New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here! (v2)
At over 600 comments and over a month old, v1 of the questions thread is due for retirement. Here’s a new, fresh one for all the users we are continuing to get.
We have a lot of new users joining the site. Welcome to Tildes!
This thread is for you to ask any question you have about the site, from “what is the moderation philosophy?”to “what does that blue line next to some comments mean?” to “what is the general vibe like here?” Tildes has a lot of documentation, history, and embedded social norms that can be daunting or opaque at first glance, so here’s your opportunity to get help with anything you need.
Questions about anything and everything are fair game. Follow-up questions are encouraged! No question is too simple.
Also, a quick note: the only person who can speak in any official capacity on Tildes is our admin @Deimos. Everyone answering who is NOT him is just a helpful community member!
It is perfectly okay to ask any question — even if you think it’s been asked before, or even if you didn’t search for an answer beforehand. Just ask away, and someone will answer you!
What's the etiquette for thanking someone for a response vs. creating noise?
I hate feeling like Im ghosting people when they give detailed answers but I also dont necessarily have anything else to add. If this were texting, Id give an appropriate emoji so they know Ive seen and acknowledged it.
I hate to be a newbie making suggestions but could a 'Thanks!' label meet a missing component of digital dialogues?
I wouldn't worry too much about having your comments marked joke or noise. We do want to discourage a lot of joke or noise comments (the popular subreddits were almost entirely filled with meaningless comments), but we don't want to discourage them entirely. A noise label is not "Don't post this type of content on tildes". Its closer to "This comment doesn't need to bump the thread to everyone".
Here are my personal guidelines. I am sure there are other opinions in the community, so don't take this as gospel. If someone directly asks a question and someone gives a good answer, a "thanks" type comment by the person who asked the question is reasonable. That comment should be marked noise to prevent it from bumping the thread. Even with the noise tag, the person you replied to will see that comment, which is the main purpose of that "thanks" comment. Other people not involved in that thread should avoid posting a "thanks" type comment. We really don't need 10 people saying thanks to one good answer.
In addition, if you can, turn a low effort "thanks" type comment into a high effort comment. Say something about how it helped you, or if you have tried it before. This idea is similar to how /r/changemyview required delta awards to have some explanation. That often didn't work in practice, but it was a good goal in theory.
Thanks!
That makes sense when possible, but after putting effort into initial comments I often simply don't have the time/bandwidth to contribute more than a simple acknowledgement :)
I like this distinction, thanks!
I've been here approximately a month. I say thanks and will continue to do so. If it gets labeled noise and collapses, it has still served the purpose of responding to OP.
Solid point. Thanks!
Relatively new person here so I may not have the most accurate "Tildes" sort of answer...
A vote here appears to have less weight than a comment does. Threads will float to the top if a new comment is posted is an example of the voting being of less emphasis. Still, the vote function is there and increases the vote count of that specific comment or thread.
The point is that a helpful comment being voted up is a way to "thank" the poster of that comment. This comes from an older concept where certain forum software had a "Thanks" button which works like the vote option here (where it go up numerically as people click it). At the very least, a vote is something whereas no vote and no comment is the opposite.
I'm not saying that the "vote" text should change to being "thanks" but I do feel, at least a bit, that the two terms are interchangeable here.
The vote count itself is real - it is very important not to lose track of how many people click on it. What other uses it has we are still exploring. How much those votes weigh in the ranking is something that can actually change. The thought is that your votes will 'weigh' slightly more (in small decimal increments at least to begin with) in communities where you lurk and vote often. Yes lurkers, you get to be moderators too, just by voting. That weight could be modified by other interesting trust metrics as we discover them. Labels change it too, exemplary boosts it for example.
We're trying to have something more interesting and dynamic than a mere sorting algorithm, something that is also like an immune system for a group when it doubles in size overnight. Something that allows the original members to have more clout for a time in the voting so that cultural norms have a chance to propagate in the groups. Hopefully giving every submission and comment a contextual 'weight' adjustment based on who is voting on them and where that voting is happening will open up some interesting new possibilities down the road. It's going to be tricky trying to get it right - too much weight, you get Digg, too little weight, you get Reddit. Hopefully Tildes can discover the middle ground between those two failure modes.
Pretty sure most of those features are sitting idle at the moment - we haven't really needed them, just figured they'd be a step up towards something more intelligent and powerful and useful than dull old internet voting. As Tildes grows it will be damn handy to have those core features built into the bedrock, so to speak.
We can use the voting record for more than 'internet democracy' and for more than selling out privacy.
So voting and participating often has (or is planned to have) an effect of weighting your participation more than newer users?
That's the idea, yeah. It would also decay away with inactivity to avoid the 'mod for life' scenario, and possibly be earned back faster for a returning user than a new one. We'll have to run experiments to find out what works.
I do tend to fall back on giving a "Vote" as a mark of thanks, but since it's anonymous (I think?) it doesn't feel quite right on its own.
Thanks!
Appreciate the perspective of personal experience, and good point re: comment levels. Thanks :)
Even though Tildes' focus is on higher level comments, that doesn't mean people only accept in depth comments. The only rule on this site is "don't be an asshole", and going out of your way thanking someone is the exact opposite of that.
Don't feel hesitant posting what you think contributes to the overall vibe. Content is not the only way this site distinguishes itself.
If something doesn't fit it'll be appropiately tagged or someone will speak up (friendly).
Very true, especially appreciate:
Thanks!
I'm brand new here, but with how friendly this site is trying to and does seem to be, I'd be at least a little bit surprised if there was an issue with thanking people.
Though, it certainly couldn't hurt to draw attention as to where their answers specifically helped you the most. If someone were then repeat their answer to someone else with the same question, they could put some emphasis on that part as there might help someone in a scenario much like you were in. It would also allow them to see that their point got across properly and there wasn't any confusion.
True, thanks :)
If somebody's response is particularly helpful and well-written, you can also label it as Exemplary. This will boost the comment higher up the thread and you have to type a small note as to why you marked it as Exemplary. The note is anonymous and only visible to the commenter, but if you explicitly thank them in the note I'm sure they can figure out who sent it, or just sign off the note with your username.
Do you consider tildes to be a US-centric website?
Something I see in a lot of English speaking online communities is that users sort of default to the assumption that every user is American. I have seen a couple of posts in tildes where that happened and I was wondering if that is the accepted culture here.
