It needs to become clearer what Tildes is about and how it differs from Reddit. Im part of the problem.
Ok so I have been really interested in Tildes and yesterday I was looking at the /r/Tildes subreddit and low and behold I was in time to comment in the invite thread and get one. This was great I have been really excited to see what it was like.
So I hope on and get familiar with the layout, look at some posts and some comments. Really digging it, I want to say it has a minimal vibe but that is only because I'm used to so many sites having a gajillion buttons, notifications, chats, garbage, ect. It's clean for lack of a better word.
I decided I should contribute to the community and see what posting is like. I remembered a simple joke which gave me a chuckle the other day:
'I like my Women like I like my golf scores. In the 80's with a slight handicap.'
With the hectics of the real world, I didn't have much longer to look around any longer and had to go.
When I checked back later people seemed against the posts, after reading the comments I was conflicted. It seemed like such a tame joke and people were saying they didn't want to see jokes on Tilde. I had a bit of a think and realised the problem, of course, that one post by itself is relatively harmless and ok but if you allow posts along those lines it becomes very spammy which is exactly why I don't like reddit as much anymore.
Jokes are a relatively low effort post, you could come up with several poor ones in a minute, that's what twitter is for. However, if people come and see that jokes are the norm it will likely encourage them to post them as well, and it resorts to a huge unbalance in quality posts.
I am in favour of removing all kinds of jokes that come in the form of a standalone post (if they are in the comments I feel they should remain ok). Some were saying they were ok with a dedicated ~jokes however I thought about it and feel this would be a poor decision, it still leads to people like me who can easily make low effort posts. The problem is that the number of good jokes will be rare in comparison to bad jokes it would be a net loss in terms of quality, sure you could moderate out the poor jokes but humour is subjective and that leads to all sorts of opinion based complications that are best left alone.
While I myself agree with this sentiment I still posted a dumb joke. Why? Because I didn't know. Admittedly only 4 people voted on the post and the comments aginst the post were much higher than the post itself it is still essentially spam on the feed. (The only reson for not deleting it is so others can see its negative response). Now I have posted this im very aware not to do this. However I still made this mistake while Tildes is a closed invite system, when it is no longer closed off it could be very easy for low effort posts to take over. The community needs to make sure we inform these people who make these posts and don't vote on them, or we should inform the users much better about what tildes stands for.
Just my thoughts, interested to know what the community thinks.
My original dumb joke post
I am still a bit torn between keeping tildes discussion focused only or a mix of content, but honestly if tildes wants to separate itself from other sites like Reddit, it may be for the best that it becomes discussion based only.
As I mentioned in your joke post, everyone enjoys a good laugh every once in a while but by keeping it limited to comments as you suggested I think this would keep the balance tildes is trying to strive towards; discussion based topics with the occasional casual talk spread throughout the comments.
Personally I think that non-discussion based posts should not be allowed, whereas the comments should be a mix of genuine points/ideas with the occasional joke. We’re on the internet after all, let’s not take ourselves too seriously!
I like this take on it. Some non-discussion posts are bothering me on here nowadays with someone posting an E3 trailer where the title is literally the video title and 0 comments; so low-effort and fluffy. It really doesn't even serve a purpose at that point other than trying to make Tildes become yet another aggregate news source - seriously I can see the videos easily by going to youtube or reddit, it doesn't need to be reposted here too for no reason.
Some low-effort discussion posts I'm indifferent about since they are discussion posts, and we are all relatively new to this community so I can get why people would post - so we'd all get to know each other a little more. However, at what point does that also start becoming low-effort fluff? (ex: "What's your favorite sandwich?")
I think your definition of "fluff" is off. Something like a game trailer is absolutely not fluff. It's an announcement, or new information/detail about a game—that's inherently informative. If people are interested in the game, the trailer can easily start a large discussion about it. Just look at somewhere like /r/Games on reddit, there are threads with hundreds or even thousands of comments coming off each individual trailer.
