I'll be direct: there are a couple users whose views I'm quite opposed to I think, and seeing their names under topics was subconsciously repulsing. Now I can just click judging the title, without...
I'll be direct: there are a couple users whose views I'm quite opposed to I think, and seeing their names under topics was subconsciously repulsing. Now I can just click judging the title, without feeling that that user flexes his presence on the website. So this is a nice change for me in general, even if it needs some fine tuning.
I agree with your sentiment. In fact, I would like an option (in the settings) to do the same for comments ("Hide author of comments' name? yes/no"). @Deimos, do you think something like this...
I agree with your sentiment. In fact, I would like an option (in the settings) to do the same for comments ("Hide author of comments' name? yes/no").
@Deimos, do you think something like this could be done?
This is fine. Text topics aren't that frequent to make their OP names appear too often, and I don't back out from the opened topics because of the name. I only talked about how nice this little...
since text topics still display usernames and the comments page for link topics do as well
This is fine. Text topics aren't that frequent to make their OP names appear too often, and I don't back out from the opened topics because of the name. I only talked about how nice this little change was just for me. It can turn out to be changed again in the future if most users want to, and that won't be a big deal. Especially when the website grows and the OPs become more diverse.
I don't know if someone already suggested this but hidding name of the user yet make it visible with a button might be a good option to solve both issues, we people are lazy but we like to be able...
I don't know if someone already suggested this but hidding name of the user yet make it visible with a button might be a good option to solve both issues, we people are lazy but we like to be able to enquiry if feels necessary.
Thanks for writing up such detailed feedback. Some brief thoughts from me: I hated the change initially too. I didn't want to test it out particularly because it was something that I personally...
Thanks for writing up such detailed feedback. Some brief thoughts from me:
I hated the change initially too. I didn't want to test it out particularly because it was something that I personally wanted (in fact I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it), but because I think there are negative effects to prominently drawing attention to who posts everything, and I wanted to see what it felt like if we eliminated it. At this point, I think I mostly like it, or at worst I'm neutral about it. It's certainly not perfect, and I think we do need to get usernames back on some posts where it's more relevant (primarily in ~creative).
User-tagging is something that I'm very conflicted about. To be honest, I was pretty unhappy that Tildes Extended implemented it so quickly, because I think it has a lot of harmful effects when people use it in certain ways, and I didn't like knowing that those would be starting already on Tildes too. As some other people have mentioned in the comments here, I think user reputation is an important part of community sites, but the main problem I have with user-tagging is that it basically allows people to remember (or even create) reputations for other users that they wouldn't normally retain.
For example, let's say that I'm reading a thread about video games (to pick a somewhat less controversial example), and someone expresses a really negative opinion about a game I love. Maybe I get in an argument with them about it, maybe I don't, but with user-tagging it's extremely tempting to, as part of my unhappiness with them, put a tag on them like "terrible taste", "idiot", etc. Without the tag, unless I repeatedly get in arguments with that user, I probably won't remember them. But with the tag, I've now added a very strong prejudice to every single time I see one of their comments in the future, and every interaction I have with them.
People generally don't have very good memories—we can only remember much about a relatively small group of people. But user-tagging lets us (incompletely) remember our previous interactions with an infinite number of people. It lets us take passing disagreements and turn them into eternal grudges.
This also doesn't include the ability to create reputations by importing user tags, instead of having to input them all yourself. There are all sorts of these lists available that people import into RES, like ones that put a bright red tag on every user that posts in certain subreddits. Now you're forming grudges against people that you may never have even seen before. That's not a very healthy approach, and just furthers this sort of adversarial, clique-like feeling.
There are absolutely good uses for user tags, but there are also some really harmful ones, and I'm not sure how we can balance those (or if it's even possible).
I think we're sitting on a goldmine here. That little blank text box was a miniature drawing board for people to use for whatever they like, and just in this thread we've seen several people...
I think we're sitting on a goldmine here. That little blank text box was a miniature drawing board for people to use for whatever they like, and just in this thread we've seen several people describe how they use it for very different purposes. Some of that's got to have value as possible features or tools. People are going to find ways to do this stuff with or without help from the site, because that's what groups do. There is nothing we can do about it - unless we find a better way to implement the same sort of thing, a way that emphasizes the good, and fades out the bad somehow. Harness people's natural impulses and try to nudge them towards good behaviors just by the form of the implementation.
I'm not saying we need to crud up the place with a shit-ton of random, tiny little features or implement user tags. I share your worries about the mess that user tags create on reddit, and that was done without any code from reddit to help - users will do this to themselves. They will do it here, sure as day. I think we should do a survey and ask everyone what they use user tags for, and just take it from there. Let's see if we can reduce the need for those tags by providing their value through different mechanisms that aren't so prone to abuse. Those may turn into great features that other websites have never bothered catering to in the past.
It's worth the talk. I wouldn't have said so two days ago but just in this thread I've seen curious use cases. That silly user tag is a stub/stand in for lots of things and they don't all have to be bad. Even in your example, if our implementation 'forgets' the tags after a while, that solves some of the 'fite me' problems.
I could kiss you... and while I largely agree with Deimos' worries about the potential problems with user tagging I 100% agree with you as well. It's inevitable that people are going to implement...
There is nothing we can do about it - unless we find a better way to implement the same sort of thing
I could kiss you... and while I largely agree with Deimos' worries about the potential problems with user tagging I 100% agree with you as well. It's inevitable that people are going to implement user tagging whether it's native on the site or not, so it's far better to embrace it and try to "do it right" natively (or at least try to minimize the harm it can do) than ignore it, hope it never happens, and decry it when it inevitably does.
p.s. I think one of the way we may be able to "do it better" is limiting the available tags, like is already done with comment labels, but keep them entirely positive! E.g.
Have a "verified user" mechanic similar to lobsters "hats" that allows people to recognize users with expertise in an area, famous users or other developers.
Allow friending so people can recognize people they consider friends.
And for more "generic" user tags, have ones like thoughtful contributor, good submitter, taste-maker, etc. That help people recognize others whose contributions they appreciate.
I like the hats. Just the idea of Tildes users as colorful snakes with hats. The thing about a nice sparse interface is that something cute and colorful (an icon) is an eye grabber. Now you'd...
I like the hats. Just the idea of Tildes users as colorful snakes with hats. The thing about a nice sparse interface is that something cute and colorful (an icon) is an eye grabber. Now you'd normally tell me hat icons will piss you off - but what if you were the one that put them there? Other users don't choose hats. We give you a library of hats and let you toss them on whoever you like.
Advantage is you can choose what hats go in that library, and keep the worst ones at bay, if you're the website handing out the hats. I feel like there's a detective/noir element to be tapped here somehow. Coats are the next step. We are in meme territory now.
You can change someone's hat whenever you like, and give them a new one. Now this is where it gets interesting. If you have someone wearing some form of 'ass' hat, and you later come across them doing something good, this gives the forgiveness reflex the ability to kick in - you can change their hat back. This breaks the bad memory chain. You're free to forget again.
This gives us a shot to get that early warning system in for people who were raising eyebrows too. If a lot of Tildes users give the 'ass' hat to someone they can get a private notification about it. "People are starting to look at you funny. Perhaps it's your hat?" That sort of thing. This'd require some opt-in data collection - do you want to share the hats you hand out with tildes security (whatever that is) as a sort of trouble-report? Default to no. Don't even show the option to share that data until the user has some kind of trust level, and that's noise out of the 'reports'.
Oh yes... I like this. This is a hundred times more sexy than boring old user tags. Far less clicks than any normal user tags implementation and no typing, easier and more colorful. That might help seduce people away from doing it all with user tags. Mobile users are just tapping on colorful icons.
All the things people use tags for? We'll have a hat for that. Some of those things might be too different for hats or interfere with hats, and those can be other features. Also this hat thing solves that tastemaker problem, just give out creative hats.
We could even let different groups create their own 'local' hats - or maybe that's what the coats are for. You wear a 'hat' for the website, and a 'coat' for the group. Groups get to define their own coats and we can be more generous here, I think, less restrictive in the topic matter.
So we need a snake icon next to the username (generic). That's how you know you've never interacted with someone before - they are just a generic snake. Then you hang the hats and coats on that snake somehow.
