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  • Showing only topics in ~tildes with the tag "suggestions". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Special tag: "Active"

      Based off of a suggestion @lou made about special tags, I wonder if would we could make a tag that is automatically applied when a lot of comments are added all at once and then removed when it...

      Based off of a suggestion @lou made about special tags, I wonder if would we could make a tag that is automatically applied when a lot of comments are added all at once and then removed when it reaches a more normal level of behavior?

      16 votes
    2. Suggestion for new special tags

      I would like to suggest the implementation of two special tags: sensitive (read below) and support. The reason I am calling them "special" is that I am also suggesting that those tags have a...

      I would like to suggest the implementation of two special tags: sensitive (read below) and support. The reason I am calling them "special" is that I am also suggesting that those tags have a special appearance that makes them more visible on the website, similar to the NSFW tag.

      The sensitive tag should be applied to posts about sensitive topics that are likely to create intense emotional discussions. To avoid turning this very post into an example of what I am talking about, I won't give any specifics about the kind of topic that should receive that tag. But, generally speaking, those tags would be added to inherently controversial posts about issues of a political, personal, or otherwise sensitive nature. Read below.

      The support tag is successfully used in /r/daddit. It is meant to disallow responses that serve primarily to gratify intellectual curiosity to the detriment of emotional support. A support tag means "this post is about providing emotional support to OP first and foremost".

      I understand that many people don't really need tags to know what kind of post they are engaging with, and how they should respond. I certainly need those, which is why I am suggesting them.

      This post is related to my previous submission.


      EDIT

      The word "sensitive" was a bad choice from me. For the purpose of the ongoing conversation, please consider the suggestion to be instead for a contentious tag (or something to the effect which I describe below).

      The word "contentious" better embodies what I am trying to convey, which are subjects requiring greater care and consideration than what is usually required given the site's history. So you would give this tag to subjects that were actually shown to be contentious based on multiple previous discussions, and not on the subjective sensibilities of anyone in particular.

      Additionally, given the elevated concern of some responses, I believe it is valuable to highlight that, unlike labels, only the poster and mods can edit or add tags. So it is unlikely for someone to maliciously tag your content as contentious.

      31 votes
    3. Tiny little mobile feature request: dot indicator

      When viewing the desktop version of the website, there is a little orange notification to the left of my name when there are replies to my messages. When viewing the website in mobile, there is no...

      When viewing the desktop version of the website, there is a little orange notification to the left of my name when there are replies to my messages.

      When viewing the website in mobile, there is no such indication, and I have to open up the sidebar to see if I have any new replies.

      Could we get a simple, orange "dot" indicator to the left the Sidebar link in mobile to let us know when we have unread messages?

      I apologize in advance for the imgur link, but it could look something like this: Example

      10 votes
    4. Is there any interest in a video game design subgroup?

      Hey all, I'm a professional game designer with about ten years in the video game industry. I've worked primarily with collectible card games and my most recent project is a mobile first strategy...

      Hey all,

      I'm a professional game designer with about ten years in the video game industry. I've worked primarily with collectible card games and my most recent project is a mobile first strategy card game. I'm interested in talking more about video game design, design theory, and more.

      Most of the design topics I've seen on Tildes are focused more on tabletop / board games and I was wondering if there is a big enough population of people interested in discussing game design more from the professional side of video game design.

      Hope to have some meaningful discussion and I'm available to chat about relevant topics.

      36 votes
    5. "Mirror" tag

      A pretty simple feature. Just seems like it would be handy to apply a tag to posts that provide non-paywalled or archive links for posts that are walled or 404'd. The idea just being that it seems...

      A pretty simple feature. Just seems like it would be handy to apply a tag to posts that provide non-paywalled or archive links for posts that are walled or 404'd. The idea just being that it seems too much to put an "Exemplary" tag on it, but it seems too significant to just get a vote.

      Ideally this would add the free link under the "Link Description" scrape, but that's probably hard to do. I guess you could also promote the tagged comment to the top of the stack, but then it seems like you can game out the sort to promote your commentary rather than just the link.

      16 votes
    6. Anyone interested in a "Linux" group?

      Sorry, I'm a bit new here and not sure how topic creation happens. But considering so much discussion goes on about Linux operating system all the time, I was wondering if any folks are interested...

      Sorry, I'm a bit new here and not sure how topic creation happens. But considering so much discussion goes on about Linux operating system all the time, I was wondering if any folks are interested in giving the topic its own place on Tildes. Maybe even something like ~comp.linux or ~tech.linux like some other topics have done?

      But I also understand that a whole lot of other topics will also be competing for space then like ~comp.python, ~comp.java, etc! Hasn't demand for those topics ever arrived until now?

      46 votes
    7. Is it possible to have support for theme switching according to system?

      I often browse Tildes on my phone, which automatically changes from Light to Dark theme at night and vice-versa in the morning. The issue I'm having is that changing the theme on mobile is more...

      I often browse Tildes on my phone, which automatically changes from Light to Dark theme at night and vice-versa in the morning.

