This topic is for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app.

I'll summarize the major updates at the start of each similar topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Three Cheers version 1.1 is out for Android and iOS! (Sep 14, 2024)

• Added an in-app YouTube player
• Added 2 settings related to YouTube and autoplay
• Tweaked the labels dialog UI
• (Android) Fixed Back button navigation in the WebView
• (iOS) Fixed UI bug commenting on a deeply nested comment

Android version 1.1.2 (Oct 4, 2024): Fixed YouTube player setting, should take priority over Browser type setting. Fixed a UI bug with ignored topics appearing unignored.

Some technical details: The YouTube player uses the YouTube IFrame Player API using the Android and iOS wrapper libraries. They are both open source and I was able to submit some improvement patches to them.

Regarding release schedule: Prior to version 1.0 of the app, I was working (a little too) hard on the app and putting out monthly megathreads. These days I'm allocating my time differently, so topics won't be monthly. Please continue to feel free to reach out, whether posting in the megathread even if months old, or emailing me using the contact info on the app store pages, or using iOS TestFlight feedback functionality.

Huge thank you to the few people who have set up a recurring donation in the app. From a worker perspective, it's still a tiny tiny amount if comparing with an actual wage developing apps, but luckily for my users, I'm not trying to make a wage from this app, and plan to continue developing it at my own pace. That does mean that updates will be somewhat unpredictable though.

Previous topic: May 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

Or sideloadable APK at https://www.talklittle.com/three-cheers/

iOS version on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/three-cheers-for-tildes/id6470950557

Join TestFlight for iOS beta testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app.

I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Three Cheers version 1.0 is out for iOS! (May 2, 2024)

• Submit topics!
• Added donation option in Settings
• Share links from other apps to create a Tildes submission
• Edit topic text
• Delete topics
• Fixed bottom tab bar bugs

Three Cheers is now on the App Store! (As of May 7, 2024.) This enables in-app purchases for donations, as well as installation on older devices that don't support TestFlight, such as iPhone 5s and iPad Air 1st gen.

iOS v1.0.2 (May 29, 2024): Fixed links shared from some apps going into wrong submission form field. Fixed lost spaces when editing a submission tag. Fixed <small> HTML tags in comments. Fixed crash replying in a topic, if visiting that topic from inbox.

Known Bug in v1.0.0 on iOS: Scroll bugs preventing access to some submission form fields when sharing link from another app. (Fixed in v1.0.1.)

Android v1.0.4 (May 29, 2024): Fixed scroll-to-top button bug. Fixed <small> HTML tags in comments. Fixed unwanted space added when editing submission tags.
Android v1.0.3 (May 1, 2024): Added username to Submit screen, improved donation animation, fixed Expand all comments bug.
Android v1.0.2 (Apr 13, 2024): Validate submission tags, fix submit UI bugs, fix comment UI bugs with horizontal rules.
Android v1.0.1 (Apr 1, 2024): Fixed crashes on home feed

Three Cheers version 1.0 is out for Android! (Mar 25, 2024)

• (Same features as 1.0 on iOS)
• Require minimum Android 7.1.1
• Fixed refreshing feed after login/logout

Last month's topic: April 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

iOS version on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/three-cheers-for-tildes/id6470950557

Join TestFlight for iOS beta testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing.

I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Three Cheers version 1.0 is out for Android! (Mar 25, 2024)

• Submit topics!
• Added donation option in Settings
• Share links from other apps to create a Tildes submission
• Edit topic text
• Delete topics
• Require minimum Android 7.1.1
• Fixed refreshing feed after login/logout

Android v1.0.2 (Apr 13, 2024): Validate submission tags, fix submit UI bugs, fix comment UI bugs with horizontal rules.
Android v1.0.1 (Apr 1, 2024): Fixed crashes on home feed

iOS v0.11.3 (Mar 28, 2024): Fixed UI bugs and crashes on large iPhones (Pro Max series), particularly when using the in-app WebView browser.

iOS v0.11.2 (Mar 8, 2024): Fixed crashes in Inbox under the Comments tab.

Android and iOS v0.11.0 (Mar 3, 2024)

• Added sort options for topics
• Tap username on comment, and topic OP, to view profile
• View markdown of topic OP
• Fixed minor UI bugs
• (Android) Fixed wrong profile showing via bottom tab, after logging into a different account

Last month's topic: March 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

iOS version on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing.

I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Three Cheers version 1.0 is out for Android! (Mar 25, 2024)

• Submit topics!
• Added donation option in Settings
• Share links from other apps to create a Tildes submission
• Edit topic text
• Delete topics
• Require minimum Android 7.1.1
• Fixed refreshing feed after login/logout

iOS v0.11.3 (Mar 28, 2024): Fixed UI bugs and crashes on large iPhones (Pro Max series), particularly when using the in-app WebView browser.

iOS v0.11.2 (Mar 8, 2024): Fixed crashes in Inbox under the Comments tab.

Android and iOS v0.11.0 (Mar 3, 2024)

• Added sort options for topics
• Tap username on comment, and topic OP, to view profile
• View markdown of topic OP
• Fixed minor UI bugs
• (Android) Fixed wrong profile showing via bottom tab, after logging into a different account

Android and iOS v0.10.0 (Feb 15, 2024)

• View and send private messages
• Added button to send private message from a user's profile
• Added "Tap to refresh" when a feed is empty
• Show posted time in topic OP
• Renamed bottom tab to Inbox (instead of Notifications)
• (Android) Removed animation when using bottom tabs
• (Android) Fixed crash when replying from a user's profile
• (iOS) Fixed crash toggling Details in topic OP
• (iOS) Fixed layout bugs with markdown tables
• (iOS) Fixed UI bugs when replying in a user's profile
• (iOS) Fixed minor UI bugs and crashes

Last month's topic: February 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

iOS version on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing.

I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Known bugs

• iOS v0.9.1 crashes when tapping a Details block in a topic OP. Fixed in v0.10.0.

Recently:

Android and iOS v0.10.0 (Feb 15, 2024)

• View and send private messages
• Added button to send private message from a user's profile
• Added "Tap to refresh" when a feed is empty
• Show posted time in topic OP
• Renamed bottom tab to Inbox (instead of Notifications)
• (Android) Removed animation when using bottom tabs
• (Android) Fixed crash when replying from a user's profile
• (iOS) Fixed crash toggling Details in topic OP
• (iOS) Fixed layout bugs with markdown tables
• (iOS) Fixed UI bugs when replying in a user's profile
• (iOS) Fixed minor UI bugs and crashes

Android v0.9.1: Fixed crash double-tapping comment in profile, and other rare crashes and minor bugs.

iOS hotfix v0.9.1: Fixed a possible crash opening the Notifications tab.

Android and iOS v0.9.0 (Jan 22, 2024)

• View user profiles ("all posts" feed; more options like bios coming in the future)
• Tweaked app theme colors
• Fixed various layout bugs
• (Android) Fixed crash tapping links in comment reply preview
• (Android) Fixed missing Share button on topic OP if logged out
• (Android) Fixed black background setting on Android 9 and earlier

iOS hotfix v0.8.1: Fixed keyboard blocking the Exemplary prompt dialog.

