22
votes
Does Tildes need a new icon?
I was just thinking about it. Tildes' current icon looks like a /r/wallstreetbets graph, haha. I think we could use a nice mascot that's based on a cute animal of some sort. :)
Would love to hear our community's thoughts on this, thank you! :)
Absolutely not, the icon is perfect in every way
It’s not a graph, by the way, it’s a
…
Tilde
I second this. No way.
I really don't want to be a cranky 'get off my lawn' old-timer here, but to all my new friends, can we refrain from suggesting changes to the site while it's already going through MASSIVE changes to user base and content? I don't know, maybe stick around a few weeks or months first?
For the last few years, Tildes has been a sleepy little corner of the internet with ~20 consistent posters. While I am very excited to see so much activity, some of you need to wash the reddit off a bit.
Alright, if anyone needs me I'll be sitting on my porch yelling about the good ol days with a piece of straw in my mouth.
I think it’s hard for some of the newer members to understand just how much thought already went into tildes. We aren’t some half baked Reddit clone thrown together after the Reddit api problems started. Almost every part of the site has been analyzed and agonized over for the last 5 years. Thought has been put into everything. It definitely isn’t perfect, but almost nothing here is by mistake. As we start to make changes because of this influx of people, we need to keep this in mind. When we change things, we need to analyze if the original purpose of the decision is not being met anymore, or if it was a decision that falls apart for the larger community we have become.
So for all the new people here: us old guard aren’t mad about changes because we don’t like change. We know that the current systems work well. We were part of those decisions when they were being made. Changes should definitely happen, but they must attempt to be an improvement on the current system.
I think a charitable interpretation is that the reasons people abandoned the previous entity and the suggestions they make are not related (or at least not immediately or obviously so).
The suggestion in the post here was to use a "cute animal" as the logo for Tildes, at least by implication inspired by reddit. I think it is fair to say that to a cursory inspection, the fact that reddit and communities on reddit may have such logos is not immediately related to the current situation for them and as such the likely reason OP may be here now instead.
That said, I can empathize with your feelings. There are certainly cases where the charitable interpretation is not earned, and even when it is, it can be easy to be fatigued and frustrated by the same type of behaviour being repeated ad nauseum.
In general I feel it's rude to wander into any community and ask why they don't change things, disagree with their rules, etc. Another thing that happens a lot is new users, though well-intentioned, creating noise by asking to be spoonfed information about the content or the rules. I saw this stuff happen in so many subreddits over the years, and it wasn't tactful there either, especially because any good subreddit always had great documentation to read through (hint, tildes does as well. This page explains why the tilde symbol was chosen, which by extension explains the logo.)
To new users to any space or platform: Step back. Read. Listen. Dig around in the existing content to naturally learn how things work in that space, and most of the time you'll find that the answers to your questions already exist and are searchable. Participating in online communities is not unlike entering a new social group, or visiting a different country. It's polite to get to know social norms before running wild.
As a new member myself, the reason I'm here is because I observed the community, started to understand the norms, and decided this is the kind of site I'd like to spend my time in. Now, this post in particular is quite innocent and well-intentioned, but I've seen a lot of posts from people wanting to make Tildes into a clone of reddit. Better to slow down and see if they even like the site in the first place.
I'll go one step further and suggest that we don't all suddenly become tilderinos or tildenauts or something.
* goes back to guarding the lawn against feral children...
I checked out squabbles.io a few days ago, and immediately realized it wasn't the place for me when I saw a post where users were voting on the "names" to use for ...everything there.
I believe the results of the poll were: users of the site are "squabblers," their equivalent of subreddits are "squabs" or "squbs." I believe I even saw someone utter the words "upsqub" and "downsqub." Feral indeed
God forbid any Tildos have any inclination to start throwing names around randomly.
Unrelated, but I play a game with the kids called "Get Off My Lawn" They start way back, and they have to try to get in the hoola hoop near me.
If I see them move, I yell "GET OFF MY LAWN" and spray them with the hose. They love it.
