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    1. Voting policy questions

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

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

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

      9 votes
    2. Should clicking an article on Tildes be a prerequisite for posting a comment in the associated thread?

      This thought was brought to you/sponsored by my perception that there's an increasing number of comments on Tildes that attempt to "answer" questions posed in the titles of posts, but don't...

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

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

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

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

      25 votes
    3. Can we show number of not-label-collapsed comments instead of plain number of comments?

      Right now, there is number of comments visible when on main/group page. What would you think about excluding comments that are collapsed by default, such as those labeled as noise? I'm...

      Right now, there is number of comments visible when on main/group page. What would you think about excluding comments that are collapsed by default, such as those labeled as noise? I'm disappointed when I see 7 comments at an article, but there is none actually relevant to the article itself. The disadvantage of this is that the site could feel more dead, especially in low-activity groups.

      10 votes
    4. Unofficial Weekly Discussion #2 - Topic tag system brainstorming session

      Inspired by @Lawrencium265's suggestion from a few days ago on advanced topic tag filtering: After the discussion the other day on expanding groups into sub groups I had an idea about topic tags,...

      Inspired by @Lawrencium265's suggestion from a few days ago on advanced topic tag filtering:

      After the discussion the other day on expanding groups into sub groups I had an idea about topic tags, advanced tag filtering rules. The main argument against sub groups is that it would sequester people away from each other. By allowing more advanced tag rules you could subscribe to topics that you're interested in, but further filter those if they include topics you don't like or allow certain threads that would get filtered out unless they contain a tag you are interested in or are within a certain group. I think this would attract different people to threads that wouldn't normally be and allow more diverse discussion and insight. So instead of having gaming.tabletop you would use the tabletop tag under gaming and those who are not interested in it can filter it out and those who are solely interested in it can subscribe to it, and then if a topic gets tagged in an unrelated group that you otherwise wouldn't be interested inyou will know about. This also has the side benefit if preventing cross posting or duplicates.

      I have decided that the topic of this week's unofficial discussion is going to be on the Tildes topic tag system. But rather than make it specifically on topic tag filtering and that idea in particular, I figured we could open the discussion up a bit more and have a community brainstorming session on the topic tag system in general. I.e. Anything related to tag browsing, tag filtering, tag organization/standardization, etc.

      Feel free to comment on any of the open "topic tag" related issues on Tildes Gitlab that pique your interest and you would like to discuss more in depth, propose your own new ideas related to topic tags, or even just spitball.

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


      Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

      Week - #1


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

      18 votes
    5. Recent updates - repost warning, topic-tagging improvements, group-specific search, markdown strikethrough formatting, wiki/docs updates

      There have been a number of updates over the last week or so, but I felt like none of them really warranted their own post individually: There's now a repost warning/confirmation if you try to...

      There have been a number of updates over the last week or so, but I felt like none of them really warranted their own post individually:

      • There's now a repost warning/confirmation if you try to submit a link that's been posted before. A list of the previous posts will be shown along with how old they are, and you have the option of re-posting anyway if you want to. Currently, this will warn you no matter how old the previous post(s) were and regardless of which group they were in, but I'll probably restrict it at some point.
      • A couple of improvements to topic tagging:
        • If two people happen to edit a topic's tags at the same time, there will be an error if there's an edit conflict, instead of just having the second person's changes overwrite like they did previously.
        • @deing added a check for people trying to add tags with invalid characters, and it will now show that the tag has an error before you try to submit.
      • You can now search inside a specific group by using the search box while inside that group. The search results page will have a note at the top saying that it's only searching inside that group, along with a link to search the whole site instead. If you search from the home page it will still be site-wide.
      • Writing strikethrough text in markdown now requires using two tildes on each side of the text: this text ~~has some~~ strikethrough. Previously, one tilde on each side of the text would work too, but there were some strange edge cases because of us using ~ when referring to groups as well. Requiring two tildes should be a lot less ambiguous. About 90% of posts with strikethrough were already using two anyway, but this change affected a small number of past posts (sometimes in a positive way by fixing accidental strikethrough). I'll send messages out today to anyone with posts that were affected, so that they can go edit and fix the formatting if they want to.
      • @Algernon_Asimov has been doing a massive rework of a lot of the official docs/help pages. They're currently all in the ~tildes.official wiki, but I need to work on moving them over to https://docs.tildes.net, which involves making some changes and updates to that site.

      That should about cover it for now, let me know if you have any questions or notice any issues with any of this (or anything else).

      63 votes
    6. Proposals for new groups - July 2019

      It's been over a year now since we first talked about adding some more groups to the site (and ended up adding several). I think the current set has mostly worked well since then, but some people...

      It's been over a year now since we first talked about adding some more groups to the site (and ended up adding several). I think the current set has mostly worked well since then, but some people have mentioned being hesitant to post as many topics as they want to on some subjects due to not wanting to flood out the more-general groups, as well as feeling like some subjects also don't fit into the existing ones.

      So let's do another round of suggestions. New groups can be either top-level ones (if that seems to make the most sense) or a sub-group of an existing one (for example, this group, ~tildes.official is a sub-group of ~tildes). The functionality of sub-groups is a little weak right now, but I'll be working on that over the next few days to get it into better shape in case we end up adding some new ones.

      The general process from last time seemed to work fine, so I'm just going to copy that:

      Proposing a group

      If you want to propose an idea for a new group (either a new top-level group or a sub-group of an existing one), make a top-level comment with the following information:

      1. The proposed name for the group, and a short description of its purpose/subject.
      2. 3 examples of topics that would be appropriate to be posted in that group. These can be existing posts already on Tildes, or hypothetical new ones. Just example titles/links is sufficient, it should just give an idea of what sort of posts you're expecting the group to get.
      3. A "failure plan" - if the trial group doesn't work out, what should we do with the posts from it? For example, should they be moved into an existing group or groups, with a particular tag?

      Supporting a proposal

      To express your support for a proposal that someone else made, post a reply to it, saying something like "I would post in this group" (assuming you actually believe you will). I don't want to interpret votes on a proposal as support, and for a group to be successful it really needs people to post to it, so I think it's most important to get at least some indication that there are users that will post in the group if it's created.

      I'll let this topic run for at least 3 days before making any decisions, so don't feel like you need to rush. General questions or thoughts about groups are welcome too, it doesn't need to be entirely proposals. I've also topped given everyone 10 invites again as well. Thanks!

      74 votes
    7. Daily Tildes discussion - proposals for "trial groups", round 1

      This was something that we discussed a couple of weeks ago, and I want to try it out for the first time today. I'll wait about 3 days to see how this thread progresses (through the weekend), and...

      This was something that we discussed a couple of weeks ago, and I want to try it out for the first time today. I'll wait about 3 days to see how this thread progresses (through the weekend), and then decide if we should try creating any of these groups, based on responses.

      Overall, I think it's probably more useful to propose groups that are not currently very well-represented by posts being made on Tildes. It might be good to try adding things that feel "too specific" right now, where people might be hesitating to post topics about the subject because they feel like it's too niche to really fit into the general groups that we have.

      I don't want to make this too complex initially, so let's try with a very simple method for this first round:

      Proposing a group

      If you want to propose an idea for a new group (either a new top-level group or a sub-group of an existing one), make a top-level comment with the following information:

      1. The proposed name for the group, and a short description of its purpose/subject.
      2. 3 examples of topics that would be appropriate to be posted in that group. These can be existing posts already on Tildes, or hypothetical new ones. Just example titles/links is sufficient, it should just give an idea of what sort of posts you're expecting the group to get.
      3. A "failure plan" - if the trial group doesn't work out, what should we do with the posts from it? For example, should they be moved into an existing group or groups, with a particular tag?

