Do you think the definition of an equal-sided debate requires equal representation? Put it this way, you can have lots of people talking to a single flat-earther in a very respectful and...
Do you think the definition of an equal-sided debate requires equal representation?
Put it this way, you can have lots of people talking to a single flat-earther in a very respectful and equal-sided debate about whether the earth is flat. Can't you?
Exactly. An equal sided debate on climate change is 997 scientists running around because the world is ending and 3 "scientists" just come from cashing checks from BP and ExxonMobil saying...
Exactly. An equal sided debate on climate change is 997 scientists running around because the world is ending and 3 "scientists" just come from cashing checks from BP and ExxonMobil saying everything is fine.
I think this should be modified a bit. What this site is missing is ideologues, and this has been my main issue with the site when it comes to political discussion. When everyone comes from a...
The only "side" that isn't politically represented on this forum are the extremists.
I think this should be modified a bit. What this site is missing is ideologues, and this has been my main issue with the site when it comes to political discussion. When everyone comes from a similar idealogical background (mainstream democrat in my opinion) many of the conversations end up being stale, unoriginal, and predictable. There is no back and forth. There is no discussion that ends up making you think or challenge assumptions. Everyone just generally agrees. There is no leftist on here, no paleocon, no anarcho-capitalist, no marxist, no rationalist, etc. It's all just the same.
What everyone else seems to be arguing is whether good faith arguments or dialogue can exist with ideologues. However, I have to say that people would still find it toxic if everyone ends up conversing in bath faith on even the most practical and logical of points. If you find good people or have good moderation that removes bad faith arguments, then I think you might get a more interesting discourse than what is current going on here.
EDIT: I do have to admit that I was being a bit hyperbolic about the actual numbers of people of various political backgrounds. However, my point was more about the general prevalence of a certain world view over others.
Hey now, I'm those things! Though I will say it does seem like we're few and far between...there's a lot of reasons for this but two that I think are the most pressing and can be addressed without...
no leftist
no marxist
Hey now, I'm those things! Though I will say it does seem like we're few and far between...there's a lot of reasons for this but two that I think are the most pressing and can be addressed without radically changing some aspect of the site's culture:
First, invites. This part is important but obvious so let's move on.
The other thing that needs to happen to foster niche views and perspectives is the group hierarchy and expansion of groups in general. If I'm a leftist on a majority-liberal website, commenting on general (either explicitly political or with the purpose of making a political point about anything) topics with the rest of the website, every comment is an outreach program. Every comment requires explanation going back to the starting point of my beliefs, it can never simply be a comment only on the topic as might be possible when you have much more common ground with most of the userbase. That's not a fault of Tildes, that's the nature of talking to people whose beliefs share little DNA with your own, and to some degree it needs to happen. But people don't want to use a website just for that...sometimes you've gotta be on the backfoot to help people understand and engage with your views (and the other way around), but that's never going to be the most pleasant experience in the world nor the most stimulating one. It's just a much more taxing thing to do, so I think even the leftists who are here tend to be a little more quiet than you'd think.
That, and there's the stuff I think I've spammed all over the place about how deep, detailed discussion usually happens within communities, not in general spaces. No need to really get into this since I think it's mostly self-evident if you've been in this position, but just think...are you going to get a better conversation about a new exploit or route in a speedrun when talking to other people who run that game / are interested in running that game, or in a thread in /r/gaming where people are arguing over if using glitches is just lame cheating :P
The hierarchy / more groups is obviously the way to address these, and it's what I'm most excited for here. It's hard to get niche topics going in general, let alone ones where having the common niche assumptions necessary to engage with the conversation opens up a big debate.
Yeah, I completely get what you mean. Nuanced, good faith discussions can be difficult. I keep forgetting that when I comment and see a lot of replies haha
Yeah, I completely get what you mean. Nuanced, good faith discussions can be difficult. I keep forgetting that when I comment and see a lot of replies haha
i have no idea what you're talking about with respect to leftists tbh, because we have a bunch of those (and people in this very thread are saying that they think that if anything most of the...
There is no leftist on here, no paleocon, no anarcho-capitalist, no marxist, no rationalist, etc. It's all just the same.
i have no idea what you're talking about with respect to leftists tbh, because we have a bunch of those (and people in this very thread are saying that they think that if anything most of the people here don't have the same opinions as the mainstream).
Really? Maybe there's not any vocal right wing extremists on here, but I think the hard left is pretty well represented. There aren't really any tankies or other authoritarians I guess, but their...
Everyone just generally agrees. There is no leftist on here, no paleocon, no anarcho-capitalist, no marxist, no rationalist, etc. It's all just the same.
Really? Maybe there's not any vocal right wing extremists on here, but I think the hard left is pretty well represented. There aren't really any tankies or other authoritarians I guess, but their absence is not really a loss to mourn.
neither, really. i would consider myself more of a nondescript, generic leftist who just happens to be very far to the left socially and economically than try and attach an actual label to myself,...
Would you consider yourself a marxist or do you lean more democratic socialist?
neither, really. i would consider myself more of a nondescript, generic leftist who just happens to be very far to the left socially and economically than try and attach an actual label to myself, mostly on the basis that i haven't read enough theory to closely identify with anything in particular. if i had to though, i think i'd probably classify myself somewhere between neozapatismo and, i dunno, anarcha-feminism? like i said, nondescript leftist.
I don't think this is an issue with tildes per say, but it's probably the "we simply don't have a large enough population of posters yet" point. I hope people don't take what I said about Tildes...
I don't think this is an issue with tildes per say, but it's probably the "we simply don't have a large enough population of posters yet" point. I hope people don't take what I said about Tildes as a negative about the site. I quite like it here.
I was being a bit hyperbolic about the actual numbers of people, but my point was more about the general prevalence of a certain world view over others.
If you count Republicans as extremists, sure. They do exist (like for example the Trump thread), but they are severely underrepresented and has no chance to reply to everyone against them.
The only "side" that isn't politically represented on this forum are the extremists
If you count Republicans as extremists, sure. They do exist (like for example the Trump thread), but they are severely underrepresented and has no chance to reply to everyone against them.
Seems like everyone in power on the Republican side is more than willing to stand by their man though, since he's the one who saved America from the Clintons, taxes are down, and the courts are...
Seems like everyone in power on the Republican side is more than willing to stand by their man though, since he's the one who saved America from the Clintons, taxes are down, and the courts are back on the right. On one hand, can you blame them for putting up with his Twitter nonsense and keeping him from stepping on his own toes if they are otherwise getting what they want? But on the other hand, they're all pretty much in on it and whatever reasonable Republicans are out there are reasonable enough to not piss off the boss man.
I disagree. All the sides that warrant representation are to be found here on Tildes. In discussion of American politics (or even Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, or any country experiencing...
but if you're looking for a equal sided debate this isn't the place
I disagree. All the sides that warrant representation are to be found here on Tildes. In discussion of American politics (or even Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, or any country experiencing fascist resurgences) it is important to keep in mind who the sides are. The pursuit of a "both sides" pool for debate fail to learn the lesson of "fine people on both sides." In America, one of the sides is xenophobic white nationalism. I don't think Tildes, or any other platform, is better off when those people are represented.
To this you may say, but what about the "Moderate Conservatives?" - as if there were some group of reasonable Republicans which just don't speak up. Those moderate conservatives are called democrats.
This point is easy to miss when MSNBC is held up like its some bastion of radical left-wing ideology. But consider what it means to be conservative and how many Democrats to the right of Bernie embody these principles. Plenty are willing to defend American state capitalism, foreign intervention in Iran or Venezuela, oppose progressive income tax, oppose the Green New Deal, oppose Medicare for all. These are conservative views and they are certainly to be found in Tildes users.
Just because we don't have people frothing about "locker up" and "butter emails" and "freeze peach" doesn't mean there isn't a wide range of opinion. In fact, I think the fact that those people don't get invite codes is why @thisonemakesyouthink likes Tildes so much
honestly the fact that there aren't people screaming about butter emails leads to more in depth discussion when people aren't made to be defensive all the time or straight up driven away
honestly the fact that there aren't people screaming about butter emails leads to more in depth discussion when people aren't made to be defensive all the time or straight up driven away
I believe they no long offer default subreddits. That feature was deprecated some time ago, and replaced with /r/Popular and guided subscriptions ("Tick some boxes to say what you like, and we'll...
The first thing I encourage people do when they join Reddit is to unsubscribe from the default subs.
I believe they no long offer default subreddits. That feature was deprecated some time ago, and replaced with /r/Popular and guided subscriptions ("Tick some boxes to say what you like, and we'll show you some subreddits you might be interested.").
In my experience reddit subs range from honorificly bad to somewhat tolerable. I have never seen a subreddit I would consider good and the ones I did consider good have been ruined in the last ~2...
In my experience reddit subs range from honorificly bad to somewhat tolerable. I have never seen a subreddit I would consider good and the ones I did consider good have been ruined in the last ~2 years.
I have noticed whenever there is a controversial post in /r/Australia, trolls from other subs/countries will fill the thread and fill it with crap even if the sub is normally ok.
the only good subs are the explicitly very leftist ones, enlightenedcentrism is pretty good? but even then you are on reddit and the other parts of reddit seep into literally everything so its...
the only good subs are the explicitly very leftist ones, enlightenedcentrism is pretty good? but even then you are on reddit and the other parts of reddit seep into literally everything so its just an awful draining experience, if the admins actually moderated the site and got rid of the garbage pile subs and banned people being disgusting it might be ok, not even good, just ok.
I would argue that /r/changemyview is neither explicitly very leftist nor a garbage pile, /r/askhistorians is another, /r/listentothis, and so on. Obviously it depends heavily on the mod teams,...
Obviously it depends heavily on the mod teams, but there are plenty of worthwhile niche/topical communities. It's really mostly the political or overly broad subs that are either tiresomely one-sided or seething and loathsome.
Listentothis has been oddly above all this crap - and not because of anything the mods have done. We do have some really potent/detailed automod comment filters, but they rarely get tripped. It...
Listentothis has been oddly above all this crap - and not because of anything the mods have done. We do have some really potent/detailed automod comment filters, but they rarely get tripped. It seems like in the music community, politics just never comes up, everyone that is killing each other in other subreddits just knocks that shit off when they are jamming to new music. The closest we ever got to a bad thread (that I can remember) was megan trainor. That was during the rise of fatpeoplehate and some of those other now-banned communities.
changemyview is decent but its content exhausting, I did write about how I think its being strictly moderated sort of helps with people arguing in bad faith who do not want thier views to be...
changemyview is decent but its content exhausting, I did write about how I think its being strictly moderated sort of helps with people arguing in bad faith who do not want thier views to be changed but I dont think askhistorians would be up to my standards gamingcirclejerk is ok but not gamersriseup really the only decent subs are the ones where the mods don't let bigotry seep through, theres some good LGBT subreddits and onguardforthee is pretty nice.
I feel like we should do a survey and find out what subreddits out there seem to be doing things 'right' where that's defined as having mods the users are willing to stick up for. We get that in...
I feel like we should do a survey and find out what subreddits out there seem to be doing things 'right' where that's defined as having mods the users are willing to stick up for. We get that in listentothis all the time - the subscribers still have our backs, they upvote mod comments, they engage and ask questions, and hellishly controversial threads are handled like this.
What would interest me is everyone's varied thoughts on what 'right' is, and what good (or bad) things mods do to make or break their reputations. Perhaps we could learn something. I'd love to have a posse of behavioral psychologists study this stuff.
I actually have a few thoughts about issues mods run into and what things are right or what things are bad! its hard to type it all out in a comment like this though, it would be easier as a...
I actually have a few thoughts about issues mods run into and what things are right or what things are bad! its hard to type it all out in a comment like this though, it would be easier as a instant message conversation, so its more like a conversation.
Maybe I was looking at the wrong subreddits but I saw that the very left subreddits were just a massive circlejerk where all they talk about is how bad something else is. Any kind of disagreement...
Maybe I was looking at the wrong subreddits but I saw that the very left subreddits were just a massive circlejerk where all they talk about is how bad something else is. Any kind of disagreement is unacceptable.
