Tildes is much like Hacker News and Reddit in that article previews are limited to just headlines. (Well, there are tags, but they're de-emphasized since they're hidden by default.)

While they are very concise, a problem with headlines is that we rely on them too much. Even good ones don't really tell you what the article is about. In cases where it's hard to read the article (because it's paywalled or whatever) the conversation can be based mostly on the headline rather than the substance of the article. On Hacker News there are often mini-disputes about whether the headline is clickbait or not, and what's a better headline. "Headline is misleading" is a pretty common complaint.

I'm wondering if we could add a bit more information? One possibility would be a "Subtitle" field. Lots of articles have subtitles that are somewhat more informative, and doing a copy-paste is pretty easy.

Another would be to have a "pull quote" field. This requires a bit of editorial judgement by the submitter about what's the best pull quote, but I think that's okay. It's still copy-paste so at least they don't have to summarize anything in their own words.

For the last few days I've been posting a pull quote as the first comment whenever I post an article, and I think it works fairly well, except that the summary says "1 comment" when actually nobody commented - it's just the pull quote. Also, having an explicit field for the pull quote might allow better UI possibilities, like you could put them under the headline in the topic list.

admittedly I should have asked for an invite sooner and posted this on the group request thread instead of here but here we are.

~tildes is the most active sub by far, so it only makes sense it should be split up further.

Maybe split it up to ~tildes.site (for the look of the site.), ~tildes.syntax (for the markdown used in tildes.) and ~tildes.community (for self-awareness, talking about how we could improve this community, what it needs and where it's headed.)

Any opinions?

If you look at a given ~--say, ~misc--you'll see wordcount next to article links, and runtime next to video links. But if you go to a specific post--like this one, that information is gone. Generally, the way I use tildes or other link aggregators is to click on a bunch of links and then cycle through them; by the time I got to that particular post, the index page I got it from was long gone and I'd forgotten how long it was. Can we show those metadata on the post itself?

We would most likely use a service like archive.org for it but I'm not sure if we should so before making an issue, I thought I'd ask for opinions.

It'd be useful to make sure old topics don't become obsolete but it could also be undesirable behaviour for privacy reasons.

I usually don't mind my tags getting erased and someone putting a more appropriate tag, but I want to know what is wrong with people.doing.something, or someone doing something, or someone.doing.something. I tried various ways today, and each one got removed, and I would like to know why.

Right now ~comp and ~tech are getting these kinds of posts, but I personally feel a ~tech_support ~tech.support (or ~tech_help? ~tech.help) group would be a better alternative.

People who love to help would flock to the group, and people who need it would feel safer to ask for help without receiving straight up LMGTFY (Let Me Google That For You) kind of answers.

There could be also a ~help group, wich a much broader scope (probably about Tildes itself).

What you think?

I have lots of thoughts about Tildes that I end up forgetting. This post is my attempt to put them to good use. Some of those were already stated elsewhere.

Introduction

Just to make it very clear: I am extremely happy with the way things are going on Tildes. If that was not the case, instead of drawing criticism I would simply not be here. So, please, let's be civil and avoid taking things personally ;)

I'm also a regular user, so please be gentle with my ignorance regarding the technical reasons why some things are either impossible or unpractical.

1. An Answer To A Common Objection

Some of these suggestions may encounter the following answer: "this should be an extension, not a core feature". To which I might respond:

1. Extensions impact performance and it's good practice to keep them at a minimum
2. Not everyone uses the same browser.
3. Features implemented by the actual developers will probably be of a better quality

2. Golden Rule

Unless explicit or clearly unpractical, all suggestions should be interpreted as to be as optional (and preferably opt-in) as possible for the user. I'll also make frequent use of the imperative mood: please understand that those are still suggestions. The imperative mood is just more practical. Also, notice that this is not my first language.

3. Suggestions

3.1 Keyboard Shortcuts

The majority of Tildes users would probably welcome a good set of keyboard shortcuts. I apologize if such keyboard shortcuts already exist: if they do, there should be a page listing them all.

3.1.1 Vim-like and Emacs-like keybindings

There should be Vim-like and Emacs-like (you could choose which one!) keys all around. Even with things like Vimium, not everyone uses them, and a well-thought-out set of keybindings would be extremely beneficial.

This also applies to text fields.

4. Open Calls For Moderators

Right now, I'm not sure what criteria are being used to give someone moderator powers. I think being a developer or contributor is the main criterion, which makes a lot of sense. But other participants might be up to the task, and giving them a chance could be beneficial.

