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    1. Does Tildes have RSS feeds?

      As the title say, does tilde have RSS feeds for topics? I'm thinking a feed for the frontpage, as well as feeds for each group? I've looked around but it doesn't seem like there is. Is the feature...

      As the title say, does tilde have RSS feeds for topics? I'm thinking a feed for the frontpage, as well as feeds for each group?

      I've looked around but it doesn't seem like there is. Is the feature planned? Has it been decided against? Am I the only one who'd like the feature?

      Does or will tilde have RSS feeds for the frontpage and for groups?

      17 votes
    2. [Suggestion] let's collectively use outline.com to avoid Medium's nuisances

      This thread also applies to every other annoying website. Medium is one of the most annoying sites out there. It's slow, cluttered, always greets me with a despicable banner (no, I do not pardon...

      This thread also applies to every other annoying website.

      Medium is one of the most annoying sites out there. It's slow, cluttered, always greets me with a despicable banner (no, I do not pardon the interruption!) and manages to consistently bypass uBlock Origin. I'm tired of complaining on individual threads (and attracting well-deserved reproach for my grumpiness), so here's my proposal: let's establish an informal rule that every Medium article should be shared in a sanitized version. outline.com seems to be the best tool to accomplish that, but I'm open to suggestions. As a safety measure, in case outline.com goes offline, the original Medium link could be posted in the body of the new thread.

      What you lovely people think about this idea?

      8 votes
    3. Is there an easy way to make ctrl/cmd-enter work everywhere?

      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:...

      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.

      4 votes
    4. Tildee — A python library for interacting with Tildes

      Update! After a few hours of struggling I managed to set up Read the docs for Tildee, it should help using the library significantly. After getting some inspiration from TAPS I thought that maybe...

      Update! After a few hours of struggling I managed to set up Read the docs for Tildee, it should help using the library significantly.

      After getting some inspiration from TAPS I thought that maybe I try to work on something vaguely similar on my own. And after… some? hours of coding today I came up with this: tildee.py (source)
      It's a wrapper for the Tildes Public/Web API that is already used by the site internally to make it work. The obvious problem with that is that it will at one point break when this unstable API is changed. It can do basically all things a normal user can do with the notable exception of applying comment labels (because I haven't gotten around to that yet).

      Example of usage for a DM reply bot (result):

      import sys
      from tildee import TildesClient
      import time
      
      # Initialize client and log in, 2FA isn't supported yet and will probably break in horrible ways
      t = TildesClient("username", "password", base_url="https://localhost:4443", verify_ssl=False)
      
      while True:
          # Retrieve the "unread messages" page and get a list of the conversations there
          unread_message_ids = t.fetch_unread_message_ids()
          for mid in unread_message_ids:
              # Access the conversation history page; this also clears the "unread" flag 
              conversation = t.fetch_conversation(mid)
              # Get the text of the last message
              text = conversation.entries[-1].content_html
              # Abort if it's from the current user (I don't think this could actually happen)
              if conversation.entries[-1].author == t.username:
                  break
              print(f"Found a message by {conversation.entries[-1].author}")
              # If the message contains a reference, reply in kind
              if "hello there" in text.lower():
                  print("Replying…")
                  t.create_message(mid, f"General {conversation.entries[-1].author}! You are a bold one.")
              # Delay before processing next unread message
              time.sleep(3)
          # Delay before next unread check
          time.sleep(60)
      

      This has a lot of potential. Haven't yet figured out potential for what, but I'll take what I can get.
      I'd be really grateful if someone with a little more experience than me (that's not exactly a high bar :P) could give me some pointers on the project's structure and the "API design", hence the ask tag. Other creative ideas for what to use this for are appreciated, too.

      47 votes
    5. Tildes User Script: Youtube Thumbnails Below Topic Title

      A screenshot. Following is a user script that embeds a thumbnail into the topic header. Was supposed to be trivial, but walking around the CSRP was not that easy. Luckily, someone had written a...

      A screenshot.

      Following is a user script that embeds a thumbnail into the topic header. Was supposed to be trivial, but walking around the CSRP was not that easy. Luckily, someone had written a nice useful custom Base64 encoder, because I spent more than an hour trying to get btoa to do the thing.

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name     tildesYoutubeThumbs
      // @version  1
      // @grant    GM.xmlHttpRequest
      // @namespace   tildes.net
      // @include     https://tildes.net/~*/*
      // ==/UserScript==
      
      let youtubeIcon = document.querySelector('div.topic-icon-youtube_com')
      
      if(youtubeIcon !== null) {
        let youtubeLink = youtubeIcon.nextSibling.nextSibling.href;
        let youtubeID = new URL(youtubeLink).searchParams.get('v');
        let thumbnailUrl = "https://img.youtube.com/vi/" + youtubeID + "/0.jpg";
      
        GM.xmlHttpRequest({
          method: "GET",
          url: thumbnailUrl,
          overrideMimeType: 'text/plain; charset=x-user-defined',
          onload: function(response) {
            if(response.status === 200) {
              let thumbElement = document.createElement('img');
              let thumbParentDiv = document.createElement('div');
              let header = document.querySelector('article.topic-full > header');
              let data = "data:image/jpeg;base64," + customBase64Encode(response.responseText);
              thumbElement.src = data;
              thumbElement.style = 'width: 60%; margin: auto';
              thumbElement.id = 'gk-youtube-thumbnail';
              thumbParentDiv.style = 'width: 100%; text-align:center;';
              header.appendChild(thumbParentDiv);
              thumbParentDiv.appendChild(thumbElement);
            }
          }
        });
      }
      
      // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8778863/downloading-an-image-using-xmlhttprequest-in-a-userscript/8781262#8781262
      function customBase64Encode (inputStr) {
          var
              bbLen               = 3,
              enCharLen           = 4,
              inpLen              = inputStr.length,
              inx                 = 0,
              jnx,
              keyStr              = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
                                  + "0123456789+/=",
              output              = "",
              paddingBytes        = 0;
          var
              bytebuffer          = new Array (bbLen),
              encodedCharIndexes  = new Array (enCharLen);
      
          while (inx < inpLen) {
              for (jnx = 0;  jnx < bbLen;  ++jnx) {
                  /*--- Throw away high-order byte, as documented at:
                    https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Using_XMLHttpRequest#Handling_binary_data
                  */
                  if (inx < inpLen)
                      bytebuffer[jnx] = inputStr.charCodeAt (inx++) & 0xff;
                  else
                      bytebuffer[jnx] = 0;
              }
      
              /*--- Get each encoded character, 6 bits at a time.
                  index 0: first  6 bits
                  index 1: second 6 bits
                              (2 least significant bits from inputStr byte 1
                               + 4 most significant bits from byte 2)
                  index 2: third  6 bits
                              (4 least significant bits from inputStr byte 2
                               + 2 most significant bits from byte 3)
                  index 3: forth  6 bits (6 least significant bits from inputStr byte 3)
              */
              encodedCharIndexes[0] = bytebuffer[0] >> 2;
              encodedCharIndexes[1] = ( (bytebuffer[0] & 0x3) << 4)   |  (bytebuffer[1] >> 4);
              encodedCharIndexes[2] = ( (bytebuffer[1] & 0x0f) << 2)  |  (bytebuffer[2] >> 6);
              encodedCharIndexes[3] = bytebuffer[2] & 0x3f;
      
