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    1. Is there any consistent definition for what a long read is?

      This article I posted has been marked as a long read with 2.7k words but this other article I posted has 4.7k words and hasn't been marked as such so what gives? We should probably also consider a...

      This article I posted has been marked as a long read with 2.7k words but this other article I posted has 4.7k words and hasn't been marked as such so what gives?

      We should probably also consider a 'medium read' and apply some of these standards to videos as well.

      10 votes
    2. Demographics Survey Results, Year 0.5

      Intro Hello everyone. Due to @Kat’s ever-failing health, I will be analyzing the data instead of her this time around. If you have no idea what this is about, see the demographic survey that was...

      Intro

      Hello everyone.

      Due to @Kat’s ever-failing health, I will be analyzing the data instead of her this time around. If you have no idea what this is about, see the demographic survey that was posted on the day of Tildes’ half-year birthday. She’s done this before, so let’s see what's new.

      The original survey was answered by 404 people, while the half year survey was answered by 293. Though the total number of replies was lower, the completion rate was actually higher: 293 responses from 422 unique visitors, or 69.4%, up from the first year’s 404/599=67.4%. The decrease in answers is most likely attributed to the change of the default sort from “Activity, all time” to “Activity, 3 days”: the response rate held fairly consistent for the first three days, then plummeted after the third as the topic stopped being able to gain any publicity. Though response rates on the original were not high after the first three days, there was a steady trickle up until the survey stopped accepting responses.

      While the numbers are relatively big (for a community of this size), do take anything found with a healthy dose of scepticism. Even though the original dataset she shared with me does not contain any identifiable information (all I can see are randomly-generated user strings) the specifics of that data will not be posted, as was mentioned during the original survey. This is because I am unable to be certain I can sufficiently anonymize it. Typeform has created a summary of the data on a per-question basis with substantially more datapoints than this thread, which you can find https://themeerkat.typeform.com/report/H2TtYg/rVf75AqbKaPncy6y.

      Explanation

      I will compare the statistics with a similarish reference set based on the six most common territories, all of which are above one percentage of the survey answers. That means when I compare on the general populace, I will base it on numbers from USA, Canada, UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and France.

      This means it will be weighted like this:

      USA CAN UK AUS NL FR
      55 22 20 10 8 6
      45.45% 18.18% 16.53% 8.26% 6.61% 4.96%

      I’ll clean up my data sheet and post it in the comments later. You all are absolutely encouraged to fix it because it will most likely contain errors.

      The interesting stuff

      What has changed in the first half year?

      Age

      This time around an age range was used instead of an exact numerical input, but if we were to assume that everyone is aged in the middle of their age range (so 20 for 18-22 year olds, for instance), the average age of a user would be 26.84 years, or 26 years, 9 months, and 4 days old (roughly). So we’ve grown a bit younger than last year, on average.

      Gender and identity

      Gender distribution seems to be roughly the same. We see a small decrease in percentage of heterosexuals, divided roughly evenly on the remaining categories. We also see a significant increase in the amount of transgender users, but since the amount reported is small, that could also just be statistical noise. The percentage of polyamorous people has remained exactly the same. For pronouns, there are only three users who prefer it/its, and zero who prefer any neopronoun set: every “Other” was offering commentary on the question rather than answering it. Similarly, almost all of the “Others” for orientation were expressing that they didn’t understand the specifics of the options given.

      All in all, little has changed.

      Territorial

      In both surveys, three options dominated: the USA, the UK, and Canada. On that end, little has changed, though it seems that all of the Swedes disappeared, with zero answering the half year survey as compared to eight for the first one. Wonder what they’ve been busy with.

      Native language

      Unsurprisingly, about everyone speaks English. What is more surprising is the lack of native multilinguals: fewer than 6% of Americans who natively speak English also natively speak a second language. For comparison, that’s 10% for Australians, 21% for Canadians, and 13% for the UK. This represents an overall decrease in geographic diversity, with users coming from 36 different countries as compared to 42 the first time.

      Religion

      Compared to the world at-large, we sure are a god-denying folk. A whopping 52% of us consider ourselves atheists, whereas the sample data puts it at 12.1%, so we’re far from the norm of our fellow citizens.

      We got a few interesting answers in the “other” section of the religion part of the survey. We got a few interesting ones I had never heard of before, like “Discordian”. But generally speaking, around half of them were either “none” or one of the actual options. Two stood out to me though.

      To the one Chinese user who filled it in as “The heck is chinese traditional”: I have no idea either.

      To the one Australian user who wrote “Left-hand path Heathen”, you be yourself, mate.

      Politics

      The average has barely moved in the last half year—we’re still slanted very much to the left. Unlike the first survey, there was no freeform input this time around, so the specifics are hard to discuss.

      Computers

      We have seen a drastic fall in the percentage of Windows users. It was at 60%, and is down to 43%. Nearly all of this has gone to Linux, which is now at 38%. That’s quite large, especially compared to the reference data, which has Linux use among web users at 1.23%. It’s like a herd of penguins in here.

      Mobile phones

      Compared to half a year ago, not many of us have switched mobile OS. Compared to the calculated data, we like Android slightly more than average. 62% vs 72%.

      Not much interesting in the “other” section, though I will give a salute to the one American user still holding out on Windows 10 Mobile.

      Work

      We have a pretty even distribution with three exceptions. “Computer software”, “Never employed”, and “IT”. Nearly 3/4 who answered “Never employed” are currently students.

      Among the students, we only have one student that proudly smokes and has no interest in quitting. The campaigns seem to be working.

      Tildes usage

      If we look at the users who visit Tildes multiple times per day, we see a few interesting trends. Nearly all of them use Android, and nearly all of them are employed. Beyond that it all seems surprisingly… average.

      Overall, people rated Tildes as a platform as-it-stands a 5.7/7 (0.81), and their optimism for the future of the site at a 5.4/7 (0.77). The most important reason they use the site (of the options given) is “Minimal, fast design” at a 4.6/5 (0.92), with “Privacy-consciousness and lack of trackers” right on its heels. 20.8% of users have ever contributed money to Tildes (surprisingly high, compared to most donation campaigns), with about half as many making a recurring donation.

