I'm wondering because I'm feeling kind of bad for flooding ~music with my fan girl content. I think it's quality content. I realize a lot of it's been heard but I think every sub ~ group (is that correct phrasing?) needs to have a solid base of content to build on. I don't want to be that person spamming content that people might not like, but I am trying to contribute quality stuff I don't see.

I just can't bear aggregators without it any more. (for reddit you can do it with RES, for HN there is also a browser extension ("Hacker News: Mark All Read") )

The only problem: you miss out on some later discussions. For this the HN extension I use has a "follow comments" toggle inside the posts, which excludes those posts from being hidden.

It also totally fixes the problematic of balancing the "freshness" on the frontpage.

The fact that my cursor has to touch the edge of the screen to be able to access the site docs is not only a little awkward to use, but also looks a little cramped when compared to the consistent and compact nature of the rest of the site. I do see that increasing the padding or the general size of the footer would break the consistent design of Tildes, though. Perhaps spacing the footer <p> elements so they occupy the same y-level without changing the current dimensions of the footer could help?

This is a tiny niggle and it likely only affects me, however, so please do swat me down if this is unnecessary.

—Edited as I forgot to escape characters!

If it's too early in development for these questions, let me know.

1. Is the source available yet? If so, where is it hosted? If not, when will it be dropped?
2. Third party API: I know the docs say that the browser should be the client. However, after using tildes for awhile on mobile, it's quite... interesting. The site does really well on mobile, don't get me wrong, but it's missing the system feel that makes the experience pleasant. Honestly, one of the big reasons I was drawn to reddit was the ample support (by the third party) for mobile clients. I'd love to get started on a client for ~.

Tags

I can totally see nsfw.nude work, but do you think tagging will be done much further? It's relatively much work to tag a thing well, maybe some sort of cross-posting is more rewarding to the user. Essentially it might be the same thing, but the act of sharing to another tilde feels more rewarding than adding yet another tag.

Hierarchies in Tags and Tildes

Yes! I love hierarchies for how they scale.
Do you think the one-dimensional nature of such a "taxonomy" will get problematic, or is it merely a corner case? I might have "food > recipes" and "food > restaurants" or I might have "recipes > food" and "recipes > chemistry". Again I feel like cross-posting is essential to solve this duplication issue. Maybe this as another chance to improve on reddit: if cross-posts just reference a single post there would be just one big discussion.
Cfabbro is part of the team? "We were actually considering allowing multiple ways to access the same groups. E.g. ~literature and ~lit going to the same top level group" sounds good.

Comments

I think "most votes" has a strong bias towards early comments. Ideally you'd give a new comment the reason of doubt, and make it more visible until a good rating about is has been established. For this you'd have to track up-votes per "seen".
Sadly it's really hard to track these implicit down-votes ("read but not up-voted") and generally it obfuscates how the site works. I still think it's worth thinking about, especially if you might derive trust/reputation from the up-votes at some point.
Otherwise commenting on rising stories is the an easy way to farm karma (I tried it on HN to see how the down-vote mechanism works, which is unlocked at 200 karma). Here I also agree with you, that this process should not be 100% automatic.

Group-specific trust

If tildes are nested, will reputation (eventually) be inherited up the hierarchy?

Filter-Bubble (found your opinion in some discussion about it):
I agree again, good communities are bubbles. I think the "no-downvotes" will help a bit so controversial stuff can rise.

Links

I also like your decision to not allow text on links. I really like how HN moderators improve link-titles sometimes to get rid of clickbait or inaccuracies.

I will give some UX feedback later, when I got used to tildes a bit.

AFAIK, reddit does not allow duplication of same link. In Tildes, you can repost same link. Is it deliberate choice or its' discussions postponed?

IMO, after a time period (ex. 1 month) same link can be shared. In this way, some of users that missed link, or a new discovery in the link, can be subjected to interested ones.

Also I really like reddit's other contexts feature for the same link.

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

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

Make it possible to donate in exchange for placing a monocle, sticker or gold star cough on a comment. It's karma and it's an instant way to donate to keep the site afloat.

Also donating could give the donater a special sticker on their username like "supporter" or something.

That silly number on someone's account. One that means nothing but is a weird goal people seek out.

Karma can be used to encourage user participation. Karma can also be bad and can cause someone to post with the intent of collecting karma instead of discussion.

Karma can be earned different way;

• the reddit way, you get karma for how many upvotes you get for things you post
• the gamefaqs way, you get 1 karma point for each day you log in

I'm not sure of any other ways, but I like silly numbers. Perhaps the 'trusted user' thing in the docs can somehow tie into a karma system.

What do you think about karma and how it could/should/would play out here?

The "Black" theme looks pretty OK, but monochrome white/grey-on-black would be fantastic! Nothing against a few colored spots, as long as the text has a high contrast! All the vision-impaired users will thank you!

Hi there!