There's your personal pronouns. The type of snake could do that job. Different icon for each acceptable personal pronoun, probably in a different position. I think of this like saturday newspaper comics in my head.
Oh, this makes showing expertise flags so easy. Just toss a feather in their cap. On second thoughts this icon is getting rather large now, so much info to convey at a single, right-brain tapping glance.
It's very creative and I like the thought you've put into it, but what would these look like? I see a pretty much gorgeous site right now in its simplicity (especially with the native Dracula...
It's very creative and I like the thought you've put into it, but what would these look like? I see a pretty much gorgeous site right now in its simplicity (especially with the native Dracula theme, or Bauke's, which I use). I wouldn't want to see too much extraneous color, let alone anything emoji-like.
I have no idea - I'm the last person you want doing artistic work, never had much talent for it at all. Perhaps some creative types can chime in. Let's polish this pebble of an idea and see what...
I have no idea - I'm the last person you want doing artistic work, never had much talent for it at all. Perhaps some creative types can chime in. Let's polish this pebble of an idea and see what happens.
I share the sentiments of not cluttering up the interface or making it garish. Almost wish we could do it in ascii somehow.
A minimalistic implementation is a hat and a coat as separate tiny icons of generic primary colors next to the user name. The color is the 'type' of hat or coat.
Technically, we can 'test' this with just a simple hat icon. I mean, all the rest of this is wonderful fun to talk about, but let's perhaps stop on something testable. We could just create some basic hats and see how it goes. See how many people use them, how they use them. If that part pans out we'll know we're on to something.
Remember books? The ones where the first letter of a chapter was some kind of large stylized monster? Fitting in like those artistic letters did into those books somehow.
I admin'd a small phpBB forum for years that used a horizontal traffic signal layout for tagging users, as odd as that seems. Usernames had three dots next to them, more the size of bullets in a...
I admin'd a small phpBB forum for years that used a horizontal traffic signal layout for tagging users, as odd as that seems. Usernames had three dots next to them, more the size of bullets in a list. You were able to privately tag a user as green, and if you later tagged them red, it'd go to yellow in the middle. Tag green again and green and yellow were lit. Very simple, unimposing design. I loved it, but I didn't have any contribution to creating it. Just a thought, as I haven't thought about that in years.
You too? Wasn't an Everquest guild or EQ server forum was it? This is doing it like a stoplight. It's different, and it's very focused on general reputation. It's also quite a bit simpler to...
You too? Wasn't an Everquest guild or EQ server forum was it?
This is doing it like a stoplight. It's different, and it's very focused on general reputation. It's also quite a bit simpler to implement. You get your forgiveness opportunity too. It's a decent paradigm. More importantly it's had real world testing. How well did it work out over there? What did people say about it when it was discussed, and did they occasionally post how awesome/useful it was? Is it still out there in the wild on phpBB and has anyone built up on that idea over the years?
I just realized I should probably take a look at what modules people have out there now for phpBB. That's a rack of ready made solutions to various problems with some field testing.
It wouldn't, unless we could do it in ascii. :) Reputation is a back-of-the-right-brain phenomena. Trying it to visual cues, rather than words, would likely make it work much better.
It wouldn't, unless we could do it in ascii. :)
Reputation is a back-of-the-right-brain phenomena. Trying it to visual cues, rather than words, would likely make it work much better.
One thing that always bothered me about that was that those [+143] boxes just butted into the interface and looked a mess. We've gotta find better ways than cramming things into the interface....
One thing that always bothered me about that was that those [+143] boxes just butted into the interface and looked a mess. We've gotta find better ways than cramming things into the interface. Tildes is gorgeously simple, let's not ever spoil that.
Theme and color can have a lot to do with it looking too busy, as can the font size of that information. When ooking at the line on topics on the list page that shows group and tags, it's busy...
Theme and color can have a lot to do with it looking too busy, as can the font size of that information. When ooking at the line on topics on the list page that shows group and tags, it's busy when there's a lot of tags, but it blends right in and isn't really very busy-looking. A tiny number next to a username is, to me on reddit at least, very useful. It means "I've liked a lot of what this person has to say."
Sleeping on it always helps. I'd just like to point out quick that only the small number of people who use tagging will seek those out. For the rest of the userbase, they've never been offered...
Sleeping on it always helps.
users will seek out a familiar tagging option
I'd just like to point out quick that only the small number of people who use tagging will seek those out. For the rest of the userbase, they've never been offered user tags like this by a website (unless someone out there has done this and if so we need to read about it). So there's an aspect of leveling the playing field at play here, since we know the majority of users will be using the system the site provides rather than a 3rd party extension.
Perhaps that extension can build on this idea, become a second layer of some kind someday in addition to the other things it does.
sniff You spoil me. That's a wall of text worthy of one of my angry rants. <3 I wonder though, perhaps we could simplify this and approach it from a more theoretical, less mechanical perspective....
sniff You spoil me. That's a wall of text worthy of one of my angry rants. <3
I wonder though, perhaps we could simplify this and approach it from a more theoretical, less mechanical perspective. The core of the issue here seems to be this: a mechanism of user interaction existed, and has been interfered with, and blocked. This wasn't a widely-used form of interaction (tagging with TEx) but it was there.
Also another form (subconscious association) was interfered with, just recognizing usernames on the page. That was rather the point, and it's had mixed effects but seems more on the good than bad side of things, except for certain communities where you've got a point, tastemakers might matter.
Ok, that's progress, we learned a few things. Successful experiment.
This sort of reputation matters a lot - Shirky's talk goes on about that at some length and he's right.
I did notice, however, that this is focused exclusively on tracking interactions between users over a long time period. You see someone you think posts baller content, you want to make sure you don't miss that content, and you actually give that person's new content preferential treatment (viewing it immediately when you otherwise wouldn't - on a vote-ranked site that's the medal of honor).
The flip side here is you can also tag users you've had negative interactions with, to ignore them. I want to stress strongly that whenever negative interactions come up, that's a strong chance for a negative feedback loop and those are risky business. Not to say don't look into it, or don't do it - just that you need to be much more careful thinking about it. If you set loose a negative feedback loop it's bad for the site down the road.
I will say this for myself - I hate hate hate seeing the user tags in the interface. I installed TEx and turned that off immediately because it was messing with the look of my nice clean tildes (and hitting it accidentally brought up that annoying box). I only use user tagging on reddit as part of moderating listentothis, to flag possible spammers, and only then because I have to do it to fight them, it's the best tool we've got. I see the value even if I don't personally make use of it when browsing myself.
I think it rather inevitable we'll have to add some form of user tags here someday. People are used to them from reddit and that's why it's a part of TEx. It's become an accepted norm even if it's one that most people don't use. We might go further here though, think index card/report card instead of one-liner, though the one-liner would probably be all you got in the UI as space and clean design is paramount. If we're going to do it, let's be able to leave some english notes and not cram it so much.
This also means friendships and grudges. Some folks might think that's a bad thing - but lest we forget, this is a website for human interactions. Friendship and grudges are inescapable because that's just what humans do, so forget about designing it out. One can only support and then try to harness this and steer it in a beneficial direction. ;)
So we're kinda-sorta talking about a personal trust system here, aren't we? It's kinda-sorta related to following users and being able to easily spot their content or find it through another page of some kind like reddit's friend feature does over there. I need to think some more about this, but I have a hunch we can come up with some kind of user to user interaction tracker for people to use to manage their own relationships on the site. I'd like that to be more nuanced than friends on reddit, or following on twitter.
I also smell a risk here. If someone posts good content, and gets lots of friends/whatever we call this, and people can find their stuff easily - doesn't that give them a major advantage in the vote rankings? We can't get into Digg's realm where someone posts and a posse of fifty of their on-site friends geek out voting it up (with their potentially weighted votes!) because that's going to allow them to control content just like Digg's powerusers. We're going to have to be very careful here.
We can't just stop the votes from counting (I hate that idea), we can't just de-weight them. This was a risk with TEx we weren't even aware was happening, and it's also your typical offsite-brigade problem. Share a link on twitter, everyone who sees it follows it and votes, this was a major source of home-grown astroturfing on reddit. We're in rocky territory here.
I haven't got a solution for you, but I hope this was a broader perspective. I'll think about this and see if I can stumble onto something that fits in this strange puzzle slot. If anyone has used other forums and sites in the past that have had user-to-user reputation tracking systems, I think we'd all appreciate it if you could tell us about them. Seeing how others have done it will help us do it better.
