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    1. Topic tag filtering question

      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...

      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?

      6 votes
    2. Should comments show votes?

      I feel like showing the number of votes a comment has gotten will lead to people voting something simply because it's gotten many votes and that must mean it's right. You see it happen all the...

      I feel like showing the number of votes a comment has gotten will lead to people voting something simply because it's gotten many votes and that must mean it's right. You see it happen all the time on Reddit. Someone will say something that sounds correct, and before someone else can come correct them they'll get a bunch of upvotes. Partly because they sounded correct, and partly because "all these upvotes must mean this is true".

      I don't really see any benefit to showing votes on comments.

      17 votes
    3. Voting on the main page discourages discussion

      I realize preventing people without first reading the link or text is impossible, but the least we can do is to not encourage it. By that, I mean the vote counts on the right hand side here...

      I realize preventing people without first reading the link or text is impossible, but the least we can do is to not encourage it. By that, I mean the vote counts on the right hand side here shouldn't be clickable if discussions are the priority for Tildes.

      What do you think?

      EDIT: Just to be clear - I'm not against showing the votes on the front page (though @AllMight below has a fair argument for that).

      21 votes
    4. Topic tags - tagging the domain?

      I've noticed that some people are adding topic tags to identify the domain of an article. For example, if it's from the New York Times, they'll add a "nyt" tag, or if it's from The Guardian,...

      I've noticed that some people are adding topic tags to identify the domain of an article. For example, if it's from the New York Times, they'll add a "nyt" tag, or if it's from The Guardian, they'll add a "the guardian" tag.

      Why? What's the purpose of these tags? Do people really filter in or out topics based on what website they come from? "Show me all articles from the New York Times." "Show me all articles except if they're from The Guardian."

      Is this really a thing that people do?

      6 votes
    5. Syntax highlighting for the coders, invites for everyone

      Another open-source contribution has now been implemented - @Soptik wrote the code to add support for syntax highlighting, which should be great for topics like the programming challenges in...

      Another open-source contribution has now been implemented - @Soptik wrote the code to add support for syntax highlighting, which should be great for topics like the programming challenges in ~comp.

      I'll update the formatting documentation to include info about it shortly, but it's straightforward to use. You have to use a "fenced code block", which usually means that you put 3 backticks above and below the code, and include the name of the language after the 3 backticks above it. So for example, markdown like this:

      ```python
      def word_count(string: str) -> int:
          """Count the number of words in the string."""
          return len(WORD_REGEX.findall(string))
      ```
      

      will render as:

      def word_count(string: str) -> int:
          """Count the number of words in the string."""
          return len(WORD_REGEX.findall(string))
      

      This is being done by the "Pygments" library, which supports a lot of languages: http://pygments.org/docs/lexers/

      And completely unrelated to that, it's been a while since I gave everyone some invite codes, so I've topped everyone back up to 5 (and as always, feel free to let me know if you need more). You can access them on this page: https://tildes.net/invite

      That's all for now, thanks everyone (and @Soptik in particular). There should also be more changes coming before too long, I've been working on some major updates to the comment-tagging system and hopefully should be able to implement those soon.

      78 votes
    6. Daily Tildes discussion - thoughts about making the site publicly visible, but still invite-only?

      To be clear up front, this probably won't be able to happen for at least a few weeks—there are quite a few things that will need to be done or adjusted before I'd be able to make the site publicly...

      To be clear up front, this probably won't be able to happen for at least a few weeks—there are quite a few things that will need to be done or adjusted before I'd be able to make the site publicly visible, including making sure that it can handle the load from a lot of logged-out viewers.

      However, I just wanted to bring it up and see if anyone has any particular thoughts about whether making it visible for people without accounts might be a good idea, or if we should just stick to keeping it totally private for a longer period.

      For a lot of people, not being able to see any of the actual posts on the site makes it less interesting, and I think we're already starting to get to the point where there's enough activity that it's not "embarrassing" to show off an inactive site any more. There's some great content being posted already, and it would probably be good to allow people to see it, even if they can't necessarily register and participate themselves just yet.

      Anyway, not much more to say about it. I just wanted to see if anyone had any particular thoughts on the topic to make sure I don't miss anything important when I start thinking more seriously about doing it, so please let me know.

      59 votes
    7. How about an RSS feed for tildes?