Unfortunately every English speaking social media site naturally tends to lean in that direction, since there are so many Americans on the English speaking web... and they're often the loudest voices, tend to assume everyone else speaking English on the web is a fellow American, and relate every topic back to their own American culture/identity/politics. Sorry American friends, but it's true
But it should be noted that Tildes was created by Deimos, who is a Canadian (I'm Canadian too), and the site is also run by a Canadian non-profit. So pushing back against that US-centricity is something we have actively tried to do here. E.g. By making North Americans use ~sports.american_football, and reserving ~sports.football for the more internationally recognized name for futbol/soccer.
And, for @Fostire's benefit: I'm a loud annoying voice from Australia, speaking up to make sure that the North Americans collectively don't take over and oppress the rest of us! :P
Because I absolutely hate that US-centrism you're talking about.
I even edit article titles that say "statistic in the country are improving/worsening" to specify which country is the country. And if a title doesn't specify which country's President or Prime Minister did something, I'll add that detail in. Because Tildes has a global audience, and we don't all know each other's local references.
It is not US-centric and is not supposed to be. It is very much a worldwide platform. However, individual users may not always think about this before they post or comment, and as the population of the US is so high and consequently lots of users from the US, you might still see some content that assumes people are from the US, especially from new users. I think it's every Tildes user's responsibility to kindly remind people if they have written something hard to understand for non-US users.
I would go a step further. No matter what country you're from, you should assume that you're writing or posting for an audience that doesn't live in your country.
Thanks for the reply.
That's good to know. I wasn't sure if doing that would be ok here or not.
Definitely ok if it's done respectfully and with the assumption that it was merely oversight by the OP.
This is why when I bring up statistics or numbers in a political or social context here, I try to always clarify if I'm quoting US figures or not.
It's English-only but pretty international and we try to avoid assuming the US. (Or at least that used to be true before the latest influx from Reddit.) The site itself is Canadian.
FWIW, I'm Dutch and I don't consider Tildes US centric. And when it happens it's a user and not intentionally so.
I haven't felt it too much, although political discussion (whether about the US or not) tends to be looked at through an American lens, if that makes sense.
Honest question; Why is people voting on a comment because they agree with what's been said, and not voting on something they disagree with, a problem? I often vote on comments I disagree with, so long as the person is not expressing problematic/abhorrent views, and they put solid effort into explaining themselves... but not always. And I personally don't see the majority of people voting as an "I agree" indication as being particularly concerning, since this isn't a debate site where every side of an issue needs to be praised, recognized, or encouraged.
That quote from Deimos is not really strictly talking about voting out of agreement being problematic, per se, but rather the condescending tone of some comments often leading to votes as being problematic.
That may be your opinion, and interpretation of what people mean when they say they're worried about redditors bringing their bad habits here, but on that particular point (about vote = agree being one of those bad habit) I actually disagree. Downvoting merely because you disagree is a problem on reddit because of how the downvote mechanic works there, but choosing not to vote on something you disagree with, or voting because you agree, is not the same thing. And IMO it's not a problem here either.
The amount of votes being indicative of the general support level for something that was said is often valuable, and if everyone voted for everything said here regardless of if they agreed or disagreed with it, so long as it was an effort-post, that could lead to serious problems as well. E.g. Someone advocating for abortion being banned (or some other equally controversial opinion) getting a ton of votes merely because they were eloquent could potentially start a ton of heated arguments and drive people off the site.
As I said above, this is is not a debate site where every side of an issue needs to be praised, recognized, or encouraged.
Fair enough. If that's the case then sorry for misunderstanding what you meant.
p.s. I wouldn't recommend bookmarking and then linking to those comments elsewhere though. Just report the comment using the Malice label if you think someone is being condescending or implying inferiority towards another user. Deimos has removed comments like that, and publicly chastised people for that in the past.
I'm not saying this to be accusatory, but have you considered that rather than people intentionally trying to create plausible deniability, or operate in some nebulous grey area, as you describe, that maybe you're simply being uncharitable towards them by thinking that of them? I'm not saying that is the case in all cases, but it's something worth considering. And using Malice to get Deimos' attention, in order to let him form his own opinion on said comments may help you with that too, since afterward you will be able to see whether or not he removes said comments, or replies to them, or even messages you in response.
And BTW, I asked the question because I know for a fact that I often misinterpret things as being a lot more negative than the other person likely meant, e.g. my misinterpretation and responses to your own comments above. But it's something I am trying to work on though, and I have found Deimos to be a sound second opinion to seek, especially in cases like you mention.
Heh. Your response is kinda funny, since I wasn't actually referring to your own discussions, or even thinking about that until you mentioned it. :P I was referring to reporting any comments you think might be inappropriate or flouting the line, regardless of who they're directed at. I highly doubt Deimos would remove your ability to use the Malice label so long as you were genuinely trying to help, or had a genuine concern about a thread deteriorating, especially if you mention you're unsure about if its worth reporting so would appreciate his opinion. But if you're in serious doubt about something, and worried about it being seen as abusing Malice, you can always just PM Deimos to ask for his opinion on a comment, thread, or topic. He's pretty busy these days, so might not respond right away, but he's a pretty nice guy so likely won't bite your face off for merely asking him about something like that. :)
Just a brief thought that popped into my head, hence my quick reply here, but I wonder if renaming the vote button 'interesting' would make it a more moderated thing.
The problem with that is "interesting" doesn't cover all the legitimate reasons people vote on something.
Incidentally, back before any of the code for Tildes was even written yet, I originally suggested a multi-modal vote system inspired by Slashdot. And I still really like the idea, since it would allow for people to better categorize comments, show their appreciation in different ways, and sort the comments more to their particular tastes... but it was ultimately decided to just keep the vote system basic like it is on reddit, and to use labels for something like that instead. But then it was decided that labels would only be somewhat negative in nature (other than exemplary), which I still disagree with, since it undermines the justification for keeping votes basic in the first place. :(
True.
Something generic is needed and off the top of my head vote is the only thing that comes to mind.
Related thought:
It's been mentioned before, but I do think there are some low hanging feature-fruit Tildes could be taking advantage of to help cultivate a culture of good faith and respect. We have the moderation to deal with bad actors, but some incentives for positive, respectful discussions would also be nice.