      Supporting a proposal

      To express your support for a proposal that someone else made, post a reply to it, saying something like "I would post in this group" (assuming you actually believe you will). I don't want to interpret votes on a proposal as support, and for a group to be successful it really needs people to post to it, so I think it's most important to get at least some indication that there are users that will post in the group if it's created.

      Feel free to ask questions or provide other examples of content for proposals and such as well, this thread doesn't need to be only proposals and comments expressing support.

      55 votes
    8. Unofficial Weekly Discussion #1 - Suggestions/ideas/concerns for future unofficial weekly discussions

      Since @Deimos has stated he will likely not be restarting the tradition of the Official Daily Tildes Discussions, which is something I and a number of other users greatly enjoyed and miss, I have...

      Since @Deimos has stated he will likely not be restarting the tradition of the Official Daily Tildes Discussions, which is something I and a number of other users greatly enjoyed and miss, I have decided to attempt to take on the responsibility of continuing them unofficially (with his blessing). And since these are not official (so won't be in ~tildes.official, which everyone is subscribed to and probably shouldn't unsubscribe from), I will only be doing them weekly instead of daily, and we now have topic tag filtering (so unofficial weekly discussion can be filtered out), hopefully the people who found the official daily discussions annoying can more easily ignore/hide these unofficial ones.

      With the explanation out of the way, on to the topic for this week:


      Suggestions/ideas/concerns for future unofficial weekly discussions

      I thought it would be appropriate to have the first one of these be a bit of an open-ended, meta-meta discussion on the future of these topics. And to kick things off:

      • What would everyone here like to see discussed in these topics in the future? Are there any particular site features (planned, suggested or theoretical), policies (tagging, moderation, etc), or other meta issues/subjects you would like to be the topic in future discussions?

      • What would you like us to try to achieve with these discussions? Should we have any specific goals in mind, or should they just be fun brainstorming/theory-crafting/naval-gazing sessions?

      • Does anyone have any suggestions for me with regards to how I should handle these discussions? Is there anyone out there who would like to help me with these in some capacity going forwards?

      • Does anyone have any concerns regarding these unofficial discussions, and if so, can you think of any ways we can try to address them?

      The floor is open, and I am all ears. :)


      Tildes Official Docs : Donate to Tildes | Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board

      22 votes
    9. Tildes User Script: Drag and drop usernames in order to mention them in your comments

      It is was a tedious task to mention users: copy, type, paste. This script makes it a single step: drag and drop any username on to the comment you're composing, and tada! It's there. Here is the...

      It is was a tedious task to mention users: copy, type, paste. This script makes it a single step: drag and drop any username on to the comment you're composing, and tada! It's there.

      Here is the script:

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name     tildesDragNDropUsernameForMention
      // @version  1
      // @grant    none
      // @namespace   tildes.net
      // ==/UserScript==
      
      var userLinks = document.querySelectorAll('a.link-user');
      
      var dragstartHandler = function (event) {
        var text = event.target.innerText;
        if(!text.startsWith('@')){
          text = "@" + text;
        }
        event.dataTransfer.setData("text", text);
        event.dataTransfer.dropEffect = 'copy';
      }
      
      userLinks.forEach(function (each) {
        each.setAttribute('draggable', true);
        each.ondragstart = dragstartHandler;
      });
      

      Patches welcome!

      Edit: remove useless code

      9 votes
    10. Combining searches and filters

      The lack of ability to combine search functions on Tildes is becoming more and more of a pain point for me. I can filter for one tag or search for one word, but that's it. I can't narrow the...

      The lack of ability to combine search functions on Tildes is becoming more and more of a pain point for me. I can filter for one tag or search for one word, but that's it. I can't narrow the search in any way. I can't combine searches and filters and groups:

      • I can't search for a word within a group.

      • I can't search for a word within a set of topics filtered by a tag.

      • I can't filter by two separate tags at the same time.

      • I can't search for two separate words at the same time.

      As Tildes is growing larger, the ability to search better is becoming more necessary.

      Is there any possibility of bringing forward the work on searches so that some of these combinations can be enabled?

      10 votes
    11. Any chance we can get a ~space group?

      I know that this has been discussed before (I personally participated in some of that), but, to my knowledge, it's been quite a while since it was brought up. Currently, the three groups that seem...

      I know that this has been discussed before (I personally participated in some of that), but, to my knowledge, it's been quite a while since it was brought up.

      Currently, the three groups that seem to make the most sense for space exploration news are ~tech, ~science, and ~misc. Personally, I perceive ~tech as being best suited for general news about what's going on in the tech industry, more or less "hey, Google released this" or "these researchers are working on graphene batteries". Similarly, I understand ~science as a place for discussing scientific discoveries and "meta" discussion about science as a whole. I think that most would agree with me on those characterizations after looking at those groups when sorted by activity or new.

      Space exploration, on the other hand, doesn't really fit in either. It's not exactly ~tech material, and it's also not really the right material for ~science, since much of it isn't about specific new discoveries or studies, etc. If we had an ~engineering, I would say that that would be the correct place for space discussion, but we don't have one.

      If you look at what's been happening over the last few months in the realm of space exploration, I think that it's also pretty easy to see that there's enough going on to generate enough content and discussion for a dedicated group. There've been new launches on a weekly or biweekly basis, interesting moves made by different new entrants to the industry, all of the NASA Artemis news, plenty of things from SpaceX, etc.

      35 votes
    12. Suggestion: a method for anonymous appreciation at the user level

      One thing I really like about Tildes is the exemplary tags for comments. I love being able to let someone know I thought they had a great post, and I especially like that it's anonymous (though I...

      One thing I really like about Tildes is the exemplary tags for comments. I love being able to let someone know I thought they had a great post, and I especially like that it's anonymous (though I realize some people like signing theirs, which I'm fine with too).

      One thing I've found myself wanting to be able to do is give someone an exemplary label not for any one individual comment but for their contributions to the community at large. Maybe they're consistently thoughtful and insightful; maybe they go out of their way to post a lot of content for the community; maybe they're contributing code to the platform. It's less that any one particular thing they've done is amazing (though they often have individually great contributions too) and more that they've demonstrated a noteworthy and consistent pattern of good behavior.

      As such, I think having something similar to the exemplary tag but applicable to a particular user could be very beneficial. I realize privately PMing a given user can currently accomplish this, but those are not anonymous, and I really like the idea of supporting others without revealing who I am, since I don't want my praise of others to influence their opinion of me. Furthermore, for the community at large, I think there's a benefit to praise of that type coming from "a voice in the crowd" rather than specific identifiable users, as it promotes community goodwill rather than person-to-person cheer.

      Of course, with any type of anonymous feedback the thing to consider will be the potential for misuse. Someone could easily target/harass someone using an exemplary user feature by writing a nasty message, but this is also currently possible with exemplary tags and I don't know if it's been a problem? Nevertheless, it's something to consider. Perhaps a built-in report feature should something cross a line?

      Furthermore, if such an appreciation mechanism were to be implemented, I would strongly advocate against any sort of publicly visual indicator on the site (like the blue stripe on comments). I think applying differences to that at the user level can create an appearance of user hierarchy, which is undesirable for a variety of reasons. Instead, I feel like it should be invisible to everyone except the recipient--basically an anonymous PM that they can't respond to, letting them know that they're awesome and why. I also think a similar "cooldown" system would benefit it. In fact, I'd probably advocate that it be longer than the one for comment tags.

      Thoughts?

      13 votes
    13. Suggestion: The older the topic is, the less it gets bumped in the global view

      If someone posts on a one month old thread, it shouldn't make it to front page. If someone post on a new 1 day old thread, if should, but not at top, but... somewhere else. A method of weighting...

      If someone posts on a one month old thread, it shouldn't make it to front page.

      If someone post on a new 1 day old thread, if should, but not at top, but... somewhere else. A method of weighting oldness vs liveness should play there.

