I'm new to Tildes, but I've been using Markdown-based comment systems
for more than a decade: both Reddit and GitHub. My programming blog has
been written in Markdown for the past 8 years. Overall I've probably
written several novels worth of content in Markdown in my life.

I've already noticed that Tildes has made a serious mistake in its
handling of line endings: All line endings are treated as hard line
breaks. This diverges from CommonMark and most uses of Markdown in
practice. If I wanted a hard line break, I'd put two spaces at the end
of the line, as specified by both CommonMark and the original Markdown.
Line endings should be otherwise be soft.

GitHub made the same mistake with its "GitHub-flavored Markdown," though
fortunately this mistake has been limited to issues. GitHub README.md
files don't have this behavior, nor does GitHub Pages. It the only other
Markdown system I've used with this flaw.

Why does this matter? If I'm writing more than a single sentence, I
never edit my comment inside my web browser. I edit it using my text
editor of choice, Vim, since it's far more comfortable. I don't even
have to copy-paste the text between applications. Instead, I have an
add-on, Tridactyl, that does this seemlessly and effortlessly.

Hard line endings just don't work well with long prose — exactly the
type of content that Tildes is encouraging — particularly when edited in
a proper text editor that knows about paragraphs and can do its own line
wrapping. Editing long lines is annoying and takes extra care. That's
why we have soft line endings after all.

I'm leaving all my line endings in this post so that you can see the
mess Tildes makes with it, with the ragged right-hand side due to font
differences. If I had written this in nearly any other Markdown system,
the text would have flowed into the page without issues. It is a mistake
for Tildes to do differently. This sort of compatibility issue is
probably going to be annoying enough to keep me off the site.

Many websites like hacker news, lobsters and stack exchange put an indicator next to usernames to show that the user is new. This lets regular users know that this user may need some help fitting in and following the rules.

What does everyone think about such a feature on tildes?

Hey everyone!

I'm pretty new here, and I'm already enjoying this place, but I was wondering when there will be a group to post photos. I take photos and I'm sure some of you do as well, and I thought it would be cool to be able to share the photos we take and get honest feedback on them like we have honest discussions in the news articles, share tips and tricks, and generally have another way to connect.

I know generally photos are kind of taboo, as places like instagram have kind of ruined it and turned every single person with a camera on their phone into a photographer, so I get it if you have reservations. I have some myself, but I still want to take the chance.

Idk, I thought it would be cool. If not, then whatever, I ain't picky about this place I enjoy it very much.

It's friggin amazing.

Who knew that keeping a site clean of ads, trackers, and all kinds of other garbage could make the internet feel fast again? Tildes is not only a place for great discussion, but it's a site that doesn't get in the way of its content and I love it for that.

Sorry if this isn't "interesting, informative, or have the potential to start a good discussion".

Thank you @Deimos for creating such an amazing site! I'm not in a position to donate at this point, but I see it in the future.

I've seen a number of topics that have had unrelated comments regarding Tildes as a whole and the direction in which we'd like to steer it toward. While I realize much of these sidebar conversations have been occurring naturally and very frequently in well-nested comments, I wonder if it isn't going to become distracting to some going forward.

On one hand, I have enjoyed passively gaining insight into the vision of Tildes. On the other, I can see how we might want to start setting examples on the type of organization and behavior we'd want from users as the site grows. If new users who are joining after Tildes goes public see a regular occurrence of off-topic conversation, they might fall into bad habits and it may take root and grow.

What are your thoughts? Maybe start creating new topics in ~tildes and tag users along with quotes from outside threads so that there's still a reference point to start discussion from?

Are we able to filter things like music and anime by simply adding those keywords to the filter?

I tried adding the tilde in front and that didn’t work either.

Is this operator error or perhaps a good place for me to learn some pyramid and make a PR?

It's somewhat of an unspoken rule on Reddit that replying to a comment that's more than a day old is a faux pas. The conversation naturally settles within that period – or, less often, within two days. After that, the only appropriate thing is to either reference the conversation, or quote parts of the comments in relation to a similar issue in another post.

On Hubski, conversations could go on for days. It's explicitly stated in the guidelines that it's completely okay to reply to a comment of any age. I've never seen a year-old "revival" do any good, but the fact that it isn't prohibited or frowned upon adds no burden to the user.

How does Tildes handle this? Is there an unwritten rule already? Should there be a written one? What would be the factors?

