Welcome! In general, conversation on Tildes is organized around content rather than location. So, if you want to discuss UK sports, you would post that in ~sports, UK news would go in ~news, day...
Welcome! In general, conversation on Tildes is organized around content rather than location. So, if you want to discuss UK sports, you would post that in ~sports, UK news would go in ~news, day to day posting in ~life. We use a pretty extensive tag system to stay organized, which allows users to filter by tagged location if they would like.
That being said, you're certainly not the first to request a geo specific group. With our given size I'm not sure it makes a ton of sense — I imagine a UK group would have a couple dozen users at most. But maybe down the line it would make sense! For now feel free to post in the group most relevant to the topic at hand, and let the community take it from there. Tag to the extent you're willing, but we also have community members who are happy to help tag and keep things organizes. I see @mycketforvirrad has already done so on this post (check the topic log in the sidebar). Not quite sure when they manage to sleep ;)
I totally respect the route which you guys are going down and that's your prerogative. I think it's something that should be strongly considered as the site hopefully grows. In similar sites, I...
I totally respect the route which you guys are going down and that's your prerogative. I think it's something that should be strongly considered as the site hopefully grows. In similar sites, I find myself almost exclusively in the UK "sphere" as opposed to the international/US.
In comparison to Reddit, Tildes is more homogeneous and groups are merely categories rather than sub-communities with their own separate culture, mods, and policies. Even if there was an UK group,...
In comparison to Reddit, Tildes is more homogeneous and groups are merely categories rather than sub-communities with their own separate culture, mods, and policies. Even if there was an UK group, that group would not house only people from the UK, but rather a population largely similar to the one you would find outside of that group.
To offer a counterpoint, there's a post up talking about product recommendations. It's focussed exclusively as far as I can see on US products, and therefore mostly excludes participation by most...
Tildes is organized around content rather than location
To offer a counterpoint, there's a post up talking about product recommendations. It's focussed exclusively as far as I can see on US products, and therefore mostly excludes participation by most of the worlf, even if not most users of this site.
I think that’s a fair consideration, but anyone is welcome to post recommendations in that thread (and more generally, participate in others). The fact that that thread is focused on US products...
I think that’s a fair consideration, but anyone is welcome to post recommendations in that thread (and more generally, participate in others). The fact that that thread is focused on US products is not by design but rather because of where the discussion has gone following the community. If you have no -US recommendations (for example) I encourage you to post them there — I am sure there are non-US users that would appreciate it!
Coalescing around interests will necessarily sometimes have a regional bent, and 'non-geographic' in cases where geography is explicitly relevant usually means 'US and them'. It's not terminal, as...
Coalescing around interests will necessarily sometimes have a regional bent, and 'non-geographic' in cases where geography is explicitly relevant usually means 'US and them'. It's not terminal, as you say the community leads the direction of discussions and it's open to all, but can sometimes feel slightly exclusionary.
As a non-American who finds US-defaultism extremely irritating, tildes isn't big enough for country groups. If you want to discuss a particular country, put it in your post title. If we start...
As a non-American who finds US-defaultism extremely irritating, tildes isn't big enough for country groups. If you want to discuss a particular country, put it in your post title.
If we start seeing explicitly non-US posts filled with US-flavoured irrelevance, then country-specific groups are warranted.
This is true. However, I'm not sure what the solution is beyond attracting more non-US users. I'm not sure that having a ~uk group will attract UK users, especially if activity levels are low...
This is true. However, I'm not sure what the solution is beyond attracting more non-US users. I'm not sure that having a ~uk group will attract UK users, especially if activity levels are low enough to seem "dead". It feels like a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.
I mean I'd subscribe just because the UK is awesome, but I strongly believe that an article about Manchester United should be under ~sports, a post about Neil Gaiman should go in ~books, and a...
I mean I'd subscribe just because the UK is awesome, but I strongly believe that an article about Manchester United should be under ~sports, a post about Neil Gaiman should go in ~books, and a video about the London Underground should be under ~design. IMHO, that is what makes the most sense. Right now, at least.