      I've recently gone back to using RSS as a way to keep up with things that I like to follow, and I realized that it could be a good fit for tildes. I'm a developer by trade, so if other people are...

      I've recently gone back to using RSS as a way to keep up with things that I like to follow, and I realized that it could be a good fit for tildes. I'm a developer by trade, so if other people are interested too I could even help with development (though not until I graduate in December, I'm slammed with work and school at the moment).
      Any thoughts for or against RSS?

      19 votes
    8. How long until we can hide posts?

      At the moment, my front page (is that what it's called on Tildes) is filled with posts I already commented on or don't feel the need to participate in. So I could really use a hide function. Do we...

      At the moment, my front page (is that what it's called on Tildes) is filled with posts I already commented on or don't feel the need to participate in. So I could really use a hide function.

      Do we know when it's going to be implemented?

      19 votes
    9. Replying from my notifications sometimes makes me duplicate someone else’s response, since I didn’t see it - solution ideas?

      Sometimes I reply to a comment via my notifications page, then when I go look at my reply in the context of the thread, I see that someone else already addressed my point in a peer comment and I...

      Sometimes I reply to a comment via my notifications page, then when I go look at my reply in the context of the thread, I see that someone else already addressed my point in a peer comment and I feel dumb.

      Has this happened to other folks too?

      Any thoughts on possible solutions?

      Maybe there could be an indication of other replies to the comment which might prompt you to read them first prior to making your reply?

      Until this issue is magically resolved, I feel like I should never reply via my notifications.

      Example comment of this happening to me

      8 votes
    10. I'm new to Tildes. What must I know ?

      I come from reddit and I'd like to know what is basically different in the way I should post and comment. Are there any private jokes or slang I should know to understand everything ? (like...

      I come from reddit and I'd like to know what is basically different in the way I should post and comment.

      • Are there any private jokes or slang I should know to understand everything ? (like reddit's "/s", "FBI open up" or the verb "lurk")
      • Are "mods" uncompromising ?
      • Every single post I saw is intelligent. Is this required ?
      • There's no downvote. Do I need to make a thoughtful comment every time I disagree ?
      25 votes
    11. A group we are missing, that I would really like to see is ~Culinary. Would anyone else be interested?

      I think ~culinary would be beneficial to see, it could include areas like; ~culinary.news ~culinary.recipes ~culinary.videos ~culinary.photography I am a little biased because of my profession...

      I think ~culinary would be beneficial to see, it could include areas like;

      ~culinary.news

      ~culinary.recipes

      ~culinary.videos

      ~culinary.photography

      I am a little biased because of my profession (Sous Chef), but I do see a lot of Culinary related posts that are spread out over several different groups. It would be nice to have them organized into their own group.

      And if anyone is worried about it being active, I subscribe to several culinary news sites that I rarely post here so It would give me a chance to share some of that stuff. Not to mention giving us a place to share already popular Youtube series and recipes.

      I know this content doesn't lend to discussion as much as others, but it would still be high quality.

      EDIT: Maybe a solution is to have more of those posts end up in ~food instead of being spread out. Although I feel like the ~food heading is a little more restrictive, so maybe rename ~food to ~culinary?

      10 votes
    12. Comment tags now affect sorting, more changes coming

      After re-enabling comment tags a little over a week ago and starting to experiment with some effects, I'm going to be adding some more and continuing to adjust as I keep an eye on how they're...

      After re-enabling comment tags a little over a week ago and starting to experiment with some effects, I'm going to be adding some more and continuing to adjust as I keep an eye on how they're being used so far.

      I've just deployed an update that changes the default comment sorting method to one named "relevance" (subject to change, suggestions welcome). This mostly acts like the previous default of "most votes", but also takes into account whether comments have been tagged as certain types. As with the other tagging effects so far, these effects will probably be adjusted or may even be completely changed as we see how they work in practice, but for now:

      • If multiple users tag a comment as "noise" or "off-topic", it will be sorted below comments without those tags. That is, comments that are not noise or off-topic will be prioritized above off-topic ones, and off-topic will be above noise.
      • In addition, comments tagged as "joke" will act as though their vote count is halved. This will just help with de-emphasizing joke comments a bit for now, but I definitely still plan to have filtering/collapsing behavior attached to them eventually
      • The "troll" and "flame" tags still don't have any inherent functionality yet, but I've been using them a little like a reporting function in the background so far, so those tags are helpful to me for pointing out comments that may need attention.