What I like about tildes is how well different opinions are treated. You don't have to agree with other people but you do have to treat them with respect. You also don't have to consider every opinion as valid. If someone comes on and starts posting that vaccines cause autism you can feel free to try to provide truthful information but you should not jump to personal attacks and insults.
In fairness, the very right subreddits are the same. Any time you get a group of people together who have something (anything!) in common, you're in danger of triggering some smug in-group talk...
I saw that the very left subreddits were just a massive circlejerk where all they talk about is how bad something else is.
In fairness, the very right subreddits are the same.
Any time you get a group of people together who have something (anything!) in common, you're in danger of triggering some smug in-group talk about how good X is, and how bad not-X is - and how we X-types are better people than those stupid not-X-ers. I've seen it happen in everything from politics to television.
Mr Grey spent the first minute of that video explaining the concept of memes as originally described by Richard Dawkins in his book 'The Selfish Gene' without once mentioning the word "meme" or...
Mr Grey spent the first minute of that video explaining the concept of memes as originally described by Richard Dawkins in his book 'The Selfish Gene' without once mentioning the word "meme" or Dawkins himself. Instead he used the phrase "thought germ". The title is right: that video did make me angry.
However, while that video, as you say, touches on what I said, it does have a different point than I was trying to make. My point was more about in-group bonding and group identification by creating an "us" versus "them" dichotomy.
honestly you need to be more specific, what do you mean by disagreement? What left reddits did you find? There is discussion of things that are shit but its good discussion I learned a bunch of...
I saw that the very left subreddits were just a massive circlejerk where all they talk about is how bad something else is. Any kind of disagreement is unacceptable.
honestly you need to be more specific, what do you mean by disagreement? What left reddits did you find? There is discussion of things that are shit but its good discussion I learned a bunch of the finer details on some of those subs, Theres several LGBT related subs that are pretty great in my experience even though I no longer go to reddit because the site is awful.
I hope you aren't doing this but im getting a vibe of "leftist subs are awful because they ban me for disagreeing with fundamental shit like trans issues" because people really love to disguise why they have a problem with subs by making it sounds more mellow with stuff like "theres no room for disagreement"
also tbh not all different "opinions" deserve to be treated well if you try to do that on tildes you are going to drive the left away and make it haven for "centrists" who love to debate everything and anything to try and shift the overton window, some opinions are simply not up for debate and do not deserve respect,
changemyview has semi dodged the issue of catering to centrists out of some naive idea that we need to meet in the middle for everything because it forces people to actually engage and if they are clearly not interested in changing thier view their topic is removed. Which is great, because it helps a bit with people arguing in bad faith who have no intention of changing thier views, I don't think there needs to be a site wide version of that here though, cmv has already made a site separate from reddit.
Octofox has been on the site long enough and been active enough (even participating in discussions on ~lgbt on occasion) to IMO very likely not be meaning it in the way you're accusing him of. So...
I hope you aren't doing this but im getting a vibe of "leftist subs are awful because they ban me for disagreeing with fundamental shit like trans issues" because people really love to disguise why they have a problem with subs by making it sounds more mellow with stuff like "theres no room for disagreement".
Octofox has been on the site long enough and been active enough (even participating in discussions on ~lgbt on occasion) to IMO very likely not be meaning it in the way you're accusing him of. So please try to apply charitable interpretations and not assume the worst. See:
really I was explaining how that might come off and im asking for a confirm or deny, if others want to treat me that way and explain how something im saying comes off in a way like that id welcome...
really I was explaining how that might come off and im asking for a confirm or deny, if others want to treat me that way and explain how something im saying comes off in a way like that id welcome it so I can also confirm or deny, I don't want to be saying vague things that signal stuff that I do not mean to others.
Fair enough. However, it would only come off that way if you fail to apply a charitable interpretation, but if you don't want your own statement to come off like a genuine accusation you could...
Fair enough. However, it would only come off that way if you fail to apply a charitable interpretation, but if you don't want your own statement to come off like a genuine accusation you could perhaps try to coach your language a bit more to make it clear you're not actually accusing them of holding that opinion and instead just trying to let them know how it could be perceived.
I'm kinda over giving people the benefit of the doubt over internet forums, I've done that before, people act nice and say vague things and when I try to get to what they actually mean its...
I'm kinda over giving people the benefit of the doubt over internet forums, I've done that before, people act nice and say vague things and when I try to get to what they actually mean its revealed that its an act and they think something horrendous or harass me with multiple alt accounts and refuse to have a "civil discussion" with me while they continue to say they want one, I want people to tell me what they actually mean and cut through to the heart, but I can change my language so its more clear that i'm asking instead of accusing, im used to dealing with people on reddit and I guess I cant expect people to always say what they mean up to my standards im sure I can be clearer in my language.
LOL, that's something we are all struggling with... myself included; I have had to bite my tongue on several occasions, have stuck my foot in my mouth on several more, and have even felt compelled...
im used to dealing with people on reddit.
LOL, that's something we are all struggling with... myself included; I have had to bite my tongue on several occasions, have stuck my foot in my mouth on several more, and have even felt compelled to publicly apologize a few times already on Tildes for making the wrong negative assumptions about a few people here. So I get where you are coming from, truly. But I am certainly trying my best not to assume the worst anymore, which is definitely a habit I also developed based on countless horrible interactions I have had on reddit over the last decade+. :(
But Tildes is thankfully not reddit, and IMO one of the best ways we can all help to ensure it doesn't fall to the same fate is to try our best to actually follow through with applying the principle of charity, and pointing it out as an overall goal for the site whenever we can.
I actually found the lgbt subs to be ok but a little boring. The kind of disagreement I am talking about are subs where people spam out "Capitalism is completely wrong and needs to be destroyed...
I actually found the lgbt subs to be ok but a little boring. The kind of disagreement I am talking about are subs where people spam out "Capitalism is completely wrong and needs to be destroyed and is the cause of all our problems" and you will be banned for saying that most of our problems could be solved while keeping a more regulated version of capitalism.
i'm pretty sure both of you are off base here. neither of the major economic system of economics is inherently wrong unto itself either in the sense of being morally unjust or incorrect states of...
That statement is completely wrong.
i'm pretty sure both of you are off base here. neither of the major economic system of economics is inherently wrong unto itself either in the sense of being morally unjust or incorrect states of function, they can only produce those outcomes as a consequence of their structure.
It also takes extremely active moderation to maintain community standards on reddit. The community itself can’t enforce them because downvotes are easy, anonymous, and don’t actually explain the...
It also takes extremely active moderation to maintain community standards on reddit. The community itself can’t enforce them because downvotes are easy, anonymous, and don’t actually explain the problem. So only mods can enforce what good or bad behavior is really.
Probably not, since in the (rare) cases that I remove something, it generally deserves to be removed and leaving it visible undermines that and makes removal mostly pointless. I didn't do it in...
Probably not, since in the (rare) cases that I remove something, it generally deserves to be removed and leaving it visible undermines that and makes removal mostly pointless. I didn't do it in this case, but it's pretty normal for me to also remove replies to the actual target comment. Like you said, leaving replies with no context is weird and mostly useless (unless they add something significant).
Also, on HN, the greyed-out comments are just downvoted ones. The closest equivalent on Tildes right now would be the auto-collapsed Noise comments. Flagged comments on HN are hidden even more, and I think only visible at all if you specifically enable "showdead" in your settings (and completely invisible otherwise, including to logged-out users). I believe if the HN mods/admins remove anything, there's no trace left of it at all.
your use of the word cuck kind of hints that you aren’t telling things exactly as they are. games is a supposed to be a sub with quality discussion about games, not politics. and bpt doesn’t ban...
your use of the word cuck kind of hints that you aren’t telling things exactly as they are.
games is a supposed to be a sub with quality discussion about games, not politics. and bpt doesn’t ban you if you’re white (otherwise they’d have no more audience).
Okay, you may have a point there, but I'll give you an example of where this doesn't work. There was a post about Google Stadia and I weighed in my views about it and cloud gaming in general. I...
games is a supposed to be a sub with quality discussion about games, not politics.
Okay, you may have a point there, but I'll give you an example of where this doesn't work.
There was a post about Google Stadia and I weighed in my views about it and cloud gaming in general. I felt that it was a pretty bad idea because streaming games used up a lot more bandwidth. Apparently mentioning the chairman of the FCC Ajit Pai and the Trump Administration (Trump was the one who put Pai in charge) was enough to get my comment silently auto-removed.
and bpt doesn’t ban you if you’re white (otherwise they’d have no more audience).
That's not being banned from the sub. There are a select set of posts some users aren't allowed to comment on. You're still able to view them, white people are still allowed to comment on other...
That's not being banned from the sub. There are a select set of posts some users aren't allowed to comment on. You're still able to view them, white people are still allowed to comment on other posts and see posts. Banned would be being a private subreddit and kicking out any white people who try to follow the sub.
the fact that people are still genuinely upset about a subreddit devoted to black people, black culture, and the black internet as a collective taking measures to keep the subreddit even nominally...
the fact that people are still genuinely upset about a subreddit devoted to black people, black culture, and the black internet as a collective taking measures to keep the subreddit even nominally black when the surrounding website consists of roughly 90% white (and male and cis) redditors who don't know shit about black issues and which regularly come in acting like they, in the immortal words of the Dead Kennedys, know how the niggers feel, really does a great job of demonstrating why they did that in the first place and why i hope they continue to do it. white redditors have literally the entire rest of the website and all the non-country club posts. they're not suddenly in an apartheid state or being even remotely discriminated against because the big mean black moderators at BPT want to keep people from treating the place like an 1800s minstrel show and want to occasionally provide a space for minorities to talk about minority shit without being disrupted by people acting in bad faith or who have no understanding of any of that.
sure. but it’s because black people have to deal with a bunch of things white people don't and sometimes that gets tiring for black people and they just want a space where they don’t have to deal...
sure. but it’s because black people have to deal with a bunch of things white people don't and sometimes that gets tiring for black people and they just want a space where they don’t have to deal with that bullshit. do I think it’s the best solution? no. do I think it’s understandable: completely.
disclaimer: am white and just saying what i’ve heard
the Trump auto-removal is probably because the mods had had problems with political comments and were wasting time on it and decided it would be easier to just auto-delete possible political ones...
the Trump auto-removal is probably because the mods had had problems with political comments and were wasting time on it and decided it would be easier to just auto-delete possible political ones so they could focus on moderating the sub better. edge cases like yours happen though. if you don’t like the system, let the mods know!
no idea what the original user was saying about BPT but its actually been criticized by people when they realize its a bunch of white peo- oh wait you were alluding to that? Games are political...
no idea what the original user was saying about BPT but its actually been criticized by people when they realize its a bunch of white peo- oh wait you were alluding to that?
Games are political very often, if anything I wish games was moderated better to keep out bigoted shit and have good discussions about the politics in video games cause the politics that do appear are mostly just typical gamer shite
this, ironically enough, sounds an awful lot like the circlejerk-y whinging i hear from right wingers about how they can't call refugees from syria rapefugees or muslims a cancer who want to...
this, ironically enough, sounds an awful lot like the circlejerk-y whinging i hear from right wingers about how they can't call refugees from syria rapefugees or muslims a cancer who want to institute sharia law and kill all the westerners without getting banned or who bitch about how BPT is racist for meme-ing on fragile white redditors by fake-banning them from the subreddit even though it's literally a subreddit devoted to content surrounding black people being funny on the internet and half the white people there are idiots misusing AAVE and talking about black culture they have no understanding of, lol. i don't know if that was your intent, but if it was to rag on circlejerking you made one of the most circlejerk-y possible responses to this subject.
Oh no I totally agree with you. Judging an entire religion by the actions of a few is pretty dumb and if anything the sheer amount of hate is why I didn't go to Voat instead. And sadly the view...
Oh no I totally agree with you. Judging an entire religion by the actions of a few is pretty dumb and if anything the sheer amount of hate is why I didn't go to Voat instead.
But there is plenty of evidence that r/news is heavily censored and is actually pretty biased about how they swing their banhammer. Just look at how much the place is mentioned over on r/subredditcancer.
No downvotes works out fine in general, but imo it is the least useful with topics likely to be taken seriously and passionately. It encourages aggressive arguments that the participants don't...
