“Which group should this go to?”, “Which tags should I use?”, and other posting anxieties.
A short story
Last night, I posted an article about fraud related to COVID funding in the United States.
I debated about where to put it. Was it ~news since it was an investigative report that was just released? ~finance because it was about money? ~health because it was about COVID?
In reading through other comments here, especially related to our current group structure I’ve noticed other people expressing similar sentiments about submitting things.
The same goes for tagging your topic. What are the right tags? What if I use the wrong one? There’s a non-negligible amount of anxiety regarding submitting things to the site.
If you go to the article I posted, and then click Topic Log on the sidebar, you can see what got changed. I realized I forgot to add the tag usa. You can then see that another user changed the capitalization on my title, moved my post from ~news to ~health, and added additional tags.
The betrayal(?)
Someone moved my post? Someone changed my title? Without telling me?! 😡
Yes, they did, and I’m here to tell you that I couldn’t be happier about that. It’s not a betrayal; it’s a collaboration. 🥰
Submissions on Tildes aren’t like other places. You won’t get your hand slapped here for not following the right protocol, especially because there’s not a fully clear protocol in the first place. Topic placement, tagging, and titling are all things that often require judgment calls. It’s not uncommon for the titles we see on Tildes to actually differ from published titles to make them less clickbaity or clearer, for example.
Furthermore, Tildes isn’t a place where people are competing to post content. There’s no karma to be harvested or influencers to influence. On other sites, big news items will often get dozens or hundreds of duplicate posts because, on other sites, who posted the content matters a whole lot. People will post and repost things because it’s important that they, individually, get “credit” for that.
Tildes works a bit differently, with submissions being owned more by the community at large rather than individual posters. It doesn’t mean we don’t have our own content (and it definitely doesn’t mean someone can or will edit the actual body of a post, like what I’m writing here), but more that the content’s place and appearance in the community is something we work together on. If you want to discuss something and you see someone already posted it here, that’s not a bummer — it’s a great thing! It saves you some work, plus you know at least one other person is on the same page as you and wants to discuss the same thing.
Which group should this go to? Which tags should I use?
Don’t worry too much about those things! We’ll collaborate on them. There are several users here who are librarians of Tildes, dutifully organizing submissions behind the scenes.
When I first started posting, I was nervous about getting my tags and title exactly right. I’d occasionally post a title with a typo and cringe, hard, wondering if I needed to delete the post entirely.
Now, when I post, I’m happy that if I don’t know what to do exactly or I make a mistake, someone else will come along and help me out with it. No more anxiety!
I hope all our new users can feel that way too. Having your submissions reorganized is not combative; it’s collaborative. Don’t stress about posting anything perfectly. Someone will help you out if need be.
I'm gonna tell you a secret. There's a magical group where you can put everything you don't know where to post. It is called ~misc, and when put something there, a fairy will figure it out for you. If your post was meant for ~misc, it'll stay there, but if it doesn't, it'll magically reappear where it was supposed be in the first place! Even better: if you click on it from your profile, the link will still work!
Groups are a myth... see for yourself! Open your eyes sheeple!
https://tildes.net/~fuckyouiwontdowhatyoutellme/169n#comment-8cr0
Who you callin' a fairy? Them's fightin' words! I ain't no fairy. Poofter, yes. Fairy, not so much.
Oh I'm so sorry, I don't know much about magical beings, but I do love them all ♥️
umm... I'm not sure if you got the joke and are trying to be clever in response... or if you missed my joke entirely.
I got the joke with a help from Google! :P
Good!
Thanks for this perspective, I think it's great that the focus is on quality, well-organised content.
I assume that currently, due to the size of the community, that cross-posting isn't really a thing - a submission lands in a single group even where it may fit multiple, but that's ok because chances are that everyone who is interested will see it anyway. Are there any thoughts or plans on whether this might change as we grow, and if so what that might look like? One thing which occurs to me is the value in having a central place for discussion, so am option might be to reference the primary submission from other groups to ensure visibility, but only allow discussion on the primary - so effectively just a link.
This post by Tildes' creator and sole admin is currently collecting thoughts about possible changes regarding groups: https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/167q/thoughts_on_making_tildes_groups_more_independent
Currently, Tildes groups work like categories, not sub-communities. They exist to organize content that you can subscribe to. In practice, Tildes is one whole community and the same people is largely everywhere. The idea of crossposting does not make sense at the moment and we try to avoid duplicates or overlaps when possible.
You know I have to edit the title of this post, right? Mostly to prove a point, but partly because that punctuation is bothering me...
But you make valid points, and you've shared them in a relatable way - as usual.
