That existed but was removed: https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/26m/invited_by_information_for_users_is_no_longer_displayed A set list for tags isn't planned AFAIK but tag autocompletion is...
A user tree, similar to what Lobsters uses, that allows everyone to see who invited who
On Tildes, if a post links to a website, the domain of that site shows up next to the title in smaller text, but it cannot be clicked or interacted with, only copied and pasted.
I read in another comment earlier that Hacker News allows users to check what the frontpage looked like on any given day of its existence, which is a very cool feature, as well as checking what the top posts of a specific year were.
Probably the final feature from Lobsters that I would like to see would be hats
I really like the hat system as well and have suggested it for here several times as well. Some people said they don't want something like that so that "each comment can be judged on its own merits" but I personally think that more weight should be given to people who actually work in a field related to the discussion so a mechanism for recognizing them is important for that.
Yeah even with the issues already in Gitlab, including them in your suggestion is still nice to help gauge user interest in those features. I know I was a bit terse in my reply but I didn't mean...
Yeah even with the issues already in Gitlab, including them in your suggestion is still nice to help gauge user interest in those features. I know I was a bit terse in my reply but I didn't mean to imply you shouldn't have mentioned them by linking to the Gitlab issues, so sorry if it came off that way.
Didn't you mention in that thread that you thought about tagging that user, but decided against it so as not to draw them into the conversation without it being of their own volition?
Yeah, that was me. And yeah, it would be nice having a Mozilla employee "hat" for him (if he wanted it) that he could turn on/off at will, so other users could know they can safely take his comments as authoritative when he is talking about Mozilla.
Yeah I went looking for details of their hats verification process before and there is nothing in the wiki or anywhere else that I can see. But as you said I doubt the process is particularly...
Yeah I went looking for details of their hats verification process before and there is nothing in the wiki or anywhere else that I can see. But as you said I doubt the process is particularly cumbersome or time consuming. I imagine it's probably similar to what the /r/IAMA mods do, a few of which are on Tildes already and we talk to regularly... so if/when "hats" is implemented on Tildes they can probably provide some good suggestions on establishing a similar process of verification here.
As to a public list of users with hats, I don't think that's a good idea for precisely the same reasons I didn't tag the Mozilla employee in that contentious topic about Mozilla... since it could lead to people pressuring others to respond when it is perhaps not in their best interest to. Also having a public list like that may discourage people from applying for hats in the first place for fear of that happening, too.
I do think being able to sort comments so people who have chosen to don their hats in relevant topics are given added sort order visibility would be a good idea though. E.g. an admin hat that Deimos could enable for ~tildes.official threads and when he is speaking authoritatively about Tildes elsewhere, so his comments are given added visibility (moreso than just the OP bar).
And even outside of features related to users making comments with their hats on, perhaps even allowing them to vouch for certain comments they agree with by signifying "hat user approved" or something similar could be interesting as well. Hats can certainly provide some interesting related mechanics to consider and play with, at any rate.
Voten has a feature I really enjoy, especially when submitting a link while on a phone. After you paste a link, a button named "Suggest" appears next to the title field. Click the button and the...
Voten has a feature I really enjoy, especially when submitting a link while on a phone. After you paste a link, a button named "Suggest" appears next to the title field. Click the button and the title of your link will be fetched and entered into the title field for you.
Hubski has some neat features as well. One is that any user can add a tag to a post someone else submitted. (This has potential for abuse though, so there should probably be some restrictions.)
The two features I find more important for my usage experience at the moment would be filtering and hiding posts and comments. I like to hide posts as I read them (or dismiss them) instead of...
The two features I find more important for my usage experience at the moment would be filtering and hiding posts and comments.
I like to hide posts as I read them (or dismiss them) instead of scrolling down. It's much more comfortable for me this way.
I also desperately need the ability to filter posts and comments based on keywords and domains, (in the future, users, too). It's the best way to tailor the site to my needs. Ideally, we should be able to filter out any word whatsoever we want on Tildes, there are many words that I don't want to read, yet don't necessarily have a corresponding tag, since they're just alternative ways of calling things that already have tags.
Rant incoming.
For example, on Reddit, every time a celebrity dies, the whole front page gets filled with posts about them. And the only way to escape it is by filtering the person's name. Understadably, lowest common denominator, garbage, karmawhoring, normie-ass, bullshit, slightly-lower-quality subreddits like r/pics, r/funny, r/todayilearned, r/gifs, r/showerthoughts, r/wholesomememes, etc will get flooded with pictures and content related to the celebrity. And you'd think that by unsubscribing from those subreddits, you would be safe, right? Well, WRONG. Because they go and post about them on r/mapporn or r/vexillology of all places. So the only way to not see that stuff, is by filtering it with keywords.