If the amount of "I have you tagged x, but I'm not sure why" posts I see on reddit is any indication, I'd say quite a few people are using RES tagging.
It's become an accepted norm even if it's one that most people don't use.
If the amount of "I have you tagged x, but I'm not sure why" posts I see on reddit is any indication, I'd say quite a few people are using RES tagging.
My point was merely that it's a minority interaction even on reddit. That's a fact just based on the majority of reddit's user base being mobile users, and RES not existing for mobile. The...
My point was merely that it's a minority interaction even on reddit. That's a fact just based on the majority of reddit's user base being mobile users, and RES not existing for mobile.
The question for us is if this is a valuable form of social interaction (I think so), and how to make it work better. By that I mean tagging users was just this neat simple idea that got added to a tool that had other primary goals. It wasn't the focus. That means it's probably nowhere near an optimal implementation, and there's room for improvement in the concept, so we should try to help it evolve a bit into something better and more useful.
Understood. I use them on reddit pretty heavily. I spent a lot of time in a sports sub (r/ClevelandCavs), and learned that there are a lot of people I wanted to avoid, and a lot of people who's...
Understood. I use them on reddit pretty heavily. I spent a lot of time in a sports sub (r/ClevelandCavs), and learned that there are a lot of people I wanted to avoid, and a lot of people who's submissions and comments I always found valuable, so they were tagged appropriately. I agreee that it's valuable, and arguably necessary for a site like reddit, or now Tildes, to have available in some form.
I've previously argued very strongly against dissociating users from the content they post, and I've previously expressed a dislike of hiding usernames on topics. However, reading your post here -...
However, reading your post here - which, theoretically, I should agree with - has shifted me to the other side.
Let's start here:
Of course, the inverse of this is also true. Instead of wanting to seek content out based on who posted it, you might actually want to avoid that content because, just as you know that you agree with the tastes of one user, you might find yourself constantly upset by another user's comments and topics.
So, if there is a user on the site who, while still acting within the rules established for the site, manages to consistently upset you with their content or the content they link, it's going to become very difficult to automatically avoid their topics if you cannot immediately see their username from the listing page.
Reading this made me realise that I actually believe it is wrong to judge the content by the person who posted it. I previously got caught up in ownership and pride and name recognition, but there's a more important principle: content should stand on its own merits. We should not prejudge a post based on who posted it.
And I say this as someone who has an intense dislike of the content posted here by one particular person; merely seeing that person's username on my screen is enough to make me cringe. Seeing that person's username is a very quick way for me to assume that a post will contain content I absolutely DO NOT WANT TO SEE.
However, the converse of your point here also applies:
So, if I tagged a user because they are always posting interesting articles to ~tech, but one day they post an article to ~enviro, I'm probably going to check it out, even if it doesn't stand out to me as something I'd normally be interested in.
What if that user I dislike posted something different to their normal stuff - something that I might like? If I saw their username, I would avoid that topic. However, I might miss something I want to see.
I should therefore not prejudge content based on who posts it.
User tags are an entirely different matter.
I used them on Reddit to keep track of my interactions with some users. I had a "Do not engage" tag I used for some people with whom I had had strongly negative interactions, and who I didn't want to waste my time on again in future. Or, I might use tags to track someone's preferred pronouns (I'm convinced, for example, that @cfabbro is not a "cool dude", but a "cool dudette").
I therefore see a need for user tags - but it's not related to flagging the content they post.
That's exactly how I saw it, plus one more thing - the reputation association shifts from the submitter to the site instead, or if it's a site like youtube, the channel (once we're showing channel...
I previously got caught up in ownership and pride and name recognition, but there's a more important principle: content should stand on its own merits.
That's exactly how I saw it, plus one more thing - the reputation association shifts from the submitter to the site instead, or if it's a site like youtube, the channel (once we're showing channel names on sites like that which is in the plans someday). Seems like it's kinda putting us in the business of helping people find places and channels and content creators they like online outside of Tildes, no? That's not a bad side effect, not bad at all. It should make it pretty damn clear if one of these sites or channels is pushing an agenda of some kind. People are more likely to notice.
The tastemaker thing vexes me, though. Coming from a music background, that's kinda how it's done when getting music recommendations. We can probably find a way to work that in somehow, without losing it. Perhaps if it's a separate system/thing of its own we can make it work way, way better than this hackneyed re-purposing of user labels, which would leave the labels free for other things like pronouns or whatever. We did talk about Tildes 'hats' at one point too.
Nope, I'm a "dude". :) I honestly really don't care which pronoun people use when referring to me though, especially online... but I also totally understand people who would prefer to be addressed...
Nope, I'm a "dude". :) I honestly really don't care which pronoun people use when referring to me though, especially online... but I also totally understand people who would prefer to be addressed with a particular pronoun, especially those that have had to fight for that right and have had another pronoun thrown in their face to hurt them, so respect people's wishes in that regard.
I am kind of out of the loop---trying to rather strictly limit my internet usage b/c procrastination issues---but also followed the discussion on this, and am trying to understand the main...
I am kind of out of the loop---trying to rather strictly limit my internet usage b/c procrastination issues---but also followed the discussion on this, and am trying to understand the main problem. AFAIU, it boils down to detaching link topics from OPs, at least at first sight---i.e. on the topic listings, front page or not. That's because we want to minimise prejudice, to make OPs less possessive, and to (kind of) make link topics belong more to all of us than the OP.
The absence of the poster's ID does disorient me a bit TBH, I could not really get used to it. But I don't really mind, as long as I can eventually learn who is the poster without much ado. Below is my use case.
As I said, procrastination is a trouble for me---I lose the track of time I spend on something when I'm enjoying it---and because of that any kind of filtering, software or meatware (i.e. me recognising some red flag, on which I'll elaborate in a bit), it really important for me. I subscribe to a small set of groups here and subs on reddit, and avoid highly-controversial stuff (like politics; as opposed to literary, scientific or tech stuff which is most often at most mildly controversial) stuff. Among the red flags for controversial is certain user names whose owners I know might pull me into long, unproductive debates (and I sometimes just fall for it). I just filter them out mentally in certain areas of the site (they are not evil, but I find I'd rather discuss only some topics with them, whereas some others will cause me trouble). So, to cut it short, I benefit from being able to check who'll receive a notification when I write a reply before I do so.
On the suggestions here and elsewhere to remove usernames from comments, I don't think it's useful, and it also is harmful. I really do care who I'm communicating with. For example, I run a recurring thread on ~books, and there, I know which users generally post things that I am interested in. When I have a rather crowded inbox, or browsing the thread itself, I know who to look for, and either read theirs first or save it for later. Similarly on other topics, I can recognise users that are apparently more informed on certain topics, and gravitate towards their comments. And apart from these use cases of mine that I can come up with, I think that comments are essentially opinions of persons and necessarily belong to someone.
To summarise, before trying to make a suggestion, I think that who posted a link and who posted a comment is important information, and I both don't want them removed and think that that's a bad idea. I want the poster's name there on the front page, but can deal with the status quo.
My suggestion---which I believe I made or read in a previous, similar thread---is that we allow users to opt out of this hiding links' OPs on the front page. If we won't, at least we keep it as it is, and don't remove authorship information further. Just like I can use a user script to make OPs re-appear on the front page (1), people can hide further information using user scripts or content blocking (like uBlock Origin) (2).
(1) With the caveat that I can't conveniently do it on mobile.
(2) I am a fairly technical user, IDK if a non-techie can really use either one of these options. And, as in (1), these options can easily create a gap between the UX on mobile and on desktop; thus I think these should be added as settings to the website.
I pretty firmly feel like the change was a bad one and I would rather have the information of who posted everything in every case. As far as I'm concerned, knowing who made a particular submission...
I pretty firmly feel like the change was a bad one and I would rather have the information of who posted everything in every case. As far as I'm concerned, knowing who made a particular submission and being able to make decisions based on that is one of the most basic and important ways to accomplish "Let(ting) users make their own decisions about what they want to see." The half-measure where some groups like ~music are shown this information seems like a bare minimum to me, but it would be better than what we've got right now. I just want to have all the cards when it comes to deciding what I'm about to look at, I'm so tired of the whole internet obscuring things from me. Not that Deimos has bad intentions with this, but it still makes me feel like I have a bit less control over my experience here, which is a shame. I don't mean to be too dramatic, I realize that it's all experimental :)
Oh and:
I will say that, for username @mentions, it's probably going to be necessary to just include the tag right beside the mentioned username (which Tildes Extended does not do).