      Let me know what you think of these changes or if you notice anywhere that they seem to be working poorly. There should be more updates and changes to the comment-tagging system coming this week as well, based on suggestions and observations so far.

      73 votes
    13. New "voted" formatting - less improved

      I notice that the formatting of my "voted" status on topics has changed. It used to be that, when I had voted on a topic, its vote count displayed with a solid purple block (I'm using Solarized...

      I notice that the formatting of my "voted" status on topics has changed. It used to be that, when I had voted on a topic, its vote count displayed with a solid purple block (I'm using Solarized Light). This distinguished it from topics I had not voted on, which displayed a blue box around the vote count.

      This morning, the vote counts for topics I have voted on are displayed with just a single purple line to their left, while the unvoted topics still display the blue box.

      This change means that my "voted on" and "not voted on" topics aren't easily distinguishable again, like before the change to the big purple box. Again, it's confusing to work out whether or not I have voted on a topic.

      50 votes
    14. Need help formatting on Tildes

      I have just posted on ~sports the last results of the major European soccer leagues, but it does not show as I'd want to. I read the Formatting help page, but I did not find an aswer to my...

      I have just posted on ~sports the last results of the major European soccer leagues, but it does not show as I'd want to. I read the Formatting help page, but I did not find an aswer to my question, so if someone would like to help I'd appreciate it.

      Basically I would like the post to look like this: Imgur link, but in the end it looks like the spaces I put in there do not show as you can see here: Imgur link.

      Is there any way to make the post looks like what I want? I read about the Tables section in the Formatting help page, but I do not need a bold header row, which looks like a requirement for a table.

      Thanks in advance for the help

      7 votes
    15. Comment tags have been re-enabled to experiment with, input wanted on plans

      This has been a long time coming, but the comment tags have now been re-enabled. I want to treat this as experimental, and potentially make a number of changes to them quickly based on seeing how...

      This has been a long time coming, but the comment tags have now been re-enabled. I want to treat this as experimental, and potentially make a number of changes to them quickly based on seeing how they get used. A few notes about how they're set up now and what I'm planning to do with them, followed by some questions that I'd like input on:

      • The main change I want to experiment with is turning the comment tags (mostly) into a system where they're invisible, but cause effects. That is, instead of having the actual tags show up on each comment like they were before, they'll now be something that's "in the background", but can have different effects on comments that get tagged.
      • Currently, tags will only have an effect if multiple users apply the tag. This may change eventually if we start granting more weight to certain users that have a consistent history of tagging, but for now it means that a single user tagging a comment won't do anything unless other user(s) also apply the same tag.
      • As of the time I'm making this post, you can apply tags, but they don't have any effects yet. This will change very soon (probably even later today), but I wanted to get input on potential effects and get a baseline idea of how they start getting used before I turned any effects on.
      • Currently, anyone whose account is at least 7 days old will have access to comment tagging. This is to try to make sure that people have at least a bit of experience on the site before they start using the tags.

      Now, questions that I want input on:

      • What effects do you think might work well for the different tags? I don't want to bias the ideas by explaining a bunch of my own ones up-front, but an example of the sort of things that I'm thinking about is making it more difficult to reply to comments tagged "troll", such as by requiring the user to click through a dialog box like "Other users have tagged this comment as a possible troll, are you sure you want to reply to it and feed the troll?"
      • Is the current set of tags (joke, noise, offtopic, troll, flame) reasonable, or should we consider adding or removing some of them?
      • Now that the comment tags aren't being shown, should we consider changing them to more detailed descriptions? It was somewhat important to have shorter, "snappier" names for them before to keep them compact, but if they're not going to be shown often that may not be necessary at all. For example, "noise" could be changed to something more like "doesn't contribute to discussion".

      Let me know what you think—the comment tags are definitely one of the important aspects of the site, so I'm excited to start experimenting with them again and am confident that we can figure out a system for them that will work really well and help encourage quality discussions.

      102 votes
    16. Crazy Idea: What if we remove traditional voting on comments entirely?

      Tildes already replaces some of the functionality of downvoting with its tags (troll, flame, off-topic). What if we replaced voting with "positive" tags: helpful, interesting, etc.? This would...

