The current problem with ~
I had this full submission typed out before I accidentally closed the tab, so if this seems a bit rushed I apologize :)
The current problem with ~ is, in my mind, a lack of shared understanding between the "older" and "newer" users, about what the main focus of the site should be. I was lucky enough to join the site fairly early on, and with the exponential growth of the site, I've noticed a few changes.
There seems to be a "struggle" between link/article submissions and discussion posts. While each have their benefits, in ~'s current state, I do not think it's possible for both to work in harmony with the site.
The benefits of discussion posts are that they encourage community, and well, discussion. Discussion posts are great for the generally serious nature of the site as well. One of my main reasons for leaving reddit was the lack of genuine, interesting conversation that didn't dissolve into meta memes within two comments. On tildes, I've commented more than in my past few years on reddit because of this.
Link submissions don't encourage community or discussion, usually. Not always, but in most cases the user will post the article and move on. The same goes for users coming across it, they will just "upvote and move on", which doesn't seem to be very beneficial to ~ or its community.
The second problem with link submissions is the voting system. Right now on ~, you cannot downvote something. This was fine earlier when most posts were discussion based, but downvotes can be useful for link/article submissions. It can help cut out noise or blatantly clickbait/advertising articles.
I think there needs to be a way to distinguish between these two types of posts, or simply decide what the main focus of the site should be, and stick with that. What are your thoughts on this?
I honestly don't understand this opinion. There have been plenty of link submissions that have started discussions (here's one that was even posted to ~talk for that purpose the other day). Sites like Hacker News are almost entirely discussions started based on link submissions. There is nothing inherently worse about a link submission. A discussion isn't created just because the person posting says "what do you think about X?" instead of posting a link to an article about X.
Links and discussions both serve a purpose, and we're going to end up with the best result by supporting both. Nobody's going to come to a site to talk about games if they aren't able to get the actual news or information about games in the same place. If they have to go to a separate site to get all the information anyway, why wouldn't they just discuss there instead?
I think we probably just need some solid tools for filtering, and if some people don't want to see link posts, they can just filter them out. Alternatively, do some more different things with organization, such as making ~talk cover all discussion posts more comprehensively, and people could go entirely through there if they just want to stick to discussions.
I’m feeling a little confused about the split between link submissions and pure discussion posts too. The only time I’ve seen links not lead to discussion is on the subs with barely any activity.
I’m also a little confused by the requirement to participate in the conversation if I post a link. I don’t always have anything to add to an article and sometimes the discussion that follows the link submission is higher level than the knowledge I have on the topic so jumping in to talk would really amount to me leaving a comment for the sake of it. I’m not 100% sure that it would support the goal of having quality discussions. This won’t be the case for the majority of any links I might submit, but I’m not sure if I would be penalized for not being able to contribute to a discussion I started because I’m out of my league by the time it gets going.
you mean that it would collect side-wide text posts?
Yes, for example we could have ~talk.games actually be showing all text posts from ~games instead of being a truly separate group.
I like that idea, what would the opposite of ~talk.games be called? Something that only displays link posts, ~link.games?
A simple checkbox/field in the profile would do it.
[ ] only show me link submissions with at least [ x ] comments
I think the ability to combine a link and text post together would hopefully reduce the amount of “posting and leaving” that you mentioned. By this I mean somebody can link an article/video but also add underneath their own personal opinion on it. The reason discussion based posts work so well is because the user provides the initial push or idea. By allowing users who want to post a link the ability to also give their own initial thoughts, hopefully more discussions will take place on link-based posts.
This would also allow the upvote to be used the same way it’s used on discussion posts; if the user has just linked an article but given no real initial thoughts on the article, I don’t see it as deserving as someone who’s read the article and also included their own take.
I imagine there will be an issue with users who simply want to post the article and leave it at that, but tildes focus is discussion. If you have posted an article, I would assume you’ve read it and therefore have some initial thoughts or ideas on what the article addresses or discusses.
We talked about that before - having the user's post attached directly to his link presents certain problems. What might be possible, though, is for the text in that box to be posted as the first comment at the same time the link is posted. That way the user's comment is not stapled directly to the link submission and is free to be moderated by the votes like everyone else.
I think having that ability would improve the odds that people start a discussion on link posts.
I really like this idea. Similar to what @ajar suggested but the text presented with the link is automatically posted as a comment? If so, I am very on board with this idea, a good mix of both link only and link + text.
I suggested this a long time ago but nothing came of it; hopefully more support will make it happen :]
specifically which ones? I must have missed the original discussion.