I mean, what is this even? It's literally just a national flag... Only sliiiightly relevant because of the death of the actor. But completely undeserving of front page of the sub, which isn't about just boring computer designed images of national flags.
One word I'd love to filter out on Tildes is Kavanaugh. I don't know who that is, I don't care who that is, I just don't want to see their name every time I log in.
I think a filter feature for posts has been talked about in the past and I think it's going to be implemented eventually, but I don't know about comment filtering or the ability to hide posts/comments.
You can add filters (for tags, not keywords/domains yet) now. It's at the bottom of the sidebar, labeled "Filtered topic tags". Click on the edit button there, and add "kavanaugh" and "brett...
You can add filters (for tags, not keywords/domains yet) now. It's at the bottom of the sidebar, labeled "Filtered topic tags". Click on the edit button there, and add "kavanaugh" and "brett kavanaugh".
Hiding topics is already being worked on but AFAIK there is no plan to do that for comments: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/51 And the current filtering feature is just in the rudimentary...
And the current filtering feature is just in the rudimentary stages of development and can only do tags, but I imagine over time will get much more feature complete and possibly allow keyword and domain filtering as well. I also don't know about comment filtering though, but just like comment hiding, I am not entirely sold on its usefulness, TBH.
Well, on Reddit, they're a great way of filtering out lots of memes and certain irksome words. In here the community hasn't turned as repetitive yet, but I'm certain there will be certain...
I also don't know about comment filtering though, but I am not entirely sold on its usefulness, TBH.
Well, on Reddit, they're a great way of filtering out lots of memes and certain irksome words.
In here the community hasn't turned as repetitive yet, but I'm certain there will be certain discussions that will be periodically repeated over and over and over. And I'd like to filter that out.
Fair enough, I suppose. But unless you write out pretty specific regex for the comment filter (which would need to be supported) you're likely going to get a ton of false positives and miss out on...
Fair enough, I suppose. But unless you write out pretty specific regex for the comment filter (which would need to be supported) you're likely going to get a ton of false positives and miss out on a lot of discussion needlessly. And as for a mechanism for hiding comments manually, what would a separate feature like that accomplish that collapsing them wouldn't (once the collapsed state save feature is added, anyways)?
I really miss having the post preview like Reddit and Stack Overflow have so I don't just have to blindly hope that my markdown is behaving as expected. I know it's a feature in progress, but I...
I really miss having the post preview like Reddit and Stack Overflow have so I don't just have to blindly hope that my markdown is behaving as expected.
I know it's a feature in progress, but I hope it gets finished sooner rather than later.
Its little things, but there are two RES features (that were later added to Reddit) that I really would like to see here. Highlighting to auto quote comments. So if I highlight part of a parent...
Its little things, but there are two RES features (that were later added to Reddit) that I really would like to see here.
Highlighting to auto quote comments. So if I highlight part of a parent comment and hit reply it automatically puts the highlighted portion in my comment as a quote. This is something that is very ingrained into my commenting habits and I do it here on Tildes probably 10 times a day just out of pure habit (to obviously no effect).
Having the ability to view images on the website by clicking a little icon that appears at the end of the image's respective link. Not sure if there is a proper term for this ability, it was one of the main reasons I used RES for years and I have always loved it.
I was the one that added that feature to reddit, so I'm sure I can do it again here (and I try using it out of habit all the time myself too). (and for @cfabbro, there shouldn't really be any...
Highlighting to auto quote comments. So if I highlight part of a parent comment and hit reply it automatically puts the highlighted portion in my comment as a quote
I was the one that added that feature to reddit, so I'm sure I can do it again here (and I try using it out of habit all the time myself too).
(and for @cfabbro, there shouldn't really be any performance/privacy/etc. issues with it, it's just an easier way of copying text the user can already see)
Well, thank you for doing so. I was really pleased to see it become an integrated function of the site. It's a great little feature that I never realised how much I utilized until it was gone. I'm...
I was the one that added that feature to reddit
Well, thank you for doing so. I was really pleased to see it become an integrated function of the site.
It's a great little feature that I never realised how much I utilized until it was gone.
