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    1. Lets trade advertisement for something else and start a new trend?

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

      Hi

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

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

      Before of witch phrase it would say the topic.

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

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

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

      8 votes
    2. Reward system?

      Could a reward system be added similar to Reddit coins but instead of buying them you earn them from being active on the website and from the quality of your content maybe by using the voting...

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

      5 votes
    3. Adding native scheduled/recurring topics, let's figure out which ones we want to have

      I've just pushed up a commit that adds the backend for configuring and posting topics automatically on a schedule. I'm still working on the UI to be able to set them up through the site, but I can...

      I've just pushed up a commit that adds the backend for configuring and posting topics automatically on a schedule. I'm still working on the UI to be able to set them up through the site, but I can add them manually pretty easily now.

      So first, thanks very much to the people that have been manually posting these recurring topics for months. They've been a source of lots of great conversation, and I really appreciate people making sure to keep posting them regularly. Thanks also to @hungariantoast and @deing specifically for doing the work of writing a script to do automatic posting, and the kinda-API-wrapper that it uses. That made sure that multiple of those topics were posted consistently for quite a while before I got around to implementing this.

      I'd like to start setting up all of the recurring topics "properly" in the new system, so let's talk about which ones we already have, and potentially some others that we'd want to add. We should probably also try to space them out a little, so there's not a dump of them at the same times. Here are some of the ones that come to mind immediately for me, but I'm sure I'm missing some, and if there are others that you think would be good to have, let me know. I know there are other ones that have dropped off and it would probably be good to resurrect them:

      Group Topic
      ~anime What have you been watching/reading this week?
      ~books What are you reading these days?
      ~comp Fortnightly programming Q&A
      ~creative What creative projects have you been working on?
      ~games What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
      ~talk What are you doing this weekend?
      ~talk What are you doing this week?

      There are also some others that vary every week, so I probably won't be able to set those up yet (like @aphoenix's recent ~games.tabletop weekly discussions), but once there's a UI we should be able to start configuring them ahead of time.

      Any thoughts on those existing recurring topics, suggestions for new ones to add, or old ones to bring back?

      62 votes
    4. Some layout adjustments and de-emphasizing topic tags a little

      Updates have been slow lately—I've been working on some larger projects that have ended up with me getting lost down some rabbit-holes that I probably should have stayed away from. Hopefully there...

      Updates have been slow lately—I've been working on some larger projects that have ended up with me getting lost down some rabbit-holes that I probably should have stayed away from. Hopefully there will be some progress to show from those before too much longer.

      Anyway, I've just deployed an update that re-arranges a few elements, with the most major change being that most topic tags are no longer shown by default on the "listing pages", such as the home page and when you're inside a specific group. The tags added a ton of clutter to the page for information that wasn't important at all most of the time, and multiple people have told me that they found them intimidating and confusing.

      I'll come back to the reasoning behind it, but first: if you want to continue seeing tags on topics in listings, there's a new setting for that near the top of the Settings page: "Show topic tags in listing pages". I've also already enabled this setting for anyone that has the permission to tag other users' topics, since I think those users clearly care more about tagging (and if you'd like that permission to help with tagging topics, send me a message and let me know and I can give it to you).

      For more about why, I think this old page by Cory Doctorow from 18 years ago does a good job of explaining why detailed metadata systems often have a lot of issues. Even though some users (including me) care a lot about trying to organize and label everything, most users really don't, and it's intimidating to try to figure out how to tag "properly".

      This will only get worse as the site continues to grow and more tagging conventions and history are built up, so I wanted to try addressing this now, before it gets too bad. Not having the tags on listings will also have some other benefits like not needing to worry so much about adding "too many" tags to topics, potentially being able to come up with some new special uses for tags in the future, and so on.

      Various other minor tweaks were made to the layout as part of this and some upcoming changes (like being able to hide/ignore topics from the listing page). Just a quick list:

      • "nsfw" and "spoiler" tags will still be shown in listings. Other "important" tags will be enabled eventually to continue showing in listings, probably even on a per-group level.
      • On a topic's comments page, tags are now displayed below the title instead of being in the sidebar
      • On the new topic page, the "add tags" field is hidden (collapsed, requires a click) by default. Once a user shows interest in tagging—either by submitting a new topic with tags or changing tags on a topic—it will be shown in the future. I enabled it for a lot of existing users that have done any tagging recently, so most of you probably won't even notice this.
      • The "content metadata" such as word count and publication date is now shown in listings next to a topic's group, instead of in parentheses after its title. Without the tags, we have more room for this and can probably do some more with this soon.
      • Link topic favicons (the site logos) are now shown next to the site's name, instead of before the title.

