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.

Might it be useful for our Exemplary (and I imagine Malice) labels to be removable or editable? I recently added an Exemplary label with a description that was a bit more "fuck that other guy!" than I would've liked, and despite it not being publicly visible, I still felt the need to in some way correct my mistake to not drag the other user into my hostility, but there's no option to do so. If we can't remove the labels because users shouldn't be juggling the timer or something, I get that, but editing seems like a good (yet low-priority) thing to implement.

I can't recall this being explicitly outlined anywhere when labels were being introduced, sorry if I've forgotten something. Knowing me, I probably argued against it somewhere :P

If I'm the weirdo in the minority here, feel free to let me know, but I ideally switch between day and night modes almost daily on my websites and apps based on time of day. Here, it's usually between the White and Black settings. And while it's not a big problem by any means, navigating between 3 different pages (the homepage, my user page, then settings) is a tiny hassle that I feel could be avoided by placing the theme switching option on the homepage. I don't know if my usage of themes is normal or an abnormality, so I understand if putting it directly on the homepage isn't ideal if most users don't switch themes constantly. It would still be a fair bit faster if it were to be placed on the profile page somewhat similar to Reddit or YouTube (I'm not talking about the overlay, just moving the switcher from settings to maybe part of the User Menu).

I have noticed that most apps with a dark mode tend to bury it in settings, clearly indicating that it's designed to be a one time change, so again, maybe this is just a me problem, but I am curious on how others feel about a more easily on hand theme option.

I'm fairly sure it's either a Reddit or RES feature, but whenever I select text in a comment and then click Reply, it'll copy that text to the comment box and add a > in front so it'll turn into a quote. It makes it a little quicker to respond to a specific part of someone's message.

I'm no IT bird and as such I don't know if this is something that can be implemented easily(if at all). It'd also require more JS, not sure if that's an issue as well.

In any case, let me know what you think.

Edit: I'd like to suggest something else, should I make a secondary post or append it to this one? I'd like to avoid cluttering up the front page.

I'd like to be able to bookmark posts from the front page. Right now it really isn't an issue yet since posting frequency is low, but I often quickly check the front page for interesting reads, while not having the time to actually read them. I'd like to see a "Bookmark" button on front page posts that allow me to save those posts for later when I actually do have time to read the posts.

For quick scrolls over the front page, tapping the post and then bookmarking is one click too many.
You could argue I'm lazy, I call it efficiency.

While on the subject, if I click "bookmark" on a topic, it'll read "bookmarked" but does not offer an "unbookmark" option until I refresh the page. Since I have big thumbs(large bones) I often tap wrong, so it could be nice if there was a quick way to undo this, similar to how we can undo votes.
Edit: this seems to be a bug: it does work for comments.
Edit2: Made this into an issue.

I just noticed we got a back to top link, floating on the bottom right. It is easy to block on desktop, but on mobile, not as easy. I think it'd be great it we had an option to disable it in user settings.

Basically, the ability to receive a notification whenever someone comments on a subscribed topic. Currently, there is a save option (Unless it's been removed? I'm looking now and can't seem to find it) which makes for a decent solution for the time being, but personally I know how easy it is to forget all about what you have saved and have it fly completely under your radar. I, for one, think it would be a good idea if you could subscribe to a topic you're interested so you don't completely forget and miss some discussion.

I am wondering if it is planned to provide the user with methods to control the content they see, ie; filtering the topics in a group or comments in a topic based on various criteria including keywords.
I looked around to see if this has been asked, or if there was a roadmap document, but did not find anything. (this is no criticism, I do realize we are early in the dev cycle and I cannot image just one person being able to do all this!)

I do hope so. No matter how high the quality of the topics/comments there will always be things a user may not want to see.

Comment Visits Setting

This data is retained for 30 days. After not visiting a particular topic for 30 days, the data about your last visit to it will be deleted.

We've had discussions before about long-lived topics, resurrecting old topics, etc. and the general consensus is that they were good and encouraged. Unfortunately, with the limited 30-day memory for topic read-vs-new comments, resurrected posts become a real pain. The current activity-sorted all-time front page has three topics from 2018, each with over a hundred comments. It'd be nice to read the new activity, but that takes either some tedious Ctrl+F with various terms ("minutes", "days", etc.) to find newish comments or re-reading everything.

I'd like to avoid relying on a third-party extension to handle this (browser and device support, issues with syncing multiple devices, etc.), and I understand the privacy goals. What are people's thoughts on making read-comment memory user-configurable, even if it's just "default 30-days" and "all-time"?

The whole suggestion is in the title.