Android and iOS v0.8.0 (Jan 9, 2024)

• Apply comment labels (Exemplary, Offtopic, Joke, Noise, Malice)
• Tap an Exemplary label you've received to see messages
• Added Reply to text selection context menu
• Quote selected text when replying
• Fixed app incorrectly treating user as logged in after restoring a Google Drive or iCloud backup
• (Android) Added Share button to OP in comments section
• (Android) Support Android 14
• (Android) Fixed rendering non-breaking spaces
• (iOS) Fixed logout bug if no connectivity
• (iOS) Fixed markdown table layout and CPU idle bugs
• (iOS) Fixed rare crash collapsing a comment

Last month's topic: January 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

iOS version on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing.

I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Android v0.9.1: Fixed crash double-tapping comment in profile, and other rare crashes and minor bugs.

iOS hotfix v0.9.1: Fixed a possible crash opening the Notifications tab.

Android and iOS v0.9.0 (Jan 22, 2024)

• View user profiles ("all posts" feed; more options like bios coming in the future)
• Tweaked app theme colors
• Fixed various layout bugs
• (Android) Fixed crash tapping links in comment reply preview
• (Android) Fixed missing Share button on topic OP if logged out
• (Android) Fixed black background setting on Android 9 and earlier

iOS hotfix v0.8.1: Fixed keyboard blocking the Exemplary prompt dialog.

Android and iOS v0.8.0 (Jan 9, 2024)

• Apply comment labels (Exemplary, Offtopic, Joke, Noise, Malice)
• Tap an Exemplary label you've received to see messages
• Added Reply to text selection context menu
• Quote selected text when replying
• Fixed app incorrectly treating user as logged in after restoring a Google Drive or iCloud backup
• (Android) Added Share button to OP in comments section
• (Android) Support Android 14
• (Android) Fixed rendering non-breaking spaces
• (iOS) Fixed logout bug if no connectivity
• (iOS) Fixed markdown table layout and CPU idle bugs
• (iOS) Fixed rare crash collapsing a comment

iOS hotfix v0.7.2: Fixed crashes in Notifications tab, and fixed crash inserting emoji in reply

Android and iOS v0.7.0 (Dec 27, 2023)

• Added a markdown formatting bar when composing a comment
• Edit comments after posting them
• View markdown of other users' comments
• (Android) New setting: Quit confirmation
• Fixed comment reply preview bugs
• Fixed bugs viewing direct linked comments
• Fixed numbered list bug
• Fixed rate limit error message
• Fixed crashes and UI bugs

Android and iOS v0.6.x (Nov/Dec 2023)

• In-app notifications of comment replies
• Highlight and jump to linked comments

Last month's topic: December 2023

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

iOS version on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

TestFlight

TestFlight link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

Three Cheers for Tildes is an unofficial mobile app for Tildes, originally announced on Tildes' 5th birthday. The original announcement answers some basic questions about the app.

iPhone and iPad support

The app supports iOS versions as early as iOS 12.4, which includes iPhone 5s and iPad Air 1st generation.

The app also sports an iPad dual-pane layout, similar to the tablet layout in the Android version.

30-second iPad demo: https://youtube.com/shorts/S0tT2qM-Wh8

Missing features

Like the Android app, the iOS app is still missing tons of features—hence "alpha". Alpha version 0.5 is currently good enough for light use, to help check on Tildes once or twice a day. You can log in, vote, and comment.

Notable missing features as of v0.5: Submitting topics; Markdown editor; In-app notifications; Comment labels; Sort options.

Android?

(Looking for the Android alpha? See the Android alpha testing announcement.)

Now that the iOS alpha version is out, I can look at adding missing features to both Android and iOS. Thanks for your patience if you've been using the Android app in the meantime.

Update (Nov 1, 2023)

The app is now available for alpha testing on TestFlight: https://tildes.net/~tildes/1bt0/three_cheers_for_tildes_ios_version_is_open_for_alpha_testing_on_testflight

Original post

Hey Tildes, I failed to account for certain time-consuming parts of the TestFlight submission process, and so the first iOS alpha of Three Cheers will be delayed at least a few days. I'm disappointed I won't meet the promised October deadline due to this oversight. Sorry to anyone who's been eagerly waiting on the edge of their seat (@cfabbro). I've been working hard on the app though, and excited to release my first ever iOS app soon.

It's in approximately the same state as the Android alpha version, which is to say, it's functional and pretty stable bugs-wise (fingers crossed), but missing a lot of features you'd expect from a Tildes app.

For example, you currently can't: apply comment labels; see reply notifications; submit new topics; change sort options.

The plan is to get this released and then go back and add new features to both the Android and iOS apps.

If you're an iPhone user and looking for more features right away, check out Backtick and Surfboard, two great apps by talented developers.

For Three Cheers, I've made a point of supporting iOS versions back to version 12.4, which includes iPhone 5s and iPad Air 1st generation. So if you're using an older iPhone/iPad that doesn't run the other apps, you might want to give Three Cheers a shot when it's ready.

Thanks for bearing with me! I'll post another topic when the TestFlight link is ready. (And maybe request for this topic to be locked if needed.)

I am a reddit refugee and I was drawn to this network by its mission, its decisive rebuff of chasing capital at all costs, and the overall vibe.

I lurked for a while before I was invited to join, but shortly after joining I noticed something. While a good discussion from opposing viewpoints can help everyone broaden their horizons a bit, it felt like white supremacists were testing the waters. While I can't directly cite any threads, there were a couple instances where I felt one side was seeing just how close they could get without being obvious. But it felt like some of the subtler dog whistles were there.

It felt very similar to how QAnon got a lot of people with the disinformative statistic about child abductions. After all, who's going to be on the other side "child abductions are bad?"

After seeing a few threads and getting the same vibe, I stopped visiting the site for the last couple months. Life getting pretty busy also helped.

I haven't been back long enough to determine for myself whether I'm in a "Nazi bar" or not. I would be happy to admit that it was all in my head. But it is a major concern for any up-and-coming social network. And that's an opposing viewpoint no one needs to take seriously. Was it in my head? Was I reading too much into things? Did all the nazis just go to X? More generally, how has moderation been with the influx of new users? The same, but more? A couple extra reminders doing the trick? Uptick in bans? Is this information already somewhere and I'm a bad user for not having seen it?

About this one: https://tildes.net/~news/19bm/regional_news_thread

First of all I want to thank everyone who participated and gave it a shot despite the weird setup, and apologize for ghosting the meta-discussion about it. Y'all have many suggestions which convinced me that my original idea was flawed.

For one, I agree with Algernon_Asimov that splitting into a separate 'US-local news' and 'non-US global news' would have made more sense. If there's a next round, I think I'd focus on US states first, then non-US countries in another thread. But before that I want to get some feedback to make sure.

Do you think general news threads like that are necessary?

Algernon_Asimov said that news should just be posted directly to the frontpage to be more visible.

spit-evil-olive-tips made a point about the distinction between local news of general interests vs. local news of local interests, and the latter could benefit from having dedicated threads.

For me, I believe megathreads are fine as long as they're optional. In my experience, people do sometimes prefer to post in comments instead of as full topics. As long as people are free to choose either way (which is different than on Reddit where if there's a megathread then posts outside it got removed), overall we should end up with more activity not less.

Does the comment-to-comment format make sense?

In my head I imagine that to be a natural way to generate location-based grouping, but I could see the convoluted setup might be confusing and unenforceable. One the one hand, if each location only has 1 post then the extra step is unnecessary. On the other hand, if there are multiple locations, each with multiple posts then trying to find your regions of interest would be a pain.

Is the scope of the thread too broad?

