New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here! (v3)
I figure a new thread might be in order since it has been over two months since the last one and we are continuing to get a stream of new users over time.
Welcome to Tildes!
This is a place 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 on-demand, personal 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!
Previous versions:
Be the change you want to see.
Post whatever appeals to you from your daily reading, that you think would be of interest to others.
Ask whatever recurring question has been percolating in the back of your head for a while.
Present a project you want help with, or that you're just pleased with, or even ashamed of.
Invite others to share your peeves and passions.
We don't all have the time or inclination to contribute regularly. There's a significant barrier to "noisy", repetitive or minimally informative content that doesn't encourage discourse.
Others here have clearly made a personal commitment (thank you!) to contribute their time to the community every day. Personally, I filter out YouTube posts because they're generally not as information-rich as I prefer per minute spent. That means that my Tildes front page may be even more barren than what you're seeing. But if that's the case, I'll make an extra effort to find something from my reading that's potentially of general interest.
For what it’s worth, I have found that it takes less effort to open a new topic than one might initially think. I know there’s a perception that to post a link or topic you are committing to engaging with many or all of the comments, but in my experience i have not found that to be necessary. Plenty of times I have posted something here and never followed up on a comment, if I thought the original article was interesting and got something out of the ensuing discussions here. Sometimes it’s not even particularly niche content: I’ll post front page content from major news sources if I haven’t seen it here. I usually get something out of the different perspectives in the comments even if I don’t participate directly, and I’d like to think others have too. If you read something interesting somewhere and would like to know why other people think, post it here. It takes not more than a minute and you can thick if it as a way to save interesting articles, if you want.
This is less directed at you @douchebag than it is to users more generally. Share interesting content here and watch interesting discussions flourish. Don’t feel compelled to participate 100% of the time. There’s no “karma farming” to speak of here so there’s no negative association (in my opinion) of posting frequently here.
While certainly good advice, and the first course of action, its effectiveness starts to run into an issue of relative volumes and frequencies. If there’s a flood of general news posts a day from the same three users and sources, posted as they publish, it can be a hurdle to “being the change” on a smaller scale. Most people aren’t going to post again about the same topic without significant differences, so other news sources will rarely get the chance. Selectively posting things one feels are high quality and worth sharing/discussing might mean the handful a day (if that) get lost in the (potentially) quantity-over-quality firehose both in terms of visibility and the finite participation time of each user. Seeing the same few names over and over again can be discouraging to someone who’s hesitant to post, and the “same” feel OP mentioned might deter new users from joining.
I wouldn't say there's a high risk of quantity-over-quality posts right now, and it's a legitimate complaint that there are too few posters and sources.
I think Tildes is suffering in part from what's become a global news aggregation problem - paywalls. It's difficult to present a broad range of topics from a variety of sources when you can't share the content effectively. Even the sources which permit gift articles now limit the number of views per link, and they're constantly blocking archive.io and other paywall circumvention tools.
You'll see the same issue on HN, Lobsters, Mastodon... and "free" content is increasingly of dismal quality, fully sponsored and commercialized.
The only solution I can propose is that we get in the habit of making our own content. Much of Reddit's value was in the answers that people (more or less expert) gave to each other's questions, and that's certainly within the scope of what the Tildes community makes possible.
Someone else described Tildes as a news aggregator a fair while back and to be honest, in relatively short time I've been here I would tend to agree more and more.
Would prefer more user generated posts rather than endless articles posted (I'd it even 3people or are they bots ?).
Is there a way to filter out posts linked to articles ? (I enjoy user generated discussions no matter how trivial more)
To the extent that we migrated from reddit, we are all from wildly disparate preferred subreddits.
I'm following as I'm curious about the topic filtering advice you might get. But if you are curious whether someone is a bot, click into their profile and view comments for a few minutes.
But you can make number of comments per post your sorting mechanism for your home page if discussion is what you seek.
Edit @nijuu I just clicked into some posts and it looks like there are tags for specific news websites that you can filter, but no tag for article. It's an interesting absence because I can and do filter out the video tag.
