This has been on my mind for a while, and I've voiced a similar concern 1.5 months ago in the recurring topic, but it went unnoticed.

Israel has been and still is actively committing genocide against people of Gaza. You can read a summary of the reasons it's being called a genocide in the Wikipedia entry (and its sources) . Wikipedia itself has recognized it as genocide, naming the entry Gaza Genocide, and it's a major feat considering the contentious nature of the topic and the heavy regulation and debates in Wikipedia culture. Even a UN human rights experts said in March that there are reasonable grounds to think a genocide is being committed, and UN is dominated by US influence, and is much slower to act and react, especially when western or US interests are concerned (which applies in this case, because Israel is an ally).

Israel's online propaganda machine has been hard at work about this issue, in order to control the narrative (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Israel also now ranks among the world’s leading jailers of journalists., another evidence of their commitment to suppress dissenting voices and control the narrative around this issue. It's also worth noting that western coverage of Israel's acts has been said to be legitimising Israel's behavior.

I think most things in the world are some shades of gray, and it's very understandable for people to have ambivalent attitudes about it, but I do not think this is one of those cases, for the following reasons.

• There is an active, ongoing genocide.
• The genocider nation-state has been spreading its propaganda to control the international narrative, especially in US (because US is its biggest ally and funder). It's doing this because it knows support from US and its allies is crucial to keep the genocide going. This involves manufacturing consent in the citizens of these nations.
• Tildes is heavily populated with citizens of US and other western nations.
• Not actively opposing this propaganda means one is helping -albeit indirectly but still significantly- the genocider nation.

I should clarify that, as of this moment, I'm not blaming the moderators, and I'm not saying they are doing this consciously and with full consideration. Instead, I'm trying to illustrate what is going on in the wider context, and what the actions in this mini-environment mean in the wider context. Simply put, genocidal propaganda is not an issue where you can follow the middle-ground, especially when you have power over a community.

For these reasons, I propose two changes in terms of moderation.

1. Both from now on and retroactively, change the names of the "Israel-Hamas war megathreads" to "Gaza Genocide megathreads".
2. Create and, both from now on and retroactively, use the tag "Gaza Genocide" when tagging.

The first point is self-explanatory. As for the second point, there comes up only 4 topics when I search for "Gaza Genocide" in the site, even though there have been numerous discussions about it. None of them have the mentioned tag, but they have the Gaza and Genocide tags separately. Furthermore, one of the topics is mine, and I had put the tag Gaza Genocide but it was later removed by moderation, and replaced with other tags mentioning this topic. Again, not throwing personal shade to anyone, but I think this is not a good way to go about this topic. A special tag would give it more visibility, which the victims of the genocide need.

These are my suggestions. If anyone can think of anything else, they are welcome to share as well.

It seems like the last real discussion about the subject was about 6 years ago

I am mostly wondering what the thoughts now are on crossposting something in different tildes groups. This was inspired by a few things. Last week I was unsure where to post something and ended up posting it in the most topical tildes group even though previous posts that took off were posted in a different group. Meaning that people that are subscribed to ~comp but not ~life might have missed the post even though they might be interested.

Then there is this post. I was about to post the same link before realizing it was already posted. The post in question is posted in ~games, I would have posted it in ~tech. I feel like the overlap between ~games and ~tech subscribers likely is a bit bigger, but also here I feel like people might potentially be missing out.

I realize this might not be the biggest issue, the majority of people on tildes seem to be subscribed to all groups. But it still, it tickled something in my brain and this is the second time in a short period that I find myself thinking about this.

Ideally, in my mind, this would be solved on a technical level where you can post something in two groups with a consolidated comment section. However, I don't see this happening in the sort term.

Tags sort of cover this, but given they can be anything and quite numerous, browsing through them is not something I personally would ever use or actually address this.

The second-best solution, and the one I'd like to discuss, is to simply cross post and in one of the posts leave a comment linking to the other post to consolidate discussion a bit.

Am I overthinking the issue? Probably. :) But overall, what are peoples thoughts on allowing cross posts between groups? Any real downsides besides double entries in the listing?

Do we have any information on how Tildes growth is going?

I only use Tildes, used to only use reddit until they pulled their bullshit last year. I don't use any social media and I feel like I am missing out on a lot of news and things. When I used reddit I had curated my subs to my interests and I feel like I was up to date on everything I wanted to be.

But now, due to Tildes being a much smaller community, the news I receive is much more generalized and I've been noticing a lot of times I miss things. For example because all video games are clumped together in one Games Tildes, only the most popular kinds of gaming news gets posted there, so more specific or niche things I miss.