Well, I know what game I'm introducing my kid to this week
~
I propose we replace existing icon with plain text variant.
Just to show em. :)
I agree. It may not be the best aesthetics wise but I prefer this simplicity and minimalism.
Adding nothing to the convo, but agreed. No way.
Tildes are great, and far superior to cute shit. I find this suggestion kind of tone deaf honestly.
/noise
As someone with a few decades in design (print, digital, branding, etc)… it’s about as perfect as I could ever imagine. It’s the literal name of the site on iconographic form and is instantly recognisable, memorable, etc. It works in colour, monochrome, and at all sizes.
Deimos (or whoever made it) absolutely nailed it first go.
Not to mention that it is a visual nod to the original idea of this site, which would've been Spectrum or related to it (the company that runs Tildes is called Spectria)
A nice touch would be an icon and fav icon that suits your chosen theme.
I like that icon that is currently there and an animal wouldn't make any sense
I can only speak as a fellow recent joiner but ngl, being around for a couple days and then being like "hey, do we need to change the logo" is like going to someone's house for the first time and suggesting they move their furniture around.
I assume you mean well, but it just comes off kinda rude to me. I certainly wouldn't do it.
Thank you for vocalizing this, it felt off-putting to me as well.
As Deimos said, back in the early days:
Some previous discussions:
How would Tildes feel about a mascot?
I made a little concept pseudo-mascot to get some ideas rolling.
We need a loveable mascot
Absolutely, it’s always bothered me that we have an image at the top of the page. It’s time to replace it with a pure text tilde symbol befitting the site’s ethos.
Not that I'm the arbiter of such things (or anything else for that matter, really), but that's the only other thing I'd get behind. The icon is a tilde. Why would we need anything other than a tilde or a graphic of a tilde?
Maybe add a second one so tildes can be the icon for tildes. But that's it, dammit. ;)
e: I can't spel
Love it. Someone tag Deimos I'm afraid to bother the dude.
Pure text all the way! But the name of the site is Tildes, plural. A single tilde symbol is not enough. I put forth the following Unicode symbols to consider for the gopher:// version of the site:
≈Tildes
U-2248 (ALMOST EQUAL TO)
≋Tildes
U-224B (TRIPPLE TILDES)
≊Tildes
U-224A (ALMOST EQUAL OR EQUAL TO)
≉ Tildes
U-2249 (NOT ALMOST EQUAL TO), ITALICIZED TEXT
I'm partial to the last one, the forward slash reminds me of a URL.
None of those are tildes, though. As you point out, they're all mathematical symbols, rather than tildes.
Anyway, given that each group on this website is marked by a single tilde (~games ~tech), the collection of groups is multiple tildes.
Only three tildes? No way that's enough either. I put forth the following symbol, composed of all the tildes I could find:
■ Tildes
Theres a gopher version if this site! Will it come up in veronica2?
~*Tildes
The asterisk being your standard wildcard glob matcher for all the different communities.
What would actually be gained from replacing what is already in place? How would a new icon make the site better? It really does seem that any change should have a definite purpose behind it.
The site doesn't even have a group for posting cute animals, nor are we likely to as Deimos has rejected that idea. Why would the mascot be one?
I only joined today so it isn't like I have any sort of attachment to the current icon, but I see no good reason to change it. It is recognizable and not overly complex, it stands out enough among my other tabs and icons without being obnoxiously bright or attention grabbing.
It just works and does everything it needs to do, cute animals are actually something I've barely seen on Tildes at all so far, so to me it doesn't really seem like a cute animal would make for a good icon that is in any way relevant to Tildes.
It seems like every old site has a random animal as a mascot, no? In my opinion, the Tildes icon has appropriate symbolism that represents the philosophy of the site.
I really like the current logo! If people think it needs updating, I guess, but I think it's pretty nice as is ~
I'm a Reddit refugee, and honestly I hope nothing changes in any way. Text only is great, it runs fast, it's perfectly usable on mobile as a PWA/bookmark.