5. Moderation Action Should Always Present Reason

This may seem obvious and even unfair, but I think when a moderator is in no condition to dedicate the time to justify their moderation action (such as locking threads, removing contents or banning users), then the moderator should wait until this condition is met in order to take action.

6. Heated Discussions Should Be Allowed in More Circumstances

I understand Tildes is, and should always be, a place for politeness, even affectionate discussion, but sometimes heated language, including irony and sarcasm, are necessary to stress a point and take the discussion forward. I understand that's a fine line, and that is usually better err on the side of caution, but I also feel the need to caution my fellow Tilders and Tildes administration against excessive moderation, which could stifle the discussion of sensitive subjects

7. There Should Be a Page Explaining How to Collaborate

This page should be short and to the point, with lots of links. I, for instance, wanna collaborate in the documentation, but the information telling how to do so was in a comment I cannot find anymore.

8. Table of Contents

Tildes markdown should support the automated creation of a simple table of contents, which would be very useful for longer posts. Preferably, there should be a limited set of options, such as:

• title of the table of contents ("TOC", "Table of Contents", "Contents" etc)
• numbered vs unnumbered
• depth of the numbering

9. Search own content

I find very hard to search my own content. Sometimes I must reference something I said earlier, or adapt a previous response to a question I already answered. On these occasions, I have to manually Ctrl+f page after page of my user page, which is tedious and inefficient.

10. Sort my own content

I wish I could sort my own content in the same manner I can with other pages. This would help with item 9, and also help answer faster to comments that were recently made.

11. Notifications

I wish it was possible to op-in desktop notifications for Tildes to show me whenever I get an answer to a thread, a comment or a private message.

Correction: I'm not referring to Email notifications, but desktop notifications. The ones that appear occasionally on your browser or screen.

12. There Should Be Space for Comedy

I'm not saying Tildes should become a place for lazy memes and endless puns, but comedy is valuable content and I don't like the idea of Tildes being a more conversational version of Stack Overflow. I fully agree with @deimos vision for a website for meaningful interactions with a focus on privacy. I just don't think comedy is necessarily a menace to this and all the other Tildes' stated goals. Right now, we're a very serious bunch of folks. There should be a place for humor in Tildes. How would that work? IDK. I leave this open for discussion.

13. Link to Excerpt

It would be awesome being able to link not just to a particular comment, but to a selection of that particular comment. After linking to the excerpt, I would go to the full comment, but the excerpt would be highlighted.

Conclusion

This is more of a collection of thoughts than an article, therefore I cannot offer a proper conclusion. But I'd like to kindly ask my fellow Tilders to give some considerations to my ideas. And please understand that they are not complaints. It's just may to contribute to this great community.

Cheers ;)

If a top-level comment is collapsed by default (presumably due to "noise" tags), replies to that comment will still trigger the "1 new" text on the topic, but won't be visible when you visit the thread - and there's not even any indication that you should expand the noise-tagged comment to see a reply.

Would it be possible(/desirable) to show the red indicator next to collapsed comments if there's a new comment underneath them?

IDK if this is just me, but, in some cases, the dotted lines are not enough. I become easily lost, and have to "manually" retrace the discussion.

I'd like to suggest for Tildes to use even more colors on these lines, kinda like color-schemes do for Org Mode on Emacs.

I could go even further and suggest a major "Org-Modization" of Tildes: IMHO, Org Mode has nailed this kind of structure. I know it's a bold suggestion, but there it is! ;)

Cheers!

I wasn't sure if there had been some changes lately or if it was my head, but I thought there used to be a politics group within Tildes. Regardless, it seems that I've noticed a culpible decline in the number of posts that are related to politics and especially US politics. I also noticed that it seems that some more prominent users got banned or left? Obviously I can understand if the people here were tired of hearing about it and wanted to give other groups some more room for the front page, but I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a fluke or my imagination. I don't come here as often as I should, but it just seemed a little different. Hopefully this doesn't spark any massive outcry or anger or anything, I'm just out of the loop, and don't want to cause any trouble. I like this place. I like you all.

Edit: Wow this seems to have really gotten out of control and spread to discussions about moderation logs and how much we should pay attention to US politics in relation to world politics or even how much we should catastrophize over recent political developments. I almost feel like I shouldn't have brought this up and I apologize. I really didn't intend on causing any ire for those in charge or for massive debates.

I apologize if this is a topic that has been covered before. I haven't really been able to find anything and I'm not really sure what a good search keyword is. But I noticed this as part of the Hearthstone player ban thread.