Today's Feb 13. I've found a post from Feb 2 that was on a subject of interest of mine, where comments were insightful, but I feel like not all questions that need to be asked have been. Surely I won't go about creating another topic just to revive the conversation against only my own commentary to show for it.

There's also the matter of important, (semi)official topics on Tildes. Suppose a new issue arises that concerns an earlier public discussion held, say, half a year ago. It's a minor issue, but one that requires a discussion to settle. Does one comment on the old official topic, or does one create a new topic for this purpose?

Freshly minted user here, so here is a bit of feedback from the first hour of using ~s.

#1

Having topic-info line below the topic-text-excerpt block creates some usability friction, because if the the excerpt is large-ish, then the "xx comments" link is pushed way down, sometimes below the fold.

https://imgur.com/FUwKHo7.jpg

This is an issue (at least for me) because it interferes with efficient selection of topics to read.

You spot a promising topic, you open excerpt, skim through the top part, if it still shows promise, use the "xx comments" link to open it in.

Key point is that I would very rarely read the whole excerpt before deciding to see the comments. However with existing layout the "xx comments" link sits at the very bottom of the excerpt, requiring scrolling down, correcting for an over-shoot (if the link was below the fold) and then zeroing in on the link.

In comparison, if the link were to stay above the excerpt, it will be within few pixels from where my mouse is after clicking on the "open excerpt" triangle.

#2

If this were my site, I would probably just swapped topic-meta with topic-info, like so - https://imgur.com/fJ3tKxc.jpg.

The rationale here is that meta carries information that is less important and less frequently used/needed that topic-info. I know that I would be more interested in the comment count and the topic age than in tags.

#3

The topic-text-excerpt font size is too big. The index is nice, compact and has a very light feel to it. Then you click to expand the excerpt and it's like - WOAH, HERE'S SOME TEXT FOR YOU.

While browsing through the Tildes documentation, I stumbled across this in the Technical Goals section:

Tildes is a website. Your phone already has an app for using it—it's your browser.

Tildes will have a full-featured API, so I definitely don't want to discourage mobile apps overall, but the primary interface for using the site on mobile should remain as the website. That means that mobile users will get access to updates at exactly the same time as desktop ones, and full functionality should always be available on both.

This got me thinking. Despite Tildes preferring mobile browsers over an app, is there still a chance for one? I usually avoid using websites on mobile unless I must, as mobile websites generally don't have the full functionality of the website. Labelling comments 'Exemplary' and 'Malice' on mobile is an example of what doesn't work (there's more), and it's usually very unresponsive for some of the things that still do work. Also, there aren't any notifications on mobile websites and some people, me included, have cumbersome browsers that make the feel of using the website slow and laborious.

Another thing is, if the app has no chance of happening, could Tildes get desktop notifications? I usually like to respond to replies to my topics and comments as quickly as possible and I'm not a fan of the whole 'constant login to check my notifications' thing. Email notifications aren't possible because of Tildes' privacy belief.

I know that tildes is still a small community (sub 9k) but I find the number of groups too restrictive. I am mainly a redditor so I am used to subscribing to many subs, most of which are not "main" subs.

For example, shouldn't there be a group for "countries", so one could post in countries.germany or countries.finland in the future? Also, how come there is no videos? I can understand the reasoning that a video is (almost) always about a given subject but where should I post, for example, a video of "ASMR"? Should it go to health? Should chess posts go to "games" or "sports"?

I find this idea of groups a bit too comfusing, perhaps because I am used to subreddits..

Maybe it is not a bad idea to create some kind of map, with an handy link in the site, so one knows in which group one should post a certain something.

One of the issues I had with HackerNews was that the front page was dominated by articles from major publications that imo were often written by journalists out of their depth. I think having a filter by domain feature would help users avoid certain publications that they know they won't enjoy reading.

Now that user profiles have history, it would also be useful, like Hacker News and Reddit, to have a short plain-text bio blurb that users can optionally fill out.

It'd be great to let users provide some context about themselves.

What do you folks think?

Hi, I just joined an hour ago or so.
So far so good, site seems a welcome change as opposed to other certain content aggregators.

I'm just wondering what the userbase is like: what's your age group(not too specific if you want), occupation(again, vague is okay), continent of origin and gender? What draws you to this website as opposed to other social media? Do you expect Tildes to gain traction and grow to become a worthy Reddit(or other aggregator) competitor/successor?
Just to get a taste of the crowd and what kind of people we'll find here.