Exemplary
No downvotes works out fine in general, but imo it is the least useful with topics likely to be taken seriously and passionately. It encourages aggressive arguments that the participants don't really want to be in. If you come into a thread and find a comment that you believe to be incorrect or repulsive, but it isn't malicious in a way that would be worth reporting it for, there's very little to be done. There's this feeling that if you do nothing, they'll be the only / the prevailing opinion, and you can't let that happen. That doesn't sound so bad in the abstract, but it's just asking for toxic interactions. The person jumping in isn't there because they're excited to share their point or have a novel way of presenting it, they're coming in to balance out the voices at all costs, which is just begging for a directionless squabble. This leads to the kind of comment that I and others have made plenty of times, where you try to make one comment to get your perspective out there then dip. Those aren't perfect on their own, but beyond that they're really hard to keep to, especially since Tildes doesn't have any mechanics to make disengaging easy (unfollowing comments, blocking, etc.).
You can frame that as "it encourages dialogue between both sides" if you want to, but to my eyes it just leads to a lot of pointless bullshit, not productive discussion. I'm not saying we just need to have downvotes (I don't think that would ever happen anyway), but not having them leaves an unfilled hole. There's nothing in between hopping into an argument you didn't want a part of and a report, and it's hurting us.
Works out fine in things where no one thinks the stakes are that high, though...there's much less of an urge to stop someone from going unchallenged when they say a movie you don't like is good. I'm always down for dropping the explicitly political in favor of making a more pleasant community in general, even with all the challenges that brings. I don't think that will be popular either, my belief that Tildes hasn't been all that useful for political discussion doesn't seem to be a popular one.
Why? You make it sound like we have no control over if and/or how we respond to something. If someone having a different opinion from you is so important that you feel it needs rebuttal, is it not...
If you come into a thread and find a comment that you believe to be incorrect or repulsive, but it isn't malicious in a way that would be worth reporting it for, there's very little to be done. There's this feeling that if you do nothing, they'll be the only / the prevailing opinion, and you can't let that happen. That doesn't sound so bad in the abstract, but it's just asking for toxic interactions. The person jumping in isn't there because they're excited to share their point or have a novel way of presenting it, they're coming in to balance out the voices at all costs, which is just begging for a directionless squabble.
Why? You make it sound like we have no control over if and/or how we respond to something. If someone having a different opinion from you is so important that you feel it needs rebuttal, is it not worth doing well? If not, maybe it's not that important after all.
Unless you're going to personally train every user on the website to have perfect self-control and have a similar approach to comments, it's important to talk about how the site pushes users to...
Unless you're going to personally train every user on the website to have perfect self-control and have a similar approach to comments, it's important to talk about how the site pushes users to feel and act. "Well just make a better reply or leave!" isn't useful. We're not talking about the control you, me, or anyone specific has, we're talking about a site full of people who will respond differently to the way site mechanics and culture push them, and I'm suggesting that they could be pushed in a better direction.
I'd challenge the notion that it's the site pushing anyone to feel/act any particular way, but since I get what you mean, I'll leave that aside. Considering that the site and community is...
I'd challenge the notion that it's the site pushing anyone to feel/act any particular way, but since I get what you mean, I'll leave that aside. Considering that the site and community is ostensibly building itself on a culture of thoughtful discussion, one would hope that we would be self-selecting against reactionary posting. Regardless, I'm not seeing the shortcomings of the current label system for replies that fall short of the standard of quality. I'm open to being convinced otherwise if you have some idea. I'm not in favor of implementing some sort of easy downvote-and-move-on mechanic either, as that doesn't encourage users to think past their immediate emotions and devolves things to a popularity contest, but I similarly don't see how useful it is for anyone just to chime in to say that they disagree when they're not willing to present something thoughtful in opposition. How does that help the site, even (or especially) in the instances where it takes more time and effort to debunk someone's BS than it's worth?
honestly in my experience this entirely varies on what the post is about. reactionary posting isn't a very big issue with most of the normal discussions, but with meta discussions like this you'd...
Considering that the site and community is ostensibly building itself on a culture of thoughtful discussion, one would hope that we would be self-selecting against reactionary posting.
honestly in my experience this entirely varies on what the post is about. reactionary posting isn't a very big issue with most of the normal discussions, but with meta discussions like this you'd think some of the people here were metaphorical luddites with how immediately willing they are to castigate and disregard any idea which doesn't meet their idea of what is in the scope of the website. this is one of my largest criticisms of the site, actually, and i expounded on it awhile back: our culture on regular posts is generally fine,* but on more meta posts like this (and especially on feature suggestions) it usually sucks (mostly because of that reactionary posting), to a point where i know that it actively discourages some people from raising suggestions about/discussing the website and its community.
* although i have some reservations about this too and the trajectory of some of the standards people seem to have accepted as "normal" or at least not objectionable on here.
I don't think it "solves" the problem, but @Whom did mention a few good options already: And I personally think adding an unfollow (i.e. stop getting notifications for replies to your...
I don't think it "solves" the problem, but @Whom did mention a few good options already:
especially since Tildes doesn't have any mechanics to make disengaging easy (unfollowing comments, blocking, etc.).
And I think there might be some potential in adding a "placebo" comment label too... e.g. A "Disagree" comment label, even if it has no effect whatsoever, or only makes the comment collapse (like a "noise" labeled comments), but only to the user that applied the "disagree". Speaking of which: Placebo comment labels
TBH I don't even think you have to hide the fact that it's a placebo label... even knowing it doesn't really accomplish much else, it still provides an outlet for expressing disagreement without...
TBH I don't even think you have to hide the fact that it's a placebo label... even knowing it doesn't really accomplish much else, it still provides an outlet for expressing disagreement without having to refute the comment and potentially get in an argument. And a comment section "sort by most disagreed" could be interesting too, similar to "sort by controversial" on reddit.
Something that's purely placebo doesn't sit well with me, it feels a bit deceptive. Wrapping it into the potential "hide" feature makes the most sense to me. At least then I could use it without...
Something that's purely placebo doesn't sit well with me, it feels a bit deceptive. Wrapping it into the potential "hide" feature makes the most sense to me. At least then I could use it without feeling like I'm trying to trick myself...but still, the "fuck you" button doesn't impact anyone but me.
An additional sort could be cool, though. I imagine it wouldn't get much use but having it exist at least would make the dislike feel like it's doing something. Nothing at all feels kinda icky...I believe YouTube does that with comments and I hate it.
Actually, AFAIK YouTube does the exact opposite of what you would expect. The thumbs down actually increases visibility of videos and comments, because YouTube considers any interaction, "good" or...
I believe YouTube does that with comments and I hate it.
Actually, AFAIK YouTube does the exact opposite of what you would expect. The thumbs down actually increases visibility of videos and comments, because YouTube considers any interaction, "good" or "bad", as "engagement" which is what it uses to determine placement, amongst other things. So if you see a shit video or comment on YouTube, the best thing to actually do is literally nothing. Don't reply to it, don't thumbs down. :/
And I do tend to agree with you that doing absolutely nothing feels a bit deceptive and "icky" hence why I suggested those alternatives, since at least then it would do something, however minor and maybe even only for the person who uses it.
oh i didnt think of that in relation to this but yea, reddit had an extension that let you block people and thier names would be put behind spoilers or hidden completely, if tildes can integrate...
oh i didnt think of that in relation to this but yea, reddit had an extension that let you block people and thier names would be put behind spoilers or hidden completely, if tildes can integrate that into the regular site that would be great, also being able to disable notifications from your topics as well as your comments would be great.
I think that part of the difference here for Tildes is that the moderation is much stricter, to the point where what is worth reporting is very different. While not in political discussions, I...
Exemplary
If you come into a thread and find a comment that you believe to be incorrect or repulsive, but it isn't malicious in a way that would be worth reporting it for, there's very little to be done.
I think that part of the difference here for Tildes is that the moderation is much stricter, to the point where what is worth reporting is very different. While not in political discussions, I have labeled comments, and seen them then deleted, that would have been seen as perfectly acceptable on Reddit---even comments by prominent Tildes users.
This took some time for me to become accustomed to. In a particular instance I recall, the comment was a rude and rather off-topic dismissal of a post by someone who admitted they hadn't read the linked page at all, and was the type of comment that would likely have been upvoted on Reddit, albeit with a number of rebuttals. I would not have reported it on Reddit, and was uncertain about reporting here, but I think its removal really helped the thread not become derailed.
whom's point isn't really one of moderation, it's one of culture. if, hypothetically, you think that the culture here sucks because you think it needlessly offputs people, but the cultural things...
whom's point isn't really one of moderation, it's one of culture. if, hypothetically, you think that the culture here sucks because you think it needlessly offputs people, but the cultural things you take objection to aren't being expressed in what could be construed as a tangibly bad faith way (like the way i feel about most meta discussion on here), there's really no recourse for you because that's simply not actionable whether you choose to report it or not. basically the only way to currently steer the community on things that are not inherently actionable is through meta discussion, and for obvious reasons, that tends to not do much.
this is one of the other criticisms i have of the website, actually. we simply haven't cultivated a way for the community to effectively self-police the culture, so unless you basically want to get bogged down in messy-bitch meta discussions which are unlikely to go anywhere serious, there's not much of a way to push out actors and whittle away actions which could potentially lead to a decline in the quality of discourse here. in effect, i see it as we're currently relying on people to just not be underhandedly and consistently shitheaded in a way that's not really moderatable instead of working to address those problems where and when we see them, and that's... probably not optimal?
I honestly don't understand where this comes from. Yes, people debate fiercely in meta threads, but that's because they care, want what they think is best for the site and want their voices to be...
like the way i feel about most meta discussion on here
which are unlikely to go anywhere serious
I honestly don't understand where this comes from. Yes, people debate fiercely in meta threads, but that's because they care, want what they think is best for the site and want their voices to be heard by the developers of the site. However, most of the time that meta discussion does result in "serious" action... either something being done moderation-wise (moving a topic, adding a tag, changing a link, etc) or a gitlab issue being created to try and address the problem brought up by people, and even often triggering plenty of backroom discussion about the ideas as well. I know that's true because often it's me doing said actions and I have been one of the top Gitlab issue creators for almost the entire time Bauke has been tracking that stat. And for the record, I have also even been convinced of several ideas which I was initially staunchly against, due to meta discussions (some of those convincing arguments were your own BTW so thanks. ;).
I understand meta is not for everyone, and can get tedious and tiresome, but nobody is forcing anyone to participate in the meta and it's incredibly important to encourage, especially at this early a stage in the site. And if you feel really passionately about something, but don't want to make a comment about it for fear that will trigger an endless debate about it, you can always PM me or Deimos, or make a comment/issue on gitlab yourself as well. Gitlab is much more chill and there is virtually no debate there, only purely practical discussions on the suggestion.
I think there's two levels of meta here - one people want, and one most people don't. When we're in pie-in-the-sky mode (which is 99% of ~tildes content) most people don't want to be bothered by...
I think there's two levels of meta here - one people want, and one most people don't.
When we're in pie-in-the-sky mode (which is 99% of ~tildes content) most people don't want to be bothered by that I think, especially since there's so much of it right now compared to other areas of the site. They can unsub from ~tildes to avoid being pestered, but how many know that? This also creeps into reply chains of other topics sometimes and it'd be nice to be able to split those off as new threads in ~tildes instead of having them noise up the discussions that start them.
The other is the official site business, or in other words the content of ~tildes.official. That's the equivalent of /r/announcements here. That's for when Deimos has news, new features to test and discuss, or wants to take a poll and get opinions on something. This is the one people should stay subscribed to if they are interested in having input on how the site develops. If they keep up on those threads, they won't be missing anything that's 'real'.
This demarcation is I think not very clear or obvious to most users here. I like having most users subbed just to there, as a sort of red-cell team to challenge whatever new thing has been cooked up by the folks in ~tildes.
The thing that concerns me right now about tildes is that opinion-based voting is extremely prevelent. Enter any discussion thread and it's easy to find a comment chain between two users where...