I find the split between ~tech and ~comp to be very overlapping. Such a vast proportion of the content both places is ~privacy -material anyway. Content tagged privacy is effectively rendering ~tech a semi-privacy board as it is now anyway.

I think the suggested categorization makes more sense than the current organization based on the content actually submitted to tildes now.

Here's the ~comp privacy tag overview: comp

Here's the ~tech privacy tag overview: tech

Similar to how other forums go about making review or discussion thread on newly released forms of entertainment.

I think tildes would be a pretty neat platform to try and host some of these. More so with the discussion nature of tildes. Seems like they would work really well here but I often don't see any pop up. Would anyone like to see them here?

What is our policy about posting original contents (e.g. me submitting a blog post I wrote, which I just did a few minutes ago)?

IMO, if it is a personal blog, it should be okay, and not really different from submitting a text topic here. Especially if the blog is not tracking you.

EDIT: I'm only talking about the Exemplary tag

Greetings. I'm Alexis, and I signed up for this site back on May 30th, when it was just beginning. However, I have returned and I see something that doesn't seem like that big an issue, but I fear it will lead to the same sort of 'circlejerk' that Reddit has.

The issue is with this comment. At first, it doesn't really seem that bad - it is a person (we'll call them Adam) replying to someone else (Barbara) who says the subject matter (Charlie) is using white nationalism as a means to cause chaos. Adam takes this to mean Barbara supports Neo-Nazis, as Barbara states the following:

Hate to say it, but neo-Nazism is better than this, if by a small margin: at least its followers have an ideology.

Adam asks what "lofty ideology do you think Neo-Nazis" have, including a long rebuttal of this miscommunication.

The real problem with this is the labels. On the top of Adam's comment: "2x Exemplary". I have not seen any labels whatsoever anywhere else on this forum when I have been browsing it. On a miscommunicative post. Adam seems to claim Barbara is downplaying the issue, despite the miscommunication.

To see why this is an issue, let's take a second post discussing a network of paedophiles on Youtube. As on 1:14 PM EST, Feb 21, 2019, not a single label is there. This is in spite of communication being just as civil and developed.

My theory is that the Exemplary labels were not used as a "Well done" to Adam's post, but rather as a "We hate Neo-Nazis as well", or "super-vote". What I fear is that this will lead to an echo chamber where Devil's advocates, such as Barbara, are shunned for things from a simple miscommunication to having 'wrongthink' and defending ideas that people think should not be.

Let me be clear: I am not conservative or a Nazi. If anything, I am a socialist - but it shouldn't matter. You should be allowed to discuss the pros and cons of relevant political views as long as it is in a civil manner.

cw: discussion of specific types of bigotry

I used to kind of think that Reddit's bigotry was relegated to the hate subs (TD and friends), and that you'd only find it if you went looking. But wow, Tildes has made me realise that it is EVERYWHERE.

Whenever I take a trip back to Reddit, I'm always blindsided by the fact ordinary threads about unrelated topics are so hateful. For example today I was on an r/movies thread about the new Terminator movie and there's queerphobia, transphobia and sexism all highly upvoted, right near the top of the comments. I guess being immersed in that environment for the last seven years of my life made me a bit desensitised to it, but now I'm horrified everytime.

Reddit is a far worse cesspit than I realised, I'm glad Tildes exists and I hope it keeps getting better and better. The internet needs it.

Why? My mouse, as well as my vision, are focused on the left. The vote box feels like its light years away on a 16:9 screen. It's on the opposite side of the screen from everything else I might click in the GUI. Its a waste of time/movement.

HTH!

I was reading this thread and the important concept of finding the original source came up. I think two things that a lot of content aggregators run into as they grow is people will often post links from low-quality sources, and when a big newsworthy event happens a lot of similar links from multiple sources appear at once. Obviously not a big problem here now, but it may happen as Tildes grows.

Both of these issues often require significant moderator input, either through deletion of duplicates or banning of unsavory sources. One way we could instead approach this issue could be to allow for "alternate sources" to a story. For example, if a user is unsatisfied with a link to a news article, they could submit an alternate source to the thread that would show up in the discussion. If enough other users prefer that source, it could replace the link in the OP. The original source would still be visible, but all alternate links themselves could be ranked within the thread.

It seems the primary focus of Tildes is to be a discussion board, and so in my mind that means the link that engages the discussion doesn't matter much -- if we are voting on individual links anyway, this could be a way to automatically compile multiple similar threads into a single discussion.

As per subject - it'd be nice to hide topics from the front page.

The use case is very simple - if I see a topic that I have no interest in, I'd rather for its spot to be taken by some other topic that currently sits "below the fold".