I'm in my 20's, currently studying engineering and living in western Europe. Applied to this website following a comment I saw that described the Tildes system compared to Reddit; seemed like a nice change on the clickbaity and sometimes not as fun-content on that website. Hoping this ends up a good place for discussion / quality content / fun chats, and also hope it can help me detox from social media by purposefully using a less active site(for now, of course).

_{Small note: while the site is closed right now, it might be opened up later, which means this post might be visible to the internet whole. Please keep your personal info in mind and only share what you want others(including crawlers/scrapers) to know.}

My password is shorter than 8 characters. When I attempt to log in, I get a validation error telling me so.

Luckily, I'm signed in already on this browser. However, when I go to the change password page and attempt to make my password longer, I get a validation error telling me my old password is shorter than 8 characters, and it prevents submitting the form.

I browse my front page on Tildes, and I see an item I'm interested in. I also notice that it has comments. I think "I'd like to read that article, and then look at the discussion about it."

To open the link and read the article is one click, on the title. Then, after I've read the article, I have to go back to my front page, find the item again, and click on 'X comments'. This doesn't work if I'm scrolling through the front page and selecting a few items to read later.

Alternatively, I can click on 'X comments' for each item, and then go to each post's comments page and click on the URL to read the article.

Either way, it's two clicks and a bit of extra navigation.

Could there be a way to click on an item and open the article and the comments page simultaneously?

This is, of course, all anecdotal.

Spiteful downvotes are a common occurrence on Reddit. Sometimes I'm arguing in a deeply nested thread with a single person, and every one of my responses receives an immediate combo of reply and downvote. It's clear that the person arguing with me is the one making the downvotes, which doesn't seem fair. That's not an indication of my contribution to the debate, they just wanna "win".

In other occasions, when I go against the hive-mind, subjective interpretations of my phrasing renders a torrent of downvotes. I'm not talking about active belligerence on my part, but subtle differences that indicate minor defiance to the norm.

Upvoting seems less toxic. Some subs can use it to brigade /r/all, but that's easily addressable by the admins (I'm not saying they do). While downvotes can easily go unnoticed, upvotes are public by nature, they attract lots of attention, so if something vicious is upvoted the backlash it receives is frequently enough to put the author in their right place.

Tildes lack of downvotes is liberating. Not that I have the urge to post controversial stuff, but the lack of an easy "fuck you button" makes it possible for me to speak with nuance. I'm more preoccupied with what I wanna say than with the 300 implicit rules [1] I must follow to avoid being buried for offending the intricate biases of every sub.

And before this gets political, please notice that I never post on those subs. I'm speaking of "silly" places like /r/aww, /r/DunderMifflin/, /r/howyoudoin and /r/programmerHumor/.

So yeah: thank you, Tildes!

[1] I have no trouble following explicit ones.

There's one HN custom I really adore, and it's the random, interesting wikipedia articles that are posted and sometimes upvoted to the front page. cf: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org

This curated discovery of some obscure facets of humanity. Picking random articles from that list, for example, on the game Nomic; the Pineapple Express term in meteorology; or the British plan to build an aircraft carrier out of pykrete, which in case you didn't know is a mixture of paper and ice.

I was planning to try to help kickstart this here by posting articles with a special tag but I'd actually like to get people's thoughts on this, and if it's something others are interested in, suggest adding a ~wikipedia tildes to encourage this here more officially.

I don't think Tildes have or should have an official position on that, but I'd like to know what other Tilda Swintons™ think about the subject. Do you think the use of profanity cusswords is in accordance with the implicit behaviors we've established so far? Is there any advantage in trying to "keep it clean" site-wide?

I'm using Safari 12.0.2 on macOS 10.14.2 (Mojave). The same issue also occurs on iOS 12.1.2 (using Safari).

When using 1Password to autofill with the browser extension on macOS or the "autofill" feature on iOS an error message pops up: username: String does not match expected pattern.

I have to either use the browser supplied autofill on macOS or manually copy/paste username and password into the corresponding fields. On iOS there's an autofill API which I have set to use 1Password in the browser, also causing the error

Edit: Video of the issue

I have the "mark new comments" option enabled. Most of the time, it works, displaying "(X new)" under any topics which have had new comments posted since I last looked at it.

However, if the topic is old enough, this "(X new)" notification does not display. The topic is sorted to the top of my feed, because I'm using activity from all-time as my default sort. But it doesn't show "(X new)". I know it has new comments, or it wouldn't jump to the top of my feed, but I'm not seeing that notification.