The thing that concerns me right now about tildes is that opinion-based voting is extremely prevelent. Enter any discussion thread and it's easy to find a comment chain between two users where both are being equally civil and rational and are arguing their positions equally well - and yet the popular stance (normally, but not always, the most left-wing one) is upvoted to +13 while the unpopular stance languishes on +3. This is the sort of fundamental problem in Reddit that I thought tildes aspired to solve.
you're not the first person to notice this, but honestly the whole point of a vote is that it's essentially an agree button on some level, and everybody is going to inevitably on some level use...
you're not the first person to notice this, but honestly the whole point of a vote is that it's essentially an agree button on some level, and everybody is going to inevitably on some level use the votes like that, because that's the main way you can express agreement with a point (or disagreement with a point) on this website in lieu of noisy comments like "This." or downvotes. it's also worth bearing in mind that agreement buttons unto themselves are not inherently bad (especially on a website where votes quantitatively mean nothing) and that just because you write some long comment or are civil in arguing against something doesn't mean that argument deserves votes--if your argument sucks or nobody buys it, why would they then vote on it, even if you put it nicely?
I take your point here - but for me, the most interesting comment in any given thread is generally the one that challenges consensus and goes against the generally held political position of users...
I take your point here - but for me, the most interesting comment in any given thread is generally the one that challenges consensus and goes against the generally held political position of users of the site. In a vote-to-agree system, such a comment will inevitably end up buried under people simply restating and agreeing with the consensus. The word 'hugbox' has some bad connotations, but it's not the worst descriptor of an community that tends towards damping debate, which is where I see tildes going unfortunately.
i'm just going to quote two comments i have made on here with respect to this point.
The word 'hugbox' has some bad connotations, but it's not the worst descriptor of an community that tends towards damping debate, which is where I see tildes going unfortunately.
i'm just going to quote two comments i have made on here with respect to this point.
i'll repeat what i said in a thread awhile back that got into a discussion about this. people tend to fall into this notion that just because one side is represented makes a place an "echo chamber", which is just patently silly. the international "left" can be anything from a blue dog democrat to a conservative liberal to a liberal to a progressive to a social democrat to a communist to an anarchist, and you'd struggle to get any of these people to agree on anything except maybe some basic leftist ideas like 'don't treat the poor like shit' and 'climate change is an issue'.
i think if it was managed perfectly wrong, this place could eventually theoretically become an echo chamber, but even places like raddit which are clearly directed towards radical leftists and where 99% of the posters are anarchists and communists still have massive issues with sectarian divisions, so i'm skeptical that the echo chamber thing will be an issue.
i'm going to repeat a refrain i've said a couple times on here since i joined with regards to the "echo chamber" thing (at least with respect to politics): tildes is not an echo chamber just because predominantly left-wing viewpoints are represented on it, and it will never be one for the simple reason that the "left-wing" in politics is incredibly diverse, ranging from people who want to abolish state and hierarchy (anarchists) to people who want a socialist state and to abolish capitalism (socialists) to people who want to reform capitalism (social democrats, some progressives) to people who like capitalism in most cases (most progressives, most democrats) to people who seek to expand capitalism (blue dog democrats, conservative democrats). and that's just from an american economic window with no regard to the nuances of social politics or anything about european politics. you probably could not get all of the ideologies i just listed to agree on anything beyond "don't be a dick and don't kill the poor". that's not exactly a recipe for an echo chamber.
i think people get very caught up in this notion that all left-wing politics are the same and stand for the same things, but if this site consisted exclusively of liberals and socialists, there would probably be more arguments than if the site consisted exclusively of liberals and conservatives because the differences are very stark between some of the "left-wing" ideologies that get jammed together.
I respect the fact that there are a diverse range of opinions among people on the political left - but the fact remains that perhaps 90% of the highly voted comments on tildes take political...
I respect the fact that there are a diverse range of opinions among people on the political left - but the fact remains that perhaps 90% of the highly voted comments on tildes take political stances to which maybe 10% of the people I know in the real world would subscribe to; and moreover, I can generally predict what those stances will be before entering threads. Therefore, tildes clearly isn't achieving broad and balanced political debate. I still enjoy reading the comments here - the discussion quality remains very high - but I do wish for a wider range of viewpoints to be represented.
i'm not really seeing why the former is bad and the latter is something we should necessarily strive for. we're not at all seeking to be a balanced source of information, we're seeking to be a...
but the fact remains that perhaps 90% of the highly voted comments on tildes take political stances to which maybe 10% of the people I know in the real world would subscribe to; and moreover, I can generally predict what those stances will be before entering threads. Therefore, tildes clearly isn't achieving broad and balanced political debate.
i'm not really seeing why the former is bad and the latter is something we should necessarily strive for. we're not at all seeking to be a balanced source of information, we're seeking to be a website which promotes quality discussions and whatever comes with that. (also honestly, i think you greatly overstate the prevalence of people who hold fringe political opinions here. this site is still very, very traditionally liberal even though it has a significant leftist contingent.)
I like it when news discussion sites reflect the range of opinions held by people in the real world. I understand if you don't care for that, but it is something that matters to me.
I like it when news discussion sites reflect the range of opinions held by people in the real world. I understand if you don't care for that, but it is something that matters to me.
Then surely you are in the right place, friend. Tildes is still small enough where your comments are still being read even if they don't score as many votes.
Then surely you are in the right place, friend.
Tildes is still small enough where your comments are still being read even if they don't score as many votes.
I know, man, I've been here since the start too. I'm just worried that this might not always be the case as threads garner more comments and the burying effect is consequently amplified.
I know, man, I've been here since the start too. I'm just worried that this might not always be the case as threads garner more comments and the burying effect is consequently amplified.
Out of curiosity, do you have any ideas for a solution to that problem, short of removing votes entirely (which is untenable due to that amping up the noise and reducing the signal)?
Out of curiosity, do you have any ideas for a solution to that problem, short of removing votes entirely (which is untenable due to that amping up the noise and reducing the signal)?
Fair enough... and we're certainly going to try, but it's not an easy problem to solve, IMO. :P It may even be impossible just because of demographics. But I think the people who have maybe come...
Fair enough... and we're certainly going to try, but it's not an easy problem to solve, IMO. :P It may even be impossible just because of demographics. But I think the people who have maybe come the closest to figuring it out (which is esp. admirable given the limitation of the platform they operate on) are the /r/changemyview mods, and I know Deimos has talked to a bunch of them a number of times about this sort of stuff.
Yeah, a "changed my mind" (+delta) comment label would be nice. I don't know what the best effect of that should be... maybe no sort adjustment and just some visible indication it was applied as a...
Yeah, a "changed my mind" (+delta) comment label would be nice. I don't know what the best effect of that should be... maybe no sort adjustment and just some visible indication it was applied as a "reward" (maybe +trust/rep too)? That might encourage too much devil's advocating type comments and gaming of the trust system though. I dunno...
We'll just have to experiment until it works. We're going to have to do that a lot, I think. A good place to start would be by asking the CMV mods what kinds of social feedback effects they've...
We'll just have to experiment until it works. We're going to have to do that a lot, I think. A good place to start would be by asking the CMV mods what kinds of social feedback effects they've observed arising from the mechanic their bot created, that might give us a better jumping off point for the feature. It's possible they've even got plans beyond what was implemented there on reddit, but couldn't manage to shoe-horn them into reddit's interface.
Yeah, it's no doubt a good idea to get them involved somehow if we can, but given the fact they have launched their own site now (https://changeaview.com) I don't know how much they will care to...
Yeah, it's no doubt a good idea to get them involved somehow if we can, but given the fact they have launched their own site now (https://changeaview.com) I don't know how much they will care to really participate here or how much they would be willing to "give away" either. :/
I agree - it's perhaps *the* most difficult problem to solve in the vaguely defined field of 'community engineering'. Perhaps requiring people to write, say, 100 characters minimum on why they...
I agree - it's perhaps *the* most difficult problem to solve in the vaguely defined field of 'community engineering'. Perhaps requiring people to write, say, 100 characters minimum on why they think a post is voteworthy? There's a lot of reasons why that might not be workable, but I don't think it's an idea without value.
The problem with that is people are lazy, and you're ultimately just encouraging people to game the system. It's perhaps still worthy of consideration, as you said, but it has some serious...
The problem with that is people are lazy, and you're ultimately just encouraging people to game the system. It's perhaps still worthy of consideration, as you said, but it has some serious downsides as well that would need to be addressed somehow before you can implement anything like it.
do you have an example? The very problem is treating unreasonable and downright evil ideas as civil because they are presented in a civil way, if someones ideas are reasonable then they are...
do you have an example? The very problem is treating unreasonable and downright evil ideas as civil because they are presented in a civil way, if someones ideas are reasonable then they are civil...
Next time you read a political thread on tildes, check for yourself. It's easy to dismiss such concerns with the argument 'well maybe the ideas aren't civil', but thankfully tildes is a quality...
Next time you read a political thread on tildes, check for yourself. It's easy to dismiss such concerns with the argument 'well maybe the ideas aren't civil', but thankfully tildes is a quality enough forum that it's incredibly rare to come across someone expressing a hateful or bigoted viewpoint (i.e. one not worth debating).
there were a ton of uncivil ideas masked behind civility in that thread from the trump supporter, they were mostly outnumbered but they were still there? Also wait, what concerns am I dismissing...
there were a ton of uncivil ideas masked behind civility in that thread from the trump supporter, they were mostly outnumbered but they were still there?
Also wait, what concerns am I dismissing again? I got lost...
basically im pushing for a stance that isn't civility wins above all else because that favors the status quo and people who aren't personally invested in whatever thing.
maybe im just not understanding what you are saying. Could you provide an example where both sides are reasonable, it doesnt have to be an example on here, just one you can think up, one where theres a right and left wing side. I cant just look at a political thread on here because I dont know what you consider reasonable.
Not sure I read that thread, or if I did I've forgotten - I'd appreciate a link? Nonetheless, such instances are very much the exception rather than the rule in my browsing experience.
Not sure I read that thread, or if I did I've forgotten - I'd appreciate a link? Nonetheless, such instances are very much the exception rather than the rule in my browsing experience.
no problem, its from 2018 so it is a while ago https://tildes.net/~talk/n0/so_far_this_site_has_been_mostly_politics_averse_but_i_am_curious_if_i_am_alone_as_an_maga_trump the original poster acts...
the original poster acts like hes being civil but as it goes on its clear that he is at best woefully misguided to a point where its dangerous and at worst masquerading under the veil of civility to spread vile shit.
Ah yes, I do remember that thread (I'm actually in it, according to Ctrl-F :-). To be frank though, the fact that you had to reach that far into the archives sort of proves my point.
Ah yes, I do remember that thread (I'm actually in it, according to Ctrl-F :-). To be frank though, the fact that you had to reach that far into the archives sort of proves my point.
It should probably be noted that Mumberthrax, the user that posted that topic, is actually banned now for having posted a number of alt-right-ish, anti-"SJW" videos that started a bunch of heated...
It should probably be noted that Mumberthrax, the user that posted that topic, is actually banned now for having posted a number of alt-right-ish, anti-"SJW" videos that started a bunch of heated and unpleasant political arguments on the site.
And it should also be noted that even so, I had quite a few great interactions with him here. In fact, I probably interacted with him more than anyone else TBH. I even have him as a friend on Steam, still talk to him on the rare occasion, and don't believe he is troll or has any ill intent towards anyone... he is a good person at heart IMO, however, he is also unfortunately someone who has been misguided, fell down a right wing filter bubble induced rabbit hole, and has bought a number of the alt-right talking points hook, line and sinker as a result.
based on that it sounds like I was accurate with my best case scenario, I've interacted with people like that, or at least people who seem to be like that but could just be pretending, its very...
based on that it sounds like I was accurate with my best case scenario, I've interacted with people like that, or at least people who seem to be like that but could just be pretending, its very hard to tell, if other people can try to pull them back from the edge thats admirable.
How does one unlearn hatred? How do we turn this negative feedback based social media world into a positive feedback based model? We may never figure it out, but I'm sure we can do it better than...
How does one unlearn hatred? How do we turn this negative feedback based social media world into a positive feedback based model? We may never figure it out, but I'm sure we can do it better than most forums just because they aren't even looking at the real problem.
right but what im saying is I don't want to devolve back into that happening more and more, maybe its not an issue right now but it could become an issue if we just leave things on thier own,...
right but what im saying is I don't want to devolve back into that happening more and more, maybe its not an issue right now but it could become an issue if we just leave things on thier own, thats what happened when a post got that many comments, what will stop that from happening again?
