17
votes
Ability to create new ~'s on the site
Maybe I missed this when skimming through posts, but when will the ability be added if ever to create new ~ on the site?
Maybe I missed this when skimming through posts, but when will the ability be added if ever to create new ~ on the site?
The mechanics page mentions that they want to keep group creation restricted at first while the community is small.
The whole doc is pretty interesting and probably a good read for all Tildes users.
I don't oppose the creation of new communities, but I'm strongly against users being granted free reign with that feature. Reddit exploded into hundreds of thousands of fractured (albeit creative) communities that became difficult to manage. I much prefer the hierarchy of (e.g.) ~music.electronic over having individual forums for ~music and ~electronic. This will be especially useful when you have temporary-need "forums" that can eventually be rolled back into the main forum (but retain their original tagging convention).
I advocate for very strict approval of new forums only after appropriate discussion and entirely at the discretion of site admin.
I agree. I think the current major topics cover a lot of bases and I like the idea of leaning more heavily on subtopics. But this raises some questions that I don't have a good answer to.
As an example, I'm someone who frequents subreddits related to food (cooking, recipes, baking, bread making) and beverages (coffee, coffee roasting, tea), and currently I feel like I don't know where to post content like that here.
I like the idea of major topics but would a general ~food catch all of those topics I'm interested in posting content about and talking about? Or would having distinct ~food and ~beverages be better? How many major categorizations would be best? I like how limited the current list is, so would users find it appropriate to have ~food.coffee, ~food.coffee.roasting, ~food.tea even though they're beverages? Or would ~food.beverages.coffee be better (It certainly would make manually navigating there cumbersome)?
I'm curious on everyone's thoughts on this.
A food/drink type category is one of the major gaps right now, and I think I'd probably like to create a group for it in the near future. I'm really not sure about the name though, like you said, ~food feels a bit off.
Navigation to something like ~food.beverages.coffee would be a bit cumbersome, but we probably won't be split up to that level for quite a while, and when we do we can figure out some methods of making it easier. For example, if that's the only group on the site that ends in "coffee", we could probably just make ~coffee work, even if it's not the "proper" path. Or maybe shortcuts like ~f.b.coffee, etc.
All very interesting ideas. I'm quite appreciative of the open discussion of the infrastructure here.
Thanks!
I like the shortcuts idea but I worry that you'd end up with too much crossover. ~f.b.coffee would also make sense if we're talking about ~food.baking.coffee, since coffee is a very common ingredient in baking. It would also work for ~food.brands.coffee or whatever. I just worry that you'd end up with far more ambiguity than is ideal!
I can imagine some topics I do on Reddit needing this. E.g. ~engineering.electrical.semiconductor.ic-design or some such so I'd like this. It would be very "usenet/uucp" like which I'm down with completely.
I'm a mod for /r/chipdesign btw
Hmmmm yeah I think that food/bev really should be a single top level group, but can't think of a good name--
still not sure, many of these just feel... off.
For what it's worth, I'm very interested in seeing that sort of content! Could you maybe post in ~creative in the meantime? Please? :-)
Certainly couldn't hurt :] I'll post a few things to ~creative this weekend
I really like the idea of subgroups. Rampant creation of groups would get out of hand very quickly but having a bunch of approved subgroups would help contain posts as well as provide a more focused discussion point
This is actually a really fantastic idea. I hate how fragmentation goes on over at Reddit. Well, not hate as that is overly negative but I feel like it has divided too many users.
What about implementing some kind of age/reputation based system? It could be based on accruing a certain number of votes, within a certain amount of spread, and after a certain amount of time?
For instance, "you can only create 1 new ~* per 8 week period, and only after you have accrued at least 8 weeks' operation on the site and 500 votes on a minimum of 50 posts/comments." That would make certain that only people genuinely engaged in creating communities could actually create them, because it sets the bar for creation of ~'s as being "someone who is active and positive in the community as a whole".
I don't think having discussions about the usefulness of every sub community is a good idea. It seems like a super big hassle, what if a new game comes out, or a competitor to this site? Something the deciding person does not care about?
That’s where the hierarchy will come in. ~gaming.NewGame
Shame on me, I read over the docs while I was waiting on my invite ... out of excitement I must have skipped over that :(
I'm glad that ~ creation is restricted right now. Back on Imzy, when reddit mods first showed up, they made a massive ton of communities, sprawled everywhere, and it sorta created a mess. Keeping things more focused in the beginning is a good idea, imo.
The reddit mods they invited did that? Wow, you'd think the mods would know better. Tildes was basically created by one reddit-supermod who patiently listened while another 50 or so reddit mods argued endlessly in circles for 1.5 years about how to do this stuff right - and at no point did anyone in our little corner ever think that massive early fragmentation was a good idea.
