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    1. Collapse comments?

      Is there a way to collapse really long comments? I find that a very small number of Tildes.net posters often write really long comments (if I were cynical I might say excessively long and I freely...

      Is there a way to collapse really long comments? I find that a very small number of Tildes.net posters often write really long comments (if I were cynical I might say excessively long and I freely admit that I am sometimes among them) which makes it really hard to navigate comment threads because I can't see the child comments very easily.

      Is there a setting to collapse long comments (so that one has to press a "read more" button to see them). Otherwise, I would like to suggest that this be considered for addition to Tildes at some point :)

      23 votes
    2. Should I thank someone or just use the upvote button?

      I'm new to Tildes, and searched for this question but didn't find a topic covering this. I've read the instructions, and I know comments that contribute to the topic are much more desired here,...

      I'm new to Tildes, and searched for this question but didn't find a topic covering this. I've read the instructions, and I know comments that contribute to the topic are much more desired here, and that, in theory, you shouldn't just comment something another commenter has said. Does this apply to thanking another commenter, or even the original poster of a thread? Say someone replied to me with a useful comment. Should I rather thank them or just upvote them? Would the former increase noise.

      I know I'm unlikely to get an absolute anwer, but I'd rather ask the community for pointers than assume.

      24 votes
    3. I made a little CLI app for backing up my Tildes comments

      I made a little CLI app for backing up my tildes comments / topics. $ pip install xklb $ library tildes -h usage: library tildes DATABASE USER Backup tildes.net user comments and topics library...

      I made a little CLI app for backing up my tildes comments / topics.

      $ pip install xklb
      $ library tildes -h
      usage: library tildes DATABASE USER
      
          Backup tildes.net user comments and topics
      
              library tildes tildes.net.db xk3
      
          Without cookies you are limited to the first page. You can use cookies like this:
              https://github.com/rotemdan/ExportCookies
              library tildes tildes.net.db xk3 --cookies ~/Downloads/cookies-tildes-net.txt
      

      It creates a SQLITE file with HTML text in one of the columns. Nothing super fancy. Let me know what you think?

      9 votes
    4. Self labeling comments

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

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

      6 votes
    5. Is searching for comments possible?

      I never noticed this before today, but I don't seem to be able to search for comments. Is that supposed to be doable on Tildes? It took me way too long to figure out that the links at the top of...

      I never noticed this before today, but I don't seem to be able to search for comments. Is that supposed to be doable on Tildes?

      It took me way too long to figure out that the links at the top of the search results page are sort options; I had been clicking "Comments" hoping to see comment search results, and I was a bit confused why only full topics were still being listed. I guess comment search doesn't currently exist?

      12 votes
    6. Do you spend more time creating a Tildes reply than on other platforms?

      So like many others, I'm a refugee from the Rexxit, and the collaborative, positive enthusiasm here is infectious. I've had an odd observation about my brief time here - when I think I can...

      So like many others, I'm a refugee from the Rexxit, and the collaborative, positive enthusiasm here is infectious.

      I've had an odd observation about my brief time here - when I think I can contribute to a thread, I find myself trying to step up my posting game - doing a bit of extra research, making sure I add links, and double checking my grammar (as best as I can!). I want my thoughts to have value or be meaningful here, moreso than anywhere I've contributed to in the past.

      Do others feel the same way?

      95 votes
    7. Question on sorting for new comments on old posts

      Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this question, but is there a way to search which would list comments made on any topic in chronological order regardless of how old the original post...

      Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this question, but is there a way to search which would list comments made on any topic in chronological order regardless of how old the original post was made? Meaning, even if a post was one of the first on Tilde, if someone commented within it in the last few minutes, it would be displayed before a newly created post that hadn't had a comment in several hours.

      I tried all of the sorting options and didn't seem to find one that performed this function. Any assistance would be appreciated.

      7 votes
    8. How does the "collapse old comments when I return to a topic" feature work?

      I have the "collapse old comments when I return to a topic" setting turned on, but I can't quite figure out how it works. For example, when open a new topic for the first time and scroll through...

      I have the "collapse old comments when I return to a topic" setting turned on, but I can't quite figure out how it works. For example, when open a new topic for the first time and scroll through the comments, the next time I open the topic, they're all still open.

      Does anyone have more details about how this feature works or how I should be using it?

      Thank you!

      19 votes
    9. Anchor text at the top to reply without scrolling?

      Edit — thanks to all who replied and educated me on this. I thought I'd do this rather than pollute the thread with single thank you posts while I learn the ropes here. Hi, I'm brand new here so...

      Edit — thanks to all who replied and educated me on this. I thought I'd do this rather than pollute the thread with single thank you posts while I learn the ropes here.


