I'm not ready to let this place go
With the announcement of Tildes maintenance mode, it's finally official. Tildes has an expiration date. We don't know when it'll be, but we'll surely know when it's passed. I... I don't want to go. I love this place. I love the people on it.
I got here after Rexit, like many of my peers, because reddit was my home online. I participated in discussions. I spent so much time there. I met my husband. It was my little corner of the internet, because it had exactly what I wanted and nothing else.
All that's gone now. When Apollo shut down, I deleted my account out of protest. I regret that now. People pointed me here, to Tildes, and for a moment, just a moment I could smell the musty carpet of the first websites I was ever on. This was it. This was it. A tiny forum with just enough modern convenience to tolerate using it, full of people who were interesting, discussions that were respectful, little to no drama, and a minor legend of the former web at the top, generally content with ruling as a benevolent dictator.
I posted. I participated in discussions. I had such a grand time talking to people, Season One of the Minecraft server will forever be in my heart as the "golden days" of it all, if I had to look back. I check this place religiously. It's in my favourites bar. I still post. I still comment. I still like the people. It's small enough that I can go "hey, there they are!" when I see Creesch or Bauke or Tea. For the first time in a long time I could call a communal web space my... home. It's cheesy. I know.
And now I hear that it's supposed to end? That the experiment has run its course, that sooner or later, but probably sooner than I'd like, it'll all be gone? That I have to pack up all my shit again and find a new place, a new community? What a sick joke, I say, with metaphorical tears in my eyes, because getting mad is at least something. Getting mad is more than removing the stupid bookmark and forgetting about this place like I forgot about LiveJournal, about MySpace, about Blogger, about fucking Ello.
I don't want to go. And I know nobody's asking me to go. But everyone expects everyone else to go at some point. And even though none of you actually know me, truly know me, I still feel like we're familiar. We have tiny, tenuous, brittle relationships that could snap at any point, be it from hostility or apathy. I know that none of this is real, but god damn it, I liked it.
Now you'll say, oh god, Delphi, shut up, this is a forum, it's not that deep, and you're right, so damn right, I couldn't agree more, none of you should mean anything to me, I have friends, I have a life, I have people who love me out there, for real, I shouldn't care about this, but then tell me, why do I have tears in my eyes?
What's the point of this post? Catharsis? Maybe? I didn't expect to feel this way about a little corner of the internet that's sometimes a little snobbish, sometimes a little too high on its own farts, sometimes a little too elitist, but that's where I'm at.
I don't want to let this place go. But I also know that I won't be the last one here.
So if this is the last time I see some of you, I don't blame you. Just know you were part of my life, and that I quite liked that part.
—-
A little edit after crying it out: You’re all right. I hope that Tildes won’t change. I certainly won’t, I’ll stay here, and I hope we’ll have many more years together. This entire thing just dredged up memories of losing online spaces before, and… well, you can imagine the rest. Love y’all.
I don't really feel like anything changed or any new information was released in the post the other day. Like the site hasn't been updated in forever, which is fine, and Deimos is relatively hands off, which is fine, and we've just been riding on the fuel left in the tank for a while now, which is also fine.
I mean I love this site, but I also don't feel like anything has changed unless we let it? Or unless the lack of any future features is unbearable and at complete odds with your preference (which is also, also fine!). Not knocking you directly, @delphi, but I don't really get the doom and gloom of a few of these posts the last day or so.
Like to the point where I feel like I'm missing something? A community isn't in the features, it's in the people. And if the people decide to stick around, then there's always going to be a community...
I also don't understand why everyone is acting so melodramatic. The feature requests weren't going to add much value to the site, and likely intended to target other users, right or wrong, so the community got told to knock it off, buckle up, and figure it out ourselves.
If people want to leave over that, fine, but I think it's counterproductive to the health of the community to do so. If anything, in doing so the "expiration" comes nearer. There is no perfect community for everyone, and Tildes is one of the best options we have. Sometimes the right answer is to disengage instead of continually working up frustrations. Take a break, lurk for a few months, take care of your mental health however you see fit, but don't stop fighting the good fight.