Hiding a topic should remove it from the front page only, but leave it visible on the group page. It would also probably make sense to mark the topic there in some way and have an "unhide" option there.

Alternatively, have a switch for the front page to toggle between "full view" and "view without hidden topics".

I wanted to say that I really enjoy the "[Back]" link that shows up when you select "Parent" on a comment. Frequently, when I want to navigate to a comment's parent via the parent link, it's because there's a lot of other comments in between the parent and child comments, so being able to easily navigate back is just delightful. It's so thoughtful and demonstrates an understanding of the reading experience that multiple times I wished reddit had. More like this, please. :)

Hey everyone!

I'm pretty new here, and I'm already enjoying this place, but I was wondering when there will be a group to post photos. I take photos and I'm sure some of you do as well, and I thought it would be cool to be able to share the photos we take and get honest feedback on them like we have honest discussions in the news articles, share tips and tricks, and generally have another way to connect.

I know generally photos are kind of taboo, as places like instagram have kind of ruined it and turned every single person with a camera on their phone into a photographer, so I get it if you have reservations. I have some myself, but I still want to take the chance.

Idk, I thought it would be cool. If not, then whatever, I ain't picky about this place I enjoy it very much.

Freshly minted user here, so here is a bit of feedback from the first hour of using ~s.

#1

Having topic-info line below the topic-text-excerpt block creates some usability friction, because if the the excerpt is large-ish, then the "xx comments" link is pushed way down, sometimes below the fold.

https://imgur.com/FUwKHo7.jpg

This is an issue (at least for me) because it interferes with efficient selection of topics to read.

You spot a promising topic, you open excerpt, skim through the top part, if it still shows promise, use the "xx comments" link to open it in.

Key point is that I would very rarely read the whole excerpt before deciding to see the comments. However with existing layout the "xx comments" link sits at the very bottom of the excerpt, requiring scrolling down, correcting for an over-shoot (if the link was below the fold) and then zeroing in on the link.

In comparison, if the link were to stay above the excerpt, it will be within few pixels from where my mouse is after clicking on the "open excerpt" triangle.

#2

If this were my site, I would probably just swapped topic-meta with topic-info, like so - https://imgur.com/fJ3tKxc.jpg.

The rationale here is that meta carries information that is less important and less frequently used/needed that topic-info. I know that I would be more interested in the comment count and the topic age than in tags.

#3

The topic-text-excerpt font size is too big. The index is nice, compact and has a very light feel to it. Then you click to expand the excerpt and it's like - WOAH, HERE'S SOME TEXT FOR YOU.

I'm new to Tildes, but I've been using Markdown-based comment systems
for more than a decade: both Reddit and GitHub. My programming blog has
been written in Markdown for the past 8 years. Overall I've probably
written several novels worth of content in Markdown in my life.

I've already noticed that Tildes has made a serious mistake in its
handling of line endings: All line endings are treated as hard line
breaks. This diverges from CommonMark and most uses of Markdown in
practice. If I wanted a hard line break, I'd put two spaces at the end
of the line, as specified by both CommonMark and the original Markdown.
Line endings should be otherwise be soft.

GitHub made the same mistake with its "GitHub-flavored Markdown," though
fortunately this mistake has been limited to issues. GitHub README.md
files don't have this behavior, nor does GitHub Pages. It the only other
Markdown system I've used with this flaw.

Why does this matter? If I'm writing more than a single sentence, I
never edit my comment inside my web browser. I edit it using my text
editor of choice, Vim, since it's far more comfortable. I don't even
have to copy-paste the text between applications. Instead, I have an
add-on, Tridactyl, that does this seemlessly and effortlessly.

Hard line endings just don't work well with long prose — exactly the
type of content that Tildes is encouraging — particularly when edited in
a proper text editor that knows about paragraphs and can do its own line
wrapping. Editing long lines is annoying and takes extra care. That's
why we have soft line endings after all.

I'm leaving all my line endings in this post so that you can see the
mess Tildes makes with it, with the ragged right-hand side due to font
differences. If I had written this in nearly any other Markdown system,
the text would have flowed into the page without issues. It is a mistake
for Tildes to do differently. This sort of compatibility issue is
probably going to be annoying enough to keep me off the site.

Many websites like hacker news, lobsters and stack exchange put an indicator next to usernames to show that the user is new. This lets regular users know that this user may need some help fitting in and following the rules.

What does everyone think about such a feature on tildes?

It's friggin amazing.