      Hi,

      I'm brand new here so this could well be answered and I'm just being stupid. Very probable tbh!

      I'm on a macbook and iphone and one thing I noticed was it's a bit of a trek scrolling down to comment. Not that I've done that much.

      Now I love, really love, the lightweight and speedy nature of this site (and incidentally looking forward to brushing up on my Markdown) and am hoping that with the influx feature bloat doesn't happen but would a small anchor text link somewhere up top be in order to quickly get to the comment field?

      Let me know how idiotic I am and why or.. if I'm lucky.. how much of a genius I am!

      Thanks,

      Rodney

      6 votes
    10. Feature: “Spoiler” text

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

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

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

      Thanks!

      22 votes
    11. Tildes UserScript: Comment Link Fix

      I joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and I'm absolutely loving the interface and community. In the last few days of using Tildes, I noticed a particular problem that was mildly annoying; if you...

      I joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and I'm absolutely loving the interface and community.

      In the last few days of using Tildes, I noticed a particular problem that was mildly annoying; if you have the "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic" setting on, and you click on a link that is supposed to lead to a comment in a topic you have already visited, it won't jump to that comment.

      Searching around, I found a post about it from a day ago, in which long-time users have mentioned that it's been a known problem for a while now. In those comments, someone mentioned permalinks as a solution, but it appears that's still in the works.

      For now, I've made a quick userscript that will address this issue (and adds some slight related functionality). It hasn't been thoroughly tested yet, so if any issues occur, please let me know. This userscript is designed to be used with Tampermonkey (a privacy-friendly alternate that should work is ViolentMonkey), which is available in all popular desktop browsers. Installation instructions for Tampermonkey are available on their site (it's installed like any other extension).

      To install the script, you can head to this GitHub Gist which contains the code (click "Raw" to open the TamperMonkey install prompt), or you can copy and paste the code from the following dropdown block into a "New script" on the TamperMonkey dashboard. The dropdown is not guaranteed to contain the latest version.

      Code
      // ==UserScript==
      // @name         Tildes Comment Link Fix
      // @namespace    https://gist.github.com/blankdvth/6da89fff580e8cf6e50f88847ddb5729
      // @version      1.2.0
      // @description  Fixes comment links (anchors) not working as a result of Tildes' comment collapsing feature.
      // @author       blank_dvth
      // @match        https://tildes.net/*
      // @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=tildes.net
      // @grant        none
      // ==/UserScript==
      
      /* 
          USER SETTINGS
          This script is not big enough to warrant a visual settings menu, so adjust settings here.
          true = enable, false = disable
      */
      const alwaysRun_S = false; // If enabled, will always run the script, even if the comment was not collapsed (site works fine in this case). This is useful if you want to make use of the other settings.
      const smoothScroll_S = false; // If enabled, will smoothly (animated) scroll to the comment. If disabled, will jump to the comment.
      const uncollapseIndividual_S = true; // If enabled will uncollapse parent comments into one line instead of fully uncollapsing them.
      const uncollapseChildren_S = true; // If enabled, will uncollapse all children of the comment. If disabled, will leave them collapsed.
      const collapseIrrelevant_S = true; // The script uncollapses all parents to ensure the comment is visible. This will collapse irrelevant (not direct parent) comments again.
      // END OF USER SETTINGS
      
      /**
       * Uncollapses the comment if it is collapsed.
       * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
       * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
       * @returns {boolean} True if the comment was collapsed, false if it was not
       */
      function uncollapse(element, individual = false) {
          if (element.nodeName !== "ARTICLE") return false;
          var removed = false;
          if (
              !individual &&
              element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed-individual")
          ) {
              element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
              removed = true;
          }
          if (element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed")) {
              if (individual)
                  element.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
              element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed");
              removed = true;
          }
          return removed;
      }
      
      /**
       * Uncollapses all direct parents of the comment.
       * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
       * @param {boolean} collapseIrrelevant If true, will collapse irrelevant comments again
       * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
       * @returns {boolean} True if any parent was collapsed, false if none were
       */
      function uncollapseParents(element, collapseIrrelevant, individual) {
          const relevant = []; // List of relevant elements (direct parents)
          var wasCollapsed = false; // Whether any parent was collapsed
          while (
              element.parentElement &&
              element.parentElement.nodeName !== "SECTION"
          ) {
              element = element.parentElement;
              relevant.push(element); // Add parent to relevant list
              if (uncollapse(element, individual)) wasCollapsed = true;
              // Collapse all irrelevant sibling comments (if feature enabled)
              if (collapseIrrelevant && element.nodeName === "ARTICLE") {
                  element
                      .querySelectorAll(
                          `article#${element.id} > ol.comment-tree > li.comment-tree-item > article:not(.is-comment-collapsed)`
                      )
                      .forEach((child) => {
                          if (!relevant.includes(child))
                              child.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed");
                      });
              }
          }
          return wasCollapsed;
      }
      