Fluff is things like this post, which I just randomly grabbed off the front of /r/gaming. There's nothing informative or interesting there, and what sort of discussion is going to happen? People saying "lol"? That's fluff. Nothing learned, no interesting discussion potential, nothing.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you, however I felt that those kinds of posts - although they can lead to discussions - give off the same feel as reddit where it's just an aggregate news source at that point. I understand that it can easily spark discussion, but the bland title and just dumping a URL into a post with no other response, to me that's fluff as well as a generic "lol" response.
I think it'd be neat to see link posts with additional text along with it to further spark discussion.
The question is different whether the ultimate goal is if we want to have discussion – no matter what kind – or whether it’s (also) a question of quality.
If the ultimate goal is just discussions, we can simply get rid of the voting system altogether and rank threads (and comments?) based on how many replies it caused. That would get rid of the “vote = agreement” problem as well. Simple and effective ;)
If though, the main goal is quality, we may need more. For starters, perhaps renaming “vote” into something that better expresses what the aim of that button is, could help.
Also, I’m pretty sure that this is very similar to what Digg, Reddit, HN etc. have started as well, so not just learning from their current situation, but also from their past, could help a lot.
That's a discussion we've had multiple times, but I don't know if anyone's come up with anything yet that works well. If you have any suggestions for a better name, I'm definitely open to it.
I’ll give it a go …
It might help already if the agree (or also disagree) option was there separately.
Maybe we could even replace it with a symbol ...
say an exclamation point
!?Now, it'd probably need a box around it to be mobile friendly, but it'd still be more interesting than
vote.I would interpret an exclamation point as a “report objectionable content” feature, not a “vote for good content” feature.
To me, the function of voting is to increase the visibility of content by moving it higher than other less-voted content at the same hierarchical level. Is that an accurate explanation of what it does? If so, I’m inclined to use a verb that literally means to move upwards. Something like “elevate” or “boost.”
That is a good explanation.
While I would still prefer a symbol (maybe
^),elevatewould make a much better verb thanvote.Random thought, you could use gild as a replacement for vote.
In terms of sorting out the lower effort based discussion posts I believe this is where the voting system will come into effect. By only voting on posts that are thought-provoking questions and well thought out arguments, you can force low effort but still discussion based topics like “What’s your favourite sandwich?” to be lower down the list. I have nothing against these types of posts as they still incite discussion, I’d just rather see the more interesting topics first.
The problem with leaving it to the votes is that it is far easier for someone to vote on a piece of low-effort content than a high effort one, meaning low-effort posts end up better ranked most of the time by virtue of having received more overall votes. This is where reddit failed. It is not enough to "let the votes decide" on tildes — while we certainly can (and should) make a community effort to collectively prioritize quality content, I think tildes' secret weapon will instead be the trust system. If a user has been proven to upvote and post quality content, their upvotes should count slightly more. This will help prioritize high effort content and ingrain certain behaviors into the overall site community as tildes grows.
I agree, but, honestly, I don't trust the trust system very much. Of course it's still too soon and we don't even know how it'll work. But I don't think that trust will be earned by voting "quality content", but instead by getting votes on submitted posts and comments, from what I know at least, hopefully I'm wrong. But if that is the case, unless the site culture is super well defined and people somehow agree to follow it without becoming snobbish about it, low effort (but civil) posts and comments will probably get more votes and thus the users who gain the most trust might not be actually the most trustworthy.
Even if trust would to be gained by voting quality content, we'd still need two things we are still lacking: a good definition of quality content and a way to detect it.
Hopefully @Deimos will give us some more details about how he thinks it should work, maybe he has thought of some better way.
I think everyone will have a slightly different definition of high-quality content, but in general I think most people will agree on whether a post is high or low quality. The overall agreement will then hopefully lead to the post being left alone or upvoted and consequently the users trust would increase.