Who knew that keeping a site clean of ads, trackers, and all kinds of other garbage could make the internet feel fast again? Tildes is not only a place for great discussion, but it's a site that doesn't get in the way of its content and I love it for that.

Sorry if this isn't "interesting, informative, or have the potential to start a good discussion".

Thank you @Deimos for creating such an amazing site! I'm not in a position to donate at this point, but I see it in the future.

It used to be considered an honor to become a default subreddit. Then when it was seen what happens when a sub became a default (tons and tons of people came flooding in filling the threads with what were often mediocre comments and destroying the sense of community) becoming a default lost it's shine. The same can be said about Reddit as a whole though. It's extremely impressive that it's become such a huge website, but at the same time, it's not a small, quaint town. It's now just another place for the masses to congregate (both for better and for worse).

Right now Tilde is a small website. And a smaller website means a stronger sense of community. smaller threads means that your comment is more likely to be read. less upvotes (or just votes in this case) but when you do get one or two it means more. Smaller also means that you're more likely to talk to specific people again and again (as opposed to just a new totally random person each and every time).

Tilde said no NSFW. No porn. I agree with that. A bajillion porn sites out there, no need for another one. Well...There's a number of massive social media websites as well out there as well. The number of users on them are puffed up by bots, but they're still going to have millions upon millions of actual users.

I put forth that same basic question here as to what Tilde should become. If all it does is say no to NSFW stuff (essentially the exact opposite of voat) then, to put it bluntly (and kinda cruelly) it will in time just be some Reddit clone. If however the makers decide to keep it very small, and permanently so, I think we could foster something special and unique. Not something that's exclusive (I don't know about any of you but it's certainly no amazing prize to have a one on one interaction with me :-P) it would just be a way to create a small community that I get the sense that a lot of people on here desire. less memes, less sh*tposting, less a lot of stuff that doesn't actually contribute to any sort of actual interesting conversation.

Please don't tear my head off, but I look forward to seeing what people think of this.

What are people's thoughts on ads? I feel that if they are implemented in the right way they can be very unobtrusive and not take away from the viewing experience. If they can help fund the project down the road I would personally not be against them.

Are we able to filter things like music and anime by simply adding those keywords to the filter?

I tried adding the tilde in front and that didn’t work either.

Is this operator error or perhaps a good place for me to learn some pyramid and make a PR?

I've seen a number of topics that have had unrelated comments regarding Tildes as a whole and the direction in which we'd like to steer it toward. While I realize much of these sidebar conversations have been occurring naturally and very frequently in well-nested comments, I wonder if it isn't going to become distracting to some going forward.

On one hand, I have enjoyed passively gaining insight into the vision of Tildes. On the other, I can see how we might want to start setting examples on the type of organization and behavior we'd want from users as the site grows. If new users who are joining after Tildes goes public see a regular occurrence of off-topic conversation, they might fall into bad habits and it may take root and grow.

What are your thoughts? Maybe start creating new topics in ~tildes and tag users along with quotes from outside threads so that there's still a reference point to start discussion from?

One of the issues I had with HackerNews was that the front page was dominated by articles from major publications that imo were often written by journalists out of their depth. I think having a filter by domain feature would help users avoid certain publications that they know they won't enjoy reading.

While browsing through the Tildes documentation, I stumbled across this in the Technical Goals section:

Tildes is a website. Your phone already has an app for using it—it's your browser.

Tildes will have a full-featured API, so I definitely don't want to discourage mobile apps overall, but the primary interface for using the site on mobile should remain as the website. That means that mobile users will get access to updates at exactly the same time as desktop ones, and full functionality should always be available on both.

This got me thinking. Despite Tildes preferring mobile browsers over an app, is there still a chance for one? I usually avoid using websites on mobile unless I must, as mobile websites generally don't have the full functionality of the website. Labelling comments 'Exemplary' and 'Malice' on mobile is an example of what doesn't work (there's more), and it's usually very unresponsive for some of the things that still do work. Also, there aren't any notifications on mobile websites and some people, me included, have cumbersome browsers that make the feel of using the website slow and laborious.

Another thing is, if the app has no chance of happening, could Tildes get desktop notifications? I usually like to respond to replies to my topics and comments as quickly as possible and I'm not a fan of the whole 'constant login to check my notifications' thing. Email notifications aren't possible because of Tildes' privacy belief.

It's somewhat of an unspoken rule on Reddit that replying to a comment that's more than a day old is a faux pas. The conversation naturally settles within that period – or, less often, within two days. After that, the only appropriate thing is to either reference the conversation, or quote parts of the comments in relation to a similar issue in another post.

