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    1. Could security key 2FA be implemented on Tildes?

      I am wondering if this could be implemented as a 2FA method on Tildes. Although not super mainstream, I think it is the gold standard for account security. Is there anyone else interested in this...

      I am wondering if this could be implemented as a 2FA method on Tildes. Although not super mainstream, I think it is the gold standard for account security. Is there anyone else interested in this option?

      8 votes
    2. Tildes within a tildes

      This is an idea I've had for awhile, I wanted to have it written down somewhere for future reference. This would likely be a substantial undertaking, but I haven't seen much discussion on the...

      This is an idea I've had for awhile, I wanted to have it written down somewhere for future reference. This would likely be a substantial undertaking, but I haven't seen much discussion on the concept.

      What if Tildes was able to have internal tildes? We would be able to 'start a tildes group' and have all~group.tag discussions under it. You could invite members to your ~group, and only those members could vote/comment/see on the internal group that they are part of.

      This would make it so we can grow tildes, keep it small, and have personal obsessions and ideas. For example, I run a few discords that are part of nascent old/antique ideologies and philosophies, and we have been looking to move off of Discord (horrible for conversations and debates). I realize we could start our own forum or Tildes server, but the idea of tilde branches would be interesting to see play out in practice. I'm sure this has already been brought up, and will likely never happen, but I would love thoughts on the matter if you have them. This would likely be a large undertaking and I haven't really peeked at Tildes source since launch, so I'm not sure how the structure is these days.

      12 votes
    3. Maybe a function to check reposts before posting?

      Sometimes I write an introduction to an article and add relevant tags, and then discover it is a repost when I hit post. I know I should use the search function, but since there's an automatic...

      Sometimes I write an introduction to an article and add relevant tags, and then discover it is a repost when I hit post. I know I should use the search function, but since there's an automatic anti respost feature already, could it maybe be made available sooner? Maybe others would find this useful as well. Thanks!

      9 votes
    4. Feature(s) requests for recurring topics

      So I'm on Tildes less often these days so I'm not keeping up with certain things as much as I used to. In particular, I really like the recurring "What games are you playing" topics but I'm often...

      So I'm on Tildes less often these days so I'm not keeping up with certain things as much as I used to. In particular, I really like the recurring "What games are you playing" topics but I'm often not noticing them in my skimming of the front page, especially if I haven't checked in in a day or two and it's not near the top.

      So what if there was a feature, specifically for recurring topics, to subscribe to them where it gives me a "New Instance of Weekly Topic" notification in the same was as the "New Comment Reply" notification? It's probably not useful since we basically just have one recurring topic right now. But I'd honestly like to see more of these recurring topics, especially a "What are you listening to right now" one and even ones that automatically reoccur for TV shows (Episode 1, Episode 2, etc.) rather than an open thread.

      13 votes
    5. Much ado about title case

      I've noticed some people making a point of editing titles on articles to either impose or undo title case on articles. I dug around a bit and haven't been able to find any style guide suggestions...

      I've noticed some people making a point of editing titles on articles to either impose or undo title case on articles. I dug around a bit and haven't been able to find any style guide suggestions on the matter.

      Barring some kind of official stylistic standards being laid down, that I'd like to respectfully request that curator roles refrain from overruling a submitter's formatting choices without good reason.

      26 votes
    6. Accentuation on tags? ("á", "ã", "é", "í", etc)

      I was trying to add andré bazin as a tag on an article about the film theorist André Bazin, but the box became red and prevented me from submiting. So I had to use the incorrect andre bazin. I...

      I was trying to add andré bazin as a tag on an article about the film theorist André Bazin, but the box became red and prevented me from submiting. So I had to use the incorrect andre bazin.

      I suppose there's a very rational technical reason for not using accentuation on tags -- even so, I believe it would be useful to suport those characters, since many languages use them.

      11 votes
    7. After blocking a user on uBlockOrigin I can't see the number of votes

      After using this method to block a user on here I can no longer see the number of votes a comment or a post gets. I can see it fine when I switch to a browser without uBlockOrigin, but not on...

      After using this method to block a user on here I can no longer see the number of votes a comment or a post gets.