      That should mostly cover it for now. Let me know if you have feedback or questions.

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

      54 votes
    5. I made a (very, very) basic Tildes scraper and cli browser ruby gem

      Here's the ruby gem page and here's the github. Right now it comes with a command line browser that can browse the front page and group pages with no sorting options, and you can view the contents...

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

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

      9 votes
    6. Why is Tildes not on Github?

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

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

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

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

      9 votes
    7. Count the overall time someone spends on Tildes

      1. The Idea Counting overall time would be awesome already. In order to avoid overloading the servers, you could just count every 5, 10 hours or something like that. As a plus (I have no idea how...

      1. The Idea

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

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

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

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

      2. The Reason

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

      2 votes
    8. Make the collapse/expand all option persistent

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

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

      3 votes
    9. How do we want to handle Podcasts?

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

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

      6 votes
    10. Have "whispers" been implemented?

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

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

      11 votes
    11. Unofficial Weekly Discussion #3 - Argument de-escalation and disengagement brainstorming session

      IMO one of the major issues with online debates, arguments and heated discussions is that they often tend to escalate rather steadily over time, and as each side gets more frustrated with the...

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

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

      Add ability to hide topics (and view/unhide ones users have previously hidden) self explanatory
      Add community based thread locking We have labels now, which help moderation and can help hide comments that hurt the discussion. But maybe we need some sort of similar function for locking or temp-locking threads when they get out of hand due to drama or something. As long as we only really have Deimos doing the moderating, that can help avoid things blowing up when he is unavailable.
      Add "block user" feature This would more effectively allow people to avoid arguments but has some potential downsides worth considering as well, e.g. users getting trapped in a filter bubble. However, other than for moderators, that is probably not a major drawback compared to the benefits, IMO.

      How deep the block goes is also something that probably needs to be investigated and discussed. E.g. Does blocking a user just prevent PMs? Does it prevent their replies from notifying the user? Does it hide their comments/topics, and if so does it hide all the replies to those hidden comments as well? Etc.

      Add "unfollow" feature, allowing users to turn off notifications for replies to their comments/topics This would allow users to more effectively disengage from arguments. It should probably be something disabled by default and only enabled on a case-by-case basis, not a global user setting though, IMO.

      edit: Feature also requested again, but for a slightly different reason (avoiding getting spammed on busy topics)

      Add placebo comment labels Related to the other "disengage" feature suggestions, I think a "placebo" comment label could also potentially help the culture of the site. What I mean by that is perhaps adding some comment labels that have no effect, or only an effect for the person that applied it. e.g. A "Disagree" comment label, that has no effect whatsoever, or perhaps makes the comment collapse (like a "noise" labeled comments), but only to the user that applied the "disagree".

      Comments related to this.

      Add "argument/bickering" label for users to apply on unproductive arguments This label, once it reaches a certain threshold could even have effects applied to it, E.g. imposing a forced time delay on replies between all involved parties, adding a delay before the replies even show up (to give time for people to cool off), or even simply locking that particular thread entirely if enough labels are applied.
      Show whether a comment has already been replied to in users' /notifications/unread page I suspect that people often reply directly from their /notifications/unread page, which can lead to needless repetition in the comments. It also potentially further escalates arguments as well, since a user may feel obligated to reply since they do not realize that someone has already addressed the comment effectively. Embedding the other replies somehow, perhaps by using a `details` like expando, might be nice as well.

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

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


      Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

      Week #1, #2


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

      27 votes
    12. New groups added, more work still happening on rearranging, moving topics, etc.

      Alrighty, after the discussion last week, I've finally added the new groups, and everyone will have been mostly auto-subscribed to all of them. I'm still working on some of the details like adding...