Please, keep the suggestions and observations coming! But I gotta be honest: personally, I really like the way Tildes currently works in that regard, and don't see a reason why we should incorporate some mechanics and expectations that only make sense on Reddit.
Tildes' way of doing things is really nice if you give it a chance ;)
As mentioned by @gpl, we currently use tags for locations.
I will be the first to admit that before I even signed up to tildes, I looked for a UK group, but I don't think this is a good idea. (This is a long explanation, and makes some points that some...
I will be the first to admit that before I even signed up to tildes, I looked for a UK group, but I don't think this is a good idea.
(This is a long explanation, and makes some points that some might find mean. However, I think that my conclusion is balanced and not mean, so please read to the end, even if you see something you don't like at the start.)
The motivation for a UK group
I grew up in Australia, and while I didn't watch much television, a lot of what was on was American. If something offbeat was needed to fill in some time at the end of the news, it was always some wild car chase in America. The ABC ran a fair bit of Australian-made childrens' programmes, but Sesame Street was there too. I now live in the UK, and while it's mostly British programming on television, there's a lot of American stuff there too. The whole English-speaking world sees America on TV, but America doesn't see the rest of the world.
(Don't tell me about Bluey and Peppa Pig. There's not much culture to be learned there.)
On Reddit, it's not uncommon for Americans to wander into threads in /r/australia or one of the UK subreddits and start talking about America, completely unaware that everyone else was talking about a different country. It's only Americans, too: everyone else picks up the cues that this isn't America, but Americans are never exposed to those cues.
(The 'bottle of water' and 'everyone always says "cunt"' things are illustrative, because the people who make those comments on Reddit don't seem to know anything else about the UK or Australia.)
If you're not American, but have spent a few years on Reddit's default subs, you'll know that Lowe's is a chain of hardware shops in America, just from reading discussions and memes. Unless you've lived in Australia, you won't know that Lowes is a chain of discount clothes shops. An Australian reading a thread about the American Lowe's would twig pretty quickly; Americans reading threads about the Australian Lowes demonstrably don't.
The problem is the worst in politics. Australia has never had political parties with the same positions as the American Republican and Democrat parties; the UK hasn't had a two-party system with those positions since the early nineteenth century (and those views had their heydey in the late eighteenth century). The apparent permanency of those parties in the US political system (to the point that Supreme Court Justices are seen to have party affiliations) and the identity-oriented rather than policy-oriented nature of American politics means that Americans reading about other countries' politics always end up reducing it to American politics, which never ends well, because the Americans who make those reductions get rather upset about everyone else being unimpressed with their eighteenth-century ideas of freedom. (The UK and Australia have almost all of the rights that America keeps going on about, anyway.)
The problem became so bad that one of the UK subreddits (I forgot which) had to ban 'DAE hate Americans' posts that were made as a backlash.
Why a UK group is a bad idea
This isn't Reddit. The text-only nature of this site and its rate-limited sign-up process mean that it's not going to get the thoughtless refugees from Reddit, and the problems I described above aren't going to happen here.
This isn't Reddit. It's one community, which posts in groups, not a bunch of communities in their own subreddits. UK tilderinos don't need UK-oriented refuges from an overwhelming onslaught of Americaness, because discussions here are about deeper issues where national identities and cultures don't matter so much. We're here to talk about things that are more substantial than our favourite type of sausage roll, how driving a car is usually cheaper than catching the train, or asking what song everyone's local ice cream van plays.
The Online Safety Bill. The UK's Online Safety Bill has passed the House of Commons and is now making its way through the House of Lords. This bill places considerable responsibilities on social media sites, and empowers the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Office for Communications (Ofcom) to levy hefty fines for non-compliance. Once enacted, the bill will apply to any social media platform that is either UK-based, or has a significant number of UK users. Having a dedicated UK group may result in Ofcom declaring that Tildes has a significant number of UK users and is therefore in scope. While Tildes is Canadian, the extraterritorial aspects of the bill could cause some pretty serious problems for Deimos and other people involved in running the site.
I like the non-territorial nature of the boards at Tildes. There isn't really the userbase for country-level boards and the discussions could take place on existing boards. I'm also not sure how I...