So few truly hateful ideas have been expressed on this site that their instances can be counted on one hand. I don't think it's been an issue before and I don't think there's much threat of it...
So few truly hateful ideas have been expressed on this site that their instances can be counted on one hand. I don't think it's been an issue before and I don't think there's much threat of it being an issue (especially since the moderation here is very vigilant).
it was an issue in the previous thread that was HUGE one of the biggest the site has had if you sort by all time and most comments, if the site picks up more steam i see similar threads becoming...
it was an issue in the previous thread that was HUGE one of the biggest the site has had if you sort by all time and most comments, if the site picks up more steam i see similar threads becoming more common and going further. I just think its something that needs to be thought about.
I'm strongly of the opinion the numeric vote quantity should be hidden precisely because of the reasons you elucidate. Let the user see the vote count on their own posts, but obscure it from any...
I'm strongly of the opinion the numeric vote quantity should be hidden precisely because of the reasons you elucidate. Let the user see the vote count on their own posts, but obscure it from any other perspective. That should eliminate some of the bandwagoning to an extent—we have evidence this works too. "Supervoting" via the exemplary tag is now much less common now the exact exemplary quantity isn't shown.
I don't know if I like hiding the vote count completely simply because I think it can have a positive effect in establishing culture. Seeing comments with large numbers of votes helps confirm what...
I don't know if I like hiding the vote count completely simply because I think it can have a positive effect in establishing culture. Seeing comments with large numbers of votes helps confirm what good contributions to the community look like. It's a way of supporting the behavior we want to see.
That said, I can't help but wonder if it might be useful to reduce the precision of the vote. Instead of giving the specific number of individual votes as it currently is, I'm wondering if it might be more effective to break those into tiers (something like >1, >10, >30, etc.). This would still help affirm largely positive contributions but it would prevent a single or even a few individuals offsetting a vote count to help an argument gain more traction by popularity. It would also prevent surface-level comparisons between vote counts and, by proxy, their associated arguments. A comment with a score of 3 and a comment with a score of 4 would be indistinguishable under this method and would keep someone from making the judgment that the 4 comment is more correct, worthy, or popular.
Well, that's the thing; a lot of people, myself included, have noticed that votes tend to be more of a popularity contest than an indicator of quality at some level. I've had my (at least in my...
Seeing comments with large numbers of votes helps confirm what good contributions to the community look like. It's a way of supporting the behavior we want to see.
Well, that's the thing; a lot of people, myself included, have noticed that votes tend to be more of a popularity contest than an indicator of quality at some level.
I've had my (at least in my view, cordial & well presented) opinions about overpopulation (I think Earth is overpopulated), nuclear power (I'm not a supporter of nuclear power), and Apple (I'm a big apple fan!) been swamped by one-sided voting that perpetuates a reconfirmation of the Tildes consensus opinion on the subject, rather than encouraging quality discussion. I can see how some would consider this a chilling effect on continuing to contribute to the site.
All things said, I believe your vote bracketing idea (not fuzzying, I very much dislike fuzzying) could work quite well.
i mean, that's again kinda the whole point of votes though: they're an agree button, not necessarily something which is intended to "encourage quality discussion" unto itself. there are other...
Well, that's the thing; a lot of people, myself included, have noticed that votes tend to be more of a popularity contest than an indicator of quality at some level.
I've had my (at least in my view, cordial & well presented) opinions about overpopulation (I think Earth is overpopulated), nuclear power (I'm not a supporter of nuclear power), and Apple (I'm a big apple fan!) been swamped by one-sided voting that perpetuates a reconfirmation of the Tildes consensus opinion on the subject, rather than encouraging quality discussion.
i mean, that's again kinda the whole point of votes though: they're an agree button, not necessarily something which is intended to "encourage quality discussion" unto itself. there are other mechanisms on this website and a general community consensus which are explicitly intended to do that and, at least as far as i can tell, do it pretty well.
besides, like i said up thread, just because you write some long comment or are civil in arguing against or for something doesn't mean that argument inherently deserves votes because it's long or civil or promotes discussion against the tildes majority or whatever else. if that were true, we'd basically be obligated to upvote things from apologia of saddam hussein to competently argued vaccine skepticism and "stalin was a good guy and the view of him is capitalist propaganda," even though they're objectively wrong or ridiculous.
Absolutely nothing in the Tildes Docs indicates this is the case. In fact, I point you to two different statements by Deimos that explicitly disagree with your statement. Firstly: From Comment...
i mean, that's again kinda the whole point of votes though: they're an agree button, not necessarily something which is intended to "encourage quality discussion" unto itself.
Absolutely nothing in the Tildes Docs indicates this is the case. In fact, I point you to two different statements by Deimos that explicitly disagree with your statement.
Firstly:
Overall, voting on a comment should mean something like "this is a good comment and I think other people should read it"
From Comment Labelling. That doesn't sound like an agree button to me. It sounds like a quality indicator. Secondly:
The ideal usage of a downvote is a generic way to express "this doesn't contribute", but in practice they tend to be used more as "I disagree" or "I don't like this". High-quality posts will often get downvoted because other users disagree with the opinion, and in taste-based communities (such as ones related to music), entire categories of valid posts might be unviable because they'll just be downvoted by users with different taste.
From Lack of Downvoting. If this is the valid case and logical conclusion for removing downvotes, to prevent a disagree button—why would the inverse, attempting to prevent upvotes being an en masse agree button, not also be true?
if that were true, we'd basically be obligated to upvote things from apologia of saddam hussein to competently argued vaccine skepticism and "stalin was a good guy and the view of him is capitalist propaganda," even though they're objectively wrong or ridiculous.
That's honestly not for you to say at all. Again, your use of the word "ridiculous" continues to indicate that your usage of Tildes is such that any opinion that is not held by yourself is incorrect and not worthy of discussion. So which is it? Is Tildes your echo chamber, or a discussion platform?
Well, that's going to be up to the community to decide, I guess, and Deimos to an extent. But I'd highly suggest that upvotes should be considered ancillary for comment sorting & determination of quality, but auxiliary for the uses of agreement. To me, the best UI match for this design decision is to fully utilise comment votes for sorting—as is already done—but otherwise hide, partially hide, or bracketify them from the user's perspective.
It's possible to do that already with uBlock Origin (filters based on css selectors) or Stylus (userstyle css). ! Hide comment vote button/count (YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO VOTE WITH UBLOCK ON)...
It's possible to do that already with uBlock Origin (filters based on css selectors) or Stylus (userstyle css).
Labels don't show up for seven days after account creation, to give people a chance to decompress from the rest of the internet mentally before they start moderating. Being able to set conditions...
Labels don't show up for seven days after account creation, to give people a chance to decompress from the rest of the internet mentally before they start moderating.
Being able to set conditions on which labels show up, to whom, and when is the kind of thing the trust system will eventually handle.
New users can see labels I believe (My comment on https://tildes.net/~talk/co4/what_was_your_educational_experience_like is labeled exemplary if you want to see if you can view them). You just...
New users can see labels I believe (My comment on https://tildes.net/~talk/co4/what_was_your_educational_experience_like is labeled exemplary if you want to see if you can view them). You just can't use them. And as far as I know exemplary is the only label that has a visual for. Joke, off-topic, and malice don't have visuals, but they are used to determine how comments appear in a thread.
I would bet that a big influence here is the size of the communities too. I started Reddit in 2010 and at the time there seemed to be many more thoughtful, well informed, and civil discussions. As...
I would bet that a big influence here is the size of the communities too. I started Reddit in 2010 and at the time there seemed to be many more thoughtful, well informed, and civil discussions. As Reddit grew, the quality decreased. It's similar to the type of crowd you get at a Walmart vs Whole Foods. There's degrees of quality in communities and Reddit has tipped more towards the Walmart side. There's nothing wrong with that it's just a larger user base. Walmart is fine, but if you have more refined tastes you probably want something else. A more extreme example of this is YouTube. The quality of users there is abysmal in my opinion, but that's the community you get when everyone uses your platform.
Do you think the definition of an equal-sided debate requires equal representation?
Put it this way, you can have lots of people talking to a single flat-earther in a very respectful and equal-sided debate about whether the earth is flat. Can't you?
Exactly. An equal sided debate on climate change is 997 scientists running around because the world is ending and 3 "scientists" just come from cashing checks from BP and ExxonMobil saying everything is fine.
I think this should be modified a bit. What this site is missing is ideologues, and this has been my main issue with the site when it comes to political discussion. When everyone comes from a similar idealogical background (mainstream democrat in my opinion) many of the conversations end up being stale, unoriginal, and predictable. There is no back and forth. There is no discussion that ends up making you think or challenge assumptions. Everyone just generally agrees. There is no leftist on here, no paleocon, no anarcho-capitalist, no marxist, no rationalist, etc. It's all just the same.
What everyone else seems to be arguing is whether good faith arguments or dialogue can exist with ideologues. However, I have to say that people would still find it toxic if everyone ends up conversing in bath faith on even the most practical and logical of points. If you find good people or have good moderation that removes bad faith arguments, then I think you might get a more interesting discourse than what is current going on here.
EDIT: I do have to admit that I was being a bit hyperbolic about the actual numbers of people of various political backgrounds. However, my point was more about the general prevalence of a certain world view over others.
Hey now, I'm those things! Though I will say it does seem like we're few and far between...there's a lot of reasons for this but two that I think are the most pressing and can be addressed without radically changing some aspect of the site's culture:
First, invites. This part is important but obvious so let's move on.
The other thing that needs to happen to foster niche views and perspectives is the group hierarchy and expansion of groups in general. If I'm a leftist on a majority-liberal website, commenting on general (either explicitly political or with the purpose of making a political point about anything) topics with the rest of the website, every comment is an outreach program. Every comment requires explanation going back to the starting point of my beliefs, it can never simply be a comment only on the topic as might be possible when you have much more common ground with most of the userbase. That's not a fault of Tildes, that's the nature of talking to people whose beliefs share little DNA with your own, and to some degree it needs to happen. But people don't want to use a website just for that...sometimes you've gotta be on the backfoot to help people understand and engage with your views (and the other way around), but that's never going to be the most pleasant experience in the world nor the most stimulating one. It's just a much more taxing thing to do, so I think even the leftists who are here tend to be a little more quiet than you'd think.
That, and there's the stuff I think I've spammed all over the place about how deep, detailed discussion usually happens within communities, not in general spaces. No need to really get into this since I think it's mostly self-evident if you've been in this position, but just think...are you going to get a better conversation about a new exploit or route in a speedrun when talking to other people who run that game / are interested in running that game, or in a thread in /r/gaming where people are arguing over if using glitches is just lame cheating :P
The hierarchy / more groups is obviously the way to address these, and it's what I'm most excited for here. It's hard to get niche topics going in general, let alone ones where having the common niche assumptions necessary to engage with the conversation opens up a big debate.
Yeah, I completely get what you mean. Nuanced, good faith discussions can be difficult. I keep forgetting that when I comment and see a lot of replies haha
i have no idea what you're talking about with respect to leftists tbh, because we have a bunch of those (and people in this very thread are saying that they think that if anything most of the people here don't have the same opinions as the mainstream).
Really? Maybe there's not any vocal right wing extremists on here, but I think the hard left is pretty well represented. There aren't really any tankies or other authoritarians I guess, but their absence is not really a loss to mourn.
neither, really. i would consider myself more of a nondescript, generic leftist who just happens to be very far to the left socially and economically than try and attach an actual label to myself, mostly on the basis that i haven't read enough theory to closely identify with anything in particular. if i had to though, i think i'd probably classify myself somewhere between neozapatismo and, i dunno, anarcha-feminism? like i said, nondescript leftist.
I don't think this is an issue with tildes per say, but it's probably the "we simply don't have a large enough population of posters yet" point. I hope people don't take what I said about Tildes as a negative about the site. I quite like it here.
I was being a bit hyperbolic about the actual numbers of people, but my point was more about the general prevalence of a certain world view over others.