      Alrighty, after the discussion last week, I've finally added the new groups, and everyone will have been mostly auto-subscribed to all of them. I'm still working on some of the details like adding descriptions, and there will be some awkward pieces and interface aspects since we're still in the transition phase before I get those larger changes to subscriptions/etc. in (which I really hope will be soon), but it should mostly be fine.

      If you want to change your subscriptions quickly, use this page: https://tildes.net/groups (linked from a button at the bottom of the home page's sidebar)

      First, here are the new groups:

      New top-level groups (everyone auto-subscribed)

      New sub-groups (auto-subscribed only if you were subscribed to the parent group)

      Some of this will be a little experimental and I'm not totally sure how it's going to work out (splitting ~science into the branches of science especially), but we'll see what happens. The names and such aren't necessarily 100% final either.

      Since we now have some real sub-groups that people other than me can post in, I made a small behavior change to how sub-groups work until those larger changes are ready. Previously, subscribing to a group would automatically include all posts from its sub-groups in your home page as well. That is, if you subscribed to ~tildes, you would also see all posts from ~tildes.official, regardless of whether you subscribed to it or not.

      Now, your home page will only include posts from groups (and sub-groups) that you are specifically subscribed to. So if you want to see topics from ~games but not ~games.tabletop, you should subscribe to ~games and unsubscribe from ~games.tabletop. However, if you visit ~games directly, posts from ~games.tabletop will still be included in the list there, regardless of whether you're subscribed or not. I know this isn't ideal, but it's not permanent and should be fine for now.

      I'm going to get back to working on updating these groups and moving some of the older topics around now, but let me know if you have any questions or thoughts.

      And as usual, I've topped everyone's invites up to 10. You can get your invite links here: https://tildes.net/invite

      51 votes
    13. Unofficial Weekly Discussion #4 - What is your most "thinking outside the box", "pie in the sky", and/or "out there" idea for Tildes?

      Despite me still being a little distracted thanks to WoW Classic and somewhat absent from Tildes lately as a result, since it's been a few weeks since the last Unofficial Weekly Discussion topic,...

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

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

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

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


      Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

      Week #1, #2, #3


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

      28 votes
    14. What’s the status on anonymous comments?

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

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

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

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

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

      14 votes
    15. Emacs/readline-like keys on text fields

      This should be simple fairly simple to explain: Even though the Vim front is well covered by things like Vimium, Vimium+ and qutebrowser (and it would probably be too much trouble to create a Vim...

      This should be simple fairly simple to explain:

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

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

      And so on.

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

      So here's my suggestion!

      3 votes
    16. Potential new groups, and general discussion about the purpose and organization of the group hierarchy

      It's been almost a month since we had proposals for more groups to add. I apologize for taking so long with it—just as a quick explanation for why it's taken so long to get around to: I've been...

      It's been almost a month since we had proposals for more groups to add. I apologize for taking so long with it—just as a quick explanation for why it's taken so long to get around to:

      I've been working on some major background changes related to how groups and the overall abilities of choosing what to see (and not see) on Tildes work, which I was planning to implement at the same time the new groups were added. However, two weeks ago, someone used Tildes's donation page to test over a thousand stolen credit cards. This made a mess in multiple ways, and it's taken a lot of time to clean up and try to make sure it won't happen again (some of it was my fault for not implementing some protections fully/properly). Dealing with that took priority, and it meant that I wasn't able to finish the changes before being (mostly) away over the last week and a bit.

      Anyway, I'm finally getting back on track and am planning to add more groups very soon (and get those larger changes implemented not long after), so let's talk about that as well as some general discussion about the group hierarchy. First, here are the groups I'm currently intending to add and some thoughts and questions about them:

      New groups:

