Is it time for a user growth campaign?
Take a look at the Tildes Statistics site. Couple things:
1, and most obvious: there has been a decline in users over the past few days for the first time that I'm aware of.
2: (I was going to make this point before the user decline occurred but it's probably moot now) Due to the scaling of the Y-axis, it appears that there is healthy user growth in the site. But if you look at the numbers, we're talking about user growth of roughly 60 people over the past month.
I know we want controlled growth, and I know we don't want to open it up to the masses. But we also want this site to succeed (i.e. provide interesting discourse and keep people coming back on a regular basis). I don't believe success can happen when growth is stagnant (or, declining!)
I don't think that the conversations are necessarily stagnant per se, in fact there's an impressive amount of thoughtful discussion relative to the size of the user base. But if a given topic is too niche (e.g. MLS football or MUDs, two of my interests), the odds of finding like-minded users to discuss with is obviously lower.
Is it time to consider some sort of growth campaign (one that is not reactionary a la the Reddit API changes) in order to infuse some new life into this awesome site?
I've made this account a while ago and I've only really started using it this year as a way to forcefully escape my usage of Reddit Mobile. Reddit killing 3rd party apps really made me consider using alternatives and knowing that I had this Tildes account laying around, I've decided to put more time into it.
My analysis is really just anecdotal: I feel like people need a reason to change and join Tildes rather than just knowing about it. It took me multiple Reddit fuckups until I truly started to make some time to use Tildes, yet I still use Reddit everyday.
I like the memes, I like the news, I like my hobbies discussion threads there. I wouldn't really want it any other way.
As for Tildes, I love the more in-depth discussions, the small size of the site and the community vibe to it. The site gives me exactly what I want. When I read posts like this wondering if the site is too small or if new users should come in, I feel dread.
I've been on the internet long enough to know that small communities like this that are still active, yet low in number of users, are the best way to connect with people on the internet. I honestly would not mind if engagement stayed around this level for many years to come or maybe a little more, but not too much... it's hard to find that balance and once you lose it, you can never go back to having less people.
Just my two cents tho, love this site.
I've also been on the internet to see how ephemeral such small communities can be. One bad drama or simply a few power users going away for whatever reason (sometimes as simple as life changes) and the site dries up. That's the last thing I'd want to happen. Going the other way, once a site feels "dead", it's extremely hard to revive it. People move on to the next shiny object
I like the civil feeling here but I wouldn't mind a bit more activity, personally. I'd say per group there are maybe 2 moderately sized (>20 comment) discussions per week. I wouldn't mind it potentially scaling to maybe 5.
Since the scale at the top is the truncated count and amounts to a total of three accounts being deleted, I'm not so sure I'd immediately jump to the conclusion that there's a "decline in users" insumuch as three accounts being deleted in as many days is statistically insignificant. To add that there were recent "throwaway" posts that could easily explain the "decline".
In my opinion: Sixty users per month isn't stagnation, too much greater than that risks becoming another site with an endless series of links.
Also this isn't a canonical count of users. It's pulled from the sidebar on ~tildes.official. If you unsubscribe from that group the number will go down.
I think I saw one as well. If there is anything I hope will be discouraged on tildes, it is this behavior. While I could think of a few valid use cases, more often I found it one of the more toxic elements on reddit.
FWIW, the decline is (I think?) two users? It seems like we will need to wait to see whether it's noise or the beginning of a trend. I couldn't find a way to change the date range, but I'm curious what the longer term trend looks like.
If we're thinking about improving the Tildes experience (not that I have any control, just putting out ideas), then I think the goal should not be "getting more users" but "getting better discussion". To that end, I think it would be more interesting to look at engagement than subscribers. Some example ideas for things to measure:
Maybe looking at this kind of thing will help us understand the nature of the Tildes community a little better, and identify ways to engage the people who are drifting away.
If someone wants to make an anonymized data set (salted hash the usernames and post and comment categories, fuzz the the post dates or truncate them to the nearest day or 3 day window, etc.) I'd be happy to take a crack at analyzing it for some of these things. I'd give the results to the site admins to review before making them public and delete the data afterward.