This was a point made by skybrian here, which was in the context of the original thread being both US and non-US. But even if we divided them into separate US and non-US, are they still too broad?

Having one thread for each location is probably the most natural way, I fear that currently that would ended up being too niche. This was touched on by merry-cherry here as well. I could imagine that would work for a US state (which ever has the most people here) but since no one tried it yet, it's hard to know which states are most likely to succeed. And we probably shouldn't just make one each for all them (which would fill the entire frontpage with nothing but state names).

Should these threads be news-focused?

While that was my original goal, maybe megathreads could be more useful if they fills the needs of the people posting in it rather than just the one starting it. Usually that requires guesswork by the poster but since I'm already asking, might as well.

For the US-local thread, if the goal is to serve as testing grounds to see whether there's enough activity to make the case for local groups, maybe news is not necessarily the most popular when it comes to local content? If anyone support this direction, please share some examples of what types of content you'd like the most when visiting local groups. If you do, please also rank them in order of importance. That way the scope of the thread could be made to focus on the most needed activity as starter.

For the non-US global thread, do you still want dedicated global news? If so how should we set it apart from just regular posting? boxer_dogs_dance mentioned r/anime_titties being quite high quality for global news, any lessons we can adopt from them?

Digging around and I found this post asking about how to do cultural exchange on Tildes, maybe shifting the focus from global news to this might be more fruitful? (people are probably more willing to share nice things about their country than drama). Each subthread can be something like this Turkey Information Thread, or something else maybe.

Should they be recurring?

News probably make sense as recurring, others depend. Since this is still in trial whatever arrangement we agree on, I'll probably just make one and see from there.

Anything else you want to let me know (like maybe don't do this anymore haha), shoot away. Also it's not like I'm an official thread maker or anything, if any of y'all have your own take, go for it! The more people trying out stuff the better.

Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

Alternatively, opt-in to testing via web: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.talklittle.android.tildes

Three Cheers for Tildes is an unofficial mobile app for Tildes, originally announced on Tildes' 5th birthday. The original announcement answers some basic questions about the app.

It is still missing tons of features—hence "alpha"—but I felt it would be better to release something instead of waiting too long. Alpha version 0.5 is currently good enough for light use, to help check on Tildes once or twice a day. You can log in, vote, and comment.

Notable missing features as of v0.5: Submitting topics; Markdown editor; In-app notifications; Comment labels; Sort options.

The iOS version is underway and I am aiming to have it done by the October deadline achieved during our June fundraiser.

Other iOS apps are already in beta testing: Backtick by @wababa and Surfboard by @earlsweatshirt.

I'll try to keep this post updated with changelogs and known bugs.

I don't have a public issue tracker for feature requests; feel free to leave requests in comments here. Thanks my Tildren!

Hi all. On my Pixel phone I have the accessibility option for font size and display size turned up a notch or two but noticed that not all of the text in Tildes adheres to this. Some front page topic text is bigger, some of them remain small.

Is this something that can be quickly tested and fixed if it's a bug? It might drive poor sighted people away from the site.

I'm assuming it's not me, as my Pixel 7 is quite new .... but I am on the Android beta program.

Can anyone else try and see if it's a localised issue or more global?

I can post screen shots of needed but not sure what image sharing sites you prefer to use in here!

Edit:

Fixed with a chrome flag....

the text-scaling is being replaced by the "Accessibility Page Zoom" feature (currently hidden behind the feature flag in chrome://flags)

Updated: June 29th 2023

Hello folks,

Like many of the other people that have been around lately, I'm new to Tildes, I've been browsing it without an account since last Monday or so while waiting for an email response (thanks @Deimos), and in that time I've been working on a little tool to add some QOL features I thought would make my experiences with the site feel better.

I didn't plan on sharing it initially, because I didn't think I'd be able to get the javascript into a usable state, and I'm not fond of sharing my code in general, as I always get a big wave of impostor syndrome whenever I do, "What if they look at my messy code and see how silly I do some things", that sort of thing. But with Tildes I want to try to correct some of my internet behaviours, for years I've generally stayed as a lurker, never commenting or sharing content of my own, so, hello there, hopefully, I stick to my guns and you see more of me.

Onto the script itself, currently, I've built five main features into it all of them being rather minor on their own, I did do bug testing on everything and couldn't find anything else, but if you notice anything please feel free to report it to me or post an issue on the repo. It's easy to miss bugs when you've only got one set of eyes.

Tildezy Github

The GitHub contains installation instructions if you've never used a userscript before, and contains some images showing off each feature described below.

Hopefully, someone gets some use out of this with me, I look forward to chatting with you all.

EDIT
Refactored the code and added a new comment traveller feature based on some of the comments below.

EDIT 2
Up to 1.3.0, we've got markdown buttons now, see comment explaining the change or check out the github readme

Just a hack job, but I'd seen some comment about it being inconvenient to ignore posts so I made a quick userscript (tested with Tampermonkey on Firefox) that adds hotkeys for bookmarking/ignoring/voting on a post. It can also navigate to the link or comments or prev/next pages (←/→). Only implemented for posts 1-9 at the moment.

Ex:

i+2 ignores and hides the 2nd post (or restores, if ignored)

? shows a summary of hotkeys

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Tildes
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      0.1
// @description  Quickie convenience hotkeys for tildes.net
// @author       TT
// @match        *://tildes.net/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=tildes.net
// @grant        none
// @require      https://unpkg.com/hotkeys-js/dist/hotkeys.min.js
// ==/UserScript==
(function () {
    "use strict";
    let Action;
    (function (Action) {
        Action[Action["Invalid"] = 0] = "Invalid";
        Action[Action["Bookmark"] = 1] = "Bookmark";
        Action[Action["Comments"] = 2] = "Comments";
        Action[Action["Ignore"] = 3] = "Ignore";
        Action[Action["Open"] = 4] = "Open";
        Action[Action["Vote"] = 5] = "Vote";
    })(Action || (Action = {}));
    const regex = /tildes\.net(\/~(?<group>\w+))?/gi;
    let match = regex.exec(document.location);
    //In a group if I wanted to support hotkeys there?
    if (match.groups.group) {
        //alert(match.groups.group);
    }
    else {
        addArticleNumbers();
        addMainHotkeys();
    }
    //Route
    function routeAction(action, event, handler) {
        event.preventDefault();
        //Grab index.  Zero-index?
        let indexText = handler.key.substring(2);
        let index = parseInt(indexText) - 1;
        if (isNaN(index))
            return;
        actOnArticle(action, index);
    }
    function actOnArticle(action, index) {
        //Get article for index
        let article = document.querySelector(".topic-listing").children[index].children[0];
        //Do the thing
        switch (action) {
            case Action.Bookmark:
                if (article.style.borderStyle === 'solid')
                    article.style.borderStyle = 'none';
                else
                    article.style.borderStyle = 'solid';
                article.querySelector('button[data-ic-put-to$="bookmark"]').click();
                break;
            case Action.Comments:
                article.querySelector(".topic-info-comments a").click();
                break;
            case Action.Ignore:
                //Hide vs blank?
                if (article.style.visibility === "hidden")
                    article.style.visibility = "visible";
                else
                    article.style.visibility = "hidden";
                // article.style.display = 'none';
                article.querySelector('button[data-ic-put-to$="ignore"]').click();
                break;
            case Action.Open:
                article.querySelector(".topic-title a").click();
                break;
            case Action.Vote:
                article.querySelector(".topic-voting").click();
                break;
        }
    }
    function addArticleNumbers() {
        let titles = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(".topic-title a"));
        for (let i = 1; i <= titles.length; i++) {
            let title = titles[i - 1];
            title.text = i + " - " + title.text;
        }
    }
    function addMainHotkeys() {
        //Set up handlers
        const handleBookmark = (event, handler) => routeAction(Action.Bookmark, event, handler);
        const handleComments = (event, handler) => routeAction(Action.Comments, event, handler);
        const handleIgnore = (event, handler) => routeAction(Action.Ignore, event, handler);
        const handleOpen = (event, handler) => routeAction(Action.Open, event, handler);
        const handleVote = (event, handler) => routeAction(Action.Vote, event, handler);
        hotkeys("shift+/", (e, h) => alert(getHelpText()));
        //Page nav
        hotkeys("left", (e, h) => Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(".pagination a")).find((e) => e.textContent == "Prev").click());
        hotkeys("right", (e, h) => Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(".pagination a")).find((e) => e.textContent == "Next").click());
        for (let i = 1; i <= 9; i++) {
            hotkeys("b+" + i, handleBookmark);
            hotkeys("c+" + i, handleComments);
            hotkeys("i+" + i, handleIgnore);
            hotkeys("o+" + i, handleOpen);
            hotkeys("v+" + i, handleVote);
        }
    }
    function getHelpText() {
        return `
    ←/→ = navigation
    b = Bookmark, i = Ignore, v = Vote,
    c = Open comments, o = Open link,