      • ~arts - This is one that I'm a little questionable about. I do think we need a space for these subjects, but there's some strange and confusing crossover with the existing ~creative. I'm not sure if ~arts should replace ~creative, and if we should just have a sub-group or something else for "things created by Tildes users". I'd appreciate input here.
      • ~design - I really like this idea, and think it can cover topics like graphic design as well as physical ones like fashion and architecture.
      • ~finance - This covers some of the other current gaps with existing groups. I'd like to try to fit topics oriented around business in here, as well as ones related more to personal-finance. I'm not certain about the name, but I think it might be the best compared to some of the other comparable options like ~money, ~business, ~commerce, etc.
      • ~games.tabletop - I think this will be a good way to start trying to split up the ~games content a little. For now, I want to just leave video game topics in ~games though, instead of splitting it into its own dedicated sub-group. I know this will probably be somewhat confusing and unintuitive in some ways, but I also think making it so that almost no content goes into ~games itself would be very weird.
      • ~games.game_design - I think this is a useful way to also split out some of the more "theory-based" topics from the other ones in ~games, which tend to be largely more along the lines of news and "ask" discussions. I also want to be able to do some tinkering with a group having multiple sub-groups, and this will make the first instance of that.
      • ~hobbies.automotive - This will be a bit of a test as well. So far, ~hobbies has been quite inactive so it's not truly necessary to split it, but a number of users have expressed interest in it, and I'd like to see if the dedicated sub-group helps motivate more activity about a specific subject.
      • ~science.social - Both the name and being a sub-group are a little questionable here. I'm open to changes, but again, please read below about the hierarchy in general first.
      • ~space - Fairly heavily requested as well, and I feel like it's distinct enough from the existing groups to be worth trying to give a dedicated section.

      Those are all the ones I'm planning to add for now. There are some other groups (and especially some sub-groups) that I think are very good ideas and would work well too, but I want to delay those a little bit to get the structural changes in, since I think that will make a big difference in helping people choose their content too. After these additions we'll have quite a lot of top-level groups (depending exactly what we add, we'll have around 25), and we might want to think about merging some of them before adding even more. On that topic:

      General group hierarchy thoughts:

      I haven't done a good job of defining the purpose of the group hierarchy, or explaining how I think about it. This has caused a fair amount of confusion and debates about the right place for groups/sub-groups, as well as (completely reasonable) questions like why we need groups at all, instead of just using tags.

      I think a lot of the confusion comes from the natural tendency to think about it as a subject-based hierarchy. That is, if subject B is a subset of subject A, it should be a sub-group. However, I think it's going to be more useful to try to treat it as a hierarchy of interest (or disinterest), where the hierarchy is based more around a perspective like "if a user is interested in subject A, they'll probably also be interested in the more-specific subject B".

      I think ~tech and ~comp make a good demonstration. From a subject-based perspective, computers are certainly a subset of technology, so it seems like it should really be ~tech.comp instead of two separate top-level groups. But if you look at it from an interest-based perspective, someone being interested in technology in general definitely doesn't imply that they're also interested in reading technical articles about programming. That's why they're split into separate top-level groups.

      Similarly, ~anime seems to obviously make sense to be a sub-group of ~tv, but I don't think there's nearly enough "interest crossover" to do that. You'd end up with a huge portion of ~tv viewers wanting to exclude ~tv.anime, since it's such a distinct subject.

      Overall, the purpose of the group hierarchy is to help people be able to find and avoid certain types of topics. Using a hierarchy for this will allow us to do things like "I want to see the gaming topics, but not from the League of Legends groups", which are practically impossible to do in a flat structure like reddit has.

      You can also think of the groups as something like "forced" or "implied" tags that are always on all of the topics inside those groups. With a tag-only system, every gaming topic would need to manually be tagged something like "video games" so that people uninterested in them can easily filter them out. The groups system makes this automatic and much more convenient and understandable.

      In the future, I think it will also be very important for the different groups (and some sub-groups) to be able to act as different "spaces" with their own rules, and possibly even different features or design.

      I hope that helps clarify the hierarchy a bit and explain why the organization has been done this way so far (and will likely to continue to be). Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about the hierarchy and the planned new groups, I'm intending to add them later this week unless something else goes horribly wrong.

      And as usual, I've topped everyone's invites up to 10. You can get your invite links here: https://tildes.net/invite

      68 votes
    17. Proposal: Community Sourcing

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

      The Problem

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

      Examples

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

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

      Solution

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

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

      17 votes
    18. I think formatting is broken inside expandable "<details>" sections

      UPDATE: It is actually NOT broken, but it seems that a blank line is required after the <summary> tags for it to work. Therefore, this does not work: > Interstellar - just watch it I like this...