Whether trust should be increased by the user upvoting good content or producing it themselves is another question entirely. I honestly think the trust algorithm should take into account the type of user. If they are a lurker but everything they upvote turns out to be good content, they should be rewarded with an increase in trust. If a person only posts good comments but never upvotes anything, they are still putting forward good content and therefore should also be rewarded with an increase in trust.
I think the issue here will be defining what is high-quality content. As I mentioned it could be left to the users to decide, but every user will have a different definition and therefore it will never be fully defined in black and white. This however is not a bad thing: it shows how we are all differently thinking individuals and also shows that as well-defined as we'd like tildes to be, there will always be that slight subjective side to the site that makes it diverse.
You are an optimist, I think. :)
Isn't this what reddit or even facebook does? Leaving it entirely up to the users to choose? I'm not sure I'd say it is working that well, I don't know. Do you think it's working there?
I believe it'd be good to have some guidelines about what the site wants to consider high quality, otherwise I don't see how the system can reward with trust those that either submit or vote high quality. How does the system determine what is high quality?
The only option I can see if it's left up to the users to decide would be rewarding voting on posts or comments that after a while actually get a lot of votes, and so rewarding the "foretelling" skills of users. I think this can easily turn into a vicious circle in which users vote things that know will be voted (because they're cute or because they're aligned with the majority's point of view or because they're polarizing, etc). Which brings us back to karma-whoring.
Of course if you do not leave it up to the users, then the system needs a method to decide what is good and what isn't, which is difficult. Or which users are consistent with the site definition so as to assign them trust. Which is also difficult.
The trust algorithm is certainly important. I think it should be simple enough to understand it, but complex enough to avoid rigging the game as much as possible, of that's even possible.
TL;DR: I am probably a pessimist.
I do agree with the idea that some basic guidelines for what constitutes as high quality should be written down somewhere, but they should be kept simple so that most users will still agree with them whilst also keeping their own definition of high-quality. Super strict rules will simply result in a lot of posts being removed or marked as high-quality, even if to a lot of users they are seen as good content.
Karma-whoring, or I guess you could call it trust-whoring, could be completely avoided if a lot of users kept using upvotes for their intended purpose. They should be used to upvote not content they agree with but well thought-out and high-effort posts, promoting insightful discussion. If someone looks at post and realises that it fits into this criteria then clearly they should go ahead and give it an upvote. The fact they have taken the time to read the post and understand that it is of high-quality should be rewarded I think.
If this was how upvotes were treated, I think the trust system should only take into account how many upvotes you receive on your own posts/comments and also what you upvote. This of course does give rise to argument that votes should be hidden from view to discourage people picking up easy trust points, but the system could work even with the votes being seen.
It might not be the perfect system in the world, but I much prefer to Reddit's system of upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. Trying to stop users rigging the game will always be the hardest part but if done effectively I think it could become a very good system on which tildes runs on.
Yeah I am an optimist, very much so, and I especially want to see tildes work hence why I am faithful in the trust system.
Clearly an optimist.
You mention the reddit system as upvote = agree, downvote =disagree. And yeah, to some extent that's what happens (I actually think it's more like upvote = I want this to be prominent, downvote = I don't want this to be prominent/I want to punish this person).
However, actually, the reddiquette says this:
I think we can agree this is not what people do on reddit. So it seems (to me) naive that it would be different here, especially after a bigger userbase is achieved. So probably the site culture should be pretty well developed before opening the front gates at least.
In any case, unless the userbase is very well trained in being fair and using votes responsibly, I think looking only at votes might be misleading to assign trust. I actually say this because in another forum I sometimes use that's what they do and I don't like the results much. Of course it not a forum directed at "quality content" explicitly, but neither to fluff submissions. It's mostly discussion of news. And user behavior there is terrible, imo. Even for the ones with high karma, which often make most of their karma precisely by throwing one liners and puns in comments or veiled accusations that are backed up by most of the community.
