Should cross-posting be allowed?
I know the site is still in its infancy and cross-posting won't be much of an issue at the moment, but I was interested to see what other users thought about cross-posting, whether we should allow it and if so how it should be done?
Personally I am in favour of cross-posting but I think some site mechanic should exist that doesn't allow two separate threads to be created. Instead, the cross-post should link directly to the original thread so that discussion of the topic can be kept in a single location but the topic itself can reach multiple tildes. For example, say an article about music being created artificially by a robot was originally posted in ~music. Someone may want to cross-post this to ~tech, and to do so would only have to click some sort of cross-post button and select the tilde they want to cross-post to. Anyone browsing the ~tech tilde would see the post, but upon clicking it would be taken to the comments page of the post originally made in ~music. Some indication of where the post was originally made could be given as well when viewing the cross-post on another tilde.
There's been a few conversations on crossposting already. Here's one I could find: https://tildes.net/~tildes/13b/crossposting_on_tildes
Generally speaking, I think it's an issue we won't be able to address fully until tildes has the subgroups and tagging systems fully implemented. Many of the questions about crossposting, such as "should the comments stay in the original group or should the new post have a separate thread" may be solved entirely if these two systems are as robust as many are hoping for.
I did think that a conversation had already occurred about cross-posting but without a search function I was unable to find it unfortunately, my bad.
Agreed, it's probably an issue that will be addressed after the subgroups and tagging systems are implemented, I was interested to see how people would like the cross-posting mechanic to work, assuming people even want it in the first place. I can imagine though that most will want the ability to cross-post as it will create more discussion about the topic and let other users know that a discussion is taking place.
lol i'm sure there's even more, better conversations buried in the comments of some random post. without search there's really no way to know, no worries
I think whilst the site is growing there are bound to be topics posted multiple times simply because of the influx of new users, so I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing. Once the search function is up and running I can imagine they will be reduced a bit anyways.
A very basic step could be introduced with the search implemented.
It's not that hard to create something a-la Stackoverflow that tries and search for similar content in the title and suggest other questions (topics for us) already created. The user could being suggested to join that conversation instead of starting a new topic but it should leave the freedom to still create a new topic anyway as topics could be quite different by the context given by the creator.
For "links" already posted instead is quite simple. If it has been already posted, it should notify the user but still allow it to create a new topic. The only difference is that the topic, even if listed in two different groups, should redirect to the original one. This needs to have a time limit search in the past as maybe a link posted two years ago, could become relevant again after some time and thus sparkle a new discussion without a need of re-activating the old one (would be nice to have a reference to the old one anyway inside the topic).
Expand the functionality of tags and crossposting probably isn't needed.
I'd suggest that tags be used instead. Let's say the post is mostly about music and a bit about tech. So it should go in the music group and be tagged for tech.
Now let's say I'm subscribed to the group ~tech but not ~music, but I'm watching the tag music, then I should be able to see that post.
I see, so you’d rather see cross-posting done through the tag system instead of creating a new cross-posting mechanic? That would make sense, would probably save Deimos a lot of time as well. Good point!
Yes. Why make tags unless they have a use?
Why did my brain not think of this before... apologies, university has ruined me this year.
That's an interesting idea. I think that would help discussions to be less fragmented and include more viewpoints as multiple communities would be on the same board rather than having their own space to discuss. This would help with the echo chambers Tildes users seem to be not-so-fond of.
Exactly, I think bringing together the individual communities within tildes over one topic would be a good way to hopefully create a more diverse discussion but also allow users to interact with other users outside their interests. This of course would reduce the echo chambers, which as you mentioned users are not fond of and for good reason. A conversation becomes a lot more interesting and thought-provoking when you have multiple opinions and ideas being thrown around, certainly a lot more interesting then everyone nodding along to whatever is initially said.
Two years later, is there a current best practice with this? I posted a link earlier that I wasn't sure whether it should go to ~sports or ~anime, and I figured posting it twice would be a bit much.
Currently we can still kinda work with the assumption that most active users are looking at most groups, so I'd suggest just picking one. Crossposting won't really get you a different set of eyes.