      Despite @Kat’s insidious attempt to influence the data, “waves” as a demonym only received 5.5% of the vote. The leader for that, overwhelmingly, is “no demonym at all”, with a combined 49% of the votes and 18.5% of respondents strongly preferring the site not to have a demonym. Second place, the generic “users”, only has 15.8% in comparison. The first Tildes-specific demonym present is Tilders/~​rs, with 13.4%.

      Most notably, about ⅔ of users would prefer Tildes to be remain invite-only long-term.

      Freeform questions

      The survey had three freeform questions: “What do you like most about Tildes, thus far?”, “What do you like least about Tildes, thus far?”, and “What is the most pressing missing feature/‘pain point’ for you about Tildes in its current state?” All the comments fill over 30 pages, so it seems like we really have a lot to say. You can download and look at all of the raw answers here, if you’d like. They’ve been shuffled to ensure privacy.

      Likes

      A large majority of the comments boil down to “a quality of discussion where disagreement is discussed in a respectful and level-headed way”. A very significant amount also point out the lack of “low effort content and trolls” as a good thing. A significant amount also mention the simple and quick-loading interface. We also have one user who believes he can find a twerk team on Tildes.

      So on this, @Deimos can feel proud for what he has done. Though you know what really makes the site good? There is one comment that properly gets it: “The people, d’awwww.”. Yes, that includes you.

      Dislikes

      But not everything is perfect, though negatives about Tildes seem to be a lot less unanimous than the positives. There are a few that repeat a bit more often than others: the biggest one is “left centrism in discussions” or “echo chambers”, though in a close second, as with any political discussion, is its exact opposite with complaints about “too much discussion about left-centrism in discussions”—notably, though, in the question “Do you feel as though Tildes has a good mix of political opinions, for your personal preferences?”, the leading answer was “Yes” with 63%. A small amount of users also think we have too many software developers.

      Beyond that, the main complaint that stands out is “lack of users and content”, which I am sure will improve in time.

      Missing feature/pain point

      This too is very varied. A lot of the comments are actually about features that have been introduced since the survey was done, like bookmarking. Honestly, it’s not that many complaints compared to just likes and dislikes.

      The “majority” seem to be on a lack of tag autocompletion, USA-centrism, and the lack of a mobile app.

      There was one more section: “If you would like to offer any long-form commentary, criticism, or feedback regarding Tildes, you may do so here.” Due to its nature, I’ll let you read through them yourself in the raw data, if you’re interested.

      Closing words

      First of all, to everyone who took the time to answer: thank you! I hope this post and the survey has brought some fun to everyone. If there’s an interest, I am sure that Kat, myself, or someone else will make another one at the one year anniversary. We already got some feedback in the previous thread, but we’re always open for more.

      I will do some additional data comparisons on request. I might be a bit occupied this weekend, though, so that will come when it comes.

      45 votes
    3. "Watching" a comment in a thread

      I often come across a topic that I find somewhat interesting, but end up being much more interested in a discussion happening within that topic. I think it would be useful to be able to "watch" a...

      I often come across a topic that I find somewhat interesting, but end up being much more interested in a discussion happening within that topic. I think it would be useful to be able to "watch" a comment/thread to be notified if someone replies to a comment. Thoughts?

      10 votes
    4. Don't record topic history by submitters within the first 5 minutes of posting?

      Quick one for the Gitlab: Just how comment submitters get a few minutes of breathing room to make adjustments and edits to their comment before an indication the comment has been edited appears,...

      Quick one for the Gitlab:

      Just how comment submitters get a few minutes of breathing room to make adjustments and edits to their comment before an indication the comment has been edited appears, it'd be nice if the topic history which records title adjustments/tag changes/tilde moves doesn't record history by submitters just after posting?

      Usually, I'll forget to add a tag or two, or decide the title can be appropriately clarified further within a minute or two of submitting. Today I made a particularly egregious mistake which is now recorded for all time (and further documented here!) by submitting that post to ~tildes initially!

      Usually, edits by the post submitter within the first few minutes aren't of particular consequence, so recording them is a bit much, in my view. This would generally dovetail well with the notion that Tildes discards information if it isn't needed. Thoughts?

      9 votes
    5. What happened to subscribe/unsubscribe on the groups page?

      I remember there being subscribe/unsubscribe buttons on https://tildes.net/groups By default new accounts are subscribed to every group, earlier I could just goto that page and unsubscribe from...

      I remember there being subscribe/unsubscribe buttons on https://tildes.net/groups

      By default new accounts are subscribed to every group, earlier I could just goto that page and unsubscribe from groups I'm uninterested in. Looks like now you have to goto each group page and unsubscribe there.

      11 votes
    6. How should I report outdated docs or suggest edits to the wiki?

      I've been reading the docs after joining the site (hi!) and noticed a few places that were either outdated or unclear. Should I ignore them, given the disclaimer on the Instructions doc that says...

      I've been reading the docs after joining the site (hi!) and noticed a few places that were either outdated or unclear. Should I ignore them, given the disclaimer on the Instructions doc that says docs may not be current? Or is it better to report them?

      Here's a list of what I noticed for context:

      Some guidance on what to do with discoveries like these will be helpful for those who read docs :)
      I'm not really asking them to be updated here and now, but that's a fine outcome of this post too.

      13 votes
    7. Feature suggestion: One-to-many user thread format

      This may seem like I'm rambling but, please bare with me, I think I have some point(s) to make. I've been trying to locate a common ancestor image to the album cover of Gnarls Barkley's single...

      This may seem like I'm rambling but, please bare with me, I think I have some point(s) to make.

      • I've been trying to locate a common ancestor image to the album cover of Gnarls Barkley's single Crazy and the banner of an interesting talk titled Imagination and it's resistance to chance. I think the resemblance is sufficient to suggest one an ancestor exists and it's not just a crazy coincidence. Can anyone help identify it?