I made the analogy in the other thread, but I really do see this place as a kind of digital pub after work. Sometimes I just have a drink, sometimes I chat with people. The owner is responsible for the pub being open and clean, and to occassionally tell some of the patrons (me included) to knock it off. For particularly nasty people, they get trespassed.
You can't expect anything from the owner beyond that, because tech can't save you from people being people. Communities police themselves. I think we have a pretty good community. It's not perfect and lts not one that agrees on everything (even really important stuff), but we disagree politely, try to steelman each other wherever possible, apologise, and disengage when things grts heated.
And instead choose to make dramatic goodbye posts and leave this site with one less voice to represent their opinions and beliefs.
Personally, if a community member who I knew left the community, I much prefer fond goodbyes to simply disappearing one day.
Same. I do hope @Deimos clarifies what he means by this place "sunsetting," because clearly not everyone had the same reading of it. I read it as "business as usual, but in case you didn't notice, I'm no longer motivated to improve it." I gave up on this place being anything close to a Reddit replacement like 5 years ago, and I've been fine with that. Here's to another 5 years!
Edit: Just found a new comment that supports our reading of the message:
For me the more worrying part is that emailing for invites is no longer an option now. It's understandable due to LLM but then there has to be an alternative right? I could understand if the plan is just to wait till the storm passes or till there being new LLM-specific filters or something. But not only that, now users are not given new invite codes either. How to interpret that as other than closing the tap?
This is the salient part for me as well. Once the last remaining invites attached to current accounts are used up, the community is going to begin to shrink for one reason or another.
As users leave, there will be no new ones to replace them anymore.
It will be very interesting to watch how the rate of decay for the community will fluctuate over the next five years.
I will duplicate my previous comment:
And nothing stops us from messaging Deimos and asking for more invites. It's not like Deimos told us "no more invites for you, forever".
Appreciate the sentiment, but since this was an intentional change, it's up to question whether he actually want more people to come? If not then wouldn't us asking for invites be going against his wishes? And if he still does, then I think some clarification regarding the reason for the policy change would be great to alleviate concerns.
I think it really just comes down to being swarmed by LLM requests from spammers according to this comment. I highly doubt us using our own invites to invite people we can reasonably vet as not spammers will be seen as problematic.
Yeah that explain why invite email was closed, but not why new users no longer get invites.
Thanks for explanation. I can be wrong of course, but as far as I remember adding/refreshing invites to a users is a manual event. On my memory it happened maybe two times.
mmm..
Again, if some users need new invites, I believe its absolutely ok to just ask.
I want to be wrong here too, uncertainty makes your imagination go wild haha. I thought about making a topic asking if any more newer users can confirm this, or if it's just a fluke. But that felt like asking for troubles, and many people already said they want to move on from this whole business so :/
Some newer users have noticed that they don't have any invites to give out, but others have claimed that new accounts only get invites after a probationary period of unknown length, so it's hard to tell whether they will eventually get them. I've also heard it told that invites have been given to older users upon request in the past. Perhaps someone should get clarification from Deimos on this.
The latest round of invites disbursed on the Tildes subreddit is also only a month old, and has been done at least 46 times since the Reddit API situation.
Hey, if you need invites please create a thread for it.
I have 10 unused, and I believe I'm not alone in this.
Not sure if sharing invites are encouraged, but in small quantities (<100) it should be perfectly fine.
I really hope nothing changes. I really do, but... I mean, at least, before I could pretend. Now we all know. It feels like the head of the AV club looking into the clubhouse and going like "oh, you guys are still here? well, lock up when you leave". Yeah, we can stay as long as we like, but the vibes have changed.
Heck, I'm emotional. I might delete this post tomorrow. It's not exactly great for the digital footprint to get mad over a guy not-even shutting down a forum I liked.
But fuck, man. I don't want to find a new community again.
Don't want to invalidate your feelings, but would it make you feel better to flip the script in your head a little? We're used to things always updating and changing, and then things were dead if they stopped. That was never a healthy way of interacting with stuff. Tildes is solved, all of the features that were needed are done. Just like you might've bought Super Mario 64. There were no more updates, it was done. That was a good thing. You could play the game for 2 hours or 50, up to you.
