109
votes
I'm from the Reddit exodus. I'm really liking it here. What should I know?
What do you long term users want to share about the culture?
What about growth plans? The erudite discussion with (presumably) real people is what I love most, but I miss the really niche subs. That needs more people.
I just want to make sure this isn't "eternal July".
Been here about 3/4 weeks myself.
Not everything needs to be commented on. Reddit fosters low quality posts just looking for quick upvotes in the name of Karma.
Commentary volume is much lower here, but to a far superior quality. I'll often be halfway through a comment and think "nah, I don't really need to say this / it won't improve the level of dialogue" etc
It's humbling, but ultimately much more rewarding.
One subtle, but awesome feature of tildes (IMO) is that you have to scroll to the bottom of the comment section to post a new top-level comment. It nudges you to do exactly what you just said - read all of the existing discussions and think about whether or not you actually need to comment
That's a good point. I first joined Tildes about a week ago and at first that kind of annoyed me from a UX perspective, but I appreciate it now for that reason.
Also agree with TescoLarger that it's been a pleasant experience to see fewer comments, but of much higher quality, to the point that I haven't commented much since joining under the rubric of "does this actually contribute to the discussion? Does it actually add anything worth noting? If so, did someone else already say it?"
Similarly, but opposite, I'd type out a well thought out response with sources and explanations on Reddit, then end up deleting it because it would either never be seen, or just get downvoted or ignored by whoever didn't agree with it.
I’ve felt more comfortable commenting here for the same reason. I know I won’t be eviscerated if I make a spelling error.
IMO the most important principles of Tildes for new users to understand and try to uphold are Don't act like an asshole, and In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important. But some other important ones are; This isn't a reddit replacement nor is it trying to be one, and submissions here belong more to the community at large rather than individual posters, which is why topic tags are often edited, titles sometimes are too, and/or topic moved to different groups.
This is probably the exact opposite of what most of the new users coming here from reddit are hoping to hear, but AFAIK the future growth plan is to continue to not focus on growth, and instead to keep strictly controlling it. Deimos only accepts so many invite requests per day via email, and when he gets hit with a huge wave of them I usually severely limit the /r/tildes request rounds, or even shut them off entirely until things calm down. This gives all the new users time to acclimatize to the culture here so it doesn't change too drastically, and makes it so the old users don't get completely overwhelmed trying to onboard all the new users.
This was important distinction I only learned like.... 5 mins ago. Haha.
Hey if you hadn’t brought it up, it’s something we’d might not have thought to mention to new users!
This little aspect reminds me of how the StackExchange platform works. Questions people post are often retitled, whittled, rewritten by community members to focus discussion and enhance quality. That extent of editing isn't quite present here, but it's in the same spirit.
... yet.
Something similar to that ethos is part of the future plans here.
As a relatively new user I appreciate this info! I'm curious if there is a place to see the number of currently registered users? I feel like I saw it once but now I can't remember where.
There is no way to see the total registered users, but https://ts.bauke.xyz/ is close enough. It shows the amount of users subbed to ~tildes.official, which should be nearly everyone.
I would say find some constructive ways to work on the instant gratification part in your brain. I spent lots of my time on Reddit and when I left finally in ~2017 I struggled to replace all the instant gratification that Reddit brought to my life, it was all “junk food” and I loved it. When I came to tildes, I hardly commented on anything because I could immediately tell the vibe here was completely different. I even posted a question to the site at the time about having novelty accounts on here and the general consensus was that they are not wanted or needed, it’s just more junk food, so to speak.
I eventually got into more reading, spending time outdoors riding my bicycle, going to community events and playing video games that were focused on RTS or puzzles, poker, etc. I still drop the occasional shit comment on here as a reflex from my Reddit days but nobody as chided me so far.
TLDR: There are no memes here, no porn, no low effort shit posts, nobody cares about karma or internet points of any kind. Be nice and be a good member of your community, online and in person.
Same. Letting go of Reddit is such a great thing to the point where I am working on my reading lists (and adding to it because of people's recommendations here). And finding ways of getting over hurdles of reading books that were a pain to read in the past.
Ditto. I've read more books and articles and magazines in the last month or so than I think the previous 6 months combined! All because I've left reddit (well and a little self discipline).
I like tildes a lot because I only feel the need to check in a couple time a day, and even then it's almost impossible to just scroll. It's not easily consumable content, but discussion and stuff that you need to either make the effort to participate in, or decide it's not worth the effort.
Yeah, Tildes does cater to the more easily consumed media that people have grown accustomed to, which is a great thing. Because nowadays, websites are trying to keep people scrolling for more ad revenue or to keep their traffic up to say to investors that there is more people staying on their website. So it is great to see a website that is not trying to do that and keep its user base addicted to doom scrolling or what not.