      I can see it fine when I switch to a browser without uBlockOrigin, but not on FireFox.

      Any reason for this?

      Edit: I also can't see anyone's username in the comments.

      10 votes
    8. Email alerts?

      Is there a way to get email alerts when someone responds or votes on your post? I ask because I don't check Tildes each day and last week I posted a question and forgot to return to look at the...

      Is there a way to get email alerts when someone responds or votes on your post? I ask because I don't check Tildes each day and last week I posted a question and forgot to return to look at the responses. If I had something like an email alert, it'd be a nice reminder to return.

      5 votes
    9. Its still rough, but I made a really busy tildes theme

      I decided to rewrite this from scratch. You can try it out if you're game. album I wiped out my profile in Chrome the other day and forgot to back up stylus and some other settings for a few...

      I decided to rewrite this from scratch. You can try it out if you're game.

      album


      I wiped out my profile in Chrome the other day and forgot to back up stylus and some other settings for a few extensions. I found an old post where I listed part of a theme I'd started working on, but had since abandoned.

      I couldn't find a copy of the ol' Tiltweaks stylus theme, either, so I decided to bring back that old, unfinished gem to get my theme back to roughly where I had it before... then I added a bunch of other crap in.

      Anyway, here's the link to a busy screencap.

      The two column layout isn't for everybody, but in the brief time I've spent with it, I'm starting to like it.

      Just thought I'd share. I'm about 99.6% certain everybody will see it and say, 'gross' :)

      15 votes
    10. Possible Bug: Has anyone else had problems commenting or voting?

      this has happened twice. Edit: Wow just happened again, when commenting or making a post once it overflows the text area the browser forgets all the information that you have written above. I...

      this has happened twice.

      Edit: Wow just happened again, when commenting or making a post once it overflows the text area the browser forgets all the information that you have written above. I wrote that this has happened twice, but now it's three times as it happened when I was writing this post. Voting has also sporadically been broken.

      Every once in awhile the voting mechanism has a truly long delay or requires a complete refresh of the page.

      Browsers: Firefox for Android, Firefox for Ubuntu.

      7 votes
    11. Feature request: Ability to ping a comment author about spelling mistakes

      Sorry if this is dumb, I just woke up and had this idea randomly. What would happen if the site had a built-in mechanic for correction spelling mistakes. It could be opt-in (or opt-out?) if you...

      Sorry if this is dumb, I just woke up and had this idea randomly. What would happen if the site had a built-in mechanic for correction spelling mistakes. It could be opt-in (or opt-out?) if you don't want anyone to bother you. This would allow other people that notice them to ping a comment author privately with perhaps a short message explanation.

      Not everyone has English as their first language which is why I think it could be valuable. If the feature is not built into the site, correcting someone would be seen as a negative experience (I think) both in public or private messages.

      It would be up to the comment author to edit their comment. (Or perhaps a way to accept the changes would be nice?)

      Thoughts? Is this a thing anywhere else?

      Edit: I put feature request in the title, but this is more of a discussion of the idea in general. I don't expect this to become a thing, but I feel like it's interesting to think about.

      8 votes
    12. Should we have a recurring thread specific for movies, like the "TV Tuesdays Free Talk"?

      So this is a very simple question. There's a free talk thread for everyone to talk about the TV shows they have watched in the preceding week. Every once in a while we use that thread to talk...

      So this is a very simple question. There's a free talk thread for everyone to talk about the TV shows they have watched in the preceding week. Every once in a while we use that thread to talk about movies (I did that just now. My justification is that I watched the movies on my television), but the thread asks specifically for TV shows so it feels kinda weird. So maybe we should have a recurring thread for movies? If not, I'd suggest changing the TV thread to make it explicitly welcoming to discussions about movies (in that case, maybe it would be ideal to make the thread appear both in ~tv and in ~movies? I don't think that is technically possible right now, but I leave the suggestion).

      5 votes
    13. Not trying to make waves but why are articles posted to news that relate to lgbt moved?

      As a new member I am really hesitant to post this but I recently posted an article to ~news that was related to lgbt issues and it was moved to ~lgbt. I fully support a sub section devoted to lgbt...