I like the non-territorial nature of the boards at Tildes. There isn't really the userbase for country-level boards and the discussions could take place on existing boards.
I'm also not sure how I feel about the idea of a ~world board, as again: I think that much of the discussion that could take place on it could be accommodated on the existing boards. That being said, a sort of slice-of-life 'what's happening where you live?' recurring topic in ~talk might be nice.
I agree in general but I ended up unsubscribing from /r/CasualUK once the constant stream of posts about baked beans, jammies dodgers and queueing got to be a bit eye-rollingly circlejerky.
I agree in general but I ended up unsubscribing from /r/CasualUK once the constant stream of posts about baked beans, jammies dodgers and queueing got to be a bit eye-rollingly circlejerky.
Not to mention all the "no politics" but apparently not considering royalism to be political... frustrating place and as you say, quite boring in the end.
Not to mention all the "no politics" but apparently not considering royalism to be political... frustrating place and as you say, quite boring in the end.
Don't think we need country specific ~ at this moment. There are not enough posts/comments coming about any specific country. I haven't seen any r/AmericanDefaultism here either or maybe just...
Don't think we need country specific ~ at this moment. There are not enough posts/comments coming about any specific country. I haven't seen any r/AmericanDefaultism here either or maybe just didn't notice. And for major topic of month there are dedicated threads like those Ukraine Russia war and AI chatbots ones.
Welcome! In general, conversation on Tildes is organized around content rather than location. So, if you want to discuss UK sports, you would post that in ~sports, UK news would go in ~news, day to day posting in ~life. We use a pretty extensive tag system to stay organized, which allows users to filter by tagged location if they would like.
That being said, you're certainly not the first to request a geo specific group. With our given size I'm not sure it makes a ton of sense — I imagine a UK group would have a couple dozen users at most. But maybe down the line it would make sense! For now feel free to post in the group most relevant to the topic at hand, and let the community take it from there. Tag to the extent you're willing, but we also have community members who are happy to help tag and keep things organizes. I see @mycketforvirrad has already done so on this post (check the topic log in the sidebar). Not quite sure when they manage to sleep ;)
I totally respect the route which you guys are going down and that's your prerogative. I think it's something that should be strongly considered as the site hopefully grows. In similar sites, I find myself almost exclusively in the UK "sphere" as opposed to the international/US.
In comparison to Reddit, Tildes is more homogeneous and groups are merely categories rather than sub-communities with their own separate culture, mods, and policies. Even if there was an UK group, that group would not house only people from the UK, but rather a population largely similar to the one you would find outside of that group.
With one eye open. 😉
This is actually really smart. Thanks for the heads up.
To offer a counterpoint, there's a post up talking about product recommendations. It's focussed exclusively as far as I can see on US products, and therefore mostly excludes participation by most of the worlf, even if not most users of this site.
I guess the risk is unintentional homogeneity.
I think that’s a fair consideration, but anyone is welcome to post recommendations in that thread (and more generally, participate in others). The fact that that thread is focused on US products is not by design but rather because of where the discussion has gone following the community. If you have no -US recommendations (for example) I encourage you to post them there — I am sure there are non-US users that would appreciate it!
Coalescing around interests will necessarily sometimes have a regional bent, and 'non-geographic' in cases where geography is explicitly relevant usually means 'US and them'. It's not terminal, as you say the community leads the direction of discussions and it's open to all, but can sometimes feel slightly exclusionary.
As a non-American who finds US-defaultism extremely irritating, tildes isn't big enough for country groups. If you want to discuss a particular country, put it in your post title.
If we start seeing explicitly non-US posts filled with US-flavoured irrelevance, then country-specific groups are warranted.
This is true. However, I'm not sure what the solution is beyond attracting more non-US users. I'm not sure that having a ~uk group will attract UK users, especially if activity levels are low enough to seem "dead". It feels like a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.
I mean I'd subscribe just because the UK is awesome, but I strongly believe that an article about Manchester United should be under ~sports, a post about Neil Gaiman should go in ~books, and a video about the London Underground should be under ~design. IMHO, that is what makes the most sense. Right now, at least.