              //--- Determine whether padding happened, and adjust accordingly.
              paddingBytes          = inx - (inpLen - 1);
              switch (paddingBytes) {
                  case 1:
                      // Set last character to padding char
                      encodedCharIndexes[3] = 64;
                      break;
                  case 2:
                      // Set last 2 characters to padding char
                      encodedCharIndexes[3] = 64;
                      encodedCharIndexes[2] = 64;
                      break;
                  default:
                      break; // No padding - proceed
              }
      
              /*--- Now grab each appropriate character out of our keystring,
                  based on our index array and append it to the output string.
              */
              for (jnx = 0;  jnx < enCharLen;  ++jnx)
                  output += keyStr.charAt ( encodedCharIndexes[jnx] );
          }
          return output;
      }
      
      15 votes
    6. A system for "starred" posts on sensitive/advice topics

      This was inspired by this post. I was thinking, as a platform gets bigger we're going to end up with more situations where people are asking for advice about fairly serious stuff. In some cases,...

      This was inspired by this post.

      I was thinking, as a platform gets bigger we're going to end up with more situations where people are asking for advice about fairly serious stuff. In some cases, that advice needs to come from experts and taking guidance from any random Joe on the street can be risky/dangerous. (For the record, I don't think the post I'm referencing is an example of this, it just got me thinking about it).

      In cases like this, I think it's important that the actual good advice get some kind of clear designation that THIS is the guidance you need to take first. I notice this in communities like /r/Fitness a lot where people will post about what sound like pretty serious health concerns and you get a fair number of posts that suggest toughing it out or whatever and the more critical "You need to see a doctor" posts can kind of disappear amid the discussion. Similar things in /r/relationships where you can't always count on "This is abuse. Make arrangements to get your kids and yourself somewhere safe. . ." to be the top post.

      Even in cases where the poster themselves is smart enough to take "YOU NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR" type advice to heart, not every schmuck searching the topic on Google will. To that end, it might be good to give certain posts with good, holistic advice or by a known expert some kind of visual indicator that it deserves to be taken more seriously than other posts in the thread. It wouldn't be censoring anything really, just providing a little nudge about what ought to be consulted first or taken to heart.

      Now obviously it gets hard to decide how to give a post this attribute. It could possibly be awarded by the OP, though that has some obvious issues where the OP themselves might not be in a position to credibly vet the advice they're getting. We could also just do it through ranking by vote, which is the default paradigm. But like I said, it doesn't always work so well on Reddit. And the Exemplary tag is invisible to others, so that doesn't work either (and the post itself might not be worth giving up your "Exemplary" for the day besides). Moderators could do it, but there may not be enough and the skillset to be a Mod might not overlap with the skillset to know what advice a person needs in a particular situation.

      I don't actually have the answers. Maybe it just comes down to creating an attribute for some users to be "wisened elders" or something and empower them to star certain posts to separate good advice from bad. It would basically be a trusted user system. It's got it's own problems, but I guess we can open the floor for other ideas. Maybe it's not a real concern. Maybe it's better addressed by tinkering with the sorting of posts.

      11 votes
    7. Site suggestion: Dark mode

      I apologize if this is the wrong topic for this post, and if this feature already exists, I apologize for that too. I looked around and couldn't find it (it's possible I could have missed it). But...

      I apologize if this is the wrong topic for this post, and if this feature already exists, I apologize for that too. I looked around and couldn't find it (it's possible I could have missed it). But I thought a dark mode for Tildes would be most excellent. Right now, there's a lot of white space and combined with my 24" monitor, this site lights up my whole room like it's in the middle of the day. Anyways, thanks for reading. :)

      4 votes
    8. An app for tildes?

      There doesn't appear to be an app for tildes unless I'm not looking using the right name, how would users here feel about an app similar to what reddit has like reddit is fun or Joey? I'm mainly...

      There doesn't appear to be an app for tildes unless I'm not looking using the right name, how would users here feel about an app similar to what reddit has like reddit is fun or Joey? I'm mainly on my phone and while it's still easy to navigate by browser would love a similarly structured app for tildes. What do you guys think?

      17 votes
    9. Updates to "Activity" sorting method (the site's default)

      Since it launched, Tildes has always been using "Activity" as the site's default sorting method, which behaves like a classic forum—any new comment in any topic causes it to "bump" back to the top...

      Since it launched, Tildes has always been using "Activity" as the site's default sorting method, which behaves like a classic forum—any new comment in any topic causes it to "bump" back to the top of the list. This has generally worked well overall, and has been a good way to keep threads visible and active over longer periods.

      However, there have been a few issues related to it, such as controversial threads staying at the top of the site for long periods of time, and bickering back and forth between two users causing threads to constantly bump back up to the top even if nobody else is interacting with the topic at all. We haven't had great ways to deal with this so far, and have mostly had to work around it by setting the default time period to "last 3 days" so that threads can't dominate the site indefinitely, or even locking threads to force them to drop off.

      As an attempt at a better solution, "Activity" has now had its behavior changed so that topics will only bump to the top when something "interesting" happens, instead of for every single comment. The exact methods we're using to determine "interesting" will need experimentation and to be adjusted as we see how they work, but initially it's entirely based on comment labels:

      If a comment or any of its parent comments has an active Noise, Offtopic, or Malice label (note: it generally takes at least two users applying the label to make it "active"), the comment will not cause the thread to bump to the top. For example, this means that if a particular comment gets labeled as Offtopic, any replies "below" that comment will no longer bump the thread in the Activity sort. This will also apply retroactively, so if someone posts a new top-level comment, the thread will still initially bump to the top, but if that comment is then labeled as Noise, it will "un-bump" and return back to its previous location in the listing.

      Since this will give us a better way to prevent threads from staying at the top of the site forever, I've also now changed the default time period back to "all time".

      If you'd rather keep the previous behavior and continue having threads always bump to the top when a new comment is posted in them, you can use the new "All activity" sorting method instead. Logged-in users can set it as their default sorting across the site by changing to it on the home page and clicking "Set as default" to the right of the time period dropdown.

      Any feedback is welcome, but these are questions that I'm particularly interested in:

      • Are there cases where the label-based "uninteresting" judgment won't work well? Links to specific examples would be ideal, if possible.
      • What other methods could we use to judge a new comment as "uninteresting"?
      • Should we try triggering bumps from other non-comment events? For example, if a topic is getting voted up a lot, should it bump even if there isn't a new comment?

      As usual, I've also given everyone 10 invites again (and don't worry, I haven't forgotten about turning the visible comment votes back on either, and I'll do that this afternoon, along with posting a thread to discuss it).

      65 votes
    10. Stylus userstyle that hides comment vote counts

      This simple stylus userstyle hides vote counts on both voted and unvoted comments and your own comments. I really like what Deimos did, it significantly improved my time here on Tildes. If you...