      The issue I'm having is that changing the theme on mobile is more difficult than on desktop, and I'd have to always be doing it manually.

      Other websites can read the theme preference from the browser and automatically adjust. Some even give the users an option to choose which theme to associate with the Light and Dark preferences.

      I'd like to propose automatic theme Change as a feature for consideration, since Tildes already supports themes, and customization of which theme is which for a later date.

      11 votes
    8. Does anyone else think that the "Upvoted" indicator on the list of posts should be a bit more intuitive and clear?

      Right now, when you open the tildes home page or a group page, there is a square bordered box on right side of each post containing the number of votes it has received. The border indicates that...

      Right now, when you open the tildes home page or a group page, there is a square bordered box on right side of each post containing the number of votes it has received. The border indicates that you haven't upvoted it yet and when you click that box, the border disappears indicating that your vote has been counted!

      Being creatures of habit, we can get accustomed to even this eventually but for a first time user, it's a bit confusing, don't you think so?

      39 votes
    9. Possible solution for the perennial "what app" issue

      So, I think I may have a grand solution to this problem and this also extends to similar forums. There's an app called "Friendly Social Browser" and its purpose is to give you one optimized "app"...

      So, I think I may have a grand solution to this problem and this also extends to similar forums. There's an app called "Friendly Social Browser" and its purpose is to give you one optimized "app" where you can add your sites and social sites you want to keep easily accessible and be able to navigate them conveniently and have everything in one place so you can easily "channel-surf" while maintaining overall context.

      It also improves the rendering and allows you to tweak things to your liking. I would suggest it if you can get used to it since it feels a bit more stable than a random unoptimized browser, but its still true to the actual design of Tildes' web format and doesn't really depart from it in any appreciable way other than augmenting its stabillity.

      Obviously there's Three Cheers and Surfboard (which is beautiful) but Friendly is a surprisingly pleasant and effective lateral answer to this question and I would encourage folks struggling with this topic to investigate it further and give it a try if possible.

      15 votes
    10. Location of votes button on posts

      I've not fully considered the design decision and may be missing important aspects of it, but I wonder if the votes button on posts might be better situated on the left. This would make its...

      I've not fully considered the design decision and may be missing important aspects of it, but I wonder if the votes button on posts might be better situated on the left. This would make its placing more consistent with the comments' vote button location.

      I ask because I notice that I tend to often forget to vote upon a post in a way I don't with comments. I think this is because on a widescreen the button is in a part of the screen where one's focus is not drawn, far from the rest of the relevant content.

      13 votes
    11. Suggestion: Tag raising

      It is currently possible to block unwanted tags on Tildes. It would be great to also have a feature that allows users to raise tags they're more interested in. Posts with raised tags will get a...

      It is currently possible to block unwanted tags on Tildes. It would be great to also have a feature that allows users to raise tags they're more interested in. Posts with raised tags will get a score multiplier for the user that raised them, in the same way as Exemplary comments get a score multiplier.

      An example of a website that implements this really well is https://lesswrong.com, where you can give score multipliers to different tags to raise or lower them on your homepage.

      35 votes
    12. Thoughts on creating a positive ~urbanism group

      This would be a great positive mindset gathering place for folks who want to have more productive and less alienating discussions than what fuckcars etc provided. The urbanism movement talks about...

      This would be a great positive mindset gathering place for folks who want to have more productive and less alienating discussions than what fuckcars etc provided.
      The urbanism movement talks about solutions and work being done at the larger governmental scale, down to the local "tactical" or grassroots scale. These ideas are how to work to improve the housing affordability crisis, pedestrian safety, and generally help make more people friendly municipalities & communities that can become financially more sustainable. There is overlap with permaculture and environmentalism.

      If you're unfamiliar with this movement, some great places to start are books by Jane Jacobs, Strong Towns by Charles L Marohn, Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam, and countless YouTube channels like Not Just Bikes, Oh the Urbanity and many others.

      15 votes
    13. Non-anonymous "thank you" function

      I really like how Tildes encourages meaningful discussions and discourages "useless" noise. But it leads to occasionally awkward situations where for example I ask a clarification question or...

      I really like how Tildes encourages meaningful discussions and discourages "useless" noise.
      But it leads to occasionally awkward situations where for example I ask a clarification question or whatever, get a wonderful reply that answers everything I'd like, but leaves me in a situation where I have nothing meaningful left to add to the conversation, yet still wanting to personally thank the other person for their reply.
      Obviously I place my vote on the reply, but it still feels like i sort of ghost the other person. I'd like them to know that I appreciate their reply.

      My suggestion would be a kind of "Thank you" function or tag that would be available exclusively to replies to ones comments, signifying ones personal gratitude (man, that sounds pretentious, but I can't think of a better way to phrase it. I'll just blame the fact that English isn't my native language...), maybe coupled with an automatic vote.
      The receiver of a "Thank you" could then get a small one-time notification in their inbox.
      The comment in question could theoretically also display the "thank you" status to the author, maybe after the vote count at the beginning like this: "10 votes and a thank you from Landhund"

      What do you think?