      /**
       * Uncollapses all direct children of the comment.
       * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
       */
      function uncollapseChildren(element) {
          element
              .querySelectorAll("article.is-comment-collapsed article.is-comment-collapsed-individual")
              .forEach(uncollapse);
      }
      
      (function () {
          if (!location.hash.startsWith("#comment-")) return; // Not a comment hash
          const comment = document.getElementById(location.hash.substring(1)); // Get comment element
          if (!comment) return; // Comment does not exist
          // Uncollapse the comment itself, and it's parents, then perform other actions if needed/enabled
          if (
              uncollapse(comment) |
                  uncollapseParents(
                      comment,
                      collapseIrrelevant_S,
                      uncollapseIndividual_S
                  ) ||
              alwaysRun_S
          ) {
              // Uncollapse all children (if feature enabled)
              if (uncollapseChildren_S) uncollapseChildren(comment);
              // Scroll to the comment
              if (smoothScroll_S) comment.scrollIntoView({ behavior: "smooth" });
              else comment.scrollIntoView();
          }
      })();
      
      Settings Description

      There are comments that already contain short descriptions for each setting in the code, but here are more in-depth descriptions.

      • alwaysRun: By default, the script does not run if the comment and its parents are already uncollapsed (this means the in-built anchor will work as expected). However, when this setting is enabled, the script will still perform the additional options (such as uncollapsing children and collapsing irrelevant).
      • smoothScroll: When enabled, will use a smooth animated scroll. When disabled, will jump directly.
      • uncollapseIndividual: Parent comments need to be uncollapsed in some shape or form in order for the script to work. This allows you to choose what type of uncollapse is used. When enabled, it will uncollapse the parent comments into a single line (shows a short preview). When disabled, it will fully uncollapse the parent comments (everything is visible).
      • uncollapseChildren: When enabled, will automatically uncollapse all child comments (replies) to the linked comment.
      • collapseIrrelevant: When enabled, it will automatically collapse all sibling/cousin comments (comments that have a shared parent but are not directly ancestors of the linked comment)
      Changelog (Last Updated 2023-06-12 22:55 EST)
      • v1.2.0:
        • Prevent entire sibling/cousin chains from being collapsed, only collapse toplevel
        • Ensure individually collapsed children are uncollapsed properly
        • Ensure proper exiting if comment does not exist
      • v1.1.0:
        • First public release
      33 votes
    12. Meta label for comments?

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

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

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

      6 votes
    13. How do I comment on posts?

      Hi tildes! Awesome place! Just moved here with an account, any idea how to comment on "topics" directly and if there is a waiting period before i can do that? I think im allowed to reply to...

      Hi tildes! Awesome place! Just moved here with an account, any idea how to comment on "topics" directly and if there is a waiting period before i can do that? I think im allowed to reply to existing comments but not reply to the topic directly.

      6 votes
    14. Feature suggestion: Non-bumping comments

      Sometimes you want to reply to a comment with a remark that may not be of interest to the wider Tildes audience, but posting that reply is going to bump the post up in the recent changes list...

      Sometimes you want to reply to a comment with a remark that may not be of interest to the wider Tildes audience, but posting that reply is going to bump the post up in the recent changes list anyway. It would be nice if a reply-to-a-reply had a checkbox allowing you to mark it as a non-bumping comment, like the “minor edit” feature on Wikipedia. The drawback is that it might enable more clutter in the form of off topic chatting. The advantage would be that it keeps the top of the recent changes list free of uninteresting updates.

      One implementation detail regards the question of a non-bumping checkbox on replies to an already non-bumping comment. My sense is that once a comment has been marked “non-bumping”, all subsequent replies to it should be non-bumping as well.

      13 votes
    15. Is there a way of highlighting comment edits?

      Title. I often think of things to add to my comment after they’ve (presumably) been seen by the OP. Sometimes I end up making a separate comment because I want to ensure visibility. Any way to...

      Title. I often think of things to add to my comment after they’ve (presumably) been seen by the OP. Sometimes I end up making a separate comment because I want to ensure visibility. Any way to give edited comments a similar visibility to new comments?

      10 votes
    16. "Rate limit exceeded"?

      Sometimes I'd like to post comments more frequently than a single comment anywhere on the site once every two hours. But I can't, because I get the error "Rate limit exceeded". Is it possible to...

      Sometimes I'd like to post comments more frequently than a single comment anywhere on the site once every two hours.

      But I can't, because I get the error "Rate limit exceeded".