That sounds more like what the 'power tripping' reddit mod types would do - try to carve up all the space so they can sit on it and be in charge of it when the user arrives, almost like a form of domain squatting. That's deplorable behavior, and mods who behave like that are not the kinds of moderators you want running forums you visit. Ego is a mod's worst enemy, and the best people are the ones who are able to kill their egos, or at least, keep a handle on them the majority of the time.
eh some of it is ego, some of it is just excitement. a lot of folks who did it are nice folks and well meaning, many of whom are here now I'm sure.
Yeah, what happened on Imzy is the primary reason @deimos decided to restrict group creation and keep new group creation admin only to start... possible even forever, or perhaps even automate it somehow based on interest, e.g. by volume of certain tags used.
Glad to see you here btw @greenie. I don't think we have ever met before but I have heard a lot of good things about you from some of the other former reddit admins I know and current/former mods as well. We could definitely use your advice here on ~ as we move forward.
hi cfabbro! not sure we've met before either, but nice to meet you! And very nice to hear folks aren't saying mean things about me ;-)
I've been talking to chad about the project for a while now, though intermittently. difficult to find the time sometimes! excited to see how this develops.
I read the mechanic page and already voiced this concern/idea in a third level comment or something like that so I think it would be better to post it again:
Are sub-groups going to require to be created before posting on it or they will dinamically exists?
To clarify, when enabled, someone will have to create ~music.metal.instrumental and then post into it, or anyone would be able to just decide to post there?
I think that an hybrid solution here would be awesome:
Users can post in groups that don't exists and who browse ~music will see also posts from ~music.metal.instrumental.
By seeing that post, other people with that interest could begin posting on that same group. Once the group get enough activity for enough time it could be promoted to a "static" group.
How/who request the promotion can be discussed as they would probably require a moderation team, eventually a custom theme, etc.
If a group never reach that threshold it will still exists only as a dinamic group thus not having to waste resource on the system with moderators, custom stuff etc that will have to be stored server side.
Eventually a reverting logic could be implemented that just revert a static group to a dinamic one if it's inactive for too long but this is really more of an optional stricter policy.
Any thought about this?
I wonder if there's another step here: subgroups being totally dynamic.
ie:
If I post to ~music with a post tagged
[hip-hop] [instrumental], that post could exist in~music.hip-hop.instrumental,~music.instrumental.hip-hop,~music.instrumental,~music.hip-hop. Is there a benefit in structured hierarchy? Users could sub to the root~musicfor everything, if they want, or they could sub to specific hierarchies that they enjoy (ie: i'd sub to~music.instrumentalbut not~music.hip-hop.instrumental.This would also drop the need for specific moderation teams or support structures for larger subgroups.
A relevant example: some articles have been posted to ~science that qualify as news. Should those go in ~news.science or ~science.news? Should those actually be different things, or should they be effective aliases of each other? What implications would that have on the reputation system?
Honestly, that's why we shouldn't have a strict "no repost" policy.
As an example: content posted by me would go to ~science.news imho (even if I personally would just post to science) because I don't follow ~news but maybe another user could see the same content or just read my topic and decide to crosspost it to ~news because... well it fits both groups.
What the system should do is just warn the user that the same link exists already in another group so that the user can consider if the other group is more relevant as categorization.
Or maybe, in this particular case maybe "~news" is not really a good main group?
If you think about it news is more like a category applicable to several other topics more than a group by itself?
I think you're probably right about this. I specifically avoided creating a top-level group similar to ~videos because of similar logic—that "video" is a type of content, not a subject. I think overall it would be better if we could try to put things into groups based on their subject matter, and then maybe have some special views/tools for things like "show me all videos" or "show me all news", no matter which groups they're in.
Should that not be applied to ~books then since it sort of straddles the line between type and subject? Would ~reading and ~writing be better for top levels in that case? Then we could do ~reading.books and ~writing.creative, etc
Reading is a bit unspecific/ambiguous though... but having ~books and ~writing is a bit weird. Should we just go back to our original ~literature idea since that covers both? That might lead to a pretty deep and complicated hierarchy with that broad a topic though.
I really don't know, it's complicated, but I feel like books generally refers to fiction, which is more of a (vague) subject. In that way it's similar to having ~tv, ~movies, etc. I don't think we'd argue that we should get rid of ~tv and put each show inside a group more suitable to its subject matter (for example, putting a space related TV show into the general "space" group).
I like where this is going. Something always bothered me about the names of reddit's default groups. I think you hit on it.
I agree with this idea obviously, maybe make "news" a default tag so you can easily filter for that?
What if ~news was a special sort of group that could have subgroups linking to news in other groups? So in the case science news, there'd be a ~news.science that redirected to ~science.news. If you wanted to get a general news "feed," you could still go to ~news which would have topics from subgroups bubbling up, even from ones outside ~news.
It might mess with the idea of creating trust within groups, though. (Or maybe building up trust in ~science.news would count towards your general ~news trust?)