I try using it out of habit all the time myself too
I'm am so glad I am not the only one, I feel really silly sometimes.
I love that feature with RES too, but I have no idea what sort of performance overhead or potential security/privacy issues would need to be considered before natively supporting that on Tildes,...
Highlighting to auto quote comments. So if I highlight part of a parent comment and hit reply it automatically puts the highlighted portion in my comment as a quote. This is something that is very ingrained into my commenting habits and I do it here on Tildes probably 10 times a day just out of pure habit (to obviously no effect).
I love that feature with RES too, but I have no idea what sort of performance overhead or potential security/privacy issues would need to be considered before natively supporting that on Tildes, so @Deimos would probably need to chime in on that.
Having the ability to view images on the website by clicking a little icon that appears at the end of the image's respective link. Not sure if there is a proper term for this ability, it was one of the main reasons I used RES for years and I have always loved it.
It's called embedding and I would be very much against including that feature here, at least for images since it gives memes and other image based fluff even more of an advantage over long form content than they already have just by virtue of their ease of consumption. There is a Gitlab issue about it where dcelasun and I were discussing potential alternatives/compromises to such a feature though: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/263
I could see how embedding would potentially allow for lower quality content. I think a really great compromise would be to only allow it in select groups (i.e. image embedding automatically...
....embedding and I would be very much against including that feature here, at least for images since it gives memes and other image based fluff even more of an advantage over long form content....
I could see how embedding would potentially allow for lower quality content. I think a really great compromise would be to only allow it in select groups (i.e. image embedding automatically allowed in ~creative and ~hobbies and video embedding allowed in ~tv and ~movies) and text posts over a specified character limit. Then it would cater to the content in each group and low quality content could naturally be filtered out.
Inline image viewing is a wonderful feature from a usability viewpoint, but I think it's very harmful to the content quality of Reddit. Content that is quicker to consume will inevitably get more...
Inline image viewing is a wonderful feature from a usability viewpoint, but I think it's very harmful to the content quality of Reddit. Content that is quicker to consume will inevitably get more votes than time-consuming content. An image is the quickest type of content to consume, and thus every subreddit that allows them are completely dominated by them. Inline image viewing makes them even quicker to consume, thus making the problem even worse.
That is why I suggested below that embedding only been allowed in groups that are already dominated by said content. Like ~tv and ~movies allowing video embedding. Another good edition would be to...
and thus every subreddit that allows them are completely dominated by them.
That is why I suggested below that embedding only been allowed in groups that are already dominated by said content. Like ~tv and ~movies allowing video embedding. Another good edition would be to allow it in text posts over a specified character limit. That way long posts with integrated pictures can be easily managed.
Doesn't need to, sure... but storing 30 days worth of recently viewed topics (or even just the last X number of them) is perfectly in line with the data retention policy and can be a nice feature...
Doesn't need to, sure... but storing 30 days worth of recently viewed topics (or even just the last X number of them) is perfectly in line with the data retention policy and can be a nice feature to have natively on the site IMO.
I'm genuinely curious, what sort of features do you think could potentially alienate people? Are you thinking in terms of too much complexity driving some people away or something else?
I'm genuinely curious, what sort of features do you think could potentially alienate people? Are you thinking in terms of too much complexity driving some people away or something else?
Why shouldn't people give more weight to the word of people who are verified as actually having relevant experience in the field being discussed? A hat wouldn't render them infallible but the odds...
Why shouldn't people give more weight to the word of people who are verified as actually having relevant experience in the field being discussed? A hat wouldn't render them infallible but the odds of them being much better informed than some random other user who has absolutely no experience in that field is significantly higher, IMO.
And I definitely agree on complexity being a potential issue as well, hence why I mentioned it. Although to a certain extent I also think that having features and site mechanics that require a certain learning curve to understand and utilize properly isn't necessarily a bad thing either, so long as they serve a valuable purpose.
I also don't want tildes to become an addictive thing that tries stimulates me in all sorts of different ways.
I don't think that is something you need to worry about... the focus here is generally on just making a quality site that people enjoy and get value out of using, not obsessing over "retention", "growth" and "engagement" metrics like other sites do.
It's not really that subjective, especially when there are appropriate standards in place. E.g. On /r/science, /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians the official flairs are for people who can prove...
Have you considered that deciding who gets a hat and who doesn't is subjective?