      Is it possible to remove or at least significantly increase the limit site-wide for established users?

      The things a bear has to do..

      If there is a more appropriate place for this, I would appreciate having it moved there, or a link to the more appropriate area. Thanks!

      11 votes
    17. Feature request: Ability to ping a comment author about spelling mistakes

      Sorry if this is dumb, I just woke up and had this idea randomly. What would happen if the site had a built-in mechanic for correction spelling mistakes. It could be opt-in (or opt-out?) if you...

      Sorry if this is dumb, I just woke up and had this idea randomly. What would happen if the site had a built-in mechanic for correction spelling mistakes. It could be opt-in (or opt-out?) if you don't want anyone to bother you. This would allow other people that notice them to ping a comment author privately with perhaps a short message explanation.

      Not everyone has English as their first language which is why I think it could be valuable. If the feature is not built into the site, correcting someone would be seen as a negative experience (I think) both in public or private messages.

      It would be up to the comment author to edit their comment. (Or perhaps a way to accept the changes would be nice?)

      Thoughts? Is this a thing anywhere else?

      Edit: I put feature request in the title, but this is more of a discussion of the idea in general. I don't expect this to become a thing, but I feel like it's interesting to think about.

      8 votes
    18. (Option to) mark comment reply notifications as read when clicking "link" or "parent"

      When I get comment reply notifications, I normally prefer to read them in context of my own reply, and potentially other replies. However when I do this, the notification doesn't go away on its...

      When I get comment reply notifications, I normally prefer to read them in context of my own reply, and potentially other replies. However when I do this, the notification doesn't go away on its own, so I have to return to the page to click "mark as read".

      I know I can also mark the notification as read by voting on or replying to the reply, but I often don't do that. Yet I always seem to want to view the comment in its context, which requires me to leave the notifications page. In this specific use case there is no convenient way to mark the notification as read without going back.

      To avoid the extra page load, I would like the notification being marked as read when the link to it is opened, to be an option. (Actually, I'd like it to be the default behaviour, but since the current default behaviour is to not mark comments as read until an explicit action is taken on them, I suppose I'm in the minority. An option is just fine.)

      7 votes
    19. Ignore comment thread?

      Sometimes a comment thread is very very toxic/controversial and I would like to avoid getting sucked into it. Just because my decision-making is much better at 2pm than it is at 2am. I understand...

      Sometimes a comment thread is very very toxic/controversial and I would like to avoid getting sucked into it. Just because my decision-making is much better at 2pm than it is at 2am. I understand I can and should exercise self-control, and I'm working on it, I assure you! In the meantime, if at all possible, it would be nice to remove certain comments from my view, along with its children. Thanks!

      12 votes
    20. Feature request: "confirm comment submission" option

      I constantly hit the "Enter" key in the middle of writing a comment, usually when moving my hand over to my mouse. To avoid this, I'd love it if there were an option in settings to require a...

      I constantly hit the "Enter" key in the middle of writing a comment, usually when moving my hand over to my mouse. To avoid this, I'd love it if there were an option in settings to require a confirmation before any comments are actually submitted. It shouldn't be required, but it would be helpful for me personally.

      5 votes
    21. How do you think we should deal with compliments?

      Compliments are, technically, to be tagged as 'noise' and often also 'offtopic' for usually being only loosely related to the commment or post they're replying to. But the warm fuzzies empathy is...

      Compliments are, technically, to be tagged as 'noise' and often also 'offtopic' for usually being only loosely related to the commment or post they're replying to. But the warm fuzzies empathy is pretty important in a community, and I don't remember seeing an unnecessary compliment anywhere so, unsurprisingly, people don't noise compliments. But they still might clutter space for a potential reply giving advice. So do you think the current arrangement is fine? I personally would probably make a label for compliments which would either be neutral or slightly positive, and maybe publically visible so everyone can (but don't have to) see the compliments of the receiver but I haven't thought about this too deeply.

      5 votes
    22. Rethinking votes

      I know we have talked about it to death, and even run experiments on the mechanism, but I think it's worth re-evaluating the idea of voting on comments. I know that voting provides value to Tildes...

      I know we have talked about it to death, and even run experiments on the mechanism, but I think it's worth re-evaluating the idea of voting on comments.

      I know that voting provides value to Tildes as a social platform; it acts almost like a social currency; you know that if you have a lot of votes, people appreciate what you have to say. That provides incentive for people to write more comments and participate with the community.

      What I and others have come to realize is that votes also have negative effects on our community. Here's a short list of negative effects:

      1. Voting is addictive. I'm sure most of us are familiar with the process of clicking on our usernames to see how many votes our last few comments have gathered. We do this because it's a dopamine hit; they act like tiny digital love letters telling us how awesome we are.

