What kind of community do you want this to be?
Choose three words to describe the kind of community you want here, and explain why you chose those words.
Diverse
More points of view makes for a more in depth, nuanced conversation that brings viewpoints I may not have considered before. I have plenty of experience as a native woman in Canada, but that isn't the only viewpoint. Much as it pains me to admit, I don't know everything and sometimes I miss layers of conversations that others can point out to me. Those viewpoints are the ones I need to read if I want to continue growing as a person.
Welcoming
I want a community that isn't full of gatekeepers, who don't arbitrarily decide who should or should not belong before they've even had a chance to contribute. I want to see people given a chance to show who they can be on a new platform, and how they can make this a better place. The last thing we need is to chase away people who might otherwise make valid contributions to the community by being dicks.
Interesting
More threads, more topics for discussion, more traffic in general. I want to see dozens of threads I can contribute to or at least read on a daily basis, whatever that topic may be. A new book series, a hobby, a viewpoint on politics. But we're not going to get there without a diverse, welcoming group to keep new people engaged.
Engaging
As we gain more users, it's important that they're able to contribute, both with new links and posts, and also comments. Discussion is hugely important, as people just posting links often only presents a single viewpoint; getting feedback on those posts is what builds a community. The reddit joke "the real X is always in the comments" often holds true.
Insightful
I don't want cheap comments (the preceding was used to make a point). If I want cheap inside jokes, I'd go to reddit or YouTube comments. I want to see comments that actually add to the discussion be valued. That's not to say that all comments have to be essays, as that would take away from the engagement, but comments should present, question, or continue discussion. There's a vote button for simple agreement.
Respectful
In order to have people post, they have to know that they aren't going to get attacked for presenting their thoughts. A hostile community is one that dies quickly. We should be able to disagree with each other without attacking the person behind the post; instead, question the content and discuss alternatives.
Edit: clarification
Say it louder for the people in the back.
But yes, I totally agree. A nasty environment will turn people off FAST, and if we want to avoid being a self referential circlejerk we need growth.
Similar to you, I would also like to see more diversity. It's not only important in order to get different perspectives and lived experiences, but there are times when I find it exhausting to defend or continue to explain certain viewpoints. Not to say that someone would have the same opinions or experiences just because they were a woman and/or ethnic minority, but there is a level of understanding I think that would be nice.
Patience and open-mindedness go hand in hand and I would like to see more of it on Tildes. To be fair, I think most people here are pretty easy-going, but the very vocal minority that start going crazy everytime they see something they don't like (low-effort posts, people, content they don't agree with) really drown out threads that could otherwise have been interesting and informative.
Fun! Not everything has to be so serious. I don't think that humour or jokes are automatically low effort, and being able to laugh at something goes a long ways towards building community.
Civil
Being polite keeps the social interaction gears moving... it's just that simple. Getting heated or impassioned is okay but there's no need to be a dick. Particularly in text where content can be thought over before being expressed.
Diverse
Allow for different points of view and welcome viewpoints that aren't yours to be expressed even if you don't agree with them. It's not hard to just ignore things you don't like in an online community.
Laid Back
Not everything has to be super serious all the time. Taking some things too seriously can just cause additional strife where none is needed... and usually ends up as elitism in communities ("you're doing it wrong"). Not everything needs to be turned into a joke but there's no reason to get upset if someone is having a bit of fun.
Thank you for this thread, @phedre and everyone. The question got me thinking, and it's really hard to pick the three. When I think about qualities, there's a voice in me saying "Zoe, are you getting too essentialist?" or "Are you just projecting what you hunger outwards?" And I guess I'm getting a bit incoherent..
First of all, I'd hope for an empathic community. This word could imply many things, like trust, understanding, reciprocity, etc. It would mean we accept each other as they are and willing to listen to their concerns, interests, and ideas. And in this relationship we accept ourselves too, and it becomes possible to talk to each other about how we really experience as it is.
Second, I'd hope for a growing mindset be among us. I don't refer to growth as in "growth hacking", the proliferation of numbers, but the extension of our minds and horizons of experience. If we see the process of resolving a dispute not as a zero-sum contest, but an opportunity for each, in their own pace and style, to grow together, into a state with greater understanding and freedom.
Finally, the word may be graceful, in the sense described in this well-known post by Prof. Francis Su. In giving grace we encourage others to do the same. Grace makes hard conversation possible. Grace fosters creativity. Grace validates vulnerability and the human condition.
Such is my hope and also the hope for myself. I wish to be as good as I wish myself to be.
I think @phedre gave us a really great opportunity to think about this problem. I am learning from all your comments. So here is my thanks.