Did I make the post with the intention to have my title edited as an example of the exact thing I’m talking about in the post? 🤔
I’ll never tell! 😆
Hmph. I'll see your bluff. There! Take that, annoying punctuation!
Haha. Cunningham never fails, even in a more intimate place like Tildes
I'm not making making any accusations, but I have noticed that a modest amount of errors in language usage can provide a small rhetorical boost by virtue of making you relatable.
But seriously, I can't imagine @kfwyre ever intentionally misusing language, they're essentially Tildes prose benchmark ♥️
I'm all for using colloquial language to make a point.
But, that punctuation...? It was a crime against humanity!
I'm late to the party. What was the crime against humanity? Did they leave off the Oxford comma?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present a teaching moment!
If you check the Topic Log in the sidebar, you can see all the changes made to this topic. That includes before and after states. So, for example, "Algernon_Asimov changed title from X1 to X2." That'll show you what the original title was before I corrected it and saved humanity from the abomination that kfwyre tried to inflict on everyone.
(In short, he didn't include the necessary quotation marks, which resulted in a comma immediately following a question mark.)
Thank you! I didn't know you could see the edit history. I'd say that was more of a felony than a crime against humanity. They remembered the Oxford comma, so there are mitigating factors.
That's the only thing that stopped me sending out a lynch mob. :)
I think another thing really worth mentioning is that while it's true that link submissions are generally viewed as being owned more by the community at large rather than individual posters, which is why even links are sometimes changed (e.g. to a primary source)... text topics lean far more towards individual ownership.
So if you have a particular focus in mind for the discussion you want to foster with your submission, make it a text topic, and make that focus clear in the topic text. You can still include links in the body of the text topic. But by making it a text topic and making the focus clear, that helps guide the discussion in the direction you desire, and also helps those of us who can move topics between groups realize that's why you posted in that particular group.
Also, if you have any issues with, or questions regarding, the decisions we make when we change tags, titles, or move a topic to another group (all of which can be viewed in the Topic Log on the sidebar), please let us know. We're not here to step on toes. We're just trying to help keep things organized, but sometimes mistakes can be made, and we can misinterpret your intentions.
Good additions!
I'll also add that, if you're someone who likes the idea of being a librarian, you can ask Deimos to give your account access to tagging, moving, and title-changing tools.
I will say that, if you're planning on doing that, maybe wait for a few weeks for things to die down a bit here? I assume his plate is very full at the moment (full time job + full time Tildes admin + hoards of people trying to get on the site + everyone on this site wanting MORE AND BETTER CHANGES NOW = go easy on the guy, PLEASE).
I would add further to this.
Waiting for a few weeks also gives newcomers a chance to see how things work around here, what tags exist, how they're used, what topics get posted to what groups, what changes are made to posts (check the Topic Log), and such things. In other words, before you request the power to change things around here, learn how things work around here, so your changes are in accord with the site's existing policies and practices.
Also as a new user This has helped a lot
A couple of my first articles did get moved and my first reaction was to frown, but now I get it and the fact that someone took the time to put it right for me helped me to start to understand the idea of groups and tags
Also is it unfair that when you mentioned the Librarians of Tildes I pictured them as the Librarian in the Unseen University
Regarding categorization: It has been stated that one of the "rules" surrounding groups is content over format, hence why there is no ~videos. Going by this, a news article of some description would have its place in ~news, but a news article about a health topic would go to ~health. In this specific example, I assume that the health aspect was judged to be more prominent than the finance one.
I also have an idea to throw out for cases where this is less clear cut, by cribbing off Reddit: having the ability to "crosspost" topics to multiple groups if there is no consensus reached on which one fits best. The groups' respective page would each display the topic, but the home page for someone subscribed to more than one of the groups the topic is crossposted to would only display it once. As a random example, a link topic to a blog post discussing, say, the logistics behind the first tennis tournament to take place in low earth orbit and an in-depth study of how this affects the players and the ball's movements compared to Earth gravity could be posted to any of ~science, ~space and ~sports and crossposted to the two others.
I have to say this is a really nice change of pace from places like Reddit! It feels a lot more community driven than user driven if that makes sense
Haha, very timely. I just had the same internal battle when trying to decide where to post about John Romita, Sr. passing away. Is it ~books since he's a comic book artist? Is it ~hobbies since it's comics? Is it ~creative since he was an artist? I finally decided to let go and let god and put it in ~misc and let the topic fairies move it where ever it should be.
I see that one of the Tildes fairies rightly moved your post to ~books, because even comic books are a form of book.