Tildes won't get enshitified, add the downvote button, or anything that could potentially upend the community. Development is over, and now it lives or dies based on what kind of community it nurtures.
I like that. That’s a good way to see it.
That's the wy I see it as well. For me Deimos' announcement was like "Tildes is up and running and there will be no new features. It will run in this state in the foreseeable future."
I really think Deimos wasn't announcing any grave situation, quite the contraty. I think he just wanted to say out loud there will be no changes due to a few posts in past month(s) that were mentiong it would be good tonhave X or Y on the site. He just didn't want to keep.hopes up for any new features, that's how I understood it.
I'm not leaving here and I hope not many people do. This is a great place to be and there is no need to leave for anybody.
I get that. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be dismissive of how you feel at all. I guess we really don't know what the future holds for tildes. I'm happy for the time I've had here and any further time I get along with it :)
Nothing has changed, except maybe you and I. This is normal. This is good.
Closing time. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here.
But you can stay here, for a while anyway. Until you can't and then we'll go somewhere else.
It's been a nice place. I like it quite a lot. There will be a new place. You'll find it on your own but if you can't I'll message you and tell you when I know.
They close every night. They open next day, always. It's all good.
I want to add one more similar reading of recent posts, this is what I heard: "I haven't been making or planning any major updates for a long time, that isn't going to change, but I see no reason Tildes can't continue indefinitely."
I think the drama is a symptom of a lot of people caring about Tildes. And maybe some of it is drama for its own sake. But I think it's evidence that Tildes doesn't need more features... though I'm also getting that updates written by community members could potentially be merged so it's not completely off the table. In any case as others have said better and at length: Tildes is about the community, the platform is already doing it's job because the community exists. Doesn't have to be perfect, nothing humans do is ever perfect.
I'm pretty sure it's all going to be ok. We all still have invites to use if we ever feel like the population is dwindling.
To go against the grain, I hope that we as a community are still able to change a little wherever it is needed. I must sound like a broken record by now. But the post of Deimos came after two other posts where people asked for features which, while in itself maybe not a good idea, had a reason for the request behind them.
Tildes as a technical platform isn't changing. But as a community, we do need to be aware of others and not just see it from our selfish personal level of "I don't think things need to change because I like it now" while ignoring issues others are having.
If people refuse to change it is stagnation and that is a recipe for what you fear for.
To be clear, I also would like Tildes to stick around for a long time. But at the same time there are always going to be issues and I do think that to some degree many people got all hung up on the the technical aspect while not really listening to the current problems being raised.
Which is, probably, why I'll pop off soon. Not nearly as dramatically as some have left... I don't need or want a going away party. But I don't really want to get attached to a place that is going to regress. Because without additional moderators or mod features, I've already seen some people getting more comfortable in spouting their clearly disconnected and tone-deaf opinions. Opinions that are not a matter of pepperoni or pineapple on pizza, but opinions that are stagnantly opposed to solidarity and have marinated in their own pseudaltruism long enough to attract other stench-lovers.
And the opinions in and of themselves are not easy to combat because, as others have now pointed out, opinions are allowed their spotlight here. And I agree in the general principle that differences in opinion can be healthy to personal and communal growth. But that can only happen when both sides talk and listen to eachother.
But, at the very least, when someone says something factually wrong, there is no world in which the protections of opinions should ever be applied to factual inaccuracy. And the problem is, while it's all fine and good that we can just reply to misinformation, the conversation is immediately weighted on the back foot of the correct party. And then the correct party is told that this is ideal. No need for improvement.
When I started this comment, I genuinely didn't intend on a rant. I'm just tired of watching everyone around me shrug and ask why I'm overreacting while the world falls apart due to willful ignorance.
I don’t really see it as any different than Craigslist. When was the last time Craigslist had an update?
Is what it is. The population of users has, somehow or another, gone up, not down over the years, anyhow.
People always complain about “enshittification” and companies chasing growth. Tildes is doing nothing and that’s okay.
