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  • Showing only topics in ~tildes with the tag "ask.discussion". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Seems like all socials are being scraped for AI and personal/aggregate data. Is Tildes?

      I was just reminded of that again when going back and looking at some of my old posts on reddit which is openly selling online data. Prompted me to use Redact which erases and overwrites comments...

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

      34 votes
    2. Why is the discourse on Tildes so much nicer than most places on the internet?

      I've noticed that Tildes generally has a way more levelheaded and even friendly caliber of responses compared to many other social media sites that I've seen. I'm genuinely curious as to why this...

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

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

      66 votes
    3. Is the vote button an agree button?

      This is specifically about voting on comments, and not articles. I think voting for topics is clear and intuitive. I've noticed that, while reading users' comments on topics, I have a tendency to...

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

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

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

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

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

      How do you decide to vote on a comment?

      How should we collectively be using the vote for comments?

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

      47 votes
    4. Tildes is the RSS of social media, what gives?

      I've really been enjoying Tildes since I joined. The community are friendly, I've posted similar to how I would post in other unnamed social sites with top/OP being serious and long form, and...

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

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

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

      Is it just me?

      68 votes
    5. How is moderation going lately?

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

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

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

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

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

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

      62 votes
    6. Meta-discussion about the "Regional news thread" and possible future attempts

      About this one: https://tildes.net/~news/19bm/regional_news_thread First of all I want to thank everyone who participated and gave it a shot despite the weird setup, and apologize for ghosting the...

      About this one: https://tildes.net/~news/19bm/regional_news_thread

      First of all I want to thank everyone who participated and gave it a shot despite the weird setup, and apologize for ghosting the meta-discussion about it. Y'all have many suggestions which convinced me that my original idea was flawed.

      For one, I agree with Algernon_Asimov that splitting into a separate 'US-local news' and 'non-US global news' would have made more sense. If there's a next round, I think I'd focus on US states first, then non-US countries in another thread. But before that I want to get some feedback to make sure.

      Do you think general news threads like that are necessary?

      Algernon_Asimov said that news should just be posted directly to the frontpage to be more visible.

      spit-evil-olive-tips made a point about the distinction between local news of general interests vs. local news of local interests, and the latter could benefit from having dedicated threads.

      For me, I believe megathreads are fine as long as they're optional. In my experience, people do sometimes prefer to post in comments instead of as full topics. As long as people are free to choose either way (which is different than on Reddit where if there's a megathread then posts outside it got removed), overall we should end up with more activity not less.

      Does the comment-to-comment format make sense?

      In my head I imagine that to be a natural way to generate location-based grouping, but I could see the convoluted setup might be confusing and unenforceable. One the one hand, if each location only has 1 post then the extra step is unnecessary. On the other hand, if there are multiple locations, each with multiple posts then trying to find your regions of interest would be a pain.

      Is the scope of the thread too broad?

      This was a point made by skybrian here, which was in the context of the original thread being both US and non-US. But even if we divided them into separate US and non-US, are they still too broad?

      Having one thread for each location is probably the most natural way, I fear that currently that would ended up being too niche. This was touched on by merry-cherry here as well. I could imagine that would work for a US state (which ever has the most people here) but since no one tried it yet, it's hard to know which states are most likely to succeed. And we probably shouldn't just make one each for all them (which would fill the entire frontpage with nothing but state names).

      Should these threads be news-focused?

      While that was my original goal, maybe megathreads could be more useful if they fills the needs of the people posting in it rather than just the one starting it. Usually that requires guesswork by the poster but since I'm already asking, might as well.

      For the US-local thread, if the goal is to serve as testing grounds to see whether there's enough activity to make the case for local groups, maybe news is not necessarily the most popular when it comes to local content? If anyone support this direction, please share some examples of what types of content you'd like the most when visiting local groups. If you do, please also rank them in order of importance. That way the scope of the thread could be made to focus on the most needed activity as starter.

      For the non-US global thread, do you still want dedicated global news? If so how should we set it apart from just regular posting? boxer_dogs_dance mentioned r/anime_titties being quite high quality for global news, any lessons we can adopt from them?

      Digging around and I found this post asking about how to do cultural exchange on Tildes, maybe shifting the focus from global news to this might be more fruitful? (people are probably more willing to share nice things about their country than drama). Each subthread can be something like this Turkey Information Thread, or something else maybe.

      Should they be recurring?