I post from time to time and I'll start adding that tag (if I remember).
Hi!
Edit,, hopefully this explaination might help you find tags to filter, or at least learn that I am not a bot.
I did see that it was kind of quiet here when I arrived and tried to make it seem busier, partly to help it feel inviting to newcomers who would help it grow. I would love to see more people posting a wider variety.
EDITED
This is a topic that I was interested in but knew little about. https://tildes.net/~comp/196i/drupals_approach_to_accessibility_posted_to_r_blind
I got at least one user directly thanking me and I felt good for posting.
I never know which article will get engagement precisely. It seems to be about one in seven that draws discussion.
But I would say 30, possibly 40 percent of what I post here is about some kind of court case or legal issue.
You shouldn't have to defend your credentials to post on Tildes. From what I've seen, your posts are in good faith and comply with site rules. It's pretty silly for someone to complain about power users, but also say they are too busy to post, when they have time to browse and @ people/subtweet people on what appears to be a recurring basis. 🤨
I'd understand if the complaint was due to the website's algorithm boosting visibility in favor of power users' posts, but I don't think that's how that works on Tildes.
Edit: for whoever needs to see this, you can set up UBlock Origin to filter posts and comments from specific users. Doesn't work for every browser on mobile, however
Thanks. For what it's worth, I am aware that being super visible in a small community can be annoying. When I arrived I was at the front of the influx and I wanted to help give the impression that the site was more active than it actually was at that time. There is less need for that now, but I will still contribute.
The accusation that I was a bot, kind of hit hard though. I don't think bots are possible here, but my comments are individualized, even if my posts don't always come with commentary or analysis.
Right. Frankly, it seems absurd to me that someone would notice the number of posts you make, but simultaneously miss the fact that you are a frequent commenter who is pleasant to engage with and quite obviously human. A particularly earnest and genuine human, at that.
I know you tend to be very receptive of feedback, which is wonderful, but in this case I'd pay it no mind.
I do wish deimos would add the ability to filter specific users, but only so people would just do that, instead of openly and repeatedly complaining about users who frequently engage with the site in good faith and in accordance with the rules and norms.
Thanks for your kind words.
As should be clear by now, I value this site, its ideals and mission and community.
Speaking as someone who posts whatever snags my own odd, eclectic, and sometimes parochial interests, I welcome your contributions. Thank you for your efforts, and keep on!
I am yet to spot anyone on tildes who appears to be a bot. Strange.
I don't think posts need commentary or analysis. I've seen this same discussion come up on tildes before (should people post comments along with posts?) (EDIT: that thread) The general consensus (if I recall from that thread), was that people were more happy that content was being shared, and didn't want there to be more barriers to sharing. There are many articles where I would not at all be comfortable sharing an intro comment, as I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject matter.
Don't let this topic get you down, and remember that just because one person (I mean "one person" in a general way, not any specific user) doesn't enjoy something, doesn't mean it's the consensus. People can always filter their feed if they don't want to see something (interests are diverse and people enjoy different things)!
It's still invite only so that's a natural first-pass filter.
I, for one, very much appreciate your contributions here and hope you don’t let this post dissuade you.
I always say we need more non-STEM people and I'm glad you are here bringing content and points of view that are related to your profession ;)
I was hoping for that result. : )
@douchebag, I showed you mine, will you show me yours? What field are you in? What are your interests? Tell me something about you that makes you an individual
Cool! Thanks very much for responding. I love to eat and taste food, wine, beer, chocolate.
You might enjoy the books Walking English, by David Crystal, or Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch.
I don't have the patience to learn many languages, but linguistics generally is fascinating.
There are a few differences between Tildes and Reddit you may find relevant.
If a user posts a lot of content, and that content is appreciated by many, there's really no tangible downside. We have some highly dedicated posters that are cherished by the community as a reference in their fields or in their personal interests. They're not really viewed as "power users", but rather as valuable members of the community.
Additionally, if a kind of content does not please you, it is generally easy to prevent it from being displayed to you through the use of filtered tags. You can find additional information here.