      This simple stylus userstyle hides vote counts on both voted and unvoted comments and your own comments. I really like what Deimos did, it significantly improved my time here on Tildes. If you want the feature back, install Stylus extension, click the Stylus icon > write style for tildes.net and paste this:

      /* Hide vote count for unvoted comments */
      .btn-post-action[name="vote"] {
          visibility: hidden;
          position: relative;
      }
      .btn-post-action[name="vote"]:after {
          visibility: visible;
      	content: "Vote";
          position: absolute;
      }
      
      /* Hide vote count for voted comments */
      .btn-post-action[name="unvote"] {
          visibility: hidden;
          position: relative;
      }
      .btn-post-action[name="unvote"]:after {
          visibility: visible;
      	content: "Voted";
          position: absolute;
      }
      
      /* Hide vote count for your own comments */
      .comment-votes {
          display: none;
      }
      

      Known issues

      • There is extra padding around Vote button
      • Extensions such as Vim Vixen cannot interact with Vote button
      10 votes
    11. Is there an estimate of when sub-tildes are going to start being added?

      There was talk a while back about the different sections of tildes getting broken down further into subsections. Is this still the plan? Does tildes even have a user base large enough for it to be...

      There was talk a while back about the different sections of tildes getting broken down further into subsections. Is this still the plan?

      Does tildes even have a user base large enough for it to be worthwhile?

      26 votes
    12. Comment vote counts are now visible again

      It's been just over a week since the experiment with hiding comment vote counts was started, so as promised I've turned it back off now, and votes are visible again. There was already a fair...

      It's been just over a week since the experiment with hiding comment vote counts was started, so as promised I've turned it back off now, and votes are visible again.

      There was already a fair amount of feedback posted in the original topics as well as random other threads over the week, but this can be the main place for "postmortem" feedback now.

      I won't bias the discussion in a particular direction by giving any of my own thoughts just yet, so let me know what you thought of it and whether you think we should consider making any similar changes more permanently.

      75 votes
    13. UserScript that hides votes like in the recent experiment

      For those who want to prolong the experiment, here is a userscript to help: // ==UserScript== // @name tildes // @version 2 // @grant none // @namespace tildes.net // @include https://tildes.net/*...

      For those who want to prolong the experiment, here is a userscript to help:

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name     tildes
      // @version  2
      // @grant    none
      // @namespace   tildes.net
      // @include     https://tildes.net/*
      // ==/UserScript==
      
      document.querySelectorAll('.is-comment-mine .comment-votes').forEach((v) => v.parentNode.removeChild(v));
      
      ['.btn-post-action[name="vote"]', '.btn-post-action[name="unvote"]'].forEach((sel) =>
        document.querySelectorAll(sel).forEach((b) => b.innerText = b.innerText.replace(/ \(.*/, '')));
      

      I am fairly sure that this syntax requires ES6, so if your browser is not compatible, you need to reimplement this using ES5. Should be straightforward but a bit more verbose.

      20 votes
    14. Suggestions on labels

      Rationale: labels are a valuable way to receive and give feedback, so it would be useful to have more labels-related tools. This topic deals with labels received by an ordinary user or given by an...

      Rationale: labels are a valuable way to receive and give feedback, so it would be useful to have more labels-related tools.

      This topic deals with labels received by an ordinary user or given by an ordinary user from that user's point of view (as opposed to non-logged-in lurkers, other ordinary users, and users with elevated privileges).

      While labels presently only apply to comments, these suggestions would apply to topic labels when they are implemented, and to other labellable content types should any appear.

      The “Gilded” page—Issue 423

      Suggestion 1. Users can filter their user pages for content labelled Exemplary.

      Unlike all other suggestions, this also applies to users viewing other users' pages, and possibly even to lurkers viewing user pages.

      I also suggest that users have an option to automatically expand the Exemplary messages when they see their own Exemplary content.

      Other labels given TO the user

      The common point is that it would help if users observe the feedback given to them by others via labels. In addition, this would prevent label misuse and abuse.

      Suggestion 2. Users have an option to observe labels given to their own content along with the label counts.

      Suggestion 2a. If comment vote counts remain generally hidden, users should still be able to see the vote counts for their own comments.

      Suggestion 3. Users can filter their user pages for content labelled Malice (but, of course, they should not be able to see Malice messages).

      Suggestion 4. Users can filter their user pages for content with any label (maybe with further options like All labels vs “Non-major” ones).

      Edit: Suggestions 2, 3, and 4 might go with time lags. Namely, labels given to own content are only visible for content older than X minutes (X can be even 1440 or more) and to users with accounts older than Y days.

      Labels given BY the user

      Suggestion 5. Users have an option to automatically expand the label pane for the content they have already labelled.

      Suggestion 6. Users can easily overview the content they labelled Exemplary. (This is basically the “Gilded” page in the other direction.) In addition, users can see the messages they provided when giving Exemplary labels.

      Suggestion 7. Users can easily overview the content they labelled Malice. In addition, users can see the messages they provided when giving Malice labels.

      P.S. These suggestions deal with the current labels, but they can be extended to future labels, e.g., group-specific ones.

      11 votes
    15. The number of votes on comments is no longer visible (for the next week)

      I want to try another experiment today, and unlike some other times when I've referred to something as an "experiment" and ended up just leaving it around forever, I'll set a specific time limit...

      I want to try another experiment today, and unlike some other times when I've referred to something as an "experiment" and ended up just leaving it around forever, I'll set a specific time limit on this one.

      For the next week, the number of votes on comments will be completely hidden. This applies to everyone and all comments, including your own. I'm not even cheating for myself with admin permissions, I can't see comment vote counts any more either (unless I look it up manually in the database, but I won't do that).

      There's no functional change: you can still vote and sorting will be affected exactly as before, but there's no way to see how many votes a particular comment has. Topic voting is staying unchanged, with the counts still visible.

      I know that some of you are going to hate this. I think that I'm probably going to hate this. But I want to try it, because I think visible vote counts have both positive and negative effects, and I want to try and sort through those a little. Tildes is still small enough right now that almost all threads can be fully read through easily, so the voting isn't really that significant, and this is a good time to try it.

      Here are the main things I'd like to think about, and want to hear from you about:

      • In what cases does not being able to see the votes make things more difficult for you? Are there particular threads that you feel like you need to see the vote counts? Why?
      • From a less functional perspective, when does not being able to see the counts feel better or worse?
      • Can you think of other ways that we could accomplish the positive aspects (ones that are lost by hiding the counts), without showing an actual vote count?

      Thanks, let me know what you think. Initial reactions/thoughts are good, but I'm also interested in your thoughts after a few days, once you've gotten a little more accustomed to it.

      (And as is pretty usual with "official" posts now, I'm using this as a good time to top everyone back up to 10 invites)

      128 votes
    16. Daily Tildes discussion - allowing users to post anonymously?

      It's a long weekend in Canada and I'm going to be quite busy, so this is going to be the last daily discussion until Monday. Because of that, I figured I'd pick one of the more interesting topics....