    Action+[1-9] calls that action on the corresponding article`;
    }
})();

I joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and I'm absolutely loving the interface and community.

In the last few days of using Tildes, I noticed a particular problem that was mildly annoying; if you have the "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic" setting on, and you click on a link that is supposed to lead to a comment in a topic you have already visited, it won't jump to that comment.

Searching around, I found a post about it from a day ago, in which long-time users have mentioned that it's been a known problem for a while now. In those comments, someone mentioned permalinks as a solution, but it appears that's still in the works.

For now, I've made a quick userscript that will address this issue (and adds some slight related functionality). It hasn't been thoroughly tested yet, so if any issues occur, please let me know. This userscript is designed to be used with Tampermonkey (a privacy-friendly alternate that should work is ViolentMonkey), which is available in all popular desktop browsers. Installation instructions for Tampermonkey are available on their site (it's installed like any other extension).

To install the script, you can head to this GitHub Gist which contains the code (click "Raw" to open the TamperMonkey install prompt), or you can copy and paste the code from the following dropdown block into a "New script" on the TamperMonkey dashboard. The dropdown is not guaranteed to contain the latest version.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Tildes Comment Link Fix
// @namespace    https://gist.github.com/blankdvth/6da89fff580e8cf6e50f88847ddb5729
// @version      1.2.0
// @description  Fixes comment links (anchors) not working as a result of Tildes' comment collapsing feature.
// @author       blank_dvth
// @match        https://tildes.net/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=tildes.net
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

/* 
    USER SETTINGS
    This script is not big enough to warrant a visual settings menu, so adjust settings here.
    true = enable, false = disable
*/
const alwaysRun_S = false; // If enabled, will always run the script, even if the comment was not collapsed (site works fine in this case). This is useful if you want to make use of the other settings.
const smoothScroll_S = false; // If enabled, will smoothly (animated) scroll to the comment. If disabled, will jump to the comment.
const uncollapseIndividual_S = true; // If enabled will uncollapse parent comments into one line instead of fully uncollapsing them.
const uncollapseChildren_S = true; // If enabled, will uncollapse all children of the comment. If disabled, will leave them collapsed.
const collapseIrrelevant_S = true; // The script uncollapses all parents to ensure the comment is visible. This will collapse irrelevant (not direct parent) comments again.
// END OF USER SETTINGS

/**
 * Uncollapses the comment if it is collapsed.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
 * @returns {boolean} True if the comment was collapsed, false if it was not
 */
function uncollapse(element, individual = false) {
    if (element.nodeName !== "ARTICLE") return false;
    var removed = false;
    if (
        !individual &&
        element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed-individual")
    ) {
        element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
        removed = true;
    }
    if (element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed")) {
        if (individual)
            element.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
        element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed");
        removed = true;
    }
    return removed;
}

/**
 * Uncollapses all direct parents of the comment.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 * @param {boolean} collapseIrrelevant If true, will collapse irrelevant comments again
 * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
 * @returns {boolean} True if any parent was collapsed, false if none were
 */
function uncollapseParents(element, collapseIrrelevant, individual) {
    const relevant = []; // List of relevant elements (direct parents)
    var wasCollapsed = false; // Whether any parent was collapsed
    while (
        element.parentElement &&
        element.parentElement.nodeName !== "SECTION"
    ) {
        element = element.parentElement;
        relevant.push(element); // Add parent to relevant list
        if (uncollapse(element, individual)) wasCollapsed = true;
        // Collapse all irrelevant sibling comments (if feature enabled)
        if (collapseIrrelevant && element.nodeName === "ARTICLE") {
            element
                .querySelectorAll(
                    `article#${element.id} > ol.comment-tree > li.comment-tree-item > article:not(.is-comment-collapsed)`
                )
                .forEach((child) => {
                    if (!relevant.includes(child))
                        child.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed");
                });
        }
    }
    return wasCollapsed;
}

/**
 * Uncollapses all direct children of the comment.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 */
function uncollapseChildren(element) {
    element
        .querySelectorAll("article.is-comment-collapsed article.is-comment-collapsed-individual")
        .forEach(uncollapse);
}

(function () {
    if (!location.hash.startsWith("#comment-")) return; // Not a comment hash
    const comment = document.getElementById(location.hash.substring(1)); // Get comment element
    if (!comment) return; // Comment does not exist
    // Uncollapse the comment itself, and it's parents, then perform other actions if needed/enabled
    if (
        uncollapse(comment) |
            uncollapseParents(
                comment,
                collapseIrrelevant_S,
                uncollapseIndividual_S
            ) ||
        alwaysRun_S
    ) {
        // Uncollapse all children (if feature enabled)
        if (uncollapseChildren_S) uncollapseChildren(comment);
        // Scroll to the comment
        if (smoothScroll_S) comment.scrollIntoView({ behavior: "smooth" });
        else comment.scrollIntoView();
    }
})();

Someone mentioned elsewhere that they signed up for Tildes “years ago during the beta”. That reminded me: Tildes hasn’t reached beta-testing yet.

Officially, Tildes is still in alpha-testing phase.

The login page says “Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha...” And the Contact page says “To request an invite to the Tildes alpha...”

We’re still in alpha-testing. Alpha-testing of software usually happens on an incomplete product before it is released to the customer.

This is a very important point. Tildes is not feature-complete yet: there are literally hundreds of feature requests yet to work on before Tildes will be what people want it to be – and even that list is far from complete. In Agile software development terms, Tildes is a minimum viable product, or, in other words, “a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development”.

Tildes works as it is, but it’s a bare-bones forum: you can post, and comment… and that’s about it. It’s a proof of concept. There are a few minor tweaks here and there, which give the impression that Tildes is more complex than it is, but they’re misleading. There are plans to make Tildes a more complex website but, right now, most of that complexity of Tildes exists only in people’s imaginations (and there have been some very imaginative people contributing to that list of future features!).