The amount of times I’ve seen new users say this both warms my heart and has also fully radicalized me against the “corporate” social media platforms and the interaction paradigms they foster.
rtfm, at least the Philosophy and Instructions pages to get a feel for the site. A lot of people have come over wanting a 1:1 Reddit replacement which is not what this site aims to be, but there are changes coming, apparently, that will reflect many new users' asks because there are things that worked with a smaller userbase that don't work with thousands more people.
Mostly, be nice. Be charitable in your interpretation of what people say, and be thoughtful when you post. Try not to run from Reddit but walk towards Tildes, and part of that, I think, is sort of reprogramming how you interact with the community, which is why I'm recommending the docs. The Philosophy stuff is the most important part, and it's not particularly long.
Seconding RTM. It's why both Deimos and I include links to the Tildes docs in all our outgoing invite code messages now. It's all written in plain language, and the Philosophy and Policies pages are not particularly long either, so everyone reading them before they participate here is a good idea, IMO.
That's a really great way to word it. I'm stealing that. ;)
To piggyback on this, if you need a reddit experience, you can make a Lemmy account. I haven't seen a rule against having both, and I'd like to see this place remain deep and a little more personal.
You're never going to find on Tildes (or Lemmy) a rule against anything you choose to do outside the community.
Not a long term user (yet) but I have been overjoyed at seeing more thoughtful comments compared to "username checks out", which I am happy to report I have never seen here so far!
It took a lot of self control not to reply with the joke.
one of the big things is that unlike reddit, the search on Tildes is actually good, and usable. it's generally pretty easy to find old discussion threads about a particular topic, if they exist.
(this isn't a "let me google that for you" admonishment or anything, just something that I think most long-time reddit users don't realize, because we all got so used to reddit search being a joke)
this thread from a few weeks ago has a compendium of advice for other people fleeing reddit.
I would love to live in a world where my google searches are succeed by “tildes”. Or maybe not, that would mean this platform got way too big -
So far, here is the non corporate feeling of the old internet. A bit of Wild West with great people and thoughtful answers.
I’m coming here a couple times a day and always is rewarding
We don't have comments like 💀 LMAOOOO 🤣🤣🤣 and we like it that way.
Im still kind of in shock that not one person has insulted me or cussed me out for posting just an normal level-headed comment. And Ive posted about religious beliefs without a torrent of abusive replies from embittered ex-believers. Very refreshing to be treated humanely. Its going to take awhile to flush the remaining reddit toxicity out of my system.
These are the first emojis I've seen here. I was hoping to have finally found a website without them. I guess that is just unrealistic these days.
I felt dirty even posting them. But I think the point was made.
I understand!
I think emojis serve an important service when used correctly. Text just can't express the same things that tone and body language can, as it does in physical personal communication.
Emojis and /s and such convey valuable information.
Emoticons and emojis are like a new form of punctuation (which is ironic, considering that emoticons are literally constructed using punctuation marks!).
And I have learned that they are essential for me, to convey tone, because my writing style tends to be direct and formal - which some people assume is aggressive. So, I've learned to add a few little emoticons, here and there, to soften my tone.
However... I believe that making a comment consisting solely of emoji, like fruitybrisket's example, is an abomination to be avoided on Tildes. That's not the "in-depth content" that Tildes is intended for.
For what it's worth, I agree.
I've been using emoticons/emojis since I was on CompuServe's forums 30 years ago. (Though on CompuServe, we used <g> for "grin" rather than :), and we had similar variations like <bg>, <vbg>, <beg>, etc.) Perhaps it's the Millennial in me talking, but I feel like they help convey tone.
Though it's also my understanding that Gen-Z sees emojis as broadly for sarcasm only. Which I find it disappointing as a long-time adherent of them.
That said, I still use them rather sparingly on Reddit. So if the culture here is against them, it wouldn't kill me.
I’ve used some emojis in my comments, and nobody mentioned it 🤷🏼♀️ I agree they are very useful for adding a little tone to a wall of text. I think if there is actual content in the comment as well, most users won’t be bothered.
I don't really use them outside the occasional text ":)" but I see they're used enough by people that it's just part of normal internet parlance, so I don't get pissy when I see them.
Apologies for the late reply!
I'm curious, have you ever read a book and thought it would be better with emojis?
And specifically classical literature? Like, was Shakespeare or even Lovecraft less effective without little yellow faces?
I'm genuinely curious!
Not really prose or technical documents. Not prose in general because writers have time to adequately convey their ideas.
Of course, for plays, those do have the equivalent of emojis. Stage directions, and the direct analogy to emojis in prose is "would it be better as a movie or play?" which is something that is true and said all the time.
