Starter comments on Tildes?
I get a lot out of browsing Tildes and all the conversations here. This is in keeping with the Tildes philosophy of high-quality content and conversation.
In the spirit of quality discussion, context is everything and reference points matter. I have found my own thoughts nudged many times here, and often the comments and points of view lend entirely new perspective to the content (and are sometimes more interesting).
While I appreciate the discussions, there are often links to an article, a video, a blog, or anything really, with no context and little description.
So in the spirit of conversation, I'm asking if there could be "conversation starter" comments for posted links. I'd like to know why this video or that blog is different from just randomly finding some link online. Why is this link on Tildes? What makes it interesting or important? What are we talking about? Where is the quality conversation?
Is that too much, or would that be reasonable? Thoughts?
I think it's something that should be encouraged, but not required.
For video, I think it should be highly encouraged. I created this post last week and provided a starter comment. Mainly because 1) the post/video title wasn't obviously linked with the video's topic, and 2) I know how I am with video, which might be like you: Why should I watch a video on something that I may not really care about in the first place? But if I had some context beforehand, that might get me over the hump.
For other things, specifically text-based news articles, I could see an argument of just wanting to inform. I've done that with submissions, especially on reddit. Hey, this thing is going on, it's happening, be aware those who are interested. I'm not necessarily trying to create conversation. On Tildes, I'll often quote the opening paragraph, and that'll be that.
Anyway, I say encouraged and not required, because I think it's important, especially on a smaller website, with a smaller community, to not put too many barriers into posting. Like I sometimes get hung up on the topic tags, even though I know we have community members who will tag/re-tag everything. Which has prevented me from posting before, because I'll get distracted while trying to figure out tags, and forget that I'm trying to post something. I know tags aren't required, but it feels that way sometimes. If people have to come up with a prompt or some explanation beforehand, some may not post at all. Which I think would be more "damaging" than not providing any starter comments/context.
I feel like the most important one is politics. There are a lot of people who filter out political posts (or US politics) so I see it as common courtesy to try to enable that filtering.
I've started to see it as a game... Spam fun, but still relevant, tags and see if any stick :) The perspective of I won't be able to do it right anyway, might as well have some fun has reduced tag-suggestion-paralysis to almost zero.
We used to do that, I still do quite often, usually using an interesting pulled quote from the article - but some find them less than ideal, finding that they superficially increase the perceived "activity" on the post and that the author is attempting to draw more attention to their own post than others.
I for one am in agreement with you, but it shouldn't be an expected requirement as that could lead to a decrease in topics being posted.
I think that way sometimes, that if I'm posting something it feels unfair to further "advertise" and take up people's time. But that's not how I feel about others who post starter comments, or just descriptions: it makes me pause to read and get me interested in reading the article. Sometimes, the include their own viewpoints and I'm especially interested in those. There's also a near 0 chance I would watch a video unless it has a text description of what to expect. So, it's one of those things where I'm more harsh on myself than I ever would be to someone else.
But I agree, we're a small community and it shouldn't be a requirement: I want to hear from the more shy members of our community and I want the bar of entry for them to be very very low.
I believe starter comments are generally encouraged, especially when sharing more subjective things such as essays or music.
Sometimes I leave my own "starter" comment on other submissions from creators I already personally enjoyed in the hopes that I can convince just one person to check it out when they otherwise would not have.
I mean, submission statements are neither encouraged nor discouraged. They're just something people can do and there are varying opinions on the subject.
Personally if someone just drops a video (or some specific types of links) with absolutely no comment I'm absolutely not clicking through
That is perfectly fine. You are not forced to click on anything.
What if a bodybuilder with a black belt in 8 martial arts & a proficiency in handguns is standing next to my desk shouting at me to click on tildes posts, threatening that they'll drown a kitten if I don't?
Then you call their bluff and then the internet will murder them for you.
Wait...murder the bodybuilder or the kitten?
You know what? Nevermind, I don't know wanna know.
Okay? Of course there's no official seal of encouragement here. It's just something people like to see, and it's evident when one pays attention to what other people like over time and note what could help disseminate a subjective interest a little bit more.
"Encouraged" generally means an overwhelming consensus or indirect directive. I most certainly value your opinion but I don't believe it is enough to determine which behaviors are encouraged on Tildes as whole.
You're sounding a little prescriptive with the implications of the word that's all.
I just want everyone to know that it is okay to post with or without a submission statement.
If you valued my opinion, you'd ask if any of that is really what was meant before assuming I was being so stringent. It was a casual comment. It was just providing some perspective.
Which is more prescriptive? What I said, or your comment about tags? If you're trying to save the people of this site from the evils of prescription, I don't believe I'm the starting point.
I'm really not sure what is going on here. Perhaps we can leave that aside and start over on another opportunity?
I do this for practically everything I post. Given, most of the stuff I post are conversation starters in and of themselves.
But the Tildes post UI is built specifically for what you’re asking for: there is both a link and a text box. I think that, for the most part, everyone should be filling both.
I do like submission statements if they include the thoughts of OP on what they found interesting about the content. I don't value them as much when it is mostly the OP quoting a bit from an article without input of their own.
Seconded. I appreciate archive summaries and topical links as posts broadly, but having OP reflect, comment or even give stream of consciousness thoughts about the post content is preferred.
I'd feel like I'm not starting an actual discussion if I don't at least provide my opinion, but I can also see the view of "just provide the content and let others form an opinion about the content, not form an opinion about your opinion." I think for me it would come down to checking if I want to discuss the thing I'm linking or if I want to discuss my thoughts on the thing I'm linking.
Also, can I lightly hijack to ask if anyone has any suggestions about tagging new threads? I've encountered stuff I'd like to see if there's discussion around, but I don't want to under or over tag. Or should I get over myself and tag what I think is reasonable and let others add tags as needed?
Don’t let tagging hold you back from making posts! Posting entirely without tags is perfectly fine, but I think usually a source tag is probably the most important, followed by maybe a general topic tag if it’s a more specific topic than the group itself you’re posting the topic to.
The only tag I’d definitely try to make sure to include is “politics” if the post is political in nature, just so those that filter politics out don’t have to see it before it gets tagged by the helpful tag fairies.
That's reasonable, thank you for a straightforward answer.
It's helpful to get familiar with a few tags that are subjects a significant number of people have blocked. For example politics.usa is a good one to tag on the original post if it applies. If the content is a video or podcast, it's helpful to tag it as such.
But otherwise, there is no reason to completely tag anything. The site librarians will add tags as needed.
More good advice, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time.
Most links are self explanatory and tags usually suffice. You should read the tags. I sometimes edit the title to provide a better representation of the content. Conversation starters are necessary sometimes. But not always.
I avoid writing conversation starters because people will engage with it without the context of the article.
I honestly don't find tags useful for that, and as a result rarely look at them. Tags ... well... tag something, but that is only the broadest of summaries, often lacking a lot.
They also do not reflect why OP might have posted the thing. Because they can and are changed by others so they fail to include the context of what made someone submit that specific thing.
Certainly with long form content like videos, if they are long and have no submission statement, I often end up just skipping them.
Submission statements on the other hand will often contain the motivational triggers that might make me check out the video. Even if they are fairly short and might overlap with tags.
I've thought about this myself. There is often a link with no comment from more than a day ago on the front page. I've thought that tildes could benefit from a system where link posts do not appear for others until the original poster adds a top level comment. Is this a strict improvement? Probably not, but I think the way I am interested in using tildes would benefit, though I do not necessarily use tildes the same way as others.