      69 votes
    14. Self labeling comments

      Other than Exemplary, it might be useful for the ability to self label a comment. While in some sense it might be desirable for anyone posting a comment that falls under such a category, and is...

      Other than Exemplary, it might be useful for the ability to self label a comment. While in some sense it might be desirable for anyone posting a comment that falls under such a category, and is self aware, to simply refrain from posting, some of the boundaries for labels such as joke and off-topic can be rather fuzzy.

      6 votes
    15. Can we get an ~ai?

      To me, AI is kind of its own thing. It's too creative to fall under ~tech, but it's not quite ~creative either. It's something brand new, and can't be stuffed into any of the already established...

      To me, AI is kind of its own thing. It's too creative to fall under ~tech, but it's not quite ~creative either. It's something brand new, and can't be stuffed into any of the already established categories.

      28 votes
    16. Label for appreciated course corrections

      With Tildes having a distinctive approach to content and comments I found that I was missing an option. Without calling out anyone someone posted a submission today that was simply an image...

      With Tildes having a distinctive approach to content and comments I found that I was missing an option.
      Without calling out anyone someone posted a submission today that was simply an image collection. I did invite them to also post a bit more about as a comment starter, which they did.

      I naturally gave their comment an upvote. But I found myself wanting to reward them a bit more for their recognition. I could go for exemplary as label, in fact I did. But I can't help but feel that I am missing a meta label that is positive but doesn't weigh as heavy.

      How do other people look at this?

      21 votes
    17. Could we get a ~jokes, ~humor or ~funny group on Tildes?

      I read some funny stuff on here and there are plenty of witty responses around, but a community for humorous content may lighten things up a bit and it can start discussions too… after all:...

      I read some funny stuff on here and there are plenty of witty responses around, but a community for humorous content may lighten things up a bit and it can start discussions too… after all:

      “Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.” -Mark Twain

      69 votes
    18. Viewing all tags

      Hi all. I was wondering if there was a way to see all the tags that have been created on Tildes and their popularity? It would help when working out what tag to use, etc. Maybe even a popularity...

      Hi all.

      I was wondering if there was a way to see all the tags that have been created on Tildes and their popularity? It would help when working out what tag to use, etc.

      Maybe even a popularity break down by group that the tag was posted into would help loads when selecting the correct tag.

      I can see that auto-complete for tags uses the 100 most commonly-used tags, not sure if this is by group or site wide, but even that list would be great to see.

      Many thanks!
      RRR

      14 votes
    19. Feature idea: A 'Best Of Tildes' page that shows the newest Exemplary'd comments

      With the increase in activity, it's now more difficult to read every topic and every bit of discussion. As well, there are some topics that I wouldn't click into naturally, but I would very much...

      With the increase in activity, it's now more difficult to read every topic and every bit of discussion. As well, there are some topics that I wouldn't click into naturally, but I would very much click into if I knew there was a high-quality comment hidden within.

      So, it would nice to have a page that specifically highlights comments that have received an Exemplary label. That way, it would be possible to jump straight to the most insightful/thoughtful/interesting discussions that Tildes has to offer, regardless of the topic.

      I'm imagining that the page would be somewhat off to the side, so that it doesn't incentivize misuse of the label. Something like how Hacker News hides the pool/invited/best/bestcomments pages under the lists page in the footer of the site.

      What do you think?

      74 votes
    20. Should bylines be more prominent in the topic posts?

      I've noticed we've gotten in the habit of using the author.[name] tagging convention on articles and blogs and I think this is a great idea. But to me it just seems more important than having to...

      I've noticed we've gotten in the habit of using the author.[name] tagging convention on articles and blogs and I think this is a great idea. But to me it just seems more important than having to see it as just a tag amidst all the other tags. Right now we put the site name and favicon in a prominent spot whenever we post a link, and I get that this is much easier to extract reliably from just scraping the page than the bylines tend to be. But I wonder if any author.[name] tag could get promoted to a special spot in the "Article: X words" element?

      Of course this does leave the question of what to do about multiple authors, but I think the usual convention in academia is to list the first author who appears on the list as the primary author.

      I assume this has been discussed before, but when I tried searching for it the abundance of topics with "author" tags made it so I couldn't find anything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      10 votes
    21. How would you feel about a PC building/tech deals group?

      Yeah that's the question. I was thinking of the possibility of posting deals here. But it might just eat up the other tech content here. That's not my goal, but I'd like to start a PC...

      Yeah that's the question. I was thinking of the possibility of posting deals here. But it might just eat up the other tech content here. That's not my goal, but I'd like to start a PC building\support\tech deals tilde.

      22 votes
    22. Do you think there should be more customization of user profiles on Tildes? If so, what should be added?

      When talking about adding new features to tildes, many people talk about adding more ways to customize your profile, since right now we only have the username and the user bio. The most common way...

      When talking about adding new features to tildes, many people talk about adding more ways to customize your profile, since right now we only have the username and the user bio. The most common way other sites do this is by having profile pictures, but considering tildes is text based that wouldn't work out well.
      Another way of doing this would be signatures. Not only would that distinguish tildes from reddit and HN, but it would be text based and look ok on the tildes layout. But what do you guys think? Would it be neccessary?