EDIT: Grammar
If you count Republicans as extremists, sure. They do exist (like for example the Trump thread), but they are severely underrepresented and has no chance to reply to everyone against them.
Seems like everyone in power on the Republican side is more than willing to stand by their man though, since he's the one who saved America from the Clintons, taxes are down, and the courts are back on the right. On one hand, can you blame them for putting up with his Twitter nonsense and keeping him from stepping on his own toes if they are otherwise getting what they want? But on the other hand, they're all pretty much in on it and whatever reasonable Republicans are out there are reasonable enough to not piss off the boss man.
I disagree. All the sides that warrant representation are to be found here on Tildes. In discussion of American politics (or even Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, or any country experiencing fascist resurgences) it is important to keep in mind who the sides are. The pursuit of a "both sides" pool for debate fail to learn the lesson of "fine people on both sides." In America, one of the sides is xenophobic white nationalism. I don't think Tildes, or any other platform, is better off when those people are represented.
To this you may say, but what about the "Moderate Conservatives?" - as if there were some group of reasonable Republicans which just don't speak up. Those moderate conservatives are called democrats.
This point is easy to miss when MSNBC is held up like its some bastion of radical left-wing ideology. But consider what it means to be conservative and how many Democrats to the right of Bernie embody these principles. Plenty are willing to defend American state capitalism, foreign intervention in Iran or Venezuela, oppose progressive income tax, oppose the Green New Deal, oppose Medicare for all. These are conservative views and they are certainly to be found in Tildes users.
Just because we don't have people frothing about "locker up" and "butter emails" and "freeze peach" doesn't mean there isn't a wide range of opinion. In fact, I think the fact that those people don't get invite codes is why @thisonemakesyouthink likes Tildes so much
honestly the fact that there aren't people screaming about butter emails leads to more in depth discussion when people aren't made to be defensive all the time or straight up driven away
I believe thisonemakesyouthink is speaking of this thread by Mumberthrax
I believe they no long offer default subreddits. That feature was deprecated some time ago, and replaced with /r/Popular and guided subscriptions ("Tick some boxes to say what you like, and we'll show you some subreddits you might be interested.").
Thanks for the explanation. That approach does seem closer to "suggested subreddits" than "defaults".
In my experience reddit subs range from honorificly bad to somewhat tolerable. I have never seen a subreddit I would consider good and the ones I did consider good have been ruined in the last ~2 years.
I have noticed whenever there is a controversial post in /r/Australia, trolls from other subs/countries will fill the thread and fill it with crap even if the sub is normally ok.
the only good subs are the explicitly very leftist ones, enlightenedcentrism is pretty good? but even then you are on reddit and the other parts of reddit seep into literally everything so its just an awful draining experience, if the admins actually moderated the site and got rid of the garbage pile subs and banned people being disgusting it might be ok, not even good, just ok.
I would argue that /r/changemyview is neither explicitly very leftist nor a garbage pile, /r/askhistorians is another, /r/listentothis, and so on.
Obviously it depends heavily on the mod teams, but there are plenty of worthwhile niche/topical communities. It's really mostly the political or overly broad subs that are either tiresomely one-sided or seething and loathsome.
Listentothis has been oddly above all this crap - and not because of anything the mods have done. We do have some really potent/detailed automod comment filters, but they rarely get tripped. It seems like in the music community, politics just never comes up, everyone that is killing each other in other subreddits just knocks that shit off when they are jamming to new music. The closest we ever got to a bad thread (that I can remember) was megan trainor. That was during the rise of fatpeoplehate and some of those other now-banned communities.
changemyview is decent but its content exhausting, I did write about how I think its being strictly moderated sort of helps with people arguing in bad faith who do not want thier views to be changed but I dont think askhistorians would be up to my standards gamingcirclejerk is ok but not gamersriseup really the only decent subs are the ones where the mods don't let bigotry seep through, theres some good LGBT subreddits and onguardforthee is pretty nice.
I feel like we should do a survey and find out what subreddits out there seem to be doing things 'right' where that's defined as having mods the users are willing to stick up for. We get that in listentothis all the time - the subscribers still have our backs, they upvote mod comments, they engage and ask questions, and hellishly controversial threads are handled like this.
What would interest me is everyone's varied thoughts on what 'right' is, and what good (or bad) things mods do to make or break their reputations. Perhaps we could learn something. I'd love to have a posse of behavioral psychologists study this stuff.
I actually have a few thoughts about issues mods run into and what things are right or what things are bad! its hard to type it all out in a comment like this though, it would be easier as a instant message conversation, so its more like a conversation.
Maybe I was looking at the wrong subreddits but I saw that the very left subreddits were just a massive circlejerk where all they talk about is how bad something else is. Any kind of disagreement is unacceptable.
What I like about tildes is how well different opinions are treated. You don't have to agree with other people but you do have to treat them with respect. You also don't have to consider every opinion as valid. If someone comes on and starts posting that vaccines cause autism you can feel free to try to provide truthful information but you should not jump to personal attacks and insults.
In fairness, the very right subreddits are the same.
Any time you get a group of people together who have something (anything!) in common, you're in danger of triggering some smug in-group talk about how good X is, and how bad not-X is - and how we X-types are better people than those stupid not-X-ers. I've seen it happen in everything from politics to television.
Mr Grey spent the first minute of that video explaining the concept of memes as originally described by Richard Dawkins in his book 'The Selfish Gene' without once mentioning the word "meme" or Dawkins himself. Instead he used the phrase "thought germ". The title is right: that video did make me angry.
However, while that video, as you say, touches on what I said, it does have a different point than I was trying to make. My point was more about in-group bonding and group identification by creating an "us" versus "them" dichotomy.
honestly you need to be more specific, what do you mean by disagreement? What left reddits did you find? There is discussion of things that are shit but its good discussion I learned a bunch of the finer details on some of those subs, Theres several LGBT related subs that are pretty great in my experience even though I no longer go to reddit because the site is awful.
I hope you aren't doing this but im getting a vibe of "leftist subs are awful because they ban me for disagreeing with fundamental shit like trans issues" because people really love to disguise why they have a problem with subs by making it sounds more mellow with stuff like "theres no room for disagreement"
also tbh not all different "opinions" deserve to be treated well if you try to do that on tildes you are going to drive the left away and make it haven for "centrists" who love to debate everything and anything to try and shift the overton window, some opinions are simply not up for debate and do not deserve respect,
changemyview has semi dodged the issue of catering to centrists out of some naive idea that we need to meet in the middle for everything because it forces people to actually engage and if they are clearly not interested in changing thier view their topic is removed. Which is great, because it helps a bit with people arguing in bad faith who have no intention of changing thier views, I don't think there needs to be a site wide version of that here though, cmv has already made a site separate from reddit.
Octofox has been on the site long enough and been active enough (even participating in discussions on ~lgbt on occasion) to IMO very likely not be meaning it in the way you're accusing him of. So please try to apply charitable interpretations and not assume the worst. See:
https://docs.tildes.net/overall-goals#the-golden-rule
really I was explaining how that might come off and im asking for a confirm or deny, if others want to treat me that way and explain how something im saying comes off in a way like that id welcome it so I can also confirm or deny, I don't want to be saying vague things that signal stuff that I do not mean to others.
Fair enough. However, it would only come off that way if you fail to apply a charitable interpretation, but if you don't want your own statement to come off like a genuine accusation you could perhaps try to coach your language a bit more to make it clear you're not actually accusing them of holding that opinion and instead just trying to let them know how it could be perceived.
I'm kinda over giving people the benefit of the doubt over internet forums, I've done that before, people act nice and say vague things and when I try to get to what they actually mean its revealed that its an act and they think something horrendous or harass me with multiple alt accounts and refuse to have a "civil discussion" with me while they continue to say they want one, I want people to tell me what they actually mean and cut through to the heart, but I can change my language so its more clear that i'm asking instead of accusing, im used to dealing with people on reddit and I guess I cant expect people to always say what they mean up to my standards im sure I can be clearer in my language.
LOL, that's something we are all struggling with... myself included; I have had to bite my tongue on several occasions, have stuck my foot in my mouth on several more, and have even felt compelled to publicly apologize a few times already on Tildes for making the wrong negative assumptions about a few people here. So I get where you are coming from, truly. But I am certainly trying my best not to assume the worst anymore, which is definitely a habit I also developed based on countless horrible interactions I have had on reddit over the last decade+. :(
But Tildes is thankfully not reddit, and IMO one of the best ways we can all help to ensure it doesn't fall to the same fate is to try our best to actually follow through with applying the principle of charity, and pointing it out as an overall goal for the site whenever we can.
right
I actually found the lgbt subs to be ok but a little boring. The kind of disagreement I am talking about are subs where people spam out "Capitalism is completely wrong and needs to be destroyed and is the cause of all our problems" and you will be banned for saying that most of our problems could be solved while keeping a more regulated version of capitalism.
i'm pretty sure both of you are off base here. neither of the major economic system of economics is inherently wrong unto itself either in the sense of being morally unjust or incorrect states of function, they can only produce those outcomes as a consequence of their structure.
It also takes extremely active moderation to maintain community standards on reddit. The community itself can’t enforce them because downvotes are easy, anonymous, and don’t actually explain the problem. So only mods can enforce what good or bad behavior is really.
an equal sided debate is not a popularity contest.
Calling people "cucks" doesn't bode well for you. Please do better than that, or you won't last long here.
Probably not, since in the (rare) cases that I remove something, it generally deserves to be removed and leaving it visible undermines that and makes removal mostly pointless. I didn't do it in this case, but it's pretty normal for me to also remove replies to the actual target comment. Like you said, leaving replies with no context is weird and mostly useless (unless they add something significant).
Also, on HN, the greyed-out comments are just downvoted ones. The closest equivalent on Tildes right now would be the auto-collapsed Noise comments. Flagged comments on HN are hidden even more, and I think only visible at all if you specifically enable "showdead" in your settings (and completely invisible otherwise, including to logged-out users). I believe if the HN mods/admins remove anything, there's no trace left of it at all.
your use of the word cuck kind of hints that you aren’t telling things exactly as they are.
games is a supposed to be a sub with quality discussion about games, not politics. and bpt doesn’t ban you if you’re white (otherwise they’d have no more audience).
Okay, you may have a point there, but I'll give you an example of where this doesn't work.
There was a post about Google Stadia and I weighed in my views about it and cloud gaming in general. I felt that it was a pretty bad idea because streaming games used up a lot more bandwidth. Apparently mentioning the chairman of the FCC Ajit Pai and the Trump Administration (Trump was the one who put Pai in charge) was enough to get my comment silently auto-removed.
If so, can you explain their Country Club system?
That's not being banned from the sub. There are a select set of posts some users aren't allowed to comment on. You're still able to view them, white people are still allowed to comment on other posts and see posts. Banned would be being a private subreddit and kicking out any white people who try to follow the sub.
the fact that people are still genuinely upset about a subreddit devoted to black people, black culture, and the black internet as a collective taking measures to keep the subreddit even nominally black when the surrounding website consists of roughly 90% white (and male and cis) redditors who don't know shit about black issues and which regularly come in acting like they, in the immortal words of the Dead Kennedys, know how the niggers feel, really does a great job of demonstrating why they did that in the first place and why i hope they continue to do it. white redditors have literally the entire rest of the website and all the non-country club posts. they're not suddenly in an apartheid state or being even remotely discriminated against because the big mean black moderators at BPT want to keep people from treating the place like an 1800s minstrel show and want to occasionally provide a space for minorities to talk about minority shit without being disrupted by people acting in bad faith or who have no understanding of any of that.
sure. but it’s because black people have to deal with a bunch of things white people don't and sometimes that gets tiring for black people and they just want a space where they don’t have to deal with that bullshit. do I think it’s the best solution? no. do I think it’s understandable: completely.
disclaimer: am white and just saying what i’ve heard
the Trump auto-removal is probably because the mods had had problems with political comments and were wasting time on it and decided it would be easier to just auto-delete possible political ones so they could focus on moderating the sub better. edge cases like yours happen though. if you don’t like the system, let the mods know!
no idea what the original user was saying about BPT but its actually been criticized by people when they realize its a bunch of white peo- oh wait you were alluding to that?