      Tildes already replaces some of the functionality of downvoting with its tags (troll, flame, off-topic). What if we replaced voting with "positive" tags: helpful, interesting, etc.? This would play off of people's indecision when faced with multiple options. A binary decision is very easy - upvoting vs. downvoting. But if you just want to vote on something because it backs up your political opinion you might pause to think for a second if you need to declare the comment "interesting".

      The number of positive tags could still be aggregated into a score. Perhaps we could list the positive tags at the bottom of the comment e.g.: "10 x helpful, 5 x interesting".

      26 votes
    17. Collapsed comments?

      I'm starting to see occasional collapsed comments when I open threads. The first time I saw one, I thought I'd accidentally collapsed the comment myself, but this one was definitely already...

      I'm starting to see occasional collapsed comments when I open threads. The first time I saw one, I thought I'd accidentally collapsed the comment myself, but this one was definitely already collapsed when I opened the thread.

      Is this related to the "tagging" system that Deimos discussed the other day? At the time, he said that "tags" wouldn't have any effect. Are these effects now working? What are the effects? Also, there was no actual decision about what the different tags would be, and what they would mean. As I said in that thread, I decided not to use these tags until: a) they were agreed and defined; b) they actually did something. I thought they were just placeholders for now. I'm confused.

      Or is there some other feature operating here? For example, people keep talking about "whisper" comments, and I'm not sure if they're just fantasising about a feature they would like, or if it's something that's actually planned. Are these those "whisper" comments?

      25 votes
    18. Notification to a user if their comment is hidden due to comment tags

      The new comment-flagging feature is in place and is starting to operate: some comments are being hidden based on tags applied by users. The irony is that everyone knows a comment is hidden except...

      The new comment-flagging feature is in place and is starting to operate: some comments are being hidden based on tags applied by users.

      The irony is that everyone knows a comment is hidden except the person who posted the comment. If someone's own comment is being hidden, they should know that. I assume that part of the motive behind these tags is to teach Tildeans what is and isn't acceptable here. If someone doesn't know their comments are being flagged and hidden, they'll just keep on doing what they're doing.

      There should be some mechanism to advise a user that their comment is hidden - like happens when their comment is removed by the admin.

      EDIT: It's not just about educating people not to post more shallow comments in future. It's also just letting them know their comment has been hidden, as a courtesy.

      14 votes
    19. Starting to experiment a little with using data scraped from the destination of link topics

      This is very minor so far, but I think it's good to have a topic devoted to it so that people have somewhere to discuss it, instead of having it come up randomly in topics that it applies to. I've...

      This is very minor so far, but I think it's good to have a topic devoted to it so that people have somewhere to discuss it, instead of having it come up randomly in topics that it applies to.

      I've recently started scraping some data about the destination of link topics using Embedly's "Extract" API (Embedly was kind enough to give me a reasonable amount of free usage since Tildes is a non-profit). You can put in the url of an article/video/etc. on that page to get an idea of what sort of data I can get from it, if you'd like to see for yourself.

      I've only just started tinkering with it, and so far the data is only being used in two small ways:

      1. Tweets now display the entire text of the tweet on the topic listing page, similar to the "excerpt" from text topics. You can see an example here.

      2. On topic listings, the date that an article was published will be shown (after the domain name) if the publication date was at least 3 days before it was submitted. There are a few examples in the recent posts in ~misc

        I'll probably adjust this threshold, but I'd like it to be an amount of time where the age of the content might feel "significant". It would also be possible to just show this info all the time, but I think the topic listings are already fairly cluttered so it's probably best to hide it when it's not interesting/significant.

      As I said, these are very tiny changes so far, but there are lots of other possibilities that I hope to start using before long. I've mentioned this before, but something I'd really like to do overall is try to bring in more data about the links where it's possible to be able to show things like the lengths of videos and so on.

      Let me know if you have any thoughts about it or notice any issues, thanks.

      57 votes
    20. ~esports

      Hi, I wanted to suggest the creation of an esports specific group. The taxonomy would work in a similar way to ~games, however it would home both the business and news side of our industry as well...

      Hi, I wanted to suggest the creation of an esports specific group.

      The taxonomy would work in a similar way to ~games, however it would home both the business and news side of our industry as well as allowing for the competitive communities of various games to have sub groups. ~esports.leagueoflegends, ~esports.dota2, ~esports.overwatch for example.