      Edit: u/TooFewColours said this and i think it seems good. I've also heard about allowing your username to be a certain font:

      I'd be opposed to profile pictures, but maybe simply being able to choose a single colour that decorates your profile page in a simple way would be a cute addition. Given the colours in the logo, I think it would be on-brand.

      32 votes
    23. Suggestion: Make megathreads more prominent

      So while megathreads are a thing, I think we can really benefit from making them more prominent. Because right now there are two topics about the Titan submersible on my front page (and two more...

      So while megathreads are a thing, I think we can really benefit from making them more prominent. Because right now there are two topics about the Titan submersible on my front page (and two more if I go to the second page), multiple surveys about movies, and at least one new thread per day about the current reddit fiasco. It's getting a bit cluttered.

      So my proposal: make megathreads more prominent.

      • Give designated megathreads a colored border or some other simple decoration to make them grab the eye and stand out.
      • Pin some megathreads so they show at the top of their respective tildes, especially if they relate to ongoing or developing events. I don't think this is necessary for all megathreads like recurring ones, but it will help cut down clutter. (Note: I did check, and this is indeed on Gitlab. Deimos left a comment three years ago that code was made, just hadn't been merged into Tildes yet due to not being needed at the time.)
      • A little more advanced: for ongoing events, maybe have some way that multiple people can edit a post with updates on new developments or links. That way even if the original poster is offline when some big event happens, someone can update it or add new links.
        • Related to above: have a pinned comment on such megathreads to help collect links and such. This would probably be the ideal editable comment rather than the original post.
      • To help cut down on the survey threads that typically just ask for lists without much discourse (e.g. "favorite X movie"): Have recurring survey megathreads asking the most common such questions, possibly each week or every other week
        • You could either cycle through different questions each time (particularly in movies where you can just go through the different genres), or just collate the most common questions
        • Also, have a list somewhere of previous times a question has been asked, and then have a "cool down" period before a question can be asked again. Maybe a wiki-style list that people can edit and add links to previous threads?

      Of these suggestions, I think the first two would be the most effective and also the simplest to implement. Adding some visual indicator for a megathread would be a simple CSS change, and apparently the code already exists for pinning threads. Just a couple thoughts!

      47 votes
    24. Feature(?) request: Free talk thread

      The ? means, it doesn’t really need to be coded. Technically I could just do it. But i wanted to check in first. I really like the community here, amd sometimes want to share or ask something...

      The ? means, it doesn’t really need to be coded. Technically I could just do it. But i wanted to check in first.

      I really like the community here, amd sometimes want to share or ask something really small. I can and have started a whole thread for it, but we might be better served by a short comment in a larger thread.

      What do yall think?

      13 votes
    25. Turning off reply notifications would be a really nice feature

      I didn't see it in feature requests or planned features. Has there been discussion on this before? For the most part, I want to receive notifications of replies to my topics. But recently I made a...

      I didn't see it in feature requests or planned features. Has there been discussion on this before?

      For the most part, I want to receive notifications of replies to my topics. But recently I made a topic that took off a bit and many days later there are replies still dropping through. At this point I would prefer to stop getting notifications and or would be great to have a button on the topic to disable replies most for that one.

      30 votes
    26. Observations on needed features and issues now that the site has gotten busier

      Now that the site has gotten a little busier, I’ve noticed a few shifts in how I've engaged with the site and jotted down notes on things that I've noticed might be nice to have. We already have a...

      Now that the site has gotten a little busier, I’ve noticed a few shifts in how I've engaged with the site and jotted down notes on things that I've noticed might be nice to have. We already have a "what don't you like" thread I know, but this is more like "what didn't I notice when the place was a lot quieter" sort of thing.
      



      Edit bumps for megathreads

      I recently created a megathread for the Apple VisionPro reviews. But I realized that if I continuously edit in new reviews as they come in, the thread won’t bump. I’d need to actually post each time a new review comes in AND edit it into the self-post. It might be nice if I could choose to bump a self-post if I’m making a substantive edit to the content. Though I can see the opportunities for abuse here so I wonder if there’s a more elegant solution for it besides just occasionally posting when there are updates.

      Following/Subscribing to Topics

      Yes topics get bumped as conversation happens in them, but with the level of activity we have right now I’m having trouble keeping up with conversations I’m actually invested in following. Bookmarks are good, but there’s two issues. One is that they’re hidden in a folder off to the side. So it’s easy to forget to check them. Two is that they’re currently serving dual purposes, they can either be for saving specific topics because I think they’re good enough that I might want to reference them again or they can be because I want to keep up with the conversation in them.
      I’d be interested in separating the functions a little bit. I’d like to be able to bookmark topics as a “save” function but also “subscribe” to topics to get alerted up top when there are new posts the same way I am alerted to stuff in my inbox. Alternatively, just having an “unread” count next to the bookmarked topics link and sorting the list of bookmarks by acitivity might do it.