The site will only die when a combination of two things happen: the user base dwindles to being close to dead, and the funds dry up.
it feels like there's a small subset who didn't read or maybe comprehend the post. Tildes is so simple and perfect as it is.
Realistically, with the cost of the site, the funds shouldn't ever really dry up. We can take in pop cans to fund this thing. :)
Not to be a downer, and I’m mostly a lurker, but I didn’t get the impression at all that Tildes is anywhere near closing its doors. I don’t understand everyone else speaking about the most recent meta-conversations as foreshadowing the site shutting down. As far as I can tell, some folks are frustrated with some of the discourse recently (or maybe more than recently) and are publicly announcing their leaving because some aspects of the site are not to their liking in terms of moderation style. That’s certainly within their right. But it’s been a little more than topical, and I think Deimos just wanted to go on record and say nothing's going to change. It didn’t feel like he was announcing the end of the site. Yeah, if this place ends up going under I’ll miss it. I’m certainly not as involved as many of you, so it’s not the same for me, I acknowledge that. But I don’t personally understand these existential responses.
I think it's just been a while since there was drama that took over the site for a few days. Combine that with the end-of-summer-break vibe in God's post and it probably has some people feeling a little rattled. I'm not sure why that's the reaction, but it's nice to know that people really care about this place.
Come to think of it, I don't know if we've had this level of drama since the great influx of '23, so this might be some of y'all's first rodeo. This has happened several times before, and almost always for the same reason. Here's to hoping that people learn from it so the next big drama can be about something completely different.
I joined in 2021 and this is the first time I’ve seen a topic have such a strong presence. Where were having the same discussions over the course of several days.
I did a lazy search through some old topics and I think that was around the last time something like that happened. There's a good chance I could be misremembering, but there was a stretch where it felt like departure posts and the airing of grievances was a regular thing, even for petty issues. The only thing I've ever had taken down was a sarcastic meta post about people leaving the site, and that was in August of 2021. I don't remember exactly what brought that on, only that there were a string of 'Here's why I'm leaving' posts.
Looking back on some older posts, it seems like we were on a good run, but it's still disappointing to see how we're still having the same conversations about the same problems. I've linked to this post in the past, but after this week it feels like it should be required reading. The conversation and the linked posts that spurred it are unbelievably (unsurprisingly?) relevant. The Simpsons 'Don't make me tap the sign' meme comes to mind.
Then there is this post from 2020 that is more broad but it also feels relevant. It's like we're always repeating the same cycle. One of my fellow white boys/spiritually white boys acts up, blowback ensues, departures, ideas for how to fix the problem, kfwyre chimes in somewhere with an exemplary comment, rinse and repeat. Same as it ever was, time is a flat circle, blah blah blah.
Ironically I think a solution, and I'm aware the community as of this moment is very allergic to this notion, is growth. Growth to the point where there are meaningful separation between the different subgroups within the community so that people are not accidentally drawn into seeing topics that cater to another subgroup and be compelled to interact with people with irreconcilable differences. At some level we need to accept that these kinds of social issues are much larger than us, we probably cannot meaningfully "solve" it (in the sense of not having them flaired up again), but only find ways to mitigate and make it more tolerable.
People sometimes say they still tolerate being on Reddit despite the general toxicity because there're some smaller subreddits that they still enjoy being in. I think there was hint of that kind of stickiness starting to form here as well. Before TaylorSwiftsPickles left, she didn't just say she'd leave, but that she'd leave once the Minecraft season ended. The Minecraft threads was basically a Tildes' subgroup in all but name. Probably truer to the nature of a subgroup too since the activities and conversation there actually feel different from the larger site, as opposed to the many formal groups that all feel more or less the same.
That wouldn’t solve the issues, it would just serve to make them less visible.
In the past I have made posts about how people should show sympathy to fat people. They were recieved very negatively. That’s a problem with this community, and as such I have not posted anything to that extent since. This is an issue in which I do not see possibly being “swept under the rug” in the way you are describing, but instead becoming dramatically worse.