Most questions about “Why doesn’t Tildes do X?” or “Can Tildes do X?” can be answered simply by saying “Tildes is incomplete and X hasn’t been built yet.” There are some questions about missing features which can be answered by saying “Tildes was never intended to do X”, but those are far and away in the minority. Most flaws, drawbacks, and problems with Tildes exist because Tildes is still a proof of concept, rather than a finished product.

It’s also worth noting that Tildes’ current feature set is absolutely not up to the task if the user base and site activity increase too quickly. There’s too much manual tinkering required at the moment to make things work properly: for one thing, there are no significant moderation tools on Tildes (that’s almost all done manually at the moment). There are still a lot of features yet to be built - and we don’t even know what some of those features are yet!

To pre-empt the people who will rightly point out that Tildes is 5 years old: Tildes’ feature set was intended to grow gradually over time, in line with a gradual growth in users, activity, and the need for those features to exist. However, Tildes has not undergone much growth over the past few years, so the existing features were sufficient to manage the existing activity. Basically, the site didn’t need a lot of fancy features to handle the low traffic here.

This sudden surge of new users might change that. But it will take time to build more features. That was always the intention, and it hasn’t changed now.

Until then: Tildes is still in alpha-testing. It’s an unfinished product. Set your expectations accordingly.

EDIT:

If you're one of the many people who seem to be replying to this topic, saying "it's okay, I like this simple bare-bones site as it is"... then you're probably not part of my original intended audience for this topic. This topic was aimed at all the people who are arriving here, being taken aback at how simple Tildes is, and wondering where the advanced features are.

However, we can still take the "set your expectations accordingly" message and apply it to you: "Tildes is an unfinished product, so you can expect it to change in the future. It won't be like this forever."

Either way, "set your expectations accordingly" is the message here, whether you're expecting more features and not finding them, or whether you're expecting simplicity and enjoying what you see. Either way, you should know that things will change around here. Maybe slowly. Maybe quickly. Maybe they'll get better from your point of view. Maybe they'll get worse from your point of view. But, change they will.

Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick.

Background

I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I got started, the API change chaos happened. Thankfully, I remembered signing up for Tildes.net a few years ago and decided to pivot to make an app for this site instead! The app is still a work in progress, but I believe releasing early and getting as many eyes on it during development results in a better end product (and it's more fun for me 😊).

Features

Here are the current features of Backtick:

• Light mode/dark mode
• Login to Tildes.net (suports 2FA)
• Front page feed with sorting support
• View, vote, and comment on posts
• Reply and vote on comments
• Collapse comments
• View notifications
• Full markdown rendering
• Text-to-speech for posts and comments

Here is a video demo of the app in its current state (updated for v1.8.1): https://youtube.com/shorts/iukQJyJbtw8?feature=share

I know there missing features, but as I mentioned before, I would love to get as many people in as early as possible to help shape Backtick's future.

Testing

If you're interested in testing the app as I continue to work on it during my free time you will need:

• An iOS 16 device
• TestFlight (Apple's testing app)

You can access the beta here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/gNH18NE9. If you have any issues please DM me your Apple ID email and I will send you an invite manually.

Thanks, everyone! Have a great weekend.
- Ash

Edit:
Getting some great feedback! I'll be tracking bugs and potential features here if anyone is curious: https://chatter-brick-3d3.notion.site/Backtick-Tracker-888150b641ae4c0ab39dc0345783bc50?pvs=4

Edit2:
I created the Discord server to help facilitate better collaboration with those who wish to be more involved. It will be a place for discussion around potential features, bugs, and general chat. I will still be taking in feedback via TestFlight and Tildes.net, so it's perfectly fine if you don't want to join.
Join here: https://discord.gg/aah7nkfpBY

After reviewing all the beginner friendly tags on the GitLab and figuring out easy answers the hard way, I finally made my first merge request for issue #700 to an open-source project! It isn't much, and probably took me 10x the amount of time it would take for someone who knows what they are doing, and it probably has some issues that needs to be worked out (although I tried to test as thoroughly as possible), I still submitted it. Even if it doesn't get accepted, I'm sure if someone wants to pick up my pieces, they can do so and build out this functionality in a better way.

I just wanted to share and put it out there that you don't have to be a master programmer to make contributions to this site))

I've been trying to set up a dev enviornment for Tildes, mainly so that I can actually test my MR (!136), and I've been running into a few issues.

However, since we also have a new influx of people who might be interested in contributing to Tildes, it seems like a good time to collect resources on setting up the dev environment, as well as helping anyone running into issues.

So, if you have issues or advice, post them here! I'll be adding my questions in a comment shortly.

Relevant wiki pages:

• Development / Initial Setup
• Development / General Development Info

Edit: A more recent post on setting up the dev environment on Apple Silicon / M1 Macs

I generated markdown with a table of contents which is auto-generated on Emacs. I tested it on https://rentry.co and it works fine. On Tildes the links don't work. Is there a way to make this work? It would be nice to have that for longer posts. Thanks!

The first two image links in the spoilerbox of my Timasomo update don't work (as in aren't clickable or turn the text into a link), but others do.

Bug?

Based on replies to this comment there seems to be a decent amount of interest around the topic of reworking voting, so I thought I would start a thread to get some more input. We already had similar discussions about a year ago but it looks like some people's opinions may have shifted somewhat? and as was noted in the comment thread, 1 week wasn't really enough to accurately assess the value of something like making vote counts invisible.

Things to consider:

• Do you think how voting works changes your/other's behavior on this site? and if it does, is this change positive or negative?
• Would you support reworking/modifying voting? If so, how?
• How long should we test said modifications if they are made?
• anything else you consider relevant

Collect and code, until it is done.

And now it is.

Ladies (the few that we have, I mean holy ^FUCK ), gents and everyone inbetween, welcome to the results of the 2020 Tildes census, which is only 34% less horrifying than 2020 itself. And you better believe I'm going to keep this up for the whole post, because fuck the responses this year, while greater in numbers, were occasionally still [REDACTED].^{thanks, thought police}

In the year of the lord, 2020^{CAN YOU PLEASE END ALREADY}, we got 350 responses in, which is a whopping 100 more than last year. I don't know how many accounts we have in total, no one does, and I'm too lazy to calculate the percentages right now because I'm calculating as we go so from the point of me writing this to clicking Post Topic an hour or two will probably pass.^{Update: I went to bed, so like 10 hours passed} Absolute numbers is all you're going to get here, so fuck me, fuck you and fuck off.^{I need some alcohol}

Anyway, let's go through the census. I let JotForms compile this nice graphical report that is pretty much useless because it completely breaks once either sexuality, gender or the myriad of various operating systems the people on here have get involved. But it's still funny seeing it struggle. Have a link to the PDF. So back to good Excel, my old nemesis.

Aggregated Data

Thankfully, this time around you'll have access to generate all this shit yourself, HERE YOU GO. The thing is in JSON, so easily deserializable, etc etc. I'm sure you people are skilled enough at typing the words into the IDEs to magic the data into your memory.

Important info: Empty answers are usually marked NO ANSWER, in case of numerical values it's usually -1 for age, -2 for the Kinsey scale (-1 is taken) and -69 for the 3 political values from the Sapply test, as these range from -10 to 10. Yes I made the default value -69. It's everyone's favourite number after all. Also, for some absolute FUCKED reason one of the values has 3 more entries than the other ones, I'm sure it has a totally VALID reason that has nothing to do with people entering bullshit. NOTHING.^{FuckingKILLME}

Also I can't be bothered to edit the "wrong" data out, i.e. typos in languages etc, so those are all in, maybe someone with more compassion than me can do that.

