How does Tildes feel about recruiting?
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially in light of some recent threads, and because my own account here is nearing 1 year old. I don't think I've seen this come up yet, but it's possible I missed something. I'd really just like to see what the consensus is here, especially now that the site is fairly large.
Anyways, what I define as 'recruiting' is responsibly (preferably privately) messaging someone who hasn't posted on the /r/Tildes subreddit or reached out in some other way, and asking if they would be interested in joining the platform. My reasons for wanting to do this are two- fold:
For one, on the rare occasion that you come across someone who seems like a good fit for this site, and who is trying to contribute meaningfully to reddit but obviously getting frustrated, it just seems like the right thing to do. Wouldn't you want someone to reach out and let you know there is something better?
Secondly, it's a good way to grow representation of niche ideas, which could later evolve in subgroups. Have a favorite programming language you'd like to see represented here more? Maybe a favorite hobby? Whatever the case, I think most people are part of some kind of niche interest that they would like to see more of here.
Personally, I have done this very occasionally and I think it's reasonable, but usually only if the person was pretty explicit about being interested in a different platform. I don't want the site to be promoted in a spammy, unsolicited way like, "hey, you post good stuff! you should go post it on this other site instead of here!" I've gotten unsolicited messages like that a few times over the years on reddit, and it always feels just like spam.
In general, I think that it's better to try to mention the site in relevant comment threads than through messages. That way it's not as "direct", and people can just choose to take a look at it or ignore it. It's also visible to more people, and like @Douglas said, you can usually just include something like "PM me if you're interested in an invite" and you'll often end up getting a decent number of requests.
This is how I found out about Tildes. I saw a post on Reddit and PM'd the OP asking for an invite (it may have even been you).
I've been calling attention Spez's inability/inaction in regards to running Reddit ethically in /r/againsthatesubreddits, and typically end the note on "btw, if you want to gtfo of here, pm me for Tildes invites."
I ran out of all of my ten invites within 24 hours. I basically just looked at anyone who PM'd me for an invite, made sure they had a solid account, didn't have any toxic history, and invited them.
I'd really like to do the same for Mastodon. I'm tired of seeing organizations like Sleeping Giants do great work like call out Twitter and FB for their lack of ethics in regarding doing anything about Trump's hateful, rule-breaking tweets, but they themselves don't (appear to have) a Mastodon account.
Like, you don't even have to log into Mastodon, just setup an IFTTT rule to auto-post your tweets for you. ANY activity to light a fire on Mastodon to get it going would be great. I've been thinking of just PM'ing some accounts I follow to ask if I can do it for them, just so I have more accounts to follow on there.
...sorry, I digress. But my view is these platforms aren't going to populate themselves. If you see someone who doesn't seem to be problematic and is expressing their disdain for Reddit, go ahead and invite them to Tildes!
Edit: Grammar
NIce work.
I feel awkward doing that. I mentioned Tildes a couple of times when topical - say, when people are going "fuck reddit" - but the topic doesn't come up that often, and people have yet to ask me for an invite.
Doing that on reddit - as opposed to some group chat - would feel even more awkward, because, except for an handful of users on some specific subreddits, I don't know people on there, and vetting complete strangers... yeah. Awkward.
i don't know that that's necessarily the best approach when it comes to outreach, but yes tildes in general is more or less always in need of recruiting for a variety of reasons. it's just nice in general to recruit people who fit here for one thing, but also growing the number of people who use this place by recruiting from communities and creating similar communities here is probably integral to its future structure. right now, we do a pretty good job of recruiting (although i would like it if we made an effort to try and slightly diversify the people who we're taking on because no offense, but this place is sometimes very reddit-y in a bad way on some topics of discussion), but i find that it's the "keeping them around and cultivating a community that they feel inclined to contribute to" that's generally the problem, and obviously that's a bit of an issue when it comes to things like subgroups and growing an active userbase because if there's no community, keeping people and subgroups around is probably going to be harder.
I don't know how Tilderinos feel about this, but I can tell you that, with the exception of /r/tildes and maybe /r/RedditAlternatives/, Redditors react with great hostility to any mention of Tildes - even in threads that are openly critical of Reddit. Most Redditors are free-speech absolutists anyway. So I stopped mentioning it. And I'm not heavily invested in any other platform.
Nah, most redditors who criticize reddit aren't really for free speech. They're for protecting hate speech.
Christ, I've had this account for over a year.
I've tweeted random screenshots from it on occasion & linked random posts (granted, mostly in the first handful of months of using the site), and I think I've invited around twenty people just from them asking about that? Dunno if any are active, though, none of them told me their account names barring one.
I've done this a lot with people I know from other sites. Obviously check their background if you're not that familiar with them, overall it's a great way to grow the site imo.
Haven't invited anyone thus far but if I did, I would want to vet their post history first. If they were an alt right or leftist nut I wouldn't invite them.
Even though I occasionally browse Voat (I joined back during the days when Ellen Pao was CEO of Reddit Inc, long before white supremacists commandeered the site), I would never mention this site on Voat let alone invite a regular Voater because that place is just full of slur-throwing racist bigots.
Wrong type of recruiting. This topic is about unsolicited recruiting of users to join Tildes, not recruiting for jobs on Tildes.