      As a new member I am really hesitant to post this but I recently posted an article to ~news that was related to lgbt issues and it was moved to ~lgbt. I fully support a sub section devoted to lgbt but news should be news regardless.

      Just because it has an lgbt angle does not mean it should be moved. I'm not even lgbt myself but I find it sort of hurtful that a news article was pushed off ~news. So I ask this, and once again not trying to make waves. But why?

      Edit: I would love to be a member of this community as I am personally seeking a less asshole filled reddit alternative. But pushing a news article to another ~ just because it relates a bit more to them shouldn't be a thing. If you are tolerant it relates to us all. And yes I know I posted it in ~news because I was trying to participate and I'm a news junky.

      Sorry.

      Edit 2: This was a sad sorry way to come in to this community. I apologize.

      19 votes
    14. Meet the new server, functionally the same as the old server (hopefully)

      Welcome back! Right after making this post, I'm going to update the DNS records to point tildes.net to this server, so everyone should start trickling in as those updates go through. The switch...

      Welcome back!

      Right after making this post, I'm going to update the DNS records to point tildes.net to this server, so everyone should start trickling in as those updates go through.

      The switch and upgrades all seem to have gone fairly well, though there were definitely a few issues here and there that I had to work through. I'm glad I decided to do a longer downtime instead of needing to rush through figuring some of it out.

      A summary of what's changed so far:

      • Running on a different physical server (but in the same datacenter)
      • Operating system is now Debian 10 instead of Ubuntu 16.04
      • Python version is now 3.9 instead of 3.8 (and updated a couple libraries that needed it)
      • PostgreSQL version is now 13 instead of 12
      • Redis version is now 6 instead of 5
      • Everything was deployed and configured using Ansible instead of SaltStack

      There are still a few more changes and updates I want to make soon, but I can just do them normally while the site is running. I'll also update the open-source code soon, once I finalize a few pieces and finish cleaning things up.

      Please let me know if you notice anything that seems to be behaving strangely, it's definitely possible that there are some things broken in subtle (or not-subtle) ways.

      90 votes
    15. Tildes will be down for most of this weekend

      I'm going to be taking the site down this weekend to do some upgrades and changes to various systems it runs on. I'm planning to start the downtime somewhere around noon on Saturday, and have it...

      I'm going to be taking the site down this weekend to do some upgrades and changes to various systems it runs on. I'm planning to start the downtime somewhere around noon on Saturday, and have it running again on Sunday evening (vague times, in a vague North American timezone).

      If you're interested in the details, the main reason is to switch operating systems from Ubuntu to Debian. The easiest and safest way to do this is by just setting up a new server and moving the site over, so I'll also be taking the opportunity to switch to a different physical server. Tildes has been running for 3 years now, so I'll be able to rent a new server that's some combination of faster and cheaper (not that we're getting anywhere close to the limits on this server, but I might as well).

      Since I was having to review and adjust the whole server setup as part of switching OSes, I also decided to switch configuration-management systems from SaltStack to Ansible. Salt had a major vulnerability last year that compromised thousands of servers, and Tildes really only avoided being affected through the luck of using it in a non-vulnerable way. I've been intending to switch away from it ever since.

      And since the site will be down anyway, I'll also be doing some upgrades and changes that are difficult to do without downtime, including upgrading PostgreSQL, Redis, and Python to their newest versions and making some changes to their setups.

      So overall, this turned into a large project, and unfortunately it's one of those wonderful development projects where you do a ton of work and if everything goes well, nobody can even notice any difference from the way it was before. It also would have been possible to do all of this with only minimal downtime, but it would have required a lot more prep work and would be more stressful, so I'm just going to do it the easy way and take my time. If you're interested in doing a Screenless Day, maybe this could be a good time to do it!

      123 votes
    16. (Option to) mark comment reply notifications as read when clicking "link" or "parent"

      When I get comment reply notifications, I normally prefer to read them in context of my own reply, and potentially other replies. However when I do this, the notification doesn't go away on its...