We probably can only agree to disagree on this front. My thinking was along the lines of 'good fences make good neighbor', 'out of sight out of mind'.
Part of why the conflicts on here were so intractible is for the most part people on all sides meant well. In online discussions there are certain topics that are like black holes which draw people in the moment they see it mentioned, which they otherwise wouldn't have much strong opinions on. In these cases it's best to reduce the chance for them to have to come across it to begin with. Good group separations is one way to achieve that, user blocking is also another way but from a different angle.
Of course there would still be people deliberately seeking out opposing groups to argue, but this is closer to malicious behavior. A side benefit is troublemakers are more easily detectable and so more easily handled with moderation.
It’s literally me
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with your posts, but the most eye-opening part of this drama to me is seeing the shift in tone in Deimos' reply to the first post you linked (Feb 22, 2021):
Compared to his recent site-wide update (Aug 11, 2026):
It's hard not to see the shift, especially in willingness to engage with the community (some of whom refer to him as "god?" ...yuck, even if meant sarcastically) and willingness to stand up for the community that has been built here. I'll pull two quotes from the referenced posts here, see if you can identify which post they come from without looking:
I have noticed some instances over my three years here -- a thread getting increasingly heated, followed by metaposting about that thread and the state of the site. Each time, I'd bookmark them for later perusal, but within a few hours I'd find that they had been completely removed from the site, or at least locked, and a few accounts had been similarly wiped from existence. It seems that Deimos usually takes swift action when such incidents occur. It's possible that you just never checked Tildes at exactly the right moment to witness the drama.
tildes isnt going anywhere and these downer posts do nothing to support the community. If I could, I'd simply remove them all.
Agreed, I also don't think the site is going anywhere soon
These posts are people's feelings about what's happening. I think Raistlin comment does a better job at helping these people than your comment here and the one calling everything silly. Your comment is dismissive and does nothing to support the community. I highly doubt removing posts would improve anything.
Are you frustrated about what's going on? If so, why not talk about that instead.
but I am dismissing these comments since they have little to no value. The site isn't going anywhere and there's no reason to panic or to plan alternatives etc... its absolutely silly. All this does is create unnecessary panic and noise.
A lot of people are acting irrationally and it should be called out. Maybe a 'oh fuck we're all dead' megathread would be better... but either way, most of these posts don't serve the community.
It isn't going anywhere from a technical perspective. You are entirely right there. That doesn't mean that everything is all fine and dandy either either. Which is what makes your comment sound dismissive or at the very least somewhat oblivious to various signals.
I dont think its right for all of these people to be shitting on it like they are. Tildes isn't dead or dying in either respect. We've both been here from the get-go and we've seen the waves of people and tones come and go. This one will also pass and the community will continue to change... but it shouldn't change into what it has been over the last day or so. That's the absolute wrong direction and there's no basis for any of it.
These posts arent good for the community.
I think you are still glossing over what I am trying to say. Yes, posts like these might be somewhat overblown, but there is still a lead up of events to them. Part of that is actual issues people are experiencing and tried to talk about.
I'd invite you to follow the link to my other comment and the two links I put in there. It is a bit of a long read but it is context worth considering imho. Since by labeling it all as silly you are being dismissive of that as well.
Well, as I said not talking about things in a community is sure way to cause more issues. If anything Deimos his post have made people realize they shouldn't take this space for granted. I wish people would actually make posts more along the lines of "okay, the site isn't changing but do we as a community want to be more aware of things and how would we do that?". But lacking that angle this topic comes fairly close and at least gets people talking about it.
I may not have read the comments/posts you’re thinking of, but to me it doesn’t seem like anybody is shitting on anything. Do you mean this post, for example? What I mostly read is worried people looking for a way to channel those feelings.
Having people that seem to clearly understand Deimos’ posts and that have been around long enough to know this isn’t anything new, like yourself, are in a unique position to cool things down a bit. Being dismissive does however the opposite and only fuels the anxiety of others.