Maybe I'll get around to a longer post, but something I really have liked the idea of would be private, user-to-user labels for participants in threads. So being able to convey both 'thanks, you changed my mind' or 'I disagree, but thanks for being respectful' to someone would be awesome and allow people to 'sign off' gracefully.
Essentially, they would just serve as a very low-cost option to help incentivize people to keep things respectful.
This sounds a lot like the Delta mechanic of /r/changemyview but with the added "agree to disagree" feature:
https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_4
And I would be all for that, but only if it's only visible to the other user and usable by thread participants, like you said, since it being publicly visible only works there because of how strictly moderated, and heavily monitored their subreddit is.
Some other ideas we talked about ages ago that might also be worth considering again are the placebo labels, and argument/bickering label.
I think what you're highlighting isn't necessarily a breakdown in the voting system. While voting is a structural way of surfacing good comments on the site, I also think it serves as a noise-reduction feature that allows people to support a comment without comments like "+1" or "this" or whatnot. There have been a lot of recommendation threads recently, and I've gone in to make a specific recommendation only to see that someone else has already given it. In this case, my vote for their comment is essentially an "I agree" and I don't think that's a particularly bad thing.
I want to pull attention to the part I bolded. To me, this is more where the breakdown happens. Argumentative back-and-forths are almost always unproductive. People get to bickering, it turns up the temperature on the thread, and takes away oxygen from the other conversations. I was disappointed to see things go that way on my recent topic, and if I had to guess, the conversations there might be a big part of what is bothering you.
Once a back and forth starts, voting kind of goes with it out the window in general, because a big chunk of people who we assume might be reading those comments have already checked themselves out. The people who remain are the ones wanting to watch the fight in the first place, which makes the voting about taking "sides" and creating the phenomenon you've identified here.
To me, culturally changing how we approach voting isn't the solution -- culturally changing this place to move away from combative back-and-forths is the solution. Voting works really well when people aren't arguing and there aren't sides in the first place. Different perspectives don't necessarily have to exist in opposition, and we only tend to look at them as "imbalanced" after a back-and-forth has broken out in the first place.
You note that a lot of these come from new users, and that's probably because back-and-forths are popular elsewhere and structurally supported by those sites. A lot of us that have been here a long time got that style of commenting out of our systems over time. It doesn't mean we never did it or won't at times fall back into it, but it does mean that a lot of people have made a conscious effort to change the conversational culture here.
I think, with new users, we have to be a little patient. They need time to get used to things here, and sometimes people have to learn things by doing something wrong first and gleaning the lesson from it after the fact. You mentioned in the topic I linked that you realized you'd made a mistake in the wording of your original comment which helped set off some of the back-and-forths. That's a great lesson to learn! Just as it's better if we meet your original comment with patience rather than anger or accusations, it's better if you meet others with patience too.
If you find yourself in a back-and-forth, it's okay to disengage. Ideally, Tildes can become and maintain itself as a place where people don't choose to escalate a conversation in that manner in the first place. The principle of charity asks us to see the best in others' words, and the moment someone goes in for a rhetorical kill, it's immediately clear that they're not doing it because they see the best in what someone else is trying to say.
I realize this is a lot to dump on you, especially when I know you've been frustrated on account of some of the replies you've received elsewhere on the site. I promise I'm not trying to do this to call you out or try to put more on your shoulders. I'm happy you're here and think you have valuable perspectives to share. I think patience in general is the way forward for everyone here, myself included.
I've noticed similar and the same with the Exemplary tag.
It's definitely an issue... but not as much as you would think with the way votes are weighted and perhaps more so, the lack of downvotes.
It's something that carries over from Reddit. It's evident that Tildes is growing and with some spillage from Reddit it's only normal some of the culture transfers. My guess is that it'll reduce over time when it becomes apparent the dogpiling strategy doesn't quite work as well here.
I think this is completely unavoidable. Also, if you were to put both definitions on a Venn Diagram, I think there'd be quite a bit of overlap regardless.
What is the appropriate response to sealioning, or to posts sharing misinformation? On other platforms I would just downvote and move along, and maybe submit a misinformation report. I'm not interested in spending my time writing a reply to every ill-informed post, and I think replying can be a harmful response to any kind of trolling.
The general philosophy here is to treat comments as if they were made in good faith, and try to use charitable interpretations of what was said. However, that doesn't mean being totally gullible and letting trolls run rampant either. So if you truly believe someone to be sealioning, JAQing off, concern-trolling, or intentionally spreading misinformation, then report their comments using the Malice comment label (which acts as a report system here). And if you believe the problem can't be explained in the short Malice message, you can private message Deimos directly to explain it further. His time is valuable though, so please only do that if you think it's a serious issue.
Is the noise label for unproductive comments inappropriate? Sometimes it's grey on whether the comment rises to being malicious. I feel like noise shouldn't be used like a pseudo-downvote though since to my understanding a noise label on an innocent "thanks" message is fine.
It really depends. Using the noise label is a bit of a judgement call in those grey area situations. I have occasionally used it on comments that I felt were incredibly unproductive/inflammatory, or even wildly offtopic. I also often use Noise when I use Malice too, just so the comment has lower visibility in order to give Deimos more time to respond. And I have never been reprimanded for it, but that doesn't necessarily mean he approves of it either. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have tried to never use it as a psuedo-downvote purely as a form of disagreement. But there were cases where I disagreed with something AND felt it was unproductive, inflammatory, or wildly offtopic. The disagreement was not why I used Noise though. So again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But I think one thing worth remembering is that Noise doesn't take effect with just one Noise label being applied. Everyone on Tildes currently has a label weight of 0.5 and so it requires two people to apply it before it goes into effect. This gives a bit of leeway, and allows for a bit of consensus to be formed regarding edge cases. And if Noise starts getting abused, that activation weight can always be adjusted.
Just to clarify, this applies to the 'Offtopic', 'Joke', and 'Noise' labels.
It does not apply to the 'Malice' label. Also, the 'Exemplary' label has a specific variation on how the weighting works.
Exemplary
When you apply the 'Exemplary' label to a comment, it has three effects:
It applies a visible blue 'Exemplary' label to the comment. This happens when the first person labels a comment as exemplary, and stays visible thereafter.