      When I get comment reply notifications, I normally prefer to read them in context of my own reply, and potentially other replies. However when I do this, the notification doesn't go away on its own, so I have to return to the page to click "mark as read".

      I know I can also mark the notification as read by voting on or replying to the reply, but I often don't do that. Yet I always seem to want to view the comment in its context, which requires me to leave the notifications page. In this specific use case there is no convenient way to mark the notification as read without going back.

      To avoid the extra page load, I would like the notification being marked as read when the link to it is opened, to be an option. (Actually, I'd like it to be the default behaviour, but since the current default behaviour is to not mark comments as read until an explicit action is taken on them, I suppose I'm in the minority. An option is just fine.)

      7 votes
    17. Suggestion for another label beside Malice

      Malice implies intent to break the rules (or just the general conduct of the community). On one end, sometimes a user gets caught up in the heat of the argument and writes something they know they...

      Malice implies intent to break the rules (or just the general conduct of the community). On one end, sometimes a user gets caught up in the heat of the argument and writes something they know they shouldn't. On the other end, sometimes a comment isn't particularly inflammatory at all but you can feel from the content that its author was in a place of of hurt, or anger. You can either label them as Malice and let the moderators sort out who are the real trouble makers and who just need some help, or you can reply to them in a helpful manner and possibly have a side conversation regarding their wellbeing.

      I think it'd be a nice if there's a label to tell the moderators that "I think this user needs some talking to", for usage other than "I think this user needs a warning". More users are probably comfortable with clicking a label than putting themselves out there in a conversation about mental health, some may also not want to derail the discussion. Mental wellbeing and rule enforcement are 2 different skills with 2 different mindsets so having 2 different mod teams for each function probably also help.

      This suggestion was partly inspired by, but not limited to, this comment by kfwyre. I feel that most social media's features (Tildes included with the way labels are currently) are designed to be content-centric and not much in the way of taking care of the wellbeing of their members, maybe we can improve.

      17 votes
    18. Ignore comment thread?

      Sometimes a comment thread is very very toxic/controversial and I would like to avoid getting sucked into it. Just because my decision-making is much better at 2pm than it is at 2am. I understand...

      Sometimes a comment thread is very very toxic/controversial and I would like to avoid getting sucked into it. Just because my decision-making is much better at 2pm than it is at 2am. I understand I can and should exercise self-control, and I'm working on it, I assure you! In the meantime, if at all possible, it would be nice to remove certain comments from my view, along with its children. Thanks!

      12 votes
    19. Should Tildes have rules for healthcare advice?

      Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the...

      Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the tildes advice was compliant with national guidance, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's bad, dangerous, advice.

      Should Tildes have rules about this?

      16 votes
    20. Happy 3rd Birthday, Tildes!

      Since no one has posted this yet and the day approaches the end (UTC), I decided to post this...

      Since no one has posted this yet and the day approaches the end (UTC), I decided to post this...

      55 votes
    21. Search for tag site-wide?

      Clicking a tag provides the search results for that tag in the local group. Since some topics appear across groups, I think it'd be useful to view site-wide results as well, optionally. Does that...

      Clicking a tag provides the search results for that tag in the local group. Since some topics appear across groups, I think it'd be useful to view site-wide results as well, optionally. Does that already exist?

      9 votes
    22. Change group color on unsubscribe (on the groups page)

      Perhaps the post was posted in the wrong place and can be moved or deleted. But it's not entirely clear. There is a page: https://tildes.net/groups Where is it written: Group name colors:...

      Perhaps the post was posted in the wrong place and can be moved or deleted. But it's not entirely clear.

      There is a page: https://tildes.net/groups

      Where is it written:

      Group name colors: subscribed / not subscribed. You can change your subscription status to a group in its sidebar when you are viewing it directly.

      I decided to experiment and unsubscribe from some groups. However, there are no changes on this page. Perhaps it’s just me or I’m doing something wrong.

      7 votes
    23. New groups and site mechanics - 2021 edition

      The last group request thread was last year. With all the meta-chat lately it might be time for a new one, and maybe expand a bit more in terms of site organization in general. I mainly want to...

      The last group request thread was last year. With all the meta-chat lately it might be time for a new one, and maybe expand a bit more in terms of site organization in general.