      • The same academic conference linked above hosts a fascinating introduction to Intensionality, Invariance, and Univalence. It captures some of the most exciting mathematics going on at the moment. Presumably I should be posting this in ~science tagged as mathematics. Is there some limit at which particular tags become popular enough to warrant their own subtilde? Are there queries users can run to determine tag counts? These questions were prompted by the slight irritating thought of classifying mathematics under science.

      • People could respond to many different parts of this thread since I've written so much. However, the points are slightly related, at least in how I present them. If I were to split them up into separate posts, not only would it add to the noise, each point would lose whatever relation they had. So, I wonder if, much like r/IAMA, could there be a better format for conversations where many users are speaking to a particular individual? An expert or celebrity perhaps. Trying to track all the replies of the main user was always a hassle in those IAMA threads.

      If there's interest in such an extension to tildes, I'd like to offer my help in implementing it. That's my main point really and why I posted here.

      7 votes
    8. More coronavirus-related updates: specialized views, and a daily topic. Anything else we should do?

      After adding the ~health.coronavirus group the other day, I've just made a couple more updates to try and keep the site more usable as the flood of news and information keeps coming in. First, I...

      After adding the ~health.coronavirus group the other day, I've just made a couple more updates to try and keep the site more usable as the flood of news and information keeps coming in.

      First, I just added a bar in the header when you're on the home page that has links to two "specialized views" in it. One of these views will show only coronavirus topics, and the other one will filter out all the coronavirus topics. These should be helpful for both logged-in users as well as logged-out ones (who previously didn't have the option of unsubscribing from ~health.coronavirus to hide those topics more easily).

      For the purposes of these views, a "coronavirus topic" is one that's either inside ~health.coronavirus or has the "coronaviruses.covid19" tag on it (in any group).

      The way I did this was definitely pretty hacky and isn't intended to stay around over the long term, so please let me know if you notice any strange behavior with them.

      Second, earlier today I set up a scheduled post in ~health.coronavirus for general chat, questions, minor updates, and so on. The first one is here, and that will continue posting every day for now. If the activity in it starts dropping I'll probably reduce the frequency, but I think it should be good as a general spot for discussion for now.

      It's looking like we might be living in this situation for weeks or months, so I'm definitely open to making other changes that will help keep the site usable and enjoyable during it. Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions, thanks!

      48 votes
    9. New group created for news and discussion of COVID-19 coronavirus: ~health.coronavirus (everyone subscribed by default)

      As suggested, I've created a new group now named ~health.coronavirus that we can use to try to keep the topics about the coronavirus somewhat more quarantined contained. I've subscribed everyone...

      As suggested, I've created a new group now named ~health.coronavirus that we can use to try to keep the topics about the coronavirus somewhat more quarantined contained. I've subscribed everyone for now, but if you want to segregate the information more easily I'd suggest unsubscribing from it (which you can do from its sidebar or the groups list) and visiting it individually when you want to look at coronavirus news.

      I know there are probably some quibbles about the name, but I decided to go with this one for a few reasons, including that it's by far the more commonly-known and used term overall, it's generally easier to type (especially on mobile), and some XKCD-style "the spider" logic.

      One specific thing we need to discuss is how to decide when some topics should be in there vs. some of the other groups, especially since there are so many widespread effects. Like most moderation-ish subjects, we won't be able to draw a perfect line, but I think in general we should try to put more "general" updates/advice/discussion in the new group, while topics can go into other groups only when their impact is especially heavy on that group's subject.

      For example, I think it makes sense for the announcement that NCAA games will be played without fans to stay in ~sports, because that's a very major announcement for a sports event. E3 being cancelled similarly makes sense to stay in ~games. Those are major, important announcements regardless of the cause being the coronavirus.

      Deciding when something goes in ~news vs. ~health.coronavirus will be more difficult, but I'm sure we can probably do a reasonable job of it by trying to base it on only putting the very most significant events in ~news. It's not incredibly important to have everything categorized perfectly and most people probably subscribe/check both groups anyway, so we'll just do the best we can.

      I'm going to start trying to move a lot of the existing topics into there, and I'm sure some others will too. This might be kinda chaotic for a bit.

      I think it would also be great to start trying to put together some good resources on the ~health.coronavirus wiki. If some people are willing to start taking that on (and feel free to post a topic in there to ask for help/suggestions), it would be much appreciated. And if you don't have wiki permissions but would like to be a part of that, message me about it or leave a comment here asking, and I can give you the ability to create/edit pages.

      Anything other feedback or discussion about it to start with? Should we set up any regularly scheduled posts in there or anything?

      64 votes
    10. Premature session cookie expiration?

      I've noticed that, even when I choose the "Keep me logged in" option, I usually have to re-log in to Tildes at least once or twice per day. Under what circumstances might the session cookie expire...

      I've noticed that, even when I choose the "Keep me logged in" option, I usually have to re-log in to Tildes at least once or twice per day. Under what circumstances might the session cookie expire on such a short time scale? I can see that the Max-Age is set to one year, so I'm not sure what might be causing that.

      Has anyone else encountered this issue? It's entirely possible that some of my add-ons are interfering (although I don't see how), which is the reason I ask.

      I have to pull up my Tildes password and my TOTP generator in each case, which is just enough pain to encourage me to navigate to another tab instead.

      4 votes
    11. U2F help proposal

      So, I cannot really financially contribute, but I'm a backend developer and I'd like to be able to authenticate using U2F 2FA. I'd like to know if you would be open to let me try to make a patch...

      So, I cannot really financially contribute, but I'm a backend developer and I'd like to be able to authenticate using U2F 2FA.

      I'd like to know if you would be open to let me try to make a patch that would add this feature to 2FA mechanisms.

      12 votes
    12. Deployed a complete rework of the permissions system - please let me know if you notice anything strange

      I just deployed a major update to the site's permissions system, which involved rewriting a lot of the related code. This is pretty much all internal details, and there should be no noticeable...

      I just deployed a major update to the site's permissions system, which involved rewriting a lot of the related code. This is pretty much all internal details, and there should be no noticeable changes, but it's definitely possible that I missed something. So if you notice anything unusual that seems like it might be permissions-related (such as a button missing or a functionality not working), please let me know.