I would find a 'oh fuck we're all dead' megathread hillarious, and probably over the top enough that it could gently remind us not to blow internet emotion out of proportion while allowing people a place to vent.
right! I mean, I was half-joking about it. I think one place where everybody can post their concerns (wild or grounded) could be really healthy. And really, a weekly 'we're fucked because...' would be very therapeutic.
I’d consider them more noise than downer.
I understand the sentiment people have, but having multiple topics about people leaving probably does more to amplify people leaving instead of finding a solution or an alternative.
yeah, noise too. its all so silly.
Hey Delphi
I'm one of those members with the downer comments this week. I'm sorry, to you and everyone affected by the overall mood I have contributed to. I'm not trying to be negative, and I have absolutely no complaints about how Deimos has been running things, nor am I clamoring for enshittifying or radically changing how things work: I've made downer comments because I don't know how to deal with my emotions about seeing members fighting, seeing people leave, the big announcement, and then the news (to me) that code pull requests have not been accepted, and new users not getting invite codes. I don't know how else to interpret the tea leaves other than "I am taking up space/time/money/energy and maybe it's better if I leave".
I'm not ready to go either. This is my home.
One thing I hadn't considered, that Deimos said in a recent comment, is how much work answering request emails had become due to LLM and bad faith actors. Perhaps it's not that we're closing the doors, it's that it's being more closely monitored in tough times. (I would like clarification on this point but that's just me being needy )
There was also an old regular who was banned and apparently still causing problems: thing is, as a guest here having a good time, I really have no idea how much work is being done, if Deimos is tired of it all, the struggles of thankless work not just keeping the lights on but keeping the community safe , plus being blamed for everything.
Deimos has been very behind the scenes this whole time. I hope he has an alt that we interact with more often and that he gets to enjoy the community as well.
Want to stay together, Delphi? Maybe we could shift our thinking a little as well and consider each other not as users (users want the record to be correct or for others to be in agreement with on everything), but as actual friends: in real life, sometimes friendship means putting up with each other on a touchy subject , or deciding to not ruffle feathers today because we know they're going through a hard time. We won't tolerate outright hate, but maybe I can do a better job of celebrating differences. I could always be curious rather than judgemental, but I also need to remember to be more " please ignore if this is costing you energy ".
Sorry for the rambling
This was for Delphi, but I read it also. I like one of the conclusions: seeing others as friends instead of users and having the same kindness you’d have for dealing with friends’ off days. Please don’t worry too much about being a downer in the last couple of days. A lot has been going on and it affects us all differently because we all interact in our own ways with Tildes and have different groups we are part of. Although I’m mostly a very active lurker, seeing familiar faces upset and the community shaken, affects me too.
Be kind to yourself. In a weeks time things will have hopefully blown over a bit. Let’s hope all lovely regulars stay and hopefully some will even return.
:3 thank you and same to you. I've seen so many older usernames pop up in the last few days. We all love the community here. I hope they come back or at least continue to lurk among us.
I think essentially the struggle we have here is one that's common to all human relationships and communities and not going to be solved by tech.
That each of our viewpoint on a subject is like different little geometrical shapes where sometimes we slide smoothly against each other, and other times we overlap and poke pointy angles against another's smooth round side. Tech can seperate us so that only tileable shapes can interact. But then we'd lose so much. Not to mention there are no two person exactly the same: I might be a triangle politically, but a heptagon when it comes to the environment
I agree we should be treating eachother more like friends. I’ve been thinking about starting a thread for organizing real-world meetups, but I’m not sure how open people would be to the idea.
Even intentional same-time voice
videochats probably go a long way towards remembering the human behind the text, I think. At least that's my thoughts as I live 3.5 hours away from the closest city.I've never been to a forum inspired meetup, but I've seen plenty reportedly work out great over the years.
I think maybe the only barrier is not everyone wants to tell internet strangers where they are. Maybe an anonymous location only form would be a good way to test the waters? Then you'd know how many interested people are in a given area.
That would be nice. I didn’t expect anything to come from this, what, public breakdown? But yeah, I’d love to be friends. Thanks for listening to me.
I'm happy to see that you are staying. I always enjoy your comments and the perspective you bring to various topics.