      5 votes
    14. Suggestion when linking to comments from a user's history page

      Comments in a person's history page have a "Link" and "Parent" link on them. My suggestion is have just a single link to the comment, but all other comments on the page that are not direct...

      Comments in a person's history page have a "Link" and "Parent" link on them.

      My suggestion is have just a single link to the comment, but all other comments on the page that are not direct parents/ancestors or children/descendants of the linked to comment should be minimized so we can easily see the relevant discussion, but also view them if we want, and the linked comment itself should be highlighted in some way.

      You could probably put a "Hide all but direct family" flag in the querystring

      6 votes
    15. What's the community's opinion on "The Right to be Forgotten?"

      This is kind of a question for Tildes as well as a discussion topic on Social Media more generally. For context, "The Right to be Forgotten" is an idea being kicked around in international law and...

      This is kind of a question for Tildes as well as a discussion topic on Social Media more generally. For context, "The Right to be Forgotten" is an idea being kicked around in international law and human rights circles. It's kind of a corollary to the "right to privacy" and focuses on putting some guardrails around the downsides of having all information about you being archived, searchable, and publicly available forever and ever. It's usually phrased as a sense that people shouldn't be tied down indefinitely by stigmatizing actions they've done in "the past" (which is usually interpreted as long enough ago that you're not the same person anymore).

      This manifests in some examples large and small. Felony convictions or drug offenses are a pretty big one. Another public issue was James Gunn getting raked over the coals for homophobic quotes from a long time ago. Even on a smaller scale, I think plenty of young people have some generalized anxiety about embarrassing videos, photos, Facebook statuses, forum posts, etc. that they made when they were young following them around the rest of their lives. For example, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had people try to shame her for dancing to a Phoenix song in an amateur music video. An even darker version of this happens with people who might be the victims of targeted harassment. Often doxxing happens by people digging through peoples' histories and piecing together clues to figure out who they are or at least narrow down where they're from, where they work, etc.

      In the context of Tildes, this would basically be a question of how do we feel about peoples' comment history lingering forever? Do we care about/agree with this "right" in principle and if we do, what should be done about putting it into practice?

      The root of the issue is the existence of archives of data about yourself that is 1.) searchable, 2.) publicly viewable, 3.) under someone else's control, 4.) forever. Even if the ability to delete comments exists, it's infeasible for any individual to pore over the reams of data they create about themselves to find the stuff that might be problematic. The solutions would revolve around addressing any one of those numbered items. Unfortunately, hitting any of those has upsides and downsizes. Some examples:

      Some people like being able to look back on old contributions and having them get deleted after a period of time (hitting problem #4) would be a bummer unless there is a system to selectively archive stuff you want to save from atrophy, which would be a function/feature that would take a ton of thought and development. What's more, there is no point in just saving your own comment if everyone else's stuff is gone because comments without context are indecipherable. It could work in a more selective way, so rather than a blanket atrophying of posts, but then you have the context issue again. Someone you were having a discussion with might choose to delete their entire comment history and there goes any sense of logic or coherence to your posts.

      We could address the searchable bit by automatically or selectively having posts pseudonymed after a period of time. But in a lot of cases a pseudonym won't work. People tend to refer to each other by username at times, and some people have a distinctive enough style that you could probably figure it out if they're well known and long-tenured.

      That's just some general food for thought. I'll yield the floor

      38 votes
    16. Any candidates to take over "What are you reading currently?" threads in ~books?

      I've been posting these since time immemorial 9 months by now. Since almost the first post my plan was to hand the responsibility of posting them over to someone; as of recent it seems to me that...

      I've been posting these since time immemorial 9 months by now. Since almost the first post my plan was to hand the responsibility of posting them over to someone; as of recent it seems to me that soon I'll lack the time to properly participate in them as the organiser that keeps the discussion alive and fruitful. In fact, the last few posts I've either posted one comment or none at all.

      So maybe the 25th or the 26th topic should be posted by the New Guy™? Has the time come? My answer is yes, TBH. In the comments, you can criticise my decision, call me lazy, or name yourself as a candidate freely. I guess we'll use votes on candidate comments to determine the next guy. If there is a tie, I'll name one of them as the next guy (tell me in the comments if you disagree with this). Voting will be over roughly when this post becomes three days old. I don't think too much precision is required, or else we can try something else.

      IDK if this is a nice way to do it, but I don't want to do this Guido van Rossum style—say "bye, figure this out for yourselves, you lot" and leave. Hope I'm not over- or underdoing it. I'll ask a few prolific posters to name themselves as candidates through PMs.


      Edit: I'll close voting around 3 PM UTC+3 24th of July, which means I'll edit to record votes I see by that time, including a timestamp. I'll then speak to the user with the highest amount of votes, informing them of the (rather simple) process of posting and maintaining these threads. Most probably, from #25 onwards, the new guy will take over.

      Thanks a lot for taking this seriously and helping this nice feature of ~books move on with a new maintainer!

      Edit 2: I'm closing votes, it's 24th of July 2019, 18:20 UTC+3. @acdw has 10 votes, @iiv has 6. I'll contact @acdw, and the next WAYRC topic will include an announcement. Thanks a lot for your participation and interest in the future of this fun little thing we do!

      18 votes
    17. How does Tildes feel about recruiting?

      This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially in light of some recent threads, and because my own account here is nearing 1 year old. I don't think I've seen this come up...

      This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially in light of some recent threads, and because my own account here is nearing 1 year old. I don't think I've seen this come up yet, but it's possible I missed something. I'd really just like to see what the consensus is here, especially now that the site is fairly large.

      Anyways, what I define as 'recruiting' is responsibly (preferably privately) messaging someone who hasn't posted on the /r/Tildes subreddit or reached out in some other way, and asking if they would be interested in joining the platform. My reasons for wanting to do this are two- fold:

      For one, on the rare occasion that you come across someone who seems like a good fit for this site, and who is trying to contribute meaningfully to reddit but obviously getting frustrated, it just seems like the right thing to do. Wouldn't you want someone to reach out and let you know there is something better?

      Secondly, it's a good way to grow representation of niche ideas, which could later evolve in subgroups. Have a favorite programming language you'd like to see represented here more? Maybe a favorite hobby? Whatever the case, I think most people are part of some kind of niche interest that they would like to see more of here.

      22 votes
    18. Suggestion: Hide my logged-in username while browsing

      I think an excellent addition to tildes would be hiding the username while browsing, this way we can use our account and don't worry about people looking and finding our username. This could be an...

      I think an excellent addition to tildes would be hiding the username while browsing, this way we can use our account and don't worry about people looking and finding our username. This could be an option.

      17 votes
    19. Does Tildes have RSS feeds?

      As the title say, does tilde have RSS feeds for topics? I'm thinking a feed for the frontpage, as well as feeds for each group? I've looked around but it doesn't seem like there is. Is the feature...

      As the title say, does tilde have RSS feeds for topics? I'm thinking a feed for the frontpage, as well as feeds for each group?

      I've looked around but it doesn't seem like there is. Is the feature planned? Has it been decided against? Am I the only one who'd like the feature?

      Does or will tilde have RSS feeds for the frontpage and for groups?

      17 votes
    20. [Suggestion] let's collectively use outline.com to avoid Medium's nuisances

      This thread also applies to every other annoying website. Medium is one of the most annoying sites out there. It's slow, cluttered, always greets me with a despicable banner (no, I do not pardon...

      This thread also applies to every other annoying website.

      Medium is one of the most annoying sites out there. It's slow, cluttered, always greets me with a despicable banner (no, I do not pardon the interruption!) and manages to consistently bypass uBlock Origin. I'm tired of complaining on individual threads (and attracting well-deserved reproach for my grumpiness), so here's my proposal: let's establish an informal rule that every Medium article should be shared in a sanitized version. outline.com seems to be the best tool to accomplish that, but I'm open to suggestions. As a safety measure, in case outline.com goes offline, the original Medium link could be posted in the body of the new thread.