It's not really that subjective, especially when there are appropriate standards in place. E.g. On /r/science, /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians the official flairs are for people who can prove they have undergraduate degrees or higher in their particular field. On Lobste.rs, hats are for "anyone officially speaking for a project, organization, or company". Etc... And I imagine the standards for who can apply for "hats" (or whatever they get called here) would be similar for Tildes as well.
Also such a feature would require more person-hours towards verifying those that have hats.
Verification isn't that much work, but even so, that's exactly what volunteers are for. And to ensure personal bias doesn't enter in to it, standards for the verification process can also be adopted. /r/IAMA has an official verification process, as does /r/science, /r/askscience, /r/askhistorians and lobste.rs and it would be no different here.
Ultimately, a hats feature would introduce more complexity while, in my opinion, provide minimal benefit. ...
If a person feels their qualification is relevant to their comment, they can mention it in the comment itself.
I disagree about it providing minimal benefit. Having qualifications officially verified in some manner allows for users to be reasonably certain the person isn't just making shit up about their job or field of study. And they also likely wouldn't be always visible either and instead would need to be selectively enabled for particular comments, which they should only do when discussing a topic relevant to their field of work. That's how it works on lobste.rs and that is likely how it would work here, too. And just because you don't care about explanations by a History PhD doesn't mean nobody else does.
Ah, gotcha. Sorry, I misinterpreted what you meant. That's exactly what the "hats" would help facilitate though, but just in a manner that reduces duplication of effort. Rather than people needing...
I should restate that its not that I am disinterested in what a history PhD has to say, rather I don't care if they are flaired as such or just say so in their comment.
Ah, gotcha. Sorry, I misinterpreted what you meant.
"trust but verify."
That's exactly what the "hats" would help facilitate though, but just in a manner that reduces duplication of effort. Rather than people needing to independently verify someone's identity for themselves on every single comment where qualifications are mentioned, the "hats" allow for reasonable certainty (if the process of verification is sound) that people actually do have the qualifications and authority they claim to have.
Saving of comments/posts, like Reddit, but with search - or at least, a better interface. I save a lot of comments, either as a reference or because I'm on mobile and can't act on them, and I had...
Saving of comments/posts, like Reddit, but with search - or at least, a better interface. I save a lot of comments, either as a reference or because I'm on mobile and can't act on them, and I had to cobble together a downloader and curses viewer to deal with them.
A way to easily export one's data would be good, too.
That existed but was removed:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/26m/invited_by_information_for_users_is_no_longer_displayed
A set list for tags isn't planned AFAIK but tag autocompletion is already being worked on:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/merge_requests/15
"Suggestion" Gitlab issue for it already:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/286
Sorting by specific date/time ranges is also on Gitlab as "feature" (decided to be included):
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/237
I really like the hat system as well and have suggested it for here several times as well. Some people said they don't want something like that so that "each comment can be judged on its own merits" but I personally think that more weight should be given to people who actually work in a field related to the discussion so a mechanism for recognizing them is important for that.
Yeah even with the issues already in Gitlab, including them in your suggestion is still nice to help gauge user interest in those features. I know I was a bit terse in my reply but I didn't mean to imply you shouldn't have mentioned them by linking to the Gitlab issues, so sorry if it came off that way.
Yeah, that was me. And yeah, it would be nice having a
Mozilla employee"hat" for him (if he wanted it) that he could turn on/off at will, so other users could know they can safely take his comments as authoritative when he is talking about Mozilla.Yeah I went looking for details of their hats verification process before and there is nothing in the wiki or anywhere else that I can see. But as you said I doubt the process is particularly cumbersome or time consuming. I imagine it's probably similar to what the /r/IAMA mods do, a few of which are on Tildes already and we talk to regularly... so if/when "hats" is implemented on Tildes they can probably provide some good suggestions on establishing a similar process of verification here.
As to a public list of users with hats, I don't think that's a good idea for precisely the same reasons I didn't tag the Mozilla employee in that contentious topic about Mozilla... since it could lead to people pressuring others to respond when it is perhaps not in their best interest to. Also having a public list like that may discourage people from applying for hats in the first place for fear of that happening, too.
I do think being able to sort comments so people who have chosen to don their hats in relevant topics are given added sort order visibility would be a good idea though. E.g. an
adminhat that Deimos could enable for ~tildes.official threads and when he is speaking authoritatively about Tildes elsewhere, so his comments are given added visibility (moreso than just the OP bar).And even outside of features related to users making comments with their hats on, perhaps even allowing them to vouch for certain comments they agree with by signifying "hat user approved" or something similar could be interesting as well. Hats can certainly provide some interesting related mechanics to consider and play with, at any rate.