      I mainly want to take this opportunity to make the recent meta feedback a bit more actionable: Which current problems can be solved via site mechanics? Will leave some thoughts in the comments.

      35 votes
    24. Is there any interest in a Cryptocurrency group on Tildes?

      I know chat about cryptocurrency hasn't been extremely popular here in the past, but I am curious if there is enough interest now to make a group for it. I am looking for a place to discuss it...

      I know chat about cryptocurrency hasn't been extremely popular here in the past, but I am curious if there is enough interest now to make a group for it. I am looking for a place to discuss it from an enthusiast's perspective because Reddit is just getting a little too crazy for me.

      13 votes
    25. Feature suggestion - tildes only content

      It would be nice if there was an extra box that allows you to add info that is private to the people on tildes. For example I would like to share creds to a game account, but I only want people on...

      It would be nice if there was an extra box that allows you to add info that is private to the people on tildes. For example I would like to share creds to a game account, but I only want people on tildes to get that info, not the public who aren't users and just visit.

      10 votes
    26. No feedback when saving filters

      If I add, remove, or change a topic filter, and then press the "Save" button, I get no indication that anything happened. It does work, but it's odd that it doesn't tell you it tried. What if...

      If I add, remove, or change a topic filter, and then press the "Save" button, I get no indication that anything happened. It does work, but it's odd that it doesn't tell you it tried. What if something caused it to fail? (Maybe that case is handled?) I think it should say something like "Changes saved at 3:11:42PM", or something along those lines so you know it actually updated.

      5 votes
    27. Feature request: "confirm comment submission" option

      I constantly hit the "Enter" key in the middle of writing a comment, usually when moving my hand over to my mouse. To avoid this, I'd love it if there were an option in settings to require a...

      I constantly hit the "Enter" key in the middle of writing a comment, usually when moving my hand over to my mouse. To avoid this, I'd love it if there were an option in settings to require a confirmation before any comments are actually submitted. It shouldn't be required, but it would be helpful for me personally.

      5 votes
    28. How do you think we should deal with compliments?

      Compliments are, technically, to be tagged as 'noise' and often also 'offtopic' for usually being only loosely related to the commment or post they're replying to. But the warm fuzzies empathy is...

      Compliments are, technically, to be tagged as 'noise' and often also 'offtopic' for usually being only loosely related to the commment or post they're replying to. But the warm fuzzies empathy is pretty important in a community, and I don't remember seeing an unnecessary compliment anywhere so, unsurprisingly, people don't noise compliments. But they still might clutter space for a potential reply giving advice. So do you think the current arrangement is fine? I personally would probably make a label for compliments which would either be neutral or slightly positive, and maybe publically visible so everyone can (but don't have to) see the compliments of the receiver but I haven't thought about this too deeply.

      5 votes
    29. What kinds of content are you hoping to see on Tildes?

      There's been quite a bit of discussion lately about people don't want to see, but not that much about what sort of content we do want to see. What would you like to see more of? For the official...

      There's been quite a bit of discussion lately about people don't want to see, but not that much about what sort of content we do want to see. What would you like to see more of?

      For the official stance, I'll repost the instructions that most of us are probably skipping over by now.

      Tildes prioritizes high-quality content and discussion
      Please post topics that are interesting, informative, or have the potential to start a good discussion.
      Please avoid posting topics that are primarily for entertainment or that don't have discussion value.

      This seems vague, and we probably have different ideas of what's high-quality and what counts as good discussion?

      I'm also wondering if we should be here more for the links or for the discussion. When I arrived, I was just happy to find a quiet place where I could post links to articles that I found elsewhere and were particularly interesting to me. (But I think I had gotten into a rut for a while after getting obsessed with the pandemic and politics.) Maybe we should try posting more links?

      28 votes
    30. Would it be useful to allow time-delayed posts?

      I have some music links I was thinking of posting. However, I didn't want to flood ~music with 10 new links at once. It can make a category look like it has really homogenous content to newcomers...