Maybe the simple fact that trust will. be hidden to some extent will help here. But I guess since there are features unlocked with high trust, people will still want those, whether to feel accomplished (trust-whoring), or to actually help manage the site (good Samaritan) or to just exert power over others ("power trolling").
I like to think I'm a realist, but I guess it comes across as a pessimist to the eyes of optimists at least.
Yeah making sure before the site grows large I think ensuring everyone understands the proper use of upvotes is vital. How this is done is another whole discussion in itself though.
I think the motivations for people to achieve higher trust will be dependent upon what exactly you get once you achieve a higher trust. If all it does is weigh your upvotes more heavily than other users, I can't imagine a lot of users will try and gain trust for either power trolling or just trust-whoring, especially if trust is a hidden property for each user. The trust system is a good idea but it should not run the entire site; the primary purpose should be to encourage interesting discussions. By limiting the benefits of becoming a trusted user and ensuring that the primary purpose of the benefits are to encourage further high quality content, I think the system could work.
You're definitely seeing the whole thing a lot more realistically, but I'm basing my judgement and thoughts off of what I've seen so far of the users on tildes.
Yep, we'll see how it goes. I certainly hope someone can come up with a good way to deal with all of that.
Well, it's a lot of power actually if you can propel or bury someone else's comment or post, so I don't see why people wouldn't want that. Also, there will be other "benefits". As far as I know was discussed, there will be some gated access. So for example tagging comments or posts will be available to X tier of trust, and maybe also reporting, editing titles, or even taking action against another user for breaking the rules. I'd think some people would like all of that for not completely altruistic goals. Which in turn creates the need to police the police (which I think it's great, but definitely time and energy consuming).
But yeah, I too want to believe!
It's only a lot of power if the power is given. I'm hoping that when you become more trusted your votes are valued only slightly higher than others, not abnormally higher like 2 or 3 times the average vote. Assuming the system is kept so that there are only upvotes, "burying" another persons post/comment shouldn't be possible. Admittedly yes you could force all other posts upwards by upvoting them, but as long as the users post is a good one, it'll reach the top with or without a single user's slightly higher valued upvote.
The other benefits will definitely have to be fine tuned and well thought through in order to reduce the chances of corrupting the trust system, but if that takes time so be it, especially considering that at this early on in the sites lifetime reporting, tagging etc. is not a huge necessity due to the small amount of posts and users in general.
I've only seen good intentions and positive discussion on the site so far, so I to believe in the users.
I think it'd ideally factor in multiple forms of trust, as I agree votes alone won't cut it. I'd like to see some more details on it too.
Yes, I'm just concerned (maybe unnecessarily) that accounting for more than votes (even if by assigning vote weight to users) will make it to complicated. Maybe because I've seen vote weight fail to some extent in other forums.
I think the combination of both will work in the long run, especially if users are made to understand that upvotes are much more valuable than something you can just easily chuck at a half decent post. They should be given out sparingly to high-effort posts, and not used to simply show agreement with a post. If I see somebody making a post where their point of view is different to mine, I will still upvote that post if they have clearly put thought and effort into their argument.
I am completely with you in terms of tildes secret weapon being the trust system. I really like the idea of giving "power to the people" as it were and rewarding those who clearly have good judgement in what constitutes as a high quality post and what doesn't. Hopefully this will also act as an incentive for new users to try and be more sparing with their upvotes and in general will promote better content. The only worry I have is making the trust system balanced, i.e. how much more valuable is a highly trusted user's upvotes compared to a normal user's upvotes. Clearly this will simply be a fine tuning process over time, and I'm extremely glad Deimos thought of this system to use as the every day moderation of the site.
Maybe we need to be clearer about what votes mean, and perhaps if there needs to be two different vote buttons.