Tildes has everything I want, and none of the crap I didn't like about Reddit.
I think it looks fine. It's a representation of a tilde, which fits the site more than an animal. I also feel like it fits the vibe of the site more. It's not flashy, and straight to the point.
The icon also stands out against a lot of other icons I have on my phone. It's pretty recognisable. I like it.
I don't think it's all that important, but a minor update to make it look more like a tilde symbol and less like a graph might be nice?
It's already an 8-bit tilde symbol.
No! The logo looks perfect for Tildes
I like the icon just the way it is.
A what? It's a pixelated tilde? Isn't that fairly obvious between the name of the site, and, well, the icon's shape?
I love the current icon. Solarized lil tilde.
Oh, I was talking about the green and red stock charts /r/wallstreetbets users post on the sub. Even I'm a user of RES+old.reddit.com and Apollo (with uBlock origin, ofc).
You can disable sub specific stuff in the user settings on the main site, have been able to for years.
I used to really like custom sub themes. I don't know why though, they're mostly awful.
I don't think so.
I can only agree with the opinion of the others. The icon is simply perfect and reflects the spirit of the site and does that better than any arbitrary mascot ever could.
Hard disagree. This icon is perfect.
I’ve only been here a day but if the logo changes I’m going dark for two days and only posting the words Oliver and John thereafter.
Logo is great as it is.
Nope, the current logo is fine.
I think it’s perfect how it is. Absolutely don’t change.
Honestly I love the logo. It's simple, recognizable and fits the name!
I think if it's not already a vector image or an SVG, it should be. Otherwise, I don't think it should be changed.
I think the icon is cool
Noooo I love it! It’s cute. I don’t know why but it gives me a feeling of happiness when I see it.
As many have pointed out, the icon is the site's namesake. As to a cute animal, well, it'll have to be a really cute, simple, and immediately lovable animal for me to prefer it over the current icon.
Also, there is something strangely mid-2010s about the current icon. Not saying that as a criticism; I like it. Anybody else kind of feel that way too?
I asked Bing AI chat to give me a cute wombat for tildes. I then added the word tildes, and some tilde eyebrows. https://ibb.co/SyP8gKZ
I prefer the existing logo to this wombat, even though man I really do like wombats.
Hmm... Existing logo wins by a small margin. Sorry Mr. Wombat! You're really cute.
Given that Tildes was launched in 2018, so the icon was probably designed some time in 2017... it's not that strange that the icon reflects the time it was made. :P
FWIW, I've found myself hunting through browser tabs a few times over the past few days trying to tell which are Tildes pages, and the present icon really does not do a good job of distinguishing those. It's dark and ambiguous, readily confused with several others (Vice.com particularly, at the moment).
Sites such as Wikipedia, Hacker News, the New York Times, and DuckDuckGo are far easier to distinguish.
Edit: It also is poorly distinguished on e-ink displays: monochrome, relatively low-contrast, and limited (16 greyscale shades) degrees of shading.
No, but if they need an artist for future projects, well... points to self ;)
To be honest I hadn't even noticed the existing one.
I think it could look more like a tilde, I get that it's pixel art but I'm not so sure it works to represent a tilde well, maybe with some more pixels :)
I doubt it'll change though
I vote no. A mascot would make it childish as Reddit.
Brand new user here. 100% against the idea of a new icon or cute animal mascot. I personally hated the Reddit alien, the GitHub octopus thing, the Twitter bird, etc. It all made it so much easier to anthropomorphize websites and develop some odd love for these platforms.
The Tilde tilde is about as good as it gets, in my opinion.
I like the current logo, it's a tilde and the bits make it digital. but wonder if we can further simplify/shorten it to use fewer bits.
I was all set to agree on leaving it, but then I saw this octopus and the snake mascot ideas someone posted in one of the old threads linked above, and now I’m kind of into the idea. As a newcomer though, I’m just happy to be here!
nah.
How bout no!