      News probably make sense as recurring, others depend. Since this is still in trial whatever arrangement we agree on, I'll probably just make one and see from there.


      Anything else you want to let me know (like maybe don't do this anymore haha), shoot away. Also it's not like I'm an official thread maker or anything, if any of y'all have your own take, go for it! The more people trying out stuff the better.

      31 votes
    7. Posting links to articles without contributing to a conversation about it?

      I don’t know if it’s just me but I feel like there is a lot of people posting news articles and then radio silence and it’s been rubbing me the wrong way. It feels like someone throwing a...

      I don’t know if it’s just me but I feel like there is a lot of people posting news articles and then radio silence and it’s been rubbing me the wrong way. It feels like someone throwing a newspaper through my window and not owning up to it.
      Again maybe it’s just me but I feel like you should have to contribute a bit about why you decided to share the link at least. Get the ball rolling on a conversation.
      Sharing information and staying informed is important but a more human touch would go a long way to making this site feel less like bots talking to other bots.
      All opinions welcome of course.

      74 votes
    8. How has the Reddit drama affected the quality of conversations on here?

      I think we all know how redditors can be negative nancies looking for the next user to argue with, so I'm curious to know from the peeps that were here before the redditors: has the quality of...

      I think we all know how redditors can be negative nancies looking for the next user to argue with, so I'm curious to know from the peeps that were here before the redditors: has the quality of conversation and sense of community changed (either positively or negatively) since us redditors showed up?

      80 votes
    9. What happens if Deimos can't host the site anymore?

      I'm sorry if this was already answered in the docs somewhere but similarly to the question "What happens to my Steam games when Valve goes out of business?" I was wondering what happens to Tildes...

      I'm sorry if this was already answered in the docs somewhere but similarly to the question "What happens to my Steam games when Valve goes out of business?" I was wondering what happens to Tildes if Deimos can't sustain it anymore for whatever reason (e.g. death, prison, going off the grid and starting from scratch in Ecuador...)?

      Is there some kind of backup plan in place?

      79 votes
    10. Should Twitter links be banned?

      Or at the very least, should there be a requirement to have users take screenshots of Twitter content if they want to link to it? It feels a little backwards to have to make an account for another...

      Or at the very least, should there be a requirement to have users take screenshots of Twitter content if they want to link to it? It feels a little backwards to have to make an account for another website in order to consume certain content on this site.

      104 votes
    11. Tildes constitution

      Looking at the current top thread in ~talk, it seems many of us were forged in the fires of Mount Digg, and now suffer again through the great Reddit diaspora. Perhaps it is here our journey ends?...

      Looking at the current top thread in ~talk, it seems many of us were forged in the fires of Mount Digg, and now suffer again through the great Reddit diaspora. Perhaps it is here our journey ends?

      I am not from the US of A, but one thing I have always found fascinating about that country is the concept of the constitution. I believe it was so incredibly well conceived, the three legged stool, with all the thought that went into how it might be attacked and edge cases, that the founding fathers would have made excellent software testers. The fact American democracy has stood this long is some feat.

      Which brings me to my question. Should Tildes create some form of constitution? A set of principles that binds and guides it? I believe something like that would make questions like this easier to answer. A founding set of ideals from which everything else should derive.

      We have something akin to this at my company, where the founding principle is the customer is always our main priority. This has served our business well for decades; is everything we do in service of the customer and their needs. You would honestly be amazed at the loyalty and trust this builds over time.

      Anyway just some food for thought. I think I will be calling this my new home for now - it feels very much like the Reddit of old right now, a feeling I haven't felt for a great age.

      17 votes
    12. How do Tildes users feel about an OP that takes part in their own thread?

      Bit of an odd question but one I'm becoming a little self conscious of. I posted a thread earlier today on ~LGBT asking people to share their experiences of coming out. Because it's a somewhat...

      Bit of an odd question but one I'm becoming a little self conscious of.

      I posted a thread earlier today on ~LGBT asking people to share their experiences of coming out. Because it's a somewhat sensitive topic and sharing your experiences can be a little vulnerable I've been taking part and interacting with everyone who's shared their experience.

      Im being sure to try and actually contribute, bring my perspective and continue the conversation, and importantly thank people for being open about something that can be difficult.

      My problem is that I worry that this is a habit I'm bringing over from Reddit that's perhaps not suitable for Tildes, but I'm not sure?