Okay, so I am a bit late to the party, but I wanted to take some time to actually read what everyone else thought first and then have a think about all this before I responded ... especially since...
Okay, so I am a bit late to the party, but I wanted to take some time to actually read what everyone else thought first and then have a think about all this before I responded ... especially since my last comment about this change was featured so prominently in the original topic, and mentioned by @hungariantoast so much in the topic text here as well.
Even though I was on the fence about this change, I do have to admit that the change has actually grown on me quite a lot since it was made. However I absolutely still think, as I originally did and others have also mentioned as well, that the "taste-based groups" (~music especially) have and continue to really suffer from lack of visible usernames!!! And while I don't know what the best solution is, I can think of a few viable options (beyond the suggestions @hungariantoast has made: #4 in particular I think is a good one BTW):
Have usernames off on external link topics by default in all groups, but allow users to individually make their own decision and set which groups they are re-enabled for on their own front page. This would allow those of us ~music-heads to go back to the way things were there, and that being an option would also address the concerns of users like @Whom who feel this change runs contrary to Tildes overall goal of "[Letting] users make their own decisions about what they want to see".
Keep usernames disable on all external link topics, but add a set of particular topic tags that re-enables the usernames; Topic tags like suggestion, original content, self promotion, etc... where usernames are actually vital context to the submission. @Amarok and I discussed the possibilities of that here, on @teaearlgraycold's submission of the original idea. This option wouldn't address the problem with having no usernames in ~music, unless every single submission there was topic tagged with suggestion, but perhaps in concert with option 1) this would be a nice compromise between no usernames ever and always shown usernames on the front page.
Re-enable front page usernames for all but the groups where prominently visible usernames are potentially most problematic, e.g. ~news, and perhaps ~enviro, ~humanities and ~science as well.
And while I initially suggested 3) in the thread when the usernames were first disabled, I have actually come to think that might be the least appealing option. I now think 1) and 2), perhaps both at the same time, are a better and more nuanced option that could provide the best of both worlds.
Would it make sense if hovering over the domain name shows the username (where the username is not shown; I agree that in cases like 1. and 2. you mention it makes sense to show the username)?
Would it make sense if hovering over the domain name shows the username (where the username is not shown; I agree that in cases like 1. and 2. you mention it makes sense to show the username)?
Some touchscreen browsers do actually support a psuedo-hover of sorts where touching an element with a hover or focus event will actually activate them and have the hover message stay open /...
Some touchscreen browsers do actually support a psuedo-hover of sorts where touching an element with a hover or focus event will actually activate them and have the hover message stay open / element stay focused until you do something else. But even in browsers that support that, it either doesn't work when an onclick event is also tied to the same element (e.g. on hyperlinks) since the onclick activates instead, or requires shortpress+drag on the element so only the hover/focus event activates but not the onclick event.
Regardless, relying on hover is really not ideal since there doesn't appear to be any universal standards for handling hover across the various browsers for touchscreen devices, and accessibility is a huge problem with them even on desktop, so hover should generally be avoided at all costs, IMO.
IMO for almost any feature, regardless of it being critical or not, hover is generally a very poor mechanic to rely on for webapps from a UX standpoint. There is often no visual feedback to indicate the hover event is even there in the first place, so the only way to discover them is by accident. From an accessibility standpoint hover is also problematic since it relies on using the mouse and so keyboard navigation users (and screen readers) often don't have any consistently reliable means for accessing them (even with :focus and ARIA role=tooltip properly applied). And the fact that hover doesn't even work on mobile browsers (esp if there is an onclick event tied to the element as well) is just yet another reason not to use it.
But I do think there is some potential for a mechanism that "reveals" the username only when a particular action is taken... the problem is figuring out an action that works on desktop, mobile and (most importantly IMO) screen reader for accessibility's sake. However it should be noted that a "reveal" action already basically exists in this case: visiting the topic's comment section. :P
p.s. And the real issue at hand here, IMO, is the value of instantly available information (in this case the username of the submitter) that can be seen at a glance and immediately used by the user, which requiring any action to reveal basically negates.
The domain names used in place of usernames are not linked at the moment; will the title HTML attribute work (no need to employ sofisticated CSS, not to mention JS, solutions when <span...
The domain names used in place of usernames are not linked at the moment; will the title HTML attribute work (no need to employ sofisticated CSS, not to mention JS, solutions when <span title="...">...</span> works)?
A rose hover element by any other name would smell as sweet foul. ;) The issues with using title are basically the same as with :hover but even worse, since screen readers actually do rely on...
A rosehover element by any other name would smell as sweet foul. ;)
The issues with using title are basically the same as with :hover but even worse, since screen readers actually do rely on accurate title information to help their users determine what exactly an element is (particularly visual ones but not exclusively). And as bauke also pointed out, having information conflict like that is not usually a good idea in any case.
In most of those cases, the person they dislike is probably me. You're fine.
Exemplary
I was also a bit surprised to see that so many users have at least one person they apparently loathe entirely to the point they feel the need to actively disengage from their posts. It makes me feel a bit anxious to think that I could have pissed someone off
In most of those cases, the person they dislike is probably me. You're fine.
If I'm being honest, dub, you actually are one of the people I was referring to about wanting to avoid the topics they submit. I like you as a person, have enjoyed our conversations in various...
If I'm being honest, dub, you actually are one of the people I was referring to about wanting to avoid the topics they submit. I like you as a person, have enjoyed our conversations in various places around the site and we even seem to overall have similar political leanings. However, I really need to be in the mood for rage inducing ~news articles, especially about US politics (but not exclusively), and you seem to submit a disproportionate amount of those.
And while a simple solution to my problem (and to be clear it is "my problem" not yours or your fault) would be for me to filter out 'USA' and 'politics', I don't want to do that since I still want to keep informed, just not to the point I have a nervous breakdown... so it was honestly more effective for me to just mentally filter out any ~news submissions I saw from you (and a few others who post similar highly charged topics) when I know I can't handle reading them at that moment. However because of the username change I can no longer do that.
p.s. And even though it probably doesn't need to be said, I am not saying this to try and get you to stop posting what you do. Trying to keep people well informed is a good thing and that's what you're doing... it's commendable! It's just that I can only handle so much "being informed" in a given week about particular subjects before my brain melts. :P
I love this comment because it perfectly illustrates why thinking of this system as a 'fuck this guy' vs 'love this guy' mechanic is a mistake. It's bigger than that.
I love this comment because it perfectly illustrates why thinking of this system as a 'fuck this guy' vs 'love this guy' mechanic is a mistake. It's bigger than that.
This might be confirmation bias. I've just reviewed @dubteedub's posting history, and there seems to be a broad mix of content there, with USA politics being only one topic among many. It might be...
you seem to submit a disproportionate amount of those.
This might be confirmation bias. I've just reviewed @dubteedub's posting history, and there seems to be a broad mix of content there, with USA politics being only one topic among many. It might be that you notice the topics about USA politics more than the others, but @dubteedub submits a broad variety of content here (thank you!).
Re-read what I said. I never said dubteedub didn't submit valuable stuff. Hell, even on ~news, which is very specifically what I was referring to when saying what they submit often makes me angry,...
Re-read what I said. I never said dubteedub didn't submit valuable stuff. Hell, even on ~news, which is very specifically what I was referring to when saying what they submit often makes me angry, I called dub's efforts and submissions commendable! However even when dub doesn't post about US politics specifically on ~news it's still usually depressing/negative/"bad" news, which I can only handle so much of, and not much of it is positive/"good"/uplifting news.
p.s. Unlike yourself... since you actually post neutral or even outright uplifting stuff far more frequently by comparison, IMO. Both are valuable contributions... but I can only take so much of the purely negative, so being able to see who posted something was often helpful in that regard.
And I never said you never said dubteedub didn't submit valuable stuff! :) You seemed to think they "seem to submit a disproportionate amount of" "rage inducing ~news articles, especially about US...