On a traditional bulletin board forum it's not really an issue because the conversations unfold chronologically anyway. When you have the atemporality of threaded comment chains that gets disorganized fast.

Basically, it's a "still developing" story where more events and news keep happening that's germane to the discussion. As the news comes up, people who already read the thread might not see the comments being posted about subsequent developments and be able to follow it because each piece of additional news or info. ends up happening in a comment/sub-thread that ends up arranged in fairly arbitrary, rather than chronological order.

The Democratic Debate threads have been similar, where the reactions and consequences of the topics being discussed can keep a discussion going for a long time, but it all happens in sub threads that people are unlikely to see. Many of these developments don't really merit a thread of their own, but after a few days or so it gets hard to actually have a big-picture discussion because the news has overtaken the scope of the discussion thread.

In a thread with an active OP, I've noticed what tends to happen is the OP will steadily edit new developments into the main post to update it. I think this has actually worked pretty well BUT edits don't bump posts as far as I can tell. Also, the people posting the updates aren't necessarily getting as much credit (in terms of votes, exemplary labels, or whatever) and, insofar as that matters to people that's a thing. Do you think this is adequate as things scale or would some novel design or subcomment system be needed?

A little over a year ago I created an unofficial matrix room for the tildes community. I believed at the time, and still do, that the infrastructure supporting the community should be founded on open, sustainable software, and matrix was an interesting new solution in this space similar to the Discords and Slacks of the world. Though the room is bridged with the IRC chat activity has remained relatively low compared to Discord.

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to properly moderate this channel. Though the community's involvement there has remained civil I do not think I'm active enough to ensure things stay that way.

As such I am looking for an interested person or persons to take over this channel over the next week or so and if no suitable replacements are found will be shutting the room down until further notice.

Thanks everyone,

Hi

I think we could start a new trend to make the world better by trading advertisement for tips and how to behave in a society. The important thing is not to be invasive or change the user experience in any way.

So do you see the top bar where we don't have nothing? I think it would be a great place to have a new phrase on every refresh like this:
"A bottle of plastic is to put in the yellow trash can".
"Open Source is important so we don't rely on company's for everything"
"If you smoke please don't throw butts in to the ground, buy a cheap portable ashtray"
"Remember that not everyone is having good day"
"Don't throw cotton swab in to the toilet"
"When brushing your teeth turn of the water in the dead times or better use a cup to use less water"
"2OATH is always important to have"
"Password manager is a must have now a days (having the same password in everything defeats the purpose)"
"Read more than the titles before you make conclusions"
"When driving don't forget to use the lights when turning/changing lanes"
"Think twice when using paper"
"Beverages are not water"
"Focus a distant point from time to time if you are long hours in front of the monitor)"
"When you are putting music in public you are invading the other space"
"Wait for the people to exit the train before entering"
"If you drink don't drive not because of you but because of the other people"
"Put the phone down while driving, everyone says that can do that before hitting someone"

Before of witch phrase it would say the topic.

I think for this phrases we can't have nothing political, religious or other topics that could change people views or that could offend.
Maybe we could have topics for country's because of the costumes.

Little things like this, I hope I could express the idea(more directs and simple maybe?). And if this is welcome maybe the correct way of doing this is making a repository on gitlab(every file would be a topic maybe) so everyone could add new phrases and use the list for other sites. Of course we would need to get a few trust worthy people that have a good sense of witch phrases to accept or create rules for them.
Maybe there is a better way of creating a public DB but I don't know any at least.
And if people wanted could select the topics they wanted(all or some or none).

This could also show the importance of donating and support open projects so we don't need to get money from third party's in any way and better yet, use the empty space to make the world a better place.

Could a reward system be added similar to Reddit coins but instead of buying them you earn them from being active on the website and from the quality of your content maybe by using the voting system and you could buy rewards for posts with them, it could be a bit like tildes own currency in a way, I’m personally a big fan of the Reddit coins but just don’t like how you have to buy them I think they should be something that is earn from using the website

Here's the ruby gem page and here's the github. Right now it comes with a command line browser that can browse the front page and group pages with no sorting options, and you can view the contents of a topic (link or text) aswell as the comments. The methods defined in lib/tilde-scraper/api.rb can be used to scrape tildes pages into Group, Page, Topic, and Comment objects.

Right now it's super basic and messy, but I figured if anyone was interested in it it would be the people here.

Let me make a possibly unpleasant question: why is Tildes only on Gitlab? Do you self-host? Is it because of Microsoft? Or idealistic reasons (that I would totally 100% respect)?