Another example, I had never heard of Ozempic before the South Park episode, and a friend was shocked and told me I was so out of the loop for not knowing what it was. I'd never seen anyone talk about it on here, so how would I know?

I also notice there's just significantly less engagement overall on Tildes. I can scroll through the front page of Tildes every morning, see maybe half posts I've already seen and half new ones, and by the end of the day there will be a handful of new posts but not many. In its golden years, Reddit would have new posts every few hours with new info or news about different things. Tildes feels really small still.

Point being, I'm curious how Tildes is doing in terms of growth and whether it looks like it'll be getting larger communities which will split more subcategories into the broad categories we have now. Or if it has plateaued and this is how it'll be for good?

Hey there everyone,

I've been on here since near the start, and spend too much time finding content to post on here, but I just love this place. One thing I've noticed over the years is a severe lack of personal articles, blogs, or the similar and I think it's to do with the 'officialness' of a lot of the topics.

Would it be beneficial to just have a ~blogs section, to post links and thoughts on our personal writings? Even if that includes things like ~tech or ~cooking or whatever? Just to have a central place for our articles.

I don't mind posting my own in ~tech, but I can imagine the hesitation for everyone else as those areas feel more in-tune with "news" than personal thoughts. We have ~creative, but that feels more for artistic endeavors and projects.

Any ideas how we might be able to encourage more topics or links to personal (small-web) blogs (either your own, or someone else's) in the culture here? We seem to be becoming more and more a news aggregator, which is great because of the relevance and discussions (best on the web) but we have no real culture for small-web indie blogging.

Hello, I wrote an introductory post titled Introduction to the physical basis of global warming. I think it would be a good fit for A Layperson's Introduction to... series, but I don't see any contact info on that page, and the person who started the series doesn't seem to have been active in the last 5 years.

So, how do I apply? Also, I think it would be better if the page was updated with info on how to apply.

Before starting this topic, I thought I'd start a discussion that wasn't held before. @cfabbro and other commenters who have better memories than I pointed out that this isn't the case. They've also laid out it's been tried and was unsuccessful. I stand corrected.

I do not want to contribute any noise to the website, so I'd appreciate it if @Deimos can lock or remove the topic all together, if he deems it appropriate. I'd also appreciate it if no further comments are made so as to not put any further burden on moderation. I apologize for wasting everyone's time.

I'm used to browsing places like reddit, mastodon, kbin.social and midnight.pub. If I'm lucky I can find something lighthearted, witty or interesting. But there's a lot of outrageous posts as well as personal ramblings that make the effort feel like a slog.

I was slow to get into Tildes because I didn't find much "quick hit" posts, such as a good topical quip. I also wasn't as sure how to navigate to places I might want to post. But I did find it very easy to engage with existing posts.

It's in these existing posts that the transformative stuff happened for me. On other sites, long-form posts were often not in my interest or self-indulgent. But I found myself taking my time here, perhaps guided by the thoughtful comments that I saw already beneath the posts. Looking back, it's like a tone was set that I respected and didn't want to diminish.

The result is that I find the other sites under-stimulating, in spite of their design. Tildes has been really good for helping me reform my internet habits. I don't have that regret of excessive internet use as much now. Thanks to deimos and everyone on the site that makes it what it is.

If I miss one thing, it's using my native language. But at the same time, my gut says that things are good just as they are.

It seems like Tildes is not going to ever get a block user function.

But it would be really handy if I could get a filter to auto-ignore any topics started by certain users. Would this be something that Tildes would ever implement?

Posted an WaPo article about "big food" paying dietitians / influencers to make let's say dubious claims about processed food with high sugar content. Discussion was healthy imho, so I really wonder why it got removed.

You might ask yourself “monthly mystery commenters”? Well, let me attempt to explain. I have noticed that on a semi frequent basis, someone will reply to me in a comment. The sort of comment that does invite a reply and isn't a stand-alone comment. Yet, in the case of these comments, whenever someone replies they never do reply in turn.

Of course, it is entirely possible for people to decide to not reply and still reply elsewhere on tildes. In this case, however, I noticed that there is a group of people who only ever leave single replies and never respond to any follow-ups. More often than not, I have noticed these are people who only leave a comment once per month or every few weeks. Hence, the title referring to the practice of monthly hit-and-run comments.

It is a bit of a curious pattern, isn't it? To me, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, I get that people sometimes don't want to continue a conversation. But to structurally leave comments to never follow up on replies is entirely alien to me. Even more so for comments that really are replies to other people, not stand-alone comments.