I never said dubteedub didn't submit valuable stuff.
And I never said you never said dubteedub didn't submit valuable stuff! :)
You seemed to think they "seem to submit a disproportionate amount of" "rage inducing ~news articles, especially about US politics" - and I wanted to point out that, while they do indeed submit these articles, that's only a minority of the content they submit.
Fair enough. I certainly didn't want to give the impression that anger inducing stuff is all dubteedub submits, and in retrospect it may have come off that way, so your pointing out that they...
Fair enough. I certainly didn't want to give the impression that anger inducing stuff is all dubteedub submits, and in retrospect it may have come off that way, so your pointing out that they submit much more than just that is appreciated!
p.s. <3 you both, BTW. I honestly do seriously appreciate how much effort and work you both put in to finding and submitting stuff here. :)
That took me completely by surprise as well. The few people I've felt that way about here have all gone on to get themselves banned of their own volition posting hatespeech or by obvious trolling....
I was also a bit surprised to see that so many users have at least one person they apparently loathe entirely to the point they feel the need to actively disengage from their posts.
That took me completely by surprise as well. The few people I've felt that way about here have all gone on to get themselves banned of their own volition posting hatespeech or by obvious trolling. I'm seeing a need here for that user-to-user trust system, if only to minimize those negative interactions for the folks who don't want to deal with them. Let's be proactive about our mental health around here since nobody else will.
I haven't thought it up yet but I think I know the shape...
Data about how you feel about someone (be it numbers/labels/etc) should be private to your user account
You should be able to leave yourself notes about how/why you label someone a certain way
This mechanism should provide some follow-like and/or highlight-like features (like an * next to a username, or color change, or something subtle but noticeable) for users gaining your trust
It should also de-emphasize or hide the content from the users losing your trust, somewhat like an ignore function
A tiny blurb from those notes may or may not be visible next to the username - it does make things look a bit ugly, if we can find a way to do this without the actual label text I'd like that, to save that label text for other things in the future
This system must treat votes on your friends differently somehow to avoid triggering an upvote brigade every time they submit content - perhaps by putting them into some different kind of bucket from normal votes, so that it's more of a '155 of your friends like this' thing than a 155 upvotes thing
I am also now thinking just like the 'topic tag filters are in use on this page' that this may go well with a 'user filters are in use on this page' to both make people aware it's there and give them the opportunity to turn it off occasionally in the views of the content.
That's all I've got so far. There's also the tastemaker problem which seems separate. People were using user labels for all sorts of things, and each of those things deserves individual consideration to see if they should be tools of their own imo.
I think this is overkill. We can solve this problem with a plain, simple user-tagging system. If I don't want to interact with someone, I can populate their tag with "do not engage" (or something...
I think this is overkill. We can solve this problem with a plain, simple user-tagging system. If I don't want to interact with someone, I can populate their tag with "do not engage" (or something similar), and the job is done. I don't need their content suppressed. That "do not engage" (or whatever someone chooses) is sufficient.
My thinking was that if people are using tags for all sorts of things, those things must have value and perhaps that value is worth more than being crammed into a tiny text box. This is just pie...
My thinking was that if people are using tags for all sorts of things, those things must have value and perhaps that value is worth more than being crammed into a tiny text box. This is just pie in the sky stuff, exploring what's possible. Also, anything that follows from real life human behavior is worth exploring. People do make friends and avoid certain people. That happens regardless of features... but if there's a feature for it, laziness means people will use it (rather than force something else to do the job)... and if we code a feature people use out of laziness (the best kind) that means we have an opportunity to harness that behavior. Mostly that just means enhancing positive effects and fading out negative effects but sometimes it can be more.
You can relax, though - the last thing we want to see here is twitter followers and facebook friends. It's a discussion site, and community trumps individuals. Plus we'd never be so artless in the implementation.
Just like cfab uses this to avoid triggering content, you use it for 'do not engage'. That's good. Perhaps we should do a survey of what people use user tags for. Who knows, that might open up a giant pandora's box of ideas that nobody's taken a real serious look at before.
I'll be direct: there are a couple users whose views I'm quite opposed to I think, and seeing their names under topics was subconsciously repulsing. Now I can just click judging the title, without feeling that that user flexes his presence on the website. So this is a nice change for me in general, even if it needs some fine tuning.
I agree with your sentiment. In fact, I would like an option (in the settings) to do the same for comments ("Hide author of comments' name? yes/no").
@Deimos, do you think something like this could be done?
This is fine. Text topics aren't that frequent to make their OP names appear too often, and I don't back out from the opened topics because of the name. I only talked about how nice this little change was just for me. It can turn out to be changed again in the future if most users want to, and that won't be a big deal. Especially when the website grows and the OPs become more diverse.
I don't know if someone already suggested this but hidding name of the user yet make it visible with a button might be a good option to solve both issues, we people are lazy but we like to be able to enquiry if feels necessary.
Thanks for writing up such detailed feedback. Some brief thoughts from me:
I hated the change initially too. I didn't want to test it out particularly because it was something that I personally wanted (in fact I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it), but because I think there are negative effects to prominently drawing attention to who posts everything, and I wanted to see what it felt like if we eliminated it. At this point, I think I mostly like it, or at worst I'm neutral about it. It's certainly not perfect, and I think we do need to get usernames back on some posts where it's more relevant (primarily in ~creative).
User-tagging is something that I'm very conflicted about. To be honest, I was pretty unhappy that Tildes Extended implemented it so quickly, because I think it has a lot of harmful effects when people use it in certain ways, and I didn't like knowing that those would be starting already on Tildes too. As some other people have mentioned in the comments here, I think user reputation is an important part of community sites, but the main problem I have with user-tagging is that it basically allows people to remember (or even create) reputations for other users that they wouldn't normally retain.
For example, let's say that I'm reading a thread about video games (to pick a somewhat less controversial example), and someone expresses a really negative opinion about a game I love. Maybe I get in an argument with them about it, maybe I don't, but with user-tagging it's extremely tempting to, as part of my unhappiness with them, put a tag on them like "terrible taste", "idiot", etc. Without the tag, unless I repeatedly get in arguments with that user, I probably won't remember them. But with the tag, I've now added a very strong prejudice to every single time I see one of their comments in the future, and every interaction I have with them.
People generally don't have very good memories—we can only remember much about a relatively small group of people. But user-tagging lets us (incompletely) remember our previous interactions with an infinite number of people. It lets us take passing disagreements and turn them into eternal grudges.
This also doesn't include the ability to create reputations by importing user tags, instead of having to input them all yourself. There are all sorts of these lists available that people import into RES, like ones that put a bright red tag on every user that posts in certain subreddits. Now you're forming grudges against people that you may never have even seen before. That's not a very healthy approach, and just furthers this sort of adversarial, clique-like feeling.
There are absolutely good uses for user tags, but there are also some really harmful ones, and I'm not sure how we can balance those (or if it's even possible).
I think we're sitting on a goldmine here. That little blank text box was a miniature drawing board for people to use for whatever they like, and just in this thread we've seen several people describe how they use it for very different purposes. Some of that's got to have value as possible features or tools. People are going to find ways to do this stuff with or without help from the site, because that's what groups do. There is nothing we can do about it - unless we find a better way to implement the same sort of thing, a way that emphasizes the good, and fades out the bad somehow. Harness people's natural impulses and try to nudge them towards good behaviors just by the form of the implementation.
I'm not saying we need to crud up the place with a shit-ton of random, tiny little features or implement user tags. I share your worries about the mess that user tags create on reddit, and that was done without any code from reddit to help - users will do this to themselves. They will do it here, sure as day. I think we should do a survey and ask everyone what they use user tags for, and just take it from there. Let's see if we can reduce the need for those tags by providing their value through different mechanisms that aren't so prone to abuse. Those may turn into great features that other websites have never bothered catering to in the past.
It's worth the talk. I wouldn't have said so two days ago but just in this thread I've seen curious use cases. That silly user tag is a stub/stand in for lots of things and they don't all have to be bad. Even in your example, if our implementation 'forgets' the tags after a while, that solves some of the 'fite me' problems.
