I thought it was by design tbh. A slow website for people who aren't terminally online and who aren't looking to get upset. It would be nice to be a little busier. But I'm also a bit afraid of...
I thought it was by design tbh. A slow website for people who aren't terminally online and who aren't looking to get upset.
It would be nice to be a little busier. But I'm also a bit afraid of what that looks like, lol.
Yup tildes is perfect for my post-Reddit needs. It’s more in-depth and slower, so I can spend 15min on the site and feel just as “caught up” as hours of Reddit browsing would take.
Yup tildes is perfect for my post-Reddit needs. It’s more in-depth and slower, so I can spend 15min on the site and feel just as “caught up” as hours of Reddit browsing would take.
Yeah, in fact Reddit got too much traffic, now that I’m looking back on it. Posts would get “old” far too quickly. One thing I like about Tildes is that a given topic will stay current for much...
Yeah, in fact Reddit got too much traffic, now that I’m looking back on it. Posts would get “old” far too quickly. One thing I like about Tildes is that a given topic will stay current for much longer, leading to more solid discussion.
I think the Activity sorts also really help with that. On reddit once a submission is a few days old it's typically dead at that point, with no new comments being made anywhere, even in massive...
I think the Activity sorts also really help with that. On reddit once a submission is a few days old it's typically dead at that point, with no new comments being made anywhere, even in massive threads.
But here, much like on the forums of olde, Topics get "bumped" back to the top of the Activity sorts almost* every time someone makes a new comment in them. So even topics that are months old can still remain relatively active as conversations between users continue, and new users discover the topic and finally decide to join in. And it's not even unheard of for topics that are years old to occasionally pop back up here, and then see a flurry of new comments made in them. :)
The way this forum presents threads helps tremendously. By automatically highlighting new entries, and literally minimizing large chunks of the older ones (that, presumably, someone returning to...
The way this forum presents threads helps tremendously. By automatically highlighting new entries, and literally minimizing large chunks of the older ones (that, presumably, someone returning to the thread already went through) it encourages ongoing attention.
Contrast to Reddit, where it's only popularity that rises by default. And that popularity is set within the first hour of any thread that gets more than a handful of responses.
I used to test it out, until I satisfied myself that's how it worked on Reddit. If you get into a thread immediately, your posts have a chance to be at the top where they'll continue to gather votes by default since most people see them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy on Reddit, that the earliest posts are the ones that are extremely likely to be the "highest voted." It has only a little to do with the post itself, and a lot to do with when the post was made.
Meanwhile, on Tildes, you can stumble into a necro thread and get engagement when you post. Threads here aren't over thirty or sixty minutes after they go up. Sometimes they're only starting to get truly interesting after a few days, as people come and go and lines of discussion form.
I see a thread here that has dozens and dozens of responses, it's almost always because a lot of actual content has been contributed. Meanwhile, on Reddit, any popular thread is just full of meme shit, lame jokes, stupid empty contextless quotes from wherever. The bigger the thread, the higher the noise.
And that's by design, because for all Reddit used to be a bit different, they're basically just one more social media company living off the churn now. They have no interest in quality posts, just posts. Anything, as long as people are clicking and sometimes typing. It shows the advertisers and sponsors and tie-in companies there's an audience for the shit those entities pay for.
In some ways, I think Reddit might be improving from the supposed bot infestation there. Used to be, a bot was just like those old "10 Print "hello" 20 Goto 10" programs you learned to write in basic computers in school back during the 80s. The bots posted lame shit, poorly, and it was obvious. With LLMs presumably getting tied into these things, if nothing else the stuff bot accounts are coming up with to post is starting to get better, more interesting, than the absolute crap most Redditors throw up.
I know old forum etiquette was “no necro posting” but I’ve enjoyed it here on tildes. Usually the revival has something new to add and isn’t spam. Also tildes is good about collapsing what you’ve...
I know old forum etiquette was “no necro posting” but I’ve enjoyed it here on tildes. Usually the revival has something new to add and isn’t spam. Also tildes is good about collapsing what you’ve already read and highlight what you haven’t.
Yeah, the only real unwritten rule here is to avoid necroposting with noise comments. Having a 3 year old topic pop back up because someone decided to reply with "LOL" isn't exactly cool. But if...
Yeah, the only real unwritten rule here is to avoid necroposting with noise comments. Having a 3 year old topic pop back up because someone decided to reply with "LOL" isn't exactly cool. But if anyone has an additional question, update, or anything remotely substantial they want to add to the discussion then they're free to necro away!
Yeah, it always frustrates me on old-style forum sites when someone genuinely adds to the discussion on an old thread, only to be chastised for necroposting. If you’ve got something useful or...
Yeah, it always frustrates me on old-style forum sites when someone genuinely adds to the discussion on an old thread, only to be chastised for necroposting. If you’ve got something useful or interesting to say, it shouldn’t matter that the topic hasn’t been brought up in a while.
To be fair, on older forums the comments were displayed as a single flat chain in order of comment age, and paginated every X comments. So they could get extremely unwieldy and annoying to...
To be fair, on older forums the comments were displayed as a single flat chain in order of comment age, and paginated every X comments. So they could get extremely unwieldy and annoying to navigate the older and larger they got. And it was also often impossible to find and follow worthwhile/interesting discussion threads in them without having to sift through potentially hundreds of pages of noise, and bouncing back and forth through page after page to understand the context of everything being said.
As a result, on older/larger posts it would often be way better for people to directly PM a user they wanted to reply to, or make a totally new post to start things fresh, rather than necroposting. And so I can understand why some people found necroposts on old forums annoying, and why it was generally discouraged.
Whereas on Tildes we have threaded comments, manual comment/thread collapsing, the manual "Collapse [all] replies" feature, the automatic "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic" feature, as well votes and comment labels to help sort things. So it's much easier to navigate old topics here with hundreds of comments in them, much easier to find interesting comments, and much less annoying to follow all the branching comment threads and understand their context.
This is true, especially if it's an important topic that is a current event but also later has an update. Like something in the news. Giving updated info on a popular topic shouldn't be punished.
This is true, especially if it's an important topic that is a current event but also later has an update. Like something in the news. Giving updated info on a popular topic shouldn't be punished.
I realized this quite recently when I wanted to find a post that I saw way back, and when I found it I saw that it was only like a week since it was posted, I was sure it was over 1 month.
Posts would get “old” far too quickly.
I realized this quite recently when I wanted to find a post that I saw way back, and when I found it I saw that it was only like a week since it was posted, I was sure it was over 1 month.
What counts as low votes or low comments? In my own curated version of Tildes (sports and politics is filtered out) I don't see much difference between threads now than e.g. 6 months ago. I think...
What counts as low votes or low comments?
In my own curated version of Tildes (sports and politics is filtered out) I don't see much difference between threads now than e.g. 6 months ago.
I think the busy-ness on Tildes ebs and flows, but with the consistent userbase I'd personally very much hesitate to call Tildes anything less than a 'successful smaller forum', let alone something that has failed to thrive.
Also, in b4: Be The Change You Want To See In The World :p
Agree. The fact that there is an ebb and flow here is what's healthy and appealing. No endless doom scrolling, no blocking trolls, and thoughful, reasoned commentary keep me engaged just enough....