I don't know how old is "old enough" but it's definitely longer than a month. The topics this is happening to are 3 or 6 months old, but it doesn't seem to happen for topics which are only a few weeks old.

Hi, finally got the chance to join tildes. I am loving it so far but there is just one small suggestion.
When I am on mobile and on a particular group, for eg ~music and want to switch to ~books, I have to go back to the main page to access the list from the sidebar.

I know, I know, I could just type in the url but wouldn't it be better if there was some way to access the group list from any page for easier navigation. Perhaps adding it in the existing sidebar or a separate sidebar on the left side.

What are people's thoughts on ads? I feel that if they are implemented in the right way they can be very unobtrusive and not take away from the viewing experience. If they can help fund the project down the road I would personally not be against them.

Currently, we can filter posts based on topic tags, is there any chance we could get the same based upon users? Preferably for comments and topics. There are times when I might be interested in a sub-tilde group, but for one reason or another, not a specific user's content in that group. Is this a bad idea?

I'm left handed and having to reach the right side of the screen is pretty annoying when browsing one handed on mobile. I know this seems like a silly issue(and it very much is) but I'd be very grateful if someone could help

Firstly - thanks for the invite, looks like a good place!

I signed up and read some posts, alt tabbed to other sites, came back and went to post a reply but got an error https://i.imgur.com/Fz1MXtd.png

I opened a new tab and logged in and could post ok, but it didnt feel like that long from when I logged in to when it timed out on me.

I am new to Tildes so please forgive me if this has been discussed in the past but it seems to me ~tildes has a fair amount of people interested in the psychological processes and dynamics of communities as it related to feature ideas for Tildes.

Perhaps it would be interesting to have a place to discuss these sort of effects in online communities (social media sites, forums, multiplayer games, social platforms like Seconds Life, IRC,...) and offline communities in a broader context, not just limited to its immediate effects on Tildes itself.

Just a few minutes ago I moved this topic from ~creative to ~music, but almost immediately began second guessing my decision. I'm not exactly sure where that belongs, because it's music, but it is creative/the OP's original song. What do you think? Is ~creative more for crafts, IE woodworking and the likes, or anything creative done by the OP? Similarly, I can think of more examples for this, such as if someone wants to show off their Raspberry Pi project, do they put it in ~comp or ~creative? Where does it belong?

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if I'm just now noticing something that has always been that way, or if something has actually changed.

Post tags aren't clickable on the main page, or on any group page. I can click on tags inside a topic, but I can't click on tags on the main page.

I feel like I used to be able to do this. I'm pretty sure I must have been able to do this, because I've done some work in the past making tags consistent, and that's how I obtained lists of posts with certain tags.

Has something changed? Or am I imagining things?

Just a few hours ago I was thinking about how much I miss parent links from Hacker News, and now I see that they have suddenly appeared on user pages and in topics. Did Deimos just roll out an update, or have I been blind this whole time?

By default, no links are underlined in the Tildes interface, as far as I observed. I suggest that we underline the links that are in topic texts and comments. It is a nice visual clue in prose, and allows to distinguish between two consecutive links. Currently I'm using the following snippet in a userscript to achieve that:

// Underline links in prose.
document.querySelectorAll(".comment-text a, .topic-text-full a").forEach(
  function (elem) { elem.style="text-decoration: underline;"; });

The rest of the links function like buttons, so it's not that important (or even unnecessary) that they be underlined. What do you think?

I'm curious about joining mastodon but I spent a while looking through the LGBTQ and developer sections and I don't really see a server that appeals to me. Do a lot of people here use it, any suggestions for getting started?

I have to say I love the required little message that comes with the label. It actually gives an idea why it was added. Thing is, I've received a couple of Exemplary tags that either addressed me directly, or where I would have loved to know who wrote the message.

Would making them optionally-anonymous instead of always-anonymous be interesting to anyone? I certainly don't mind if people know who it is when I assign it.

Well, I know that I'm just stating the obvious, but I love Tildes for a few reasons. Right now, however, I'd like to discuss one thing: text posts can become popular. "But Sans, they could on reddit too!" Text-only subs notwithstanding, not really. Find any fandom subreddit or r/games, and you'll find a bunch of memes. They're the only thing anyone likes. Here, however, one can actually ask insightful questions in text posts, and it is visible. People like it. They upvote it. On Reddit, that doesn't happen. Nobody upvotes text posts. Just my two cents.

thank you for coming to my ted talk