That said, it is common for users to get annoyed when seeing a bunch of posts by someone. I can't say I share that sentiment myself but requests for a feature allowing to ignore users have been made multiple times. As far as I know, the proposal was neither accepted nor rejected, and it may very well happen at some point.
A small number of people think it's okay to post content that they're not interested in, but that they think other people will be interested in. They're very resistant to changing their behaviour on this. It does lead to the situation you describe.
The only way to fix it is by posting content that you're interested in, supporting new users to start posting content that they're interested in, and participating in discussions in those threads.
Interestingly, I agree with your comment, except for the fact that you and @douchebag and others disapprove of it.
This is a collaborative medium. I can use a metaphor from a team sport like volleyball. If I post an article I think is intriguing, or important, I am trying to set the ball so that someone else can spike it.
Edit, here is an example where someone did exactly what you suggest, and I tagged it exemplary
https://tildes.net/~transport/1aqw/biden_administration_announces_1_4_billion_to_improve_us_rail_safety_and_boost_capacity_in_thirty
I'm going to throw this out there, but I am not at all bothered by people posting things that they aren't personally interested in, but they think others will be. I think it's cool that someone would be mindful enough of others that they'd do that. I think it's nice that you care enough to want to make things seem more welcoming to others.
Yeah, I'm not seeing the issue with it, either. I stopped watching the NFL years ago because of the strikes, the addition of some nonsensical rules and the like. However, I'll still see something that coworkers of mine might find interesting so I'll mention it to them in the break room. They then get excited talking about it even though I'm not particularly interested in it myself.
I think the most unusual example of this is that one user who has coded a queuing system for farming upvotes on topic submissions to sites (including tildes). I sort of expected the lack of displayed karma on this site to eliminate that kind of activity.
Are there any stats about the reddit influx to see how many of those people are still around?
I joined earlier this year and I'm still around but it seemed like there were a lot of new users and then things kind of fizzled out. Not nearly as many big discussions.
There are definitely still quite a lot here. I rarely if ever come back to a stale front page even over short periods of time, and comment sections feel significantly more fleshed out.
I've unfortunately also began seeing far more comments that very clearly do not fit Tilde's culture or have far more of the reddit-like cynical undertones than usual here. I've fallen into the very unhealthy habit of glancing at account creation dates and feeding a confirmation bias that we aren't doing a good enough job at integration.
I may be the old man yelling at clouds, but I've got about an 80% success rate for guessing when a low quality comment will be from a June 2023 account and I feel like nobody else has mentioned it.
My now increased awareness of the negativity on reddit and other social media may just be spilling over into identifying those same (though significantly lesser) tendencies here. So this may not be new and I might just be a nut, but this is starting to feel more like "old" reddit used to feel for me rather than a totally novel tiny community.
I'm more than open to being slapped and told I'm hallucinating through some haze of gatekeeping and nostalgia though.
Edit: Grammar
I've been having similar feelings lately.
(tangent)
Though to put a positive spin on it, it has definitely encouraged me to just turn the computer off, or put the phone away, and go do something else. Tildes has very much been the last bastion of strictly online interactivity for me for the last little while, and I guess seeing even it go the way of other sites is the push I've been needing.
I still enjoy services like discord or slack where I can interact with people I might know or be loosely connected to in person, online. But I think my time on the anonymous open internet is coming to an end. The cost benefit valuation of putting up with all that nastiness just doesn't seem worth it anymore.
I have done a lot of reading of past threads in ~ tildes and ~tildes.official. I have seen several people comment and reflect on a period of detoxification after leaving reddit. I think the incentives and structure and commmunity here are likely to encourage and foster a more uplifting spirit over time.
Possibly consider checking back in six months? Just a thought.
I just want to let you know that I appreciate your presence here. You have gone all in on helping maintain and make better the tildes culture that has kept me around these parts. Thank you.
That only works as long as the space is non-toxic. If it becomes reflexively cynical, self-righteous, or outrage-baity then people will just continue marinating in that instead of shedding those habits of mind.