      None of it's really being used yet, but the rewritten system allows for multiple new capabilities that we'll need as the site grows, like granting permissions to users only inside specific groups (instead of site-wide) and denying permissions in specific groups (like "able to tag topics in all groups except ~music").

      On that note, most permissions are still granted manually, and I haven't given them to many people lately. If you're interested in helping with some of the site's organizational work and think you have a good understanding of how things are currently organized, please send me a message and ask, and I can give you some permissions to help out.

      These are the permissions that are currently available (and there are at least a few users that have access to each of these):

      • Changing tags on topics
      • Moving topics to different groups
      • Editing the titles of topics
      • Editing the links of link topics
      • Editing wiki pages (or creating new ones)

      Thanks!

      And as usual, I've topped everyone back up to 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.

      39 votes
    13. Calling them groups

      I love this website can’t think of anything bad about it apart from really not liking that communities are called groups, I feel this is due in part to Facebook using it but also it’s such an over...

      I love this website can’t think of anything bad about it apart from really not liking that communities are called groups, I feel this is due in part to Facebook using it but also it’s such an over used term on the internet, could we not think of something more unique for tildes to call it’s communities

      17 votes
    14. Simplified markdown to </avoid> typing <this> type of text?

      I'm complaining mainly because <these> 2 keys tend to be in the symbols tab on a mobile keyboard and are really annoying to keep going back from and to while making something like a <details> box....

      I'm complaining mainly because <these> 2 keys tend to be in the symbols tab on a mobile keyboard and are really annoying to keep going back from and to while making something like a <details> box.

      Some replacements I imagine (0 programming knowledge) could be:

      >small text here< ( for > to not make quotations at the beginning you could maybe put some unrelated character like ) or ] before it)

      ^superscripted text here/ (or you could just use parentheses to delineate which text is formatted like on reddit and probably all normal places)

      _subscripted text here_ (admittedly I know this messes with underscore being equal to asterisks in formatting, but I don't know which key you could use avoid this that still is intuitive)

      
      {Details
      [Summary text here]
      
      Details text here}
      
      

      Replace the <details> prompt with { and </details> with } and presumably everything should work, right? (The brackets can have the summary functionality limited to within the details box because they're encased within the curly brackets? Admittedly I don't really know.)

      7 votes
    15. Self promotion vs. Original content vs. Own content vs. User created vs. ...?

      This question has come up a few times now in the "Unofficial Tildes Chat" Discord server meta/curation channels, but I wanted to open up the discussion to ~tildes at large so we can perhaps...

      This question has come up a few times now in the "Unofficial Tildes Chat" Discord server meta/curation channels, but I wanted to open up the discussion to ~tildes at large so we can perhaps finally get a more definitive judgement on it. So here goes:

      What are people's thoughts on using the above topic tags in cases where a Tildes user posts something that they themselves have created, have hosted on their own site (or another), and/or could potentially profit from (monetarily or otherwise)?

      Should only one of the tags be standardized on, or is there enough of a distinction between some of them for their use to be situational?

      Should such tags be required?

      Can anyone think of any better tags for such situations than the ones listed?

      28 votes
    16. An idea on how to allow anonymous posts/comments without ruining Tildes

      @deimos has expressed before his dislike for alt-accounts, a position I happen to share. Alt-accounts makes users less accountable and more prone to misbehavior. At the same time, deeply personal...

      @deimos has expressed before his dislike for alt-accounts, a position I happen to share. Alt-accounts makes users less accountable and more prone to misbehavior.

      At the same time, deeply personal threads frequently require anonymity to be of any value.

      To avoid alt-accounts altogether, I propose an anonymity with caveats:

      1. Only accounts older than 60 days can comment and create threads anonymously.
      2. Mods and admins can take action against the account that posted anonymously just like with any account
      3. For the most part, the identity of the poster will remain a secret even from mods and admins.
      4. For practical reasons, in the case of banning a user from the entire website, the identity of the user would have to be revealed to the admin that banned him/her. But that will only happen after the action is taken. This seems like a bad idea.

      EDIT: PLUS FEATURES

      1. The creator of the thread must tick a box to allow anonymous posts (they are opt-in).
      2. Moderators and admins have the power of disabling this permission if deemed necessary.
      30 votes
    17. Are there any other sites similar to this one?

      Hacker news and lobsters pop up in these threads as answers pretty quickly but I find them to be too tech focused, not subdivided into communities, which reinforces these few focuses and make...

      Hacker news and lobsters pop up in these threads as answers pretty quickly but I find them to be too tech focused, not subdivided into communities, which reinforces these few focuses and make finding large amounts of related content hard. Also the lack of delineation between responses makes the discussion difficult to follow. (At least to me.)

      So basically I'm looking for sites that:

      • Have some sort of subdivision of their content

      • Aren't very focused on any one thing

      • Have some sort of thread subdivision

      • Value good discussion

      So does anyone have any sites?

      8 votes
    18. Metadata missing on ~music listings?

      I just noticed today that in ~music, the "topic-info-source" metadata isn't visible in listings; it shows the author name instead. Clicking through to the post it's clear that it's been scraped,...

      I just noticed today that in ~music, the "topic-info-source" metadata isn't visible in listings; it shows the author name instead. Clicking through to the post it's clear that it's been scraped, it just doesn't get a site name or favicon.

      eg: Youtube link on ~movies versus Youtube link on ~music

      Is this intentional? It sorta makes it look like everything on ~music is a text post.

      3 votes
    19. A bunch of updates and fixes from open-source contributors

      Over the last week, a number of updates have been made by people other than me contributing code to Tildes through its open-source repository. I wanted to make a post to highlight some of these...

      Over the last week, a number of updates have been made by people other than me contributing code to Tildes through its open-source repository. I wanted to make a post to highlight some of these changes and let everyone know about them, since there are some great updates and fixes in here:

      @deing made it possible to create links that will pre-fill the subject and message for private messages. For example: https://tildes.net/user/Deimos/new_message?subject=Test+Message&message=Please+don't+actually+send+this+to+me

      @blitz saw me make an offhand comment about a rare bug when someone submits a link to an IP address, and got a development environment set up and fixed it right away.