I don't know if it's ever going to be possible to re-train a community not to use votes akin to a Facebook "like". If I see a funny one-liner, I'm going to reflexively want to reward it, and there is a mechanism in easy reach. That shouldn't conflate with a desire to promote that as content reflective of the community.
This is fundamentally a platform for communication. Disambiguity should be built into the function.
Given /u/Deimos' post on the subject yesterday, it's obvious there's confusion between what different subgroups expect to get out of this site, and even between what those subgroups expect versus what his vision for this community is. I think this is in part based on the Docs. When I joined Tildes, I took this part:
to mean that this site had less of an emphasis on link aggregation and more of an emphasis on in-depth discussion and in-depth links. Yesterday's clarification by /u/Deimos gave me a different impression of the ultimate goals of the site.
I think part of the difficulty with wanting a good balance of link aggregation and in-depth discussion in a community like this is that the former is much harder to guide than the latter. In striving for a balance like that, it seems like communities like this one ultimately set themselves on a trajectory to becoming Reddit-like clones because people's idea of what constitutes as quality, non-discussion-inducing links differs vastly.
What's more, the people who are looking for that kind of link aggregation experience seem to already be primed from other communities (like Reddit and its predecessors) for the kind of experience they're trying to recreate. It's not that they aren't trying to improve on it, but it's still working off the same fundamental model.
To that end, it wasn't the link aggregating aspect of Tildes that intrigued me enough to join, it was the aforementioned emphasis on depth and discussion. I'm curious to see what this balance will look like on Tildes.
It does seem a lot more subjective on what constitutes as high-quality content in regards to external links compared to text-based discussion posts, hence why I feel that heavily discussion based is what tildes should become. Firstly as you mentioned it's a bit easier to control what is good and what isn't, secondly if the site could become self dependent on its own users putting forward topic discussions it would be able to separate itself from sites like Reddit and not follow down that path and end up becoming another Reddit clone.
The hardest part will be the shift in culture from Reddit's, from which a lot of tildes users have come from myself included, to a more unique discussion-based only culture which tildes could become. Culture shifts are always gradual, but if users keep trying to slowly make the shift then it could work out in the long run. Rome wasn't built in a day, neither will tildes.
I was also drawn in to join tildes because of the emphasis on discussion based posts, and I'm glad I did join. Only been using the site for a short amount of time but there have already been some really thought-provoking discussions which have made me think.
As I pointed out in my previous comment, and based on /u/Deimos' clarification yesterday, a discussion-based-only culture doesn't seem to be the goal for this community.
I do seem to be bouncing back and forth between discussion only and discussion heavy. If tildes goal is to become discussion heavy with a good mix of content as well, I am perfectly happy with that and support it fully. Users can discuss the multiple directions the site can be taken in, but at the end of the day @Deimos should have the final say as it is his website after all and at some point somebody has to lay down a clear path.
I agree that it's his vision that will ultimately guide this community. I just thought this was an opportunity to point out how fuzzy that vision still seems to be, mainly as a way to contextualize why there's so much confusion about this in the first place.
I'll have to agree with you on that one, the site does still seem to be taking shape and finding it's course. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, at least us users here at the beginning get to have some kind of influence over the future of the site, which I for one am grateful for and excited by. Once the overall guidelines and mechanics for the site are up and running I think that's when questions about the future of the site will die down and content will start flowing in. At this point tildes is a bike with stabilisers, but once it's figured out the exact direction to take the site in, those stabilisers can be taken off.
I'm kinda in a hurry but just wanted to add this:
Sure, and that's why in a comment of a topic I will always welcome the "joke" comment.
The way I see tildes is that really cool teacher you had in school. He's really good at teaching, gets the work done and caters towards every type of student. Every once in a while he'll crack a joke but for the most part he is there to help others learn and expand their knowledge.
That's a quite surprising good metaphor of how I see tildes as well. Well done :)
Isn't that the whole point of communities? They can decide what kind of content they want by voting on it? If the community doesn't align with your ideals, then you can create a new community like ~jokesoneliners or something.