      Would like to hear other people's thoughts.

      4 votes
    21. Usability Suggestion: Mobile sidebar closing.

      Edit: As @Bauke pointed out, apparently this feature already exists via tapping outside of the sidebar. I never even thought to try that. I'm not sure if this is in the gitlab issues or not, but a...

      Edit: As @Bauke pointed out, apparently this feature already exists via tapping outside of the sidebar. I never even thought to try that.


      I'm not sure if this is in the gitlab issues or not, but a cursory search suggested it's not. On mobile, if you tap the link to the most recent comment from the sidebar, you navigate directly to that comment just as on the desktop site, but the sidebar remains open and can't be closed without scrolling all the way back up to the top of the page. This is incredibly cumbersome and inconvenient.

      Ideally there would either be a method of closing the sidebar from anywhere, or for the sidebar to close on clicking the link. I would imagine that the latter would be simplest.

      8 votes
    22. On user-created groups

      I read the FAQ when I signed up and was honestly kind of dismayed to see lack of support for user-created groups (UCGs from here on). I understand the reasoning, but wonder if there isn't some way...

      I read the FAQ when I signed up and was honestly kind of dismayed to see lack of support for user-created groups (UCGs from here on). I understand the reasoning, but wonder if there isn't some way to allow group creation without cluttering.

      Some ideas:

      • List UCGs in a different section of the site
      • Organize under creator's username (UserName.mygroup)
      • Limit number of UCGs one user can directly create (not moderate)
      • Group creation approval queue
      • Allow private groups (UserName.mygroup) to convert into public groups (~mygroup) with admin approval, good behavior from subscribers, meeting milestone goals (e.g. 5000 subscribers), and no conflicting groups

      I'm not sure how any of that would work, logistically, so I'm curious what ideas the community here has to offer.

      7 votes
    23. Suggestion : browsing keyboard shortcuts

      Hi, I used to browse reddit with the J/K scroll up down the feed or comments keyboard shortcut. Coupled with X for opening media or link and C to get to comments, it was a much more efficient way...

      Hi,

      I used to browse reddit with the J/K scroll up down the feed or comments keyboard shortcut. Coupled with X for opening media or link and C to get to comments, it was a much more efficient way of navigating the website. As do all vim-like controls like Vimium etc..

      There are a lots of more useful keyboard navigation possibilities but i think these are the more needed ones for now.

      13 votes
    24. Flattr support

      In keeping with Tildes' general philosophy of supporting budding technologies that have the potential to reform large domains of the internet for the better, I think you should look into Flattr...

      In keeping with Tildes' general philosophy of supporting budding technologies that have the potential to reform large domains of the internet for the better, I think you should look into Flattr (www.flattr.com).
      A Flattr subscriber reserves any set amount of money per month which will then get automatically distributed to content creators on the web, in proportion to an algorithmic estimate of how much the user has used that particular site or resource.

      First-tier support for Tildes on Flattr would be as simple as registering an account and connecting the tildes.net domain to it. From then on, a percentage of the reserved amount would automatically get transferred to Tildes' account for every Flattr user who uses the site (I myself have generated 64 "Flattrs" on this site as of this moment, which would lead to a significant portion of my reserved $5 to be transfered to Tildes for this month).

      For sites that host content creators, like Twitch and YouTube, Flattr offers a deeper support, where Flattrs go toward individual content creators as well as the host site in itself. An intuitive way to connect Tildes to this feature would be to have each upvote of a Tildes post generate a Flattr for the poster. I believe the money would then be divided between the user who was upvoted (if they have a Flattr account) and Tildes' own Flattr account, but I am unsure about the exact fraction that would get routed to the individual poster as opposed to Tildes itself. I'm sure Flattr's tech support can answer this in detail, though. Flattr is currently owned and maintained by the company behind AdBlock.

      What do other users think? Is Flattr's model good? Are there other sites or providers that offer a similar service? A notable difference between for example Patreon and Flattr is that Flattr is indirectly based on a "pay what you want" model, which marks a pretty significant shift in economic control from producers to consumers. This will obviously have both advantages and drawbacks. Personally, I think the model has a lot of potential on an arena like the internet, where the sheer number of potential consumers can make microtransaction-based models like Flattr really powerful.

      19 votes
    25. Low effort post, but I don't care, concerning downvotes...