      It's a long weekend in Canada and I'm going to be quite busy, so this is going to be the last daily discussion until Monday. Because of that, I figured I'd pick one of the more interesting topics. This isn't necessarily something that will be implemented particularly soon, but it should be good to discuss anyway:

      Should we support the ability for users to make some posts anonymously?

      General notes/thoughts:

      • If the site itself doesn't support it, people will just create throwaway accounts and effectively post anonymously anyway. This is worse in some ways (causes a lot of abandoned accounts and wasted usernames) and especially doesn't work well while the site is invite-only, since people have to use one of their invites to create a throwaway.
      • The user making the posts would still be tracked internally, so anonymous posting wouldn't be free of potential consequences. This association would probably be removed after 30 days, like most other private/sensitive data.
      • There would be some sort of anonymous identifier that would change on a per-thread basis, so that multiple posts from the same anonymous user can be recognized.
      • Once we start working towards a trust/reputation system, having the anonymous posts be linked to the user's real account would probably have a number of benefits.

      Let me know what you think about the idea in general, and what concerns you think we'll need to be careful about if we decide to implement it.

      One other, unrelated thing as well: it's been a while since we gave out invite codes, so I've topped everyone up to 5 invite codes. You can get to them here (linked in your userpage sidebar): https://tildes.net/invite

      97 votes
    17. How do you configure IntelliJ Idea for the tildes project ?

      Anybody has experience in setting up IntelliJ Idea for a Python/Vagrant project. I have imported the project and selected the Python interpreter as ../tildes/venv/bin/python, but the IDE failed to...

      Anybody has experience in setting up IntelliJ Idea for a Python/Vagrant project. I have imported the project and selected the Python interpreter as ../tildes/venv/bin/python, but the IDE failed to resolve dependencies. What am I missing ? I have Idea ultimate license so prefer to use it rather than Pycharm community edition.

      4 votes
    18. Community based tag-curation

      This was inspired by this post where the user tagged the post as "sugges" rather than "suggestions." Since tags decline in utility with minor spelling mistakes like this, I wonder if there could...

      This was inspired by this post where the user tagged the post as "sugges" rather than "suggestions."

      Since tags decline in utility with minor spelling mistakes like this, I wonder if there could be a way for nitpicky grammarians, like myself, to just go through an edit broken tags, add relevant tags, prune unnecessary ones, etc.

      I guess it would be sort of a moderation responsibility, but I expect we would prefer they focus on content moderation. Tag editing is low-key enough that people with this responsibility probably wouldn't need to be vetted as thoroughly or held to the same kind of community standards of behavior that a mod would be. We'd just have to trust them to not be pranksters or abusive with it (e.g. making tags like "this poster is a doodyhead").

      8 votes
    19. Wiki log and future plans - May 2019

      This took a long time to compile but the goal is to make it easy for people to see what changes happened since the last recurring topic (similarly to @Bauke's "Tildes issue log"), I plan to do...

      This took a long time to compile but the goal is to make it easy for people to see what changes happened since the last recurring topic (similarly to @Bauke's "Tildes issue log"), I plan to do this monthly since I think things will probably calm down a bit.

      I won't mention minor changes such as design changes or typos to keep this still readable, I hope you understand. I also took the liberty to combine certain commits to make it more compact.

      I'd like to allow for conversation and cooperation in the wikis this way since people can discuss changes they plan to do here with others before they reach and someone wishes to have their explanations which might appear rude so please discuss your changes here before doing them so you can see what other people think of your changes (and probably help too!).

      (Please message me directly if you see mistakes as to avoid potential noise)


      Global

      May 24th

      • Tildes wiki comes out
      • @deing imports most (if not all) of the unofficial wiki's resources

      ~tech

      May 25th

      • @lionirdeadman added IceCat, Wire and Rocket.Chat in ~tech/FOSS-Recommendations

      ~books

      May 25th


      ~music

      May 26th

      • @Kelsier created ~music/discover_new_music to list websites where you can discover new music
      • @Whom added links, review and journalism section, databases to ~music/discover_new_music
      • @cfabbro added Youtube sources to ~music/discover_new_music

      ~anime

      May 26th

      • @Whom created ~anime/useful_links to link to streaming services, manga services, tracking sites, news, reviews and others
      • @lionirdeadman added Viewster and TubiTV to anime/useful_links

      ~news

      May 27th

      • @deing added Election Night 10 to ~news/index

      ~lgbt

      May 26th

      • @alyaza created ~lgbt/lgbt_resources to list resources for lgbt help services

      May 27th

      • @alyaza added US resources to ~lgbt/lgbt_resources

      May 30th

      • @mftrhu added italian resources to ~lgbt/lgbt_resources

      ~movies

      May 31st


      ~tv

      May 31st


      ~talk

      May 25th

      May 31st

      • @LukeZaz updated ~talk/index recurring topics

      ~comp

      May 25th

      • @ali added courses to ~comp/index

      June 1st

      • @sniper24 added Dice Roller to ~comp/index's programming challenges

      ~tildes

      May 24th

      • @lionirdeadman added information about wikis in ~tildes.official/mechanics
      • @alyaza creates ~tildes/Hierarchical_tag_short_rules
      • @alyaza addeds info about recurring. in ~tildes/hierarchical_tags

      May 25th

      May 26th

      May 31st

      June 2nd

      June 3rd

      • @Eylrid specified that users with Deimos' permission can edit tags in ~tildes.official/instructions
      10 votes
    20. A collection of notable Tildes threads!

      Hello! Have a good or unique thread that you found on this website that you want others to see? Feel free to suggest some and I will update them in this list! After a thread is added, I will also...

      Hello! Have a good or unique thread that you found on this website that you want others to see? Feel free to suggest some and I will update them in this list! After a thread is added, I will also sort it by category.

      Here's a wiki for it like @Algernon_Asimov suggested
      Here's another wiki although this isn't specifically focused on notable threads.
      Here's a google document for it

      Meta

      By making both "high-quality discussion" and "transparent community development" a core part of its identity, Tildes will always be dominated by people with "moderator/power user" personalities. - A thread discussing content elitism on tildes.

      Scenario

      If you found the secret to immortality would you tell anyone? - Self-explanatory title.

      25 votes
    21. Tildes (unofficial) IRC channel

      I recently floated this idea in a comment elsewhere, but I wanted to gauge interest in having an unofficial Tildes IRC channel. The purpose of this channel would just be general, casual discussion...

      I recently floated this idea in a comment elsewhere, but I wanted to gauge interest in having an unofficial Tildes IRC channel. The purpose of this channel would just be general, casual discussion with other users of Tildes about anything, and particularly those topics which may not warrant an entire thread on the site here. I know that these days IRC isn't the most popular chat option, with things like Discord filling the void. However IRC is appealing in that users can choose between multiple clients, and in that such a Tildes channel would not need many of the features offered by Discord. How would people feel about such a space?

      5 votes
    22. Scheduling posts

      Usecases : Recurring posting which can't be done (for numerous reasons) like @hungariantoast recently mentioned Trickle-down posting because certain people feel bad when they post a bunch of...