      What you lovely people think about this idea?

      8 votes
    21. Is there an easy way to make ctrl/cmd-enter work everywhere?

      I don't want to ask this question in "default" groups as peeps that monitor this group will likely know the answer, and I support not making "Tildes a site about discussing Tildes" :) inline-edit:...

      I don't want to ask this question in "default" groups as peeps that monitor this group will likely know the answer, and I support not making "Tildes a site about discussing Tildes" :)
      inline-edit: for context this was originally posted in ~test.

      I am probably one of the most heavily mobile-first users here, but when on desktop, I really want ctrl-enter to work everywhere. Is there some way to make sure all "save" buttons use ctrl/cmd-enter across the entire site? Can this be done via a class or something?

      If not, I can go through the whole site and find places where it does not work.. first example is in the new awesome edit tags ui.

      4 votes
    22. Tildee — A python library for interacting with Tildes

      Update! After a few hours of struggling I managed to set up Read the docs for Tildee, it should help using the library significantly. After getting some inspiration from TAPS I thought that maybe...

      Update! After a few hours of struggling I managed to set up Read the docs for Tildee, it should help using the library significantly.

      After getting some inspiration from TAPS I thought that maybe I try to work on something vaguely similar on my own. And after… some? hours of coding today I came up with this: tildee.py (source)
      It's a wrapper for the Tildes Public/Web API that is already used by the site internally to make it work. The obvious problem with that is that it will at one point break when this unstable API is changed. It can do basically all things a normal user can do with the notable exception of applying comment labels (because I haven't gotten around to that yet).

      Example of usage for a DM reply bot (result):

      import sys
      from tildee import TildesClient
      import time
      
      # Initialize client and log in, 2FA isn't supported yet and will probably break in horrible ways
      t = TildesClient("username", "password", base_url="https://localhost:4443", verify_ssl=False)
      
      while True:
          # Retrieve the "unread messages" page and get a list of the conversations there
          unread_message_ids = t.fetch_unread_message_ids()
          for mid in unread_message_ids:
              # Access the conversation history page; this also clears the "unread" flag 
              conversation = t.fetch_conversation(mid)
              # Get the text of the last message
              text = conversation.entries[-1].content_html
              # Abort if it's from the current user (I don't think this could actually happen)
              if conversation.entries[-1].author == t.username:
                  break
              print(f"Found a message by {conversation.entries[-1].author}")
              # If the message contains a reference, reply in kind
              if "hello there" in text.lower():
                  print("Replying…")
                  t.create_message(mid, f"General {conversation.entries[-1].author}! You are a bold one.")
              # Delay before processing next unread message
              time.sleep(3)
          # Delay before next unread check
          time.sleep(60)
      

      This has a lot of potential. Haven't yet figured out potential for what, but I'll take what I can get.
      I'd be really grateful if someone with a little more experience than me (that's not exactly a high bar :P) could give me some pointers on the project's structure and the "API design", hence the ask tag. Other creative ideas for what to use this for are appreciated, too.

      47 votes
    23. Tildes User Script: Youtube Thumbnails Below Topic Title

      A screenshot. Following is a user script that embeds a thumbnail into the topic header. Was supposed to be trivial, but walking around the CSRP was not that easy. Luckily, someone had written a...

      A screenshot.

      Following is a user script that embeds a thumbnail into the topic header. Was supposed to be trivial, but walking around the CSRP was not that easy. Luckily, someone had written a nice useful custom Base64 encoder, because I spent more than an hour trying to get btoa to do the thing.

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name     tildesYoutubeThumbs
      // @version  1
      // @grant    GM.xmlHttpRequest
      // @namespace   tildes.net
      // @include     https://tildes.net/~*/*
      // ==/UserScript==
      
      let youtubeIcon = document.querySelector('div.topic-icon-youtube_com')
      
      if(youtubeIcon !== null) {
        let youtubeLink = youtubeIcon.nextSibling.nextSibling.href;
        let youtubeID = new URL(youtubeLink).searchParams.get('v');
        let thumbnailUrl = "https://img.youtube.com/vi/" + youtubeID + "/0.jpg";
      
        GM.xmlHttpRequest({
          method: "GET",
          url: thumbnailUrl,
          overrideMimeType: 'text/plain; charset=x-user-defined',
          onload: function(response) {
            if(response.status === 200) {
              let thumbElement = document.createElement('img');
              let thumbParentDiv = document.createElement('div');
              let header = document.querySelector('article.topic-full > header');
              let data = "data:image/jpeg;base64," + customBase64Encode(response.responseText);
              thumbElement.src = data;
              thumbElement.style = 'width: 60%; margin: auto';
              thumbElement.id = 'gk-youtube-thumbnail';
              thumbParentDiv.style = 'width: 100%; text-align:center;';
              header.appendChild(thumbParentDiv);
              thumbParentDiv.appendChild(thumbElement);
            }
          }
        });
      }
      
      // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8778863/downloading-an-image-using-xmlhttprequest-in-a-userscript/8781262#8781262
      function customBase64Encode (inputStr) {
          var
              bbLen               = 3,
              enCharLen           = 4,
              inpLen              = inputStr.length,
              inx                 = 0,
              jnx,
              keyStr              = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
                                  + "0123456789+/=",
              output              = "",
              paddingBytes        = 0;
          var
              bytebuffer          = new Array (bbLen),
              encodedCharIndexes  = new Array (enCharLen);
      
          while (inx < inpLen) {
              for (jnx = 0;  jnx < bbLen;  ++jnx) {
                  /*--- Throw away high-order byte, as documented at:
                    https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Using_XMLHttpRequest#Handling_binary_data
                  */
                  if (inx < inpLen)
                      bytebuffer[jnx] = inputStr.charCodeAt (inx++) & 0xff;
                  else
                      bytebuffer[jnx] = 0;
              }
      
              /*--- Get each encoded character, 6 bits at a time.
                  index 0: first  6 bits
                  index 1: second 6 bits
                              (2 least significant bits from inputStr byte 1
                               + 4 most significant bits from byte 2)
                  index 2: third  6 bits
                              (4 least significant bits from inputStr byte 2
                               + 2 most significant bits from byte 3)
                  index 3: forth  6 bits (6 least significant bits from inputStr byte 3)
              */
              encodedCharIndexes[0] = bytebuffer[0] >> 2;
              encodedCharIndexes[1] = ( (bytebuffer[0] & 0x3) << 4)   |  (bytebuffer[1] >> 4);
              encodedCharIndexes[2] = ( (bytebuffer[1] & 0x0f) << 2)  |  (bytebuffer[2] >> 6);
              encodedCharIndexes[3] = bytebuffer[2] & 0x3f;
      
              //--- Determine whether padding happened, and adjust accordingly.
              paddingBytes          = inx - (inpLen - 1);
              switch (paddingBytes) {
                  case 1:
                      // Set last character to padding char
                      encodedCharIndexes[3] = 64;
                      break;
                  case 2:
                      // Set last 2 characters to padding char
                      encodedCharIndexes[3] = 64;
                      encodedCharIndexes[2] = 64;
                      break;
                  default:
                      break; // No padding - proceed
              }
      
              /*--- Now grab each appropriate character out of our keystring,
                  based on our index array and append it to the output string.
              */
              for (jnx = 0;  jnx < enCharLen;  ++jnx)
                  output += keyStr.charAt ( encodedCharIndexes[jnx] );
          }
          return output;
      }
      
      15 votes
    24. A system for "starred" posts on sensitive/advice topics

      This was inspired by this post. I was thinking, as a platform gets bigger we're going to end up with more situations where people are asking for advice about fairly serious stuff. In some cases,...