This whole thing has got me scratching my head just enough to make this post. Are they dropping these comments with the best of intentions to return, only to get swept up in other aspects of life? Or is it more about leaving a mark, however brief, to say, “I was here” without the commitment to a full-on conversation? Maybe it's something completely different I haven't even considered.

So, hit-and-runners, what drives you? I am genuinely curious about this and looking forward to any replies.

Edit

This already did get a lot more responses than I ever thought it would get. One observation so far is that a lot of people that replied seem to identify with the title. Yet, so far, for all people I checked they don't fit the type of commenter as I describe in the post itself. It is possible my description just sucks, maybe there is room for a future discussion about commenting based on titles alone. ;)

It's still interesting to read all the different perspectives people have about commenting!

Tiny edit: because of the subject, I almost feel obligated to respond to most people. I really shot myself in the food there :D As that is an impossible task, sorry to the folks I don't end up replying to.

I was just reminded of that again when going back and looking at some of my old posts on reddit which is openly selling online data. Prompted me to use Redact which erases and overwrites comments before deleting them. But that got me wondering if the same is true of Tildes? And how would we know?

Hello fine people. I recently patched the Nord theme into Tildes. I am requesting some feedback on potential changes to make to it. This is my first time doing something like this so please be patient if I am a bit slow. Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Dark theme preview
Light theme preview
Nord
Gitlab merge request

Edit: Thank you everyone for the feedback! I'll try to get the merge request out tomorrow with the fixes.

I've noticed that Tildes generally has a way more levelheaded and even friendly caliber of responses compared to many other social media sites that I've seen. I'm genuinely curious as to why this is. I regularly see the same article posted here that I also saw on say Lemmy, but over there the comments tend to be more hostile and explosive. Meanwhile, disagreements on Tildes rarely get THAT heated (at least as far as I have seen), even on posts involving very intense and personal subjects like politics or war. Even the disagreements and arguments I see on Tildes tend to be more respectful and level-headed, so much so that it's jarring to me to see the comments on some other site where someone's response to a user they disagree with is just straight name-calling.

Is it the invite-only nature of it? The lack of downvotes? The moderation? Confirmation bias? The demographics of the people here? Pure luck? Something else entirely?

Take a look at the Tildes Statistics site. Couple things:

1, and most obvious: there has been a decline in users over the past few days for the first time that I'm aware of.
2: (I was going to make this point before the user decline occurred but it's probably moot now) Due to the scaling of the Y-axis, it appears that there is healthy user growth in the site. But if you look at the numbers, we're talking about user growth of roughly 60 people over the past month.

I know we want controlled growth, and I know we don't want to open it up to the masses. But we also want this site to succeed (i.e. provide interesting discourse and keep people coming back on a regular basis). I don't believe success can happen when growth is stagnant (or, declining!)

I don't think that the conversations are necessarily stagnant per se, in fact there's an impressive amount of thoughtful discussion relative to the size of the user base. But if a given topic is too niche (e.g. MLS football or MUDs, two of my interests), the odds of finding like-minded users to discuss with is obviously lower.

Is it time to consider some sort of growth campaign (one that is not reactionary a la the Reddit API changes) in order to infuse some new life into this awesome site?

Is there a way to collapse really long comments? I find that a very small number of Tildes.net posters often write really long comments (if I were cynical I might say excessively long and I freely admit that I am sometimes among them) which makes it really hard to navigate comment threads because I can't see the child comments very easily.

Is there a setting to collapse long comments (so that one has to press a "read more" button to see them). Otherwise, I would like to suggest that this be considered for addition to Tildes at some point :)

I came to Tildes to get away from the endless political talk of reddit. Is there any way to unsubscribe from the political threads here? Most of them seem to be posted in ~misc, but there's other content there too.

I'm looking for an article that was posted on Tildes in the last year I believe, on online communities and moderation.

I think it was a link to someones personal blog and the author was female. It talked about the challenges of moderating communities with free speech as a core value, because all it takes is a few bad actors pushing that to it's limits and it completely derails the community and puts too much strain on moderators.

The article itself was very good, but I also remember the discussion on tildes was a very good read as well. I have tried searching tildes, using google and chatGPT4 and while I can find a lot of good threads related to this topic, I can't seem to find this one with the article.

Does anyone remember this article/thread?

I realize it's maybe a long shot and it's just a vague memory, so I apologize if this is an annoying post, but it doesn't hurt to ask?