Agree. The fact that there is an ebb and flow here is what's healthy and appealing. No endless doom scrolling, no blocking trolls, and thoughful, reasoned commentary keep me engaged just enough.
Just because there's not constant growth doen't mean Tildes is failing to thrive. It was always my understanding that the goals for this place are to be a safe community for proper, civil discussion, not massive growth.
Requisite thank you to Deimos for creating this space and the handful of folks who help keep it neat and tidy!
I'll repeat what I've said in previous topic about economics. Growth for the sake of growth is nothing more than cancer. Tildes has carved its space into the internet as we know it today. Nurture...
I'll repeat what I've said in previous topic about economics. Growth for the sake of growth is nothing more than cancer. Tildes has carved its space into the internet as we know it today. Nurture it, appreciate it for what it is and cherish it. Numbers are just numbers in the end. 50k likes, 2500 upvotes, or 12 thumbs up. It's all symbolism and is meaningless if you are here for the content itself. Life is not a game about being the best. Life is about finding meaning, beauty, enjoyment, sharing and caring about it with friends. Tildes is thriving in its own way.
I think people don't comment if they don't care. If you sort by most comments, there are passionate conversations. I am a bit concerned that there is no promotion or marketing strategy. Successful...
I think people don't comment if they don't care. If you sort by most comments, there are passionate conversations.
I am a bit concerned that there is no promotion or marketing strategy. Successful nonprofits share their mission and how they meet their goals.
However Tildes is still a lot busier than it was last May before the recent reddit influx.
I think Tildes could find more users if the community was motivated and made plans to do that.
This is myself. I tend to lurk more than I post, simply because I don't have anything intelligent to say on most topics. Even this comment explaining myself and my lack of posting doesn't feel all...
This is myself. I tend to lurk more than I post, simply because I don't have anything intelligent to say on most topics. Even this comment explaining myself and my lack of posting doesn't feel all that useful and it's the kind of comment I often write and then delete without posting because I feel it adds nothing to the conversation.
I think it's fine to give your thoughts in a simple comment :) You never know when your random thought will spark an idea in someone else. As long as your comment isn't malicious, other users will...
I think it's fine to give your thoughts in a simple comment :)
You never know when your random thought will spark an idea in someone else. As long as your comment isn't malicious, other users will vote and label your comment as appropriate.
Personally, I also think users should make jokes more often. Sometimes they're insightful or help lighten up an intense comment section!
I'll take this even further and say that I usually refrain from commenting unless I feel like it adds to the conversation knowing that it will bump the thread back up to the top of the Tildes feed...
I often write and then delete without posting because I feel it adds nothing to the conversation
I'll take this even further and say that I usually refrain from commenting unless I feel like it adds to the conversation knowing that it will bump the thread back up to the top of the Tildes feed for EVERYONE.
To provide the counter argument: I want to see people's comments here, and I think the culture of people self-policing their comments hurts that. I'm part of a number of forums where this sort of...
To provide the counter argument: I want to see people's comments here, and I think the culture of people self-policing their comments hurts that. I'm part of a number of forums where this sort of thing happens, and usually what ends up is that the same people post every time and become the high profile "power users" who will, in fairness, put a lot of effort into their posts, but those posts are usually very similar and repetitive because they're all coming from the same people.
I'd much rather read a bunch of less useful comments from a wide range of commenters than the same set of comments from a handful of names that comment on every single post. So even if you don't think your comment is valuable, I would still sincerely appreciate it!
On this occasion I’ll make an exception to my own rule and say “same here”. Normally I would just upvote. I don’t want to co tribute to the style of commenting I see on other platforms where it...
On this occasion I’ll make an exception to my own rule and say “same here”. Normally I would just upvote.
I don’t want to co tribute to the style of commenting I see on other platforms where it doesn’t add any value to the discussion. I consider it, but the remember what it’s like to be to encounter those inane comments (or just emojis sometimes!). There’s plenty of that elsewhere. But you’ve said this more or less already :)
I'm not sure that Tildes should be compared to a mission-oriented nonprofit, or at least, not anymore. A better metaphor might be to a party. There's no real mission. As long as the host is happy...
I'm not sure that Tildes should be compared to a mission-oriented nonprofit, or at least, not anymore. A better metaphor might be to a party. There's no real mission. As long as the host is happy with the costs and aggravation, and the guests are enjoying themselves, it's fine. Bigger isn't necessarily better - more users, more problems, higher costs.
A small website is much cheaper and more sustainable than an in-person party. It can keep going as long as the hosting costs and time put into administering it are sustainable.
We don't know how it ends. Maybe it doesn't matter when or how it ends, as long as people had a good time while it lasted.
LOL, no wonder you don't think Tildes is "thriving" if all you're seeing is the newest topics! :P You should give Activity sort a try. It's the default sort for good reason, and one of the best...
LOL, no wonder you don't think Tildes is "thriving" if all you're seeing is the newest topics! :P
You should give Activity sort a try. It's the default sort for good reason, and one of the best features of Tildes, IMO. It allows discussions to gradually grow over time like they did on the forums of olde. And if a topic is something you're really not interested in seeing anymore, you can always just click "Ignore" to make it disappear from your front page.
To be fair... it's both. There is a non-profit behind the site: https://docs.tildes.net/donate#information-about-donating But it's not a non-profit with a mission which requires excessive...
Tildes is operated by Spectria, a Canadian not-for-profit corporation (corporation number 1034108-8).
But it's not a non-profit with a mission which requires excessive promotion or marketing to achieve, so that hasn't really been a priority. The site already has a decent population, and is already self-sustaining, so mission already largely achieved.
However, the next logical step would probably be to try to get enough users and active donators so Deimos can finally take a wage, and maybe even eventually quit his 9-5 to start working on the site full time again. That isn't impossible to achieve with no promotion or marketing, but it certainly would help and likely speed things up. Whether Deimos actually wants to take that next step is the real question though.
That depends on whether civility online is a message Tildes wants to share, or whether Deimos wants his nonprofit to support him as @cfabbro mentioned. @skybrian
That depends on whether civility online is a message Tildes wants to share, or whether Deimos wants his nonprofit to support him as @cfabbro mentioned.
Does that matter? Votes are kind of pointless in my opinion, so I'll focus on comments. I think a lot of people here, myself included, self moderate and don't comment. There are various reasons. I...
It seems like many threads lately get few votes and few comments.
Does that matter? Votes are kind of pointless in my opinion, so I'll focus on comments.
I think a lot of people here, myself included, self moderate and don't comment. There are various reasons. I have nothing to add or what I want to add was already said by someone else or the person is arguing with me about something I don't care about so I just don't respond.
There are definitely days where it feels like most of the new topics are stuff I don't care about, but then I close Tildes and go do something else, which is exactly what I personally want.
I suppose if you want a more active community, I would love to hear your ideas about how that should be accomplished?
Yeah I constantly forget that you even can vote on topics tbqh (despite the button being right there lol). It's not the default sort for the front page so it doesn't strike me as important in the...