      This was inspired by this post.

      I was thinking, as a platform gets bigger we're going to end up with more situations where people are asking for advice about fairly serious stuff. In some cases, that advice needs to come from experts and taking guidance from any random Joe on the street can be risky/dangerous. (For the record, I don't think the post I'm referencing is an example of this, it just got me thinking about it).

      In cases like this, I think it's important that the actual good advice get some kind of clear designation that THIS is the guidance you need to take first. I notice this in communities like /r/Fitness a lot where people will post about what sound like pretty serious health concerns and you get a fair number of posts that suggest toughing it out or whatever and the more critical "You need to see a doctor" posts can kind of disappear amid the discussion. Similar things in /r/relationships where you can't always count on "This is abuse. Make arrangements to get your kids and yourself somewhere safe. . ." to be the top post.

      Even in cases where the poster themselves is smart enough to take "YOU NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR" type advice to heart, not every schmuck searching the topic on Google will. To that end, it might be good to give certain posts with good, holistic advice or by a known expert some kind of visual indicator that it deserves to be taken more seriously than other posts in the thread. It wouldn't be censoring anything really, just providing a little nudge about what ought to be consulted first or taken to heart.

      Now obviously it gets hard to decide how to give a post this attribute. It could possibly be awarded by the OP, though that has some obvious issues where the OP themselves might not be in a position to credibly vet the advice they're getting. We could also just do it through ranking by vote, which is the default paradigm. But like I said, it doesn't always work so well on Reddit. And the Exemplary tag is invisible to others, so that doesn't work either (and the post itself might not be worth giving up your "Exemplary" for the day besides). Moderators could do it, but there may not be enough and the skillset to be a Mod might not overlap with the skillset to know what advice a person needs in a particular situation.

      I don't actually have the answers. Maybe it just comes down to creating an attribute for some users to be "wisened elders" or something and empower them to star certain posts to separate good advice from bad. It would basically be a trusted user system. It's got it's own problems, but I guess we can open the floor for other ideas. Maybe it's not a real concern. Maybe it's better addressed by tinkering with the sorting of posts.

      11 votes
    25. Site suggestion: Dark mode

      I apologize if this is the wrong topic for this post, and if this feature already exists, I apologize for that too. I looked around and couldn't find it (it's possible I could have missed it). But...

      I apologize if this is the wrong topic for this post, and if this feature already exists, I apologize for that too. I looked around and couldn't find it (it's possible I could have missed it). But I thought a dark mode for Tildes would be most excellent. Right now, there's a lot of white space and combined with my 24" monitor, this site lights up my whole room like it's in the middle of the day. Anyways, thanks for reading. :)

      4 votes
    26. An app for tildes?

      There doesn't appear to be an app for tildes unless I'm not looking using the right name, how would users here feel about an app similar to what reddit has like reddit is fun or Joey? I'm mainly...

      There doesn't appear to be an app for tildes unless I'm not looking using the right name, how would users here feel about an app similar to what reddit has like reddit is fun or Joey? I'm mainly on my phone and while it's still easy to navigate by browser would love a similarly structured app for tildes. What do you guys think?

      17 votes
    27. Updates to "Activity" sorting method (the site's default)

      Since it launched, Tildes has always been using "Activity" as the site's default sorting method, which behaves like a classic forum—any new comment in any topic causes it to "bump" back to the top...

      Since it launched, Tildes has always been using "Activity" as the site's default sorting method, which behaves like a classic forum—any new comment in any topic causes it to "bump" back to the top of the list. This has generally worked well overall, and has been a good way to keep threads visible and active over longer periods.

      However, there have been a few issues related to it, such as controversial threads staying at the top of the site for long periods of time, and bickering back and forth between two users causing threads to constantly bump back up to the top even if nobody else is interacting with the topic at all. We haven't had great ways to deal with this so far, and have mostly had to work around it by setting the default time period to "last 3 days" so that threads can't dominate the site indefinitely, or even locking threads to force them to drop off.

      As an attempt at a better solution, "Activity" has now had its behavior changed so that topics will only bump to the top when something "interesting" happens, instead of for every single comment. The exact methods we're using to determine "interesting" will need experimentation and to be adjusted as we see how they work, but initially it's entirely based on comment labels:

      If a comment or any of its parent comments has an active Noise, Offtopic, or Malice label (note: it generally takes at least two users applying the label to make it "active"), the comment will not cause the thread to bump to the top. For example, this means that if a particular comment gets labeled as Offtopic, any replies "below" that comment will no longer bump the thread in the Activity sort. This will also apply retroactively, so if someone posts a new top-level comment, the thread will still initially bump to the top, but if that comment is then labeled as Noise, it will "un-bump" and return back to its previous location in the listing.

      Since this will give us a better way to prevent threads from staying at the top of the site forever, I've also now changed the default time period back to "all time".

      If you'd rather keep the previous behavior and continue having threads always bump to the top when a new comment is posted in them, you can use the new "All activity" sorting method instead. Logged-in users can set it as their default sorting across the site by changing to it on the home page and clicking "Set as default" to the right of the time period dropdown.

      Any feedback is welcome, but these are questions that I'm particularly interested in:

      • Are there cases where the label-based "uninteresting" judgment won't work well? Links to specific examples would be ideal, if possible.
      • What other methods could we use to judge a new comment as "uninteresting"?
      • Should we try triggering bumps from other non-comment events? For example, if a topic is getting voted up a lot, should it bump even if there isn't a new comment?

      As usual, I've also given everyone 10 invites again (and don't worry, I haven't forgotten about turning the visible comment votes back on either, and I'll do that this afternoon, along with posting a thread to discuss it).

      65 votes
    28. Stylus userstyle that hides comment vote counts

      This simple stylus userstyle hides vote counts on both voted and unvoted comments and your own comments. I really like what Deimos did, it significantly improved my time here on Tildes. If you...

      This simple stylus userstyle hides vote counts on both voted and unvoted comments and your own comments. I really like what Deimos did, it significantly improved my time here on Tildes. If you want the feature back, install Stylus extension, click the Stylus icon > write style for tildes.net and paste this:

      /* Hide vote count for unvoted comments */
      .btn-post-action[name="vote"] {
          visibility: hidden;
          position: relative;
      }
      .btn-post-action[name="vote"]:after {
          visibility: visible;
      	content: "Vote";
          position: absolute;
      }
      
      /* Hide vote count for voted comments */
      .btn-post-action[name="unvote"] {
          visibility: hidden;
          position: relative;
      }
      .btn-post-action[name="unvote"]:after {
          visibility: visible;
      	content: "Voted";
          position: absolute;
      }
      
      /* Hide vote count for your own comments */
      .comment-votes {
          display: none;
      }
      

      Known issues

      • There is extra padding around Vote button
      • Extensions such as Vim Vixen cannot interact with Vote button
      10 votes
    29. Is there an estimate of when sub-tildes are going to start being added?

      There was talk a while back about the different sections of tildes getting broken down further into subsections. Is this still the plan? Does tildes even have a user base large enough for it to be...

      There was talk a while back about the different sections of tildes getting broken down further into subsections. Is this still the plan?

      Does tildes even have a user base large enough for it to be worthwhile?

      26 votes
    30. Comment vote counts are now visible again

      It's been just over a week since the experiment with hiding comment vote counts was started, so as promised I've turned it back off now, and votes are visible again. There was already a fair...

      It's been just over a week since the experiment with hiding comment vote counts was started, so as promised I've turned it back off now, and votes are visible again.

      There was already a fair amount of feedback posted in the original topics as well as random other threads over the week, but this can be the main place for "postmortem" feedback now.

      I won't bias the discussion in a particular direction by giving any of my own thoughts just yet, so let me know what you thought of it and whether you think we should consider making any similar changes more permanently.