I want you to know how much I appreciate you sharing that article and bringing up Grace, as it's a powerful concept that is both at the very core of my own theology and is so often tragically lacking in so much of today's word and deed.
It's beautifully written, and speaks to the best foundations of human love and dignity.
Thank you for letting me know. The article (speech) was addressed to an audience of educators, but I think the core message is common to a lot of human relations, and I really want to hear what people think of it.
Respectful
Coming out of the nineties and the aughts it sometimes seems like showing how creative you are at being angry has become something of a sport. In the tens this sort of morphed into telling people how wrong they were all the time in the most hostile way possible. I'm hoping Tildes can break that cycle and just agree to remain respectful to each other, to debate topics and not each other's personalities.
Communal
I'd like to feel like Tildes is less like shouting at each other on the public square, and more like a meetup at a pub. Some formality is nice but some levity would be nice as well.
Interesting
Same as @phedre really, I'd love to see interesting articles, studies, or videos get posted here. I'll try my best to contribute ones I feel are interesting as well.
Authentic
I think the thing that I have enjoyed most about online communities is when people are themselves, and wholly so. When you have actual experts chime in, or when someone has a personal anecdote that is insightful, or someone tells a funny joke that they came up with. When people are themselves, an online community becomes more of an actual community. People treat each other as people when they know each other. Granted, there's no way everyone can know each other, but if the baseline is authentic communication and community engagement then hopefully new users (like me) will follow suit.
Eroding authenticity is also what kills online communities in my opinion. When you can dismiss people as trolls or shills (and sometimes be right) it becomes an easy crutch and soon no one trusts anyone. The "trust" mechanic that @deimos has described seems to be at least an attempt to address this that I haven't seen elsewhere. Which is nice.
Caring
One of my biggest problems with internet groups in general is the celebration of apathy. Giving a shit is bad, and remaining aloof and cynical is good. And while I'd agree that's armor against a lot of what is wrong with people online, it isn't good for a community. I'd like this to be a place where being invested isn't looked down upon. Where trying to improve things isn't seen as being a tryhard. Where trying to be sensitive to your fellow users (which I don't think is something that can be 100%, we can all try but no one can make everyone happy, but we should still try) isn't ridiculed. I would like this place to be somewhere worth caring about, but also a place where caring is celebrated.
Open-Minded
I don't mean "we should let Nazis speak their piece!" but I do think that there should be a place here for topics that are contentious. An issue with tight-knit communities (which I hope this becomes) is that there's a lot of codification about what is right and wrong to believe. Granted there are some things that I think we should take as truth because they're the truth, but I wouldn't want this place to become too insular. We should be open to discussion on a lot of stuff. Trying to make sure that the discussion is being done in good faith will be a challenge though. Which, hopefully, is where the trust mechanic comes in again.
Great points, especially about caring and the celebration of caring.
A part of a good community is a sense of responsibility and ownership, in the "I have to keep this tidy because it's mine." The only way we get there is to care and to make caring a thing we hold up as a positive.
Charitable
I'd like to have a community in which we are able to take each other seriously and assume the best intentions of those we interact with. So much social intercourse online comes down to a meta-conversation, where everyone is guessing at the intentions of everyone else, and many people are dishonestly trying to change the general state of online discourse instead of interacting directly with the people they're talking to. That leads me to my next word...
Personal
The best conversation I've seen online has been between people who interact regularly enough to recognize each other. I don't think that people can have generous and honest conversations with one another without some amount of trust, and there's just no reason to trust a stranger on the internet. I'm not sure how to create the right conditions as the population of the site grows, but maybe there could be some way to group people into smaller communities; maybe everyone who shares certain ~topics could be grouped together. There has to be some way for people you know and trust to act as a sort of barrier against the blaring noise of the internet.
Noncompetitive
I think that a major problem with reddit is the lure of collecting karma and the inflated importance it has to people. It works as a way of measuring how many people value a post, but applying the same value to the poster encourages reposting and low-effort content. It would be interesting if each user had a personalized rating for other users based on how often the user voted for their content or how often those users are active in the ~topics that the user is interested in.
You said it so well!
Diverse
Just echoing what's already here. I would like to be part of a community that more closely mirrors our population. And as @Cyhchan mentioned, it does get a little draining defending a point that seems so obvious to me that it almost feels like I'm being gas-lighted sometimes. It would be nice to have a similar voice either to give me a sanity check or tell me I'm crazy.
Non-judgemental
This is in direct response to how quickly we jump on and pile on "low-effort", "low-quality", "sensational", whatever content. I would love to give topics a chance to generate meaningful, non-meta, discussions.