      I generally see it as a good thing when an OP takes active part in a discussion they started, but maybe it's more of a hindrance here?

      I'm not sure how I feel, and I'd like to get the opinions of other regular users on what would be appropriate?

      Edit: I should specify and make it clear in my case I'm talking about actively replying to most or all top level comments. Not necessarily replies but still a fair number. I worry about crossing a line into just contributing to noise.

      45 votes
    13. Prevalence of AI generated text in Tildes

      I've recently noticed that some particular users, who post/comment quite often, frequently contribute with high quality content across an impressive spectrum of themes. These posts/comments...

      I've recently noticed that some particular users, who post/comment quite often, frequently contribute with high quality content across an impressive spectrum of themes. These posts/comments usually go into great detail, an approach suitable of a "semi-expert", that honestly baffles me.

      This lead me to think that Tildes users might be using AI language models to aid in the writing of their posts/comments. This possibility is quite disheartening since I found Tildes to be an extraordinarily engaging community, with a distinct human element that I haven't seen in other bigger forums. The possibility of a significant portion of Tildes content being generated by AI makes this sentiment a mere illusion.

      So here are my questions:

      1. Is there any reasonable way of determining which posts were written with the aid of AI?
      2. Is the Tildes community okay with the content being generated partly, or entirely, by AI?

      Please forgive me if I'm being a cynic, I've spent too much time in forums with significantly lower quality content than Tildes.


      Edit 1: Just wanted to cite this paper to somehow justify my uneasiness when it comes to writing texts with AI in command. As I've commented below, LLMs might get in the way of learning the person's true idea/opinion.


      Edit 2: As I've said in the comments below, I had no intention of accusing any particular user with this post. Clearly, I've failed to convey my intent so I'll try to clarify my original idea a bit more:

      Because I'm new to Tildes and haven't got any other forum experience besides Reddit, I was amazed with how much and how fast some users post extremely high quality content, since this was certainly not the norm in Reddit. As with many other online platforms, spammers armed with AI can be a difficult problem to deal with, so I've made this post with the intent of starting a discussion about this matter and to understand the Tildes community stance. My relatively negative view of the use of AI is due in part to my experience with such spammers in the past. Forgive me if I've assumed the worst...

      From the little time I've spent in Tildes, I'm quite sure the community grew to know each other and I'm hopeful that my post will not cause undue witch hunts. And I've also learned that because people got to know each user's stylistic voice, it's fairly easy to spot a possible AI spammer.

      Thank you for the insightful discussion so far !

      62 votes
    14. SEO for niche topics

      Hi All, As yet another reddit transplant (YART) I've been watching the drama on that other platform and reflecting on what the most important aspects of successful online discussions are for me....

      Hi All,

      As yet another reddit transplant (YART) I've been watching the drama on that other platform and reflecting on what the most important aspects of successful online discussions are for me.

      One of the things that I value(d) most about reddit was the ability to use the keyword reddit in DuckDuckGo or Google searches to help me find more relevant and helpful content about a variety of niche subjects. So far, it seems to me like Tildes has some potential to fill this role based on its emphasis of thoughtful text content. Also, these types of searches add credibility to a site when random internet browsers stumble across a thread discussing their exact question.

      One thought that I had along these lines was that people who care about this type of thing could make a concerted effort to transport content from reddit and other sites to be shared here. I don't think it would be appropriate to just copy and paste text without adding at least a bit of original thoughts or context. However, I often find myself researching niche products or ideas to such an extent that I could write up a nice summary of all my findings. A post like that could be a nice crash course to others or a fun way to introduce people to ideas they didn't know about.

      Would people here be interested in consciously doing this type of thing? We could all make nice amalgamations of information we think is important as we independently research topics and post them here to boost discussion and boost Tildes threads in web search results.

      18 votes
    15. Handling text reposts (recurring subjects)

      While browsing over the past little while I have noticed that I starting to see "text reposts". I did a quick search and saw that link reposts have been discussed in the past, but I didn't come...

      While browsing over the past little while I have noticed that I starting to see "text reposts".
      I did a quick search and saw that link reposts have been discussed in the past, but I didn't come across something in relation to text posts.

      To make it a bit more clear what I mean, a recent example:

      Generally speaking I don't mind reposts, certainly with "ask" topics new insights can be gained over time and different people might give different answers. At the same time I do think that the landscape around note taking software hasn't drastically changed in a week.