      I have some music links I was thinking of posting. However, I didn't want to flood ~music with 10 new links at once. It can make a category look like it has really homogenous content to newcomers when a single poster has posted a bunch of links at once. What I'd like to do is post one per day for the next several days. But I don't want to potentially forget one day because I got a little busy, or whatever. Would it be useful to be able to create a topic but set it to not post until a particular day or time?

      15 votes
    31. Suggestion: Having an @ help for users

      I don't think I saw a feature like this in the gitLab, apologies if it's already in the works or been suggested. The gist of it would be to have an @/help ping so if someone needs an edit to a...

      I don't think I saw a feature like this in the gitLab, apologies if it's already in the works or been suggested.

      The gist of it would be to have an @/help ping so if someone needs an edit to a title or tags or something, they can use that and it'd flag the topic or somehow show those who have the permissions that this thread needs attention. This might be helpful for users (like moi) who might not know the people who CAN do this already off the top of their head, beyond Deimos.

      Let me know your thoughts or if this could be a useful feature for anyone else.

      15 votes
    32. /groups indicates I am subscribed to ~anime, subscriptions list on the homepage indicates otherwise

      Pretty simple bug, documented as per title. The /groups page incorrectly indicates that I am subscribed to ~anime (I shouldn't be), whilst the ~anime group itself, and the subscriptions list on...

      Pretty simple bug, documented as per title. The /groups page incorrectly indicates that I am subscribed to ~anime (I shouldn't be), whilst the ~anime group itself, and the subscriptions list on the homepage (along with the topics I see), correctly show me as unsubscribed from ~anime.

      I could try toggling this? Which might fix the bug, but would also potentially erase the state of my subscriptions in the database and prevent debugging.

      8 votes
    33. Rethinking votes

      I know we have talked about it to death, and even run experiments on the mechanism, but I think it's worth re-evaluating the idea of voting on comments. I know that voting provides value to Tildes...

      I know we have talked about it to death, and even run experiments on the mechanism, but I think it's worth re-evaluating the idea of voting on comments.

      I know that voting provides value to Tildes as a social platform; it acts almost like a social currency; you know that if you have a lot of votes, people appreciate what you have to say. That provides incentive for people to write more comments and participate with the community.

      What I and others have come to realize is that votes also have negative effects on our community. Here's a short list of negative effects:

      1. Voting is addictive. I'm sure most of us are familiar with the process of clicking on our usernames to see how many votes our last few comments have gathered. We do this because it's a dopamine hit; they act like tiny digital love letters telling us how awesome we are.

      2. Voting is a measurement of popularity. Those love letters aren't actually how good you are, they measure how popular your ideas are. In other words, votes encourage group-think and creates an echo chamber that will prevent you from taking competing ideas seriously.

      3. Because of number 2, we alienate people with other ideas and reduce the richness and quality of discussion on this platform.

      4. Also as a result of number 2, the information that gets put into those popular threads becomes the de facto truth - weather or not it's actually true. This can prevent us from seeing the "bigger picture" or from understanding problems others might have with how we think.

      5. The end result of all of these effects is that we will slowly become more and more extreme and insular as time progresses. We essentially become the same as the people stuck in conservative media prisons that we tend to look down on.

      Personally speaking, I think that we would be a much more robust community if we had more conservative voices speaking up. After all, the left does not have a monopoly on the objective truth. I know we probably have a few conservatives that are lurking around, but I think that they are largely disincentivized to contribute because they don't get the same kind of votes left-leaning comments do.

      With that being said, I would like to hear back from everyone what they think we should do about voting. Should we go back to hiding vote totals again? Should we get rid of them entirely? Or maybe you think things are good as they are? Please let us know your reasoning.

      26 votes
    34. Add option to tip/promote posts

      I have an idea for Tildes. You can give people the option to promote their own posts ,using either real money or cryptocurrency, so their posts can appear on the homepage, they get exposure and...

      I have an idea for Tildes.
      You can give people the option to promote their own posts ,using either real money or cryptocurrency, so their posts can appear on the homepage, they get exposure and they support Tildes whilst doing it! Other people can also tip posts, both Tildes and the OP get a share of the revenue! The money Tildes makes from this will be able to support the site!