Yeah I constantly forget that you even can vote on topics tbqh (despite the button being right there lol). It's not the default sort for the front page so it doesn't strike me as important in the way voting on comments is.
TBH, that's not surprising to hear either, since the vote numbers have been intentionally designed to be less prominent here than on most other social media sites. And the vote buttons have been...
TBH, that's not surprising to hear either, since the vote numbers have been intentionally designed to be less prominent here than on most other social media sites. And the vote buttons have been intentionally placed after/under the topic-title/comments so people are more likely to actually read said content before voting on them. Unlike on reddit where they're located before/above the titles and comments... which, IMO, is what leads to so many people there voting on titles alone, more knee-jerk bandwagon voting, as well as the low-effort, joke, and quick-to-consume content/comments overwhelming the more time-consuming/thoughtful/high-effort content/comments.
The downside to this is there are generally less votes on content here even in comparison to subreddits of similar size/traffic though, since users here often do seem forget to vote on stuff even if they enjoyed it and think its worthy of a vote... but that's not necessarily a bad thing either, so long as people readjust their expectations. E.g. When I was on reddit I would be disappointed if my submissions didn't make the "front page", or my comments only got a handful of votes, but here I appreciate every single vote way more. And it's also made me far more appreciative of the people who take the time to comment in the topics I've submitted, and reply to my comments.
cc: @BeanBurrito, since I think that's another factor you might not be considering.
I'm honestly pleasantly surprised when I notice my comments have gotten votes, but I'll confess I rarely pay attention unless I've been in an argument with someone.
I'm honestly pleasantly surprised when I notice my comments have gotten votes, but I'll confess I rarely pay attention unless I've been in an argument with someone.
That is what I like. I think most Redditors simply aren't aware to how toxic voting on contents is. I was disappointed seeing how most Lemmy communities just carried that kind of voting over into...
TBH, that's not surprising to hear either, since the vote numbers have been intentionally designed to be less prominent here than on most other social media sites. And the vote buttons have been intentionally placed after/under the topic-title/comments so people are more likely to actually read said content before voting on them.
That is what I like.
I think most Redditors simply aren't aware to how toxic voting on contents is. I was disappointed seeing how most Lemmy communities just carried that kind of voting over into their communities. I too like how voting is done here. It serves the idea originally behind content voting --- to promote content you think is worthy. Downvotes simply aren't needed and actually retard a lot of what the creators of content voting wanted. My guess is that many redditors want the ability to "punish" thoughts they don't like without having to put in the work of making something to say.
You can effectively censor through downvotes on Reddit, leading to those communities that become frustrating to navigate and hostile to anyone new. I do see a bit of the "vote to agree" here too...
You can effectively censor through downvotes on Reddit, leading to those communities that become frustrating to navigate and hostile to anyone new.
I do see a bit of the "vote to agree" here too making me believe it's simply human nature to vote more on what resonates rather than on what contributes, but Tildes doesn't let votes steer the conversation by weighing votes through tags. It's simple but clever. Though the exemplary tag is dangerous with a very large site, where it could be used to steer certain ideologies to the top of the chain.
Being smaller helps. Even so, a little more speed and a couple of different topics would be welcome.
Downoting has completely destroyed the idea of moving good content up and bad content down, on Reddit. I'm still a big fan of /r/politics If you go to the "new" tab/sort on "new", you will see...
Downoting has completely destroyed the idea of moving good content up and bad content down, on Reddit.
If you go to the "new" tab/sort on "new", you will see that people are downvoting facts and events they don't like, NOT downvoting articles that they think people should see.
Eh, New sort on reddit and the downvote behavior there can be a bit misleading, IMO. Having created and helped moderate many subreddits over the last 16+ years, and also having been a staunch...
Eh, New sort on reddit and the downvote behavior there can be a bit misleading, IMO. Having created and helped moderate many subreddits over the last 16+ years, and also having been a staunch "knight of new" for the same length of time - I'm absolutely convinced that 99% of the downvotes on new submissions are from bots or other users who just submitted something themselves and are trying to increase the likelihood their submission will make the "rising" and "hot" pages by downvoting every other new submission.
On the smaller subreddits that sort of behavior is really noticeable, and you can often even tell which asshole did it too, because as soon as they submit something all the other new submissions will suddenly go from 1 to 0 or even negative vote counts. And on the larger subreddits, it's likely just that same selfish behavior but scaled up.
That's one of the major reasons Tildes doesn't have downvotes, doesn't track Karma, made vote counts less prominent and less important, and also treats topics as more of a communal property thing rather than individual user property, to disincentivize or eliminate that sort of selfish behavior.
Agreed and with how small this community is I don't know how important voting really is. I often read articles from threads with like 5 votes. I'm still getting interesting content collected for...
Agreed and with how small this community is I don't know how important voting really is. I often read articles from threads with like 5 votes. I'm still getting interesting content collected for me and I'm totally fine with not discussing said article/content.
I always feel like I get out what I put in from Tildes. I've had some really great conversations and a couple of users have went out of their way to be kind to me and made my day. I wouldn't hate...
I always feel like I get out what I put in from Tildes. I've had some really great conversations and a couple of users have went out of their way to be kind to me and made my day. I wouldn't hate to see some growth, as I don't want to ever see this place die. I've not gone to reddit but a handful of times since I started coming here and have been healthier for it. Being trans I don't have to worry nearly as much about toxic comment sections baiting me into arguments and making my blood rise. I still see some people ignorant of the topic, but not so many hateful about the topic, if that makes sense.
I recently made a lighthearted thread about PS1 games and was really thrilled with the discussion it created. So in short, I'm happy with the status of Tildes. I do want to give out my invitations though.
I'll trade a small but high-signal community for the inverse any day of the week. Tildes is way over Dunbar's Number for creating a tight knit feeling but if I had to describe the aggregate...
I'll trade a small but high-signal community for the inverse any day of the week. Tildes is way over Dunbar's Number for creating a tight knit feeling but if I had to describe the aggregate "entity" that I imagine the tildes userbase to be I'd say that you are are varied, thoughtful, and much more genuine in your expression than the rest of the net.
If tildes pushed harder into growing the userbase I worry we'd end up with the abusive snark, low effort noise, and harmful groupthink that makes spaces like hackernews 1 or slashdot just awful to be around.
Advertising openly would ruin this tenuous harmony for sure but I do feel that invites to people that you know would keep the quality high since each invite would be shared to those that have been casually vetted by the invitee.
I got my invite via a thread in a difficult-to-join community that made sure to set a tone of "only join if you value interacting with an exemplary community" which precluded any expectations of shitposting or slinging pithy no thought one-liners in the typical reddit style. This is a good thing, IMO and I hope others that share invites provide similar introductions.
So in my opinion if anyone is looking for marching orders to help Tildes thrive, offer out your invites to people you trust and enjoy chatting with already!
Given that it's still in "invite-only alpha" with very little development, no promotion and no clear future plan it's not surprising it's not thriving. If anything it's surprising it's still so...
Given that it's still in "invite-only alpha" with very little development, no promotion and no clear future plan it's not surprising it's not thriving. If anything it's surprising it's still so active, although reddit being so bad certainly helps (some lost users randomly end up here via word of mouth).
