“Which group should this go to?”, “Which tags should I use?”, and other posting anxieties.

kfwyre
Wed, 14 Jun 2023 12:09:32 +0000

A short story

Last night, I posted an article about fraud related to COVID funding in the United States.

I debated about where to put it. Was it ~news since it was an investigative report that was just released? ~finance because it was about money? ~health because it was about COVID?

In reading through other comments here, especially related to our current group structure I’ve noticed other people expressing similar sentiments about submitting things.

The same goes for tagging your topic. What are the right tags? What if I use the wrong one? There’s a non-negligible amount of anxiety regarding submitting things to the site.

If you go to the article I posted, and then click Topic Log on the sidebar, you can see what got changed. I realized I forgot to add the tag usa. You can then see that another user changed the capitalization on my title, moved my post from ~news to ~health, and added additional tags.

The betrayal(?)

Someone moved my post? Someone changed my title? Without telling me?! 😡

Yes, they did, and I’m here to tell you that I couldn’t be happier about that. It’s not a betrayal; it’s a collaboration. 🥰

Submissions on Tildes aren’t like other places. You won’t get your hand slapped here for not following the right protocol, especially because there’s not a fully clear protocol in the first place. Topic placement, tagging, and titling are all things that often require judgment calls. It’s not uncommon for the titles we see on Tildes to actually differ from published titles to make them less clickbaity or clearer, for example.

Furthermore, Tildes isn’t a place where people are competing to post content. There’s no karma to be harvested or influencers to influence. On other sites, big news items will often get dozens or hundreds of duplicate posts because, on other sites, who posted the content matters a whole lot. People will post and repost things because it’s important that they, individually, get “credit” for that.

Tildes works a bit differently, with submissions being owned more by the community at large rather than individual posters. It doesn’t mean we don’t have our own content (and it definitely doesn’t mean someone can or will edit the actual body of a post, like what I’m writing here), but more that the content’s place and appearance in the community is something we work together on. If you want to discuss something and you see someone already posted it here, that’s not a bummer — it’s a great thing! It saves you some work, plus you know at least one other person is on the same page as you and wants to discuss the same thing.

Which group should this go to? Which tags should I use?

Don’t worry too much about those things! We’ll collaborate on them. There are several users here who are librarians of Tildes, dutifully organizing submissions behind the scenes.

When I first started posting, I was nervous about getting my tags and title exactly right. I’d occasionally post a title with a typo and cringe, hard, wondering if I needed to delete the post entirely.

Now, when I post, I’m happy that if I don’t know what to do exactly or I make a mistake, someone else will come along and help me out with it. No more anxiety!

I hope all our new users can feel that way too. Having your submissions reorganized is not combative; it’s collaborative. Don’t stress about posting anything perfectly. Someone will help you out if need be.

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~tildes/169n/which_group_should_this_go_to_which_tags_should_i_use_and_other_posting_anxieties

Votes: 104

Comments: 40