      Usecases :

      • Recurring posting which can't be done (for numerous reasons) like @hungariantoast recently mentioned
      • Trickle-down posting because certain people feel bad when they post a bunch of topics since they feel like it floods the ~groups

      There's room for abuse but I think Tildes' "Trust people but punish abusers" applies here.

      21 votes
    23. A basic wiki system is now available for groups

      Friday afternoon just before an American long weekend probably isn't the best time for me to announce a major update, but oh well, I'm doing it anyway: There is now a basic wiki system available,...

      Friday afternoon just before an American long weekend probably isn't the best time for me to announce a major update, but oh well, I'm doing it anyway:

      There is now a basic wiki system available, with each group being able to have its own set of pages. I think this should help a lot for letting people collaborate on information through the site itself. @deing has been running an unofficial wiki (thanks!), but having it natively on the site should be much easier for people to find and help edit, so hopefully we can transfer over most or all of that content.

      As always, a number of aspects are pretty rough and I'm sure I'll keep tweaking it over the next little while as I see how it starts to be used, but it should be decent enough to get started with. Various things to know about it:

      • As of right now, permission to create and edit wiki pages must be granted manually. So if you'd like to get involved with editing wiki pages, please either comment here and say so or send me a message and I can give you permissions.
      • The editing history is being stored in git, which will give us a lot of neat functionality for "free". You don't need to know anything about git at all (or even know what it is)—it's all done internally, but it means that I can do things like sync the wiki pages to GitLab and take advantage of their existing interface to display changes, page histories, etc. instead of needing to duplicate all of those functions from scratch (which might be nice to do someday anyway, but it's neat to have them all already with this method).
      • Unlike other content you post to Tildes (such as your comments) which remain your own, contributions to the wiki will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike, in order to allow others to edit, reproduce, and so on. This is explained prominently on the wiki editing pages, and I'll update the Terms of Use shortly to reflect this as well.
      • I'm going to duplicate all the pages from the Tildes Docs site into the ~tildes.official wiki. This will allow people to be able to contribute changes to the docs without needing to figure out all the pieces for making changes to that repo directly. It won't update automatically or anything (and I wouldn't want it to), but I'll review any changes made through the site wiki and move them onto the Docs site.

      I think that should cover the main points, but let me know if you have questions. Also, it's been a while, so I've topped everyone back up with 10 invites again. Thanks!

      89 votes
    24. Hierarchical tags: How they're used and working toward a community standard [Draft part 1]

      among the things i have been working on for the past day and change is documentation of the novel uses of hierarchical tags on tildes, how they vary by group (or in the cases here, across most or...

      among the things i have been working on for the past day and change is documentation of the novel uses of hierarchical tags on tildes, how they vary by group (or in the cases here, across most or all of the site), and how we might best begin to standardize, introduce, or deprecate them going forward so we're on the same page and end up with tags that aren't a giant, unfriendly, user-unintuitive mess.

      obviously, though, this is something that should probably include community input since the community generally determines the tags used in the first place; therefore, this is your chance to check my work, suggest additions, removals, etc. to this draft and in the end, hopefully help craft a standard of hierarchical tagging that's simpler, more intuitive, and more consistent for everybody on the website to use so we can reduce future meta discussions on this and make tags better overall.

      this will be done in chunks for convenience purposes (your sake and mine). therefore, if you would be so kind as to try and limit your suggestions to the pertinent tags, that would be most helpful.



      Mostly group non-specific tags

      There are also a number of tags which are more general and occur or can occur in several or all groups on the website. Some of the more common conventions of hierarchical tags that are generally not group-specific are:


      economics. and similar tags

      The economics tag can occur in several groups, most often ~science, ~news, and ~misc. While it can take hierarchical tags, standalone economics is usually fine. Nonetheless, with specific branches of economics like microeconomics and macroeconomics, hierarchical tags should probably be used (thus economics.micro, economics.macro, economics.applied, and so on). Examples of this in action (and further specification under this scheme) are:

      • economics.trade (economics and trade)
      • economics.micro.urban (urban microeconomics)
      • economics.policy.employment (economic policy with respect to employment)

      However, when placed in ~science, the standard is always socialsciences.economics over economics. to align with the standards of tagging in that group, thus socialsciences.economics.trade instead of economics.trade. Given that economics. in this case is itself a hierarchical tag, it may be pertinent to break off the last hierarchical tag into its own tag where it would lead to three consecutive hierarchical tags, like so:

      • socialsciences.economics.micro and urban areas
      • socialsciences.economics.policy and employment

      law.

      The law tag takes a very large number of modifiers and can be used in just about every group due to the fact that law generally transcends the current set of groups Tildes has. Historically, topics related to law have been tagged in the [modifier] law format (i.e. medical law, copyright law, us law, and so on); however, this has generally been phased out by the community in favor of using hierarchical tags for the modifiers. Therefore, with respect to pre-existing tags, constructions like medical law should be deprecated in favor of law.medical. In addition, the following tags which do exist should be converted accordingly:

      • medical law (convert to law.medical)
      • international law (convert to law.international)
      • labor law (convert to law.labor)
      • employment law (convert to law.employment)
      • antidiscrimination laws (convert to law.antidiscrimination)
      • copyright law (convert to law.copyright)
      • maritime law (convert to law.maritime)
      • environmental law (convert to law.environmental)
      • gun laws (convert to law.guns)

      All single modifier tags should follow a pattern like this. In other words, if you were going to tag something as "abortion law", you should do law.abortion instead of abortion law. Currently well established tags following this format are: law.citizenship, law.international, law.labor, law.marriage, and law.juvenile.

      The following tags with location tags in them (and similar tags like them) should be converted slightly differently from the above tags. Instead of being rolled directly, the locator tag (or what would be the locator tag) should be broken out from the tag, and the tag that is left should have its modifier turned into a hierarchical tag if possible. Thus:

      • usa federal laws is converted to law.federal and usa. (To elaborate in this case, the usa is separated, leaving federal laws which can be converted into law.federal)
      • us law is similarly converted to law and usa
      • european law is converted to law and european union

      However, this should generally not be done with tags which refer to specific laws. For example religious neutrality law, blue laws and safe haven law are tags which should not be converted to use hierarchical tags because it makes little sense to do so.

      There are also two specific tags which should generally not be rolled, which are martial law and law enforcement. Martial law is mostly used to refer to a specific state of affairs rather than an actual subset of law, so it makes little sense for this to be grouped into the law tag, while law enforcement is not really law in the sense being tagged here and is also covered by other tags like policing; using law.enforcement for this purpose would also be ambiguous, since it more likely would refer to enforcement of legal doctrine.

      The use of the sharia law tag is ambiguous. Since sharia is de jure a form of law, it would make sense to roll it like the other examples so that the tag is law.sharia; however the two uses of it on Tildes are sharia law and there is currently no real consensus on whether or not to roll it in this manner.


      nsfw., trigger., tw., cw. and similar tags

      nsfw., trigger., tw, and cw. are all universal tags that have been used in one form or another to separate out content which might be objectionable and which are still useful for these purposes. Although all four have been used, the community has largely settled on a standard of using trigger. over tw. and cw. with potentially triggering content primarily for reasons of clarity (the trigger. tag also been put forward by Deimos previously as a way of handing potentially triggering and objectionable content). nsfw. is also sometimes used, but this is less frequent and usually carries a different implication than trigger. does.