Kowalski, Analysis

First of all, I'm going to less graphs this year because it's fucking hard to aggregate things like ethnicity when you get responses ranging from black to a literal link of someone's You23AndMe results. Yes. I mean props to you for that but like, uh, FUCK, what am I going to do now? YOU ARE ALL MAKING THIS WAY TO FUCKING HARD. ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ)

This propagates to basically all responses and next year I'm probably going to captain a way straighter course with less options, because I can't fucking MAKE FANCY GRAPHS WHEN YOU GIVE ME TOO MANY INDIVIDUAL RESPONSES^{FUCKINGKILLME}

Personal Shit

Geography

Not much has changed, the US still dominates, Canada second, though the British are catching up. I'm sure you'll have your tea party eventually. Though with good ol' Boris in charge I don't know if annexing the yanks is such a good idea. Also, as there are no invidual option here for everyone to FUCK IT UP it's the most sane graph of them all. No fucked colours this year, I promise, it's all scale.

Fancy Graph #1: Geography

Age

Fancy Graph #2: Age by decile For those wanting to repeat this, watch out, as the age by decile and specific age questions were exclusionary. You'll have to combine the results to get the same numbers. I hope. Unless I fucked up. Equal possibility.

Also whoever entered 28.9, because of you I had to make the age field in my code a double instead of an integer. Fuck you.

Gender etc.

I honestly thought this was going to be the wildest answer, but y'all are such a minority that it's fairly sane. The real clusterfuck starts after this question. Also whoever wrote prefer not to say, DID YOU NOT READ THE PART ABOUT THE OPTIONAL ANSWERS, [REDACTED] PLEASE [REDACTED] AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

Anyway as I said, fairly standard results.

Fancy Graph #3: Gender

Trans? Value
NO ANSWER 13
no 312
yes 23

Yeah I'm not gonna make a graph for a yes/no question, if that's bigoted you may scream at me in the comments.

Sexuality

I MADE THE SCREENSHOT BUT I FORGOT TO ADD IT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Kinsey

Also forgot about you. Average is 1,37, idk what else to do.

Ethnicity

This was a mistake. 124 wrote white. 23 wrote caucasian. One person wrote causcasion. One person wrote that it's illegal to ask this question in their country. Someone wrote I bleed red white and blue.

THIS WAS A MISTAKE.

Kill me. Safe to say, that Tildes is, as someone put it perfectly: white af. Yes this was also a reply. KILL ME.

Language

Fancy Graph #3,5: Language^{This was added later, and I'm really not updating the others.}

Religion

I'm just gonna let the graph speak for itself, I don't have it in me to keep the anger up.

Fancy Graph #4: Religion

Politics, Education, Work

This is where the fun begins. No, honestly not really.

Politics

If I average out our Sapply values, we get this compass result. Yeah we're all communists. So whoever said in their dislike the alt right people on this platform, I really don't know what you mean. If anything we need more to achieve PEAK CENTRISM. In all honesty, the people saying that this sub is a leftist echo chamber (there were a few), you may have a point.

When we get to the magical field of how everyone identifies themselves politically, well, let's just say^{ah, there's the rage again} I'M NOT GONNA REPEAT THIS NEXT YEAR, GREAT FUCKING IDEA. Whoever entered confused, I FUCKING AGREE. SINCE WHEN IS PINK A FUCKING POLITICAL AFFLIATION? We do have a pirate though.^Nice

You may wade through the rest OF [REDACTED] YOURSELF in the published data.

Education

Tildes is an educated lot, contrary to popular my belief after making this census. A good chunk of people have a Bachelors, Masters, PhD. Still only one MD though, so if you have a medical emergency take it up with... checks notes ^{Ah fuck I can't reveal anything.} ...Take up with them. ^{JK please call your local emergency line when you need help}

Fancy Graph #5: Education

Work

Actually fairly sensible results, except a few, like that one person that entered not STEM, thanks for not giving me any useful information. You have the ability TO NOT ENTER SOMETHING. THIS GOES FOR THE PERSON WHO ENTERED meh AS FUCKING WELL, [REDACTED].

Fancy Graph #6: Work

Technology

Fancy Graph #7: Computer Operating Systems

Fancy Graph #8: Mobile Operating Systems

Basically just like religions. You all have to many options, since we're all communists now according to average, and options are bad, you MAY ONLY USE WINDOWS VISTA FROM THIS POINT ON, OR THE GESTAPO WILL PAY YOU A VISIT ^{fuck, wrong mass murderers}

About Tildes

Have Acc? Value
NO ANSWER 7
yes 312
no 29

For consistency, and it didn't fit into the picture in a nice way.

Fancy Graph #9: Various Tildes Statistics

Most people migrated off reddit, followed by Hackernews. The rest is various random shit, include like 5 different ways of "I don't know", but the one person replying Gab surprised me. Didn't think people would hop on Tildes off Gab, since Gab is basically extreme rightwing Twitter and Tildes is like, the antithesis to that. Leftist userbase, longform discussion.

The long replies

Once again, can't graph the shit outta this, so here's the collection of them. One reply per line. Had to format some replies to fit this format, I know someone did bullet points, apologies.

What do you like about Tildes?

What do you dislike about Tildes?

What would you change about Tildes?

Final notes

To keep my sanity in check, although when I read this post, that probably didn't work out too well, I kept some notes.

1. Someone suggested to ban all Europeans off the platform. You now have the stats, so I'm going to let you guess from where they are. Fucking hilarious.

2. Someone very cordial managed to write an entire blog post into one of the final freeform boxes. I appreciate the feedback and I'm sure Deimos does as well, but why did you have to make so many empty lines? TBH it's more on Jotform for not removing linebreaks when giving you the CSV, it breaks the entire format.

3. We should have a prize for that person who fit a textbook into the box for ethnicity, also amazing, you mad fucking lad (or lass, but statistics are on my side, lol)

In closing, most answers were good and interesting, except for the part where I let you run wild with the politics question, holy fuck, but that's on me. To the people that reduced my IQ by a few points, well I took the piss outta you already, so I hope you have a great day. Everyone else, I hope you [REDACTED] on a few [REDACTED]. Wait, I think I mixed something up here.^{As you may have guessed, don't take this too seriously}

As always, see you all next year, same time?^{Unless I get banned, which seems like a good possibility when I proofread all this, so much angerI need to get laid, or drunkActually how high does this go?}

Cheers, I'm gonna go C͉̠̰͚͚͓ͪ̿̋̏̚O͓̯͕̙͕͎͈̫̦͐̊́Ṅ͕̮̣̺̖̣̖̈ͥͦ͊̽͒͠S̶̵̹̜͔͖͗͂̋̔̈̒͊̚Ú̷͔͍͇̪̥͍ͭͭ̔ͨ̄̇̅̕M̵͈̮͉̹͈͕̻̎̓E̛̯̝̭͉̼̍̎̐̋̑̎ ̷̵̮͔̬̙̠̣̬͉ͭ͒S̨͙̼̟̻̜̈̄͋̄̇ͨ͛́͟͞Ò̡̧͙̩̓̄͂̓͗́M̹̰̲̆̌E̴̡̲̟ͯ ̹͇̲̩͍ͨͨ͒̑͊̌͒͆̕͡F̵͊̊̾ͭ҉̘̲̝͎̥͔̠̺̙O̧̡̱̠̙ͤ͒ͪO̬̯̪͉͙̩̅͂̀̏ͫ̄̓͂D͎͓͍͔͙̰͕̒̒͒̓̃̍͂ͭ̀͢
Grzmot

Hello everyone!