I'm curious where you got the idea that tildes is in alpha. IMO, the invite-only aspect is a key part of why tildes is so high quality. We'll alternate between low user growth and then some event...
Given that it's still in "invite-only alpha" with very little development, no promotion and no clear future plan
I'm curious where you got the idea that tildes is in alpha. IMO, the invite-only aspect is a key part of why tildes is so high quality. We'll alternate between low user growth and then some event (usually some sort of reddit enshitification) driving a big swing. If things are slowing down, we can recruit more. But big user waves also tend to lower quality for a bit until the new users figure out the site and those who want memes self-filter elsewhere.
There are definitely some features that were planned but haven't yet been implemented. There were plans for escalating permissions based on community participation or something like that... not...
There are definitely some features that were planned but haven't yet been implemented. There were plans for escalating permissions based on community participation or something like that... not sure if that's still the plan. I think being invite-only is important not just to site culture but also just to provide enough of a barrier to spammers and trolls -- especially while we only have one person who can delete posts but even past that point.
I'm one of the many who came to Tildes from the post-Reddit exodus. Tildes is, unquestionably, much smaller than Reddit in regard to userbase. It is also (to my understanding) semi-curated in...
I'm one of the many who came to Tildes from the post-Reddit exodus.
Tildes is, unquestionably, much smaller than Reddit in regard to userbase. It is also (to my understanding) semi-curated in terms of what subjects are posted here.
That said, the average quality of discussion is, in my opinion, higher here than it was back at Reddit, with some exceptions of course (this is the internet and arguments still occur).
There are trade-offs. If you want a space where you can ask a specific subsection of the site: 'Hey, is anyone else experiencing these technical issues with this specific (non-Tildes) site as of 5 minutes ago?', you are going to be disappointed in the niche, real-time hivemind / information sharing available to you here. That is a direct result of scale, or lack thereof. It's not exactly a bad thing, and neither is it exactly a good thing, it's just a property of what Tildes is, the (intentional?) lack of a million different niche subsections for every imaginable subject, and the scale of the userbase here.
I am happy with Tildes, it has enough interesting articles to keep me entertained during downtime, but not too many to where I use it too often. I also appreciate the longer form comments,...
I am happy with Tildes, it has enough interesting articles to keep me entertained during downtime, but not too many to where I use it too often.
I also appreciate the longer form comments, although I do often skip them if the topic isn't super interesting.
I definitely do not miss running into "and my axe!" or similar in every single comment thread. I haven't used reddit in months except for the occasional Google search for "best [x] reddit".
To me, Tildes is alive and well and functioning as I hoped it would when I first joined. I personally do not want Tildes to have a growth, promotion, or marketing strategy- there is a high risk...
To me, Tildes is alive and well and functioning as I hoped it would when I first joined. I personally do not want Tildes to have a growth, promotion, or marketing strategy- there is a high risk that these would ruin the site (as would changing from invite/request only to open registration probably).
I think it's beneficial to let go of these things as expectations. Not every site or community needs to grow large and some lose value when they do.
Not every topic or discussion needs super high engagement either. Low but quality engagement where people are thinking before posting (and sometimes deciding to not contribute) is a sign of health to me.
Places like reddit are plagued with low quality interactions because the culture there lends itself to constant memeing, trolling, joke comments, and karma farming. The moment that happens here, I am out.
Idk, seems like there's always activity around here. I often drop in several times on posts to see additional discussion and such. Anyway, it's better now than it was pre-reddit API shenanigans,...
Idk, seems like there's always activity around here. I often drop in several times on posts to see additional discussion and such. Anyway, it's better now than it was pre-reddit API shenanigans, at least. It was a lot quieter here, except when the topic was about reddit and/or Tildes it self.
I wouldn't mind more active users, but I also don't think it's absolutely necessary. I certainly don't want to see a firehose of new users (I assume that's where additional activity would come from). Let the slow trickle of new users keep trickling in.
I recently saw an outside discussion of Tildes, where someone asked, "wait, is this right? They've been in 'invite-only' alpha mode for 6 years?". I replied with, "yes ... and we like it that...
I recently saw an outside discussion of Tildes, where someone asked, "wait, is this right? They've been in 'invite-only' alpha mode for 6 years?".
I replied with, "yes ... and we like it that way."
Then I added "(and DM me with irrefutable proof that you are a decent human being, for an invite)".
Using Reddit like this, whoever is giving the invite can at least casually look through the history of that Reddit user, to get a decent idea of whether the user will be a troll or not. Even a...
Using Reddit like this, whoever is giving the invite can at least casually look through the history of that Reddit user, to get a decent idea of whether the user will be a troll or not. Even a minor barrier to entry can do a massive difference. MetaFilter has a one time $5 signup fee, which also helps keep the userbase of decent quality.
Honestly, I think it is still actually invite-only. First, the simple fact that the registration page says you need an invite probably already drives off a huge horde of potential...
Honestly, I think it is still actually invite-only.
First, the simple fact that the registration page says you need an invite probably already drives off a huge horde of potential scammers/spammers, in search of lower-hanging fruit.
Second, people who are not already on Tildes probably don't know how easy it is to get an invite ... you kinda have to be motivated enough to plan for putting in the effort to look for one, before you discover that, hey-hey, it actually doesn't require much effort.
Thirdly, as I understand it, it serves as a tiered tracking system. If I invite a bunch of people, and 9 out of 10 are not trouble-makers, but my 10th one is a spammer, no biggie. But if I invite 10 spammers to join, and then each of those spammers also invite 10 more spammers, and etc ... there is an electronic paper trail leading right back to me as the source of the problem. Not only do the 2nd and 3rd level spammers get banned, I also get booted.
Sidebar, if the site ever moved out of alpha/invite-only, what would be used to help control the influx of new users? My first thought would be a quick quiz (read the docs, answer a few questions...
Sidebar, if the site ever moved out of alpha/invite-only, what would be used to help control the influx of new users? My first thought would be a quick quiz (read the docs, answer a few questions about the site/site values), but I’m wondering if ChatGPT would make that too easy to bypass.
In a sense, we aren’t really invite only, at least compared to things like invite only torrent trackers. You can post on the tildes subreddit asking for an invite, and you will probably get one (I...
In a sense, we aren’t really invite only, at least compared to things like invite only torrent trackers. You can post on the tildes subreddit asking for an invite, and you will probably get one (I think /u/cfabbro manages those). You can also send an email to Deimos requesting an invite and be basically guaranteed to get one. In practice, requiring the user to engage in that small bit of effort has been pretty effective at managing growth and selecting the users we want.
What does "irrefutable proof that you are a decent human" even mean? I don't think someone needs to be a paragon of virtue to join and contribute. There are warning and ban systems. The invite is...
What does "irrefutable proof that you are a decent human" even mean? I don't think someone needs to be a paragon of virtue to join and contribute. There are warning and ban systems. The invite is tied to you so you probably don't want to post public invite links. But if someone generally seems engaged and amenable to reasonable discourse there's no reason to keep them out.
Oh, that was just my snarky way of saying I won't randomly hand out invites to anyone w/o doing some due diligence on their history. Edit: I actually don't vet people very much, before giving out...