The only thing I want to know is if this place does shut down does everything remain in place or is it down down. Cause I was cataloguing stuff here.
Honestly the way it reads is that it's simply just here as it is for however long is feasible. I wouldn't use this to catalog anything, just like any other website.
This isn't really related to the OP, but I'd encourage you to explore other methods of cataloguing with something you have control over. For example, I use Obsidian combined with Syncthing. It lets me combine notes across all of my devices, so I can leave a note at any time.
For a while, I've been trying to organize my notes into different folders, but it ends up just getting messy. Since... last night... I've been using my new Pebble Index to write a note under my
Daily Notesfolder, with today's date as the filename. The jury is still out on how helpful it will be, but so far it seems nice.Obsidian/Syncthing is effectively the Notes app on Apple Products right?
I would like to figure out a way to save some of the writings on movies I’ve made here but I’m not techy enough for that.
Yes, likely so. I don't have apple devices so a lot of my things aren't synced together like iPhone/MacOS. Obsidian is just a text editor with support for formatting like bold, italics, lists, tables, etc.
Would you be interested in a script to back up your profile, to open in a software like Excel? I'd be pretty easy to write - maybe other users would want something like that.
I would 100% appreciate something like this. I’d love to be able to archive all that I’ve written here.
Yes I would like something like that
Alright, it's done. Naturally, it was more complicated than I thought. Here's how to use it:
Once installed:
If you installed Tampermonkey specifically for this, you can remove it after downloading.
Unfortunately, only new lines are preserved. This means any bold, italics, lists, etc are removed from the copy it downloads.@kfwyre
@cloud_loud
Edit: I forgot to mention, .csv can be opened in whatever spreadsheet software you prefer. For example: Google Sheets or Excel both support it.
Edit edit: markdown parsing works now
Seems like you are not downloading the markdown for comments. There is actually a endpoint for that since you can request to view the markdown source of comments through the little "more..." button on them.
for example for your comment it will then call the following
https://tildes.net/api/web/comments/ifd7?ic-request=true&ic-element-name=markdown-source&ic-id=255&ic-trigger-name=markdown-source&_method=GETThat would allow downloading of all comments in their markdown format.
Edit:
If using that endpoint it is probably good to put in some timeouts between fetching to not hammer the server with thousands of requests obviously.
Yeah, I thought about it - but I didn't want to make so many requests. Plus with a timeout, it'd take even longer to process your profile. In an ideal world, it's just a simple endpoint with a slightly different query.
I think a smarter(?) way would be to reverse the HTML back into markdown. But if I'm going to do that, I need to change up how I'm writing this script. I'm using the web version of vscode which doesn't support ESLint. I'm so spoiled by typescript...
Ages ago, I filed a feature request for a true JSON version of users & comments. It looks like it merged, but as far as I can tell, was never actually deployed ( @talklittle and @bauke worked on it, so they maybe have the most context). That would be perfect for something like this though! I made a reddit version exporter that I've been really happy with, and it wouldn't be hard to adapt to Tildes if there was an API with original source.
Yeah that's fair, I just looked it up and it would be roughly 30000 request for me. That would be a bit much.
There probably is a library out there you can use and it should be good enough for most comments. I should note, I recently discovered that you can use html comments
<!-- text here -->on tildes and they are never shown. They will only show up when you edit a comment or view the source of one.I have been meaning to ask Deimos if that is intentional or a side effect. I don't imagine many people have important text hidden in their comments though :D
That is... really interesting. I'd be worried about an XSS exploit if an HTML comment can slip by the parser. Who knows what weird syntax ends up as valid HTML.
Doesn't seem to work for me on Firefox with Tampermonkey. The console logs an invalid assignment to const state error.
Didn't work for me in Firefox or Vivaldi either, though I'm not sure how to check error messages so I'm not sure if it's the same problem.
Nevertheless, thanks for working on this kmcgurty1! I'm always amazed at the programming wizardry that people like you can do.
Also, if this does end up working, I highly recommend making a separate top-level topic about it. There are probably a lot of people on the site who would want backups of their comments but who might not see your post since it's deep in the comments of another topic.