      75 votes
    31. UserScript that hides votes like in the recent experiment

      For those who want to prolong the experiment, here is a userscript to help: // ==UserScript== // @name tildes // @version 2 // @grant none // @namespace tildes.net // @include https://tildes.net/*...

      For those who want to prolong the experiment, here is a userscript to help:

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name     tildes
      // @version  2
      // @grant    none
      // @namespace   tildes.net
      // @include     https://tildes.net/*
      // ==/UserScript==
      
      document.querySelectorAll('.is-comment-mine .comment-votes').forEach((v) => v.parentNode.removeChild(v));
      
      ['.btn-post-action[name="vote"]', '.btn-post-action[name="unvote"]'].forEach((sel) =>
        document.querySelectorAll(sel).forEach((b) => b.innerText = b.innerText.replace(/ \(.*/, '')));
      

      I am fairly sure that this syntax requires ES6, so if your browser is not compatible, you need to reimplement this using ES5. Should be straightforward but a bit more verbose.

      20 votes
    32. Suggestions on labels

      Rationale: labels are a valuable way to receive and give feedback, so it would be useful to have more labels-related tools. This topic deals with labels received by an ordinary user or given by an...

      Rationale: labels are a valuable way to receive and give feedback, so it would be useful to have more labels-related tools.

      This topic deals with labels received by an ordinary user or given by an ordinary user from that user's point of view (as opposed to non-logged-in lurkers, other ordinary users, and users with elevated privileges).

      While labels presently only apply to comments, these suggestions would apply to topic labels when they are implemented, and to other labellable content types should any appear.

      The “Gilded” page—Issue 423

      Suggestion 1. Users can filter their user pages for content labelled Exemplary.

      Unlike all other suggestions, this also applies to users viewing other users' pages, and possibly even to lurkers viewing user pages.

      I also suggest that users have an option to automatically expand the Exemplary messages when they see their own Exemplary content.

      Other labels given TO the user

      The common point is that it would help if users observe the feedback given to them by others via labels. In addition, this would prevent label misuse and abuse.

      Suggestion 2. Users have an option to observe labels given to their own content along with the label counts.

      Suggestion 2a. If comment vote counts remain generally hidden, users should still be able to see the vote counts for their own comments.

      Suggestion 3. Users can filter their user pages for content labelled Malice (but, of course, they should not be able to see Malice messages).

      Suggestion 4. Users can filter their user pages for content with any label (maybe with further options like All labels vs “Non-major” ones).

      Edit: Suggestions 2, 3, and 4 might go with time lags. Namely, labels given to own content are only visible for content older than X minutes (X can be even 1440 or more) and to users with accounts older than Y days.

      Labels given BY the user

      Suggestion 5. Users have an option to automatically expand the label pane for the content they have already labelled.

      Suggestion 6. Users can easily overview the content they labelled Exemplary. (This is basically the “Gilded” page in the other direction.) In addition, users can see the messages they provided when giving Exemplary labels.

      Suggestion 7. Users can easily overview the content they labelled Malice. In addition, users can see the messages they provided when giving Malice labels.

      P.S. These suggestions deal with the current labels, but they can be extended to future labels, e.g., group-specific ones.

      11 votes
    33. The number of votes on comments is no longer visible (for the next week)

      I want to try another experiment today, and unlike some other times when I've referred to something as an "experiment" and ended up just leaving it around forever, I'll set a specific time limit...

      I want to try another experiment today, and unlike some other times when I've referred to something as an "experiment" and ended up just leaving it around forever, I'll set a specific time limit on this one.

      For the next week, the number of votes on comments will be completely hidden. This applies to everyone and all comments, including your own. I'm not even cheating for myself with admin permissions, I can't see comment vote counts any more either (unless I look it up manually in the database, but I won't do that).

      There's no functional change: you can still vote and sorting will be affected exactly as before, but there's no way to see how many votes a particular comment has. Topic voting is staying unchanged, with the counts still visible.

      I know that some of you are going to hate this. I think that I'm probably going to hate this. But I want to try it, because I think visible vote counts have both positive and negative effects, and I want to try and sort through those a little. Tildes is still small enough right now that almost all threads can be fully read through easily, so the voting isn't really that significant, and this is a good time to try it.

      Here are the main things I'd like to think about, and want to hear from you about:

      • In what cases does not being able to see the votes make things more difficult for you? Are there particular threads that you feel like you need to see the vote counts? Why?
      • From a less functional perspective, when does not being able to see the counts feel better or worse?
      • Can you think of other ways that we could accomplish the positive aspects (ones that are lost by hiding the counts), without showing an actual vote count?

      Thanks, let me know what you think. Initial reactions/thoughts are good, but I'm also interested in your thoughts after a few days, once you've gotten a little more accustomed to it.

      (And as is pretty usual with "official" posts now, I'm using this as a good time to top everyone back up to 10 invites)

      128 votes
    34. Daily Tildes discussion - allowing users to post anonymously?

      It's a long weekend in Canada and I'm going to be quite busy, so this is going to be the last daily discussion until Monday. Because of that, I figured I'd pick one of the more interesting topics....

      It's a long weekend in Canada and I'm going to be quite busy, so this is going to be the last daily discussion until Monday. Because of that, I figured I'd pick one of the more interesting topics. This isn't necessarily something that will be implemented particularly soon, but it should be good to discuss anyway:

      Should we support the ability for users to make some posts anonymously?

      General notes/thoughts:

      • If the site itself doesn't support it, people will just create throwaway accounts and effectively post anonymously anyway. This is worse in some ways (causes a lot of abandoned accounts and wasted usernames) and especially doesn't work well while the site is invite-only, since people have to use one of their invites to create a throwaway.
      • The user making the posts would still be tracked internally, so anonymous posting wouldn't be free of potential consequences. This association would probably be removed after 30 days, like most other private/sensitive data.
      • There would be some sort of anonymous identifier that would change on a per-thread basis, so that multiple posts from the same anonymous user can be recognized.
      • Once we start working towards a trust/reputation system, having the anonymous posts be linked to the user's real account would probably have a number of benefits.

      Let me know what you think about the idea in general, and what concerns you think we'll need to be careful about if we decide to implement it.

      One other, unrelated thing as well: it's been a while since we gave out invite codes, so I've topped everyone up to 5 invite codes. You can get to them here (linked in your userpage sidebar): https://tildes.net/invite

      97 votes
    35. How do you configure IntelliJ Idea for the tildes project ?

      Anybody has experience in setting up IntelliJ Idea for a Python/Vagrant project. I have imported the project and selected the Python interpreter as ../tildes/venv/bin/python, but the IDE failed to...

      Anybody has experience in setting up IntelliJ Idea for a Python/Vagrant project. I have imported the project and selected the Python interpreter as ../tildes/venv/bin/python, but the IDE failed to resolve dependencies. What am I missing ? I have Idea ultimate license so prefer to use it rather than Pycharm community edition.

      4 votes
    36. Community based tag-curation

      This was inspired by this post where the user tagged the post as "sugges" rather than "suggestions." Since tags decline in utility with minor spelling mistakes like this, I wonder if there could...

      This was inspired by this post where the user tagged the post as "sugges" rather than "suggestions."

      Since tags decline in utility with minor spelling mistakes like this, I wonder if there could be a way for nitpicky grammarians, like myself, to just go through an edit broken tags, add relevant tags, prune unnecessary ones, etc.

      I guess it would be sort of a moderation responsibility, but I expect we would prefer they focus on content moderation. Tag editing is low-key enough that people with this responsibility probably wouldn't need to be vetted as thoroughly or held to the same kind of community standards of behavior that a mod would be. We'd just have to trust them to not be pranksters or abusive with it (e.g. making tags like "this poster is a doodyhead").