This is a bit of a concern for me in seeing how the tone of conversation has shifted lately. I'm reluctant to label most of it as noise, because it's not really noisy individually. But it's that sort of "dogpiling" usage pattern where one comment isn't an issue but when people are just trying to one-up each other on moral outrage or judgements it becomes this feedback loop that ends up making the thread really noisy and low-value.
Like if a thread is full of people all saying, more or less, the same things without adding any new insight or knowledge or perspective I'd call that noise even if any individual comment is good. But if everything gets like 40 votes and 3 people saying it's noisy it's still gonna be mostly noisy comment above the fold.
As far as I know, there’s not any data like that. We don’t really have an active user count anywhere.
I think whenever we get a big influx there’s a lot of people trying the site out, but not all of them stay. I see it their leaving less as things fizzling out and more of us settling back in to our regular groove after a period of abnormally high activity.
I do think a good number of people have stuck around, and the site is more active than it has been in a long time, but it’s definitely slowed down from what it was back in, say, June of this year.
I'm here, but as a lurker.
I fear it's the same reason I only lurk. I just fundamentally don't believe in the design of the site as it currently stands. It's like meeting (excellent) strangers on a bus, which is nice and all, but the chances of having shared interests are very low and conversations stays at a surface level. I am also kind of disappointed that deimoz didn't lean into what could have been a great advantage of invite only sites. That is for invitees to provide a reference by post history on other sites, which is what some private piracy sites does I believe.
Meta question: Would there be any merit in making this thread recurring?
It's been very useful each time it was posted to help people get up to speed on the site.
Also would you mind linking the docs in your post?
Good call on the docs link. I've added it!
Also, having it be recurring is a good idea, I think. Maybe monthly? Pinging @Deimos to see what he thinks.
A link to the docs (and other relevant links) can be found at the bottom of every Tildes page.
Yeah totally! The idea was that that may not be obvious to people new to the site.
Hello,
I'm not exactly a new user, but its the first time I have something I feel actually passionate enough to post about, and I've realised I have little idea of how to make a standalone post? It's only been the odd comment here and there before this!
Thanks
Go to a specific group — say, ~games — and then click/tap
Post a new topicin the sidebar (if you’re on mobile, you’ll have to hit theSidebarbutton in the top right first).If you’re not sure which group to post to or which tags to use when you do, don’t sweat it. Organization and tagging are collaborative, so if something needs to be moved/fixed/added, the community will help you out!
When making a post, you have two options: a link post, or a text post (both use the same form).
For a link post, add a link in the link box. Optionally, you can also add text in the box below. If you do that, it will be added as a comment on the topic.
For a text post, leave the link box empty. The text of your post will go into the body of the topic.
Thanks for this!!
Are we able to invite new users? The person who introduced me to Tildes still doesn't have an account of his own, it would be nice to repay him with an invite
From time to time, everyone gets a few invitations but there is no formal schedule.
If you find yourself wishing for a block of codes to hand out, just PM Deimos and he'll send you a batch whenever he finally finds the time to read your messages.
DMed you an invite to share 🙂
You are a fantabulous person, and he will appreciate it! Thank you so much!
I'm definitely missing something trivial, but how do you DM here? (Did not find a place on the user's profile)
Click on a username and you'll see a big blue button in the sidebar that says "Send a private message".
To add to that, on mobile the sidebar might be collapsed so that needs to be opened up
Thanks to you too! That's why I missed it.
Thanks! That was easy but I missed it. Probably because I was on phone.
Why aren't there more tildes (am I using that right when I mean to refer to a topic preceded by the ~ character)? What is the process for creating a new ~? I'd like a ~linux but I don't know what the process is to advocate for it.
The last time tildes were added were back in july based on a thread posted by Deimos who is both the overlord and janitor here.
Groups are just high level topic organization. Make posts in a relevant ~group and tag them topic with “linux”. If there’s enough posts with that tag, it may be promoted to a subgroup one day, like ~comp.linux
Hey, I received an invite during the reddit API mess, but haven't been very active. Some sub-tildes (what is the proper name?) for my interests are not very active. I don't want to spam a page with my own posts, so I feel discouraged to post things into nearly-dead communities and clog them up with my own stuff. What is the proper etiquette here if I want to post several things about a given topic?