      Downvotes are so cheap and I'm happy Tildes doesn't have them. It's like totally spitting on your post in a very passive aggressive way. Downvotes ideally are meant to be used as a kind of "this...

      Downvotes are so cheap and I'm happy Tildes doesn't have them. It's like totally spitting on your post in a very passive aggressive way. Downvotes ideally are meant to be used as a kind of "this doesn't contribute/this is a troll post" thing. But the amount of "I don't like this opinion, downvote" is maddening. Do people not realize how ridiculous it is that they're doing that? Terrible phenomenon.

      27 votes
    26. A group for finance/markets/investing/trading would be nice

      There is a conspicuous lack of that sort of thing here so far. I get that Tildes might not want to be a repository of "hey what stock do I buy" or "Oh my god MU is still going down" but...

      There is a conspicuous lack of that sort of thing here so far. I get that Tildes might not want to be a repository of "hey what stock do I buy" or "Oh my god MU is still going down" but strategy-oriented discussions around positions in markets and the way changes in the world will effect your financial future seems like high-quality content to me.

      6 votes
    27. Should deleting comments be the standard behaviour, or can we consider a less censored approach by default?

      I often stumble in to threads with entire comment chains deleted. I assume most people here have faced the same situation as well, either here or on reddit. I'd like to see a move to locking...

      I often stumble in to threads with entire comment chains deleted. I assume most people here have faced the same situation as well, either here or on reddit.

      I'd like to see a move to locking comments rather than deleting them by default. That would mean no further replies to the comment or any other comment in that chain, no one being able to delete or edit their comments, no one being able to add or remove votes to a comment, etc.

      I understand for particularly egregious comments removal is completely necessary (especially when it goes hand-in-hand with banning users), but a lot of times comments are deleted as a means to prevent long argumentative back-and-forth chains that spam and derail topics, as well as antagonize users.

      In a lot of cases I feel like deleting the comment only further serves to hide what is unacceptable behaviour (even if that behaviour should be obvious), rather than setting an example for the userbase.

      30 votes
    28. General Tildes feedback/questions thread + invites given to everyone

      It's been quite a while now since we had a general feedback thread. So if there's anything you want to discuss, ask about, suggest, etc. but didn't feel like starting a dedicated thread for it,...

      It's been quite a while now since we had a general feedback thread. So if there's anything you want to discuss, ask about, suggest, etc. but didn't feel like starting a dedicated thread for it, feel free to do that here.

      Also, speaking of things that I haven't done in a while, I've topped everyone back up to 5 invite codes. Please don't feel obligated to find ways to use them, but if there are people you want to invite, that would be great. You can get the codes here: https://tildes.net/invite

      69 votes
    29. The Tildes code is now open-sourced

      Disclaimer: this post/information will probably only be interesting to more technical people It's long overdue, but Tildes is now open-sourced: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes There's still a ton...

      Disclaimer: this post/information will probably only be interesting to more technical people

      It's long overdue, but Tildes is now open-sourced: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes

      There's still a ton to do in terms of writing more documentation, filling out the issue tracker with known issues/plans and so on, but it should be ready enough to get started.

      I'm planning to make a post on the Tildes blog tomorrow or Thursday announcing this more formally, but I'd like to keep it a bit quiet until then, in case there are any issues or major gaps in the docs discovered when some of you start looking at it. I'd especially appreciate it if any of you would like to try setting up a local development version and let me know how it goes, and if the instructions all make sense.

      There are two new pages on the docs site as part of this as well:

      • Development Setup - describes how to do the initial setup necessary to get a local development version of the site running
      • Development - a general page with information and instructions related to a lot of aspects of site development. It's very scattered right now and I intend to split it into multiple pages eventually, but that will require some more work on the blog to support being able to organize it well. There are still some definite gaps in here, but it should describe most of the major pieces.

      I'd appreciate any feedback about the documents, code, etc. As mentioned, I'd be especially grateful if some of you want to try setting up a local development version by following my instructions, and give feedback about if any parts of the process are unclear, incomplete, or otherwise need more work. Please feel free to ask any questions you have as well.

      235 votes
    30. Feature proposal: Real-time moderation transparency page (vote in comments)

      Proposal: Create a new page where all users can view all moderation actions. This would make transparency a core part of the platform, hopefully avoiding any misunderstandings about mod actions. A...