      A Drafts section

      This post right now I mostly composed in a note-taking app because it’s a collection of random thoughts I had while using the site the past couple of weeks but didn’t want to post until I had time to marinate on them. Being able to save drafts directly in Tildes would have been a nice feature. It would also be good for replies since it gives you a chance to be like “Hmmm, do I really want to engage with this conversation right now?”



      “Shortlisted” groups

      The list of groups is a bit long, especially when you’re scrolling it on mobile. People might not (and probably don’t) actually care about all of them. It might be nice if we could “star” a group to have it show up higher on the list or have all non-starred groups in a collapsed list.

      Choosing groups from the new post view instead of posting from the groups view

      Since groups are currently being treated more like “super-tags” than separated communities, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to designate the group in a dropdown menu above the tag bar when we’re posting instead of needing to go into a group to create a new post. In some cases, I might think a self-post belongs in one group but by the time I’m done writing I realize this ~humanities post is really more of a ~life post. This will, of course, depend on the outcome of the “treating groups more as separate entities” discussion.



      Subscribed topic tags

      Filtered topic tags is a nice feature because it’s one interaction mode that serves dual uses. You can both remove a selected class of content from your main feed but then you can also navigate into it to see ONLY that content. This basically lets you use it alternatively as a “favorites” option instead of an anti-favorites option. (I guess this is less of a feature suggestion and more of an observation for a non-obvious use of the function.) We could, maybe, separate out the list of filtered topics by why you’re filtering. Either “I don’t want to see this stuff” or “I want to be able to specially focus on this stuff.”

      Built-in invite request form

      Currently to get an invite you have to ask on Reddit or something. Maybe we should have a page where people can request invites within Tildes so we aren’t reliant on having to pick-up flotsam from other social media platforms. The downside, of course, is that you can’t vet people. So this invite path would probably be the lowest priority and only handed out during quiet periods where noxious posters can be handled quickly.



      “Only New” filter for comments


      I mentioned this issue with the Arc browser that makes it so the “collapse all old replies” function breaks if I open it in a background tab. Maybe it might be nice to also have this as a button I can trigger next to the Collapse replies and Expand all buttons. Or, if it doesn’t over-complicate the UI, maybe even a way to “collapse all before [datetime]” with the last session time pre-filled in. Or perhaps more like a clock that you can wind backwards in 30 minute or 1 hour increments.



      Rethinking time-limit on Exemplary labels


      I think it’s crucial that these remain a rare commodity, but with the current volume of good posts the 8 hour limit is feeling mighty constraining. Although previously the time limit didn’t feel like a constraint at all because there legitimately wasn’t much to label. Not sure if this should actually change or not, maybe the time limit can stretch or compress based on how active the site has been over the past X hours.



      Add a “Funny” modifier to the “Joke” label

      The effect on sorting should be the exact same and it should be invisible to everyone, but I just think it would be fun and would also encourage people to label jokes as such (trick folks into narcing basically). Maybe when there is a reputation system in place it can be used to adjust how big of a negative weight your joke posts get. Funnier people get dinged less.

      Rethinking the necroposting warning

      With more people here there are more active conversations and topics seem to remain active a lot longer. In topics like the one for questions from new users it’s so active it feels kind of silly to see the “this topic is over X old” warning. We do want to encourage maintaining conversations as long as they’re going so maybe we should suppress this warning on active topics (like ones that have had more than 5 posts in the past 3 days).

      Improved search

      
I know search is hard, but it is difficult to find old stuff. I’ve been trying to dig up examples of old posts or previous conversations on things when answering questions and I’m often trying to wrack my brain for specific phrases from conversations a year or more ago. It just doesn’t work for this. Discord search works pretty well and gives you modifiers for who posted, where, around when. I get the potential for abuse here, but maybe enable this kind of deep search for my own post history and nobody else’s?



      Mark direct messages as unread

      Exactly what is says on the tin. Sometimes people ask you something and you need to come back to it later.



      Tag cloud

      Knowing what to tag things as is intimidating for newbies and old heads alike. There need to be mechanisms to make this more approachable. I think perhaps if, underneath the tag bar we just displayed a “word cloud” of the common tags sized according to frequency it might help get people started. The word cloud would have to be per group and maybe refreshed per day based on a rolling-sample of the last 100 posts.

      Put a vote button on the bottom of the post for self-posts.

      Seriously, do you realize how much scrolling I have to do to go back up and upvote kfwyre when he posts something like this? It's especially a hassle on mobile.

      87 votes
    27. Filtering site domains on Tildes

      When I learned about filtered tags I thought this is an underated feature I missed on Reddit, and save me so much hassle of screening content I am not interested. I think filter sites or specific...

      When I learned about filtered tags I thought this is an underated feature I missed on Reddit, and save me so much hassle of screening content I am not interested.

      I think filter sites or specific domains would make my homepage so much cleaner, like filtering all BBC and CNN posts, what do you think?.

      13 votes
    28. Does Tildes need a new icon?

      I was just thinking about it. Tildes' current icon looks like a /r/wallstreetbets graph, haha. I think we could use a nice mascot that's based on a cute animal of some sort. :) Would love to hear...