      To be clear, I am not saying that the OP of the most recent topic did anything wrong either. Even if you remember to check if a question has been asked before (I ironically almost forgot myself in this case) you might not find it.

      But I am wondering if more could be done to surface previous discussions. Not to specifically prevent these sorts of reposts but also to surface potentially valuable information of previous discussions.

      Something that does come to mind is having a mechanism that uses the title someone is typing as (part of) a search query in the same space. Matching topics could then be shown before submission.

      Or if we care more about making previous discussions accessible give the OP after submission the option to also link to previous topics around the subject. Interlinked topics is something that would be interesting to explore, basically borrowing from the "other discussions" tab idea but make it "similar discussions".

      I'm curious to see what others think about it.

      16 votes
    16. 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
    17. 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
    18. Why doesn't Tildes display a user's social score or karma on their profile page?

      I've noticed that tildes is somewhat different than other social networks in that it doesn't display a user's karma, neither on profile page or on the handle. On other networks, you'll always see...

      I've noticed that tildes is somewhat different than other social networks in that it doesn't display a user's karma, neither on profile page or on the handle. On other networks, you'll always see something like pyeri [100] at almost every place where pyeri posts.

      Is there any thought process behind this design decision? Do you think judging users by their social score might lead to "class conflicts" of sorts which might erupt in flame wars or something? Or do you think high karma will reach their heads and make them more narcissistic while a lower score will make them prone to imposter syndrome!

      But on the flip side, this karma score acts as a kind of street cred indicator. What the community thinks about a particular user is public and known to the community in the natural and organic course of content creation which is quite desirable.

      34 votes
    19. 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
    20. Are "Ask" posts stifling the visibility of link posts on Tildes?

      Disclaimer: This is just an observation of changing dynamics on Tildes! I don't mean to suggest any sort of way that Tildes should or shouldn't be. I've noticed over the past few days that the...

      Disclaimer: This is just an observation of changing dynamics on Tildes! I don't mean to suggest any sort of way that Tildes should or shouldn't be.

      I've noticed over the past few days that the Tildes front page has become filled with Ask posts. My best guess as to why is that these posts are the easiest to create and respond to? They're an easy way to spark discussion, generating lots of bumps back to the front page.

      Now, I love seeing folks connect over all these niche topics and experiences. It feels like folks here are finding their people after losing the tight knit communities they had on Reddit, and that's lovely! In fact, it almost feels like these niche ask posts are acting as an impromptu replacement for the niche groups that Tildes currently lacks.

      But, one consequence of this is that link posts get quickly pushed off the front page. I had noticed that link posts often struggled to generate discussion, even before the influx of new users. Longread articles and video essays take time to digest, and time to formulate opinions on. But now, I think this effect is compounded by the popularity of Ask threads, with fewer eyes dedicated to these links after they've left the front page.

      Some closing questions:

      • Have other users noticed this? How do you feel about this shift?
      • Is there any merit to having a group dedicated to ask posts? Sort of like /r/AskReddit, but for Tildes? (That way, the posts can be easily filtered if a user wants to only see link posts.) EDIT: Filtering is possible already by filtering out the 'self post' tag, as suggested by @streblo.
      • Should the visibility of link posts and ask posts on the front page be artificially balanced in some way?
      42 votes
    21. Tildes and identity politics

      As a new Tildes user, one of the biggest cultural differences I've noticed between Tildes and Reddit is the lack of identity-driven argumentative discussion. Instead, discussion is driven by...

      As a new Tildes user, one of the biggest cultural differences I've noticed between Tildes and Reddit is the lack of identity-driven argumentative discussion. Instead, discussion is driven by interests, knowledge seeking, and personal expression.

      Identity politics is an umbrella term
      that encompasses identity groups both laudable and vitriolic. For example, it includes civil rights, gay rights, disability activism, fat acceptance, white supremacy, and nationalism. (wiki)

      It's my opinion that you can't have a rational, cooperative discussion until you set aside identity groups, and I like this aspect of the Tildes culture. I don't want to jinx it, but I believe the lack of identity politics is what people mean when they say they enjoy the high quality, non-divisive discourse here.

      It's worth noting my subs of choice on Reddit were /r/samharris and /r/stupidpol. The former encouraged objective, rational discussion. The latter had lots of news that cut though the identity politics of the mainstream (though with a Marxist bent).

      I would love to hear the thoughts of the older Tildes users before the most recent Reddit exodus (from where I come).