      @Bauke has been on a tear, fixing a lot of long-outstanding issues and adding features. So far:

      • Added a way for users to view their two-factor authentication backup codes (previously you could only see them at the time you activated 2FA).
      • Added "View Markdown" for comments and text topics. This is inside a new "More" dropdown menu, and will show you the markdown that the poster used, so that you can check how they did some formatting or copy-paste if you want to use someone else's post as a template of sorts.
      • Added new settings (under "Site behavior settings" on the Settings page) to always open links to Tildes groups and users in new tabs.
      • Fixed a few issues with inconsistent interface elements and styling.

      There are multiple more merge requests still waiting for me to review, and I'll probably be making some other posts soon once some of those get merged in as well. Thanks, the contributions are greatly appreciated! If anyone else is interested in looking into contributing, the CONTRIBUTING file in the repo is probably the best place to start.

      And as usual, I've topped everyone back up to 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.

      53 votes
    20. How do you use Tildes' labels?

      One of the unique feature of Tildes when it comes to content moderation is the usage of "labels". While there are guidelines, there are no hard and fast rules as to when to use one label or the...

      One of the unique feature of Tildes when it comes to content moderation is the usage of "labels". While there are guidelines, there are no hard and fast rules as to when to use one label or the other (nor should there be!). I am curious what criteria you all use when deciding whether or not to apply a label to a comment, and also how frequently you find yourself labeling things. For reference, the current labels are:

      • Exemplary
      • Offtopic
      • Joke
      • Noise
      • Malice

      Are there labels you find yourself using more than others? Are there some you think are unclear? I feel like this is an often overlooked and underused feature, but that may just be because I personally do not use them that frequently. For example, I have only given a few Exemplary tags, a few noise, and I don't think any of the others.

      17 votes
    21. Do duplicates need to be pointed out, or do we not care?

      Looking at the Activity page right now, there are 2 different pointers to 2 different articles about turning off auto-play on Netflix. I totally get why people are excited about this! My question...

      Looking at the Activity page right now, there are 2 different pointers to 2 different articles about turning off auto-play on Netflix. I totally get why people are excited about this!

      My question is, do we care about duplicates? Some forums ask people to notify a mod and they combine the threads. Others just let them be. Is there an official stance on this here?

      8 votes
    22. What is your default sort for Tildes?

      Pretty much self explanatory: what did you set for your default tildes.net post sort? I currently have it set to top activity in the last three days, but I'm not sure if that's the optimal way to...

      Pretty much self explanatory: what did you set for your default tildes.net post sort?

      I currently have it set to top activity in the last three days, but I'm not sure if that's the optimal way to find posts that are likely to have ongoing conversation. On the other hand, filtering to just the past day often eliminates too many posts.

      12 votes
    23. Should there be a way to turn off replies for a comment?

      One thing we take for granted in social media is that any comment may receive a reply from anyone. Maybe we should rethink that? What would happen if it were optional? For example, for someone...

      One thing we take for granted in social media is that any comment may receive a reply from anyone. Maybe we should rethink that? What would happen if it were optional?
      For example, for someone posting in "What's a widely criticized thing that you feel is worth defending?" topic, I am not sure that everyone posting there really wanted to start a discussion.
      Having replies shut off might be frustrating sometimes as a reader, particularly when something you disagree with gets a lot of upvotes. But it would make the author's intent clearer. If you're inviting further conversation, leave replies on. If you're not, turn it off.
      Everyone has the right to walk away from conversation. This would make it explicit. Maybe it would make heated threads less likely, since they'd stop sooner? It seems like it's more difficult to walk away when you're also letting the other side get the last word?

      17 votes
    24. The financials block not showing up?

      I might've missed something, but why did the Financials block disappear from the main page? And the numbers on the financials page are zero. Also, while we're at it, there should probably be a...

      I might've missed something, but why did the Financials block disappear from the main page? And the numbers on the financials page are zero.

      Also, while we're at it, there should probably be a “Financials” link in the footer.

      10 votes
    25. Suggestion: Automatically link to video timestamps in comments in posts where the topic type is a video/song (on supported platforms)

      There are three platforms that I'm aware of that are included in the Tildes SiteInfo dictionary—YouTube, Vimeo, & SoundCloud—that support linking to specific parts of a media resource via...

      There are three platforms that I'm aware of that are included in the Tildes SiteInfo dictionary—YouTube, Vimeo, & SoundCloud—that support linking to specific parts of a media resource via timestamps. This is useful to reference a particular portion of the video/song during discussion.

      It should probably be possible to automatically apply hyperlinks to timestamps in the video (link this) when someone posts a comment with a timestamp-like string inside of it. This would make it a bit easier to share and link to specific portions of what's being shared in the main topic.

      This seems like a decent value-add feature for Tildes. Whether it's a good idea to directly edit the comment string, I'm not so sure. I'd probably be in favour of implementing either a post-markdown middleware that added an icon next to the timestamp, kind of like how external links on some sites are suffixed with an icon that indicates the resource is not on the current domain.

      10 votes
    26. Is the Roadmap still useful?

      Clicking on "Roadmap" at the bottom of any Tildes page brings up an issue board. I'm wondering if that's still being maintained and whether it's worth keeping? The items listed under "in progress"...

      Clicking on "Roadmap" at the bottom of any Tildes page brings up an issue board. I'm wondering if that's still being maintained and whether it's worth keeping?

      The items listed under "in progress" don't look like they are actually in progress. For example, "Add sticky / pinned topics" is marked as "In progress" but in fact it's a year old and there's been no activity for four months.

      6 votes
    27. Do you think a ~community would be helpful?

      I personally think it could be helpful as a group for us to attempt guiding ourselves to cooperate and do stuff like timasomo. Alternatively it could end up being swallowed by petty drama and be...

      I personally think it could be helpful as a group for us to attempt guiding ourselves to cooperate and do stuff like timasomo. Alternatively it could end up being swallowed by petty drama and be really horrible.