Don’t think of groups (the ~whatever) as communities. They are, as of now, simply organizational, like a super-tag. Since the single Tildes community isn’t dead, whatever you post isn’t clogging up anything.
Post them all. :-D
Maybe check first if there's a relevant megathread to post them in. If not, just post them as separate posts in whatever (sub)group you feel they belong in.
Unfortunately, some users are overzealous about this stuff, largely out of fears that don't make sense on Tildes. You shouldn't fear posting content that you truly believe is valuable and worthy of discussion.
Anything you post will hit the front page of at least 85 % of the users based on the stats that were posted on who is subscribed to what.
I will wait for other people to weigh in about etiquette.
At the current state of Tildes, there should be no such etiquette. Good content is good content regardless of the poster. Even more so because if there is no interest your post will quickly move to a lower position.
Just make an effort to post high-quality content that is of interest to the community.
As long as they aren't all the same posts a bunch of times I don't see the problem. (ie "This is what I had for breakfast on Monday!", "This is what I had for breakfast Tuesday!" etc)
I think the fact that you're asking about the etiquitte of over-posting is a good sign that you probably won't break any unofficial netiquette. In the very few instances I've seen here the Tildes members have been pretty patient in educating someone as to how or why the post in question breaks netiquette (usually copying and pasting a whole article).
What is the feeling about commenting on very old posts?
I was interested in a certain topic, but thought I'd look first for prior discussion. I found a post from a couple of years ago which was exactly what I was looking for, but I wasn't sure if I should ask a question on such an old post or whether it was better to start a new thread. In the end I did neither.
It's not frowned upon as long as you are commenting in good faith. And bear in mind that you might end up replying to a user account that is no longer active, so feedback might be somewhat hit and miss.
I take my cue from 2 different things here to think there isn't any issue with posting in older threads:
Given those 2 facts I don't see any issue with posting on old threads unless it is something inane or worthless like "me too!"
Another thing to add about old posts: some people don't have their default views set to the
all timeparameter, so when you post to older topics -- especially ones that are months/years old -- your comment might not be visible to a (possibly big?) part of the community.If you're wanting to restart a discussion more than maybe a month old, I generally think it's better to start a new topic unless there's something specific about the old one that you're responding to.
To add to what @kfwyre suggested, if you start a new topic it can be interesting/helpful to link the old discussion in a comment
Is there a way to disable commenting on a post that you created that you no longer wish to keep up with?
For example I normally post a topic when I'm having an issue and am looking for advice or ideas. Once I have solved the issue or delt with the problem I really don't want to keep up with the post.
I try to say thank you to everybody and explain that it has been solved. But at the same time I don't want somebody to feel ignored because they didn't see that the issue is resolved and I did not respond to their comment.
It would be cool to have like a close post feature or a "Solved" tag maybe so that the post is visible for people who have the same issue to search and find answers but disables or gives a warning for commenting.
I am still relatively new to Tildes so I could be missing something or not aware of a feature.
You can't disable the ability of others to comment on an old topic of yours, but you can stop receiving notifications for any new comments in that topic by clicking "Ignore" at the top of the topic comment section.
And while not a site feature, per se, those of us with title/tag editing typically edit the title to include "[Solved]" at the start, and add a "solved" tag as well. So if you (or anyone else here) creates a topic and the problem your were seeking help on gets solved, feel free to PM me or ping me using @cfabbro in a comment to let me know, and I can then add "solved" to the title and tags for you.
You cannot. If things get really bad and toxic you can either delete the post or send a direct message to @deimos since they're the only one with the ability to lock posts.
Are there any interesting or little used features which might be handy for newbies/newbieish like me?.
There’s lots of cool stuff hiding out on your account settings page!