      34 votes
    22. Does Tildes *want* Reddit 'refugees'?

      The Reddit company is screwing up and upsetting a lot of their "power users" and mods. A lot of people are fed up with Reddit, and are possibly ready to move on to a new platform. Is Tildes that...

      The Reddit company is screwing up and upsetting a lot of their "power users" and mods. A lot of people are fed up with Reddit, and are possibly ready to move on to a new platform.

      Is Tildes that platform? I've lurked here for most of Tildes' life, and from that, my impression is that Tildes does not especially want to replace Reddit. A lot of people here like the small, intimate atmosphere. I've even noticed a bit of derision toward Reddit's lowbrow appeal.

      The reason I ask is because there are communities on Reddit that I don't want to see die. /r/Permaculture and /r/composting are some of my favorite places. I've gotten to know quite a few people who also frequent those places and I've come to enjoy the tone of conversations there.

      But this seems like an important question for Tildes to answer not just for my sake. Reddit is full of niche communities like this. If they have to go somewhere suddenly (and I realize that this is a big "if"), where do they go? I know that they technically can't come here suddenly--slowing growth is one of Tildes' features. But if Reddit's niche communities decided to move here, would you welcome them? I'm interested in what you, personally, think, as well as how you think Tildes as a whole would handle this.

      P.S. I'm also sorta asking for permission to invite /r/Permaculture and /r/composting over here. I like this website, but I'm just a lurker, and don't feel like I'm part of the Tildes community. It feels super presumptuous to invite my friends over here without asking. But I think the wider question is more important. Do you, and does Tildes, want Reddit's 'refugee' niche interest communities?

      Edit: Thank you all for the excellent responses! I don't have time now to respond individually, but I really appreciate the thought so many of you have put into your replies. This will help a lot in considering how to proceed over on Reddit.

      148 votes
    23. Tildes down?

      Was tildes down a couple hours ago for anyone else? I wasn't able to access it, also verified it with isitdownrightnow

      25 votes
    24. What will prevent this site from becoming Reddit 2.0?

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

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

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

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

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

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

      15 votes
    25. Paywalls, and the difficulty of accurately tagging them

      The distinction between Hard and Soft paywalls used to be clear: Hard paywall sites only allowed paying subscribers to view their contents; Soft paywall sites typically used a metered approach...

      The distinction between Hard and Soft paywalls used to be clear:

      Hard paywall sites only allowed paying subscribers to view their contents;
      Soft paywall sites typically used a metered approach that limited non-subscribers to a certain number of free article views per month.

      This made tagging paywalled submission here on Tildes, as either paywall.hard or paywall.soft, pretty easy to do, and doing so provided tangible benefits. They let submitters know when to consider providing a summary of the article, or even mirror/alternative links, so non-subscribers weren't left out. It allowed users to easily avoid or filter-out hard paywall submissions entirely, if they so chose. And also indicated when a paywall was soft, and easier to get around (e.g. by clearing browser cache, or viewing in private-browsing mode), so the article could still be read.

      However in recent years the distinction between Hard and Soft paywalls has become increasingly blurry. And with all the new, constantly evolving, often opaque, paywall mechanics now in play, it has become more difficult to identify and keep track of what type of paywall a site has. E.g.

      Some sites have begun adding article sharing mechanics as a perk for their subscribers (NYT). Some with hard paywalls now allow certain articles of "public interest" to be viewed by everyone (Financial Times). Some still hard paywall their print articles but allow the rest to be viewed for free (Forbes). Some have hard paywalls for recent articles but older ones are free (Boston Globe). Some decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to paywall each individual article, based on editorial board decisions and other unspecified metrics (Business Insider). And apparently some now even switch from Soft to Hard paywalls depending on where in the world the traffic is coming from (WaPo?).

      And as a result of all this, accurately tagging paywalled articles here has become increasingly difficult too, especially since there is no easy way to update all previously applied tags on older articles when a site's paywall type changes.

      So, the question is, what should we do about this?
      Should we simply stop trying to distinguish between hard/soft paywalls in the tags?
      Should we add another "hybrid" category?
      Should we just do away with the paywall tag entirely?
      Or is there a better solution to this problem?

      p.s. I started a "Hard vs Soft Paywalls" wiki entry to try to keep track of all the paywall types, as well as the various new mechanics I have been able to identify, for the sites commonly submitted to Tildes.