Humorous
I find something super interesting about someone making true and clever points. Let's allow some fun!
Illuminating - if this is "the social media platform that's about more than cat gifs and beaten-to-death memes, I want insights & facts & perspectives I wouldn't necessarily get anywhere else. Not in one place at least. And here it seems it's possible those viewpoints & various people's expertise will be able to come through, because it won't get lost in shouting or slapfights or other dumb noise that plagues many platforms.
Accepting - almost cheating since people have hit on aspects of this already, but... I want to be able to discuss with people who are different from me, not shout at each other. I want to be able to see where others are coming from, and trust that they'll try to do the same for me, even though my background may be very different from theirs. Obviously not accepting of assholes & hatey "opinions (blah blah Paradox Of Tolerance etc), but where each of us brings something and won't be attacked or laughed off just for having a different view.
Fun - This seems to easily fall by the wayside when trying for "quality," but it's important! Taking oneself too seriously is seldom helpful; if anything, it tends to build walls instead of knocking them down. I know this place is finding itself with respect to "quality" and self-policing vs unhelpful-gatekeeping... but in the end we're all here on our free time, exploring. A bit of fun shouldn't be considered unworthy, if anything it'll likely keep people coming back.
Interesting, links and discussion to get people learning, thinking, and exploring new (and old) ideas.
Edifying, I hope we can help people feel that they are welcome, safe, appreciated, encouraged, and uplifted by their time here.
Engaging, both in the sense of a reader who is engaged in an interesting work, and in the sense of a writer wading headfirst into a discussion. We should do our best to make our contributions to the site worth taking the time to read, for the sake of both the other participants in a dialogue and the silent majority of non-participating readers; and we should try to use our voices to create more room for people to join the conversation rather than to end it.
Ah well, I'm late to the thread, which might be the perfect time for this screed.
Three words: no damn Nazis.
The full list would be longer --- no Nazis, racists, fascists, "race realists", bone-headed nationalists, tyranny and toughness ("law and order") cheerleaders, misogynists, MGTOWs, red pillers, TERFs, Gamergaters, Holocaust deniers, Confederacy fanboys, incels, antisemites, foreigner-haters, violence advocates, alt-righters, authoritarians, homophobes, transphobes, anti-feminists, Trump supporters, Jordan Peterson fans, white supremacists, bloodthirsty religious or rational people --- it's a terrible constellation with a lot of overlap but basically boils down to "I have the Truth, mere facts shan't convince me, I shall remove your disagreement and you too, and all my humor is kicking down and laughing to cover up the cries."
(Or: they're in the thread to lead not to read: to confuse, misdirect, lie, normalize, recruit and scare people into silence.)
As far as they can't be kept out --- and people are multitudes so they shouldn't be, everybody knows a person that's a perfect darling but if you bring up that one specific thing, oh darling no --- I want this to be such an openly unfriendly ground to those shitty opinions their shitty holders don't speak up about them, and maybe learn something. Nothing of conversational value is lost by shutting out voices that are not interested in a conversation: and these have nothing to offer but lies, hate and opposition to tolerance --- gaming the system to destroy it.
Free speech is a human game: it shouldn't have a place for those who want to cheat and shut the whole game down. If Mark is a compulsively cheating, vocally abusive chess player who "ironically" threatens to beat up anyone that beats him, then the chess club does not lose any players by kicking Mark out. If Mark thinks this actually costs the club a member, isn't that counter to getting more members, well, a member like Mark would say that.
As for people who are just (likely) wrong, like UFO fans --- the phenomenon, not the band --- well, it's not being wrong that's destructive to discussion and tolerance, it's whether you can discuss without counter-discussive means, like using slurs, JAQing, Gish galloping, blatant persistent lying, aggressive ignorance, and IMing Jewish people pictures of ovens: argumentation of such amorally Eristic nature it would make an old Discordian happy, if it wasn't ruined by those malignant hate-boners and the sneering non-smiles hovering over them and below the shadows of gibbets. I'm a great proponent of nonsense talk, and even playful Eristic arguments (aiming at victory instead of truth), but they are no fun when the other "debater" seriously aims to deny the humanity of thinking living human beings. (To which he would say, "but surely you deny me my essential humanity by not allowing me a forum to tell people they deserve to be thrown from helicopters.")
Fans of UFOs, Nessie and Mandela effects are great, even if I, the perfect arbiter of all truth, find their methodologies sorely lacking; they find their talk meaningful and I find it entertaining, and nobody needs to threaten to throw people off flying saucers. But, to have diversity and tolerance, Nazis need to be told to shut up.
Er, I apologize for the length and the vitriol, but spending time on Reddit builds up these frustrations.