Oh, that was just my snarky way of saying I won't randomly hand out invites to anyone w/o doing some due diligence on their history.
Edit: I actually don't vet people very much, before giving out an invite, but just looking to see they have a real posting history somewhere, that looks like a human posted things, that already prunes out a lot of the bot-ish riff-raff.
I have, in fact, had people ask me for an invite, and at a quick glance I can see that they have little or no history, on reddit or wherever, and/or their history looks really sketchy, and I've not handed out an invite to those people.
I've thought about posting more and bringing in topics for niches I enjoy but I also want to be able to engage with the people who comment on a post I'd make and have been holding off due to the...
I've thought about posting more and bringing in topics for niches I enjoy but I also want to be able to engage with the people who comment on a post I'd make and have been holding off due to the limited time I can spend on Tildes and my hobbies in general.
I feel like I enjoy the quality posts and comments that I see here and the amount of activity here seems great as there's usually new things being posted throughout the day. For some of my niche interests I still visit the related subreddits but that has been decreasing more as I try to phase Reddit completely out.
As others have said, activity comes and goes. I sometimes wish there was a bit more conversation about some subjects, but if you look by activity of amount of comments, there certainly isn't a...
As others have said, activity comes and goes. I sometimes wish there was a bit more conversation about some subjects, but if you look by activity of amount of comments, there certainly isn't a shortage of conversation in general.
If we just go by comments and votes (which is not the complete picture) and we agree that your premise about tildes is correct, it probably isn't the right thing to have a conversation about. Simply because there can be so many cases as to why that might be the case. Not even counting the various views and desires you need to content with.
Just taking yourself as an example, you clearly seem to value comments at the same time you seem to be a lurker mostly. A few weeks ago I posted this thread which to me showcased how differently people can approach online platforms. What they value on them, what encourages and discourages them to participate.
One of the most striking differences is that even on a platform as Tildes there are distinct groups of people who value comments in different ways. Some truly do value long form comments, where others think there are too many comments that are just overly long. And, of course, a lot of people somewhere in between.
So, if by some metric, we agree that Tildes is not thriving. Then the question becomes, what can actually be done about it in a way that keeps all of those wishes and desires in mind.
Somewhat related, in my mind at least. What we can do as a community is also influenced by the platform and governance. Some solutions simply can't be achieved without changes to the platform, which is made slightly more complex by the current state of governance. Deimos is clearly busy IRL, so anything requiring technical changes and their input will be slow moving. There also aren't really mods on the website in the traditional sense. There are a few users with some extra rights, but they insist they are not truly mods.
I personally think they fit the bill of being "a moderator", but that is a different discussion. In this context, they do indeed lack the power to make big changes.
It’d be interesting to see stats on it, but I wonder if folks are just posting more these days? I think there have been a few threads by people using apps and whatnot where they note that they...
It’d be interesting to see stats on it, but I wonder if folks are just posting more these days? I think there have been a few threads by people using apps and whatnot where they note that they forward tonnes of links to Tildes whenever something piques their interest. Since the site doesn’t run a recommender algorithm which could hide it, perhaps you’re simply seeing the increased churn from that?
I sort Tildes by activity from all time, so new stuff doesn’t appear at the top unless there is activity. This probably prevents me from commenting on new threads, but it also seems to fall in...
I sort Tildes by activity from all time, so new stuff doesn’t appear at the top unless there is activity.
This probably prevents me from commenting on new threads, but it also seems to fall in line with the content that I actually would find interesting.
Perhaps we need something like „the knights of r/new” on Tildes. It’s been over a decade, not many of them left on reddit.
I thought it was by design tbh. A slow website for people who aren't terminally online and who aren't looking to get upset.
It would be nice to be a little busier. But I'm also a bit afraid of what that looks like, lol.
Yup tildes is perfect for my post-Reddit needs. It’s more in-depth and slower, so I can spend 15min on the site and feel just as “caught up” as hours of Reddit browsing would take.
Yeah, in fact Reddit got too much traffic, now that I’m looking back on it. Posts would get “old” far too quickly. One thing I like about Tildes is that a given topic will stay current for much longer, leading to more solid discussion.
I think the Activity sorts also really help with that. On reddit once a submission is a few days old it's typically dead at that point, with no new comments being made anywhere, even in massive threads.
But here, much like on the forums of olde, Topics get "bumped" back to the top of the Activity sorts almost* every time someone makes a new comment in them. So even topics that are months old can still remain relatively active as conversations between users continue, and new users discover the topic and finally decide to join in. And it's not even unheard of for topics that are years old to occasionally pop back up here, and then see a flurry of new comments made in them. :)
* - See: Activity vs All Activity sorting
The way this forum presents threads helps tremendously. By automatically highlighting new entries, and literally minimizing large chunks of the older ones (that, presumably, someone returning to the thread already went through) it encourages ongoing attention.
Contrast to Reddit, where it's only popularity that rises by default. And that popularity is set within the first hour of any thread that gets more than a handful of responses.
I used to test it out, until I satisfied myself that's how it worked on Reddit. If you get into a thread immediately, your posts have a chance to be at the top where they'll continue to gather votes by default since most people see them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy on Reddit, that the earliest posts are the ones that are extremely likely to be the "highest voted." It has only a little to do with the post itself, and a lot to do with when the post was made.
Meanwhile, on Tildes, you can stumble into a necro thread and get engagement when you post. Threads here aren't over thirty or sixty minutes after they go up. Sometimes they're only starting to get truly interesting after a few days, as people come and go and lines of discussion form.
I see a thread here that has dozens and dozens of responses, it's almost always because a lot of actual content has been contributed. Meanwhile, on Reddit, any popular thread is just full of meme shit, lame jokes, stupid empty contextless quotes from wherever. The bigger the thread, the higher the noise.
And that's by design, because for all Reddit used to be a bit different, they're basically just one more social media company living off the churn now. They have no interest in quality posts, just posts. Anything, as long as people are clicking and sometimes typing. It shows the advertisers and sponsors and tie-in companies there's an audience for the shit those entities pay for.
In some ways, I think Reddit might be improving from the supposed bot infestation there. Used to be, a bot was just like those old "10 Print "hello" 20 Goto 10" programs you learned to write in basic computers in school back during the 80s. The bots posted lame shit, poorly, and it was obvious. With LLMs presumably getting tied into these things, if nothing else the stuff bot accounts are coming up with to post is starting to get better, more interesting, than the absolute crap most Redditors throw up.
I know old forum etiquette was “no necro posting” but I’ve enjoyed it here on tildes. Usually the revival has something new to add and isn’t spam. Also tildes is good about collapsing what you’ve already read and highlight what you haven’t.
Yeah, the only real unwritten rule here is to avoid necroposting with noise comments. Having a 3 year old topic pop back up because someone decided to reply with "LOL" isn't exactly cool. But if anyone has an additional question, update, or anything remotely substantial they want to add to the discussion then they're free to necro away!
Yeah, it always frustrates me on old-style forum sites when someone genuinely adds to the discussion on an old thread, only to be chastised for necroposting. If you’ve got something useful or interesting to say, it shouldn’t matter that the topic hasn’t been brought up in a while.