Github and Microsoft may be "evil", but that's where everybody is. I'm 99% more prone to post an issue on Github than on Gitlab. I know it's "wrong", but that's also true and not just for me. Couldn't Tildes have at least some presence on Github? Is it possible for a mirror to get issues? (I really don't know, honest question). And why not just move to Github, mirror to Gitlab and have some super-reliable backup?

This would give Tildes more exposure (maybe Tildes doesn't want more exposure right now. That's entirely understandable). But Github is where things happen, and I really want Tildes to happen. And, even if Github ever turns evil (or already is), couldn't we just fork/transfer/whatever to someplace else? Or just use the backup? What's the downside?

1. The Idea

Counting overall time would be awesome already. In order to avoid overloading the servers, you could just count every 5, 10 hours or something like that.

As a plus (I have no idea how hard this is, please forgive me), there could be graphs showing how much time you spent by day, week, month, year, etc.

This would be a good way to help Tilders prevent Tildes addiction (on the other hand, there would have to be some mechanic to prevent people from gamyfying this...).

This time count would be entirely private to each user by default, but there would the option to display it.

2. The Reason

I find that knowing how much time I spent on something helps me be more productive. It's the entire reason for the existence of tools such Rescue Time, Waka Time and Toggl. If I know how much I spend on a platform, it's easier to control my addiction to it. These other tools are heavy and focused on billing hours. That's not my use case. I know this might seem silly, but it makes a lot of difference for some people. 7.2% of the world's population has ADHD. I happen to be one of them.

In such a fashion that all my threads will open either collapsed and expanded. Ideally, there should be a setting for that. Some people might prefer to always open expanded regardless of their last choice.

So, when we want to link to a podcast , should we link to the webpage or preferred aggregator, or directly to the MP3? Should we have an embedded object for playing audio built into Tildes, or is that out of scope?

I'm really curious if they have, because on this thread, there's a bunch of comments from "unknown user." If whispers have been implemented, how do I use them? I can't seem to find any information about them.

IMO one of the major issues with online debates, arguments and heated discussions is that they often tend to escalate rather steadily over time, and as each side gets more frustrated with the other they also tend to slowly get more personal as well. I am admittedly guilty of falling into this trap occasionally myself too, which has got me thinking about ways that Tildes (the site and the users here) can potentially help deescalate unproductive arguments and allow people to disengage more effectively from them. To this end I thought it might be a good idea to have a brainstorming session regarding that.

To start things off, here are most of the ideas I could find related to this issue that have previously been proposed and are already on Tildes Gitlab (click ▶ to read the full details):

Feel free to voice your support or criticism regarding the above suggestions, offer up ideas to potentially improve them, or even propose your own brand new ideas related to this issue in the comments here as well.

p.s. Once again, the point here is to open up the conversation and get ideas flowing freely, so let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week #1, #2

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

Despite me still being a little distracted thanks to WoW Classic and somewhat absent from Tildes lately as a result, since it's been a few weeks since the last Unofficial Weekly Discussion topic, I wanted to make sure to get one posted this week. And since it's been a while, I wanted to try something a bit more lighthearted and fun than usual to get things flowing again. So here it is:

What is your most "thinking outside the box", "pie in the sky" and/or "out there" idea for Tildes?

It doesn't matter whether you think it's really a good idea or not, it will work or not, it would ultimately have a net positive or negative effect, or how impossible it might be to implement; Let's just get the creative juices flowing and start throwing out our "craziest" ideas for the site!

p.s. Once again, let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week #1, #2, #3

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

A long time ago, there was a discussion about anonymous comment posting. I’d link it if I wasn’t typing at mobile, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

How did things about anonymous posting evolve, @Deimos? Do you plan to eventually make something like this?

There are plenty of topics such as this one which would IMO strongly benefit from anonymous comments - I can definitely see much higher participation if that was the case.

Regarding the abuse, I won’t reiterate all the points made in the thread ^{[todo: link]} and purposed solutions, but what about turning anonymous posting on only in some topics, perhaps where the topic author manually turned them on? We could have them for sensitive topics while holding people accountable for their words in all the political topics.

This should be simple fairly simple to explain:

Even though the Vim front is well covered by things like Vimium, Vimium+ and qutebrowser (and it would probably be too much trouble to create a Vim mode for Tildes' text fields - especially when wasavi exists), Emacs-like keys might be a great addition for some people. Tildes seem to have a high number of Emacs and command-line users right now. I frequently find myself hitting keys such as:

• C-p previous-line
• C-n next-line
• C-m for return
• C-a to move cursor to the start of the line
• C-e to move cursor to the start of end line
• M-d to kill word
• C-k kill line
• C-u kill backwards line
• C-b to backward char
• C-f to forward char
• C-b to backward char
• M-f to forward word
• M-b to backward word
• C-w delete-backward-word
  • not a default Emacs keybinding but it's on readline and I think it makes sense

And so on.

