, you're sure to find people interested in talking about it. And with more people showing interest in it, there's a stronger argument for a subgroup.
The thing is, if that content is happening a lot on ~talk, pretty quickly there would be pressure to create a ~talk.cmv or something like it so that people who aren't interested in that vein of conversation can unsubscribe.
There was discussion in the past of having the best content of subsidiary groups rise to visibility of the parent group even if you weren't subscribed to the sub-group, but there haven't been enough sub-groups established yet to make that feature needed.
But that is to say, be the content you want to see in the world, and it'll help shape how Tildes grows and how development is prioritized.
Dedicated NFL and fantasy football subreddits down the road would be awesome. Probably a ways off, more pages probably dilutes the conversation at this stage.
I've been a part of another forum for ~20 years that may be of interest to you: https://forums.footballsfuture.com/
Dude that's awesome, I honestly didn't think there was that big of a discussion board anywhere other than reddit. Much appreciated!
I am brand spanking new here, do forgive me if some of these already exist. I'm slow at feeling things out so it will take me a minute.
I'd love to see some women's spaces. Places like r/menopause and r/abrathatfits for example. The bigger subs were just too much and turned super toxic. Smaller, specific spaces are more palatable to me. r/nosleep was also a fave. I could get lost for hours in that sub. Important places like r/auntienetwork for support too.
Once new users get more settled the site will almost certainly have another call for new group suggestions. A specific women group has been suggested the past couple of times but not followed through on because of the assumption that it a.) won't see enough use and b.) since everyone is subbed to every group by default it won't actually be a women's space and will just end up being a bunch of dudes mansplaining (~lgbt functions because quite a few of the sites most active users are lgbt, possibly even a majority).
This is sort of a chicken and egg problem. I hope enough hens can come out in force next time.
If you want to make the strongest possible case for it, I would suggest archiving and bookmarking a few of the posts from the subreddits you like as examples of how you think the Tildes community would use the group.
Content related to Counter-Strike and the competitive scene there. I considered making a post in the ~games group and posting post-match discussion threads, but I'm not sure that there is a sufficient audience for it here.
I thought about this too, and I'd be interested, but I feel like post-match discussions might be a bit too much. Maybe just a post per tournament?
Yes, that's a good point. Maybe a good solution would be a 'megathread' for the tournament and a parent comment for discussion about individual games. I may post one for Blast Spring and see how it's received!
I like being able to see current news events and hear everyone’s viewpoints on the latest.
Gun topics. I.e., types of interesting firearms and their history, as well as ideas for modern gun control that don't involve ineffectual bans (like tackling toxic masculinity and the cult of the gun).
I was thinking about this too. I'm involved in several competitive shooting sports and hunting/fishing, and none of those things are represented here. It would be great if firearms had their own topic or even a tag of sports like sports.shooting or something like that.
While top-level groups are static, you can make any tags you want when posting. The auto-suggest when typing a tag is just that - suggestions of popular tags - not a limiting set.
I saw food but didn't see cooking. As in techniques, thoughts on tools, etc.
New to Tildes but if staying with text is at the core of the values here I understand how it might be difficult to use gifs for recipes etc.
Regardless, I'm excited to have been invited here and look forward to checking things out.
Filmmaking/TV production! I work in the industry and enjoy having discussions about the craft or answering questions on places like /r/Filmmakers, /r/cinematography, and /r/FilmIndustryLA. As I’m trying to leave Reddit (I’m a new Tildes user) I’d love to have those discussions here.
?tag=filmmaking and ?tag=cinematography will probably interest you then. There are quite a few film buffs here, and video essays on films and filmmaking are usually quite popular. But feel free to post more content of your own related to them too!
I will happily forego being able to mindlessly scroll through cute pics of cats if we can somehow get r/nosleep in here.
Something else I'll miss is the lack of subs for specialized professions like r/accounting, r/legaladvice, r/insurance, r/askhistorians, etc. May not be feasible to have subcommunities of that level of specialization with a small userbase, which is kinda a shame.
I think those ask profession subs will grow over time as people can verify their qualifications and an audience builds.
I think the problem with creating an equivalent for creative subs like r/nosleep and the like over here is that those subs throw up some good content because so many people are writing. You need to skim over all the flavour of the month 'I found fifteen instructions left by my boss, didn't follow them and am now being eaten by an eldritch horror' stuff to get to the genuinely good pieces. But you only get that 5% of good stories because of the sheer volume being created there's statistically going to be some quality horror.