It provides a little message to the Tilder who posted the comment. This happens for each person who labels a comment as exemplary.
It adds a positive multiplier to the comment's vote count, to increase its visibility. The multiplier is equal to
1 + (N x 0.5), where N is the number of people who have labelled a comment as exemplary.Malice
At the moment, the 'Malice' label sends a notification directly to Deimos. This happens for each person who labels a comment as malicious.
Is there a way to report topics themselves as malice? I understand that the other labels are all for comments but it feels weird not being able to report a topic itself without op leaving a comment
Not yet, unfortunately. It's on Gitlab and has been approved already, but not implemented yet. In the mean time, I typically just PM Deimos to report topics, or even Malice a comment in the topic to draw his attention to it if it's particularly bad and needs immediate attention.
IMO the appropriate reaction to sealioning would be to label it malice and move on.
In addition to what others have said, Tildes is pretty good about encouraging disengagement. It's okay to walk away from a conversation, and the ability to ignore whole topics is built into the site. If whatever you're witnessing doesn't reach the level of should-be-removed-from-the-site, it's okay (encouraged, actually!) to simply disengage. It's not uncommon to see people here "sign off" from a conversation without trying to get the last word when frictions get high.
Very much this. I don't even bother to 'sign off', I just stop replying if I don't find a conversation fruitful or productive. That might be considered rude, but I don't intend for it to reflect negatively on the recipient, I just find it helpful to my own mental health.
I've noticed tagging is something Tildes is fantastic with. At least moderators are fantastic at it. But for more casual users like me, tagging feels a bit harder than flairs on Reddit since there are so many options. What is the expectation from mods when it comes to tagging my posts?
No expectations. Any tags you add when you submit something are appreciated though, since that usually saves us a bit of time, even if they're not perfect. Just do the best you can, and don't worry about making mistakes, since we can fix any issues with the tags you added.
And if you want to get a better feel for how we tag things, check the Topic Log in the sidebar of your (or anyone else's) submissions to see the changes we made.
What's the difference between ask.survey and ask.discussion? I'm still trying to learn how Tildes works, I posted two topics so far and both had tags edited by somebody else.
Two examples:
This one is tagged ask.discussion and it's apparently OK. The topic asks two questions, but it is not an ask.survey topic.
This one is mine:
I tagged it ask.survey (because it's a question), reading (because it's about readership) and ask.discussion (because I would like to discuss readership challenges worldwide). The last tag was removed. I understand that sometimes it may be a personal feeling for whoever removes the tag, but perhaps my tagging was incorrect in the first place. I'd like to better understand the difference between a "survey" and a "discussion" as applied to topics on Tildes.
Sorry to jump in as someone who knows nothing about anything when it comes to tags and doesn’t have the permissions to tag other people posts, but I can immediately see a very big difference. Your question is essentially a yes/no (though there might be nuance in the answers) while the other invites very different answers, with the possibility for debate in those answers. If someone answers your question with “yes, my friends read and the stats say readership is high” that’s not really someone someone else can challenge or build on; someone saying “I think we should be approaching a problem with xyz tactics” opens up for discussion about their answer.
Could be it, yes. It crossed my mind in retrospective. When I started posting my topic I wanted to write something else and then let it simmer for a few hours and added more context on readership in Poland in general, but left the title as it was. I guess I'm at fault here. I'll try better next time. :)
You can see what edits were made in the Topic Log in the sidebar, and by whom. And if you're confused about any changes, you can always just ask that person for clarification either via PM or pinging them in a comment (just be nice about it, plz :).
TBH, I don't totally understand the distinction between the two tags myself. So @mycketforvirrad is probably the better person to ask this of.
I'd also be interested in seeing an answer to this. Also, it might shed some light on this question from yesterday.
Began using Tildes yesterday. The site already has me auto-subbed to so many topics I don't have much interest in. Is there an easier way to unsubscribe them than going into each and clicking unsubscribe?
At the moment, no, sorry. We actually recently added a lot of new categories, which makes that particular friction worse than it used to be in the past. With only a few categories, it was easy enough to unsubscribe from a handful of them.
It's something that I imagine will be addressed eventually, as it doesn't scale well should we continue to add more categories (a very real possibility if the site continues to grow).
When someone replies to a comment of mine, is there a way to jump to that specific thread so I can refamiliarize myself on the context? Currently I scroll down to find the thread after the link takes me to the conversation.
Not entirely sure what you mean, but there is a 'Parent' button on every comment. So if someone is replying to you, and you want to know the context, you can just click Parent on that reply and it should take you to the next highest comment in the thread. Repeat to go further back. And you can then click 'Back' which will appear on those Parent comments to go back to the child comment.
The way linking to comments work is a bit buggy right now though, since Tildes uses HTML anchors, and the "Collapse old comments" feature conflicts with that since anchors don't work on collapsed comments. A permalink system is planned though, which should fix all those issues.
So THAT'S what that bug is. Good to know there are plans to fix it. It never was a big deal but it is definitely a mild annoyance.
This isn't a proper fix, but I wrote a little CSS to highlight the parent comment when that happens. I got tired of hunting for my responses under collapsed comments.
There is also a userscript that fixes it entire:
https://tildes.net/~tildes/1647/tildes_userscript_comment_link_fix
@CosmicDefect
Oh, good find and it's funny the RES dev showed up. One thing that concerns me though is that this is a long-standing issue - is development here pretty slow? I understand deimos is rather busy, but it looks like this issue has been well documented for over 4 years now.
I am not a software dev, so my observation might be from an unrealistic perspective and honestly the site works amazingly most of the time despite having such little manpower behind it.
It has been slow ever since Deimos had to take a full-time job elsewhere. He dedicated 2 full years to Tildes development, but we were never able to grow enough, or get enough donations for him to actually take a wage. I doubt he will be able to quit his job even now, but now that traffic and donations have picked back up a fair bit, development has picked up again too though. E.g. We had our first accepted merge request in a year last month. And Deimos has mentioned elsewhere having a few new features in the works again.
Well, I used to pay for reddit premium and now that I've cancelled it...
Done. Now Deimos gets my money rather than reddit.
Sidenote: Hunting for donations tab was a bit of a barrier, it should probably be added to the site's public footer.