      17 votes
    26. Not trying to make waves but why are articles posted to news that relate to lgbt moved?

      As a new member I am really hesitant to post this but I recently posted an article to ~news that was related to lgbt issues and it was moved to ~lgbt. I fully support a sub section devoted to lgbt...

      As a new member I am really hesitant to post this but I recently posted an article to ~news that was related to lgbt issues and it was moved to ~lgbt. I fully support a sub section devoted to lgbt but news should be news regardless.

      Just because it has an lgbt angle does not mean it should be moved. I'm not even lgbt myself but I find it sort of hurtful that a news article was pushed off ~news. So I ask this, and once again not trying to make waves. But why?

      Edit: I would love to be a member of this community as I am personally seeking a less asshole filled reddit alternative. But pushing a news article to another ~ just because it relates a bit more to them shouldn't be a thing. If you are tolerant it relates to us all. And yes I know I posted it in ~news because I was trying to participate and I'm a news junky.

      Sorry.

      Edit 2: This was a sad sorry way to come in to this community. I apologize.

      19 votes
    27. Much ado about title case

      I've noticed some people making a point of editing titles on articles to either impose or undo title case on articles. I dug around a bit and haven't been able to find any style guide suggestions...

      I've noticed some people making a point of editing titles on articles to either impose or undo title case on articles. I dug around a bit and haven't been able to find any style guide suggestions on the matter.

      Barring some kind of official stylistic standards being laid down, that I'd like to respectfully request that curator roles refrain from overruling a submitter's formatting choices without good reason.

      26 votes
    28. How do you think we should deal with multiple videos on the same topic?

      So what I'm talking about is stuff like this 10-video playlist or this 3 video playlist (Emp never actually made it a playlist unfortunately). So how should we deal with multiple videos from the...

      So what I'm talking about is stuff like this 10-video playlist or this 3 video playlist (Emp never actually made it a playlist unfortunately).

      So how should we deal with multiple videos from the same person on the same subject?

      Should the ability to make 10 link posts and wrap them under a single topic so people can comment on each video individually be a new feature (and if so should we be able to upvote the whole thing or each link individually?)

      Should we upload a playlist of all the videos like this?

      Should we make a text post with all the video links, like this but with videos instead of chapters?

      Or should we do something else?

      5 votes
    29. Should we talk about voting again?

      Based on replies to this comment there seems to be a decent amount of interest around the topic of reworking voting, so I thought I would start a thread to get some more input. We already had...

      Based on replies to this comment there seems to be a decent amount of interest around the topic of reworking voting, so I thought I would start a thread to get some more input. We already had similar discussions about a year ago but it looks like some people's opinions may have shifted somewhat? and as was noted in the comment thread, 1 week wasn't really enough to accurately assess the value of something like making vote counts invisible.

      Things to consider:

      • Do you think how voting works changes your/other's behavior on this site? and if it does, is this change positive or negative?
      • Would you support reworking/modifying voting? If so, how?
      • How long should we test said modifications if they are made?
      • anything else you consider relevant
      21 votes
    30. Musings on Tildes' topic wikis and resources

      TL;DR: I did not know each individual group had wikis and I find them pretty great (the LGBT and tech ones in particular). Do they get updated regularly, are they searchable via the site-wide...

      TL;DR: I did not know each individual group had wikis and I find them pretty great (the LGBT and tech ones in particular). Do they get updated regularly, are they searchable via the site-wide search, and who can contribute to them exactly?

      I was looking through the "note-taking" and "productivity" tags for recommendations on a new note-taking app when I came across the extension resources wiki article in "Tech". It hasn't been updated recently but it made me realize one of the reasons why I find places like reddit useful is that the "Pinned FAQs", "Beginner Guides to <Hobby>", and "Megaposts" on reddit are an excellent source of (for lack of a better term) "peer-reviewed" recommendations and are often the catalyst for fun discussions.

      I have, through my time here on tildes, discovered so many excellent recommendations even by just using the search bar and browsing threads - to the point that if say, a reddit and tildes post give me conflicting recommendations, I would trust the tildes post 9 out of 10 times. The climate of posts here are less inflammatory and the discussion on pros/cons are more calm, friendly, and thought through. I admit they have impacted my views on a bunch of things (not least of which is trying firefox as my main browser).

      Are resource dumps like that something that the community here find viable in general? Are there plans for updating their implementation to be more easily accessible or is it too far removed from the discussion-based fluidity of the site? I understand that there are other places online to find information, but rarely do I find it at this level of transparency of bias and (on average) free of any bloat.