      2. Voting is a measurement of popularity. Those love letters aren't actually how good you are, they measure how popular your ideas are. In other words, votes encourage group-think and creates an echo chamber that will prevent you from taking competing ideas seriously.

      3. Because of number 2, we alienate people with other ideas and reduce the richness and quality of discussion on this platform.

      4. Also as a result of number 2, the information that gets put into those popular threads becomes the de facto truth - weather or not it's actually true. This can prevent us from seeing the "bigger picture" or from understanding problems others might have with how we think.

      5. The end result of all of these effects is that we will slowly become more and more extreme and insular as time progresses. We essentially become the same as the people stuck in conservative media prisons that we tend to look down on.

      Personally speaking, I think that we would be a much more robust community if we had more conservative voices speaking up. After all, the left does not have a monopoly on the objective truth. I know we probably have a few conservatives that are lurking around, but I think that they are largely disincentivized to contribute because they don't get the same kind of votes left-leaning comments do.

      With that being said, I would like to hear back from everyone what they think we should do about voting. Should we go back to hiding vote totals again? Should we get rid of them entirely? Or maybe you think things are good as they are? Please let us know your reasoning.

      26 votes
    23. When looking at the parent of a reply, the parent cannot be collapsed

      When I click on the "x comments" in the upper right to see responses to my previous posts, it lists out any unread comments to my posts. If I click on the "Parent" link to see my original comment...

      When I click on the "x comments" in the upper right to see responses to my previous posts, it lists out any unread comments to my posts. If I click on the "Parent" link to see my original comment and the reply, I can collapse the reply, but not the parent. This seems like a bug. I can collapse the grandparent, and it all goes away, but I'd expect to be able to collapse the parent as well.

      9 votes
    24. Collapsible comments vs. spoiler tags

      Just noticed that the contents of expandable comments are automatically shown in the one-line summary when comments are collapsed; see here. Considering we often use them for spoiler comments,...

      Just noticed that the contents of expandable comments are automatically shown in the one-line summary when comments are collapsed; see here. Considering we often use them for spoiler comments, maybe this warrants changing this behavior? Or at the least it adds to the case for implementing dedicated spoiler tags within comments.

      7 votes
    25. Links inside a spoilerbox not working

      The first two image links in the spoilerbox of my Timasomo update don't work (as in aren't clickable or turn the text into a link), but others do. Bug? Test This is only a test. Or perhaps it's...

      The first two image links in the spoilerbox of my Timasomo update don't work (as in aren't clickable or turn the text into a link), but others do.

      Bug?

      Test

      This is only a test. Or perhaps it's the links.

      3 votes
    26. Addressing topic areas that chronically engender "low quality" discussion

      It is pretty clear there are certain subject areas where the discussion simply never goes well here. This isn't a Tildes thing really. Frankly these topics rarely go well anywhere online but, as...

      It is pretty clear there are certain subject areas where the discussion simply never goes well here. This isn't a Tildes thing really. Frankly these topics rarely go well anywhere online but, as we have aspirations 'round these parts of being more sophisticated than the Reddit rabble, I think it's worth digging into.

      Overall Tildes is a fairly low-activity site, but if I ever see a topic that even tangentially touches on "identarian" issues get past double-digit comments, there will almost surely be an acrimonious exchange inside. I don't want to pretend I'm above this, I've been sucked into these back-and-forths myself as, I think, has almost every regular poster at one time or another. I've largely disengaged from participating in these at this point and mostly just watch from the sidelines now.

      Unlike most of the common complaints with Tildes, I don't think this one will get better as the site grows and diversifies. If anything, I think it's going to end up creating norms and a culture that will bleed over into other controversial topics from tabs/spaces to iOS/Android. To keep that from happening, the community will need to form a consensus on what "high quality discussion" means and what we hope to get out of having conversations on these issues here.
      To start, when I say "doesn't go well" I'm thinking of indicators where some combination of the following happen:

      1. None of the participants learn anything new about the subject, themselves, or another viewpoint
      2. Preponderance of "Malice" and "Noise" tags
      3. Heated back-and-forth exchanges (related to the above)
      4. Frequent accusations (and evidence) of speaking in bad-faith or mischaracterization of peoples' statements

      These threads end in people being angry or frustrated with each other, and it's become pretty clear that members of the community have begun to form cliques and rivalries based on these battle lines. It also seems like the stridency and tone are making people leave out of frustration, either deleting their accounts or just logging off for extended stretches of time, which is also an outcome we don't want. So let's go into what we can do to both change ourselves and how others engage with us so people feel like they're being heard without everything breaking down into arguments.