Some of you may remember last years census. I did say I wanted to repeat it, and have decided to push the date forward, as last year a few people said that doing it in December at the end of the year probably wasn't the smartest choice, due to well, christmas and new year's eve and I totally agree. Wish I would've seen that earlier, but I guess I'm dumb lol. Summer may give us better stats because more people are on vacation any maybe check in more regularily. Or maybe there's also less people around because everyone's on vacation. Who fucking knows, I don't know. I don't know anything.

Anyway, just like last time, I'd like to organize a preliminary discussion about the census and what questions we should ask this community. As a reminder, this was the 2019 census.

Areas that I'd like to improve: Politics, mainly. The 8values test I think is good, but maybe there's something better out there. We could do it with the political compass and go full quadrant and r/politicalcompassmemes, but of course that's also not going to be very accurate. I honestly don't even know if there's a good solution to this problem.

Other than that, are there other questions you'd like to ask the community? Let's discuss!^{I hope someone replies or this is gonna be emberassing.}

I don't want to ask this question in "default" groups as peeps that monitor this group will likely know the answer, and I support not making "Tildes a site about discussing Tildes" :)
_{inline-edit: for context this was originally posted in ~test.}

I am probably one of the most heavily mobile-first users here, but when on desktop, I really want ctrl-enter to work everywhere. Is there some way to make sure all "save" buttons use ctrl/cmd-enter across the entire site? Can this be done via a class or something?

If not, I can go through the whole site and find places where it does not work.. first example is in the new awesome edit tags ui.

When I try to access tildes.net over an IPv6-enabled network, the connection simply times out.

Running ping -4 tildes.net responds but ping -6 tildes.net times out. I've tested this on multiple networks (residential and commercial) but it doesn't work on any.

It looks like tildes.net has an AAAA record but the IP doesn't work.

Can anyone reproduce?

I've been meaning to make this post for a while, and it's actually going to wind up being a series of several posts. It's kind of a long meditation on what it means to socialize online and the ways in which the services we use to do that help or hinder us in doing so. Along the way I'm going to be going into some thoughts on how online discourse works, how it should work, and what can be done to drive a more communal, less toxic, and more inclusive of non-traditional (read: non-technical) voices. I'm going to be throwing out a lot of inchoate opinions here, so I'm hoping to pressure test my views and solicit other viewpoints and experiences from the community.

I mentioned in an introduction thread that I'm a policy analyst and my work is focused on how to structure policies and procedures to build a constructive organizational culture. I've been a moderator in some large PHP forums and IRC channels in the old days, and I've developed some really strong and meaningful friendships through the web. So I've always had a soft spot for socializing on the interwebs.

Okay, so that's the introduction out of the way. The main point I want to focus on is the title: Remember the Person. This was the something Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit, suggested in a farewell message as she stepped down from the role in the wake of a community outcry regarding her changes to Reddit's moderation practices. The gist of it was that online communication makes it too easy to see the people you're interacting with in abstract terms rather than as human beings with feelings. It's a bit of a clichéd thought if we're being honest, but I think we still tend not to pay enough attention to how true it is and how deeply it alters the way we interact and behave and how it privileges certain kinds of interaction over others. So let's dig in on how we chat today, how it's different from how we chatted before in discussion forums, and what we're actually looking for when we gather online.

Since this is the first in a series, I want to focus on getting some clarity on terms and jargon that we'll be using going forward. I'd like to start by establishing some typologies for social media platforms. A lot of these will probably overlap with each other, and I'll probably be missing a few, but it's just to get a general sense of categories.

To start with we have the "Content Aggregator" sites. Reddit is the most notable, HackerNews is big but niche, and Tildes is one too. This would also include other sites like old Digg, Fark.com, and possibly even include things like IMGUR or 9Gag. The common thread among all of these is user submitted content, curation and editorial decisions made largely by popular vote, and continued engagement being driven by comment threads associated with the submitted content (e.g. links, images, videos, posts). In any case, the key thing you interact with on these sites is atomized pieces of "content."

Next up are the "Running Feed" services. Twitter and Mastodon are the classic examples as is Facebook's newsfeed. Instagram is an example with a different spin on it. These services are functionally just glorified status updates. Indeed, Twitter was originally pitched as "What if we had a site that was ONLY the status updates from AOL Instant Messager/GChat?" The key thing with how you interact with these services is the "social graph." You need to friend, follow, or subscribe to accounts to actually get anything. And in order to contribute anything, you need people following or subscribing to you. Otherwise you're just talking to yourself (although if we're being honest, that's what most people are doing anyway they just don't know it). This means the key thing you interact with on these sites is an account. You follow accounts get to put content on your feed. Follower counts, consequently, become a sort of "currency" on the site.

Then you've got the "Blogs" of old and their descendants. This one is a bit tricky since it's largely just websites so they can be really heterogenous. As far as platforms go, though, Tumblr is one of the few left and I think LiveJournal is still kicking. Lots of online newspapers and magazines also kind of count. And in the past there were a lot more services, like Xanga and MySpace. The key thing you interact with here is the site. The page itself is the content and they develop a distinct editorial voice. Follower counts are still kind of a thing, but the content itself has more persistence so immediacy is less of an issue than in feed based paradigms where anything older than a day might as well not exist. This one gets even trickier because the blogs tend to have comment sections and those comment sections can have a bunch little social media paradigms of their own. It's like a matroishka doll of social platforms.

The penultimate category is the "Bulletin Board" forum. PHP BB was usually the platform of choice. There are still a few of these kicking around, but once upon a time these were the predominant forms of online discourse. Ars Technica and Something Awful still have somewhat active ones, but I'm not sure where else. These also have user posted content, but there is no content curation or editorial action. As a result, these sites tend to need more empowered and active moderators to thrive. And the critical thing you're interacting with in these platforms is the thread. Threads are discussion topics, but it's a different vibe from the way you interact on a content aggregator. On a site like Reddit or Tildes all discussion under a topic is 1 to 1. Posts come under content. On a bulletin board it works like an actual bulletin board. You're responding under a discussion about a topic rather than making individual statements about an individual post or comment. Another way to put it is on an aggregator site each participant is functionally writing individual notes to each other participant. On a bulletin board each participant is writing an open letter to add to the overall discussion as a whole.

And finally, you've got the "Chat Clients." This is the oldest form besides email newsletters. This began with Usenet and then into IRC. The paradigm lives on today in the form of instant messaging/group texts, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, etc. In this system you're primarily interacting with the room(s) as a whole. There isn't really an organizing framework for the conversation, it's really just a free-flowing conversation between the participants. You might be able to enforce on-topic restrictions, but that's about as structured as it gets.

That about covers the typologies I can think of. Next up I want to delve into the ways in which the UI and design patterns with each of these platforms affects the way users engage with them, what sorts of social dynamics they encourage, and what sorts of interactions they discourage. In the mean time, I'm eager to hear what people think about the way I've divided these up, whether you think I've missed anything, or have any additional thoughts on the ones I put up.