I think ultimately news applies to way too many topics to explicitly define a subgroup for it in every single subject on the site it could apply to. I think it's sort of implied that each subjects group will include relevant news, since what would even be on ~science if not news related to science?
~news right now is a catchall... but it may get removed eventually and replace with ~world.news when/if we start wanting to make country specific subgroups there like ~world.us, ~world.ca, etc We're not quite sure yet though.
That makes sense~ And I like the idea Deimos mentioned above of sticking with groups based on subjects rather than types.
Man, this sort of organizational thing feels so complicated (at least to me). At the moment we have ~creative for posting things we've made, and I was imagining different subgroups surrounding different arts and crafts if there's ever enough content to support it (like ~creative.3D or ~creative.sewing).
But people create writing and music, too, which already have groups they'd fit under... so what's the dividing line. I dunno, I am probably over complicating things and rambling. :D
Yeah hierarchies are certainly not easy to design. You have to put great care and thought into their structure, naming standards, etc... and with the limited namespace, even how you address conflicts within groups that can lead to splits if left unaddressed like on reddit (e.g. /r/marijuana splitting into /r/trees). We came up with the idea of admin arbitration and punishment of bad-faith users which will hopefully be sufficient for that. But hierarchies just have so much potential, especially for aiding group discovery, that all the trouble is worth it, IMO.
People posting their own music was almost universally reviled under the music subs on reddit, because at best there'd be one out of fifty that were on-par with professional musicians. It'd clog up the new queue, and users would get miffed so much of it was 'garbage' that they'd stop visiting. Every single sub that allowed it would eventually change their minds, and it got chased all over the music subs trying to find a home.
Eventually there were a few subreddits that catered to it (thisisourmusic, theseareouralbums) but they remained at very low levels of activity. I felt so bad about this that we talked it over and came up with the 'music melting pot' threads that are now weekly posts in listentothis, just to give self-promotion an actual home where there was a chance people would see it. A sort of listentothis-within-listentothis.
Even that didn't work. Everyone posts there, no one votes or comments or listens to it. Everyone wants to share their music, no one wants to listen and give feedback, even among the people who create this stuff. Not even the listentothis users are willing to help with it, and they are after the most obscure of the obscure.
So, perhaps having it all as part of the ~creative hierarchy would help solve that problem? It certainly does not work out under a music hierarchy. :/
Huh, I had no idea~
Including music in ~creative might work, then? I'm assuming there's an audience out there somewhere for it— folks who like making music, discussing it, and giving pointers to others.
[A tangent: I wonder if there's a way to use some of the systems being discussed (like trust and increased permissions) to encourage substantive responses within ~creative. Like looking at number of topics someone makes vs the number of "high quality" comments on other people's posts. Someone who shares but never contributes to building the community accumulates less trust/standing.
Another possibility is new people only gaining the ability to make topics and share once they've been active in ~creative for a little bit. Guess that runs the risk of being discouraging...]
I understand your point but exceptions are the first cause of loss of hair in developers.
Joke aside, I think "news" is more fitting as a tag to which someone can filter to, given the group it's in.
If you think about it, on the internet everything is a "news" only for the subject that read it. I could have read a news yesterday, you could have read it a week ago.
It's a tricky concept and it's categorization shouldn't have that much weight as a group imho.
wait, theres a reputation system?
There isn't really yet, but it is being planned.
oh cool, let's just hope this dosen't act like other sites where it excludes people because of lower karma making it harder for them to gain karma.
Edit: I read into it and realize that theres a huge difference between karma and reputation XD, sorry
really interested in seeing how it works out
You got such a good name
you too! <3
Also, this would create an interesting structure where posts aren't relegated to single groups, allowing for more discoverability.
yeah
This seems like it could be a good solution. Right now, the difference between tags and subgroups isn’t completely clear to me. It seems like subgroups could just be a special type of (nested) tag.
slightly related while reading this comment: https://tildes.net/~tildes/sr/daily_tildes_discussion_thoughts_about_making_the_site_publicly_visible_but_still_invite_only#comment-442
Depending on the ~s creation mechanic, I wonder if a system a-la-wikipedia wouldn't be better than how reddit does it where you end up with extensions like RES to figure out if a subreddit is actually a thing or not. And if ~s creation is restricted, it's probably not even worth it to link non-existing tildes. ( the only issue I can think of with that is that the comments might have to be re-parsed if we want a new ~ to retro-actively appear in old posts but that's more an implementation detail )
I know this site is still relatively small and I do agree with keeping everything regulated, but being able to create sub groups should be allowed at some point for sure.
For example, I typically use Reddit for specific gaming communities. I would hate to have to start talking about a game within the general gaming ~ only to have 90% of the people not know or care about the game I want to talk about.
It will be interesting to see how everything unfolds. I'm still getting used to this place, but so far I like it a lot.
I feel the same needs to happen for TV shows at some point, as I don't feel like I should be posting screen captures on ~tv since it just feels like a general TV news group.