      I was just thinking about it. Tildes' current icon looks like a /r/wallstreetbets graph, haha. I think we could use a nice mascot that's based on a cute animal of some sort. :)

      Would love to hear our community's thoughts on this, thank you! :)

      22 votes
    29. Tagging proposal: .wiki suffix

      There have been recent posts that reflect in-depth knowledge and significant effort to provide comprehensive information on a topic (examples here and here). Yes, it's possible to bookmark these...

      There have been recent posts that reflect in-depth knowledge and significant effort to provide comprehensive information on a topic (examples here and here).

      Yes, it's possible to bookmark these posts for individual reference. However, Tildes doesn't have a pinning feature given the current very loose organization of subjects/interest communities.

      In that absence, I'd like to suggest a globally used ".wiki" sub-tag appended to topics, to narrow search results to highly informative entries on a subject.

      Please let me know your thoughts on this.

      I'd go ahead and add the .wiki sub-tag to a couple of entries myself, but I've lost tagging privileges after a long stretch of inactivity. Please consider that I'm interested in volunteering again.

      21 votes
    30. Feature request: Filter out sites

      I see we can filter by topic tags (https://tildes.net/settings/filters), and that's nice. What I'd also like to be able to do is filter out by site:somedomain.com. I went to look at the tildes...

      I see we can filter by topic tags (https://tildes.net/settings/filters), and that's nice.

      What I'd also like to be able to do is filter out by site:somedomain.com.

      I went to look at the tildes source code, but, in my brief visit, it didn't strike me as something I could quickly cobble a pull request together for.

      The main thing I want this for is to filter out YouTube. Nothing wrong with other people liking Tildes recommendation of YT videos, but I come to Tildes for things to read, not things to watch.

      11 votes
    31. Feature: “Spoiler” text

      I was typing a comment in a gaming thread and I wanted to say something that may have been a spoiler. As I was looking through the formatting doc, I noticed it had a ton of different things you...

      I was typing a comment in a gaming thread and I wanted to say something that may have been a spoiler. As I was looking through the formatting doc, I noticed it had a ton of different things you could do, but I couldn’t find a way to hide something behind a spoiler—I was wondering if there was a way to add a “spoiler” text feature.

      Essentially this , but block out the word or phrase (I just wanted a reason to use one of the formatting options, honestly).

      Thanks!

      22 votes
    32. Half-baked proposals for architectural changes to Tildes groups and tags

      This is a place to post your ideas about what to do about Tildes groups and tags. I'm going to write about some problems (as I see them) and save my ideas about solutions for the comments. The...

      This is a place to post your ideas about what to do about Tildes groups and tags. I'm going to write about some problems (as I see them) and save my ideas about solutions for the comments.

      The taxonomy problem

      We have tags and groups and they are somewhat arbitrary. A tag could be a group someday. A group can be downgraded to a tag if it's not used much.

      Topics can have multiple tags, but they can be in only one group (and its ancestor groups).

      It's hard to pick the right group. An example: a post about animals could go in ~enviro (for wildlife), ~hobbies (for pets), or ~science (for a scientific study). So where do you put news article about a scientific study of the effects of house cats on wildlife?

      Adding ~animals seems like it would be a good thing because now you have an obvious place to find all the posts about animals. Animal lovers rejoice! But from a taxonomy point of view, it makes things worse, because now you have another place where you could logically put an article and another place to go looking for it. More groups means more edges and more edge cases. It's enough to make you wish for crossposts.

      The competition problem

      Tags are better for taxonomy, so why not just have tags? Because classifying topics isn't the only thing we want to do. As Deimos wrote about, eventually we'd like to have somewhat more independent communities, closer to subreddits but hopefully without their downsides. It would be nice if subreddits that wanted to migrate to Tildes could actually do it. We also want to have a good mix of topics on the front page, while allowing some groups to have a lot more posts than others.

      I'll start with an analogy: if a school has only one sport that matters, the people who are good at that sport win socially, and other people don't have as much of a chance. But if you have multiple sports and clubs that people care about, there are more ways to win at something. I don't believe pretending everyone is a winner works all that well, but more ways to win promotes diversity and creates useful social ambiguity.

      The front page of Tildes is the most visible and has limited space. That creates an all-against-all competition between topics. We also have groups with their own leaderboards, but they are lesser competitions and it's unclear if they matter yet. (I'm using them more, though.) Meanwhile, each topic has an independent leaderboard for its comments that doesn't conflict with any other game. (Maybe that's why I like megathreads?)

      I haven't been thinking of Tildes in terms of leaderboards, but maybe it can explain why old-timers are often reluctant to post topics? We aren't really trying to win, but we have ideas about fair play. When there's only one game anyone cares about, we don't want to drown out other worthy topics by entering too many contestants. We're also a bit reluctant to enter anything that's too specialized into the competition, because it doesn't "deserve" the attention. It's not a worthy contestant and it's just gonna lose.

      Also, sometimes this isn't a game you want to win. Entering a controversial topic into a competition can get you unwanted attention, and that's often no prize at all. When a game isn't one you wanted to enter, getting attention is more like losing than winning.