      The "Whys" of this are varied and I'm sure I don't see the whole picture. Obviously people come into any community bringing different background experiences and with different things they're hoping to get out of it. But in my view the root cause comes down to approaching discussions as a win/lose battle rather than a shared opportunity to learn about a subject or perspective. From observing many of these discussions without engaging, there are evident patterns in how they develop. The main thrust seems to be that criticism and pushback pretty quickly evolve from specific and constructive (e.g. "This [statement or behavior] is problematic because [reason]") to general and defamatory (e.g. "[Person] is [bad thing], as evidenced by them doing/making [action/statement]").

      This approach very quickly turns a conversation between two people into a symbolic battle about making Tildes/the world safe for [community], defending the wrongfully accused, striking a blow against censorship, or some other broad principle that the actual discussion participants may or may not actually be invested in. Once this happens the participants are no longer trying to listen or learn from each other, they're trying to mine their posts for things they can pick through to make them look bad or invalidate their participation. This has the effect of obliterating nuance and polarizing the participants. Discussions quickly devolve from people speaking candidly to people accusing each other of mischaracterizing what they've said. This makes people defensive, frustrated, and creates a feedback loop of negativity.

      The win/lose battle approach permeates political discussion on Tildes (and elsewhere), which is a separate issue, but it gets especially problematic in these threads since the subject matter is intensely personal for many people. As a result, it's important to take care that pushback on specific positions should always endeavor to make people feel heard and accepted despite disagreement. On the flip side, there needs to be a principle of charity in place where one accepts that "no offense/harm intended" actually means no offense intended without dissecting the particulars of word-choice to uncover secret agendas. If a charitable interpretation is available, it isn't constructive to insist or default to the uncharitable one. It may not feel fair if you know that the more negative interpretation is correct, but it is literally impossible to have productive discussion any other way. If you can't imagine that a well informed, intelligent, and decent person might hold a certain view then the only conclusion you can draw is that they're either ignorant, stupid, or evil and every response you make to them is going to sound like you think this of them. That's not a position where minds are going to be changed from. English isn't necessarily a first language for everyone here and, even if it is, not everyone keeps up to date on the fast moving world of shifting norms and connotations in social media. What's more, not all cultures and places approach these issues with the same assumptions and biases you're familiar with.

      Now I don't actually believe in appealing to peoples' sense of virtue to keep things going constructively in situations like this. Without very active moderation to reinforce it, it just never works and can't scale. So I think operationalizing these norms is going to take some kind of work. Right now we freeze out comments when they have a lot of back-and-forth, which I think is good. But maybe we should make it a bit more humanistic. What if we rate limited with a note to say "Hey this discussion seems to be pretty heated. Maybe reflect on your state of mind for a second and take a breather if you're upset."

      Or, in long threads with lots of my bad indicators, the submit button can send to the post preview rather than immediately posting. It could then flash a banner to be a quick reminder of the ground rules (e.g. Try to assume good faith, Remember the Human, Listen to understand rather than respond, Careful with the snark, It's not about winning/losing, etc.) This would introduce just a touch of friction to the posting process, hopefully just enough to make people think "Maybe I could phrase that better" or "You know, this isn't worth my time" and disengage (Obligatory relevant XKCD)

      Alternatively, maybe it is the case that this is honestly just intractable without some sort of third-party mediation mechanic and we freeze out comments under such topics entirely. Like I said before, I worry the frequency with which these discussions turn dispiriting has a chance of acculturating new users or signaling to prospective users that this is an expected way for this community to engage.

      This is a long post, and I hope it does not itself turn into another case study in the issues I'm trying to raise. I want to open the floor to anyone who has other ideas about causes and solutions. I also ask that we try to keep any critiques to specific actions and behaviors without trying to put blame on any groups of people. We all contribute to the vibe one way or another so we can all stand to try a little harder on this front.

      25 votes
    27. Minor bug: Can't collapse linked comments

      The CSS selectors that determine whether or not to apply the display: none rule to comment text sections use the pseudo-class rule :not(:target). While this is great for keeping a comment in a...

      The CSS selectors that determine whether or not to apply the display: none rule to comment text sections use the pseudo-class rule :not(:target). While this is great for keeping a comment in a non-collapsed state, it's a bit too effective as it prevents user-initiated collapsing of the comment. This can be problematic when you visit a direct link to a comment with an extensive reply tree beneath it and want to collapse it so that you can view the surrounding reply trees. As it stands, you can't do this without needing to either a) collapse the parent (prevents viewing sibling comments), b) collapse the children (requires collapsing potentially multiple child comments), or c) remove the fragment portion of the URL (requires reloading the page and possibly losing your place on the page).