Voten has a feature I really enjoy, especially when submitting a link while on a phone. After you paste a link, a button named "Suggest" appears next to the title field. Click the button and the title of your link will be fetched and entered into the title field for you.
Hubski has some neat features as well. One is that any user can add a tag to a post someone else submitted. (This has potential for abuse though, so there should probably be some restrictions.)
The two features I find more important for my usage experience at the moment would be filtering and hiding posts and comments.
I like to hide posts as I read them (or dismiss them) instead of scrolling down. It's much more comfortable for me this way.
I also desperately need the ability to filter posts and comments based on keywords and domains, (in the future, users, too). It's the best way to tailor the site to my needs. Ideally, we should be able to filter out any word whatsoever we want on Tildes, there are many words that I don't want to read, yet don't necessarily have a corresponding tag, since they're just alternative ways of calling things that already have tags.
Rant incoming.
For example, on Reddit, every time a celebrity dies, the whole front page gets filled with posts about them. And the only way to escape it is by filtering the person's name. Understadably, lowest common denominator,
garbage,karmawhoring,normie-ass,bullshit, slightly-lower-quality subreddits like r/pics, r/funny, r/todayilearned, r/gifs, r/showerthoughts, r/wholesomememes, etc will get flooded with pictures and content related to the celebrity. And you'd think that by unsubscribing from those subreddits, you would be safe, right? Well, WRONG. Because they go and post about them on r/mapporn or r/vexillology of all places. So the only way to not see that stuff, is by filtering it with keywords.This is infuriating as hell.
I mean, what is this even? It's literally just a national flag... Only sliiiightly relevant because of the death of the actor. But completely undeserving of front page of the sub, which isn't about just boring computer designed images of national flags.
One word I'd love to filter out on Tildes is Kavanaugh. I don't know who that is, I don't care who that is, I just don't want to see their name every time I log in.
I think a filter feature for posts has been talked about in the past and I think it's going to be implemented eventually, but I don't know about comment filtering or the ability to hide posts/comments.
You can add filters (for tags, not keywords/domains yet) now. It's at the bottom of the sidebar, labeled "Filtered topic tags". Click on the edit button there, and add "kavanaugh" and "brett kavanaugh".
You're right. I went to check it and had a few tags filtered already. Don't know how I forgot about them. Thank you.
Hiding topics is already being worked on but AFAIK there is no plan to do that for comments:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/51
And the current filtering feature is just in the rudimentary stages of development and can only do tags, but I imagine over time will get much more feature complete and possibly allow keyword and domain filtering as well. I also don't know about comment filtering though, but just like comment hiding, I am not entirely sold on its usefulness, TBH.
Well, on Reddit, they're a great way of filtering out lots of memes and certain irksome words.
In here the community hasn't turned as repetitive yet, but I'm certain there will be certain discussions that will be periodically repeated over and over and over. And I'd like to filter that out.
Fair enough, I suppose. But unless you write out pretty specific regex for the comment filter (which would need to be supported) you're likely going to get a ton of false positives and miss out on a lot of discussion needlessly. And as for a mechanism for hiding comments manually, what would a separate feature like that accomplish that collapsing them wouldn't (once the collapsed state save feature is added, anyways)?
I really miss having the post preview like Reddit and Stack Overflow have so I don't just have to blindly hope that my markdown is behaving as expected.
I know it's a feature in progress, but I hope it gets finished sooner rather than later.
Thanks! The Chrome extension is working fine for me.
Its little things, but there are two RES features (that were later added to Reddit) that I really would like to see here.
Highlighting to auto quote comments. So if I highlight part of a parent comment and hit reply it automatically puts the highlighted portion in my comment as a quote. This is something that is very ingrained into my commenting habits and I do it here on Tildes probably 10 times a day just out of pure habit (to obviously no effect).
Having the ability to view images on the website by clicking a little icon that appears at the end of the image's respective link. Not sure if there is a proper term for this ability, it was one of the main reasons I used RES for years and I have always loved it.
I was the one that added that feature to reddit, so I'm sure I can do it again here (and I try using it out of habit all the time myself too).
(and for @cfabbro, there shouldn't really be any performance/privacy/etc. issues with it, it's just an easier way of copying text the user can already see)
Well, thank you for doing so. I was really pleased to see it become an integrated function of the site.
It's a great little feature that I never realised how much I utilized until it was gone.