First things first, I just want to say thank you for the invite, but more importantly, thank you for taking the time to create this platform. I, as I imagine most people on here, have a love-hate relationship with reddit. Clearly the site has had a tremendous impact, in many ways positive, but with many things structurally and fundamentally holding it back. I've been a subscriber to /r/RedditAlternatives/ for a while, and there have been very few sites that have compelled me to learn more and actively take part in them, and yours is of course one of them. I just got done reading all of the articles on your docs page and was very pleased - "finally", I thought, someone who's taken into account all of the articles on the internet that have been written about designing and building communities, from both a social and technical perspective, and put it into practice. You've addressed many issues that are often ignored by the platforms themselves and done it in a brilliant way so as to ensure that our voices are heard first and foremost, and I think that's just awesome.

Okay, now that all the praise is out of the way... :P

I did notice something that was not addressed in the docs pages, so I'll be blunt and simply ask: how do you plan to address the filter bubble, or rather, do you plan to address it at all? Maximizing user freedom regarding which communities you want to see content from seems obvious, but that inevitably ends up with users being stuck in their own bubble. reddit already has an infamous reputation of being an echo chamber, and gives users tools to make it an even bigger echo chamber. A long time ago, there was a commonly held belief that the internet would bring us closer together because it would force us to expand our worldviews and interact with people as people, not knowing where they're from or who they are (the "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" saying about anonymity). As reddit moves more and more toward becoming a social network like Facebook and less like the pseudonymous and anonymous internet discussion forums of old, this problem has only gotten worse, to the point of having real-world political and social consequences (especially with the increasing deluge of so-called "fake news"). I'd really like to hear your take on it.

I do have other concerns, namely: scalability, and the stance on free speech. The donation model has worked well for Wikipedia, but, well, they're Wikipedia. They're an incredibly important resource and people have clearly valued their resource so as to have sustained their model, mass donation drives with Jimbo Wales' face plastered all over the site notwithstanding. If tildes becomes the Wikipedia of internet discussion platforms, I am sure many people will find it valuable enough to donate to, though I am still not sold on how sustainable it really is.

The stance on free speech in the announcement blog post also has me concerned. As you mentioned, it is a difficult topic; that much is clear. I am mostly just curious as to where the lines are drawn in regards to how "threats, harassment, and hate speech" are defined. With an absolutist position like "we are 100% pro-free speech", things are very clear and simple, whereas any other position, I believe, comes down to the whim of the moderators/admins. Certainly most people will generally follow the golden rule and abide by basic common sense and decency (i.e. "don't be a dick"), but when discussions get heated I think it's important to not have a reasonable fear that you're going to get permabanned because you hurt someone's feelings (just as an example).

All these issues aside, I am very excited about the development of tildes and hope you & the community can come up with excellent technical and social solutions to these difficult problems.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

(p.s. apologies for not posting this in the daily discussion topic, thought it warranted its own topic)

edit: formatting

When I upvote a post, it just goes form dotted border to solid border and a very slight change in color which makes recognizing if you already upvoted a post a little hard.

Maybe inverting the color of the box would be more suitable?

Hi!

This isn't a topic I know a ton about (beyond basics like the need for image descriptions for screen readers), but @nil's layout bug stemming from a very large font got me thinking about accessibility.

Has accessibility been discussed and worked on so far?

(If not, I'd like to suggest taking a look at online accessibility guidelines to see what would apply to tildes in particular. It's one of those things that's easiest to add towards the beginning of projects, and it takes making a conscious decision to include it.)

It's probably just me, because I have to use a really big font, but the text in the group summary and in the topics overlaps and is very hard to read! I'll send a screenshot to Deimos.

Also, the sidebar is at the bottom of the screen in my configuration.

It's probably just a personal preference, but I really enjoy that HN or reddit only use two lines per topic, which makes browsing much more efficient. I'd actually prefer one line per topic! Just give me a list of topics and let me decide whether or not I want to bite. ;)

What do you think?

One of the biggest limitations of Reddit is that if you want to post a link, and comment on it yourself, you have to go make a comment on your own post after you've made it.

It would be really useful to be able to fill in both the Link and the Text box, and have your text displayed under the link while you are viewing the comments.

(Also, we should be able to edit posts after making them.)

Currently you can only do one or the other, but I feel that this results in low efforts posts where a user simply post a link and walks away. If we can post text along with a link to, say, a news article, the OP could then start some sort of discussion around that article without having to go into the comments and post whatever they were going to say.

On Reddit, I can chose between two options - to be subscribed to a sub, or to not be subscribed. Right now, the situation is the same with Tildes. I would like to have more fine-grained control over which posts show up on my homepage. For example, right now, a signficant proportion of my homepage is music. I don't know if that will continue to be the case as the site grows, but it serves as a good example for now. I like music, and want to see music related posts on my homepage, but ideally I would like to be able to use a slider or selector of some form to dampen the precedence of ~music, so that I only see the very best posts. Other tildes, like ~comp, I want to have higher precedence / weighting, so that their posts make their way onto my homepage with more ease - because it's the topic I care most about.

I understand that this might be simply infeasible for server-load reasons, and I also could understand if it is felt that this would clash with the clean and simple mechanics of the site. However, I think this feature would be really useful, and moreover could serve as a good USP to attract users from other news aggregators who care about curated, high-quality content.