To be fair, on older forums the comments were displayed as a single flat chain in order of comment age, and paginated every X comments. So they could get extremely unwieldy and annoying to navigate the older and larger they got. And it was also often impossible to find and follow worthwhile/interesting discussion threads in them without having to sift through potentially hundreds of pages of noise, and bouncing back and forth through page after page to understand the context of everything being said.
As a result, on older/larger posts it would often be way better for people to directly PM a user they wanted to reply to, or make a totally new post to start things fresh, rather than necroposting. And so I can understand why some people found necroposts on old forums annoying, and why it was generally discouraged.
Whereas on Tildes we have threaded comments, manual comment/thread collapsing, the manual "Collapse [all] replies" feature, the automatic "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic" feature, as well votes and comment labels to help sort things. So it's much easier to navigate old topics here with hundreds of comments in them, much easier to find interesting comments, and much less annoying to follow all the branching comment threads and understand their context.
This is true, especially if it's an important topic that is a current event but also later has an update. Like something in the news. Giving updated info on a popular topic shouldn't be punished.
I realized this quite recently when I wanted to find a post that I saw way back, and when I found it I saw that it was only like a week since it was posted, I was sure it was over 1 month.
This is so true. And I find the comments sections are much more personalized, maybe cause it is a smaller community.
Same - I love to see the same topics appear in the feed after a few hours of not checking.
Same. I also find myself actually reading things I wouldn't normally, as there is less daily content, and get quite engrossed.
What counts as low votes or low comments?
In my own curated version of Tildes (sports and politics is filtered out) I don't see much difference between threads now than e.g. 6 months ago.
I think the busy-ness on Tildes ebs and flows, but with the consistent userbase I'd personally very much hesitate to call Tildes anything less than a 'successful smaller forum', let alone something that has failed to thrive.
Also, in b4: Be The Change You Want To See In The World :p
Agree. The fact that there is an ebb and flow here is what's healthy and appealing. No endless doom scrolling, no blocking trolls, and thoughful, reasoned commentary keep me engaged just enough.
Just because there's not constant growth doen't mean Tildes is failing to thrive. It was always my understanding that the goals for this place are to be a safe community for proper, civil discussion, not massive growth.
Requisite thank you to Deimos for creating this space and the handful of folks who help keep it neat and tidy!
I'll repeat what I've said in previous topic about economics. Growth for the sake of growth is nothing more than cancer. Tildes has carved its space into the internet as we know it today. Nurture it, appreciate it for what it is and cherish it. Numbers are just numbers in the end. 50k likes, 2500 upvotes, or 12 thumbs up. It's all symbolism and is meaningless if you are here for the content itself. Life is not a game about being the best. Life is about finding meaning, beauty, enjoyment, sharing and caring about it with friends. Tildes is thriving in its own way.
I think people don't comment if they don't care. If you sort by most comments, there are passionate conversations.
I am a bit concerned that there is no promotion or marketing strategy. Successful nonprofits share their mission and how they meet their goals.
However Tildes is still a lot busier than it was last May before the recent reddit influx.
I think Tildes could find more users if the community was motivated and made plans to do that.
This is myself. I tend to lurk more than I post, simply because I don't have anything intelligent to say on most topics. Even this comment explaining myself and my lack of posting doesn't feel all that useful and it's the kind of comment I often write and then delete without posting because I feel it adds nothing to the conversation.
I'm posting this one for illustrative purposes...
I think it's fine to give your thoughts in a simple comment :)
You never know when your random thought will spark an idea in someone else. As long as your comment isn't malicious, other users will vote and label your comment as appropriate.
Personally, I also think users should make jokes more often. Sometimes they're insightful or help lighten up an intense comment section!
I'll take this even further and say that I usually refrain from commenting unless I feel like it adds to the conversation knowing that it will bump the thread back up to the top of the Tildes feed for EVERYONE.
Crap, I just did it again :)
To provide the counter argument: I want to see people's comments here, and I think the culture of people self-policing their comments hurts that. I'm part of a number of forums where this sort of thing happens, and usually what ends up is that the same people post every time and become the high profile "power users" who will, in fairness, put a lot of effort into their posts, but those posts are usually very similar and repetitive because they're all coming from the same people.
I'd much rather read a bunch of less useful comments from a wide range of commenters than the same set of comments from a handful of names that comment on every single post. So even if you don't think your comment is valuable, I would still sincerely appreciate it!
And I appreciated your comment.
On this occasion I’ll make an exception to my own rule and say “same here”. Normally I would just upvote.
I don’t want to co tribute to the style of commenting I see on other platforms where it doesn’t add any value to the discussion. I consider it, but the remember what it’s like to be to encounter those inane comments (or just emojis sometimes!). There’s plenty of that elsewhere. But you’ve said this more or less already :)
I'm not sure that Tildes should be compared to a mission-oriented nonprofit, or at least, not anymore. A better metaphor might be to a party. There's no real mission. As long as the host is happy with the costs and aggravation, and the guests are enjoying themselves, it's fine. Bigger isn't necessarily better - more users, more problems, higher costs.
A small website is much cheaper and more sustainable than an in-person party. It can keep going as long as the hosting costs and time put into administering it are sustainable.
We don't know how it ends. Maybe it doesn't matter when or how it ends, as long as people had a good time while it lasted.
I sort by "new" to avoid seeing titles I have already seen.
LOL, no wonder you don't think Tildes is "thriving" if all you're seeing is the newest topics! :P
You should give Activity sort a try. It's the default sort for good reason, and one of the best features of Tildes, IMO. It allows discussions to gradually grow over time like they did on the forums of olde. And if a topic is something you're really not interested in seeing anymore, you can always just click "Ignore" to make it disappear from your front page.
But then you don't notice when conversations reach over 70 replies in a couple of days...
To be fair... it's both. There is a non-profit behind the site:
https://docs.tildes.net/donate#information-about-donating
But it's not a non-profit with a mission which requires excessive promotion or marketing to achieve, so that hasn't really been a priority. The site already has a decent population, and is already self-sustaining, so mission already largely achieved.
However, the next logical step would probably be to try to get enough users and active donators so Deimos can finally take a wage, and maybe even eventually quit his 9-5 to start working on the site full time again. That isn't impossible to achieve with no promotion or marketing, but it certainly would help and likely speed things up. Whether Deimos actually wants to take that next step is the real question though.
That depends on whether civility online is a message Tildes wants to share, or whether Deimos wants his nonprofit to support him as @cfabbro mentioned.
@skybrian
Seems like a lot of activity to me, on topics that I'm interested in. Maybe you've filtered them out?
Does that matter? Votes are kind of pointless in my opinion, so I'll focus on comments.
I think a lot of people here, myself included, self moderate and don't comment. There are various reasons. I have nothing to add or what I want to add was already said by someone else or the person is arguing with me about something I don't care about so I just don't respond.
There are definitely days where it feels like most of the new topics are stuff I don't care about, but then I close Tildes and go do something else, which is exactly what I personally want.
I suppose if you want a more active community, I would love to hear your ideas about how that should be accomplished?
Yeah I constantly forget that you even can vote on topics tbqh (despite the button being right there lol). It's not the default sort for the front page so it doesn't strike me as important in the way voting on comments is.