      For the front page, I expect this problem will get worse with more people. Entering the competition brings more attention than before.

      Note: thinking of a topic listing as a leaderboard for a game is only an analogy and I don't mean to promote competitiveness. They weren't designed to be leaderboards and I think we'd like to see design changes that reduce competitiveness. There are known downsides to competition that we don't want, like "cheating" to win with "unworthy" strategies and the rules-lawyering and jealousy that come with that.

      Ideas?

      Some rules for this "game": Please post one proposal per comment. If you have multiple independent ideas, you can post them separately, but post them together if they're interrelated.

      44 votes
    33. Women of Tildes, do we want or need a designated women's space?

      I'm relatively new here, and excited about the community. My question stems from learning that the usual way communities evolve here is by having specific topic information repeatedly surface in...

      I'm relatively new here, and excited about the community. My question stems from learning that the usual way communities evolve here is by having specific topic information repeatedly surface in more general category forums. If we do not create a women's community here, comparable to the one that already exists for lgbt, will we be less likely to create topics related to women's issues? Can we predict how it will evolve?

      What do you think?

      137 votes
    34. Considering image posts on Tildes

      Hi all, I'm a recent reddit refugee who is very happy with my transition here. I like the spirit of the community a whole lot and am a fan of the admin approach, which is designed to promote...

      Hi all, I'm a recent reddit refugee who is very happy with my transition here. I like the spirit of the community a whole lot and am a fan of the admin approach, which is designed to promote engagement and deep content and prevent a shallow (advertiser-friendly) scrolling experience.

      A the philosophy page on content says:

      In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important

      and

      In general, any changes to the site that will cause "shallower" content to gain an advantage should be considered very carefully.

      I agree with this fully. My thoughts, though, are that there are definitely forms of image post that are not just memes or jokes, and do lead to deeper discussion.

      For instance, if somebody has created some art and would like to post it for feedback (or just to share), this feels more like a discussion topic than a 'quick scroll' post. I feel that this kind of image post is 'pro community'. Somebody is posting something they care about and want to discuss.

      On reddit, a sub I always liked was ImaginaryMonsters, where people post cool pictures of monster art and discuss them (either original art or properly credited). This is for people who want to admire and discuss artwork. Again, I don't think this necessary falls into the category of 'shallow content'.

      So, what am I suggesting?

      I think it would be good for the site to actively promote the posting of the right kind of image content in the right places.

      My angle is, essentially:

      • Some image content does promote depth of discussion.
      • This type of content may be quite vital for certain wedges of the community, especially moving forwards as the site grows (and making creatives feel more welcome).
      • Rules regarding self-promotion already exist in the Code of Conduct.
      • Because of how the web works, it would make sense to have limited embedding of certain images in at least thumbnail format (but it needn't show the full image in the feed like other scrollable 'content' sites). .
      • Creating certain groups/subgroups specifically for posting certain types of images doesn't need to be seen as a slippery slope, if the rules are clear.
      • There is even the possibility of purging image posts that don't have n amount of engagement within a specific time, so as not to end up with clutter.

      I should point out two things:

      • I am aware that images can already be posted as links on the site, and I applaud the reasoning for the overall tentative approach. Here, I'm talking about some select subgroups of the site that are specifically for certain types of image posting.
      • I don't necessarily think I'm right. I am new here and making observations - I'm thinking about things I'd like personally - I know I don't have all the information to understand the full impact of such things here, but I am interested in knowing what other people think.

      So, do you have an opinion on this? Thanks for reading!

      Edit:

      I just wanted to point out a couple of things based on responses.

      • When I mention image posts, I'm not talking about image hosting - that's a whole can of worms - the site already allows links. I'm just talking about image links (with maybe some QoL surrounding that).
      • I wasn't totally clear above, I'm not suggesting image posts everywhere, or even necessarily a whole new post type. My first thoughts were about one or two specific, limited subgroups with specific purposes.
      • Those concerned about moderation, I understand that angle, but I am keeping in mind this recent post by @Deimos, where they talk about expanding moderation, or even handing it off to individual communities, subreddit style:

      If the activity stays at this level or keeps increasing, we will probably need to add more moderators soon.

      • Those concerned about feeds being overrun by images, there were thoughts about this from Deimos in the same post:

      I think we should probably take advantage of this current high activity level to try moving the groups towards being more independent spaces. This would involve switching away from the current "opt-out" approach to an "opt-in" one, and would probably need updates to a few different sections of the site to support it.

      • I also think it's worth mentioning my thoughts above do not preclude having some minimum text requirement along with every image. I agree about not encouraging shallow content, and am attempting to focus on exactly where that line lies.
      • Finally, I do want to make it clear I'm not coming here as a new person trying saying "nice site, change it like this!" - which I think some people may have taken this as (I had one or two single-sentence responses). I genuinely like what I've seen so far because of what it is, but am also aware things may well be changing in some other ways already (as per the post I linked). Sorry if this seems like 'another reddit user trying turn us into reddit' - this is not my intent whatsoever, I am just interested in specifically how it could be done in a Tildes way. I am glad it started a half-decent discussion though!
      55 votes
    35. What is the best way to provide small bits of feedback about Tildes?