Churn is an inevitability. As long as growth continues sustainably I'm unsure why faster growth would be a goal. If anything chasing growth numbers seems contrary to the philosophy behind the site. I'm not really sure what that even looks like. Would it be an article on ArsTechnica (I was invited after reading about it in a Ars Technica comment thread)?
I shop out Tildes to friends but so far no one has shown much interest. Most people want a "reddit-like" that they can doom scroll. They didn't necessarily grow up on the same types of BBS/message boards and so a platform emphasizing discussion isn't as appealing to them.
If anything donating to the non-profit (if able) is probably the best way to support the site.
I have successfully recruited from reddit conversations where people express unhappiness with the negative vibe there. But finding those conversations is not easy and I don't spend as much time on reddit these days.
I love tildes but my concern (or just… lament?) is that AI comments may pollute the site. That also applies to any platform, but I’m not sure what the way to deal with that is. I grew up using GameFAQs and this place is the closest
vibe to some of the older social boards there.
The user invite tree is preserved so that if AI users start proliferating, the whole tree of related users can be pruned, assuming they have a common ancestor, which would be the case if the bots were inviting each other.
That said, I'm not sure what anyone would gain from adding s bunch of AI comments to Tildes? There's no revenue to be made from doing so.
That’s good to hear and that’s true there’s not much incentive to have bots making comments here. I suppose the user count and the lack of ads on the site help with that.
previous related discussion
I have worked with nonprofits and promoting their mission and how they fulfill it is a key part of how they operate.
I wouldn’t object, but I am comfortable with the current level of users and activity. One of the things I like most about Tildes is how personable it is and it’s something I want to avoid losing.
To be honest, that number is without meaning as there is no context.
Metrics in general are little devils with a lot of traps to walk into, but at the very least you need some more context. Like amount of posts and comments created, ideally broken down to give an impression of how many unique users are active.
The user metric we have now just shows accounts, not if they are active. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of accounts are inactive.
But if the two accounts we lost are just accounts that were not active to begin with. And, if we gained 2 active users before that, I think you can argue we actually had a net positive growth.
Having said all that, for a community to keep existing, you do need growth. So I am not advocating against a bit of a campaign, but I also don't want it be detrimental to the website.
To be honest, I think these are two sides of the same coin. I actually think there is some impressive amount of thoughtful discussion because of the relative size of the user base. There is no mass mememing as there was on reddit, less toxic behavior and generally more of a community feeling. This makes it more likely for many people to be comfortable commenting and engaging in discussion.
You are also right though that it sometimes means that for some subject matters you simply are unlucky and there are fewer people around.
One of the things I feel we need to adjust our expectations about after reddit. Healthy communities are often smaller communities, that by definition means that we can't expect one platform to cater to all our discussion needs.
For me personally it means that I get a lot out of Tildes, but that I also frequent other communities.
I'm not someone who wants to call for a "ladder pull" just because I like the current state of the site. I think the activity here is way better than it was when I joined after the reddit API debacle. The activity is much more steady, the quality of the posts have increased, and the tone of the site feels more consistent.
I think each new recruitment campaign runs the risk of changing the character of the userbase. If we all like the content currently available, we should stick with slow steady growth.
Also, one thing I've noticed with niche content is that the OP just has to put a bit more effort into starting the discussion. Tildes is so small that an OP posting comments and interacting can be enough activity to keep a post on the front page. I've made posts that are on niche topics and I just had to try to add some context to open it up to a broader audience. Many tildes users like to discuss topics even if it's not an existing interest for them, so niche topics don't automatically flop.
On your latter point about niche content, I think it can also relate to plenty of users (myself included) being reluctant to comment if I don't feel like I have much insight to contribute.
If I've followed the link through and read an interesting but niche article and see that there are 0 comments then that can feel kind of intimidating and I'm likely to move on. If there's already at least a little bit of discussion (even just the op saying what they found interesting) then it can be easier to riff on that existing discussion.
I don't mind more people.
I agree with you on not seeing as many topics in areas I enjoy, but I also haven't been initiating conversations about them due to time constraints in my life.
I think the slow growth will help the site keep it's path forward. There's still niche Reddit communities to scratch certain itches and I don't think I'll fully stop using Reddit until old.reddit or Reddit enhancement suite stops working.