I could kiss you... and while I largely agree with Deimos' worries about the potential problems with user tagging I 100% agree with you as well. It's inevitable that people are going to implement user tagging whether it's native on the site or not, so it's far better to embrace it and try to "do it right" natively (or at least try to minimize the harm it can do) than ignore it, hope it never happens, and decry it when it inevitably does.
p.s. I think one of the way we may be able to "do it better" is limiting the available tags, like is already done with comment labels, but keep them entirely positive! E.g.
thoughtful contributor,good submitter,taste-maker, etc. That help people recognize others whose contributions they appreciate.I like the hats. Just the idea of Tildes users as colorful snakes with hats. The thing about a nice sparse interface is that something cute and colorful (an icon) is an eye grabber. Now you'd normally tell me hat icons will piss you off - but what if you were the one that put them there? Other users don't choose hats. We give you a library of hats and let you toss them on whoever you like.
Advantage is you can choose what hats go in that library, and keep the worst ones at bay, if you're the website handing out the hats. I feel like there's a detective/noir element to be tapped here somehow. Coats are the next step. We are in meme territory now.
You can change someone's hat whenever you like, and give them a new one. Now this is where it gets interesting. If you have someone wearing some form of 'ass' hat, and you later come across them doing something good, this gives the forgiveness reflex the ability to kick in - you can change their hat back. This breaks the bad memory chain. You're free to forget again.
This gives us a shot to get that early warning system in for people who were raising eyebrows too. If a lot of Tildes users give the 'ass' hat to someone they can get a private notification about it. "People are starting to look at you funny. Perhaps it's your hat?" That sort of thing. This'd require some opt-in data collection - do you want to share the hats you hand out with tildes security (whatever that is) as a sort of trouble-report? Default to no. Don't even show the option to share that data until the user has some kind of trust level, and that's noise out of the 'reports'.
Oh yes... I like this. This is a hundred times more sexy than boring old user tags. Far less clicks than any normal user tags implementation and no typing, easier and more colorful. That might help seduce people away from doing it all with user tags. Mobile users are just tapping on colorful icons.
All the things people use tags for? We'll have a hat for that. Some of those things might be too different for hats or interfere with hats, and those can be other features. Also this hat thing solves that tastemaker problem, just give out creative hats.
We could even let different groups create their own 'local' hats - or maybe that's what the coats are for. You wear a 'hat' for the website, and a 'coat' for the group. Groups get to define their own coats and we can be more generous here, I think, less restrictive in the topic matter.
So we need a snake icon next to the username (generic). That's how you know you've never interacted with someone before - they are just a generic snake. Then you hang the hats and coats on that snake somehow.
There's your personal pronouns. The type of snake could do that job. Different icon for each acceptable personal pronoun, probably in a different position. I think of this like saturday newspaper comics in my head.
Oh, this makes showing expertise flags so easy. Just toss a feather in their cap. On second thoughts this icon is getting rather large now, so much info to convey at a single, right-brain tapping glance.
It's very creative and I like the thought you've put into it, but what would these look like? I see a pretty much gorgeous site right now in its simplicity (especially with the native Dracula theme, or Bauke's, which I use). I wouldn't want to see too much extraneous color, let alone anything emoji-like.
I have no idea - I'm the last person you want doing artistic work, never had much talent for it at all. Perhaps some creative types can chime in. Let's polish this pebble of an idea and see what happens.
I share the sentiments of not cluttering up the interface or making it garish. Almost wish we could do it in ascii somehow.
A minimalistic implementation is a hat and a coat as separate tiny icons of generic primary colors next to the user name. The color is the 'type' of hat or coat.
Technically, we can 'test' this with just a simple hat icon. I mean, all the rest of this is wonderful fun to talk about, but let's perhaps stop on something testable. We could just create some basic hats and see how it goes. See how many people use them, how they use them. If that part pans out we'll know we're on to something.
This is kinda what I see in my head when talking about this stuff. Something like that but next to the username and somehow not making a mess out of the nice page formatting we have now.
Remember books? The ones where the first letter of a chapter was some kind of large stylized monster? Fitting in like those artistic letters did into those books somehow.
I admin'd a small phpBB forum for years that used a horizontal traffic signal layout for tagging users, as odd as that seems. Usernames had three dots next to them, more the size of bullets in a list. You were able to privately tag a user as green, and if you later tagged them red, it'd go to yellow in the middle. Tag green again and green and yellow were lit. Very simple, unimposing design. I loved it, but I didn't have any contribution to creating it. Just a thought, as I haven't thought about that in years.
You too? Wasn't an Everquest guild or EQ server forum was it?
This is doing it like a stoplight. It's different, and it's very focused on general reputation. It's also quite a bit simpler to implement. You get your forgiveness opportunity too. It's a decent paradigm. More importantly it's had real world testing. How well did it work out over there? What did people say about it when it was discussed, and did they occasionally post how awesome/useful it was? Is it still out there in the wild on phpBB and has anyone built up on that idea over the years?
I just realized I should probably take a look at what modules people have out there now for phpBB. That's a rack of ready made solutions to various problems with some field testing.
How would these hats fit in with Deimos' "use words, not icons" design philosophy?
It wouldn't, unless we could do it in ascii. :)
Reputation is a back-of-the-right-brain phenomena. Trying it to visual cues, rather than words, would likely make it work much better.
this is so damn cute and powerful. Such a fun idea!
One thing that always bothered me about that was that those [+143] boxes just butted into the interface and looked a mess. We've gotta find better ways than cramming things into the interface. Tildes is gorgeously simple, let's not ever spoil that.
Theme and color can have a lot to do with it looking too busy, as can the font size of that information. When ooking at the line on topics on the list page that shows group and tags, it's busy when there's a lot of tags, but it blends right in and isn't really very busy-looking. A tiny number next to a username is, to me on reddit at least, very useful. It means "I've liked a lot of what this person has to say."
Sleeping on it always helps.
I'd just like to point out quick that only the small number of people who use tagging will seek those out. For the rest of the userbase, they've never been offered user tags like this by a website (unless someone out there has done this and if so we need to read about it). So there's an aspect of leveling the playing field at play here, since we know the majority of users will be using the system the site provides rather than a 3rd party extension.
Perhaps that extension can build on this idea, become a second layer of some kind someday in addition to the other things it does.
sniff You spoil me. That's a wall of text worthy of one of my angry rants. <3
I wonder though, perhaps we could simplify this and approach it from a more theoretical, less mechanical perspective. The core of the issue here seems to be this: a mechanism of user interaction existed, and has been interfered with, and blocked. This wasn't a widely-used form of interaction (tagging with TEx) but it was there.
Also another form (subconscious association) was interfered with, just recognizing usernames on the page. That was rather the point, and it's had mixed effects but seems more on the good than bad side of things, except for certain communities where you've got a point, tastemakers might matter.
Ok, that's progress, we learned a few things. Successful experiment.
This sort of reputation matters a lot - Shirky's talk goes on about that at some length and he's right.
I did notice, however, that this is focused exclusively on tracking interactions between users over a long time period. You see someone you think posts baller content, you want to make sure you don't miss that content, and you actually give that person's new content preferential treatment (viewing it immediately when you otherwise wouldn't - on a vote-ranked site that's the medal of honor).
The flip side here is you can also tag users you've had negative interactions with, to ignore them. I want to stress strongly that whenever negative interactions come up, that's a strong chance for a negative feedback loop and those are risky business. Not to say don't look into it, or don't do it - just that you need to be much more careful thinking about it. If you set loose a negative feedback loop it's bad for the site down the road.
I will say this for myself - I hate hate hate seeing the user tags in the interface. I installed TEx and turned that off immediately because it was messing with the look of my nice clean tildes (and hitting it accidentally brought up that annoying box). I only use user tagging on reddit as part of moderating listentothis, to flag possible spammers, and only then because I have to do it to fight them, it's the best tool we've got. I see the value even if I don't personally make use of it when browsing myself.
I think it rather inevitable we'll have to add some form of user tags here someday. People are used to them from reddit and that's why it's a part of TEx. It's become an accepted norm even if it's one that most people don't use. We might go further here though, think index card/report card instead of one-liner, though the one-liner would probably be all you got in the UI as space and clean design is paramount. If we're going to do it, let's be able to leave some english notes and not cram it so much.