Other people can tag my posts as jokes, but I can't. Is there a good reason for this to be the case? Obviously I'm not going to tag my posts as Noise, Troll, or Flame, but Joke and Offtopic aren't necessarily negative.

I am absolutely loving Tildes so far! I have been using HackerNews for a long time and I think a couple of things that sites like those lack is 2-Factor Authentication and a dedicated on-site search functionality. Even though this is not a priority, nor does this site require any personal data, I think adding a 2FA would allow users to strengthen (?) their account at one point. I also think a site-wide search would be a good feature to have. HN does not have a native search and you need to use 3rd party services through HN API, which I think isn't really intuitive.

Neither of these are a priority, but I think having these features early on would actually be a good thing to do.

Hi,

I got a CSRF error on the registration page, probably a timeout because I read the terms and privacy policy before going on with the registration. :)

That's a bad first impression for users and should be avoided.

Chris

It took me a few seconds to realize that tapping on the # of votes would count as an upvote.

The usual arrows would be nice, even Facebook is experimenting with those now.

update: Just realized this suggestion was already raised 4 days ago.

Gotta limit the tags; I added maybe 5-6 tags on a submission, I know Instagram has a limit of 30 or so hashtags, if tags are going to be searchable or used for surfacing content in other contexts, limiting the hashtags would limit abuse of it.

Or maybe this already exists and I just haven't hit the limit... ;p

One of the most useful things about most internet communities is being able to compile resources on a particular topic and act as a hub for getting into that topic. On Reddit, this is handled through sidebars and wikis containing guides on how to start speedrunning, sewing, [ridiculous third example for humorous effect], etc. On imageboards, you have generals with pastebins and charts that each new version of that thread inherits. Traditional forums have a similar implementation, just slower.

Given that groups on Tildes are not user-managed and the Reddit-style posts don't encourage the kind of infinite repeating and bumping you see on imageboard generals, I don't see how this kind of thing can take root on the site. How is this going to be managed, if there are ideas on the way?

Of course, this is working from the assumption that this is something which the site should have. Personally, I see it as an essential measure for any site of this kind, but maybe yall don't agree.

Currently, it's just sitting in the top right corner. Considering the fact that it's hiding useful settings (like dark modes!) behind it, it should be a bit more obvious that it's a button, especially on mobile.

Problem Summary

• "Vote" might not be the best word for tildes, since it implies choice
• 0 might not be the best number to start votes at

Solution

• Call the score "Score". It feels really natural: This has a score of 5. My submission has a great score.
• Call the act of voting +. It feels mostly natural: I give this +. I + this post. I got a +.
• Start score at 0. Things start at zero.
• When someone submits something, have them auto+ their own post. + is removable, but see next point - user will never see a 0.
• Hide scores until you have voted on something. This is potentially controversial, but I think it makes sense. Just show a big + in a box for the vote.

I think this checks off most of the concerns around things that were brought up in both of those threads (listed below).

Sources

For posterity, here are both the previous links on this topic:

• https://tildes.net/~tildes/b1/suggestion_find_a_new_name_for_vote_button
• https://tildes.net/~tildes/b3/suggestion_default_posts_to_1_vote_since_0_votes_can_be_disheartening

It's also not inaccurate to assume the user wants to vote on their own post. Of course 0 votes in the current system vs. 1 vote in the new system would mean exactly the same thing, the latter is a more positive experience.

I did some reading about the trust system listed in future goals today. I think that's pretty good for moderation, but one thing that I wanted to open a discussion about is submission gamification within ~, but not specifically with regards to trust/responsibilities, but one that encourages good quality submissions, or at least will isolate bad quality submissions.

With sites like reddit and others, where you have a singular generic Who's Line Is It Anyway style points system or "Karma" the acquisition of "Karma" is a driving factor for submitting content to the site. However, with this system it tends to encourage content that goes viral, hence we see the /u/GallowBoob's of the world producing low-effort content or free-booting other people's content for "karma profit".

I don't particularly think this is a very healthy system for content as a whole, but it does seem to achieve viral attention & interest and a somewhat constant stream of stuff (not necessarily good).

Someone in the Promotion thread had suggest gamifying getting the invites out there which got me thinking (although, not on board with that particular idea).

With comments tags we can categorize the type of comment we're seeing, and hopefully in the future filter the content we're seeing. If the submission incentives were based around tags instead of androgynous points of no meaning, perhaps we could get members actively seeking positive tags, similar to how someone aiming to become part of the moderation apparatus would seek this "trust" goal.

People seeking to be on top of the [Unbiased] or [Thought provoking] tags would (at least on the surface) be generally trying to produce unbiased and thought provoking content (bot voting & bullshit aside).

And people like /r/GallowBoob may become king of [Viral] or [shitpost] but we'd have the ability to filter those tags away and let people that want to meme it up meme it up on their own and not drown quality content.

Obviously this is all idealistic on paper, but with how much effort quality posting takes compared to shit-posting it'd be nice to try and give a little recognition (similar to this trust system) to those who strive for it, and not drawing the ire of unfounded censorship trolls/complaints for other areas.