TBH, that's not surprising to hear either, since the vote numbers have been intentionally designed to be less prominent here than on most other social media sites. And the vote buttons have been intentionally placed after/under the topic-title/comments so people are more likely to actually read said content before voting on them. Unlike on reddit where they're located before/above the titles and comments... which, IMO, is what leads to so many people there voting on titles alone, more knee-jerk bandwagon voting, as well as the low-effort, joke, and quick-to-consume content/comments overwhelming the more time-consuming/thoughtful/high-effort content/comments.
The downside to this is there are generally less votes on content here even in comparison to subreddits of similar size/traffic though, since users here often do seem forget to vote on stuff even if they enjoyed it and think its worthy of a vote... but that's not necessarily a bad thing either, so long as people readjust their expectations. E.g. When I was on reddit I would be disappointed if my submissions didn't make the "front page", or my comments only got a handful of votes, but here I appreciate every single vote way more. And it's also made me far more appreciative of the people who take the time to comment in the topics I've submitted, and reply to my comments.
cc: @BeanBurrito, since I think that's another factor you might not be considering.
I'm honestly pleasantly surprised when I notice my comments have gotten votes, but I'll confess I rarely pay attention unless I've been in an argument with someone.
That is what I like.
I think most Redditors simply aren't aware to how toxic voting on contents is. I was disappointed seeing how most Lemmy communities just carried that kind of voting over into their communities. I too like how voting is done here. It serves the idea originally behind content voting --- to promote content you think is worthy. Downvotes simply aren't needed and actually retard a lot of what the creators of content voting wanted. My guess is that many redditors want the ability to "punish" thoughts they don't like without having to put in the work of making something to say.
You can effectively censor through downvotes on Reddit, leading to those communities that become frustrating to navigate and hostile to anyone new.
I do see a bit of the "vote to agree" here too making me believe it's simply human nature to vote more on what resonates rather than on what contributes, but Tildes doesn't let votes steer the conversation by weighing votes through tags. It's simple but clever. Though the exemplary tag is dangerous with a very large site, where it could be used to steer certain ideologies to the top of the chain.
Being smaller helps. Even so, a little more speed and a couple of different topics would be welcome.
Downoting has completely destroyed the idea of moving good content up and bad content down, on Reddit.
I'm still a big fan of /r/politics
If you go to the "new" tab/sort on "new", you will see that people are downvoting facts and events they don't like, NOT downvoting articles that they think people should see.
Eh, New sort on reddit and the downvote behavior there can be a bit misleading, IMO. Having created and helped moderate many subreddits over the last 16+ years, and also having been a staunch "knight of new" for the same length of time - I'm absolutely convinced that 99% of the downvotes on new submissions are from bots or other users who just submitted something themselves and are trying to increase the likelihood their submission will make the "rising" and "hot" pages by downvoting every other new submission.
On the smaller subreddits that sort of behavior is really noticeable, and you can often even tell which asshole did it too, because as soon as they submit something all the other new submissions will suddenly go from 1 to 0 or even negative vote counts. And on the larger subreddits, it's likely just that same selfish behavior but scaled up.
That's one of the major reasons Tildes doesn't have downvotes, doesn't track Karma, made vote counts less prominent and less important, and also treats topics as more of a communal property thing rather than individual user property, to disincentivize or eliminate that sort of selfish behavior.
Agreed and with how small this community is I don't know how important voting really is. I often read articles from threads with like 5 votes. I'm still getting interesting content collected for me and I'm totally fine with not discussing said article/content.
It seems quite busy to me. Much busier than before the big reddit exodus.
I'm one of the people who came from reddit. I still visit reddit 20 times per day.
Now I just visit tildes also a few times per week.
I always feel like I get out what I put in from Tildes. I've had some really great conversations and a couple of users have went out of their way to be kind to me and made my day. I wouldn't hate to see some growth, as I don't want to ever see this place die. I've not gone to reddit but a handful of times since I started coming here and have been healthier for it. Being trans I don't have to worry nearly as much about toxic comment sections baiting me into arguments and making my blood rise. I still see some people ignorant of the topic, but not so many hateful about the topic, if that makes sense.
I recently made a lighthearted thread about PS1 games and was really thrilled with the discussion it created. So in short, I'm happy with the status of Tildes. I do want to give out my invitations though.
I'll trade a small but high-signal community for the inverse any day of the week. Tildes is way over Dunbar's Number for creating a tight knit feeling but if I had to describe the aggregate "entity" that I imagine the tildes userbase to be I'd say that you are are varied, thoughtful, and much more genuine in your expression than the rest of the net.
If tildes pushed harder into growing the userbase I worry we'd end up with the abusive snark, low effort noise, and harmful groupthink that makes spaces like hackernews 1 or slashdot just awful to be around.
Advertising openly would ruin this tenuous harmony for sure but I do feel that invites to people that you know would keep the quality high since each invite would be shared to those that have been casually vetted by the invitee.
I got my invite via a thread in a difficult-to-join community that made sure to set a tone of "only join if you value interacting with an exemplary community" which precluded any expectations of shitposting or slinging pithy no thought one-liners in the typical reddit style. This is a good thing, IMO and I hope others that share invites provide similar introductions.
So in my opinion if anyone is looking for marching orders to help Tildes thrive, offer out your invites to people you trust and enjoy chatting with already!
https://tildes.net/invite
Given that it's still in "invite-only alpha" with very little development, no promotion and no clear future plan it's not surprising it's not thriving. If anything it's surprising it's still so active, although reddit being so bad certainly helps (some lost users randomly end up here via word of mouth).
I'm curious where you got the idea that tildes is in alpha. IMO, the invite-only aspect is a key part of why tildes is so high quality. We'll alternate between low user growth and then some event (usually some sort of reddit enshitification) driving a big swing. If things are slowing down, we can recruit more. But big user waves also tend to lower quality for a bit until the new users figure out the site and those who want memes self-filter elsewhere.
The small text at the bottom of the login page does say "Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha." (you need to be logged out to see it)
Hmmm. Fair enough. I suppose I never do look at tildes without being logged in.
There are definitely some features that were planned but haven't yet been implemented. There were plans for escalating permissions based on community participation or something like that... not sure if that's still the plan. I think being invite-only is important not just to site culture but also just to provide enough of a barrier to spammers and trolls -- especially while we only have one person who can delete posts but even past that point.
I'm one of the many who came to Tildes from the post-Reddit exodus.
Tildes is, unquestionably, much smaller than Reddit in regard to userbase. It is also (to my understanding) semi-curated in terms of what subjects are posted here.
That said, the average quality of discussion is, in my opinion, higher here than it was back at Reddit, with some exceptions of course (this is the internet and arguments still occur).
There are trade-offs. If you want a space where you can ask a specific subsection of the site: 'Hey, is anyone else experiencing these technical issues with this specific (non-Tildes) site as of 5 minutes ago?', you are going to be disappointed in the niche, real-time hivemind / information sharing available to you here. That is a direct result of scale, or lack thereof. It's not exactly a bad thing, and neither is it exactly a good thing, it's just a property of what Tildes is, the (intentional?) lack of a million different niche subsections for every imaginable subject, and the scale of the userbase here.