      8 votes
    37. Wiki log and future plans - May 2019

      This took a long time to compile but the goal is to make it easy for people to see what changes happened since the last recurring topic (similarly to @Bauke's "Tildes issue log"), I plan to do...

      This took a long time to compile but the goal is to make it easy for people to see what changes happened since the last recurring topic (similarly to @Bauke's "Tildes issue log"), I plan to do this monthly since I think things will probably calm down a bit.

      I won't mention minor changes such as design changes or typos to keep this still readable, I hope you understand. I also took the liberty to combine certain commits to make it more compact.

      I'd like to allow for conversation and cooperation in the wikis this way since people can discuss changes they plan to do here with others before they reach and someone wishes to have their explanations which might appear rude so please discuss your changes here before doing them so you can see what other people think of your changes (and probably help too!).

      (Please message me directly if you see mistakes as to avoid potential noise)


      Global

      May 24th

      • Tildes wiki comes out
      • @deing imports most (if not all) of the unofficial wiki's resources

      ~tech

      May 25th

      • @lionirdeadman added IceCat, Wire and Rocket.Chat in ~tech/FOSS-Recommendations

      ~books

      May 25th


      ~music

      May 26th

      • @Kelsier created ~music/discover_new_music to list websites where you can discover new music
      • @Whom added links, review and journalism section, databases to ~music/discover_new_music
      • @cfabbro added Youtube sources to ~music/discover_new_music

      ~anime

      May 26th

      • @Whom created ~anime/useful_links to link to streaming services, manga services, tracking sites, news, reviews and others
      • @lionirdeadman added Viewster and TubiTV to anime/useful_links

      ~news

      May 27th

      • @deing added Election Night 10 to ~news/index

      ~lgbt

      May 26th

      • @alyaza created ~lgbt/lgbt_resources to list resources for lgbt help services

      May 27th

      • @alyaza added US resources to ~lgbt/lgbt_resources

      May 30th

      • @mftrhu added italian resources to ~lgbt/lgbt_resources

      ~movies

      May 31st


      ~tv

      May 31st


      ~talk

      May 25th

      May 31st

      • @LukeZaz updated ~talk/index recurring topics

      ~comp

      May 25th

      • @ali added courses to ~comp/index

      June 1st

      • @sniper24 added Dice Roller to ~comp/index's programming challenges

      ~tildes

      May 24th

      • @lionirdeadman added information about wikis in ~tildes.official/mechanics
      • @alyaza creates ~tildes/Hierarchical_tag_short_rules
      • @alyaza addeds info about recurring. in ~tildes/hierarchical_tags

      May 25th

      May 26th

      May 31st

      June 2nd

      June 3rd

      • @Eylrid specified that users with Deimos' permission can edit tags in ~tildes.official/instructions
      10 votes
    38. A collection of notable Tildes threads!

      Hello! Have a good or unique thread that you found on this website that you want others to see? Feel free to suggest some and I will update them in this list! After a thread is added, I will also...

      Hello! Have a good or unique thread that you found on this website that you want others to see? Feel free to suggest some and I will update them in this list! After a thread is added, I will also sort it by category.

      Here's a wiki for it like @Algernon_Asimov suggested
      Here's another wiki although this isn't specifically focused on notable threads.
      Here's a google document for it

      Meta

      By making both "high-quality discussion" and "transparent community development" a core part of its identity, Tildes will always be dominated by people with "moderator/power user" personalities. - A thread discussing content elitism on tildes.

      Scenario

      If you found the secret to immortality would you tell anyone? - Self-explanatory title.

      25 votes
    39. Tildes (unofficial) IRC channel

      I recently floated this idea in a comment elsewhere, but I wanted to gauge interest in having an unofficial Tildes IRC channel. The purpose of this channel would just be general, casual discussion...

      I recently floated this idea in a comment elsewhere, but I wanted to gauge interest in having an unofficial Tildes IRC channel. The purpose of this channel would just be general, casual discussion with other users of Tildes about anything, and particularly those topics which may not warrant an entire thread on the site here. I know that these days IRC isn't the most popular chat option, with things like Discord filling the void. However IRC is appealing in that users can choose between multiple clients, and in that such a Tildes channel would not need many of the features offered by Discord. How would people feel about such a space?

      5 votes
    40. Scheduling posts

      Usecases : Recurring posting which can't be done (for numerous reasons) like @hungariantoast recently mentioned Trickle-down posting because certain people feel bad when they post a bunch of...

      Usecases :

      • Recurring posting which can't be done (for numerous reasons) like @hungariantoast recently mentioned
      • Trickle-down posting because certain people feel bad when they post a bunch of topics since they feel like it floods the ~groups

      There's room for abuse but I think Tildes' "Trust people but punish abusers" applies here.

      21 votes
    41. A basic wiki system is now available for groups

      Friday afternoon just before an American long weekend probably isn't the best time for me to announce a major update, but oh well, I'm doing it anyway: There is now a basic wiki system available,...

      Friday afternoon just before an American long weekend probably isn't the best time for me to announce a major update, but oh well, I'm doing it anyway:

      There is now a basic wiki system available, with each group being able to have its own set of pages. I think this should help a lot for letting people collaborate on information through the site itself. @deing has been running an unofficial wiki (thanks!), but having it natively on the site should be much easier for people to find and help edit, so hopefully we can transfer over most or all of that content.

      As always, a number of aspects are pretty rough and I'm sure I'll keep tweaking it over the next little while as I see how it starts to be used, but it should be decent enough to get started with. Various things to know about it:

      • As of right now, permission to create and edit wiki pages must be granted manually. So if you'd like to get involved with editing wiki pages, please either comment here and say so or send me a message and I can give you permissions.
      • The editing history is being stored in git, which will give us a lot of neat functionality for "free". You don't need to know anything about git at all (or even know what it is)—it's all done internally, but it means that I can do things like sync the wiki pages to GitLab and take advantage of their existing interface to display changes, page histories, etc. instead of needing to duplicate all of those functions from scratch (which might be nice to do someday anyway, but it's neat to have them all already with this method).
      • Unlike other content you post to Tildes (such as your comments) which remain your own, contributions to the wiki will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike, in order to allow others to edit, reproduce, and so on. This is explained prominently on the wiki editing pages, and I'll update the Terms of Use shortly to reflect this as well.
      • I'm going to duplicate all the pages from the Tildes Docs site into the ~tildes.official wiki. This will allow people to be able to contribute changes to the docs without needing to figure out all the pieces for making changes to that repo directly. It won't update automatically or anything (and I wouldn't want it to), but I'll review any changes made through the site wiki and move them onto the Docs site.

      I think that should cover the main points, but let me know if you have questions. Also, it's been a while, so I've topped everyone back up with 10 invites again. Thanks!

      89 votes
    42. Hierarchical tags: How they're used and working toward a community standard [Draft part 1]

      among the things i have been working on for the past day and change is documentation of the novel uses of hierarchical tags on tildes, how they vary by group (or in the cases here, across most or...

      among the things i have been working on for the past day and change is documentation of the novel uses of hierarchical tags on tildes, how they vary by group (or in the cases here, across most or all of the site), and how we might best begin to standardize, introduce, or deprecate them going forward so we're on the same page and end up with tags that aren't a giant, unfriendly, user-unintuitive mess.

      obviously, though, this is something that should probably include community input since the community generally determines the tags used in the first place; therefore, this is your chance to check my work, suggest additions, removals, etc. to this draft and in the end, hopefully help craft a standard of hierarchical tagging that's simpler, more intuitive, and more consistent for everybody on the website to use so we can reduce future meta discussions on this and make tags better overall.

      this will be done in chunks for convenience purposes (your sake and mine). therefore, if you would be so kind as to try and limit your suggestions to the pertinent tags, that would be most helpful.