I'm new to Tildes, and searched for this question but didn't find a topic covering this. I've read the instructions, and I know comments that contribute to the topic are much more desired here, and that, in theory, you shouldn't just comment something another commenter has said. Does this apply to thanking another commenter, or even the original poster of a thread? Say someone replied to me with a useful comment. Should I rather thank them or just upvote them? Would the former increase noise.

I know I'm unlikely to get an absolute anwer, but I'd rather ask the community for pointers than assume.

This is specifically about voting on comments, and not articles. I think voting for topics is clear and intuitive.

I've noticed that, while reading users' comments on topics, I have a tendency to think "This is right, so I will vote it up," or "I agree with this, so I will vote it up." I'm not sure I should be doing this, or rather, I'm not sure that's the best use of my ability to vote on comments. I always worry that sites I frequent will morph into echo chambers, and I want to avoid that for this site. I want to encourage expressing alternate viewpoints, because exposure to alternate views helps me grow a human. The vote button is a low-effort means of accomplishing that, and I intend to use it as such.

I think the vote button should be used on comments that enhance the discussion, and help engage people, and not necessarily only on comments that make me feel happy, good or righteous. So, lately, I've been trying to explicitly vote up comments which have replies, especially ones which have several replies, but aren't voted as highly as their children or peers. If someone's comment can engage several people to reply and contribute positively to a conversation, then that comment is worthy of being seen and so I vote it up. I do this regardless of whether or not I agree with the substance of the message.

I've noticed a trend where there will be a low-voted comment with many replies. These aren't trolling comments, because if they were, then they would be removed. These are comments which are engaging people and furthering the conversation, but it seems like the community doesn't value these comments due to their low vote count. This leads me to suspect that the number of votes on a comment might be merely a tally of the number of people who agreed with it.

So, I'm curious. Do you vote on comments?

How do you decide to vote on a comment?

How should we collectively be using the vote for comments?

(As an aside, I also wonder how the psychology of reading comments would change if vote tallies on comments were hidden.)

I submit a lot of posts from mobile, and I find some of the markdown tedious to enter on a mobile keyboard. I know JavaScript is supposed to be a last resort, but I'd really like to have some assistance in the post authoring and comments fields.

I assume this could be a user script. Looking at the wiki, it looks like none of the current ones do this.

Thoughts on this? Things people are already using? Ideas for existing tools to build on? Would it be better as a user script or as a feature of the main site, perhaps with an option to disable it? I'm medium at JavaScript but would happily take a crack at it.

Here is my inital feature list:

• link button - select text, press the link button, get a prompt for the URL, replace the selected text with the markdown formatted text and URL.
• quote block- select multiple paragraphs and click the button to block quote them all
• bold, italic, strike though buttons - apply the markdown to selected text
• spoiler - insert a details block at the cursor. If text is selected wrap it in a details block and prompt for the summary.

if I were to develop it, what else would people like to see on this list?

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes the Tildes homepage will say "1 new message", but when clicking on this the message inbox is empty?

I guess this is because messages are being deleted after being sent? It's slightly annoying because I can't find a way to dismiss the "new message" notification.

This is kind of silly. I've been tild'ing a lot recently and have come to recognize some other users, and am wondering how accurate my simple reactions are, or whether they're shared by anyone else.

• deimos - Moon of Mars, and also a character in either one of the early Unreal Tournament games or Quake 3 Arena. Uh, also a figure from Greek or Roman mythology or whatever 😅
• cfabbro - "C fab bro" - Identifies as a "bro", and does something involving fabrication?
• douchebag - Expects to get hated on maybe?
• akir - For some reason makes me think of Admiral Akbar from OG Star Wars.
• algernon_asimov - Has been explained. I too love Flowers for Algernon and Isaac Asmiov.
• boxer_dogs_dance - I picture three dogs on their hind legs "holding" each other's forepaws, merrily dancing in a circle. It makes me happy 😅

Sorry if I've forgotten your username! Reply and I'll tell you what yours makes me think, I'm feeling associative.

I've been trying to set up a dev enviornment for Tildes, mainly so that I can actually test my MR (!136), and I've been running into a few issues.

However, since we also have a new influx of people who might be interested in contributing to Tildes, it seems like a good time to collect resources on setting up the dev environment, as well as helping anyone running into issues.

So, if you have issues or advice, post them here! I'll be adding my questions in a comment shortly.

Relevant wiki pages:

• Development / Initial Setup
• Development / General Development Info

Edit: A more recent post on setting up the dev environment on Apple Silicon / M1 Macs

I can't seem to get any CSS user-style to work with Tildes anymore. I'm using Stylus on Firefox. Has something changed recently on Tildes which is causing this?
Edit: I was using Stylus already, just thought it was Stylish.