I am happy with Tildes, it has enough interesting articles to keep me entertained during downtime, but not too many to where I use it too often.
I also appreciate the longer form comments, although I do often skip them if the topic isn't super interesting.
I definitely do not miss running into "and my axe!" or similar in every single comment thread. I haven't used reddit in months except for the occasional Google search for "best [x] reddit".
To me, Tildes is alive and well and functioning as I hoped it would when I first joined. I personally do not want Tildes to have a growth, promotion, or marketing strategy- there is a high risk that these would ruin the site (as would changing from invite/request only to open registration probably).
I think it's beneficial to let go of these things as expectations. Not every site or community needs to grow large and some lose value when they do.
Not every topic or discussion needs super high engagement either. Low but quality engagement where people are thinking before posting (and sometimes deciding to not contribute) is a sign of health to me.
Places like reddit are plagued with low quality interactions because the culture there lends itself to constant memeing, trolling, joke comments, and karma farming. The moment that happens here, I am out.
Idk, seems like there's always activity around here. I often drop in several times on posts to see additional discussion and such. Anyway, it's better now than it was pre-reddit API shenanigans, at least. It was a lot quieter here, except when the topic was about reddit and/or Tildes it self.
I wouldn't mind more active users, but I also don't think it's absolutely necessary. I certainly don't want to see a firehose of new users (I assume that's where additional activity would come from). Let the slow trickle of new users keep trickling in.
I recently saw an outside discussion of Tildes, where someone asked, "wait, is this right? They've been in 'invite-only' alpha mode for 6 years?".
I replied with, "yes ... and we like it that way."
Then I added "(and DM me with irrefutable proof that you are a decent human being, for an invite)".
Is it really an invite only mode when you can go on Reddit, ask for an invitation, and get one without anyone knowing anything about you?
Using Reddit like this, whoever is giving the invite can at least casually look through the history of that Reddit user, to get a decent idea of whether the user will be a troll or not. Even a minor barrier to entry can do a massive difference. MetaFilter has a one time $5 signup fee, which also helps keep the userbase of decent quality.
Honestly, I think it is still actually invite-only.
First, the simple fact that the registration page says you need an invite probably already drives off a huge horde of potential scammers/spammers, in search of lower-hanging fruit.
Second, people who are not already on Tildes probably don't know how easy it is to get an invite ... you kinda have to be motivated enough to plan for putting in the effort to look for one, before you discover that, hey-hey, it actually doesn't require much effort.
Thirdly, as I understand it, it serves as a tiered tracking system. If I invite a bunch of people, and 9 out of 10 are not trouble-makers, but my 10th one is a spammer, no biggie. But if I invite 10 spammers to join, and then each of those spammers also invite 10 more spammers, and etc ... there is an electronic paper trail leading right back to me as the source of the problem. Not only do the 2nd and 3rd level spammers get banned, I also get booted.
Sidebar, if the site ever moved out of alpha/invite-only, what would be used to help control the influx of new users? My first thought would be a quick quiz (read the docs, answer a few questions about the site/site values), but I’m wondering if ChatGPT would make that too easy to bypass.
In a sense, we aren’t really invite only, at least compared to things like invite only torrent trackers. You can post on the tildes subreddit asking for an invite, and you will probably get one (I think /u/cfabbro manages those). You can also send an email to Deimos requesting an invite and be basically guaranteed to get one. In practice, requiring the user to engage in that small bit of effort has been pretty effective at managing growth and selecting the users we want.
Yep. I don't even really vet users anymore either. The only people I don't send invites to are obvious spammers.
Um no? It's totally not cfabbro. That's even their username so you know for a fact that it's someone else.
What does "irrefutable proof that you are a decent human" even mean? I don't think someone needs to be a paragon of virtue to join and contribute. There are warning and ban systems. The invite is tied to you so you probably don't want to post public invite links. But if someone generally seems engaged and amenable to reasonable discourse there's no reason to keep them out.
Oh, that was just my snarky way of saying I won't randomly hand out invites to anyone w/o doing some due diligence on their history.
Edit: I actually don't vet people very much, before giving out an invite, but just looking to see they have a real posting history somewhere, that looks like a human posted things, that already prunes out a lot of the bot-ish riff-raff.
I have, in fact, had people ask me for an invite, and at a quick glance I can see that they have little or no history, on reddit or wherever, and/or their history looks really sketchy, and I've not handed out an invite to those people.
I've thought about posting more and bringing in topics for niches I enjoy but I also want to be able to engage with the people who comment on a post I'd make and have been holding off due to the limited time I can spend on Tildes and my hobbies in general.
I feel like I enjoy the quality posts and comments that I see here and the amount of activity here seems great as there's usually new things being posted throughout the day. For some of my niche interests I still visit the related subreddits but that has been decreasing more as I try to phase Reddit completely out.
The slow pace of Tildes means that if it's 24 hours before you can reply, that's fine.
If you have interesting content, please share.
As others have said, activity comes and goes. I sometimes wish there was a bit more conversation about some subjects, but if you look by activity of amount of comments, there certainly isn't a shortage of conversation in general.
If we just go by comments and votes (which is not the complete picture) and we agree that your premise about tildes is correct, it probably isn't the right thing to have a conversation about. Simply because there can be so many cases as to why that might be the case. Not even counting the various views and desires you need to content with.
Just taking yourself as an example, you clearly seem to value comments at the same time you seem to be a lurker mostly. A few weeks ago I posted this thread which to me showcased how differently people can approach online platforms. What they value on them, what encourages and discourages them to participate.
One of the most striking differences is that even on a platform as Tildes there are distinct groups of people who value comments in different ways. Some truly do value long form comments, where others think there are too many comments that are just overly long. And, of course, a lot of people somewhere in between.
So, if by some metric, we agree that Tildes is not thriving. Then the question becomes, what can actually be done about it in a way that keeps all of those wishes and desires in mind.
Somewhat related, in my mind at least. What we can do as a community is also influenced by the platform and governance. Some solutions simply can't be achieved without changes to the platform, which is made slightly more complex by the current state of governance. Deimos is clearly busy IRL, so anything requiring technical changes and their input will be slow moving. There also aren't really mods on the website in the traditional sense. There are a few users with some extra rights, but they insist they are not truly mods.
I personally think they fit the bill of being "a moderator", but that is a different discussion. In this context, they do indeed lack the power to make big changes.
It’d be interesting to see stats on it, but I wonder if folks are just posting more these days? I think there have been a few threads by people using apps and whatnot where they note that they forward tonnes of links to Tildes whenever something piques their interest. Since the site doesn’t run a recommender algorithm which could hide it, perhaps you’re simply seeing the increased churn from that?
I sort Tildes by activity from all time, so new stuff doesn’t appear at the top unless there is activity.
This probably prevents me from commenting on new threads, but it also seems to fall in line with the content that I actually would find interesting.
Perhaps we need something like „the knights of r/new” on Tildes. It’s been over a decade, not many of them left on reddit.
I definitely noticed that but at the same time, as many other have said, I think that is kinda by design on tildes.