      Proposal:
      Create a new page where all users can view all moderation actions. This would make transparency a core part of the platform, hopefully avoiding any misunderstandings about mod actions.

      A new page, maybe called tildes.net/moderation, is available to all registered users. I am not sure where the link to should appear on the site, maybe on the user's profile sidebar?

      This page contains a table of all possible moderation actions. The actions may include: deleted topics, deleted comments, tag modification, moved topics, edited topic titles, banned user, locked topics. (this begs the question, what are the possible mod actions, and that they must be codified.)

      Very roughly, the table columns might include: Date, User(being mod'ed), Mod Action(a list of possible mod actions), Mod Action Reason (either a text field, or a list of possible reasons for this action), Link (null if action is a deleted topic.)

      I think that the user who did the moderating should not be publicly listed for now, to avoid drama?


      Some of the related Topics: (please make a top-level comment with any others)

      Could we have a stickied list of all bans with reasons included?

      Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban


      Please vote for the comment which best reflects your position on this proposal.
      As a bonus question, please make a top-level comment if you have general comment about my format of voting on comments. Would you prefer a straw poll on a 3rd party platform? Is there a cleaner way to do this?

      Edit: added "banned user" to actions list, I probably missed others, let me know. Also added the obvious locked topics.

      23 votes
    31. Standardizing tags: Grouping by continent?

      Example post. Should we add continent tags? We do it with europe and sometimes with asia or south america. But I've never seen north america alongside with usa or canada. When I searched for it,...

      Example post.

      Should we add continent tags? We do it with europe and sometimes with asia or south america. But I've never seen north america alongside with usa or canada. When I searched for it, north america tag was used just once, 93 days ago.

      8 votes
    32. Standardising tags: "eu" or "europe"?

      Are we using "eu" or "europe" for topics about Europe? I think we need to pick one or the other. I prefer "europe". EDIT The people have spoken, and the vast majority is in favour of "europe" (not...

      Are we using "eu" or "europe" for topics about Europe? I think we need to pick one or the other.

      I prefer "europe".


      EDIT

      The people have spoken, and the vast majority is in favour of "europe" (not "eu") for topics related to continental Europe. Topics related to the European Union itself can be tagged "europe.eu" (as per @nothis' excellent suggestion.

      14 votes
    33. [SOLVED] How is the inbox sorted?

      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...

      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.

      7 votes
    34. If you have the "mark new comments" feature enabled, old comments will now be collapsed when returning to a thread

      The "mark new comments" feature (which isn't enabled by default) has two main functions: From the listing pages, it shows which topics have new comments (and how many) On the comments page, it...

      The "mark new comments" feature (which isn't enabled by default) has two main functions:

      • From the listing pages, it shows which topics have new comments (and how many)
      • On the comments page, it puts an orange stripe down the left side of the new comments

      These are both extremely useful (and you should probably enable it if you don't already have it on), but it was still a bit hard to find the new comments in larger threads, even with them marked. You had to just scroll around and look for the orange stripes.

      I've deployed a new update now that makes it so that when you go back to a thread that has new comments, all the old comments will be collapsed, except for the direct parents of the new ones. I've also updated the appearance of collapsed comments so that you can see the first part of the text of the collapsed comments.

      No behavior will change if you're not using the "mark new comments" feature, and if visit a thread for the first time or go back to a thread with no new comments, all comments will be expanded as normal. Remember that you can also use the new "expand all comments" button added last week to quickly uncollapse all comments if you want to.

      Edit: And if you really don't like it, you can disable it now with the second checkbox at the bottom of the settings page: https://tildes.net/settings/comment_visits

      Let me know what you think, and if you notice any issues. This should make navigating large threads a lot easier, and there are also some other interesting possibilities with the "individually collapsed" comments that I'm going to be working on soon. One thing I definitely want to do is add an indication of how many comments are in a particular collapsed chain, since right now you can't distinguish a single collapsed comment from one with (potentially many) replies.

      81 votes
    35. How to view subgroups?

      Is there a way to view all the subgroups in a group? Right now I don't see any way to access them without someone directly linking a subgroup. I think it would be helpful if there was a list of...

      Is there a way to view all the subgroups in a group? Right now I don't see any way to access them without someone directly linking a subgroup. I think it would be helpful if there was a list of subgroups in each group sidebar, or a link to a page of them.