To be fair, on Reddit, there is no ability to edit titles or move posts. If your post title is wrong, the only solution is to delete the post and re-post it. If your post is in the wrong
groupsubreddit, the only solution is to delete the post and re-post it.As a long-term Reddit moderator myself, if I had the ability to edit titles or move posts, I wouldn't remove half the posts that I end up removing. Sometimes, it's not about mods being trigger-happy; it's about the necessary moderation features not existing.
EDITED for terminology.
As a new person here this is great perspective. Thanks!
Tags are a personal nightmare for me. I use Tumblr occasionally and even though that has established tags and tags that are just used to talk, I get the nagging feeling that I should be adding some other tag that would be just descriptive-enough that it would be egregious to not already have it added. Thank you for sharing your experience, it's made me consider actually making that post I've been thinking of but haven't made yet because I wasn't sure of where to post or what to tag it.
As @NaraVara said deep in the new user help thread...
Lately there have been a lot of trump posts.
Instead of posting them as seperate posts, you can instead add them as a comment on the weekly news megathread.
One of the nice things about Tildes, is that if you come back to recent thread, the system collapses old comments and only expands the new comments.
Thank you for this post! I am new here and have only started commenting. This will prevent some heartache for when I inevitably post and it gets moved/retitled. I think this is great, as long as the content inside doesn't get modified. I prefer to keep things organized and this seems a lot less hamfisted than deleting the whole post, as long as it is appropriate and follows general rules.
I've been thinking that submission points would flow down towards subgroups... but this has me wondering if perhaps having a single submit button for the entire website would be better for keeping the community together.
The tags might let us pull it off, if we put the submission wherever those tags are most frequent. Combine that with bots auto-populating the tags for link submissions and it's a lazy process too. Might this solve our group finder problem as well? If we place the user's submission in the best fit group it sends them directly into that community.
Seems like as good of place as any to ask this question— What does "vote" mean? I've surmised that there is not karma or upvoting and downvoting. My assumption that "vote" just means, good.
BTW no upvote/downvote is the way. Thankful for that.
Think of it as a mechanism to assist with sorting. Generally, comments with more votes will appear higher in the thread than comments with less votes. So... do you want a comment to appear higher in the thread? Do you think it deserves to be seen by more people? Then give it a vote! If you don't think a comment needs higher visibility, then don't give it a vote.
There are exceptions. The comment labels which you will see after your first 7 days on Tildes also affect the sorting:
'Exemplary' applies a positive multiplier to the vote score, to push a comment even higher up the thread.
'Joke' applies a negative multiplier to the vote score, to push a comment lower down the thread.
'Offtopic' and 'Noise' both add a negative amount to the vote score, forcing a comment lower down the thread.
'Malice' doesn't affect the sorting - it sends a notification to the admin about a comment.
By the way, I've applied an 'Offtopic' label to your comment here, because it's not directly relevant to the post you're commenting on, which isn't about voting.
Thanks for the explanation. In my opinion joke shouldn't apply a negative multiplier. Unless the idea for this site is to have strictly serious discussion only. Which sounds like a bunch of people who are "fun at parties."
I always hated the upvote/downvote system on reddit. There are some great ideas here, but the comment label system gets a little messy. I like vote being a, "good comment" button. And perhaps keeping 'Exemplary' with the required written reasoning. Let the no-votes speak for themselves. Oh, and a report/malice button is obviously needed.
The intention is to prevent those comment-threads that happen in Reddit, where every comment is just another joke playing off the previous comment. Or, at least, pushing those joke sub-threads to the bottom of the page. Humour is fine in moderation. You can see some examples of it in this very thread. But it shouldn't dominate the discussion; hence the negative multiplier, to de-emphasise it.
You're welcome to not use it (when it becomes visible to you).
Keep in mind that you've only been here a few days. Take a look around. Soak up the atmosphere. Get the feel of the place. There's a lot to like here.
I don't think the negative multiplier matters that much, all you have to do is scroll down a little bit further and you'll find it. Its useful for top level comments, as there you want to encourage discussion as much as possible and avoid threads of just meaningless joke after joke.
In replies I find value in jokes and humor, but there the order doesn't matter too much to me as I (typically) will read the whole thread anyway. Just my two cents!
A negative multiplier just makes the votes push it up by less, rather than directly pushing it downwards as happens with "Offtopic" and "Noise". Given how easily low-effort jokes get upvotes on reddit, this seems like a wise way of handling it.
Someone else had the same question over in the new user help thread, so you can check out my response there.
Also, if you have any other questions, feel free to post them there too. We’re happy to help, and welcome to Tildes!