      UPDATE:

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

      • Therefore, this does not work:

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

          > Interstellar - just watch it
        
          I like this movie a lot. BUT, it bothers me that
        
          <details>
          <summary>spoiler</summary>
        
          a story so grounded in hard science fiction chose an unjustified book
          metaphor to represent a dimension that would be, for us, absolutely
          unknowable. I much prefer the choice made by Kubrick in *2001, A Space
          Odyssey*: to represent one abstraction with another, preserving the
          alien character of an inhuman reality.
          </details>
        
      7 votes
    19. Some <details> about more <small> updates (you'll get that in a minute) and general Tildes feedback/questions/comments

      Similar to the last topic, I've got some more minor updates to let everyone know about. It's also been quite a while since we had a general feedback topic, so let's do that today as well—feel free...

      Similar to the last topic, I've got some more minor updates to let everyone know about.

      It's also been quite a while since we had a general feedback topic, so let's do that today as well—feel free to ask any questions or give feedback about Tildes overall.

      Here's what's been happening:

      1. @Algernon_Asimov's major reorganizing and rework of the Docs is now live on https://docs.tildes.net. A decent number of changes needed to be made to be able to support having the pages in categories/folders, dealing with some formatting changes, redirecting old urls, etc. Some of these changes have started being integrated back into the wiki on Tildes itself as well (and I'm still gradually working on it). For example, the pages in the ~tildes.official wiki are somewhat organized into the same folders, even though the UI doesn't handle it very well in a lot of places yet.

        If you want to help edit the Docs at all, all of the pages (except site policies) are available in the ~tildes.official wiki, and I'll review and transfer any edits to the Docs site. If you don't have access to edit the wiki, send me a message and ask and I can give you access to edit (and you can edit the other groups' wikis too).

      2. Some new HTML-exclusive formatting capabilities are available when writing posts:

        • <small>: lets you write a section of text in a smaller font. Good for "side notes" and such, and much better than using superscript, which some people were doing previously to get that effect.
        • <details> and <summary>: lets you make "expandable" blocks in your comments. This is useful if you want to do things like hide a large block of text or code and let people expand it if they want to read it. @hungariantoast used it immediately in his comment here, if you want to see an example. The current state of it isn't great for use for spoilers (but probably better than just writing them in plain sight), but I may make an adaptation of it specifically for use for spoilers.
      3. There's a new site theme available, "Zenburn". It's a fairly low-contrast, and used to be one of my favorite color schemes. I had to do some work on one of my old sites that was using it last weekend, and it reminded me how much I liked it, so I added it. Here's the official screenshot of the vim color scheme for it, if you want an idea of what colors it uses. You can change the theme on the settings page if you're logged in, or there's a dropdown at the bottom of every page if you're logged out.

      4. @deing has added a small warning to try to let people know when they're about to reply to an old comment or topic, since it seems fairly common for people to accidentally "necrobump" old threads without realizing. For now, the warning shows up when the topic/comment is over a week old. I set that threshold based on pulling out some stats and seeing that only 1% of comment replies and 2% of top-level comments were replying to anything that old, so it should be quite rare for anyone to see anyway.

      Other than that, I haven't forgotten about the new group proposals and should be adding some new ones this week. I wanted to finish some backend changes to the group system first to help with that, and it's... gotten more ugly than I was expecting. Sorry for the delay, hopefully soon though.

      Let me know if you have any thoughts about any of those changes, and as mentioned, feel free to use this topic for general feedback/questions as well, since I'm sure there are some things that people want to give feedback or ask about that might not feel like they're worth starting a thread in ~tildes for. As usual, I've also topped everyone back up to 10 invite codes, which you can get here.

      59 votes
    20. Suggestion: Spoiler Tag on comments that collapses them

      I don't know if this would be only an option when you are creating a comment, or added to the list of tags like "Exemplary" and such, but an option to have a "Spoiler" comment tag that collapses...

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

      7 votes
    21. While on the search page, make clicking links to your "subscriptions" move the search to that board.

      I was looking to see if anyone had talked about the TV show Person Of Interest and forgot to go to ~tv before searching. I know its not a major thing since it only took me a few seconds click to...

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

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

      5 votes
    22. 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
    23. 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
    24. 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
    25. 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
    26. 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
    27. 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
    28. 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
    29. 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
    30. 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
    31. 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
    32. 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
    33. 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
    34. 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
    35. 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
    36. 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
    37. 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
    38. 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
    39. 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
    40. 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
    41. [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