      Please add this. I don't want annoying Google ads.

      4 votes
    35. Statistics on bans and transparency

      Do we have any statistics on how many users have been banned and why they’ve been banned? What information should be or remain public? Some forum sites let you see the banned users post and...

      Do we have any statistics on how many users have been banned and why they’ve been banned? What information should be or remain public? Some forum sites let you see the banned users post and comment history from prior to their ban; is there any value in that?

      Unrelated; how many Tildes-ers are we up to now?

      18 votes
    36. When seeing a tag in a group, there is a link to take you back. I think a link to see that tag in all groups would also be nice?

      When you click in a tag in a tildes group, you see the topics that have been posted in that group with that tag according to your filters. There's also a link to go back to normal viewing. I think...

      When you click in a tag in a tildes group, you see the topics that have been posted in that group with that tag according to your filters. There's also a link to go back to normal viewing. I think an option to see that tag in all groups would be a neat addition, even if not particularly important. Thoughts?

      15 votes
    37. When looking at the parent of a reply, the parent cannot be collapsed

      When I click on the "x comments" in the upper right to see responses to my previous posts, it lists out any unread comments to my posts. If I click on the "Parent" link to see my original comment...

      When I click on the "x comments" in the upper right to see responses to my previous posts, it lists out any unread comments to my posts. If I click on the "Parent" link to see my original comment and the reply, I can collapse the reply, but not the parent. This seems like a bug. I can collapse the grandparent, and it all goes away, but I'd expect to be able to collapse the parent as well.

      9 votes
    38. Collapsed comments that contain only a quote

      When a comment is collapsed, either through tags or already being read, it shows a one line preview of the comment. This preview skips any quotes in the comment. This works perfectly when quotes...

      When a comment is collapsed, either through tags or already being read, it shows a one line preview of the comment. This preview skips any quotes in the comment. This works perfectly when quotes are used to reference a part of the comment they are replying to. But if the comment includes only a quote, the preview line is just blank. This makes it look like an error. I think that, if a comment has only a quote, it should do something like this:

      Quote

      Or

      Quote: This is the quote text…

      7 votes
    39. Collapsible comments vs. spoiler tags

      Just noticed that the contents of expandable comments are automatically shown in the one-line summary when comments are collapsed; see here. Considering we often use them for spoiler comments,...

      Just noticed that the contents of expandable comments are automatically shown in the one-line summary when comments are collapsed; see here. Considering we often use them for spoiler comments, maybe this warrants changing this behavior? Or at the least it adds to the case for implementing dedicated spoiler tags within comments.

      7 votes
    40. Should long-running content be bumped to the top of activity view if a certain heuristic is reached?

      Basically the title. I'm not going to navel-gaze too much here because it's not that much of a complex problem. Currently, as it stands, if a submission is older than x days (where x may be 3, but...

      Basically the title. I'm not going to navel-gaze too much here because it's not that much of a complex problem.

      Currently, as it stands, if a submission is older than x days (where x may be 3, but I'm not sure), new comments in that submission will no longer cause Tildes to bump the thread to the top of the list in activity view. Additionally, after 2 weeks, a note will be appended to the comment posting view indicating community standards around commenting on older threads.

      The scenario I'm seeking to solve is where one submission covers an event of some duration longer than a few days—where Tildes users feel repeated or recurring submissions are not warranted. My example is this thread about a YouTube video series that was released in three parts, but all discussion has been placed in that submission, presumably because no one has felt that duplicating a post for each new part of the series is worthwhile.

      Perhaps if a certain proportion of comments occur within a timeframe, after the submission has been aged out of the sliding window where new comments cause a bump in activity, a bump should still be allowed, but should require more than 1 comment to trigger said bump?

      There's some fairly good discussion in that thread that feels wholesome enough that it could be exposed again to the wider Tildes community—because right now everyone interested in that thread is operating under the implicit assumption that to read and participate about this topic, they have to remember to go back to thread y.

      6 votes
    41. How can we change the site's structure/mechanics/patterns so that we're not discouraging posting "too much" on particular subjects?