There actually used to be a Donation goal tracker at the top of the sidebar:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200121182011/https://tildes.net/
But it was removed, probably because the donation number basically didn't change for years. I have added your suggestion to Gitlab though, since I didn't even realize there is no Donate link in the footer:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/805
cc: @Deimos, because I think this is a pretty easy thing to add, and would likely help a lot. :P
I don't think the percentage of removals has changed much, but the higher traffic here over the past 6 weeks would incidentally push the number of removals up.
Awesome, thanks! I was looking at the links below the comment - I see the inline "parent" link above.
One thing I've noticed in mobile: "Parent" (being the last item in the accordion bar) can get pushed off-screen (instead of wrapping on a second line) when using larger font sizes + if a user's name is particularly long.
Not sure if that's the expected behaviour, but it's a bit of an accessibility annoyance, as someone who needs to increase font size when my eyes are feeling strained.
I don't think that's intentional behavior. So thanks for pointing that out. Added to Gitlab:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/804
To add on to this, is there any way of marking a reply as "read" without voting on it?
In your notifications there's a
Mark as readbutton on each comment that you can use to clear the notification without voting on the comment (try it out on this one!).That worked! Thanks, I don't know how I missed it before.
In your settings under Notification settings there are two features for that:
And if neither option is checked, you can simply click "Mark as read" on the reply in your notifications.
Or do you mean marking replies to other users as having been read by you? There is no way to do that.
Ah, thanks! This setting is what I was looking for.
Not currently, but there is a Stage:: Accepted Gitlab issue for it:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/282
I don't imagine it's a super high priority though. But as you said, it would be nice so hopefully it gets implemented eventually.
I am feeling stupid because I see references to direct messages, but can’t figure out how to do that (or if it’s a thing?).
I wrote a reply to someone asking questions on a thread that was locked by the time I tried to post. It is a good reply, and an (imo) insightful and respectful one, so I would like to send it to them. Is there a way to direct message people on tildes? If not, I guess I must have gotten confused— but I saw a reference to that in another thread. Thank you!
Click on the person's username and in the sidebar is a button to private message them.
Oh my gosh ok I’m still getting used to the sidebar. Thank you and sorry for the obvious-now-seeming question. Appreciate the prompt and helpful answer!
No worries. Happy to help!
Does anyone have any thoughts on how the algorithm that creates your "front page" works? The reason I'm asking is I've noticed (several times) that when I open Tildes, a post from several days ago is near the top of my page. Oh, and I was just using the site earlier this morning, and last night, and the day before, so it's not like I haven't been on here in a week. I'm here every day and still sometimes I'll see posts on my front page that are a few days old.
No need to speculate:
https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/tildes-front-page#sorting-the-topics
And if you don't like the Activity sort, you can change your default topic sort at any point. Just select a different sorting method on the front page, change the "from:" dropdown to your preferred time period, then click "Set as default".
And no need to guess with comment sorting either:
https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/commenting-on-tildes#labelling-comments
(Not gonna copy it all here since it's really long. You cannot currently change the comment sort default though.)
When people comment, it immediately bumps that thread back up significantly (I am unsure if voting does this too, to a lesser extent, but voting also has a cutoff date). I asked about it before was informed that resurrecting a dead thread is considered preferable to making a new post if your contribution is still thoughtful but maybe not "big" enough to warrant a whole new thread.
It doesn't. See here for a full explanation of all the topic sorts:
https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/tildes-front-page#sorting-the-topics
Ahh, I must of missed this page when I read through the documentation. Thank you!
I'm almost always sorting by "new" but occasionally I just forget to do it and that's when I noticed that articles I saw two or three days ago are now at the top of my page.
Oh good to know! I was not aware of that. Thanks for sharing!
I've noticed that I hardly ever see emojis being used on Tildes. Is it just how people talk here, or is it frowned upon / discouraged for some reason (is it because Tildes content should be pure text as much as possible)?
Don't let us stuffy curmudgeons stop you. Let your emojis run free. 🔥
Serious answer: I think they're perfectly fine in moderation to punctuate tone or humor. A good comment isn't harmed by a couple emojis here or there.
I've been here 7 weeks now. I think like photos, if the emojis add important content or context to a thoughtful comment, no one will be unhappy about it. If any older users want to correct me, that would be great.
I think compared to reddit, there is a higher percentage of people here who became used to emoticons or kaomoji before emoji were a thing. I know I saw a lot of references to the Digg to Reddit migration among people complaining about Spez' decisions.
I will use emojis if I'm talking with a friend on here in a casual capacity, but not if I was discussing the finer points of Middle East politics. Of which I know very little, I might add.
Got it, thanks so much for the responses! 😊 @knocklessmonster @boxer_dogs_dance @mycketforvirrad @CosmicDefect
It's just not done by people here.
Don't leave a reply that is just an emoji or an ☝️😆emoji🙄🥴copypasta🎉style post and nobody should really bat an eye.
There are effectively three levels of moderation:
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
At present, Deimos is the only one who can take Level 1 actions.
After 7 days on the site, all users get the ability to take Level 2 actions in the form of labels. If a user feels a Level 1 action is required, they can use the
Malicelabel, which escalates a comment to Deimos for him to potentially take Level 1 action on. There is no way to flag topics at present, but you can simply use aMalicelabel on a comment in the topic itself and then explain the issue in your message to Deimos (eachMalicelabel you use asks for an accompanying explanation). If there aren't any comments on a topic, you can always PM Deimos if you feel he needs to take action on something.As for
Off-TopicandNoise-- those labels won't take effect on a comment until more than one user uses the label on the same comment, so one user alone won't be able to misuse those maliciously. If a user is using labels maliciously or incorrectly, Deimos can remove the labels features from that account, effectively cutting out any Level 2 actions for them.Level 3 actions can be assigned to users by Deimos. There is no automatic system for getting these -- you have to specifically request them for your account. It's important to note that these actions aren't really used as "moderation" in the traditional sense but more as "housekeeping". Editing titles and tags isn't about making decisions on borderline content but more about properly categorizing it and logging on the site. I think of these as "librarian" actions rather than "moderation" actions as a mental shorthand.
There's also a user-driven "moderation" feature in the form of ignoring topics. This doesn't change anyone else's experience on the site, but it allows individual users to remove any topics from their feed that they like. This will also deactivate notifications from that topic, so it's effectively a "self-removal" feature. Once you ignore a topic, it's like it ceases to exist (unless you made a mistake or change your mind, in which case you can fish it out of your ignored topics list).