/r/coffee and /r/espresso taught me a lot of things during the lockdowns. I'd love to see them here!
Topic-specific news are another one. Reddit is a great place to find news on computing, Android/iPhone, politics, health, and so on, and it would be great to get that here.
Having just arrived from Reddit, there is a lot of areas missing to help compete with /r
Some of these things probably won’t ever have a place on Tildes, such as image/gif support, adult content, etc. Those things are fine but not really the focus here. The goal on Tildes is to be a place where you can come to share and discuss content with a bit more depth than you’d see elsewhere. So the goal is t really to compete with Reddit but to be an alternative. That being said I would love for this place to grow to the point that local groups are lively and needed!
You might be well served by reading through the Tildes philosophy documents that explain the goals of this community.
https://docs.tildes.net/
I don’t get it: So you literally just want Reddit?
Most of these “features” are what encouraged low quality shitposts, dubiously pirated adult content and rehashed memes that drove the site into its current state of mediocrity.
Reddit will still have all the endless reposts of 9gag content you crave and those “high quality subs” like “justiceserved” that encourage rage posting and endless arguments in the threads. Just hang out there and you’ve got everything you want already.
This is a harsh comment and goes against the spirit of community on this site. It’s biting, and it shows a brand new user the door in a bad way. It’s fine to disagree with someone, but please try to take the sting out of your words when talking to them.
I’m not trying to be “biting” I genuinely was asking a question: if someone wants the identical features and content of the site you just left…the exact ones that drove people away from said site…..why not stay there?
I understand that you weren’t trying to be biting, but can you see how it might come across that way anyway? “Endless reposts of 9gag content you crave” is the opposite of charitable, for example, and feels like a thorn.
Also a lot of the people leaving reddit like much of the content that’s there but are being pushed out due to the decision about third party apps. It makes sense to me that they would want to find new communities with that content, so I don’t think it’s particularly out of the question that someone would express that.
I personally agree with you that a lot of the content described here is stuff I wouldn’t want to see on Tildes, but I also don’t want to see aggressive takedowns here either.
We've discussed this before: here, and here.
a Vexillology and a Maps community!
Frankly, I could do with a little less of this recent rash of poll-like posts, especially ones which are on so general a topic as to be practically guaranteed to get bites from almost every fish in the sea.
Personally, I like it. It's a nice way to talk about things going on in your life that maybe aren't interesting enough to start a new thread. Looking around, those threads are also pretty popular. I say go for it! If someone doesn't like a given thread (there are plenty I'm not interested in), they can find another that they do like or start their own.
Groups of learners in any subject. Languages, math, guitar, to name a few. Also, text reviews and quality opinions that last forever, and as other users said, creative writing, like writing prompts and malicious compliance.
Not sure if I already posted here but I love reading about the new changes being made to Android beta updates. On Reddit, Mishaal Rahman usually crossposts his tweets onto r/Android to talk about new things the Android developers on working on. Would love to see stuff like that under ~tech.
If I were to post my artwork to an art community here to share with other artists for discussion purposes and not for sales/advertising/promoting my work, is that acceptable? I would always have a thorough write up to go along, and it would be great to just talk about it for conversation.
Yep. If you're genuinely looking to start discussions about, or receive advice/critique on your artwork then it's perfectly acceptable to post about that (and share pics of said art) in ~creative. We just don't want low-effort, contextless, "here is a pic of a thing I made" image posts, with no effort made by the OP to foster discussions to go along with it.
There's a "what are you working on" bi-weekly mega thread that helps corral the self-promo, and does foster interesting discussion!
I’m not sure how this community might take it, but one of my favorite communities on Reddit was vaporents. They were focused on vaporization of cannabis/marijuana. It’s a niche of a niche.
I think most folks will go back to fuckcombustion, but if there was interest I’d love to see a niche carved out here.
I'm in that niche, and I wonder what category "trees" would live on in this site?
~hobbies would work, tagged appropriately
The hobby specific forums are what I really get into so I hope to see a thriving community of them here!
I'm interested in more outdoor sports like camping hiking backpacking snowboarding skiing biking, ect. And more how to and repair stuff.
Comic book community/subs category's
I would love something similar to red flag deals or buyapcsales on reddit. Or along those lines, a community for frugality and discussion regarding products. I don't know how the difference in countries would play into it. Maybe via a flair?