I don't have a problem with low-effort posts if they stay low in the community hierarchy. If, say, ~music~punk~hardcore is mostly composed of Strike Anywhere memes because that's how the subcommunity organically develops, fine. As long as it's the quality discussion that floats up into ~punk or ~music.
While I like this idealistic view, as the community grows the hierarchy will shift to meet the community ideals, which may be memes over quality discussion.
And if it does, I'll forcibly shift it back the other way. I have specific goals for the site, this isn't "let's just create a platform and see what people do with it."
Glad to see you're so engaged. What do you plan to do when this website has 500,000 visitors and you can't get into the weeds that much?
The site may never get that large, but even if it does, I'm sure I'll still be fairly involved. If the people running the site aren't actively involved with the community on it, it's never going to be a good result.
Very true.
Yes but at the same time the site should still align to its original purpose outlined by Deimos.
Just because it should doesn't mean that it will. That's how communities work, they decide for themselves. You're welcome to voice your opinion but it unfortunately might be drowned out if the majority thinks differently.
Of course, I have no idea how ~ will evolve, it just depends on how much Deimos allows the community to decide how the site should be changed and defined and how much he wants to keep his original plans in place.
Yeah, I didn't mean to post content which didn't suit the site, was just unfamiliar with it. That's part of the problem even though I didn't mean to post what's essentially spam I accidentally did. I wouldn't have done if I had known better.
It's ok right now as my mistake and the discussion around it has more than likely brought more attention to the issue but down the road, I can see spam becoming a problem if it's not addressed early on.
Did you receive any onboarding info like links to the docs? I've been here since it went alpha so I'm not sure what exactly new users are seeing.
Everybody should take a minute to read the docs, especially the overall goals one. It outlines the general idea of what tildes is shooting for, which is primarily high effort content and discussion. That's not to say tildes is intended to be humorless -- just that right now, while the community is small and the tone of the site is still developing, it's really important to avoid low effort content such as one liner jokes and memes as much as possible.
There's also some more good discussion in this post about getting new users to read the docs.
I did read over those before I even got an invite but it still didn't really give me a real clear vibe about what the attitude of the site is about, and I think that's because It's largely down to the community. I think the best solution would be to include a small something in the introduction message you get sent to you when you first join.
This is mostly my failure, in a few different aspects:
I'm going to try to improve at least the documentation side of things this week. We already had a good discussion the other day about where to start for commenting guidelines, so we can probably do the same for submissions soon as well.
However, I think it's important to recognize that no matter what we do, this sort of thing will still happen. People will get the wrong impression, skip reading the docs, etc. When it inevitably does, the best thing is for the community to tell people nicely, "hey, this isn't the type of posts we make here." And that's exactly what happened here, so that's really great to see.
Honestly, I think you pointed out a lot of the problem here already.
There is going to be a learning curve for all new users. There's nothing anyone can do about that fact. @Flashynuff mentioned some of the existing material that can help ease new users into the culture of the place, but it's always true that lurking and learning will do more than just about anything to understand the culture of a place. We're in the process of coming up with some commenting guidelines, and I imagine submission guidelines won't be too far behind that. Until then, the general internet principle of lurking and learning probably should be front and center in every new user's mind.
I admit that I didn't click on your joke in the first place because in my experience any joke that starts with "I like my women like" tends to be rather anti-woman.
Yeah well, it was my fault for trying to run before I could walk, I could have lurked a bit more but my error made me realise that I'm almost certainly not going to be the first one to make these kinds of mistakes, that's why I feel it needs addressing otherwise it could get out of hand.
I have suggested in another comment maybe add something into the introduction message you get sent when you first join. Or have a system where you need a certain threshold of votes on your comments before you can post, it would certainly limit spam on the posts.