      Reproducing should be as simple as clicking Link in a comment's header, then trying to collapse the comment after being redirected.

      9 votes
    28. Label sorting options in comment history

      Hi, I'm not sure if this has already been proposed, but I think it could help solidify the labeling system somewhat if there were options in your profile to sort your comments by labels. Right now...

      Hi, I'm not sure if this has already been proposed, but I think it could help solidify the labeling system somewhat if there were options in your profile to sort your comments by labels. Right now you can sort by newest or most upvoted, which is fine (although adding an option for oldest wouldn't hurt), but there's no particular way to see which comments of yours have received "exemplary" status etc. without scrolling through the entire list.

      Since labels are not really directly correlated with upvotes, lacking such sorting options means that they are still considered a secondary/unimportant feedback process on Tildes. I personally think that one of the best ways that Tildes can distinguish itself from other content aggregators like Reddit is this slightly more complex feedback system, so it should probably be emphasized a little more on profiles as well.

      3 votes
    29. Could we have a different color for exemplary new comments?

      Currently exemplary comments are highlighted with a blue outline, and new comments are highlighted with an orange outline. Is it possible to use a different color, or to interweave the colors when...

      Currently exemplary comments are highlighted with a blue outline, and new comments are highlighted with an orange outline. Is it possible to use a different color, or to interweave the colors when a comment is both new and exemplary?

      The reason for this is that it's impossible to check back into a thread that has a dozen new comments and know if the exemplary ones have already been read or not, or it's impossible to see that a new comment is exemplary (not sure which color takes priority).

      19 votes
    30. Should we be able to view comments/posts where mods/admins are doing their roles and not doing them separately?

      What I mean by this is: Sometimes @Deimos posts something related to his mod/admin work, like saying he will be locking a thread or adding something new, but that's not all he does, he makes...

      What I mean by this is:

      Sometimes @Deimos posts something related to his mod/admin work, like saying he will be locking a thread or adding something new, but that's not all he does, he makes regular topics and comments about regular things, he doesn't have need to use an alt-account for that. I feel that when he's talking or posting about his mod/admin work and talking about anything else that interests him should be able to be viewed separately.

      Thoughts?

      9 votes
    31. 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
    32. Can we have an option to collapse all the threads too?

      Meant primarily for long threads (35+ comments) Mainly because sometimes we just want to get to the reply box after reading through a long comment section and checking several times over now that...

      Meant primarily for long threads (35+ comments)

      Mainly because sometimes we just want to get to the reply box after reading through a long comment section and checking several times over now that highlighting new comments is a default feature and the fastest way to do that is closing a bunch of threads or tapping the screen a few times/scrolling.

      Admittedly it's kinda silly but being able to collapse all the threads and get straight to the reply box seems like a pretty good QoL feature.

      7 votes
    33. Maybe it’s too easy to delete comments on mobile

      In numerous occasions I accidentally deleted comments on mobile. Sometimes I can use navigation history to restore them but not always. This can be rather frustrating. Maybe there should be some...

      In numerous occasions I accidentally deleted comments on mobile. Sometimes I can use navigation history to restore them but not always. This can be rather frustrating. Maybe there should be some extra confirmation that’s not easy to accidentally click in order to delete stuff on mobile

      14 votes
    34. Should there be a way to turn off replies for a comment?

      One thing we take for granted in social media is that any comment may receive a reply from anyone. Maybe we should rethink that? What would happen if it were optional? For example, for someone...

      One thing we take for granted in social media is that any comment may receive a reply from anyone. Maybe we should rethink that? What would happen if it were optional?
      For example, for someone posting in "What's a widely criticized thing that you feel is worth defending?" topic, I am not sure that everyone posting there really wanted to start a discussion.
      Having replies shut off might be frustrating sometimes as a reader, particularly when something you disagree with gets a lot of upvotes. But it would make the author's intent clearer. If you're inviting further conversation, leave replies on. If you're not, turn it off.
      Everyone has the right to walk away from conversation. This would make it explicit. Maybe it would make heated threads less likely, since they'd stop sooner? It seems like it's more difficult to walk away when you're also letting the other side get the last word?

      17 votes
    35. Can there be a 'new comments only' sort for people who toggled 'mark new comments' on?

      As someone comes to this site a lot and has toggled this feature on, a sort that shows only the threads where new comments have been posted since I last left would be great so I don't need to...

      As someone comes to this site a lot and has toggled this feature on, a sort that shows only the threads where new comments have been posted since I last left would be great so I don't need to scroll down the homepage anxiously looking for new comments on the topics I like.

      8 votes
    36. Notify people who replied to a post/comment when it's edited?

      Some people only include footnotes on their text after they finish it, or realize that their interpretation of something might not be the same as others interpretation (like what is social media)...