This also means friendships and grudges. Some folks might think that's a bad thing - but lest we forget, this is a website for human interactions. Friendship and grudges are inescapable because that's just what humans do, so forget about designing it out. One can only support and then try to harness this and steer it in a beneficial direction. ;)
So we're kinda-sorta talking about a personal trust system here, aren't we? It's kinda-sorta related to following users and being able to easily spot their content or find it through another page of some kind like reddit's friend feature does over there. I need to think some more about this, but I have a hunch we can come up with some kind of user to user interaction tracker for people to use to manage their own relationships on the site. I'd like that to be more nuanced than friends on reddit, or following on twitter.
I also smell a risk here. If someone posts good content, and gets lots of friends/whatever we call this, and people can find their stuff easily - doesn't that give them a major advantage in the vote rankings? We can't get into Digg's realm where someone posts and a posse of fifty of their on-site friends geek out voting it up (with their potentially weighted votes!) because that's going to allow them to control content just like Digg's powerusers. We're going to have to be very careful here.
We can't just stop the votes from counting (I hate that idea), we can't just de-weight them. This was a risk with TEx we weren't even aware was happening, and it's also your typical offsite-brigade problem. Share a link on twitter, everyone who sees it follows it and votes, this was a major source of home-grown astroturfing on reddit. We're in rocky territory here.
I haven't got a solution for you, but I hope this was a broader perspective. I'll think about this and see if I can stumble onto something that fits in this strange puzzle slot. If anyone has used other forums and sites in the past that have had user-to-user reputation tracking systems, I think we'd all appreciate it if you could tell us about them. Seeing how others have done it will help us do it better.
If the amount of "I have you tagged x, but I'm not sure why" posts I see on reddit is any indication, I'd say quite a few people are using RES tagging.
My point was merely that it's a minority interaction even on reddit. That's a fact just based on the majority of reddit's user base being mobile users, and RES not existing for mobile.
The question for us is if this is a valuable form of social interaction (I think so), and how to make it work better. By that I mean tagging users was just this neat simple idea that got added to a tool that had other primary goals. It wasn't the focus. That means it's probably nowhere near an optimal implementation, and there's room for improvement in the concept, so we should try to help it evolve a bit into something better and more useful.
Understood. I use them on reddit pretty heavily. I spent a lot of time in a sports sub (r/ClevelandCavs), and learned that there are a lot of people I wanted to avoid, and a lot of people who's submissions and comments I always found valuable, so they were tagged appropriately. I agreee that it's valuable, and arguably necessary for a site like reddit, or now Tildes, to have available in some form.
I've previously argued very strongly against dissociating users from the content they post, and I've previously expressed a dislike of hiding usernames on topics.
However, reading your post here - which, theoretically, I should agree with - has shifted me to the other side.
Let's start here:
Reading this made me realise that I actually believe it is wrong to judge the content by the person who posted it. I previously got caught up in ownership and pride and name recognition, but there's a more important principle: content should stand on its own merits. We should not prejudge a post based on who posted it.
And I say this as someone who has an intense dislike of the content posted here by one particular person; merely seeing that person's username on my screen is enough to make me cringe. Seeing that person's username is a very quick way for me to assume that a post will contain content I absolutely DO NOT WANT TO SEE.
However, the converse of your point here also applies:
What if that user I dislike posted something different to their normal stuff - something that I might like? If I saw their username, I would avoid that topic. However, I might miss something I want to see.
I should therefore not prejudge content based on who posts it.
User tags are an entirely different matter.
I used them on Reddit to keep track of my interactions with some users. I had a "Do not engage" tag I used for some people with whom I had had strongly negative interactions, and who I didn't want to waste my time on again in future. Or, I might use tags to track someone's preferred pronouns (I'm convinced, for example, that @cfabbro is not a "cool dude", but a "cool dudette").
I therefore see a need for user tags - but it's not related to flagging the content they post.
That's exactly how I saw it, plus one more thing - the reputation association shifts from the submitter to the site instead, or if it's a site like youtube, the channel (once we're showing channel names on sites like that which is in the plans someday). Seems like it's kinda putting us in the business of helping people find places and channels and content creators they like online outside of Tildes, no? That's not a bad side effect, not bad at all. It should make it pretty damn clear if one of these sites or channels is pushing an agenda of some kind. People are more likely to notice.
The tastemaker thing vexes me, though. Coming from a music background, that's kinda how it's done when getting music recommendations. We can probably find a way to work that in somehow, without losing it. Perhaps if it's a separate system/thing of its own we can make it work way, way better than this hackneyed re-purposing of user labels, which would leave the labels free for other things like pronouns or whatever. We did talk about Tildes 'hats' at one point too.
Nope, I'm a "dude". :) I honestly really don't care which pronoun people use when referring to me though, especially online... but I also totally understand people who would prefer to be addressed with a particular pronoun, especially those that have had to fight for that right and have had another pronoun thrown in their face to hurt them, so respect people's wishes in that regard.
I am kind of out of the loop---trying to rather strictly limit my internet usage b/c procrastination issues---but also followed the discussion on this, and am trying to understand the main problem. AFAIU, it boils down to detaching link topics from OPs, at least at first sight---i.e. on the topic listings, front page or not. That's because we want to minimise prejudice, to make OPs less possessive, and to (kind of) make link topics belong more to all of us than the OP.
The absence of the poster's ID does disorient me a bit TBH, I could not really get used to it. But I don't really mind, as long as I can eventually learn who is the poster without much ado. Below is my use case.
As I said, procrastination is a trouble for me---I lose the track of time I spend on something when I'm enjoying it---and because of that any kind of filtering, software or meatware (i.e. me recognising some red flag, on which I'll elaborate in a bit), it really important for me. I subscribe to a small set of groups here and subs on reddit, and avoid highly-controversial stuff (like politics; as opposed to literary, scientific or tech stuff which is most often at most mildly controversial) stuff. Among the red flags for controversial is certain user names whose owners I know might pull me into long, unproductive debates (and I sometimes just fall for it). I just filter them out mentally in certain areas of the site (they are not evil, but I find I'd rather discuss only some topics with them, whereas some others will cause me trouble). So, to cut it short, I benefit from being able to check who'll receive a notification when I write a reply before I do so.
On the suggestions here and elsewhere to remove usernames from comments, I don't think it's useful, and it also is harmful. I really do care who I'm communicating with. For example, I run a recurring thread on ~books, and there, I know which users generally post things that I am interested in. When I have a rather crowded inbox, or browsing the thread itself, I know who to look for, and either read theirs first or save it for later. Similarly on other topics, I can recognise users that are apparently more informed on certain topics, and gravitate towards their comments. And apart from these use cases of mine that I can come up with, I think that comments are essentially opinions of persons and necessarily belong to someone.
To summarise, before trying to make a suggestion, I think that who posted a link and who posted a comment is important information, and I both don't want them removed and think that that's a bad idea. I want the poster's name there on the front page, but can deal with the status quo.
My suggestion---which I believe I made or read in a previous, similar thread---is that we allow users to opt out of this hiding links' OPs on the front page. If we won't, at least we keep it as it is, and don't remove authorship information further. Just like I can use a user script to make OPs re-appear on the front page (1), people can hide further information using user scripts or content blocking (like uBlock Origin) (2).
(1) With the caveat that I can't conveniently do it on mobile.
(2) I am a fairly technical user, IDK if a non-techie can really use either one of these options. And, as in (1), these options can easily create a gap between the UX on mobile and on desktop; thus I think these should be added as settings to the website.
I pretty firmly feel like the change was a bad one and I would rather have the information of who posted everything in every case. As far as I'm concerned, knowing who made a particular submission and being able to make decisions based on that is one of the most basic and important ways to accomplish "Let(ting) users make their own decisions about what they want to see." The half-measure where some groups like ~music are shown this information seems like a bare minimum to me, but it would be better than what we've got right now. I just want to have all the cards when it comes to deciding what I'm about to look at, I'm so tired of the whole internet obscuring things from me. Not that Deimos has bad intentions with this, but it still makes me feel like I have a bit less control over my experience here, which is a shame. I don't mean to be too dramatic, I realize that it's all experimental :)
Oh and:
It does do this, if I'm not misunderstanding you.
That screenshot is from Firefox.
If you click that + next to @mentions, you should be able to add a tag.
Okay, so I am a bit late to the party, but I wanted to take some time to actually read what everyone else thought first and then have a think about all this before I responded ... especially since my last comment about this change was featured so prominently in the original topic, and mentioned by @hungariantoast so much in the topic text here as well.