I don't care if tildes has joke topics. But if it does, I'd like them to be in a ~jokes group or only allowed after filtering is created, because that way I can unsubscribe/filter and hopefully never have to see something similar again.
(As an aside, it's discouraging, but not that surprising, that the conversation has mostly revolved around whether or not jokes in general are appropriate and where to put them, rather than whether that joke was appropriate. But I don't really feel comfortable saying more, since I don't fancy another round of arguing about free speech.)
Just remember that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, and I thought their joke was in poor taste. I get enough of hearing jokes about "hurr hurr my women preferences" even in joke form, so I would really like to not allow them. I'm also not a fan of the name they chose.
I personally feel that joke is ok but that's exactly the problem if we have a middle ground where we have to judge if a joke is ok when humour is one of the most subjective topics it will lead to complications. Whereas if we just don't have jokes as standalone posts if not only fixes this opinions and judgement problem but also fills the site with posts of higher quality.
Agreed. While the goals of Tildes clearly state a strive to foster high-quality content, there have been mixed signals being sent by both the administration and the users, which makes it difficult to understand the true purpose of Tildes.
Most (all?) of the users here were directly invited from Reddit, and, due to Tildes' similarities, they begin using it exactly as they use Reddit and expect the same kind of content. For instance, there was a thread asking about the role of AMAs on Tildes, which serves as a perfect example of a misunderstanding of Tildes. AMAs are predominantly a Reddit occurrence, so I think it's telling that a new user would come here and ask about their role here.
Another example comes from OP's joke thread, where in the comments someone suggest creating a ~jokes category. This again I think is a poor understanding of Tildes. Creating groups like ~jokes that have a singular purpose centered around low-effort content is very much a Reddit trend, and, in my opinion, has no place here.
It needs to be emphasized that Tildes is not a Reddit clone, and therefore the same type of functionality and content should not be expected. Tildes is striving to be its own thing, and in order to do that the admin(s) and users need to work together to make it its own thing.
I think what causes the most ambiguity is that Tildes' has taken a hybrid approach of being both a discussion and content aggregation site. It's easy to share a link and move on, and the voting system makes it easy to show you like something without actually saying anything. On the other hand, there are mechanics in place that are more reminiscent of a typical discussion forum, such as posts being bumped by new activity, making it less likely for threads to die out quickly. Perhaps it is the blend of these two designs that makes Tildes a bit unclear at the moment.
Umm, actually, I'm pretty sure the guys from r/science already said they wanted to do their AMAs here, and I think Deimos was pretty happy about that. AMAs can be a very good example of quality content.
But yeah, we are probably all still trying to understand the goals of Tildes. And I guess that's fine and that it's part of The Plan™.
Let me clarify. I do think that AMAs can provide valuable content, and they shouldn't necessarily be discouraged should a certain community want to have them.
I was mostly addressing the user's inherent expectation that AMAs, which are most common on Reddit, will have a direct counterpart on Tildes, and that Tildes should provide functionality to specially support it.
I mean, sure, Tildes shouldn't just copy any other site without reason, I understand what you mean. But I don't think it should shy away from copying good things about other sites, especially if they foster quality content, whatever that may be.
In any case, I think in these early stages most is still to be decided, so it's good to find different views and expectations so the dev and the users can consider them, I guess.
I wouldn't mind the occasional, "what's your best dumb joke" type thread. I'm far too easily entertained for that to not be enjoyable.
But each joke doesn't need its own thread either, as you said, because then it can become spammy. I want a variety of content, but as users we should be cognizant of how we present it. A jokes thread is okay. It's akin to creating something like a sticky thread (minus the sticky) to group a high volume of similar low-effort content that people can easily browse. In that sense, we need to self-moderate before we even post to figure out how to best present the content so that it isn't spammy.
My first reaction is a "pleeaaase no", because of the anti-fluff sentiment.