Sorry about that, I fixed that locally but never updated it. 1.0.7 is the version that works.
@Protected (sick name btw)
Edit: It could be worth posting as a separate topic. However, I didn't really want to contribute to the hysteria of thinking Tildes is shutting down. Also, it bothers me that the markdown isn't preserved. It works, but it could be better.
Edit edit: Because you ran the script but it failed halfway, I think step 3 won't prompt you automatically. You'll just click the "Download" button at the top. That starts the process over.
1.0.7 worked on Firefox for me.
OH MY GOSH I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HAPPY I AM I HAVE WANTED A BACKUP OF MY COMMENTS HERE FOR YEARS NOW
Thank you so, SO much.
(Also, in case anyone was curious, my .csv file is a whopping 9.6 megabytes!)
Yea, that tracks :)
Haha, I'm glad I could help!! It's not often I get to solve other people's problems with code.
Let me experiment with preserving the markdown. It might take some time, but that way it's a true back up. I'll ping you when I have something!
Well, that was easier than I thought it would be.
@kfwyre Can you update to 1.1.0 and try downloading your profile again? I just updated it with markdown support.
I'm happy to report that it worked!
The additional markdown characters increased my file size from 9.6 MB to 10.4 MB. :)
Again, thank you so much. It feels SO good to have an archive of all the writing that I've done here.
EDIT: I took the comment column from LibreOffice Calc and posted it into Writer to do a word count. Writer froze for approximately 10 minutes before finally catching up.
The final count?
1.35 million words 😱
Have you something like cloud storage syncing with your harddrive? I'd start by just making a writing directory and put your stuff in there with the
.mdextension. That way anything that supports markdown (Which is the formatting tildes uses) will be able to read it at some point. That would be either obsidian or some other note taking application that support markdown.Do you have a cross platform app you prefer to use for markdown notes? Obsidian is alright, but it's so complex for what I want. There's so many little buttons I have to hover over or guess what they're for. Despite being annoying, it's the best inline markdown editor I've found.
Personally I just use a code editor like vscode if I am just writing notes and do raw markdown with just the highlighting that comes with the editor.
I've seen several people (including the admin themself) explain that nothing has changed and things have been like that for years. And generally being surprised at the reaction.
I find the whole notion silly. It's like the doctor telling you your husband is dying of cancer, that they refuse treat it, so they'll just let em die. Then when you are distressed, proclaiming "Look, we've been refusing to treat the cancer for years now, nothing has changed!"
That's obviously not gonna calm anyone down. People want an admin that will fight to keep the site alive.
The beauty in all things in life lies in that at some point they will end in one way or another, and a new chapter begins after. Tildes may slowly wither away, people may choose to pack up their things and go, and that's okay.
One of my favorite songs Ring 2 - Nature (lyrics) by my favorite band The Dear Hunter talks about this in a way. The lyrics are from the perspective of nature, where it's about how "At first, there was no one to meddle" and then mankind evolves into what we are now "Taking much more than they need" - but that that is fine. Because as nature puts it "No worries, just laughter, we'll be here after". Nature is going to remain here long after mankind beats, stabs, shoots and blows itself up.
Anyways, I use this line "No worries, just laughter, we'll be here after" in my account bios/descriptions a lot because I like it as a mantra, it helps relativize things and helps me to remember to reflect. Tildes may slowly wither away but you'll find your way, delphi. We'll be here after in some way or another.
Everything is going to be fine.
I'm going to be blunt- can we all just chill tf out? Nothing has changed in the last 5 years and there's no reason to think that inertia won't continue. Let's have these discussions when there are actual changes coming.
Hitting ignore on this one post was a free action. You can be blunt, but that's still a pretty hurtful thing to say to someone who's feeling distressed by something you're not distressed about. I don't think that's what you'd want to hear when you're distressed, to "just chill tf out."
I am not disagreeing with you here. Nothing has fundamentally changed but it has laid out the situation for people. This is just people processing that information, incorporating it into their worldview and attending to the emotions that come up. We all do that differently; anywhere from a shrug to a dramatic departure.