This post was useful for me
https://tildes.net/~tildes/15my/new_users_ask_your_questions_about_tildes_here
I'm also part of the mass exodus. I've been lurking around for a while, got an invite to register today. The conversation here is so much more thoughtful than Reddit and from what I've seen so far, is that most people on here want to genuinely have a good experience, with insightful conversation.
This is what I have found as well. I'm enjoying the novel experience of having people to actually communicate with rather than just meme each other to death. It's refreshing to reply to a post and have people actually care about your reply and want to discuss things more deeply. I don't know if I could ever do a Reddit like environment again now that I am part of Tildes.
When adding tags to you post don’t worry so much if you have them all correctly. Someone more experienced on Tildes has the ability to edit and add tags to correct it and in time you will learn how to properly tag a post.
It's also fine to not care at all and submit your topics without any tags (I've done this plenty of times), the community will take care of it.
Agreed on missing the niche subs. It’s going to be really hard to replace the discussion that came with the specificity. No offense, I like Tildes generally speaking, but I don’t see myself getting into a rousing discussion about my favorite team’s draft pick, or what discs are best for throwing a tomahawk, or regional things going on in my state & local community.
That’s okay, I get it. Still miss them though.
May I ask as a new member, what goes into forming a new ~tildes discussion topic/community? Is it top down from Deimos? Is it user-driven? How does a new ~tildes get born? I just don’t see a lot of info on that side of things.
That's a fairly common misunderstanding from former Reddit users - groups (the tilde-prefixed entities like ~tech and ~humanities) are not subreddits, nor are they intended to be. Instead, groups are a very-high-level, deliberately coarse bucketing of a post, and the finer-grained filtering is accomplished using the post's tags.
So the answer to how you make a new group is "you don't" - instead, tag your post appropriately. If enough interest is being shown in a certain topic, then a new group might be spun up for it, but that's fairly rare.
Also, unlike Reddit, posts can be moved between groups, re-tagged, and even have their titles edited, not just by the author, but by certain community members as well. So don't fret over putting your post in the "best" place - instead, just make your best effort, and if someone thinks a different group or tagging is better, they'll fix it for you. There's no obscure rules or AutoModerator takedowns you have to deal with here!
Thanks, that helps me understand it a bit better. I’ll have to get better with the tags.
After commenting that, I actually found a week+ old NBA draft discussion in the ~sports topic bin, put my two cents in on the Hornets draftees.
(And definitely won’t miss random Automod removals lol)
Here is how a new group/sub-group gets born on Tildes:
Daily Tildes discussion - proposals for "trial groups", round 1
Four new groups added (and everyone subscribed): ~anime, ~enviro, ~humanities, and ~life
And here:
Proposals for new groups - July 2019
New groups added, more work still happening on rearranging, moving topics, etc.
And now... here:
Let's add (and rearrange?) some groups + a few notes about other short-term plans
Group updates for July 2023
EDITED to add current groups announcement.
A sentiment I see regularly expressed here (and on Reddit) is a sort of "social media absolutism." Where it's not possible to simultaneously use Reddit and Tildes. As if they are mutually exclusive, antagonistic tribes and we must pick only one of them to belong to.
I'm here because I don't like where the culture of Reddit has generally gone, and the killing of third-party apps was the push that I needed to find an alternative. But the API change hasn't been a complete dealbreaker for me. The way I see it, this site does not intend to be a replacement for Reddit, so I shouldn't try to make it one.
If I want to discuss the best builds in Destiny 2 or the latest episode of a show I'm watching, I wouldn't expect to do that here. But if I want to participate in a forum that seems to favor deeper discussion, this is a better place.
That's just my two cents. I'm new and I don't really know what I'm doing here yet, either!
Oh for sure, I still occasionally will hop on old.reddit on PC for some of the things I can’t find much on here or Lemmy so far (I also technically made a WT social account but that didn’t seem like my cup of tea). But they definitely broke a lot of subreddits with the API change protests leading to the loss of a ton of mods, and losing Apollo (my preferred way to access Reddit) makes it so I don’t visit it on mobile anymore.
But definitely trying to a) wean myself off of reddit and b) help grow other communities. So far I like Tildes the most out of anything I’ve tried so far, we’ll see!
I don’t expect Tildes to be a 1:1 replacement, for sure. But I’m glad I asked the question, have gotten some great replies (and right around when some new ~tildes topic action happened, so it was nice to see the answers play out really quickly, actually). And those helped make me a little bit better at finding some of the stuff that I do want to engage with, which has been nice.
A whole new world…!
Little bit off topic, but I've just started to get into disc golf and I would be curious to know the answer to that. I'm coming over from ultimate and the hammer/tomahawk is the only throw that has come over exactly the same...to the point where my circle 2 hammer is probably just as accurate as my circle 2 putts. But I don't have a good feeling for how different discs would play into that.