On the other hand, ~talk exists, which describes itself as "General discussion topics, casual or serious". In other words, a rule/thought that having its own threads is discouraged, but every once in a while a thread (like the one on there now) could work. It would just mean I unsubscribe from that group.
As long as that's not a thing done by every group. If ~books had a "off topic: what's your favourite book joke" thread that would be hurting the goals of the community, I think. I'm quite divided, but in general against it. I wonder if containment, like you describe, would work.
This place won't survive if there's no outlet for fun and low effort content. It would be a lot better to let it happen but contain it, I think. As soon as we get too pretentious about high effort content, we alienate all the content that keeps a site going. People join sites they see are active. Without a bit of room to play around, discussions will move slower or get dropped all together.
I don't know if I agree with this. I think it can definitely survive, it just won't grow to reddit scale.
For example HN is strictly moderated and really narrow in focus, but it does what it does best. People go looking for it because it's narrow in focus. I mean there's still fun (e.g. people presenting fun websites or games they made) but within the larger goal—the person presenting it will most often be the one that made it, and be able to answer questions on it and get a discussion going. But there's not much fluff, no "memes" in the sense of low-effort pictures, etc.
And I think something like that, with a bit broader scope, could work here.
i am with you 100%. this place does have some interesting discussions, but damn are all these people completely fucking joyless.
you put it perfectly before, the best current definition of this site is "annoyingly pretentious."
While I personally am not a fan of the joke threads, people have to realize how small this site is right now. When something gets posted and receives ~15 votes, it's front page stuff. Not to mention there is a strict number of groups currently on the site. Once the site grows and there are custom groups become available, you probably won't see stuff like that. And if you do, you can unsubscribe. I think once these more focused groups are open though, posts like that outside of humor/joke groups should be removed.
I just wanted to say "don't beat yourself up too much." I made a Kirk v Picard thread a couple weeks ago. No one complained but it was definitely fluff/low effort. I'm learning to post better quality stuff but the site is small and so we need content. You're doing the right thing by talking about it. :)
Yeah, I'm not necessarily annoyed or angry at the response, not in the slightest, in hindsight I agree with the general sentiment. I was just a bit surprised. I feel the general tone of the site should come across in perhaps a welcome message of some description.
That's good feedback for @Deimos to hear. I'd be surprised if he's not already looking at doing something about it.
I don't think the solution is culture -- you can't control it. The solution is systematic filtering.
If you keep the community small enough you certainly can. But it comes at a cost. You piss off and alienate the people who don't perfectly conform. That's not necessarily bad for maintaining culture, but it can damage the word-of-mouth reputation.
I'm already considering moving on from tildes, for example. I haven't even done anything "wrong" but this discussion about it, and some of the other meta tildes threads, are annoyingly pretentious for my tastes.
I get it, but can't you just unsubscribe from ~tildes? That way you don't need to deal with the meta threads.
I'm not sure you understood the point - you're just suggesting I slap on a Band-Aid to deal with the underlying issue. It's not just the presence of the meta threads. It's the, what I consider to be, pretentious and boring behaviour in them. I've been in the online community building industry for years. I have some actual expert knowledge of what I'm talking about so the criticism I levied was not just on a whim. If the idea to is to help shape the culture of the site, my contribution is as at least valid as the next person's.
In short, no, the answer is not to unsubscribe.
I don't see where I suggested you didn't have experience or expertise or that your contribution was less valid than anyone else's.
So what you're saying is that you want to participate in the meta discussion but that the people that are participating in the discussions currently sound too pretentious and that puts you off? I don't know, I don't see this post as pretentious. Would you mind elaborating what's the problem you find?
That's what I was thinking -- it will work for small communities. But, I don't think the intention is to keep tildes small.
Don't get me wrong I agree with the stance this site has taken and will enjoy using it and participating in it with this sort of serious manner. I just didn't realise exactly what the culture of this site was.
You're going to implement logins? Well, I might try this, though I can't quite wrap my head around the whole decentralization thing yet.