Please, keep the suggestions and observations coming! But I gotta be honest: personally, I really like the way Tildes currently works in that regard, and don't see a reason why we should incorporate some mechanics and expectations that only make sense on Reddit.
Tildes' way of doing things is really nice if you give it a chance ;)
As mentioned by @gpl, we currently use tags for locations.
And welcome to Tildes :)
I will need to learn more about Tildes and groups (it's only my first day), so I will be continue experimenting.
No problem! You should start here ;)
I will be the first to admit that before I even signed up to tildes, I looked for a UK group, but I don't think this is a good idea.
(This is a long explanation, and makes some points that some might find mean. However, I think that my conclusion is balanced and not mean, so please read to the end, even if you see something you don't like at the start.)
The motivation for a UK group
I grew up in Australia, and while I didn't watch much television, a lot of what was on was American. If something offbeat was needed to fill in some time at the end of the news, it was always some wild car chase in America. The ABC ran a fair bit of Australian-made childrens' programmes, but Sesame Street was there too. I now live in the UK, and while it's mostly British programming on television, there's a lot of American stuff there too. The whole English-speaking world sees America on TV, but America doesn't see the rest of the world.
(Don't tell me about Bluey and Peppa Pig. There's not much culture to be learned there.)
On Reddit, it's not uncommon for Americans to wander into threads in /r/australia or one of the UK subreddits and start talking about America, completely unaware that everyone else was talking about a different country. It's only Americans, too: everyone else picks up the cues that this isn't America, but Americans are never exposed to those cues.
(The 'bottle of water' and 'everyone always says "cunt"' things are illustrative, because the people who make those comments on Reddit don't seem to know anything else about the UK or Australia.)
If you're not American, but have spent a few years on Reddit's default subs, you'll know that Lowe's is a chain of hardware shops in America, just from reading discussions and memes. Unless you've lived in Australia, you won't know that Lowes is a chain of discount clothes shops. An Australian reading a thread about the American Lowe's would twig pretty quickly; Americans reading threads about the Australian Lowes demonstrably don't.
The problem is the worst in politics. Australia has never had political parties with the same positions as the American Republican and Democrat parties; the UK hasn't had a two-party system with those positions since the early nineteenth century (and those views had their heydey in the late eighteenth century). The apparent permanency of those parties in the US political system (to the point that Supreme Court Justices are seen to have party affiliations) and the identity-oriented rather than policy-oriented nature of American politics means that Americans reading about other countries' politics always end up reducing it to American politics, which never ends well, because the Americans who make those reductions get rather upset about everyone else being unimpressed with their eighteenth-century ideas of freedom. (The UK and Australia have almost all of the rights that America keeps going on about, anyway.)
The problem became so bad that one of the UK subreddits (I forgot which) had to ban 'DAE hate Americans' posts that were made as a backlash.
Why a UK group is a bad idea
Just as background: the concept of location-based groups has been discussed quite a few times before, such as here and here.
I like the non-territorial nature of the boards at Tildes. There isn't really the userbase for country-level boards and the discussions could take place on existing boards.
I'm also not sure how I feel about the idea of a ~world board, as again: I think that much of the discussion that could take place on it could be accommodated on the existing boards. That being said, a sort of slice-of-life 'what's happening where you live?' recurring topic in ~talk might be nice.
Could we try to make it more like r/CasualUK and not r/unitedkingdom? r/uk was horribly dire...
I agree in general but I ended up unsubscribing from /r/CasualUK once the constant stream of posts about baked beans, jammies dodgers and queueing got to be a bit eye-rollingly circlejerky.
Not to mention all the "no politics" but apparently not considering royalism to be political... frustrating place and as you say, quite boring in the end.
Absolutely! CasualUK's inception and growth is probably the only UK success story in recent years
Don't think we need country specific ~ at this moment. There are not enough posts/comments coming about any specific country. I haven't seen any r/AmericanDefaultism here either or maybe just didn't notice. And for major topic of month there are dedicated threads like those Ukraine Russia war and AI chatbots ones.