      I just got here, so sorry if this has been covered elsewhere.

      4 votes
    36. Voting: Best Practices

      I've seen some discussion of what voting should be used for here on tildes. Here are the things I try to follow when voting on comment: Does it have a reputable looking source ( I open the source...

      I've seen some discussion of what voting should be used for here on tildes.

      Here are the things I try to follow when voting on comment:

      • Does it have a reputable looking source ( I open the source and check it out)?
      • Does it have new information?
      • Is this a comment whose votes are acting as a form of population polling?
      • Does it contain a well thought out point/ multiple paragraphs?

      Here are the things I try to follow when voting on a post:

      • Is it important for other people to see?
      • Is it reputable?
      • Does it contribute to the greater tildes dialogue?

      I try to make sure it takes more than one of these for me to vote on a comment or page but that certainly isn't always the case. The one thing I try to stay away from is from voting just because I liked the title or because I agreed with an easy 1-3 sentence opinion unless I think that opinion is really important.

      14 votes
    37. Looking to chat? I've created an (unofficial) Tildes community Matrix room!

      #tildes:matrix.org So there are many, many Matrix clients but the most popular one seems to be Riot which is available on iOS, Android (F-Droid, Play Store), and as a web app which you can join by...

      #tildes:matrix.org

      So there are many, many Matrix clients but the most popular one seems to be Riot which is available on iOS, Android (F-Droid, Play Store), and as a web app which you can join by clicking the link above.

      It's similar to Discord in the features it offers, but being open source I thought it might be more in the spirit of Tildes than some of the proprietary alternatives.

      That being said I'll be the first to admit Riot is a bit rough around the edges and Matrix seems to be under both heavy load and development. If there's demand for it I should be able to get a dedicated server up since it's an optionally federated service.

      Oh, and as a bonus the Matrix chat links with the Tildes IRC channels (#tildes and ##tildes) on freenode, so there's that. (Thanks @tyil)

      Don't forget to visit @Kat's wonderful ~tech wiki for links to other options such as Discord and Telegram if them's more your fancy.

      Happy wordsing!

      23 votes
    38. Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban

      After reaching a nice milestone yesterday of over 1000 users registered, we've followed it up with a slightly less nice one—I've now banned someone for the first time. This almost certainly won't...

      After reaching a nice milestone yesterday of over 1000 users registered, we've followed it up with a slightly less nice one—I've now banned someone for the first time. This almost certainly won't happen with every ban, but I'm going to be quite transparent with this one since it was the first one, and it gives a good starting point for a discussion today.

      Trying to be transparent about this one is actually a bit funny, because the user I banned was named "Redacted" (really, I promise!). I had removed his comments from the thread, but I've un-removed them for now so that you can see exactly what I banned for: https://tildes.net/user/Redacted

      There were two reasons that I decided to ban him:

      1. Those last 3 comments, all in the ~talk thread. That thread has been a bit heated in places, but overall it's been civil and going pretty well. He came into it without being involved in the discussion at all and went straight to personal attacks.
      2. He went through and tagged almost all of Mumberthrax's comments as some combination of "troll", "flame", and "noise"—sometimes even all 3 tags on a single comment. That's just blatant misuse of the tags, with no possible reasonable excuse. (Note that I've already removed all his tags, so you won't be able to see them any more)

      So that's a pretty clear case of being an asshole, in my opinion. Let me know what you think—I'm not sure that there's any particular focus for the discussion today, so we can just talk about this specific case as well as banning/removing in general since this is the first time I've had to do anything (and I was just saying how nice it had been).

      161 votes
    39. Feature Request: Can we get a reply button at the top of every post?

      I spend far too much time looking for a reply button before I realise I have to scroll to the bottom. Also, it'd be a lot less work in big threads, where you might be scrolling for a while to get...

      I spend far too much time looking for a reply button before I realise I have to scroll to the bottom.
      Also, it'd be a lot less work in big threads, where you might be scrolling for a while to get to the reply box.
      Yes, I'm that lazy.
      I noticed that sometimes I don't engage if it's a big thread because of this, if the topic being discussed is only of passing interest for example.

      4 votes
    40. Lets discuss tags, again

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each...

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags

      I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each one I thought I'd make a few top level comments instead, hopefully with others doing the same for anything tag related they'd like to see discussed.

      20 votes