In a nutshell, there's nothing stopping me from stapling an ill-informed rant or baseless opinion piece to a link of a breaking news event, and once done, there's no way to deal with it as it's stuck to the link right at the top. At least if that happens as a comment it's not protected from moderation and voting. If it's stuck to the link, it is.
I feel as though it's just a Reddit holdover that submission links cannot contain text in the body of the post. It seems silly, as I've always thought including your own positions and points appending the full submission would garner better discussion, to be honest.
Imagine submitting articles or videos with some food for thought underneath. Hell, you could make it in a similar vain to high school test questions. How do you feel about the article? Do you think the points made were clear? Etc...
It’s that first little push that will get other users taking, simply posting the link on its own I don’t think is enough to get the ball rolling it seems.
Hey there again. I'm here to offer some mild disagreement. :)
I think there was some thread about requiring statements in link submissions. But can't find it right now. Anyway, I don't think it's a very good idea. The reason being that people who don't want to write anything, will usually just copy a snippet from the article and paste it and leave. And anyway, they can already add their opinion in a comment, so I don't think statements would change much. In fact, they might discourage people from submitting stuff if they are required and try to follow the "rules" starting the discussion, but no one cares. I actually submitted a link a few days ago, I don't remember what it was right now, and I added a pretty long comment explaining some stuff, and it didn't get any response, but the comment got a few votes, I think. So I'll probably not do that again, just because of the effort.
I agree however with the idea that discussion is usually more limited in link posts. And I see two reasons: either people don't want to comment at all, or the OP doesn't want to reply to comments. And we can't force people to reply. But we could try and influence OP.
I think it might be a good idea to add a guideline by which if you submit a link, it's because you want to discuss it. So OP should be available to talk about it with possible commenters, something like what they do in r/changemyview, where they ask OP to be available for a few hours to participate in the discussion. (Might be a bit too much, but if someone posts lots of links and never participates in the discussion, it's just using the site as a news aggregator, which I assume is not entirely the point.)
Another intermediate option could be to make a mandatory comment after submitting a link. I think writing a comment involves more the user, more than writing a statement, at least. I think it has a similar problem to writing statements, but the fact that it's a comment makes it more flexible (it doesn't directly editorialize the article and might move around up or down in the comment section).
I think that’s actually a better approach to the situation than the one I proposed, letting users know that if they post content they will have to be at least somewhat interested in discussing the link further.
I also agree with your idea of changing it so a comment is required instead, as at least people can vote on the persons initial thoughts. If they clearly have only skimmed the article and then given a vague comment on it, it would allow other comments that critique the piece more heavily to rise to the top, instead of forcing OPs thoughts to be read by everyone if it was done with the link + text approach. Good suggestion!
I’m still not really sure what the best remedy is for trying to get people discussing linked content more. Cant exactly force people to do so, but there are multiple ways probably in which they can be encouraged. I think this is why people are leaning towards more text based posts, as people come to ~ for a good in-depth discussion with other users, not just a quick reading of articles.
Why not just link the article in a text post?
So, I'm a big fan of discussion. The comments are what finally encouraged me to create a reddit account, some 9 years ago, after years of lurking. If I can't find a good community to bounce ideas, jokes, and observations off, I simply don't create an account, don't comment. This is why my youtube account has made like a half a dozen comments in twice as many years.
What I've noticed here on ~ is when there's a lack of new links, people just talk about themselves or their surroundings. I've seen no less than FIVE "intro threads", dozens of "what's your favourite X" threads, no end of meta introspective "tildes would be better if X" posts.
I feel this is unsustainable and it's putting the cart before the horse. There's only so much we can say about ourselves, whereas a constant influx of new content and news from around the web gives us a constant stream of things to talk about. I feel a tight-knit community can form around commenting on such links. So and so always has a joke, so and so always takes the libertarian "Big government" stance, so and so is always there to bring perspective, etc. You develop these relationships through years of seeing eachother every day, you start to notice certain usernames, start to appreciate their writing style, the flavour their comments and contributions add to the site.
Throwing people in an empty room with nothing to talk about except themselves and expecting a healthy community to develop doesn't seem like the best way to accomplish this for me. I've been to parties like this. It's not fun to an outsider, and there's very little opportunity to start conversations with people you don't know. Everyone's already formed tight cliques and you have to wonder why you're even here in the first place.