Even though I was on the fence about this change, I do have to admit that the change has actually grown on me quite a lot since it was made. However I absolutely still think, as I originally did and others have also mentioned as well, that the "taste-based groups" (~music especially) have and continue to really suffer from lack of visible usernames!!! And while I don't know what the best solution is, I can think of a few viable options (beyond the suggestions @hungariantoast has made: #4 in particular I think is a good one BTW):
Have usernames off on external link topics by default in all groups, but allow users to individually make their own decision and set which groups they are re-enabled for on their own front page. This would allow those of us ~music-heads to go back to the way things were there, and that being an option would also address the concerns of users like @Whom who feel this change runs contrary to Tildes overall goal of "[Letting] users make their own decisions about what they want to see".
Keep usernames disable on all external link topics, but add a set of particular topic tags that re-enables the usernames; Topic tags like
suggestion,original content,self promotion, etc... where usernames are actually vital context to the submission. @Amarok and I discussed the possibilities of that here, on @teaearlgraycold's submission of the original idea. This option wouldn't address the problem with having no usernames in ~music, unless every single submission there was topic tagged withsuggestion, but perhaps in concert with option 1) this would be a nice compromise between no usernames ever and always shown usernames on the front page.Re-enable front page usernames for all but the groups where prominently visible usernames are potentially most problematic, e.g. ~news, and perhaps ~enviro, ~humanities and ~science as well.
And while I initially suggested 3) in the thread when the usernames were first disabled, I have actually come to think that might be the least appealing option. I now think 1) and 2), perhaps both at the same time, are a better and more nuanced option that could provide the best of both worlds.
Would it make sense if hovering over the domain name shows the username (where the username is not shown; I agree that in cases like 1. and 2. you mention it makes sense to show the username)?
Bingo. One can't really 'hover' on a touchscreen. :P
Some touchscreen browsers do actually support a psuedo-hover of sorts where touching an element with a hover or focus event will actually activate them and have the hover message stay open / element stay focused until you do something else. But even in browsers that support that, it either doesn't work when an onclick event is also tied to the same element (e.g. on hyperlinks) since the onclick activates instead, or requires shortpress+drag on the element so only the hover/focus event activates but not the onclick event.
Regardless, relying on hover is really not ideal since there doesn't appear to be any universal standards for handling hover across the various browsers for touchscreen devices, and accessibility is a huge problem with them even on desktop, so hover should generally be avoided at all costs, IMO.
I feel the same. I think at best it's for informational things, rather than interactive things.
I am not a fan of hover, and have previously talked about why before:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/a2e/experimenting_with_some_changes_to_information_thats_displayed_on_topics_and_some_other_tweaks#comment-2ip0
But I do think there is some potential for a mechanism that "reveals" the username only when a particular action is taken... the problem is figuring out an action that works on desktop, mobile and (most importantly IMO) screen reader for accessibility's sake. However it should be noted that a "reveal" action already basically exists in this case: visiting the topic's comment section. :P
p.s. And the real issue at hand here, IMO, is the value of instantly available information (in this case the username of the submitter) that can be seen at a glance and immediately used by the user, which requiring any action to reveal basically negates.
The domain names used in place of usernames are not linked at the moment; will the
titleHTML attribute work (no need to employ sofisticated CSS, not to mention JS, solutions when<span title="...">...</span>works)?A
rosehover element by any other name would smell assweetfoul. ;)The issues with using
titleare basically the same as with:hoverbut even worse, since screen readers actually do rely on accuratetitleinformation to help their users determine what exactly an element is (particularly visual ones but not exclusively). And as bauke also pointed out, having information conflict like that is not usually a good idea in any case.p.s. Domains are most likely going to be linked eventually: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/286
In most of those cases, the person they dislike is probably me. You're fine.
You've improved immensely my friend. No worries at all. In fact I have a feature idea you inspired. ;)
If I'm being honest, dub, you actually are one of the people I was referring to about wanting to avoid the topics they submit. I like you as a person, have enjoyed our conversations in various places around the site and we even seem to overall have similar political leanings. However, I really need to be in the mood for rage inducing ~news articles, especially about US politics (but not exclusively), and you seem to submit a disproportionate amount of those.
And while a simple solution to my problem (and to be clear it is "my problem" not yours or your fault) would be for me to filter out 'USA' and 'politics', I don't want to do that since I still want to keep informed, just not to the point I have a nervous breakdown... so it was honestly more effective for me to just mentally filter out any ~news submissions I saw from you (and a few others who post similar highly charged topics) when I know I can't handle reading them at that moment. However because of the username change I can no longer do that.
p.s. And even though it probably doesn't need to be said, I am not saying this to try and get you to stop posting what you do. Trying to keep people well informed is a good thing and that's what you're doing... it's commendable! It's just that I can only handle so much "being informed" in a given week about particular subjects before my brain melts. :P
I love this comment because it perfectly illustrates why thinking of this system as a 'fuck this guy' vs 'love this guy' mechanic is a mistake. It's bigger than that.
This might be confirmation bias. I've just reviewed @dubteedub's posting history, and there seems to be a broad mix of content there, with USA politics being only one topic among many. It might be that you notice the topics about USA politics more than the others, but @dubteedub submits a broad variety of content here (thank you!).
Re-read what I said. I never said dubteedub didn't submit valuable stuff. Hell, even on ~news, which is very specifically what I was referring to when saying what they submit often makes me angry, I called dub's efforts and submissions commendable! However even when dub doesn't post about US politics specifically on ~news it's still usually depressing/negative/"bad" news, which I can only handle so much of, and not much of it is positive/"good"/uplifting news.
p.s. Unlike yourself... since you actually post neutral or even outright uplifting stuff far more frequently by comparison, IMO. Both are valuable contributions... but I can only take so much of the purely negative, so being able to see who posted something was often helpful in that regard.
And I never said you never said dubteedub didn't submit valuable stuff! :)
You seemed to think they "seem to submit a disproportionate amount of" "rage inducing ~news articles, especially about US politics" - and I wanted to point out that, while they do indeed submit these articles, that's only a minority of the content they submit.
Fair enough. I certainly didn't want to give the impression that anger inducing stuff is all dubteedub submits, and in retrospect it may have come off that way, so your pointing out that they submit much more than just that is appreciated!
p.s. <3 you both, BTW. I honestly do seriously appreciate how much effort and work you both put in to finding and submitting stuff here. :)
Yeah, no problem, and sorry for bumming you out a bit... it's really, really nothing personal and I only ever used do it in ~news. :)
That took me completely by surprise as well. The few people I've felt that way about here have all gone on to get themselves banned of their own volition posting hatespeech or by obvious trolling. I'm seeing a need here for that user-to-user trust system, if only to minimize those negative interactions for the folks who don't want to deal with them. Let's be proactive about our mental health around here since nobody else will.
I haven't thought it up yet but I think I know the shape...
That's all I've got so far. There's also the tastemaker problem which seems separate. People were using user labels for all sorts of things, and each of those things deserves individual consideration to see if they should be tools of their own imo.
I think this is overkill. We can solve this problem with a plain, simple user-tagging system. If I don't want to interact with someone, I can populate their tag with "do not engage" (or something similar), and the job is done. I don't need their content suppressed. That "do not engage" (or whatever someone chooses) is sufficient.
Can we please not have "friends" here? Please?
My thinking was that if people are using tags for all sorts of things, those things must have value and perhaps that value is worth more than being crammed into a tiny text box. This is just pie in the sky stuff, exploring what's possible. Also, anything that follows from real life human behavior is worth exploring. People do make friends and avoid certain people. That happens regardless of features... but if there's a feature for it, laziness means people will use it (rather than force something else to do the job)... and if we code a feature people use out of laziness (the best kind) that means we have an opportunity to harness that behavior. Mostly that just means enhancing positive effects and fading out negative effects but sometimes it can be more.
You can relax, though - the last thing we want to see here is twitter followers and facebook friends. It's a discussion site, and community trumps individuals. Plus we'd never be so artless in the implementation.
Just like cfab uses this to avoid triggering content, you use it for 'do not engage'. That's good. Perhaps we should do a survey of what people use user tags for. Who knows, that might open up a giant pandora's box of ideas that nobody's taken a real serious look at before.