      I guess I'll end this little thought stream with a thank you for all the people who post here and a curiosity for the future discussions to come. I've lurked a lot and learned a lot.

      16 votes
    31. What are your thoughts on update posts?

      These days I was thinking about making UPDATE posts for things I wrote about my personal life. So I typed "update" on the search bar and did not see anything of the sort. Are those discouraged?...

      These days I was thinking about making UPDATE posts for things I wrote about my personal life. So I typed "update" on the search bar and did not see anything of the sort. Are those discouraged? Was the question simply never asked before? Should I just add more information to the existing post, (without notifying any of the original commenters)?

      11 votes
    32. When should you consider it a good idea to delete your comments?

      (I'm tagging as ask.advice and ask.discussion because while my motivation to make this comes from my comments I'm not the only one who this could apply to and deleting coments is very much a...

      (I'm tagging as ask.advice and ask.discussion because while my motivation to make this comes from my comments I'm not the only one who this could apply to and deleting coments is very much a general topic.)

      So basically, I wrote this comment, noone agrees with it and the contrary takes all are upvoted, so should I delete it? If noone agreed with what I had to say and upvoted contrary answers, then what I said wasn't valuable to anyone, and so I should delete it, right?

      This also applies to quite a few comments I have written that have 0 votes like this, this this and this.

      In the other hand, measuring a comment's value by how many people voted on it isn't that great and leaving clarifications and tecnical/minor details and if someone replied, even if only to point out your comment as wrong or not so unlikely, so other than the third comment, you can argue they aren't entirely bad. (And leaving someone's answer without a question is pretty bad if someone comes later since they wouldn't know why that answer was there.) So where does one draw the line?

      11 votes
    33. It's been just under a year since the last group request thread, will/should we make another one?

      364 days specifically, and it's 11 PM again, so admittedly it's kinda late to ask this question. Usually I would pull-up the concerns over no user growth meaning more groups is just more division...

      364 days specifically, and it's 11 PM again, so admittedly it's kinda late to ask this question.

      Usually I would pull-up the concerns over no user growth meaning more groups is just more division for less content but this Deimos reply implies otherwise?

      5 votes
    34. Does self-promotion feel "bad" for anyone else?

      So, let's say I wrote something on my blog[1] and want people to check it out. Since I don't have any proper "audience" (and I don't expect one given I rarely post something), I don't really see...

      So, let's say I wrote something on my blog[1] and want people to check it out. Since I don't have any proper "audience" (and I don't expect one given I rarely post something), I don't really see any way other than sharing my own posts on places like Tildes, relevant subreddits, etc.

      But doing this feels bad. I feel like I'm using these places just as a dumping ground for my own posts, trying to boost my own site or whatever, even though I don't earn anything from it.

      If I check my Tildes history, 3 of the 4 topics I submitted are self-promotion in some way. On my comments the ratio of promotion vs "natural" comments look lower, but even just saying that makes me feel like I'm trying to lie about something.

      One thing about my small number of topics are that I don't really think about sharing links I come across, since I feel like none of them would fit the site, and most of them are already shared here.

      I don't know if the self-promotion is frowned upon, if I should continue, how I'd "diversify" my posting habits, and all that. What do you all think?

      [1]: Doesn't have to be a blog post, it could be anything.

      15 votes
    35. Would it be beneficial to ban certain topics of political discourse?

      I've noticed that there are certain topics (specifically political ones) that reoccur frequently on this site, which almost never contribute anything of value. These can derail threads, incite...

      I've noticed that there are certain topics (specifically political ones) that reoccur frequently on this site, which almost never contribute anything of value. These can derail threads, incite hostility between users, push away new users, etc. IMO it is rare that anything new is said, and even rarer that any opinions are changed. Examples include: socialism vs capitalism; should real leftists vote for Biden?; is Biden a rapist?; are Bernie supporters toxic?; etc. I'm not saying these aren't important things to discuss (I've done so myself), but is it really necessary for us to have the exact same arguments basically every day? I personally feel the site would be nicer to use and less toxic overall if these discussions didn't happen. Would there be any downside to simply banning them, at least temporarily? Perhaps until after the US presidential election?

      22 votes
    36. Tildes 'style guide' for headlines

      I posted an article. Between the site headline ("Scrutiny of Social Distancing Policing as 35 of 40 Arrested Are Black") and the actual HTML <title> ("The NYPD Arrested 40 People on Social...