On Hubski, conversations could go on for days. It's explicitly stated in the guidelines that it's completely okay to reply to a comment of any age. I've never seen a year-old "revival" do any good, but the fact that it isn't prohibited or frowned upon adds no burden to the user.

How does Tildes handle this? Is there an unwritten rule already? Should there be a written one? What would be the factors?

Today's Feb 13. I've found a post from Feb 2 that was on a subject of interest of mine, where comments were insightful, but I feel like not all questions that need to be asked have been. Surely I won't go about creating another topic just to revive the conversation against only my own commentary to show for it.

There's also the matter of important, (semi)official topics on Tildes. Suppose a new issue arises that concerns an earlier public discussion held, say, half a year ago. It's a minor issue, but one that requires a discussion to settle. Does one comment on the old official topic, or does one create a new topic for this purpose?

I browse my front page on Tildes, and I see an item I'm interested in. I also notice that it has comments. I think "I'd like to read that article, and then look at the discussion about it."

To open the link and read the article is one click, on the title. Then, after I've read the article, I have to go back to my front page, find the item again, and click on 'X comments'. This doesn't work if I'm scrolling through the front page and selecting a few items to read later.

Alternatively, I can click on 'X comments' for each item, and then go to each post's comments page and click on the URL to read the article.

Either way, it's two clicks and a bit of extra navigation.

Could there be a way to click on an item and open the article and the comments page simultaneously?

I know that tildes is still a small community (sub 9k) but I find the number of groups too restrictive. I am mainly a redditor so I am used to subscribing to many subs, most of which are not "main" subs.

For example, shouldn't there be a group for "countries", so one could post in countries.germany or countries.finland in the future? Also, how come there is no videos? I can understand the reasoning that a video is (almost) always about a given subject but where should I post, for example, a video of "ASMR"? Should it go to health? Should chess posts go to "games" or "sports"?

I find this idea of groups a bit too comfusing, perhaps because I am used to subreddits..

Maybe it is not a bad idea to create some kind of map, with an handy link in the site, so one knows in which group one should post a certain something.

Now that user profiles have history, it would also be useful, like Hacker News and Reddit, to have a short plain-text bio blurb that users can optionally fill out.

It'd be great to let users provide some context about themselves.

What do you folks think?

Hi, I just joined an hour ago or so.
So far so good, site seems a welcome change as opposed to other certain content aggregators.

I'm just wondering what the userbase is like: what's your age group(not too specific if you want), occupation(again, vague is okay), continent of origin and gender? What draws you to this website as opposed to other social media? Do you expect Tildes to gain traction and grow to become a worthy Reddit(or other aggregator) competitor/successor?
Just to get a taste of the crowd and what kind of people we'll find here.

I'm in my 20's, currently studying engineering and living in western Europe. Applied to this website following a comment I saw that described the Tildes system compared to Reddit; seemed like a nice change on the clickbaity and sometimes not as fun-content on that website. Hoping this ends up a good place for discussion / quality content / fun chats, and also hope it can help me detox from social media by purposefully using a less active site(for now, of course).

_{Small note: while the site is closed right now, it might be opened up later, which means this post might be visible to the internet whole. Please keep your personal info in mind and only share what you want others(including crawlers/scrapers) to know.}

This is, of course, all anecdotal.

Spiteful downvotes are a common occurrence on Reddit. Sometimes I'm arguing in a deeply nested thread with a single person, and every one of my responses receives an immediate combo of reply and downvote. It's clear that the person arguing with me is the one making the downvotes, which doesn't seem fair. That's not an indication of my contribution to the debate, they just wanna "win".

In other occasions, when I go against the hive-mind, subjective interpretations of my phrasing renders a torrent of downvotes. I'm not talking about active belligerence on my part, but subtle differences that indicate minor defiance to the norm.

Upvoting seems less toxic. Some subs can use it to brigade /r/all, but that's easily addressable by the admins (I'm not saying they do). While downvotes can easily go unnoticed, upvotes are public by nature, they attract lots of attention, so if something vicious is upvoted the backlash it receives is frequently enough to put the author in their right place.

Tildes lack of downvotes is liberating. Not that I have the urge to post controversial stuff, but the lack of an easy "fuck you button" makes it possible for me to speak with nuance. I'm more preoccupied with what I wanna say than with the 300 implicit rules [1] I must follow to avoid being buried for offending the intricate biases of every sub.

And before this gets political, please notice that I never post on those subs. I'm speaking of "silly" places like /r/aww, /r/DunderMifflin/, /r/howyoudoin and /r/programmerHumor/.

So yeah: thank you, Tildes!

[1] I have no trouble following explicit ones.