I would switch your Level 2 and Level 3. For one thing, editing tags and moving topics can be more impactful than labelling a comment as Noise. For another thing, if Level 1 is the actions that are restricted to the fewest people (just one of him!), then Level 3 should be the actions that are spread among the most users.
Your descriptions are fine. I'm just saying the Level numbers should be switched around.
That's (sort of) the intended setup but none of that has been implemented yet.
Currently, specific curation powers are assigned to ordinary users by Deimos if you have enough of a history here for him to know what your deal is and you ask him for them. These include ability to modify tags on a post, the ability to move posts between groups, the ability to edit titles, and a few other things I can't remember.
Other powers get handed out after about 7 days on the site. This primarily is just the ability to label comments.
Any of these privileges can be removed at any time by Deimos based on whether you're using them responsibly.
Wiki privileges are another.
What's the etiquette (norm? policy?) around being an account that only contributes link posts, but nothing else to Tildes?
I know excessive self-promotion is frowned on, but what about an account whose entire submission history is just link posts?
I think this entirely revolves around the kind of content you'd be posting as well as making sure you're not being too spammy. I see nothing inherently wrong with just submitting, but I personally like it when OP explains why they found the link interesting.
It depends what those link posts are. If they're all or mostly links to the poster's own content, then that would count as excessive self-promotion. However, if the links are to various websites, articles, videos, that mostly have no connection to the poster, then I would consider that being an example of someone making a positive contribution to Tildes by seeding content for people to read, watch, and discuss. I've had times when I've made a deliberate effort to post multiple links on Tildes, for exactly that purpose. In and of itself, only posting links to Tildes is not necessary a bad thing. In fact, it's more likely to be a good thing than a bad thing. It's probably someone trying to help Tildes in the only way they know (we're not all wordy obsessive commenters!).
However, your comment reminds me of an account I spotted recently (and you might have spotted it too, which might be what led to this comment of yours). They've been on Tildes for less than 2 weeks, and their account's only activity is to post links: no comments, no discussion, no questions, no nothin', just links. What brought this account to my attention was not that they only post links (which, as I said, is not necessarily a bad thing), but that about 50% of those links are to a single low-profile website which I've never seen anywhere else. I was considering yesterday whether to bring this to Deimos' attention; I think I'll do so now, for him to make a decision about it.
Thanks for prompting me to action. :)
Good question! I don’t know if we really have a norm for that, honestly.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t have a problem with it provided the person isn’t spamming. We want quality links to be posted here, and if someone is providing those then they’re an asset to the community. Opting out of conversations might just be their preferred way of contributing here.
I also think that fits in with the site’s privacy ethos as well. Commenting invariably yields personal information, beliefs, opinions, etc. It also gives a lot of surface area for inferencing based on when you post, what language you use, certain slang, and so on. Furthermore, with all the increases in AI ability, it’s only a matter of time before we’re all identifiable online on account of our individual writing styles (maybe this is already the case? I haven’t been keeping up).
Someone who wants to avoid commenting might be wanting to avoid putting anything like that out there in the first place, which I can respect. Heck, at this point they just might want to prevent AI from getting to chew on any further writing of theirs, which is probably a more popular concern. Whatever the reason though, I feel like someone who does that would be fine within the spirit of the site.
Earlier this year or late last year someone wrote a site that could identify hackernews alts based on writing style. Not sure how accurate it was though.
I wonder if @zoroa may have spotted the same account that I spotted this week, as per my reply here. I suspect that account is spamming, and I have just reported it to Deimos for him to review.
Bumping this thread won't achieve anything. Noone here can do anything about a spamming account. The only person who can do anything about a potential spammer is Deimos - and, like I said in the comment you replied to, I already reported the problematic account to Deimos.
Is there a way to get an email (or other outbound notification) when someone has replied to my comment? I don't check tildes all that much, so it's nice to know if someone is waiting on a reply.
There's HN Replies which does basically exactly what I want (in absence of notifications over there), but that's powered by the API (which Tildes doesn't seem to have).
There isn’t. And the feature request for that was rejected:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/434
Deimos' comment on why:
p.s. It should be noted that, for much the same reasons, even if you set up your account recovery, Tildes doesn't actually know your email address:
If the email isn’t stored how is it used for recovery ? Ask me to put it in and check the hash match when trying to recover and send an email to the one I entered ? Neat system, I appreciate Tildes being built with privacy in mind.
To do a password reset, you have to send an email to password@tildes.net with your username. I hash the sender's email address, and if it matches the recovery one on that account, I reset the password. I handle these requests manually for now because they're rare and fast to deal with, but this would be relatively easy to automate in the future if needed.
Effectively, your email address is treated and stored in the same way as a second password on the account, exclusively used if you need to reset the actual password.
Always a pleasure to see an official response from you, so thanks for that :)
BTW, completely unrelated side-note, but I was re-reading the announcement post about Tildes and noticed one of the links 404s. Idk if you happen to have a mirror or archive, or maybe just removing the link would do it. Not a big deal at all but dead links always leave me itchy. What did it say !? haha
Archive.org snapshot, if you want to replace the link with that, @Deimos:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210307080629/https://redditblog.com/2013/01/31/welcome-new-admin-chad-a-k-a-deimorz/
The description is on the recovery setup page:
https://tildes.net/settings/account_recovery
Hah, makes sense. As you can tell, I hadn’t bothered to poke around there yet. If I lose my username / password I think I have bigger problems than Tildes access 😆. Thanks for the link !
Yeah, that makes sense. Emails is a tough business and less user data is certainly the way to go.
If the community do find it important a separate service could be made that goes over new comments periodically and people could subscribe to a given user’s (likely their own) reply posts and get email updates. Hackernews has such a service for example.
That way Tildes doesn’t have to deal with emails.
In addition to what @cfabbro said, I'll mention that Deimos has expressed an interest in reducing engagement mechanics like notifications, at least for now. Rather than pulling you back to the site, it's better that you decide to visit of your own volition.
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/77/basic_comment_reply_notifications_added#comment-uh
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/179#note_210682074
And though I can't find a source, I'm sure I've read that this may also discourage rapid back-and-forths as users are not constantly drawn back in, without being given the opportunity to cool down or reflect on their positions.