IMO getting these meta discussions out of the away first so rules, guidelines, culture, etc can be established and better defined at the beginning is the exact opposite of ‘cart before the horse’... it’s taming the horse before you attempt to harness it and use it for driving you around in the cart. ;)
As for how long those type of discussions you dislike will continue to dominate... I doubt very much longer as the population increases and more users begin contributing content and comments reflective of their specific personal interests.
Right now people know ~ is new and in alpha so they desire to introduce themselves and have their opinions on the potential future of the site heard. It’s the nature of new social sites and alphas, but that will change as official policies get implemented (so there is less room for debate on them) and people get to know one another and the community here so don’t need to constantly feel each other out so much.
I get that people want a place to have quality discussions. As a medium for discussion, Reddit is really starting to suck.
At the same time, I would also like to have quality link aggregation. There are other sites that do that right now, including Reddit, and guess what - they suck too.
There's no reason Tildes can't be both of those things. Once filters and tagging is up and running you can filter out all link submissions if you so desire (although you'll be missing some good stuff). Until then you can weed out a good amount of that content by unsubscribing from ~news, ~sports and ~music if you don't care for it.
Another thing I don't see mentioned a lot is that there is less discussion on link submissions because it takes considerably more time to consume that content than reading a short discussion prompt like "what is a sandwich" or "what are the best '90s albums." As the number of users rises we will definitely see more discussion on article and video submissions.
I agree that the link submissions tend to not generate as much discussion as self posts. I think it would be a massive benefit if link posts (at least in some groups) required a mandatory submission statement. Something to get a conversation going, instead of dropping it onto the front page all, "Here, now you talk about it".
I still disagree with this because as (I think it was) Deimos convinced me, it's worse to give the original submitter a higher platform just for being the first one to submit.
It also muddies things up for discussion and voting, where it's unclear if the focus should be on the submission or the commentary. That's not the biggest deal ever, but I think it's more of a problem than any benefit it would provide.
I totally agree with OP and this proposal of yours. It had also being suggested several time but I never found an official stance on that by @Deimos to be honest.
I joined tildes because I crave the discussion boards of old. I don't need yet another link aggregator.
He has explicitly said he doesn't see the need for a submission statement, and won't enforce it (but I can't remember which thread, so I can't link it for you). Also, he doesn't make submission statements on his own link submissions.
EDIT: Found it!
That would definitely help. While I don't think that would solve all the problems with article/link submissions - most likely a chunk of articles would be self filtered once someone realizes they can't think a reason why they like the article. I can definitely say that has happened to me a few times :)
I think you're underestimating the number of "I thought this was interesting. What do you think?" lines you're going to end up seeing.
Agreed, articles should be posted not because the user enjoyed them but because they find the topic the article discusses interesting and wants to bring the discussion over to ~.
The second problem that you mention was meant to be remedied with the tag system, although that's been disabled temporarily so it can be reworked. Hopefully in the future the tag system will help encourage discussion without the need for down votes (which can be very opinionated).
I think we're spending too much time talking about it. I feel like if we just post content and have discussions and promote a quality / positive environment we'll be fine. People will have plenty of examples of what this place is and all that.
~tildes is the /r/theoryofreddit and /r/ideasfortheadmins for this site. Talk and debate on the potential systems, policies and culture of the site is healthy IMO. Yeah, worrying too much and arguing over minutiae can be counter productive but I don’t really see that occurring here too much yet. People are just theorycrafting at this point which is good to see since it shows they are invested in the future of the site. But ultimately you’re probably right and we’re all worrying a bit too much about things. We shall see. ;)
As I said the last time this was brought up. I don't think requiring OP to post a discussion post is necessary. If someone needs a discussion prompt to start commenting then they don't have much to say in the first place.
This is off-topic, but you should look into getting a browser extension that saves your forms. I use Lazarus, but looks like it's gone now. Other options:
Typio Form Recovery
For other browsers, I'm sure you can find other similar extensions.
Extensions like those save everything you type in common text fields. If your browser crashes, you can recover the full text.
Thanks, I'll look into that. I'll have to find one for FireFox as that is my main browser :)
I'm of the opinion if I want some quick news based on my interests, media, links, images, etc. I go to Reddit. Reddit's massive community curates that pretty easily and there's decent comments to go along with it - not much room for discussion though.
Here, I find, a better setup and community - at the moment anyway - for facilitating discussion. So, I think that links that are posted should really facilitate some sort of conversation. Proper tags, perhaps a brief text post by the OP, quality link submissions to begin with, etc. would be a good thing to have to help encourage better discussions.
As long as you're sorting by activity, the link posts that generate no discussion go down the list quickly. I don't think this is much of a problem short term.