You can change the theme of Tildes to Dracula or something besides Dracula. You can toggle on a bunch of different UI and UX options. You can add tags to your filter list so that you never have to see stuff with tags you don’t like (e.g.
paywall).Besides that, it’s good to know how to ignore specific topics and that the site has a collaborative culture when it comes to organizing and categorizing content.
If you want a deep cut for Tildes though — and we’re talking one of Tildes’ MOST HIDDEN but useful features — it’s that you can ping @cfabbro at any time with an idea about or frustration with the site design, and he’ll either create a new issue on the Gitlab for it or let you know it’s already in the queue.
But wait, it goes even deeper than that. Sometimes you don’t even have to ping him and he’ll just do it anyway. He’s that good.
Heh, thanks. And yeah, I still keep a pretty close eye on ~tildes. :)
Less a question, more a suggestion: When posts are deleted by Deimos, I think it would be helpful to include a brief note explaining why. I read the site largely through RSS (as I assume many here do) so it's pretty common to come across deleted posts. Often it's clear why it was removed, other times not so much. Adding a brief deletion note could help clarify this as well as reinforce whatever community rules or culture the deletion was intended to uphold.
As much as I also have a morbid curiosity about these things, I think part of the reason for moderation calls to be somewhat opaque in this way is to discourage backseat modding and recurring site-wide meta-conversations about the state of moderation.
Such convos are rarely productive and tend to engender a lot of bad blood. In most cases, it's best to assess the moderation approach by its fruits (e.g. Is the site pleasant to be in? Do you feel safe and comfortable sharing and interacting here? Is there a diversity of opinions without being abusive or alienating to anyone?) rather than nitpicking the methods. Good moderation is like pruning a bush. People can agree or disagree about any one branch or twig, but what is important is how the shrubbery looks overall so it's the aggregate of all decisions that matters. Not any single one.
For those who have permissions to add tags to post, is there a way to add a "news" tag to posts that are news?
I am really, really ... uh... bothered(?) to see news articles of any kind. It's one reason I stay away from social medias in general. Tildes is kind of my one "refuge" i guess, where I feel a little at ease (mostly because I can filter things so wonderfully). Sometimes news articles pop up in tildes categories where I wouldn't expect to see news, which is a bit of a downer for me personally. I would love a way to filter all news. But it's difficult because there doesn't seem to be a general "news" tag, or at least, it doesn't always get applied. Any thoughts?
EDIT: I realize I'm in the minority here (in not liking news articles), and not expecting tildes to change for me (if there's no general news tag that's ok). Maybe this is me trying to understand how to better use tildes to suit my personal preferences, and how to stop seeing news without having to resort to unsubscribing to an entire category. Maybe there's some other tags I'm not aware of
Pinging @mycketforvirrad on this one. He’s our resident tag expert.
I do know that there has been talk in the past of filtering out things not just by tag but by domain. If that gets implemented, that would be another way for you to tackle the problem, as you could simply add things like
apnews.comto your filter list.If you want to do just that and not wait, and you’re fine with using a third-party add-on, Tildes ReExtended is an unofficial browser extension that allows domain filtering.
Hey cool, I was unaware of tildes browser addons. I'll have to look into that. In general I try to keep the number of add-ons low, but this might be a cool temporary solution if domain filtering comes along. Domain filtering would surely be useful, I think not only for my use case, but many others as well.
@Algernon_Asimov mentioned this:
This also seems a possibility. However, I'm hesitant to make such a suggestion personally as I don't want to try and make people change because of my one use case (which is probably not relevant to most of the userbase).
I think a browser extension makes the most sense in this case.
I'd also be interested in a News tag.
One think I miss about reddit is having enough content without opening myself up to the firehose of an entire site's content aggregation.
I'm not even particularly sensitive to it, it's just nice to be able to spend a day on the Internet and know you're not going to be bummed out by reading about murder this or terrorism that or erosion of rightswhatever.
You would have to start by defining "news". Maybe there are already ways for you to filter "news" from your Tildes feed, if you can define what you don't want to see.
Is "news" anything that has been newly known in recent times? By some definitions, the announcement of a new phone model is "news" in technology circles. The announcement of a new vaccine against a virus would be "news" in biology journals. A famous author releasing a new book would be "news" in literary circles. And so on.