      I have a small suggestion for a change to Tilde's mobile design and I'm apprehensive about posting a whole new thread here since it's relatively insignificant. This makes me wonder in general what...

      I have a small suggestion for a change to Tilde's mobile design and I'm apprehensive about posting a whole new thread here since it's relatively insignificant. This makes me wonder in general what the best way is for me and others to submit ideas or issues without creating the clutter of a lot of threads.

      Would it be appropriate to create somewhat specific feedback threads? E.g. one for design issues and suggestions, one for feature suggestions, one for general bug reports, etc.? At the end of the day, I just want to let someone know about my suggestion without creating noise.

      17 votes
    36. List of recurring threads and their schedules?

      Do we have a list of recurring discussions and their schedules anywhere? I know they're generally weekly, but I often find myself having to do a quick search for when the last one was and...

      Do we have a list of recurring discussions and their schedules anywhere? I know they're generally weekly, but I often find myself having to do a quick search for when the last one was and determine whether or not I should hold onto my contribution to that thread until the next one occurs. eg if the new discussion is created tomorrow, I may as well just post my comments tomorrow rather than today. Admittedly a very minor inconvenience.

      Having a list somewhere easy to see could also help prevent folks from unintentionally creating duplicate discussions during the period between one week's discussion going quiet and the next week's starting.

      And maybe eventually it could be something like we subscribe to a recurring discussion and then it shows up in the sidebar somewhere in a list of upcoming discussions? Just spitballing here.

      Any thoughts?

      11 votes
    37. For anyone that likes sticky navbars

      I found myself wishing the website had a sticky navbar on desktop, so I made a Tampermonkey script to do just that. Sharing this in case anyone else was looking for something similar. To use, just...

      I found myself wishing the website had a sticky navbar on desktop, so I made a Tampermonkey script to do just that. Sharing this in case anyone else was looking for something similar.

      To use, just open this link with Tampermonkey installed, and you should be prompted to install it.
      https://ewp.fyi/tilde-tweaks/sticky-navbar.user.js

      24 votes
    38. Waiting period for invite codes?

      Not sure if this is already a feature, but I think in keeping with Tildes's philosophy of letting the platform grow (to whatever extent that it may) sustainably, there should be a waiting period...

      Not sure if this is already a feature, but I think in keeping with Tildes's philosophy of letting the platform grow (to whatever extent that it may) sustainably, there should be a waiting period of a couple days to a couple weeks between when a new user joins and when they can generate invite codes. This to me seems like an effective way of preventing viral growth and allowing the community to recalibrate or "get a grip on itself" after any new influx of users.

      16 votes
    39. Meta label for comments?

      Just popped in my head, with the massive influx of users, there's been a lot more meta discussion happening in regular threads. Perhaps it might be useful to have that as a label on comments. I'd...

      Just popped in my head, with the massive influx of users, there's been a lot more meta discussion happening in regular threads.

      Perhaps it might be useful to have that as a label on comments. I'd almost go so far as to have the label highlighted like Exemplary for new users to help highlight when discussion function and culture of the site.

      6 votes
    40. Suggestion: Show number of times a tag has been used

      Roughly knowing how many times each tag has been used would provide users actionable information if they would like to search or filter by tags. It might improve UX when applying tags, but might...

      Roughly knowing how many times each tag has been used would provide users actionable information if they would like to search or filter by tags.

      It might improve UX when applying tags, but might have undesirable side effects in user behavior.

      I can think of three places this might be implemented, and I don't know which, if any, we want:

      When filtering topics by tags:

      • informs users how large or small their scope is
      • this view should probably be kept somewhat up to date

      When looking at a topic's tags:

      • informs users where to start searching/filtering
      • passively builds a frame of reference for how tags are used?
      • this view could be allowed to become outdated and stale without issue

      When applying tags

      • a more common tag might be less accurate, but it might be more helpful?
      • in the auto fill issue weight by frequency was proposed, which is somewhat similar but more opaque
      • this should probably use pretty recent counts as well
      17 votes
    41. Suggestion: New tag for "Evergreen" posts

      Tildes has a lot of threads that are not time dependant, be they asks, surveys, recommendations and hypotheticals. Should we make an effort to give these posts an evergreen tag, and maybe even...

      Tildes has a lot of threads that are not time dependant, be they asks, surveys, recommendations and hypotheticals. Should we make an effort to give these posts an evergreen tag, and maybe even auto bump them back into circulation after a few years?

      6 votes
    42. Sort by length

      Tildes has a great function that adds the word count of a link or text post to its submission. The suggestion is this: allow the user to sort posts by length. The reason is that sometimes I wanna...

      Tildes has a great function that adds the word count of a link or text post to its submission. The suggestion is this: allow the user to sort posts by length. The reason is that sometimes I wanna read something short, and sometimes I wanna read something long. It would be great to be able to easily find articles in the length I'm up for at a given moment.

      Works for YouTube too.

      9 votes