      2 votes
    28. After visiting a topic's comments, that topic will show when it has new comments since your last visit

      As discussed last week, the site is now marking new comments for all logged-in users. This has two effects: On the listings pages, you will see something like "5 comments (2 new)" when a topic you...

      As discussed last week, the site is now marking new comments for all logged-in users. This has two effects:

      1. On the listings pages, you will see something like "5 comments (2 new)" when a topic you previously viewed the comments on has new comments since your last visit.

      2. When you return to a comments page with new comments, all old comments will start out collapsed, unless one of the new comments is a direct reply to one of them. New comments have a colored stripe down their left side, with the color varying based on the theme you're using (but I think it's generally an orange/red-like color).

        You can expand collapsed comments by clicking the "+" button in their top left corner, or expand them all by using the "Expand all" button at the top of the comments section. If you don't like this initial collapsing behavior, you can disable it on the Settings page by unchecking the "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic" setting.

      I'm working on some other adjustments and changes related to this, so there will probably be some more tweaks coming into place soon as well. I'd like input on one in particular:

      Do we need a separate function along the lines of "stop indicating new comments on this post", or does the ignore function serve that purpose well enough? Are there reasonable cases where you want to stop seeing the "(x new)" on a topic, but do not want to actually ignore it? And if we do want to implement a function like that, any suggestions for a brief name/description for it that will fit in the Actions dropdown?

      As always, any other general feedback about the feature is welcome as well.

      And as usual, I've topped everyone back up to 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.

      38 votes
    29. I'm planning to enable the "mark new comments" feature for everyone - any major concerns?

      Something that's come up in discussions a few times recently is how important it is to have good default settings. Even users who are quite technical and involved don't always explore which...

      Something that's come up in discussions a few times recently is how important it is to have good default settings. Even users who are quite technical and involved don't always explore which settings are available, and that's totally fine—they shouldn't need to. The default setup should be as good as possible, with changing settings mostly for specialized cases.

      One particular place on Tildes where this isn't currently being done well is for the "mark new comments" feature, which has always been disabled by default. I think it's one of the best features on the site and makes it much easier to follow ongoing discussions here than on other sites with similar comment systems, but overall, not many users have enabled it.

      For example, Tildes got some attention on Hacker News again yesterday, and about 80 new users have registered so far from that. Only 9 of them enabled "mark new comments", even though the welcome message strongly encourages it. Looking at longer periods of time, this seems typical: only about 10% of users ever enable it.

      As it says on the settings page for the feature, my reason for disabling it by default was out of privacy concerns. However, I've been doing some review of the data that Tildes stores lately and realized that this was kind of misleading and inaccurate. Because I have HTTP request server logs and some other related data (which is all only kept for 30 days), I effectively have topic visit records from the last 30 days for all users anyway, whether they have the feature enabled or not. The data is more convenient to access for users with the feature enabled, but it's available either way.

      Because of that, and because the data will be very useful to combine with some of the upcoming changes I mentioned in the last ~tildes.official post, I'm planning to enable this feature for everyone. Here are the general plans:

      • Data about which topics' comments pages a user visits will be stored (for 30 days), along with when and how many comments were there at the time. This enables displaying which topics have new comments since your last visit, and marking those new comments.
      • There will no longer be a setting to disable this, but you can still choose whether previously-seen comments are collapsed when you return - the same as the existing checkbox on that page for "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic".
      • I will probably implement some sort of "stop informing me of new comments in this topic" feature (separate from the new Ignore one) to stop having the info about new comments in a topic showing up for you.

      Please let me know if you have any thoughts or concerns about this. If nothing major comes up, I intend to make this change later this week.

      82 votes
    30. Tagging: "poem" or "poems"?

      Simple question. For people's original poems posted in ~creative, should they be tagged "poem" or "poems"? "poetry" is the broader category, and includes discussions about poets and poetry in...

      Simple question. For people's original poems posted in ~creative, should they be tagged "poem" or "poems"?

      "poetry" is the broader category, and includes discussions about poets and poetry in general. However, when someone posts their poem, should that be tagged "poem" or "poems"?

      The tagging guidelines say (or used to say - since I re-organised the Docs pages, I can't find this reference any more) that tags should be plural. That indicates that "poems" is the better tag. But the post contains a single poem, which makes "poem" the better tag.

      Opinions?


      EDIT: In the end, I went with the popular choice. When I looked at the tags used in ~creative, I found over a hundred topics tagged "poem" and only four topics tagged "poems". It seems that most people naturally choose "poem" when posting a poem, so I standardised the few differently tagged topics to use "poem".

      5 votes
    31. Limit the number of posts from a particular site?

      Would it be possible to limit the number of posts that are shown on the home page pointing to a given domain at one time? There have been a few times I've come to Tildes to see what's new and...

      Would it be possible to limit the number of posts that are shown on the home page pointing to a given domain at one time? There have been a few times I've come to Tildes to see what's new and there are 5 or 10 posts that all link to different pages on the same site. I think this would help increase the amount of variety in the stories that are showing and make the site more interesting to users.

      9 votes
    32. You can now ignore individual topics, which will stop showing them in listings for you

      It's been quiet from my end lately—I mentioned in a comment last week that I had been taking some time off, but now it's time to get things moving again. As I said in that comment, the next major...

      It's been quiet from my end lately—I mentioned in a comment last week that I had been taking some time off, but now it's time to get things moving again.

      As I said in that comment, the next major steps for Tildes are going to be bringing in more people, along with more (and more varied) content. To help with that, I'm going to be working on some structural and functionality changes to make it easier for people to see the types of content they want, as well as avoid content they're not interested in.

      So, I've just deployed the first piece of that: you can now ignore individual topics when you don't want to keep seeing them in your listings. Thanks yet again to repeated open-source contributor @what, who got this started a long time ago in a merge request that I was able to finish up and add a little more on top of.

      Currently, the only thing that ignoring topics does is hide them from your listings, but I'm still thinking about some of the details and possible other effects and wanted to ask for input first:

      • If you ignore a topic that you posted a comment in, should you no longer receive notifications about new replies to you in that topic? What about username mentions?
      • Should users be able to ignore their own topics?
      • Should ignored topics be hidden everywhere, or should there be exceptions? For example, if you do a search that matches ignored topics, should they show up in the results? If you're looking at the poster's user page, should ignored topics be shown?
      • Is there anything else that ignoring a topic should (or should not) affect?