      As mentioned above, if you are using intending to use a tag of this sort, the preferred option in almost all cases is trigger. over tw. or cw.. For all intents and purposes, tw. and cw. should be considered mothballed and previous uses of them should probably be converted into trigger. at some point (particularly the duplicates tw.death, tw.suicide, and tw.selfharm).

      The main established tags under the trigger. banner are:

      • trigger.death
      • trigger.selfharm
      • trigger.suicide
      • trigger.sexual violence
      • trigger.rape
      • trigger.assault
      • trigger.child abuse
      • trigger.transphobia
      • trigger.homophobia (not used yet, but presumably applicable due to trigger.transphobia's existence)

      These are self explanatory for the most part, and cover most bases; however, if you feel that a particular topic is likely to be triggering for some people, it would be courteous to tag it accordingly in line the above tags. (Do also note that all of these tags can be and often are applied as standalone tags instead of being grouped under trigger. due to the fact that trigger. has waxed and waned in popularity over Tildes's existence.)

      If you are intending to post graphic content, or content which has the potential of exposing people to graphic content (broadly construed) and want to tag it accordingly, nsfw. is generally preferable over trigger.. nsfw. is quite rare, but one example of it in action is the nsfw.racism tag on Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board due to the exceptionally racist content screencapped as a part of the submitted article. nsfw.sex is also seen on Do Police Know How To Handle Abuse Within Kinky Relationships? due to the explicitly sexual nature of the article's subject, but this is more of a courteous measure than a necessary one--a qualified nsfw tag is generally not necessary, and if one is a moderator will most likely add it after the fact.


      hurricanes., cyclones., and typhoons.

      Tropical cyclone news generally fits into several places, most often ~news, ~enviro, or ~science. Generally, the standard for tagging tropical cyclones, whether they are hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, or other similar storms is to use the applicable term for the storm in question, and then use a hierarchical tag for the storm's name. Actual examples of this are:

      This is relatively straightforward, and covers the nomenclature of all existing basins. However, some basins have not been represented on Tildes thus far, so here are the two cases where standards overlap for reference:

      • the Pacific hurricane basin and the South Atlantic basin would both be represented by the same standard as the Atlantic basin (thus, hurricanes.patricia for the Pacific Hurricane Patricia and hurricanes.catarina for the South Atlantic Hurricane Catarina)
      • the Australian, North Indian, and South Pacific basins would be represented by the South-West Indian basin's standard (thus, cyclones.tracy for Australian Cyclone Tracy, cyclones.fani for North Indian Cyclone Fani, and cyclones.gita for South Pacific Cyclone Gita).

      For convenience purposes, storms which are named but have not hit hurricane status should probably still be referred to with the corresponding cyclonic storm tag for their basin, even though they have not formally reached hurricane, cyclone, or typhoon status.

      If there is no name to refer to (i.e. a name has not been designated for the storm), a hierarchical tag should probably not be applied at all, since that would get messy and likely necessitate updates. With storms that have only nicknames or lack a name under the nomenclature since they predate cyclone naming (for example, the 1938 New England Hurricane) there's really no best way to do things, however, using a truncation of the nickname may be the most preferable option (for example: hurricanes.1938 new england).

      36 votes
    25. ~all?

      Could we have a meta-group which is a union of all the available (sub)groups? The purpose of it being having a way to view what the front page looks like without having to log out. IDK what is the...

      Could we have a meta-group which is a union of all the available (sub)groups? The purpose of it being having a way to view what the front page looks like without having to log out. IDK what is the general trend but I personally don't follow all groups (e.g. I am not interested in anime, and I try to minimise my intake of politics, so I am not subbed to ~anime and ~news), but sometimes I am curious about what the part I don't usually see is like.

      I should admit that viewing the frontpage in a private window is almost there (with the caveat of having to copy links around if I want to comment, which is not much trouble frankly), so this would rather be polishing than some very useful new feature.

      17 votes
    26. alyaza is unbanned

      A couple of days ago, I loudly banned alyaza. After investigating it more, I no longer believe that DearDeer was their alt account, so everything I accused them of doing in that post was not true,...

      A couple of days ago, I loudly banned alyaza. After investigating it more, I no longer believe that DearDeer was their alt account, so everything I accused them of doing in that post was not true, and they've been unbanned.

      There are a lot of justifications and excuses I could give for why I got it wrong, but in the end it doesn't really matter. I made a somewhat-rushed decision, but I was confident about it at the time. Yesterday I spent more time looking into it, including following the invite chain and managing to get in contact with the person that sent the invite that DearDeer used to register. Between talking with that person (who was remarkably helpful) and some other info, I found more evidence that DearDeer wasn't alyaza than I had used to originally decide that it was, and realized that I was wrong.

      This is a good example of why I don't like publicizing bans. Without me making that post about it, I'm sure this still would have been noticed by some people, but it could have been a relatively quiet temporary ban that lasted for about a day while it got sorted out. Instead, it ends up as a multi-day unnecessary spectacle. I'm not bothered by the effect on me because of that—I screwed up and deserve the embarrassment and criticism that comes from it, and I fully accept that. But it was unfair and cruel to alyaza to be falsely accused of things publicly, and that can't be reversed.

      Decisions like this (and moderation in general) are often judgment calls that have to be made quickly and with incomplete information. Sometimes, like in this case, you make the wrong call, and more time, information, or an appeal leads you to reverse it. There can be value in having that happen in public, but there can also be harm, and I think this case absolutely leaned more towards the harmful end.

      Anyway, I'll leave the comments open this time so that you can berate me appropriately. Please avoid commenting on alyaza personally though—I've already done enough damage and we don't need to continue that.

      90 votes
    27. A building block for the trust system

      This is something I've been thinking about for a while. One of the future mechanics for tildes is the trust system (see https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future). People talk about building it but...

      This is something I've been thinking about for a while.

      One of the future mechanics for tildes is the trust system (see https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future). People talk about building it but I think we already have a small part of it in place.

      Invites are a form of trust.

      By allowing inviting the community is trusting you with the ability to add new members. That ability can be taken away or could even result in the banhammer if you persistantly invite assholes. I know that made me cautious with who I've invited to join.

      With there being a clear trail of who invited who, bad actors will have to work harder to get a foothold here. I also think that spammers are deterred with having to get an invite for every new account they make.

      A simple analogy is that you're having a party and a friend asks if they can bring a friend of theirs you don't know. Your friend says they're cool and you trust your friend due to past experiences with them so along they come. Now if this person ends up kicking your cat, pissing in the fridge, and then trying to burn your house down then the trust you had in your friend is going to diminish. Next time they want to bring a guest the answer is hell no!

      We can use the invite system as an initial way to build trust.