Tildes is currently invite-only. (Thank you redditor u/⎷⎷⎷⎷⎷⎷). Of course, it's in alpha testing, so that makes sense. When do you think tildes will be made public? How will they do it? I don't think it ever really needs to be made public. The reasons are that:
1 - Bans are actual bans. Getting beyond a ban is ridiculously hard compared to on Reddit, where someone just makes a second account. On Tildes, if you're banned, you're banned. That's it. It weeds out a lot of trolls.
2 - Throwaways can't be made. Making a throwaway account on Tildes costs one of your invites, so it's much more annoying to do so.
Hopefully you enjoyed my little rant.

One thing (amongst many) that always bothered me in my 6+ years of using Reddit was their lax rules about posting clickbait articles and straight up misinformation. In my opinion this was something that contributed to the rise of radical communities and echochambers in the website.

In this post I'll talk about Clickbait, Unreliable studies, and Misinformation. I'll give examples for each one and suggest a way to deal with it.

Clickbait-

Let's start with the most benign one. These days most big websites use clickbait and hyperbole to gain more traffic. It's something that they have to do in order to survive in today's media climate and I sort of understand. But I think that as a community in Tildes we should raise our standards and avoid posting any article that uses clickbait, instead directly link to the source that the article cites.

An example would be: An article titled "Life on Mars found: Scientists claim that they have found traces of life on the red planet".

But when you read the original source it only states that "Mars rover Curiosity has identified a variety of organic molecules" and that "These results do not give us any evidence of life,".
(This may be a bad/exaggrated example but I think it gets my point across.)

On Reddit the mods give these kinds of posts a "Misleading" tag. But the damage is already done, most of the users won't read the entire article or even the source, and instead will make comments based on the headline.
I personally think that these kinds of posts should be deleted even if they get a discussion going in the comments.

Unreliable studies-

This is a bit more serious than clickbait. It's something that I see the most in subjects of psychology, social science and futurism.
These are basically articles about studies that conclude a very interesting result, but when you dig a bit you find that the methodologies used to conduct the study were flawed and that the results are inconclusive.

An (real) example would be: "A new study finds that cutting your time on social media to 30 minutes a day reduces your risk of depression and loneliness"
Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-instagram-snapchat-social-media-well-being-2018-11

At first glance this looks legit, I even agree with the results. But lets see how this study was conducted:

In the study, 143 undergraduate students were tested over the course of two semesters.

After three weeks, the students were asked questions to assess their mental health across seven different areas

Basically, their test group was 143 students, The test was only conducted for 6 months, and the results were self-reported.

Clearly, this is junk. This study doesn't show anything reliable. Yet still, it received a lot of upvotes on Reddit and there was a lot of discussion going. I only spotted 2-3 comments (at the bottom) mentioning that the study is unreliable.

Again, I think that posts with studies like this should be deleted regardless if there is a discussion going in the comments or not.

Misinformation-

This is in my opinion the biggest offender and the most dangerous one. It's something that I see in political subreddits (even the big ones like /r/politics and /r/worldnews). It's when an article straight up spreads misinformation both in the headline and in the content in order to incite outrage or paint a narrative.

Note: I will give an example that bashes a "left-leaning" article that is against Trump. I'm only doing this because I only read left-leaning to neutral articles and don't go near anything that is right-leaning. Because of this I don't have any examples of a right-leaning article spreading misinformation (I'm sure that there are a lot).

An example would be this article: "ADMINISTRATION ADMITS BORDER DEPLOYMENT WAS A $200 MILLION ELECTION STUNT"
Link: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/trump-troops-border-caravan-stunt

There are two lies here:

1. Trump administration did not admit to anything. (The article's use of the word 'Admit' is supposedly justified with 'They indirectly admitted to it'. I personally think this is a bad excuse.)
2. Most importantly, the 200 million figure is pure speculation. If you go to the older article that this article cites, the 200m figure comes from a speculation that the operation could cost up to 200m if the number of troops sent to the border is 15,000 and they stay there for more than 2 months.
   In reality the number of troops sent was 8,500 and they stayed for only a few days/weeks.

A few days after this article was published it turned out that the operation costed 70 million. Still a big sum, still ridiculous. But it's almost a third of what the article claimed.

The misinformation in this example is fairly benign. But I've seen countless other articles with even more outrageous claims that force a certain narrative. This is done by both sides of the political spectrum.

Not only do I think that we should delete these kinds of posts in Tildes, in my opinion we should black list websites that are frequent offenders of spreading misinformation.
Examples off the top of my head would be: Vanity Fair, Salon.com, of course far right websites like Fox News, Info Wars and Breitbart.
A good rule in my opinion would be: If three posts from a certain website get deleted for spreading misinformation, that website should be blacklisted from Tildes.

In conclusion:
I think we should set some rules against these problems while our community is still in the early stages. Right now I don't see any of these 3 problems on Tildes. But if we don't enforce rules against them, they will start to pop up the more users we gain.

I'll be happy to know your opinions and suggestions on the matter!

I was testing topic tag filtering and it didn't seem to work as I expected.

I was trying to filter out a topic with a main.sub style tag, but without a main tag.

I set the filter to main expecting everything nested undeneath that to be hidden, but it did not.

Is that just not implemented yet, or am I just not understanding the feature correctly?

I'm here staring at my inbox for the third time trying to figure out how the hell the sorting in it works. It isn't alphabetically by subject or user, it isn't the recency of the first message (nor is it the recency of the latest message), and it isn't the number of messages. Testing it now, it also isn't the most recent you've opened, so I have no idea how this works or how to look for anything, not that it's big enough to matter much yet.

Am I missing something obvious? I feel so lost.

This is a bit odd. Recently I've thought typing into tildes input boxes sometimes felt laggy but today I noticed my fan spinning up when I loaded the site (until today it's been so hot my fan was spinning all day). I checked Chrome's task manager and yes, tildes.net is using 100% cpu. If I wait 2-3 minutes, usage will drop back down to the expected 0-1% and remain there. This happens every pageload. If I load a page, wait for the cpu use to drop, then either reload that page or click an in-site link, the cpu ramps up again for 2-3 minutes.

Chrome Version 68.0.3440.106 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Debian testing, which is up to date as of midnight GMT 10/08/18. I even rebooted my machine just to be extra sure. Happens on all tildes pages. No other site that I regularly visit seems to do this.

Posted here rather than to the issue tracker for visibility, to see if this is affecting anyone else before raising an issue about it.

I'm wondering if others are seeing as many "broken" thumbnail(favicon) images to the left of externally linked posts? I'm not sure if it's simply because my browser needs to have visited a site before it will show me the website's default favicon or something else? For example please see below:

Favicon missing

Apologies if this has already been asked/addressed.

Edit: I just tested visiting the site linked and then reloading Tildes and it doesn't update so I assume it's probably on the external site's "end".

Having just joined recently and made my way though the (technical goals documentation)[https://docs.tildes.net/technical-goals], I am interested in the lower-level stuff. How scaling is being considered, off-loading static content to CDNs, fault-tolerance etc... As well as code testing, deployments, etc...

I guess this will be a bit clearer when Tildes goes Open, but I think a discussion on it could also be helpful for roadmapping and growth if possible.

As can be seen in this post in ~test it is possible to secretly refer to another webpage than the one actually typed. It's not the biggest priority as of now, but it would be nice to see this fixed before Tildes will go live.

In case the ~test post gets deleted, here's an example:
https://innocent.site/

One of the common issues that I've run into on reddit as a moderator is that lots of people put in a link and then put a bunch of text into the text area, and then they have a text link with no link.

I realize that you may have built things already in a way that is fundamentally not supportive of this, but I wonder about allowing both to coexist within one post?