      A listing of only topics you've ignored is also available through the sidebar on your user page as "Your ignored topics", in case you need to check on any of them or unignore one of them.

      One other piece of this is that there's now an "Actions" dropdown available on every topic in a listing, underneath the vote button. This dropdown allows you to bookmark or ignore topics without having to go into their comments page first. I'm not totally certain about this yet, and will probably make some more adjustments related to it. In particular, it's pretty far off to the right on a wide desktop monitor, so I might try some other options after seeing how it feels to use on the live site.

      Let me know if you have any feedback about these changes, or notice any issues. Hopefully there should be multiple more updates coming up over the next week or two.

      And as usual, I've given everyone 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.

      65 votes
    33. Any custom themes using Stylus?

      I switched to the light theme the other day. I'm typically all-in with dark themes for everything, but there was some convincing research. I started working on a light theme, but it's fairly...

      I switched to the light theme the other day. I'm typically all-in with dark themes for everything, but there was some convincing research.

      I started working on a light theme, but it's fairly basic.

      I was digging through the old thread and found a few gems, but I'm wondering what everybody has been up to since. Time for some show and tell!

      10 votes
    34. An active user count

      I would like a current active user Count for the whole site. I find them very useful for knowing when people are on I’m not a fan of group specific ones but one that said how many people where...

      I would like a current active user Count for the whole site. I find them very useful for knowing when people are on I’m not a fan of group specific ones but one that said how many people where currently on I would like

      19 votes
    35. Is there any progress on tag synonyms?

      I know there's a task for grouping synonymous tags together, like "humor" and "humour". How high a priority is this? I ask because poor @mycketforvirrad shouldn't have to feel like he needs to add...

      I know there's a task for grouping synonymous tags together, like "humor" and "humour". How high a priority is this?

      I ask because poor @mycketforvirrad shouldn't have to feel like he needs to add a tag for "wildfires" every time someone posts a topic about the Australia bushfires (and tags it "bushfires").

      14 votes
    36. Username search?

      Nearly every time most of us want to mention someone, we need to find a post they commented in or posted, which will get increasingly harder over time, and especially so for less active users.

      12 votes
    37. Can there be a 'new comments only' sort for people who toggled 'mark new comments' on?

      As someone comes to this site a lot and has toggled this feature on, a sort that shows only the threads where new comments have been posted since I last left would be great so I don't need to...

      As someone comes to this site a lot and has toggled this feature on, a sort that shows only the threads where new comments have been posted since I last left would be great so I don't need to scroll down the homepage anxiously looking for new comments on the topics I like.

      8 votes
    38. Who moved my cheese?

      Prologue: Feeling cranky, trying to be civil. I posted a link to an article, in the ~news, about two of the top US dairy producers declaring bankruptcy ... and Someone moved it to ~food. Harumpf....

      Prologue: Feeling cranky, trying to be civil.

      I posted a link to an article, in the ~news, about two of the top US dairy producers declaring bankruptcy ... and Someone moved it to ~food.

      Harumpf.

      ~food is "check out this new latte recipe" or "how to survive the vegetarian keto diet" (yes, that's a thing; I'm on it. May be why I'm cranky).

      My post was ~news, about the US economy, shifting societal norms, potentially about climate change.

      But forget about this specific categorization issue. This is the first time I've bumped into Tildes' moderation methodology.

      I don't subscribe to ~food, so for me, my post just vanished, w/o notification or explanation. Took me a few minutes to find it. I don't see any way to ID who moved it (may well have been @Deimos, for all I know), nor any way to challenge the move.

      Have I overlooked some 'moderation dispute' button, or some such? Or is moderation here beyond dispute?


      ETA: For anyone visiting this post down the line, here's the official/original statement on this ...

      https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/53r/users_can_now_be_manually_granted_permissions_to_re_tag_topics_move_them_between_groups_and_edit

      20 votes
    39. The results of the 2019 Census

      Hello everyone, it's 00:16 my time and I'm finally fucking done making all the data pretty for you after about 4 hours of coding to parse all those juicy CSV files cause guess what, the excel...

      Hello everyone, it's 00:16 my time and I'm finally fucking done making all the data pretty for you after about 4 hours of coding to parse all those juicy CSV files cause guess what, the excel files that JotForms gave me WHERE FUCKING GḀ͒ͬ̓ͦͅRͤ͊̔́B̴̼̫̟͍̅̆A̩̽ͮ̂̏͡G̸̭̜̑͑̃Ȇ͈͙͈̠̖̋́̌ͭ͂ͧhelp me

      Anyway :) Let's give y'all a brief rundown of the current Tilde demographics, and some highlights, CAUSE NOW I HAVE ALL YOUR DATA AND THUS INFINITE POWER TO MAKE JOKESdid I mention I've been doing for half the day and I'm really hungry? AND TIRED? Honestly you owe me this moment of insanity considering I'M RUNNING ON GREEN LEAF JUICE AND HOW MUCH DATA I WADED THROUGH AHHHH-.

      Also, most of these will be pictures because honestly I can't be asked to not pretty paste these figures into markdown tables or I'll legitimate go insane. Anyway, this post has plenty of sass, don't take this shit too seriously please, gracias.

      The 2019 Census

      Anyway.

      This year we got 249 responses in total, which really annoys me cause 250 is way prettier to look at at. However, one was completely empty and the other two are... Fishy. More on that later.

      Personal details

      Age

      When it comes to age, Tildes is heavily skewed towards people in their 20s to 30s, 45% of the responses came from people between 20 and 30. Overall, late 20s to and early 30s dominate the demographics. (before anyone screams at me about the proper use of graphs, don't worry I also took Statistics at uni, but the histogram in Excel refused to work and honestly go make your own census) There is also some statistical noise, which I'm not sure how it happened. Most likely someone typed too quickly.