      10 votes
    28. Banned accounts should have their past comments visible

      So, this is, in part, in response to the alibaba ban. I think it's bad practice not to know why someone got banned. Firstly, it may lead to excessives from your part ("I will ban anyone and...

      So, this is, in part, in response to the alibaba ban.

      I think it's bad practice not to know why someone got banned. Firstly, it may lead to excessives from your part ("I will ban anyone and everyone I want and no one will know"). Secondly, it fails to show other posters that X behaviour will get you banned.

      8 votes
    29. alyaza is banned (maybe permanently, but for at least a week regardless)

      I generally haven't been making public posts about bans any more (there have been almost none recently anyway), but I'm sure there will be people wondering about this one since they were a very...

      I generally haven't been making public posts about bans any more (there have been almost none recently anyway), but I'm sure there will be people wondering about this one since they were a very prolific poster.

      I've banned alyaza. Whether it's temporary or permanent depends on how they justify it to me, but I told them that it would last for at least a week regardless. I've previously warned alyaza about their behavior multiple times (both publicly and privately), and they were aware that they were on their last chance to stop being so hostile when disagreeing with others. Today they registered a new account (DearDeer, which is also banned now) and started immediately using it in disingenuous ways, including arguing with the same comments from both accounts. I'm not sure if the intention was to circumvent that final warning instead of changing behavior, but it absolutely wasn't being used for good-faith purposes regardless.

      I'm going to lock this thread immediately since it's really not worth fostering drama or dwelling on it with a big public discussion, but I wanted to post an explanation at least. If you have any questions or thoughts about it, please feel free to send me a message instead.

      55 votes
    30. tildes.net is inaccessible over IPv6?

      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...

      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?

      27 votes
    31. "Spoiler" tags should also display on comments in tagged posts when viewed from a user page

      Right now if a post is tagged with 'spoiler', that tag appears in its own color which is good. However, if you are interacting with a user and click through to their profile, there is no...

      Right now if a post is tagged with 'spoiler', that tag appears in its own color which is good. However, if you are interacting with a user and click through to their profile, there is no indication that some of their comments may have been in these spoiler threads and thus contain spoilers (just happened to me, thankfully for show I don't watch). It might be nice to somehow indicate these potential spoilers on the user page so that they can be skipped over.

      15 votes
    32. Viewing posts in a certain order

      Didn't there used to be a setting so we could view posts in whatever order - by default - that we wanted? Or is there a way to do it and I'm just too stupid to see it? I personally dislike this...

      Didn't there used to be a setting so we could view posts in whatever order - by default - that we wanted?
      Or is there a way to do it and I'm just too stupid to see it?
      I personally dislike this "relevance" concept and for the most part, voting.
      I just want to see posts chronologically, either oldest first or newest. And I know I can do it, but for every thread? Please tell me there is an option I am missing.

      3 votes
    33. Add spoiler tag to all comments containing X

      It would be nice if one had the option of adding the spoiler tag to all comments containing X. For example, I haven't watched endgame yet. I would feel safer if I knew that all posts containing...

      It would be nice if one had the option of adding the spoiler tag to all comments containing X.

      For example, I haven't watched endgame yet. I would feel safer if I knew that all posts containing the word "endgame" were hidden behind a spoiler-tag.

      9 votes
    34. View all comments in a group (tildes?)

      On Reddit, it's possible to view all the comments in a subreddit by going to the subreddit comments url. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/tildes/comments/ As a separate request, would it be...

      On Reddit, it's possible to view all the comments in a subreddit by going to the subreddit comments url. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/tildes/comments/


      As a separate request, would it be possible to add a new comment sorting method. Perhaps an option to disable comment nesting and sort by new. It would make it easier to see new comments that are added to a post.

      7 votes
    35. Friend mechanic

      I personally think a friend mechanic which allows you to follow what other people say on the site would be quite nice. Right now the only way you could do this is by checking their profile every...

      I personally think a friend mechanic which allows you to follow what other people say on the site would be quite nice.

      Right now the only way you could do this is by checking their profile every now and then which is... tiring at best.

      I don't think there's necessarily room for abuse but I'm interested to see what you all think of this.

      Edit : I've made a top-level comment to clarify certain things

      14 votes
    36. What is, in your opinion, missing on Tildes?

      Pretty much the title. What do you think is missing on tildes? What is something that you'd like to see on tildes that is currently lacking? It could be discussion wise, a feature, or anything...

      Pretty much the title. What do you think is missing on tildes? What is something that you'd like to see on tildes that is currently lacking? It could be discussion wise, a feature, or anything else really.

      48 votes
    37. Markdown preview is now available when writing topics/comments/etc.

      Continuing to work my way through (long overdue) merging of open-source contributions, today we've got another much-requested one that was implemented by @wirelyre: a preview function for...

      Continuing to work my way through (long overdue) merging of open-source contributions, today we've got another much-requested one that was implemented by @wirelyre: a preview function for markdown.

      Anywhere that you're writing markdown now (comments, topics, messages, user bio), there will be two "tabs" above the text field for "Edit" and "Preview". You can flip back and forth between them to see what the result of your markdown will be while you're writing, which should make it a lot easier to work on some of the tricky formatting like tables.

      Like so many other features, there are still a few little weird interface oddities with it, but I wanted to get it live on the site and will probably do a few more minor tweaks to it today. Let me know if you notice anything particularly strange or broken with it.

      And thanks again, @wirelyre!

      99 votes
    38. Autocomplete for topic tagging is now available

      This is something that's been requested and worked on for a very long time, and should help a lot with the consistency of tags that people use on topics. It's also another significant feature...

      This is something that's been requested and worked on for a very long time, and should help a lot with the consistency of tags that people use on topics. It's also another significant feature that's been added by an open-source contributor: Shane Moore (whose Tildes username I actually don't even know) has been working on this on and off since last July, and has put up with me being slow to review and requesting some major changes to it over that time.

      It applies to both the tagging field for new topics as well as the one for editing existing topics' tags, and the list of tags that show up for autocompletion are the 100 most commonly-used tags in each individual group (so the suggestions are different between ~tech and ~music and so on). This is just based on pure frequency at the moment (as in, the 100 tags that are on the most topics in that group), but in the future we could probably improve this to specifically include tags that have been getting used more recently, instead of looking at all time.

      The interface can probably still use some work, and it's likely that there are some bugs and other issues with it, but as I've said before, Tildes is supposed to be in alpha! I haven't been adding nearly enough frustrating issues or breaking things, and we're all getting complacent with having a site where most things work!

      Let me know what you think of it, and if you notice any issues. And thanks again for all the work and patience, Shane!

      69 votes
    39. Adjustments to the experimental single-reply-flattening & user-page sorting is now available

      We've had an experimental method of avoiding deeply nested comment threads in effect for a little over a week now, and while I think it's useful in some ways, it's definitely also pretty confusing...

      We've had an experimental method of avoiding deeply nested comment threads in effect for a little over a week now, and while I think it's useful in some ways, it's definitely also pretty confusing in some cases (as multiple people have pointed out to me).