Hello!

I've tried looking for it, but I can't find it. It was an essay about how a large increase of new members alienates the community feeling. How the income of stranger must be kept low so they can become "not a stranger" and how many strangers at once stop that from happening because people know each other less.

Unfortunately I can't find it at all. Does anyone still remember/have it saved?

Thank you very much!

I've really been enjoying Tildes since I joined. The community are friendly, I've posted similar to how I would post in other unnamed social sites with top/OP being serious and long form, and lower replies being more jovial or jokey. With the higher responses, I also try to keep it more formal and factual, or add a valid opinion/discussion point.

One thing I have noticed recently is that there is a constant hit of people just posting blog or news articles with little or no engagement. It's almost like they just curate news and slap it all over which has me scratching my head and stroking the old grey beard. Why? Short question but expecting long answers here. It's like looking at a RSS feed.

I come to Tildes to ask advice and post items that I believe may be of interest to others. I engage in those topics for the most part as well. Rarely does someone post an article from X blog site and I exclaim out loud and tap away a response to it. If I wanted that, I'd just comment on the blog discussion board for the article, not the linked Tildes post.

Is it just me?

Many people here have a skill for converting a url from a mishmash of sloppy looking text into something that looks like a clean line but that is clickable and works like a link. Can someone please explain?

I figure a new thread might be in order since it has been over two months since the last one and we are continuing to get a stream of new users over time.

Welcome to Tildes!

This is a place for you to ask any question you have about the site, from “what is the moderation philosophy?”to “what does that blue line next to some comments mean?” to “what is the general vibe like here?” Tildes has a lot of documentation, history, and embedded social norms that can be daunting or opaque at first glance, so here’s your opportunity to get on-demand, personal help with anything you need.

Questions about anything and everything are fair game. Follow-up questions are encouraged! No question is too simple.

Also, a quick note: the only person who can speak in any official capacity on Tildes is our admin @Deimos. Everyone answering who is NOT him is just a helpful community member!

It is perfectly okay to ask any question — even if you think it’s been asked before, or even if you didn’t search for an answer beforehand. Just ask away, and someone will answer you!

Previous versions:

• v1
• v2

Just wondering how to and if anyone has experience with joining the unofficial Matrix group of our namesake...

Seen a post or two about ios apps being developed. However, as far as android goes, I haven't seen any apps being developed yet for tildes. Which is definitely contributing to my lack of visits here and making it seem more like a chore. Am I just missing some options? 🤞 Or is the user base for Android just that low these days? 😢 Please someone tell me it's the prior😅

And I don’t mean that in a good way. In just a few years, Reddit has devolved from a place to find relevant and quirky information, to basically a platform pushing outrage porn, political divisiveness, and mindless memes, with occasional humor sprinkled in.

The outrage porn is the worst, just exhausting and tiresome. The voting mechanics are mostly to blame for this. Since outrage draws the most engagement, the more people who interact with the site, then the more this type of material will surface and thrive.

The political divisiveness germinates similarly, with the added impetus of state actors throwing fuel on the flames.

The memes are seemingly harmless, but are no substitutes for actual dialogue.

I would just like to see a platform that places a premium on meaningful social dialogue for the future betterment of all involved.

I am a reddit refugee and I was drawn to this network by its mission, its decisive rebuff of chasing capital at all costs, and the overall vibe.

I lurked for a while before I was invited to join, but shortly after joining I noticed something. While a good discussion from opposing viewpoints can help everyone broaden their horizons a bit, it felt like white supremacists were testing the waters. While I can't directly cite any threads, there were a couple instances where I felt one side was seeing just how close they could get without being obvious. But it felt like some of the subtler dog whistles were there.

It felt very similar to how QAnon got a lot of people with the disinformative statistic about child abductions. After all, who's going to be on the other side "child abductions are bad?"

After seeing a few threads and getting the same vibe, I stopped visiting the site for the last couple months. Life getting pretty busy also helped.

I haven't been back long enough to determine for myself whether I'm in a "Nazi bar" or not. I would be happy to admit that it was all in my head. But it is a major concern for any up-and-coming social network. And that's an opposing viewpoint no one needs to take seriously. Was it in my head? Was I reading too much into things? Did all the nazis just go to X? More generally, how has moderation been with the influx of new users? The same, but more? A couple extra reminders doing the trick? Uptick in bans? Is this information already somewhere and I'm a bad user for not having seen it?