I can't remember who brought up the idea originally, but I remember liking the idea of being able to "batch" notifications and have them delivered in chunks at regular intervals (e.g. once every 24 hours) instead of immediately. I think something like that could be valuable for decreasing negative engagement, as well as setting a sort of structural expectation that things can move slower here and responses might not come back immediately.
I personally dislike this is because some of my "fastest" conversations have been entirely pleasant ones for all involved. It would be frustrating to not have an easy way to know if my conversation partner has gotten back to me if I'm excited about the discussion.
Ideally I would like it to be user-selected, where we each pick our own intervals. Some people still might want their notifications immediately, whereas others might prefer having them batched every hour, every six hours, every day, etc.
Fair, that's great context. Thanks! I just don't want anyone to get lost in the shuffle.
Is there an option to have “Post a comment” at the top under the topic posting instead of the need to scroll to the bottom of the page?
TY
https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-design#the-comment-box
I've absolutely noticed this, so I appreciate this psychological trick. And this completely agrees with my reddit experience that replying to an already existing comment on a big thread is far more effective for discussion.
Thanks for the reply. I can understand the idea behind it but hopefully some day this can be a custom setting. If someone wants to post they will just scroll to the bottom anyways which I’m sure 99% of people are doing. I’m most cases people are looking to comment on the subject that’s being posted. Yes I’ll read through depending what the post is but a lot of the time it’s a comment to be posted.
I'm part of the 1%! Finally! :)
Will there be an option down the line to create our own communities? I want to create one for a game I play. I’d rather not in a general “gaming” community as posts will get buried with u related topics that are not that game related.
Thank you
From another comment of mine:
So maybe one day, if Tildes gets big enough to actually populate hundreds of groups, group creation will become less restricted... but even then it's probably unlikely to be a completely open system like on reddit, in order to prevent groups being created that don't fit the site's philosophy.
Thanks for the reply. Ya I can see it being a lot of empty communities but hopefully at some point. I’ll have to keep checking in.
I'm fairly sure a couple of my niche interests have zero dedicated fans here but people have still been sometimes interested so I plan to continue to post about them occasionally in the hope of attracting like-minded folks.
When I open a link from a Tildes discussion then use the browser's 'back' button, if I've collapsed any parts of the discussion I go back to a different place because the 'collapsed state' isn't preserved. Is there a setting I can change so that 'back' takes me to the place where I opened the link?
If not, preserving the collapses would be a helpful thing to add.
Many thanks to Deimos for this lovely place!
Unfortunately not, but that feature request is on Gitlab:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/45
For now though, in order to prevent that issue, might I recommend simply opening links in a new tab? In your settings, check "Open links in new tabs - External links in topic, comment, and message text"
Is it discouraged to use a jokey tone to a comment. I wrote a comment using some light hearted jokey language while trying to actually write a genuine response (it was not a serious thread) and it just got collapsed.
I also feel like the noise label is too severe or at least simply doesn't scale well with more users. I have seen some threads with 90% of the comments collapsed, if all it takes is 2 people to trigger then with more users this is going to become increasingly common to see.
I can't help but feel if I have genuinely tried to contribute something worthwhile and it gets collapsed then I have failed. how can I see what I did wrong, can I see the labels that have been applied? it would be useful for me to know was it too jokey, was it considered noise even if no-one else can see it.
Finally what effect does editing have, if a comment is flagged as noise or joke and becomes collapsed and you edit it to bring it more inline with a valued comment, is it beyond saving?
Good news! None of your comments have been collapsed from what I can see. I checked each of them.
Collapsing wears two hats here. It happens as a product of noise/off-topic labels, but it is also used to help keep track of new comments. When you return to a thread and see 90% of comments collapsed, that’s because it’s only showing you the new ones. If you refresh the page after doing that (assuming no new comments were added in the meantime), you’ll see the standard comment layout with only noise/off-topic comments collapsed.
If you want to change this setting, you can uncheck
Collapse old comments when I return to a topicin your settings. Personally I keep it on because it really helps follow conversations over time.With regards to your question about tone, a jokey tone is usually fine. The only time it really becomes a problem is when there’s a dissonance between the tone and the topic (e.g. someone being really jokey about something very serious).
Maybe it's collapsed because you already read it..? For example, if I reply from the comment notifications section and then go to the tilde where I posted that reply, my reply will be collapsed (because it counts as viewed, I think). I don't think it was tagged as Noise because I typed it like 3 minutes ago. That's been the case every time, I believe.
None of your comments are showing as collapsed to me in the threads you've commented in, so it must be based on your user settings.
I've just started using Tildes like many of the users here, and I've noticed that I cannot vote on some posts and their comments like the previous new users thread. Why is that the case?
I'm pretty sure that that is because the conversation is old. I don't remember the time period, but voting is disabled after a while if I understand correctly.
Yep, correct. And it's 30 days.
The voting on topics and comments now ends when they're 30 days old and all individual vote records are deleted, retaining only the count
cc: @ProvokedGamer, @chromebby
Oh ok, that makes sense. Thanks! I thought it was for archival purposes, but I was confused as to why replying wasn’t disabled then. I think it’s a good move from a privacy standpoint.
I think voting automatically closes after a month. You can still vote on newer comments though. I just tried sorting comments by 'new,' and they're still up for voting.
How does tildes plan to handle multiple logical paths that lead to communities that may be roughly the same? It's not really an issue right now, but we can pretend that Tildes has grown quite a bit and we have a much more fleshed out set of groups and subgroups. I know that groups are manually created right now, but here are some paths that I can see organically rising next to each other.
~travel.<COUNTRY>and~<COUNTRY>.travel.~humanities.languages.<LANGUAGE>and~<COUNTRY>.<LANGUAGE>~games.<GAME>vs~games.<CONSOLE>.<GAME>~news.<FOO>and~<FOO>.news- obviously this is kind of generic but like I can see it happening with countries or other higher level topics like sports, entertainment, tech, and so on.This is a great question, and one that I’m not sure has been solved yet.
At present, it seems like we are trying to avoid collisions by being selective about our structure, but I do think that once the site expands we will invariably run into the issue you describe. Already users have to select a single place for content that might fit in multiple spots — a minor friction that I still experience even though I’ve been here for years! It seems like, as we expand, some form of cross-posting or a way of having a single submission appear across multiple categories will be necessary. We have some of the basics for that via tagging, but they sort of conflict with the more siloed nature of having specific groups to post to.