      I've made two changes to it now that should help quite a bit:

      1. The flattening will now only happen when there won't be any "sibling" comments after the flattened thread.

        This is to avoid what seemed to be the most confusing case (it's a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try): Previously, you could have a thread where a comment has a few replies ("A", "B", "C"), and the first one has a string of single replies ("A2", "A3", "A4"). If the flattening applied, you would have all 6 comments displayed on the same level, in the order of A, A2, A3, A4, B, C. It was very difficult to tell where the "A subtree" ended and it went back to siblings of A—you had to look for where comments stopped having the "(Reply to above comment)" note on them.

        Some people suggested that we use a more obvious indicator of the flattened threads (which might still be a good idea), but this case should now be avoided entirely, which should reduce a lot of the potential confusion when threads are flattened. This also means that the flattening will apply in fewer cases overall, but it should still work for the most common and impactful case of a long string of single replies going back and forth.

      2. As mentioned in the original announcement, one of the nice parts of managing to do the flattening entirely in CSS means that it could easily start at higher thresholds on larger screens, so that threads aren't flattened as early on desktop/laptop-size screens as they are on mobile. I've applied this now, and it should now be very rare to see a flattened thread if you're using the site on a PC.

        If you want to see this in action, you can go to a thread where flattening would apply (the ~tildes.official thread about "source info" is still a good one), and try resizing your browser window to see how the flattening kicks in and adjusts at different sizes. If you're using Firefox, an easy way to try this out is to press Ctrl-Shift-M to go into responsive design mode, and you can easily resize the viewport or set it to specific sizes.

      Other than these changes to the flattening behavior, I've also merged in another open-source contribution that adds alternate sorting methods on the user page. These only appear when you're on the Topics or Comments listings (not the default "mixed" page), and allow you to sort by the other methods available, such as "most votes". Note that since those Topics/Comments pages are only available to logged-in users, viewers without a Tildes account won't be able to use these alternate sortings. Thanks for the work on this, JediBurrell (whose Tildes username I don't know either)!

      Let me know what you think of these changes and if you notice any issues with either of them.

      37 votes
    40. Experimenting with a way of avoiding deeply nested comment threads

      One of the difficulties with a nested/tree commenting system is finding a way to deal with threads that get very "deep", when people continue replying back and forth under the same threads. The...

      One of the difficulties with a nested/tree commenting system is finding a way to deal with threads that get very "deep", when people continue replying back and forth under the same threads. The deep threads end up getting indented very far, and this looks bad, can be hard to follow, and wastes a ton of space (especially on smaller screens like phones).

      I'm not a huge fan of any of the ways that I've seen other sites try to handle this, so I've been trying to figure out if there might be any other possibilities that would work well. I've noticed that in most of the cases where a thread gets very deep, a lot of the depth comes from back-and-forth replies, where there's only one comment on each "level". So I'm testing a method that will flatten those sections out and just put a note on each comment that it's a direct reply to the comment above it.

      Specifically, the current method (which is now live), works like this: if a comment is at least 4 levels deep and only has a single reply, don't indent the reply any further. Instead, keep the reply at the same indentation and add a note at the top of it indicating that it's a reply to the above comment.

      I managed to implement this entirely through CSS, by writing what's probably the worst best chunk of CSS (really, SASS) of my life, which I want to show off here. If you don't know CSS and can't read this, trust me, you're better off:

      .comment:not([data-comment-depth="0"]):not([data-comment-depth="1"]):not([data-comment-depth="2"]):not([data-comment-depth="3"]) {
        &[data-comment-replies="1"] {
          & > .comment-tree-replies {
            margin-left: -1px;  // compensate for border
      
            & > .comment-tree-item > .comment > .comment-itself {
              & > .comment-text::before,
              & > header > .is-comment-deleted::before,
              & > header > .is-comment-removed::before {
                content: "(Reply to above comment)";
                font-size: 0.6rem;
                font-style: italic;
                margin-right: 0.2rem;
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      

      One of the really interesting things about implementing this entirely in CSS is that we can easily change what level it happens at based on screen size. So I have it set to always start at depth >= 4 right now to help with testing and deciding whether it works well or not, but if we decide to keep it I could easily change the threshold to higher on desktop and keep it lower on smaller screens.

      As an example of how it works, the previous ~tildes.official thread works really well. @Amarok and @cfabbro had a long discussion about music metadata that went very deep. The thread ends up 16 levels deep, but this new change makes it so that it only indents by 5 levels instead of 16. Here's a comparison between how the end of the thread looks on my phone: before this change vs. after this change (yes, something's not quite right with the indentation lines yet).

      Let me know what you think. I'm mostly concerned that this might make it a little harder to follow long threads since the information from the indentation is lost, but I think we need to test it out in real threads for a while to see if that actually ends up being significant or just takes a bit of getting used to.

      76 votes
    41. Is it OK to scrape Tildes?

      I wanted to keep the title---and the question, for that matter---generic, but my use case is that I want to make a backup of my posts on Tildes, and I'd fancy automating that with a script that...

      I wanted to keep the title---and the question, for that matter---generic, but my use case is that I want to make a backup of my posts on Tildes, and I'd fancy automating that with a script that curls up my user page and downloads fresh stuff from there periodically. So for my personal case, the question is that is this allowed / welcome practice?

      The generic question is that is it welcome to scrape Tildes' public pages, in general?

      19 votes
    42. Option to temporarily hide read posts

      It would be nice to have an optional feature that filters out posts that a) you have read and b) don't have any new unread comments. When a post gets new comments it should reappear. That way we...

      It would be nice to have an optional feature that filters out posts that a) you have read and b) don't have any new unread comments. When a post gets new comments it should reappear. That way we could see more unread content on the page, but still keep long running topics going. Have it not affect search, so people can still find posts for reference.

      11 votes
    43. Feature suggestion: Suggest related tags

      The recent implementation of automatic tag suggestion has inspired another idea for me. What if Tildes could suggest related tags to the one(s) you've already chosen? You select a tag for your...

      The recent implementation of automatic tag suggestion has inspired another idea for me.

      What if Tildes could suggest related tags to the one(s) you've already chosen? You select a tag for your topic, and then Tildes suggests other tags to add to your topic, sourced from tags which have been commonly used in association with that tag you've selected.

      For example:

      • You tag a topic with "facebook", and Tildes suggests "social media" and "privacy" to add.

      • You tag a topic with "world war ii", and Tildes suggests "history", "nazis", and "military" to add.

      • You tag a topic with "avengers", and Tildes suggests "marvel" and "superheroes" to add.

      The data could be obtained by monitoring the frequency of associations between various tags: if tag B is frequently used in association with tag A, then tag B would be suggested as an additional option whenever tag A is used.

      6 votes
    44. Is Tildes 18+?

      I was thinking about posting this to ~news, but suddenly I've realised that I don't know if the word “fuck”, or any of the Seven Dirty Words, are allowed in titles. Is Tildes adults-only? Should...

      I was thinking about posting this to ~news, but suddenly I've realised that I don't know if the word “fuck”, or any of the Seven Dirty Words, are allowed in titles. Is Tildes adults-only? Should people write something like “f***” in titles instead?

      11 votes