      Mostly group non-specific tags

      There are also a number of tags which are more general and occur or can occur in several or all groups on the website. Some of the more common conventions of hierarchical tags that are generally not group-specific are:


      economics. and similar tags

      The economics tag can occur in several groups, most often ~science, ~news, and ~misc. While it can take hierarchical tags, standalone economics is usually fine. Nonetheless, with specific branches of economics like microeconomics and macroeconomics, hierarchical tags should probably be used (thus economics.micro, economics.macro, economics.applied, and so on). Examples of this in action (and further specification under this scheme) are:

      • economics.trade (economics and trade)
      • economics.micro.urban (urban microeconomics)
      • economics.policy.employment (economic policy with respect to employment)

      However, when placed in ~science, the standard is always socialsciences.economics over economics. to align with the standards of tagging in that group, thus socialsciences.economics.trade instead of economics.trade. Given that economics. in this case is itself a hierarchical tag, it may be pertinent to break off the last hierarchical tag into its own tag where it would lead to three consecutive hierarchical tags, like so:

      • socialsciences.economics.micro and urban areas
      • socialsciences.economics.policy and employment

      law.

      The law tag takes a very large number of modifiers and can be used in just about every group due to the fact that law generally transcends the current set of groups Tildes has. Historically, topics related to law have been tagged in the [modifier] law format (i.e. medical law, copyright law, us law, and so on); however, this has generally been phased out by the community in favor of using hierarchical tags for the modifiers. Therefore, with respect to pre-existing tags, constructions like medical law should be deprecated in favor of law.medical. In addition, the following tags which do exist should be converted accordingly:

      • medical law (convert to law.medical)
      • international law (convert to law.international)
      • labor law (convert to law.labor)
      • employment law (convert to law.employment)
      • antidiscrimination laws (convert to law.antidiscrimination)
      • copyright law (convert to law.copyright)
      • maritime law (convert to law.maritime)
      • environmental law (convert to law.environmental)
      • gun laws (convert to law.guns)

      All single modifier tags should follow a pattern like this. In other words, if you were going to tag something as "abortion law", you should do law.abortion instead of abortion law. Currently well established tags following this format are: law.citizenship, law.international, law.labor, law.marriage, and law.juvenile.

      The following tags with location tags in them (and similar tags like them) should be converted slightly differently from the above tags. Instead of being rolled directly, the locator tag (or what would be the locator tag) should be broken out from the tag, and the tag that is left should have its modifier turned into a hierarchical tag if possible. Thus:

      • usa federal laws is converted to law.federal and usa. (To elaborate in this case, the usa is separated, leaving federal laws which can be converted into law.federal)
      • us law is similarly converted to law and usa
      • european law is converted to law and european union

      However, this should generally not be done with tags which refer to specific laws. For example religious neutrality law, blue laws and safe haven law are tags which should not be converted to use hierarchical tags because it makes little sense to do so.

      There are also two specific tags which should generally not be rolled, which are martial law and law enforcement. Martial law is mostly used to refer to a specific state of affairs rather than an actual subset of law, so it makes little sense for this to be grouped into the law tag, while law enforcement is not really law in the sense being tagged here and is also covered by other tags like policing; using law.enforcement for this purpose would also be ambiguous, since it more likely would refer to enforcement of legal doctrine.

      The use of the sharia law tag is ambiguous. Since sharia is de jure a form of law, it would make sense to roll it like the other examples so that the tag is law.sharia; however the two uses of it on Tildes are sharia law and there is currently no real consensus on whether or not to roll it in this manner.


      nsfw., trigger., tw., cw. and similar tags

      nsfw., trigger., tw, and cw. are all universal tags that have been used in one form or another to separate out content which might be objectionable and which are still useful for these purposes. Although all four have been used, the community has largely settled on a standard of using trigger. over tw. and cw. with potentially triggering content primarily for reasons of clarity (the trigger. tag also been put forward by Deimos previously as a way of handing potentially triggering and objectionable content). nsfw. is also sometimes used, but this is less frequent and usually carries a different implication than trigger. does.

      As mentioned above, if you are using intending to use a tag of this sort, the preferred option in almost all cases is trigger. over tw. or cw.. For all intents and purposes, tw. and cw. should be considered mothballed and previous uses of them should probably be converted into trigger. at some point (particularly the duplicates tw.death, tw.suicide, and tw.selfharm).

      The main established tags under the trigger. banner are:

      • trigger.death
      • trigger.selfharm
      • trigger.suicide
      • trigger.sexual violence
      • trigger.rape
      • trigger.assault
      • trigger.child abuse
      • trigger.transphobia
      • trigger.homophobia (not used yet, but presumably applicable due to trigger.transphobia's existence)

      These are self explanatory for the most part, and cover most bases; however, if you feel that a particular topic is likely to be triggering for some people, it would be courteous to tag it accordingly in line the above tags. (Do also note that all of these tags can be and often are applied as standalone tags instead of being grouped under trigger. due to the fact that trigger. has waxed and waned in popularity over Tildes's existence.)

      If you are intending to post graphic content, or content which has the potential of exposing people to graphic content (broadly construed) and want to tag it accordingly, nsfw. is generally preferable over trigger.. nsfw. is quite rare, but one example of it in action is the nsfw.racism tag on Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board due to the exceptionally racist content screencapped as a part of the submitted article. nsfw.sex is also seen on Do Police Know How To Handle Abuse Within Kinky Relationships? due to the explicitly sexual nature of the article's subject, but this is more of a courteous measure than a necessary one--a qualified nsfw tag is generally not necessary, and if one is a moderator will most likely add it after the fact.


      hurricanes., cyclones., and typhoons.

      Tropical cyclone news generally fits into several places, most often ~news, ~enviro, or ~science. Generally, the standard for tagging tropical cyclones, whether they are hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, or other similar storms is to use the applicable term for the storm in question, and then use a hierarchical tag for the storm's name. Actual examples of this are:

      This is relatively straightforward, and covers the nomenclature of all existing basins. However, some basins have not been represented on Tildes thus far, so here are the two cases where standards overlap for reference:

      • the Pacific hurricane basin and the South Atlantic basin would both be represented by the same standard as the Atlantic basin (thus, hurricanes.patricia for the Pacific Hurricane Patricia and hurricanes.catarina for the South Atlantic Hurricane Catarina)
      • the Australian, North Indian, and South Pacific basins would be represented by the South-West Indian basin's standard (thus, cyclones.tracy for Australian Cyclone Tracy, cyclones.fani for North Indian Cyclone Fani, and cyclones.gita for South Pacific Cyclone Gita).

      For convenience purposes, storms which are named but have not hit hurricane status should probably still be referred to with the corresponding cyclonic storm tag for their basin, even though they have not formally reached hurricane, cyclone, or typhoon status.

      If there is no name to refer to (i.e. a name has not been designated for the storm), a hierarchical tag should probably not be applied at all, since that would get messy and likely necessitate updates. With storms that have only nicknames or lack a name under the nomenclature since they predate cyclone naming (for example, the 1938 New England Hurricane) there's really no best way to do things, however, using a truncation of the nickname may be the most preferable option (for example: hurricanes.1938 new england).

      36 votes
    43. ~all?

      Could we have a meta-group which is a union of all the available (sub)groups? The purpose of it being having a way to view what the front page looks like without having to log out. IDK what is the...

      Could we have a meta-group which is a union of all the available (sub)groups? The purpose of it being having a way to view what the front page looks like without having to log out. IDK what is the general trend but I personally don't follow all groups (e.g. I am not interested in anime, and I try to minimise my intake of politics, so I am not subbed to ~anime and ~news), but sometimes I am curious about what the part I don't usually see is like.

      I should admit that viewing the frontpage in a private window is almost there (with the caveat of having to copy links around if I want to comment, which is not much trouble frankly), so this would rather be polishing than some very useful new feature.

      17 votes