There’s been a lot of discussion here about tagging and the structure of the site, with, from what I can see, a lot of different opinions. Some people want a nice hierarchical taxonomy with lots of
~<category>.<subcategory>.<specificinterest>places; others want to do away with categories entirely and just rely on tagging exclusively, while some want to continue the sort of hybrid approach we currently have. Each one has its tradeoffs.If you’re interested in diving deeper into that rabbit hole, one of the best rundowns I can link to is @gaufde’s astonishingly well thought out proposal for the structure of the site. Not only is it good on its own, but Deimos specifically liked it and found at least some of it actionable, so it looks like he sees some merit to the proposal.
None of this is a full answer to your question, unfortunately; but I think that’s because, right now, we genuinely don’t know how the site will operate yet at a larger scale.
Hello! Sometimes I'll go read a thread, and then the next time I go read it again, some comments are automatically collapsed. Is there a way to disable this? I'd prefer everything being expanded all the time.
That is enabled by default now, and has been for quite a few years (IIRC). So @eggpl4nt may not have actually enable it themselves. They will need to disable it if they don't want that feature active anymore though.
Just checked to be sure, and it was enabled by default in early 2020. I also just tested it by creating a brand new account, and it was enabled by default for that account. So maybe you accidentally disabled it at some point, or intentionally disabled it but simply forgot about doing that?
Ah yes, that was checked. Thank you!
Does it matter if I post a link to an article in my own language?
Is it allowed to create a text post in one’s own language?
Currently, Tildes only supports English as a language. It wouldn't be appropriate to submit an article in a different language at this time.
However, if you're comfortable doing so, you could summarize the article into English and just link it separately as a source. That would still enable the discussion to take place.
how do i invite a friend? i can see the invitation section in my profile, it says that currently i have no invitations. how can i get one? (or several)
You missed the boat. But there'll be another along soon-ish.
Every now and then, when Deimos makes an official announcement, he automatically tops up everyone's supply of invite codes. He did this just a week ago.
You'll have to wait until the next one.
Or... you could message him directly, and ask him to give you some invite codes. Another alternative would be to harass @cfabbro (sorry!), who has given out thousands of invite codes, and may have one or two codes lying around somewhere to give you.
The admin, Deimos, regularly gives out invites to users. They don’t happen on a set schedule, but he usually gives them out when he makes updates to the site (see the very bottom of his post). You’ll have to wait until the next time he re-ups everyone’s invite quota — could be several weeks or could be tomorrow. It all depends on what his timeline is.
Is there a way to search by domain (a la https://old.reddit.com/domain/github.com/)?
Not yet.
Do you guys hate Republicans (and Russian bots) as much as I do?
I'm just really tired of dishonest conversations on the internet. I want to go back to the days when people valued intelligence and honest --- you know back when the only people on the internet were the few who were smart enough to figure out how to hook up their modem and connect.
Tildes isn't a hate-centric place at all. We're actively trying to move away from the addictive, combative, and outrage-based paradigms that are common on other sites.
We try to have honest, thoughtful conversations here -- the kind that you like and remember fondly. A big part of that involves not expressing hatred as a means to an end, because it erodes thoughtful conversation.
This is great to hear. It’s a very simple rule …. Don’t be rude to others and treat those around you with how you would like to be treated.
Yeah to word it differently : Is tildes.net actively defending against the hate and lies and propaganda political tactics that Republicans bring with them to the table?
I ask this question about both the users and moderators.
@zoroa's and @cfabbro's answers below covered two important halves. We assume good faith and try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. However, this doesn't mean that people can come in here in bad faith and exploit those norms. We're very aware of things like sealioning, "just asking questions", concern trolling, etc.
Less abstractly, to bring it down to a solid example: this site is explicitly inclusive of LGBTQ people. Outright hate speech against us is, of course, against the rules here, but it's also widely agreed that less malicious things like questioning our right to be ourselves, interrogating our identities, or spreading misinformation about us is also harmful to us. In that sense, the ways in which the wider Republican platform aligns with those wouldn't fly here either.
More succinctly: Tildes isn't fundamentally anti-Republican, but we would absolutely push back on the parts of the Republican platform that violate our community norms and values.
Also, it's worth noting that there are no separate moderators here. Currently, Deimos is the only person who can remove posts. Most other actions are opened up to users here after 7 days on the site in the form of labels. There are also some moderator-like actions (such as editing tags and titles) that are given to some users. Those aren't used for moderation in the traditional sense but more like housekeeping: those users keep things organized and make sure they're posted in the right place.
Apologies for sidestepping your question.
If you haven't already, I invite you to read the site's philosophy, particularly this section on trusting people.
Like @kfwyre was saying, the idea here is to remember the people behind the ideas, even if you may not agree, and trust that they are approaching discussion in good faith.
If a space like that is something you're interested in, you might like it around here.
Sure, assuming good faith and trusting people is a core philosophy, but so is punishing abusers and bad-faith actors. And it's also worth pointing out that hate speech is explicitly against the Code of Conduct:
Tildes is also a Canadian non-profit site, and we have hate propaganda laws up here in Canada. So this is not an absolute free speech site, and hate speech/propaganda has absolutely no place here. cc: @supported
Whoops, sorry I was off the mark. I'm also pretty new and didn't want to overstep and potentially get it wrong.
Nah, don't worry. You weren't really off the mark. I just wanted to clarify that trusting people only extends so far, and there are still lines that cannot be crossed here. :)
Well that is cool.
Tildes is an international community and we follow the Tildes Code of Conduct
I think you will find that people here are intelligent and honest. If you want to discuss US politics specifically, there is a weekly megathread for that in ~news. You will also find US news items posted in ~lgbt and (probably because it's brand new) ~life.women. and in the various other groups as they happen to fit. Lots of us US based Tildesians are unhappy with the Republican party, but this is a site based in Canada, where Reddit was a US company.
Have you read the page about communitiy voting? After you have been here a week, you will have access to a malice tag. If you apply it to a comment, that comment will receive direct attention from Deimos, who is the only formal moderator and administrator here. Hate speech etc are not tolerated. The invitation only system means that bans are enforced.