So, is "news" any new announcement, or is it restricted to new things only in certain areas of human endeavour? Is a new vaccine "news"? Is the creation of a new agreement between movie studios and screenwriters "news"? Is the marriage breakdown of two famous performers "news"? Or is it only wars and politics that bother you? What topics constitute "news"?
Also: how recent should something be to be considered "news"? One hour? One day? One week? One month? At what point does something stop being "news" and become "old news" or even "history"? Would you be as triggered by reading about the Gulf War of 1990 as by the Ukraine War of 2022?
So, what constitutes "news" for you?
Sorry that I was not more specific. I pretty much mean, links to articles from journalism news sites. Article to bbc, new york times, washington post, things like that. Personally, I don't wish to see it.
I have no issues with scientific journal articles (i.e. journal article from Nature, etc.).
Not really an issue with any particular topics (though some I want to see less than others - politics, for example..), just I am not interested to see news articles from news papers, regardless of the topic. Even topics I am personally interested in, I just don't want to see news articles about them.
Interesting question. Really, I am simply not interested in news article regarding current events, I suppose going back for about the past 7 years. But that is a bit difficult to control. I wonder what constitutes "history"? 20 years ago? Maybe there is a combination of "news" + a "history" tag for [EDIT: articles published] predating the millennium? [EDIT: On second thought, I wouldn't want to see historical news articles either, however.] I wouldn't call this being triggered, I am just not interested in current events in the news, for philosophical reasons.
There's no need to apologise! I'm just probing, to find the parameters of the problem, to possibly help find a solution. (I worked as a Business Analyst in a previous lifetime, and putting those skills to use here.)
I assume you've unsubscribed from ~news as an obvious first step.
I notice that some people are tagging posts with a
source.xtag. You could set up filters to hide tags likesource.bbcandsource.nytandsource.washington post. Unfortunately, while people are using tags likesource.varietyandsource.medium, they're not tagging the source for news websites. Maybe you could make a general suggestion that taggers be more consistent about tagging sources, so your filters could work.Wow. That's a cut-off I wasn't expecting to see. (I hope someone told you about the recent pandemic, though! 😛)
I do have to say that your particular desires seem incompatible with a link aggregator like Tildes or Reddit, though. The tendency on places like these are to post recent links - and those recent links will usually be articles or videos reflecting on recent, or even current, events.
You might have to unsubscribe from the majority of groups on Tildes, and restrict yourself to groups like ~talk and ~humanities.history and ~science and ~books and ~tv. In most other groups, you're going to get posts that are links about events within recent years.
What branch of philosophy is against learning things about the current world we live in?
Hey thanks, I am going to try this out. Again, I'm not trying to get tildes or posters to change their behavior based on the request of one person. This was me exploring if there are solutions, that is all. I didn't know if a general 'news" tag might be useful in general, which was why I proposed it.
I love tildes so far. I enjoy it for the discussion. People bring reasoned arguments, and discuss in a civil manner. They attempt to leave emotions aside (for the most part). That's what draws me to tildes, more than the content that I see. I don't get opportunities to discuss like that with people very often. I also enjoy simply reading such discussions. I did use reddit, and to be honest, I never noticed news. This is likely because I browsed a few niche subreddits, that were mainly focused on troubleshooting specific problems.
EDIT: removed from boring, useless stuff. thank you for taking the time to try and help me find a solution
Should their be a separate tag for uplifting news? There was a separate subreddit for uplifting news. What about offbeat news. I think your proposal a great idea. For the moment, if you see an article post that has been fully tagged, you can click into the comments, view the tags and filter that news source, for example BBC or CNN or New York Times. However, original posters are not expert taggers, typically tags get revised within an hour or so of posting by the experts.
@edantes
This is an interesting idea. Personally, I am not interested in any sort of news, regardless if it would be seen as uplifting or somewhat depressing (that also seems like it would be quite subjective). Interesting about being able to filter the source, I'll have to see if I'm able to do that.