Games are political very often, if anything I wish games was moderated better to keep out bigoted shit and have good discussions about the politics in video games cause the politics that do appear are mostly just typical gamer shite
this, ironically enough, sounds an awful lot like the circlejerk-y whinging i hear from right wingers about how they can't call refugees from syria rapefugees or muslims a cancer who want to institute sharia law and kill all the westerners without getting banned or who bitch about how BPT is racist for meme-ing on fragile white redditors by fake-banning them from the subreddit even though it's literally a subreddit devoted to content surrounding black people being funny on the internet and half the white people there are idiots misusing AAVE and talking about black culture they have no understanding of, lol. i don't know if that was your intent, but if it was to rag on circlejerking you made one of the most circlejerk-y possible responses to this subject.
Oh no I totally agree with you. Judging an entire religion by the actions of a few is pretty dumb and if anything the sheer amount of hate is why I didn't go to Voat instead.
And sadly the view about Muslims wanting to spread Sharia law is pretty widespread where I'm from, even though the government has rightly clarified that sharia law has no jurisdiction in the UK.
But there is plenty of evidence that r/news is heavily censored and is actually pretty biased about how they swing their banhammer. Just look at how much the place is mentioned over on r/subredditcancer.
No downvotes works out fine in general, but imo it is the least useful with topics likely to be taken seriously and passionately. It encourages aggressive arguments that the participants don't really want to be in. If you come into a thread and find a comment that you believe to be incorrect or repulsive, but it isn't malicious in a way that would be worth reporting it for, there's very little to be done. There's this feeling that if you do nothing, they'll be the only / the prevailing opinion, and you can't let that happen. That doesn't sound so bad in the abstract, but it's just asking for toxic interactions. The person jumping in isn't there because they're excited to share their point or have a novel way of presenting it, they're coming in to balance out the voices at all costs, which is just begging for a directionless squabble. This leads to the kind of comment that I and others have made plenty of times, where you try to make one comment to get your perspective out there then dip. Those aren't perfect on their own, but beyond that they're really hard to keep to, especially since Tildes doesn't have any mechanics to make disengaging easy (unfollowing comments, blocking, etc.).
You can frame that as "it encourages dialogue between both sides" if you want to, but to my eyes it just leads to a lot of pointless bullshit, not productive discussion. I'm not saying we just need to have downvotes (I don't think that would ever happen anyway), but not having them leaves an unfilled hole. There's nothing in between hopping into an argument you didn't want a part of and a report, and it's hurting us.
Works out fine in things where no one thinks the stakes are that high, though...there's much less of an urge to stop someone from going unchallenged when they say a movie you don't like is good. I'm always down for dropping the explicitly political in favor of making a more pleasant community in general, even with all the challenges that brings. I don't think that will be popular either, my belief that Tildes hasn't been all that useful for political discussion doesn't seem to be a popular one.
Why? You make it sound like we have no control over if and/or how we respond to something. If someone having a different opinion from you is so important that you feel it needs rebuttal, is it not worth doing well? If not, maybe it's not that important after all.
Unless you're going to personally train every user on the website to have perfect self-control and have a similar approach to comments, it's important to talk about how the site pushes users to feel and act. "Well just make a better reply or leave!" isn't useful. We're not talking about the control you, me, or anyone specific has, we're talking about a site full of people who will respond differently to the way site mechanics and culture push them, and I'm suggesting that they could be pushed in a better direction.
I'd challenge the notion that it's the site pushing anyone to feel/act any particular way, but since I get what you mean, I'll leave that aside. Considering that the site and community is ostensibly building itself on a culture of thoughtful discussion, one would hope that we would be self-selecting against reactionary posting. Regardless, I'm not seeing the shortcomings of the current label system for replies that fall short of the standard of quality. I'm open to being convinced otherwise if you have some idea. I'm not in favor of implementing some sort of easy downvote-and-move-on mechanic either, as that doesn't encourage users to think past their immediate emotions and devolves things to a popularity contest, but I similarly don't see how useful it is for anyone just to chime in to say that they disagree when they're not willing to present something thoughtful in opposition. How does that help the site, even (or especially) in the instances where it takes more time and effort to debunk someone's BS than it's worth?
honestly in my experience this entirely varies on what the post is about. reactionary posting isn't a very big issue with most of the normal discussions, but with meta discussions like this you'd think some of the people here were metaphorical luddites with how immediately willing they are to castigate and disregard any idea which doesn't meet their idea of what is in the scope of the website. this is one of my largest criticisms of the site, actually, and i expounded on it awhile back: our culture on regular posts is generally fine,* but on more meta posts like this (and especially on feature suggestions) it usually sucks (mostly because of that reactionary posting), to a point where i know that it actively discourages some people from raising suggestions about/discussing the website and its community.
*although i have some reservations about this too and the trajectory of some of the standards people seem to have accepted as "normal" or at least not objectionable on here.whats a good way to do it that doesn't involve downvotes cause those aren't good either
I don't think it "solves" the problem, but @Whom did mention a few good options already:
And I personally think adding an unfollow (i.e. stop getting notifications for replies to your comment/topic) and user blocking feature would be a good first step, so I have created Gitlab issues for them:
Add "block user" feature
Add "unfollow" feature, allowing users to turn off notifications for replies to their comments/topics
And I think there might be some potential in adding a "placebo" comment label too... e.g. A "Disagree" comment label, even if it has no effect whatsoever, or only makes the comment collapse (like a "noise" labeled comments), but only to the user that applied the "disagree". Speaking of which:
Placebo comment labels
TBH I don't even think you have to hide the fact that it's a placebo label... even knowing it doesn't really accomplish much else, it still provides an outlet for expressing disagreement without having to refute the comment and potentially get in an argument. And a comment section "sort by most disagreed" could be interesting too, similar to "sort by controversial" on reddit.
Something that's purely placebo doesn't sit well with me, it feels a bit deceptive. Wrapping it into the potential "hide" feature makes the most sense to me. At least then I could use it without feeling like I'm trying to trick myself...but still, the "fuck you" button doesn't impact anyone but me.
An additional sort could be cool, though. I imagine it wouldn't get much use but having it exist at least would make the dislike feel like it's doing something. Nothing at all feels kinda icky...I believe YouTube does that with comments and I hate it.
Actually, AFAIK YouTube does the exact opposite of what you would expect. The thumbs down actually increases visibility of videos and comments, because YouTube considers any interaction, "good" or "bad", as "engagement" which is what it uses to determine placement, amongst other things. So if you see a shit video or comment on YouTube, the best thing to actually do is literally nothing. Don't reply to it, don't thumbs down. :/
And I do tend to agree with you that doing absolutely nothing feels a bit deceptive and "icky" hence why I suggested those alternatives, since at least then it would do something, however minor and maybe even only for the person who uses it.
Ah, I knew that was the case for videos but I didn't realize comments were that way too. Ridiculous.
oh i didnt think of that in relation to this but yea, reddit had an extension that let you block people and thier names would be put behind spoilers or hidden completely, if tildes can integrate that into the regular site that would be great, also being able to disable notifications from your topics as well as your comments would be great.
I think that part of the difference here for Tildes is that the moderation is much stricter, to the point where what is worth reporting is very different. While not in political discussions, I have labeled comments, and seen them then deleted, that would have been seen as perfectly acceptable on Reddit---even comments by prominent Tildes users.
This took some time for me to become accustomed to. In a particular instance I recall, the comment was a rude and rather off-topic dismissal of a post by someone who admitted they hadn't read the linked page at all, and was the type of comment that would likely have been upvoted on Reddit, albeit with a number of rebuttals. I would not have reported it on Reddit, and was uncertain about reporting here, but I think its removal really helped the thread not become derailed.
whom's point isn't really one of moderation, it's one of culture. if, hypothetically, you think that the culture here sucks because you think it needlessly offputs people, but the cultural things you take objection to aren't being expressed in what could be construed as a tangibly bad faith way (like the way i feel about most meta discussion on here), there's really no recourse for you because that's simply not actionable whether you choose to report it or not. basically the only way to currently steer the community on things that are not inherently actionable is through meta discussion, and for obvious reasons, that tends to not do much.
this is one of the other criticisms i have of the website, actually. we simply haven't cultivated a way for the community to effectively self-police the culture, so unless you basically want to get bogged down in messy-bitch meta discussions which are unlikely to go anywhere serious, there's not much of a way to push out actors and whittle away actions which could potentially lead to a decline in the quality of discourse here. in effect, i see it as we're currently relying on people to just not be underhandedly and consistently shitheaded in a way that's not really moderatable instead of working to address those problems where and when we see them, and that's... probably not optimal?
I honestly don't understand where this comes from. Yes, people debate fiercely in meta threads, but that's because they care, want what they think is best for the site and want their voices to be heard by the developers of the site. However, most of the time that meta discussion does result in "serious" action... either something being done moderation-wise (moving a topic, adding a tag, changing a link, etc) or a gitlab issue being created to try and address the problem brought up by people, and even often triggering plenty of backroom discussion about the ideas as well. I know that's true because often it's me doing said actions and I have been one of the top Gitlab issue creators for almost the entire time Bauke has been tracking that stat. And for the record, I have also even been convinced of several ideas which I was initially staunchly against, due to meta discussions (some of those convincing arguments were your own BTW so thanks. ;).
I understand meta is not for everyone, and can get tedious and tiresome, but nobody is forcing anyone to participate in the meta and it's incredibly important to encourage, especially at this early a stage in the site. And if you feel really passionately about something, but don't want to make a comment about it for fear that will trigger an endless debate about it, you can always PM me or Deimos, or make a comment/issue on gitlab yourself as well. Gitlab is much more chill and there is virtually no debate there, only purely practical discussions on the suggestion.
I think there's two levels of meta here - one people want, and one most people don't.
When we're in pie-in-the-sky mode (which is 99% of ~tildes content) most people don't want to be bothered by that I think, especially since there's so much of it right now compared to other areas of the site. They can unsub from ~tildes to avoid being pestered, but how many know that? This also creeps into reply chains of other topics sometimes and it'd be nice to be able to split those off as new threads in ~tildes instead of having them noise up the discussions that start them.
The other is the official site business, or in other words the content of ~tildes.official. That's the equivalent of /r/announcements here. That's for when Deimos has news, new features to test and discuss, or wants to take a poll and get opinions on something. This is the one people should stay subscribed to if they are interested in having input on how the site develops. If they keep up on those threads, they won't be missing anything that's 'real'.
This demarcation is I think not very clear or obvious to most users here. I like having most users subbed just to there, as a sort of red-cell team to challenge whatever new thing has been cooked up by the folks in ~tildes.
You're gaining on me! ;)
The thing that concerns me right now about tildes is that opinion-based voting is extremely prevelent. Enter any discussion thread and it's easy to find a comment chain between two users where both are being equally civil and rational and are arguing their positions equally well - and yet the popular stance (normally, but not always, the most left-wing one) is upvoted to +13 while the unpopular stance languishes on +3. This is the sort of fundamental problem in Reddit that I thought tildes aspired to solve.
you're not the first person to notice this, but honestly the whole point of a vote is that it's essentially an agree button on some level, and everybody is going to inevitably on some level use the votes like that, because that's the main way you can express agreement with a point (or disagreement with a point) on this website in lieu of noisy comments like "This." or downvotes. it's also worth bearing in mind that agreement buttons unto themselves are not inherently bad (especially on a website where votes quantitatively mean nothing) and that just because you write some long comment or are civil in arguing against something doesn't mean that argument deserves votes--if your argument sucks or nobody buys it, why would they then vote on it, even if you put it nicely?
I take your point here - but for me, the most interesting comment in any given thread is generally the one that challenges consensus and goes against the generally held political position of users of the site. In a vote-to-agree system, such a comment will inevitably end up buried under people simply restating and agreeing with the consensus. The word 'hugbox' has some bad connotations, but it's not the worst descriptor of an community that tends towards damping debate, which is where I see tildes going unfortunately.
i'm just going to quote two comments i have made on here with respect to this point.