      Our youngest user is 11! And either very intelligent, cause they also speak 9 languages, or a fraud. If you're not a fraud, I apologize and wish you luck on your future path in life, which will surely be extremely successful, if you really speak that many languages at such an age.Hint, this was one of the fishy responses

      Our oldest user is 70! I really don't know what to say, cause that's a pretty high number for an internet user. How was uhh... The cold war?Holy fuck I should stop I need to eat

      Geographical... Stuff

      Overall, the Tildes demographic hasn't changed much. US and Canada still lead by quite a lot, but we have acquired quite the little diverse userbase.

      All I can do is salute my fellow other Austrian user. Can you say Oachkatzalschwoaf though? THAT'S THE SIGN OF A REAL AUSTRIAN.NONE OF THIS STARTING WORLD WARS SHIT

      Language

      Predictably, a large number of people does not speak a second language besides English, however, due to geographical diversity, a large number of languages is represented, most of them from Europe, which is Tildes' second largest userbase.

      Gender & Sexuality

      Tildes is heavily male-dominated, probably due to its IT-focused population and the fact that most of us came from Reddit.

      Of the 248 responses, 17 people hit marked that they were trans, pretty much all of them MTF (which is apparently the majority of trans people, Wikipedia tells me.) 3 preferred not to say and everyone else is cis.

      Now, let's get to the sexy stuff. And by that I mean the point where the numbers rub together in fantastic ways.

      The majority of Tildes is really fucking straight, though we have some fun sexualities represented, my personal favourite Still figuring that out. You do you mate, you'll get there eventually. Also, whoever wrote down O-Sexual also wrote X-Treme Wiccan as their religion, and at this point in I'm too afraid to google what any of that is. Clearly, we need more straight people, after all, we're in the 20s.Before anyone yells at me, THIS WAS A FUCKING JOKE For now I've defined that person as Fish numero dos.

      Religion

      So, here's a doozy. To that one person (probably part of the 9% of <20 year olds), WHO DECIDED TO WRITE THE WONDERFUL ANSWER atheism and angosticism are not religions, can you PLEASE read the question properly next time. FUCK.Honestly that is such a 14 y/o thing to write, by the Ǵ͙͔͔̻͖̜́ͅO̶̱̘͡D͓̞͉̲͓̥S̢̲͙̙̟̯̙͓̱͟

      Anyway, religion is probably the thing with the most diverse answers, honestly. There are words in there I have never read in my life before. Like what is Apatheist.1? Is there some sort of ranking? Does it work with natural numbers only? Is there a Apatheist.3,51? It can't be a typo, people take religions way too seriously for that.

      Politics

      I averaged out the scores of everyone who answered the political questions and got the following answers (remember, these are based on the 8values quiz):

      Economy - 7,02
      Diplomacy - 6,9
      State - 3,8
      Society - 7,48

      Only economy is really surprising here, though I'd also have expected diplomacy to be a little lower as well. Maybe the leftist skew ia bit of an illusion?

      Work, education and really everything else these sections were a terrible idea

      When it comes to education, Tildes is pretty university focused. Almost half people replying have a bachelor's, a good bunch are working or have aquired their master's. Also one (maybe soon-to-be) MD and a few PhDs. The Craftsmen and tradeship people barely balance us out, we need some more COMMON FOLK IN HERE.

      IT people, rejoice! WE STILL REIGN SUPREMEEveryone else will remember that All jokes aside, shoutout to the stay-at-home dad, proud of ya'. And to the disabled person, I hope life goes as well as it can for you. That goes for the longterm-unemployed person as well. Someday, you'll manage mate, someday.

      And to the person who said their job is a waste of time in exchange of money... Mate, you need someone to talk? I'm here. We're all here.

      Surprise section about technical shit and Tildes

      OS usage is as expected, due to Tildes' heavy skew into IT and the fact that Apple doesn't nearly dominate as much in other countries as in the US, it's to be expected.

      Due to said IT dominance Linux has almost caught up with the leader, Windows. Though my personal favourite is Anything cool that comes into existence, like can we make a Linux fork that is called literally that? You'd be the perfect match.

      When it comes to Tildes specifically, y'all need to chill out. Most people who answered the census visit Tildes multiple times a day, like the content here doesn't even move that quickly? WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING? IS THERE SOME SECRET CULT I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?If it's a LSD cult I'm totes in lads.

      As expected, most people who answered the survey have an account, and most likely due to the heavy IT skew most people are visiting from their PC. But I have also seen some people requesting a mobile app in the free form questions, so maybe that would go up if a native app were to be created.

      The freeform questions

      Well, in all honesty, not much has changed. Most people like the dedicated community, site design, in-depth discussions (though that was sometimes a point on both sides), etc. and dislike the heavy domination of IT topics and US/Europe news & politics. Also, multiple people simply said @Deimos when asked what they like most about Tildes. Get a room, y'all. Though it's well deserved, I think we can all agree on that.

      Complete list of positive feedback: https://pastebin.com/KYCYLWP1

      Complete list of negative feedback: https://pastebin.com/Eng6jjay

      Complete list of ideas for change: https://pastebin.com/eery3mCt

      Why am I posting these? Cause in all honesty, freeform feedback like this is hard to analyze and summarize, so I'd rather just post it all so everyone can form their opinion. Also, I'm tired.

      Special mentions

      Someone was nice enough to add the mention in parantheses that I should add them to the bisexual list instead if no one else marked pansexual. Well lucky you, exactly one other person marked it! You two can go find yourselves a room with lots of sexy pans in it now and have some fun.This is how it works, right? Or just, slide into each other's DMs or something and talk about your love for pans. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

      I also appreciate the one person who entered their religion in the languages section on accident. That's fact now, you speak Raised Catholic, now spiritual/atheist now, no shh, no talking back, that's your language now.

      To that one person that said that Tildes is too serious, this one's for you.

      And cheers to Deimos, without whom I couldn't be so silly on this overly serious but fantastic platform.

      Anyway, Grzmot out, I need sleep. I'll come back in 8 hours or so to regret the shit I just wrote down at 2 AM. Please don't ban me.

      83 votes