There are, of course, alternatives such as Emacs Anywhere and Atomic Chrome, but they require an Emacs daemon to be running and are not a good alternative for quick edits since which switching to another editor is not practical.

So here's my suggestion!

The Problem

A large problem in internet communities is internet debates that devolve into metadiscussions on credibility. This likely isn't bad, because the default alternative is generally large-scale misinformation campaigns.

Examples

Tildes hasn't been free of this, naturally; for a (very) recent example, see this thread on Andrew Yang's climate change proposals.

I, personally, have partaken in a thread that seemed as if it might head in the same direction; take a look at this thread, on gun suicides of a certain population & aggravating factors of them. A third-party delivering a breadth of sources seemed to have stopped it in its tracks, however.

Solution

It does seem to me like something that could be solved—or at least mitigated—at the platform level, with a feature that would allow other users to cite sources for a comment in question, ideally with community ranking of those sources.

Getting rid of the question of credibility in casual discussions in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of dialogue seems like something that would undoubtedly help The Conversation™ flourish, while simultaneously preventing disinformation catastrophes.

UPDATE:

It is actually NOT broken, but it seems that a blank line is required after the <summary> tags for it to work.

• Therefore, this does not work:

   > Interstellar - just watch it
  
   I like this movie a lot. BUT, it bothers me that
  
   <details>
   <summary>spoiler</summary>
   a story so grounded in hard science fiction chose an unjustified book
   metaphor to represent a dimension that would be, for us, absolutely
   unknowable. I much prefer the choice made by Kubrick in *2001, A Space
   Odyssey*: to represent one abstraction with another, preserving the
   alien character of an inhuman reality.
   </details>
  

• But this does:

    > Interstellar - just watch it
  
    I like this movie a lot. BUT, it bothers me that
  
    <details>
    <summary>spoiler</summary>
  
    a story so grounded in hard science fiction chose an unjustified book
    metaphor to represent a dimension that would be, for us, absolutely
    unknowable. I much prefer the choice made by Kubrick in *2001, A Space
    Odyssey*: to represent one abstraction with another, preserving the
    alien character of an inhuman reality.
    </details>
  

I don't know if this would be only an option when you are creating a comment, or added to the list of tags like "Exemplary" and such, but an option to have a "Spoiler" comment tag that collapses the comment but doesn't affect ranking might be a good edition to the "What is your favorite media/What have you consumed recently/Recommendation threads." It's also something that the site already supports, and most importantly, looks atheistically pleasing to me compared to highlightable Spoiler Script.

I was looking to see if anyone had talked about the TV show Person Of Interest and forgot to go to ~tv before searching.

I know its not a major thing since it only took me a few seconds click to the right place and search there, but it might be nice if you could filter the general search results from the sidebar instead of just viewing the board you clicked.

I tend to be generous with votes if I like specific posters and want to encourage them. I like to assume that's ok, but is there an official take on that?

And what about people who are likely to share an IP address with me? I'm on a small node with fewer than 200 users, and at least 2 or 3 come here (got invited by one). I don't necessarily know them but will that look like alt accts boosting votes? Is there a whitelist or something like that for verified individuals on the same address maybe?

This thought was brought to you/sponsored by my perception that there's an increasing number of comments on Tildes that attempt to "answer" questions posed in the titles of posts, but don't necessarily demonstrate that the user has read the article before commenting. I won't link specific comments, but I've noticed a fair bit of it as of late. I get that those titles bait people into voicing their opinion, but often it's at the detriment of overall discussion. Should a prerequisite of clicking the actual link in question be a requirement before the user is allowed to post a top level comment? Or perhaps a cooldown period of entering a thread versus commenting may help?

The goal here would be to disincentivise the posting of "driveby" or similarly reductive comments that often don't demonstrate nuance or knowledge that is conveyed in the associated article. Sure, we can't ever know if the user has actually read the article, but it's not designed to be a foolproof strategy, just a discouraging one.

There's a few ways this could be implemented, probably via the utilization of a small bit of javascript that toggle's a user's reading state for a particular post. Thoughts?

Just to clarify since I've edited this post: I mean top-level comments only. Replies are more likely to be in response to the parent comment, rather than the title and wouldn't be affected by this proposal.