I respect the fact that there are a diverse range of opinions among people on the political left - but the fact remains that perhaps 90% of the highly voted comments on tildes take political stances to which maybe 10% of the people I know in the real world would subscribe to; and moreover, I can generally predict what those stances will be before entering threads. Therefore, tildes clearly isn't achieving broad and balanced political debate. I still enjoy reading the comments here - the discussion quality remains very high - but I do wish for a wider range of viewpoints to be represented.
i'm not really seeing why the former is bad and the latter is something we should necessarily strive for. we're not at all seeking to be a balanced source of information, we're seeking to be a website which promotes quality discussions and whatever comes with that. (also honestly, i think you greatly overstate the prevalence of people who hold fringe political opinions here. this site is still very, very traditionally liberal even though it has a significant leftist contingent.)
I like it when news discussion sites reflect the range of opinions held by people in the real world. I understand if you don't care for that, but it is something that matters to me.
Are you looking for the cut and jib of vigorous intellectual debate?
Or are you looking for a place that will echo more of your thoughts and feelings?
The former. I would've thought that would have been evident from the comments I've already written in this thread, to be honest.
Then surely you are in the right place, friend.
Tildes is still small enough where your comments are still being read even if they don't score as many votes.
I know, man, I've been here since the start too. I'm just worried that this might not always be the case as threads garner more comments and the burying effect is consequently amplified.
Out of curiosity, do you have any ideas for a solution to that problem, short of removing votes entirely (which is untenable due to that amping up the noise and reducing the signal)?
I'm really not sure I do, to be honest. I kinda hoped that tildes might find one, though.
Fair enough... and we're certainly going to try, but it's not an easy problem to solve, IMO. :P It may even be impossible just because of demographics. But I think the people who have maybe come the closest to figuring it out (which is esp. admirable given the limitation of the platform they operate on) are the /r/changemyview mods, and I know Deimos has talked to a bunch of them a number of times about this sort of stuff.
Having their delta system would help address this somewhat, I think. Some visible way to label a comment as 'this changed my mind.'
Yeah, a "changed my mind" (+delta) comment label would be nice. I don't know what the best effect of that should be... maybe no sort adjustment and just some visible indication it was applied as a "reward" (maybe +trust/rep too)? That might encourage too much devil's advocating type comments and gaming of the trust system though. I dunno...
We'll just have to experiment until it works. We're going to have to do that a lot, I think. A good place to start would be by asking the CMV mods what kinds of social feedback effects they've observed arising from the mechanic their bot created, that might give us a better jumping off point for the feature. It's possible they've even got plans beyond what was implemented there on reddit, but couldn't manage to shoe-horn them into reddit's interface.
Yeah, it's no doubt a good idea to get them involved somehow if we can, but given the fact they have launched their own site now (https://changeaview.com) I don't know how much they will care to really participate here or how much they would be willing to "give away" either. :/
Eh, I'd bet they are willing to have the conversation. We both want the same things - good online discussions.
I agree - it's perhaps *the* most difficult problem to solve in the vaguely defined field of 'community engineering'. Perhaps requiring people to write, say, 100 characters minimum on why they think a post is voteworthy? There's a lot of reasons why that might not be workable, but I don't think it's an idea without value.
The problem with that is people are lazy, and you're ultimately just encouraging people to game the system. It's perhaps still worthy of consideration, as you said, but it has some serious downsides as well that would need to be addressed somehow before you can implement anything like it.
civility doesn't mean ones ideals are civil though
This happens even in debates when both stances are reasonable, within the Overton window, and not inspired by bigotry or vitriol.
do you have an example? The very problem is treating unreasonable and downright evil ideas as civil because they are presented in a civil way, if someones ideas are reasonable then they are civil...
This is an example of a idea presented civilly even though it is not a civil idea https://i.imgur.com/dmgpS.png
Next time you read a political thread on tildes, check for yourself. It's easy to dismiss such concerns with the argument 'well maybe the ideas aren't civil', but thankfully tildes is a quality enough forum that it's incredibly rare to come across someone expressing a hateful or bigoted viewpoint (i.e. one not worth debating).
there were a ton of uncivil ideas masked behind civility in that thread from the trump supporter, they were mostly outnumbered but they were still there?
Also wait, what concerns am I dismissing again? I got lost...
basically im pushing for a stance that isn't civility wins above all else because that favors the status quo and people who aren't personally invested in whatever thing.
maybe im just not understanding what you are saying. Could you provide an example where both sides are reasonable, it doesnt have to be an example on here, just one you can think up, one where theres a right and left wing side. I cant just look at a political thread on here because I dont know what you consider reasonable.
Not sure I read that thread, or if I did I've forgotten - I'd appreciate a link? Nonetheless, such instances are very much the exception rather than the rule in my browsing experience.
no problem, its from 2018 so it is a while ago
https://tildes.net/~talk/n0/so_far_this_site_has_been_mostly_politics_averse_but_i_am_curious_if_i_am_alone_as_an_maga_trump
the original poster acts like hes being civil but as it goes on its clear that he is at best woefully misguided to a point where its dangerous and at worst masquerading under the veil of civility to spread vile shit.
this comment
https://tildes.net/~talk/n0/so_far_this_site_has_been_mostly_politics_averse_but_i_am_curious_if_i_am_alone_as_an_maga_trump#comment-2so
helps sum up my worries, there are a bunch more that go into detail and word it better than I could if you peruse the post.
Ah yes, I do remember that thread (I'm actually in it, according to Ctrl-F :-). To be frank though, the fact that you had to reach that far into the archives sort of proves my point.
It should probably be noted that Mumberthrax, the user that posted that topic, is actually banned now for having posted a number of alt-right-ish, anti-"SJW" videos that started a bunch of heated and unpleasant political arguments on the site.
And it should also be noted that even so, I had quite a few great interactions with him here. In fact, I probably interacted with him more than anyone else TBH. I even have him as a friend on Steam, still talk to him on the rare occasion, and don't believe he is troll or has any ill intent towards anyone... he is a good person at heart IMO, however, he is also unfortunately someone who has been misguided, fell down a right wing filter bubble induced rabbit hole, and has bought a number of the alt-right talking points hook, line and sinker as a result.
based on that it sounds like I was accurate with my best case scenario, I've interacted with people like that, or at least people who seem to be like that but could just be pretending, its very hard to tell, if other people can try to pull them back from the edge thats admirable.
How does one unlearn hatred? How do we turn this negative feedback based social media world into a positive feedback based model? We may never figure it out, but I'm sure we can do it better than most forums just because they aren't even looking at the real problem.
interesting, ill try reading it but its a bit much for me right now
right but what im saying is I don't want to devolve back into that happening more and more, maybe its not an issue right now but it could become an issue if we just leave things on thier own, thats what happened when a post got that many comments, what will stop that from happening again?
So few truly hateful ideas have been expressed on this site that their instances can be counted on one hand. I don't think it's been an issue before and I don't think there's much threat of it being an issue (especially since the moderation here is very vigilant).
it was an issue in the previous thread that was HUGE one of the biggest the site has had if you sort by all time and most comments, if the site picks up more steam i see similar threads becoming more common and going further. I just think its something that needs to be thought about.
I'm strongly of the opinion the numeric vote quantity should be hidden precisely because of the reasons you elucidate. Let the user see the vote count on their own posts, but obscure it from any other perspective. That should eliminate some of the bandwagoning to an extent—we have evidence this works too. "Supervoting" via the exemplary tag is now much less common now the exact exemplary quantity isn't shown.
I don't know if I like hiding the vote count completely simply because I think it can have a positive effect in establishing culture. Seeing comments with large numbers of votes helps confirm what good contributions to the community look like. It's a way of supporting the behavior we want to see.
That said, I can't help but wonder if it might be useful to reduce the precision of the vote. Instead of giving the specific number of individual votes as it currently is, I'm wondering if it might be more effective to break those into tiers (something like
>1,>10,>30, etc.). This would still help affirm largely positive contributions but it would prevent a single or even a few individuals offsetting a vote count to help an argument gain more traction by popularity. It would also prevent surface-level comparisons between vote counts and, by proxy, their associated arguments. A comment with a score of3and a comment with a score of4would be indistinguishable under this method and would keep someone from making the judgment that the4comment is more correct, worthy, or popular.Well, that's the thing; a lot of people, myself included, have noticed that votes tend to be more of a popularity contest than an indicator of quality at some level.
I've had my (at least in my view, cordial & well presented) opinions about overpopulation (I think Earth is overpopulated), nuclear power (I'm not a supporter of nuclear power), and Apple (I'm a big apple fan!) been swamped by one-sided voting that perpetuates a reconfirmation of the Tildes consensus opinion on the subject, rather than encouraging quality discussion. I can see how some would consider this a chilling effect on continuing to contribute to the site.
All things said, I believe your vote bracketing idea (not fuzzying, I very much dislike fuzzying) could work quite well.
i mean, that's again kinda the whole point of votes though: they're an agree button, not necessarily something which is intended to "encourage quality discussion" unto itself. there are other mechanisms on this website and a general community consensus which are explicitly intended to do that and, at least as far as i can tell, do it pretty well.
besides, like i said up thread, just because you write some long comment or are civil in arguing against or for something doesn't mean that argument inherently deserves votes because it's long or civil or promotes discussion against the tildes majority or whatever else. if that were true, we'd basically be obligated to upvote things from apologia of saddam hussein to competently argued vaccine skepticism and "stalin was a good guy and the view of him is capitalist propaganda," even though they're objectively wrong or ridiculous.
Absolutely nothing in the Tildes Docs indicates this is the case. In fact, I point you to two different statements by Deimos that explicitly disagree with your statement.
Firstly:
From Comment Labelling. That doesn't sound like an agree button to me. It sounds like a quality indicator. Secondly:
From Lack of Downvoting. If this is the valid case and logical conclusion for removing downvotes, to prevent a disagree button—why would the inverse, attempting to prevent upvotes being an en masse agree button, not also be true?
That's honestly not for you to say at all. Again, your use of the word "ridiculous" continues to indicate that your usage of Tildes is such that any opinion that is not held by yourself is incorrect and not worthy of discussion. So which is it? Is Tildes your echo chamber, or a discussion platform?
Well, that's going to be up to the community to decide, I guess, and Deimos to an extent. But I'd highly suggest that upvotes should be considered ancillary for comment sorting & determination of quality, but auxiliary for the uses of agreement. To me, the best UI match for this design decision is to fully utilise comment votes for sorting—as is already done—but otherwise hide, partially hide, or bracketify them from the user's perspective.
disabling being able to view votes would be a good idea yea, give us the option to not see our own votes too.
It's possible to do that already with uBlock Origin (filters based on css selectors) or Stylus (userstyle css).
More filters and instructions on how to use them at https://unofficial-tildes-wiki.gitlab.io/tech/customizing-tildes#custom-filters
Tildes' equivalent of downvotes just seems to be no votes. So 'bad' comments still appear unless tagged malice or noise, but not at the top.
Can you even report comments on Tildes? I don't see any buttons other than Vote, Bookmark and Reply.
Are labels hidden to new users, or can you see labelled comments by default?
Labels don't show up for seven days after account creation, to give people a chance to decompress from the rest of the internet mentally before they start moderating.
Being able to set conditions on which labels show up, to whom, and when is the kind of thing the trust system will eventually handle.
New users can see labels I believe (My comment on https://tildes.net/~talk/co4/what_was_your_educational_experience_like is labeled exemplary if you want to see if you can view them). You just can't use them. And as far as I know exemplary is the only label that has a visual for. Joke, off-topic, and malice don't have visuals, but they are used to determine how comments appear in a thread.
I would bet that a big influence here is the size of the communities too. I started Reddit in 2010 and at the time there seemed to be many more thoughtful, well informed, and civil discussions. As Reddit grew, the quality decreased. It's similar to the type of crowd you get at a Walmart vs Whole Foods. There's degrees of quality in communities and Reddit has tipped more towards the Walmart side. There's nothing wrong with that it's just a larger user base. Walmart is fine, but if you have more refined tastes you probably want something else. A more extreme example of this is YouTube. The quality of users there is abysmal in my opinion, but that's the community you get when everyone uses your platform.
The reddit of today you, tomorrow me is long dead... at least until sometime next year when Tildes will probably look a lot like it.
I love that story every time I read it. I think I've read all the famous Reddit comments, but this one genuinely is the best, I think.