      Some people only include footnotes on their text after they finish it, or realize that their interpretation of something might not be the same as others interpretation (like what is social media) or source their claims, or detail it after finishing the main body. Admittedly we might want to let the user choose whether their edit is worth notifying to all who replied for the sake of stuff like typos though.

      9 votes
    37. In deeply nested discussions, it's frequently hard to know to which comment someone is answering

      IDK if this is just me, but, in some cases, the dotted lines are not enough. I become easily lost, and have to "manually" retrace the discussion. I'd like to suggest for Tildes to use even more...

      IDK if this is just me, but, in some cases, the dotted lines are not enough. I become easily lost, and have to "manually" retrace the discussion.

      I'd like to suggest for Tildes to use even more colors on these lines, kinda like color-schemes do for Org Mode on Emacs.

      I could go even further and suggest a major "Org-Modization" of Tildes: IMHO, Org Mode has nailed this kind of structure. I know it's a bold suggestion, but there it is! ;)

      Cheers!

      16 votes
    38. What’s the status on anonymous comments?

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

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

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

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

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

      14 votes
    39. Suggestion: Spoiler Tag on comments that collapses them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      10 votes
    42. Suggestion when linking to comments from a user's history page

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

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

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

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

      6 votes
    43. Stylus userstyle that hides comment vote counts

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

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

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

      Known issues

      • There is extra padding around Vote button
      • Extensions such as Vim Vixen cannot interact with Vote button
      10 votes
    44. View all comments in a group (tildes?)

      On Reddit, it's possible to view all the comments in a subreddit by going to the subreddit comments url. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/tildes/comments/ As a separate request, would it be...

      On Reddit, it's possible to view all the comments in a subreddit by going to the subreddit comments url. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/tildes/comments/


      As a separate request, would it be possible to add a new comment sorting method. Perhaps an option to disable comment nesting and sort by new. It would make it easier to see new comments that are added to a post.

      7 votes
    45. Experimenting with a way of avoiding deeply nested comment threads

      One of the difficulties with a nested/tree commenting system is finding a way to deal with threads that get very "deep", when people continue replying back and forth under the same threads. The...

      One of the difficulties with a nested/tree commenting system is finding a way to deal with threads that get very "deep", when people continue replying back and forth under the same threads. The deep threads end up getting indented very far, and this looks bad, can be hard to follow, and wastes a ton of space (especially on smaller screens like phones).

      I'm not a huge fan of any of the ways that I've seen other sites try to handle this, so I've been trying to figure out if there might be any other possibilities that would work well. I've noticed that in most of the cases where a thread gets very deep, a lot of the depth comes from back-and-forth replies, where there's only one comment on each "level". So I'm testing a method that will flatten those sections out and just put a note on each comment that it's a direct reply to the comment above it.

      Specifically, the current method (which is now live), works like this: if a comment is at least 4 levels deep and only has a single reply, don't indent the reply any further. Instead, keep the reply at the same indentation and add a note at the top of it indicating that it's a reply to the above comment.

      I managed to implement this entirely through CSS, by writing what's probably the worst best chunk of CSS (really, SASS) of my life, which I want to show off here. If you don't know CSS and can't read this, trust me, you're better off:

      .comment:not([data-comment-depth="0"]):not([data-comment-depth="1"]):not([data-comment-depth="2"]):not([data-comment-depth="3"]) {
        &[data-comment-replies="1"] {
          & > .comment-tree-replies {
            margin-left: -1px;  // compensate for border
      
            & > .comment-tree-item > .comment > .comment-itself {
              & > .comment-text::before,
              & > header > .is-comment-deleted::before,
              & > header > .is-comment-removed::before {
                content: "(Reply to above comment)";
                font-size: 0.6rem;
                font-style: italic;
                margin-right: 0.2rem;
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      

      One of the really interesting things about implementing this entirely in CSS is that we can easily change what level it happens at based on screen size. So I have it set to always start at depth >= 4 right now to help with testing and deciding whether it works well or not, but if we decide to keep it I could easily change the threshold to higher on desktop and keep it lower on smaller screens.

      As an example of how it works, the previous ~tildes.official thread works really well. @Amarok and @cfabbro had a long discussion about music metadata that went very deep. The thread ends up 16 levels deep, but this new change makes it so that it only indents by 5 levels instead of 16. Here's a comparison between how the end of the thread looks on my phone: before this change vs. after this change (yes, something's not quite right with the indentation lines yet).

      Let me know what you think. I'm mostly concerned that this might make it a little harder to follow long threads since the information from the indentation is lost, but I think we need to test it out in real threads for a while to see if that actually ends up being significant or just takes a bit of getting used to.

      76 votes