      Over the weekend, @skybrian posted a topic about feeling like you're posting "too much" if you submit too many links on the same subjects. As I said in my comment in there, I've definitely felt...

      Over the weekend, @skybrian posted a topic about feeling like you're posting "too much" if you submit too many links on the same subjects. As I said in my comment in there, I've definitely felt the same way sometimes, and I think we should try making some changes that can improve on this.

      One of the most common complaints about Tildes is that there isn't much content overall, and that most of it's very "general interest". This is largely because of how the site is set up now, where instead of having different communities, we basically just have one community that's lightly categorized by the groups. It's mostly the same users posting and discussing topics, regardless of which group they're posted in. This is totally fine and has worked well in a lot of ways, but it's also limiting in other ways, especially that it basically discourages posting "too much" about any particular subject because that will be annoying to all the users that don't want to see so much of that content.

      One of the best ways that Tildes will be able to grow is by being a place that's known for having good content on different topics. When I started /r/Games on Reddit, I was one of the heaviest submitters for quite a while, making sure that the subreddit was always full of the type of high-quality content I wanted to see. There weren't many viewers or commenters initially, but continuing to consistently post a lot of good content attracted more and more people, and eventually it became self-sustaining.

      We need to be able to take a similar approach here, but the current structure of the site is preventing it. For example, I'm one of the most frequent submitters to ~games (I've submitted about 1/3 of the topics in the last month), but I usually try to only post 1 or 2 topics there per day. I could easily submit 10-20 most days, but I know that will annoy a lot of users that don't care that much about games. That feeling isn't a good thing—it prevents any group from being able to "take off" individually.

      So to improve this, I think we're going to need to make some changes, and/or figure out some new patterns that we can use.

      First of all, I think it may be time to switch away from the current "opt-out" setup for groups (where you see everything by default) into an "opt-in" one where you have to specifically choose what you're interested in. This is something I've always planned to do eventually, because I think "forcing" everyone to see things that they're not especially interested in is both harmful to quality and causes a lot of strife. Switching will absolutely have some downsides too though, including that the activity in the more-niche groups will probably drop even more.

      It may also be best to switch away from "Activity" being the default sorting method. Again, this is something I didn't really expect to keep as the default forever, but it's been helpful while the site is small. However, having every new topic show up immediately in the most prominent position on the site just makes it even more annoying for people that aren't interested in the subject. For them, the top of the site keeps getting taken over by posts they don't care about. We're seeing this happen with ~music right now, because some users are trying to make it more active—which, again, should be a good thing—but I know that it's annoying some others.

      Some other things that might be worth considering include making it easier and more obvious that you can ignore individual topics and tags, adding new options for creating and filtering different "views", adjusting site behavior so it balances how many posts it shows from each group (but that would likely be confusing), etc.

      Another related topic I wanted to bring up (which @skybrian mentioned and I think is an interesting idea) is that we might be able to use "megathreads" more extensively somehow. For example, maybe having a megathread on a particular topic is a better way to judge the demand for a group/sub-group on a particular topic. Right now it's hard to do that because there isn't really any dedicated place to post if you're interested in something specific, but we might be able to encourage more activity by using a megathreads as almost a "testing ground".

      For example, if someone's particularly interested in woodworking, it would feel awkward to post a bunch about it in ~hobbies and effectively take over the group with woodworking content. But if there was a "woodworking megathread", it would be both more encouraging and contained (and easily ignored by other users), and if that thread started getting consistent activity from multiple users it would be a good indication that a ~hobbies.woodworking group would probably be able to stand on its own.

      I don't really have any particular plans for that kind of thing yet, but I think it's a possibility with a lot of potential, and we might even be able to find some ways to improve how megathreads work to support it. I'm definitely interested in hearing thoughts about how we could enhance threads to make them work especially well for that, including better ways for users to find and know about megathreads they'd want to read and participate in.

      I feel like this was a fairly scattered post with a lot of different thoughts in it, but overall I'm just looking for feedback or other ideas for ways we can adjust so that the site can keep growing and increasing in activity smoothly. This is important to figure out, and I think we're reaching the point where it's starting to become more urgent to do it soon. Let me know what you think.

      66 votes