I'm am so glad I am not the only one, I feel really silly sometimes.
I love that feature with RES too, but I have no idea what sort of performance overhead or potential security/privacy issues would need to be considered before natively supporting that on Tildes, so @Deimos would probably need to chime in on that.
It's called embedding and I would be very much against including that feature here, at least for images since it gives memes and other image based fluff even more of an advantage over long form content than they already have just by virtue of their ease of consumption. There is a Gitlab issue about it where dcelasun and I were discussing potential alternatives/compromises to such a feature though: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/263
I could see how embedding would potentially allow for lower quality content. I think a really great compromise would be to only allow it in select groups (i.e. image embedding automatically allowed in ~creative and ~hobbies and video embedding allowed in ~tv and ~movies) and text posts over a specified character limit. Then it would cater to the content in each group and low quality content could naturally be filtered out.
Inline image viewing is a wonderful feature from a usability viewpoint, but I think it's very harmful to the content quality of Reddit. Content that is quicker to consume will inevitably get more votes than time-consuming content. An image is the quickest type of content to consume, and thus every subreddit that allows them are completely dominated by them. Inline image viewing makes them even quicker to consume, thus making the problem even worse.
That is why I suggested below that embedding only been allowed in groups that are already dominated by said content. Like ~tv and ~movies allowing video embedding. Another good edition would be to allow it in text posts over a specified character limit. That way long posts with integrated pictures can be easily managed.
Recently viewed links like on Reddit.
that's data Tides definitely doesn't need to store. Your browser has a history feature for that purpose.
Doesn't need to, sure... but storing 30 days worth of recently viewed topics (or even just the last X number of them) is perfectly in line with the data retention policy and can be a nice feature to have natively on the site IMO.
Preview your post/comment so you can see what it will look like. Github springs to mind, it's nice to be able to check markdown before submitting.
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/25
Nice thanks for linking that.
I'm genuinely curious, what sort of features do you think could potentially alienate people? Are you thinking in terms of too much complexity driving some people away or something else?
Why shouldn't people give more weight to the word of people who are verified as actually having relevant experience in the field being discussed? A hat wouldn't render them infallible but the odds of them being much better informed than some random other user who has absolutely no experience in that field is significantly higher, IMO.
And I definitely agree on complexity being a potential issue as well, hence why I mentioned it. Although to a certain extent I also think that having features and site mechanics that require a certain learning curve to understand and utilize properly isn't necessarily a bad thing either, so long as they serve a valuable purpose.
I don't think that is something you need to worry about... the focus here is generally on just making a quality site that people enjoy and get value out of using, not obsessing over "retention", "growth" and "engagement" metrics like other sites do.
It's not really that subjective, especially when there are appropriate standards in place. E.g. On /r/science, /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians the official flairs are for people who can prove they have undergraduate degrees or higher in their particular field. On Lobste.rs, hats are for "anyone officially speaking for a project, organization, or company". Etc... And I imagine the standards for who can apply for "hats" (or whatever they get called here) would be similar for Tildes as well.
Verification isn't that much work, but even so, that's exactly what volunteers are for. And to ensure personal bias doesn't enter in to it, standards for the verification process can also be adopted. /r/IAMA has an official verification process, as does /r/science, /r/askscience, /r/askhistorians and lobste.rs and it would be no different here.
I disagree about it providing minimal benefit. Having qualifications officially verified in some manner allows for users to be reasonably certain the person isn't just making shit up about their job or field of study. And they also likely wouldn't be always visible either and instead would need to be selectively enabled for particular comments, which they should only do when discussing a topic relevant to their field of work. That's how it works on lobste.rs and that is likely how it would work here, too. And just because you don't care about explanations by a History PhD doesn't mean nobody else does.
Ah, gotcha. Sorry, I misinterpreted what you meant.
That's exactly what the "hats" would help facilitate though, but just in a manner that reduces duplication of effort. Rather than people needing to independently verify someone's identity for themselves on every single comment where qualifications are mentioned, the "hats" allow for reasonable certainty (if the process of verification is sound) that people actually do have the qualifications and authority they claim to have.
Saving of comments/posts, like Reddit, but with search - or at least, a better interface. I save a lot of comments, either as a reference or because I'm on mobile and can't act on them, and I had to cobble together a downloader and curses viewer to deal with them.
A way to easily export one's data would be good, too.
Work in progress:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/merge_requests/27
U2F based 2FA would be nice.