      I posted an article. Between the site headline ("Scrutiny of Social Distancing Policing as 35 of 40 Arrested Are Black") and the actual HTML <title> ("The NYPD Arrested 40 People on Social Distancing Violations. 35 Were Black.") I thought the title was more descriptive, so I used that.

      And then when I reloaded the main page, the topic I had just submitted looked a bit off. It was missing the trailing period. I had typed the headline in, instead of copying & pasting it, so I assumed I'd just left that off. I went to edit the title (since that's possible for a few minutes after submission), added the period, clicked save, and...it was still not there.

      It seems like there's logic built in to the site that will automatically strip the trailing periods off? That's understandable, I can see the desire to have a uniform journalistic style for news-type headlines (@Deimos has mentioned before, for example, wanting to standardize on "Apollo astronauts land on moon" sentence case over "Apollo Astronauts Land on Moon" title case)

      But, to the extent we have such a 'style guide' enforced, I think the usability could use a bit of improvement. Editing something, even if it's just to add a trailing period, and seeing my edit not get saved at all, is really weird. Maybe a pop-up telling me what's changed, or a entry in the topic log, or something? Right now that little "no periods at the end of headlines" rule seems baked in to Tildes in a way that's not at all transparent or discoverable.

      17 votes
    37. Calling them groups

      I love this website can’t think of anything bad about it apart from really not liking that communities are called groups, I feel this is due in part to Facebook using it but also it’s such an over...

      I love this website can’t think of anything bad about it apart from really not liking that communities are called groups, I feel this is due in part to Facebook using it but also it’s such an over used term on the internet, could we not think of something more unique for tildes to call it’s communities

      17 votes
    38. Self promotion vs. Original content vs. Own content vs. User created vs. ...?

      This question has come up a few times now in the "Unofficial Tildes Chat" Discord server meta/curation channels, but I wanted to open up the discussion to ~tildes at large so we can perhaps...

      This question has come up a few times now in the "Unofficial Tildes Chat" Discord server meta/curation channels, but I wanted to open up the discussion to ~tildes at large so we can perhaps finally get a more definitive judgement on it. So here goes:

      What are people's thoughts on using the above topic tags in cases where a Tildes user posts something that they themselves have created, have hosted on their own site (or another), and/or could potentially profit from (monetarily or otherwise)?

      Should only one of the tags be standardized on, or is there enough of a distinction between some of them for their use to be situational?

      Should such tags be required?

      Can anyone think of any better tags for such situations than the ones listed?

      28 votes
    39. Should we have some sort of 'Tildes census' in a regular fashion?

      So someone asked about which themes are used the most, and I went to check this survey and then realized it was deleted and that no new surveys have been done since. So are most of us interested...

      So someone asked about which themes are used the most, and I went to check this
      survey
      and then realized it was deleted and that no new surveys have been done since.

      So are most of us interested in this becoming a formal and regular thing?

      26 votes
    40. Feature Idea: Tildes Playlist - Would it be useful to have some sort of automated, easy to use, media categorization?

      My use case: I watch videos (YouTube) and listen to audio (Podcasts) as a major part of my weekly media intake. I would love some sort of generated Tildes Playlist . IANADev, but it sure would be...

      My use case:
      I watch videos (YouTube) and listen to audio (Podcasts) as a major part of my weekly media intake. I would love some sort of generated Tildes Playlist . IANADev, but it sure would be nice if Tildes was able to parse, scrape, and categorize media posted as topics and in comments. Then present them to me with a date filter, and allow separating audio only and video media. Maybe something like tildes.net/?tag= but at tildes.net/playlist. I guess it would be nice to be able to sort media by tag as well.

      Possible other use case:
      Accessibility?

      I see that some videos are already being tagged "videos." So there already is some organic interest in this special category, right?

      What do you all think, is this useful?

      From a dev perspective, is getting that correct enough difficult? Does Embedly categorize audio only and video?

      edit: in the playlist view, there should of course be a link back to the topic or comment where the media was found. Also, @Deimos, I certainly don't want to take Tildes away from the text-first/only direction of the site, but sometimes I am doing stuff conducive to audio/video media intake like cooking, driving, etc. It would be cool to be able to easily consume it then, and come back to comment later.

      13 votes
    41. 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
    42. 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
    43. 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

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