How to be a good contributor to Tildes?

Honestly, I genuinely think the Tildes docs do a pretty good job of describing what is and isn't acceptable here at the general level, and the Tildes CoC perfectly sums it up:

Don't act like an asshole and routinely make other people's experiences—or lives—worse. Almost all of the restrictions on how you can use Tildes are just more-explicit versions of this basic guideline. In general, as long as you treat others with basic civility and try to contribute in good faith, you will be welcome on Tildes.

Do not maliciously impersonate someone else's identity (real world or online)

Do not maliciously attempt to counteract other users' attempts to delete or edit their content, such as by deliberately re-posting content they want to be deleted.

Do not incite or encourage harm against people, including by posting hate speech or threats.

Do not post anyone's sensitive personal information (related to either their real world or online identity) with malicious intent.

As does the Site Design philosophy doc mentioning The Golden Rule and Principle of Charity:

The Golden Rule

There are many variants of the "golden rule", but the base idea is that you should act towards others as you'd like them to act towards you. That philosophy applies to various aspects of how I'm approaching building Tildes: in the end, I'm trying to build the community site that I wish existed, one that treats its users the way they want to be treated.

For example, having low tolerance for people that consistently make others' experience worse. Nobody (except trolls) hopes to get abuse in response to their posts, so there's no reason to allow that kind of behavior. If people treat each other in good faith and apply charitable interpretations, everyone's experience improves.

This sort of approach can also apply to decisions related to site mechanics and features. For example, when a feature has a privacy implication, we should consider how we would want our own data to be treated. If the idea of another site collecting similar data would make us nervous, we should try to figure out a way to adjust the feature to reduce or remove that anxiety.

Which both work in parallel with something spelled out in the Announcing Tildes Blog post about not falling prey to the paradox of tolerance:

Limited tolerance, especially for assholes

Tildes will not be a victim of the paradox of tolerance; my philosophy is closer to "if your website's full of assholes, it's your fault".

This is a difficult topic, so I want to try to be clear about where on the spectrum Tildes is trying to land. I'm never going to refer to the site as a "safe space" or ban anyone just for occasionally acting like a jerk in an argument—I'd probably have to ban myself fairly quickly. However, it will also never be described as anything like "an absolute free speech site".

There's a reasonable middle ground between those extremes—I believe that it's possible to support the ability to freely discuss important and controversial topics without also being obligated to allow threats, harassment, and hate speech.

As for stuff not covered by all that, that's when things get a bit tougher, since Tildes is still pretty small and the culture here still in flux. But as for how frequently to post? Flooding the site with submissions, even with interesting/high quality ones, can have negative consequences (although that is mitigated somewhat by the Activity sort), so I tend to kinda hoard links a bit and submit them during lulls... which is why I often post so late at night. I don't really expect others to do the same, though I will sometimes mention it to someone if they post way too many articles all at once. :P

And another somewhat debatable/subjective one is when to apply the "noise" tag, which I tend to use on anything I don't think adds to the discussion, or actively detracts from it. e.g. kneejerk angry/cynical responses with little substance to them, "lol" type comments, etc. And there is often quite a bit of crossover where I find myself applying the "offtopic" or "joke" tag along with "noise" as well.

I think your individual answer probably lies most in what fatigues you about reddit and Facebook. What was it about those sites specifically that drove you off of them? Identifying that can help shape how you interact here, as a sort of positive counter to their negative aspects. Also, there's the idea that, with the size that Tildes is right now, each individual submission, whether comment or topic, has considerable weight to it. It's not just a drop in a very large flood, but has shaping power for the community at large. The people active on Tildes right now are implicitly directing the culture and values of the site, and you, as a member here, have equal say in that as well. Use that opportunity to address topics and interact in ways that you feel are valuable. Ask yourself what your ideal online forum looks like, and then act accordingly. You'll be helping to create that space by, well, creating it!

Beyond that, I think in general good advice to follow is to be kind and be thoughtful in your commenting. It's hard to go wrong here if your commenting is anchored in those two principles. Granted, those can be difficult to hold on to, especially when a particular topic is charged and especially when you feel that someone is being unkind or uncharitable to you. This is where I think being able to disengage is key. Tildes has an ignore topic feature that lets an entire thread disappear from your feed. We're also small enough that it's easy to sort of manually ignore commenters who you feel are counterproductive to your goals on the site.

Finally, making use of labels and voting is an easy way of shaping content that isn't yours specifically. Use the exemplary label to highlight really great posts. It lets you leave a private, anonymous (if you don't choose to sign it) message to the commenter. I've received some messages this way that were so meaningful and supportive that they have legitimately made me cry! It's a wonderful tool. Of course, label noise and malice posts as well. These help hold the line against negative content, but I'm a much bigger fan of highlighting positives than focusing on negatives. Let's let the bad stuff die on the vine and feed the good stuff so it'll grow.