But in general, those niche communities are the biggest things I miss from reddit. For a while, I had blocked the front page and /r/all and was only visiting niche subs for games and activities I was interested in. With the past month or two, I'm trying to completely move away from reddit - but haven't quite found replacements for those. Discord can replace some of it depending on the topic, but the chat format is very different from the forum-style posts I prefer.
I’m not a particularly proficient hammer/tomahawk thrower, so take this with a grain of salt. (I’m primarily RHBH with a passable RHFH when needed. If a tomahawk attempt comes out I’m in real trouble lol).
My understanding, and what I’ve had the best success with, is that you want high speed/high stability discs for that overhand throw. Really want it to “flip” into that upside down position as fast as possible and then hold that for as long as possible.
Do you throw any particular brands, or are you open to all of them? Could recommend a couple to try if that’s something you’d be interested in.
Makes sense. Especially when you need it to go a certain distance. I'm guessing understable discs will helix and slower discs will probably end up turning nose up (upsidedown) and wall fall instead of fade?
I'm not particularly tied to a brand, but my local store carries mostly innova/discraft and a few flagships of others companies. I currently have...
Currently I'm still practicing the proper from and trying to stop throwing nose up from ultimate, which makes most of my throws act overstable - even with understable discs. I probably shouldn't be buying more discs yet...but I'm definitely willing to take recommendations =)
Haha, I get that! For whatever it’s worth, once you get your regular form down, if you get one of these discs it will fill a slot in your bag you don’t currently have anything for on your forehand/backhand as well as those overhand throws, letting you craft some lines that won’t be possible with a less stable disc.
I think I’d probably stick to the overstable classics to start with, if I’m being honest. Can branch out from there of course as you experiment and expand your bag and try new things, but I would recommend grabbing one of the standard 9 speed overstable discs for this. They’re the only things I’ve ever had any success with on my overhand tomahawks/thumbers as well, for what it’s worth. I’m partial to the Firebird myself, that’s what I have in my bag, but they’re all good discs.
Thanks! I'll definitely keep an eye out for one of those for hammers/tomahawks. I'm sure it will come in handy later on too once I am throwing hard enough where I need something overstable, but for now I can only get 1-2 of my discs to flip and it feels like I need to throw everything anheizer for them to S-curve back, otherwise my RHBH is in the woods off to the left.
I feel like as long as I behave like I’m in someone else’s home, I’ll have a good time.
The top reply by cfabbro I think is the best characterization.
My main question about the general tildes culture is one of timing. When I'm browsing and see a comment I may have something to contribute to, my first instinct is to see when it was posted. If it was anything more than a few days ago, I usually don't bother to reply. I was a redditor for over a decade, and on reddit that conversation is almost certainly dead.
So my question is, just in a general sense, how long do you all consider too long after a comment is posted to add a reply?
If you feel you have a valuable contribution to make to the conversation, go ahead and make a comment. There is no stigma to necroing a post on Tildes.
Right on. That is exactly what I was hoping, but I wasn't sure what the proper etiquette was.
The other day I bumped a 2 year old post because the song it was linking to broke and I wanted to include a working link.
As long as it contributes and adds value to something it’s worth posting. Though the bar for the amount of value to add goes up once it’s more than a few months old.
This was also my question, I'm glad you asked it. It feels so weird to me to add a comment/reply for posts that haven't been commented on in more than even a couple days, so I've simply not bothered to add anything. I'll have to get used to somewhat ignoring the comment timestamps
Yeah, I think that is really the difference between tildes and reddit. I don't know that is was necessarily taboo to reply to an old comment, though it was downright impossible once a thread was old enough. But I do think it different in that it didn't add much to the overall discussion. Simply because no one but the person you replied to would see it.
I've been on reddit talking up what I like about the site lol. Hopefully people will self select and find this place if it is going to suit them.
I can't handle the ads. I don't know how we can handle the astroturfing, but I would really like a public radio type model.
In any case, I'll make a donation shortly. I know very well that if I'm not paying, I'm what's being sold, and I don't like being sold.
How many ads do you all see on Reddit?
Maybe it's just me but I dont even have an ad blocker activated on Reddit and I only see three ads per page.
Is three very small ads really bothering you all that much?
Its not just the literal ads. It's the incessant ads-as-accounts. /r/IAMA is a good example of primarily being full of celebrities advertising their latest film.
The various corporate social media presence. The ever-present self-peomotion. It seemed like every other poster was trying to sell you something or make you more aware of their brand. Memes about McDonalds are still ads for McDonalds.
I'm sure the large contingent of former Reddit mods we have here can speak volumes more on this, as they probably had to filter multitudes more you didn't see.