• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity
  • Showing only topics in ~tildes with the tag "groups". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Is there any interest in a video game design subgroup?

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

      Hey all,

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

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

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

      36 votes
    2. Anyone interested in a "Linux" group?

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

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

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

      46 votes
    3. Let's add (and rearrange?) some groups + a few notes about other short-term plans

      Some really great feedback and ideas came out of the discussion we had about the group structure recently, and while I do want to work on implementing some things from that eventually, it won't...

      Some really great feedback and ideas came out of the discussion we had about the group structure recently, and while I do want to work on implementing some things from that eventually, it won't happen immediately. I'm also not sure if the influx of new users is going to calm down somewhat (which might make some of those changes feel less necessary), but I guess we'll see what happens in the next couple of days as the third-party Reddit clients start actually shutting down.

      Anyway, something that we can do immediately is create some new groups, and/or adjust some of the existing ones. This could encourage some more activity on certain subjects, and also make it easier for people to control what they see on Tildes through their group subscriptions. So I'm looking for input on where you feel there are currently gaps in the groups, or some new ones we could add that feel like we might have enough activity to get started.

      I also just want to quickly mention a few other things I'm trying to work on in the near future (now that I'm finally almost caught up on all the email invite requests). They're things that stagnated over the last few years but are more important to update if the site's activity is going to increase again:

      • Updating the open-source code and development environment, and ensuring people can get a local version running easily to be able to contribute fixes/changes.
      • Reviewing and organizing the issues and existing merge requests in the GitLab repo, so it's more clear what changes are wanted/needed.
      • Doing a pass through places like the Docs site and the group wikis to clean up and update some of the outdated information.

      Let's try to keep the discussion in this topic more centered around suggestions for changes to the groups though, I just wanted to let you know some of the other things I'm hoping to do in the near future.

      Thanks! And I've also given 5 invites to every current user, so feel free to use those if you know anyone else that would like to join: https://tildes.net/invite

      366 votes
    4. What's the difference between ~news and ~misc?

      The sidebar description of ~news says All the world's current events, including politics as well as analysis or opinion pieces. But most politics articles are moved to ~misc. I've even seen people...

      The sidebar description of ~news says

      All the world's current events, including politics as well as analysis or opinion pieces.

      But most politics articles are moved to ~misc. I've even seen people say that ~news is not for politics. So what determines if news stories aren't good enough for ~news? I get that an article about the estimated 20,000 deaths from a flood in Libya is news. But what's the line for politics and other similar categories? And why not have ~news.politics? I'm sure that must have been discussed before, but I'm not sure if it has been discussed in the context of the sidebar.

      Basically, we need to either change how articles get categorized or change that sidebar description.

      11 votes
    5. Thoughts on creating a positive ~urbanism group

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

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

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

      15 votes
    6. Can we get an ~ai?

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

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

      28 votes
    7. Unsubscribing from a parent group doesn't automatically unsubscribe me from its subgroups

      Hello! Tildes newbie here. I wasn't sure if this is a bug or if it's working as intended, so I wanted to ask. I unsubscribed from https://tildes.net/~sports but noticed that I still saw a post...

      Hello! Tildes newbie here. I wasn't sure if this is a bug or if it's working as intended, so I wanted to ask.

      I unsubscribed from https://tildes.net/~sports but noticed that I still saw a post from ~sports.hockey in my home feed. It took me a while to figure out that I also had to go to each of the ~sports subgroups and unsubscribe from all of them too. Am I doing this correctly or did I miss a button somewhere that would let me unsubscribe from a parent group + all its subgroups in one go?

      Thank you!

      --- EDIT ---
      Thanks to everyone for the replies! Confirmed that it's working as intended. And there is now a new post by cfabbro on Gitlab suggesting that "unsubscribe from all subgroups" be added as a new function.
      https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/802

      29 votes
    8. Group updates for July 2023

      As I'm sure some of you have already noticed in your sidebars, I've just added a bunch of new groups based on the discussion we had last week. That ended up being a very large discussion with a...

      As I'm sure some of you have already noticed in your sidebars, I've just added a bunch of new groups based on the discussion we had last week. That ended up being a very large discussion with a ton of suggestions, and while we can't add everything, I am adding a fairly large set of groups this time. Some of these are definitely experimental, and I expect that we'll need to make some more adjustments based on how they actually do in practice.

      Before I get into the specific updates, there are a few general things I want to mention first:

      Many of the discussions about groups turn into debates about how things should be organized in the hierarchy. I want to try to clarify that the hierarchy is not intended to be some kind of perfectly logical system, or that there should never be any crossover, etc. The groups are more of a social organization method, like "for people interested in X".

      For example, a common suggestion is to add something like an "entertainment" top level group that could contain ~games, ~music, ~tv, etc. This makes sense from a logical perspective, but not if you're basing it on interest. Someone's interest in gaming content doesn't really have any influence on them being interested in talking about music. There are similar reasons for other cases like having ~comp outside of ~tech and ~anime outside of ~tv, even though they feel like they should fit inside. The current hierarchy certainly isn't perfect for this either (for example, ~hobbies is extremely broad), but it's the general idea.

      As part of this, I also want to mention that something being a sub-group instead of top-level shouldn't be seen as being "less important" or somehow inferior. As a convenient example, ~tildes.official is one of the most important groups on the site, but it was the first sub-group (and the only one for a year). It's not significant yet while we're still subscribing everyone to all groups by default, but when we move away from doing that, it could actually be an advantage to be a sub-group, since it would give a larger audience to its content through the parent one(s).

      And finally, I want to mention that expanding the groups (and having higher activity in general) makes it more pressing to improve the capabilities for controlling subscriptions, filtering out groups and tags, and so on. This is something I want to treat as a high priority as I get back into Tildes development. I know there are also some existing problems such as topics from sub-groups being shown inside the parent group even if you're unsubscribed from them, and I'm hoping to resolve that one this weekend.

      Anyway, on with the changes and some brief comments on each. Note that I still need to do some administrative tasks like adding descriptions to the groups and moving old topics into them, and will be doing that over the next day or so.


      • Added ~comics, ~engineering, ~transport, ~travel (everyone auto-subscribed)
        The subjects of these groups are currently kind of awkward to fit into the existing groups, and I think there's potential for good content and discussion in all of these.

      • Added ~life sub-groups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~life)

        Whether to create groups for men and women took up a lot of the air in the suggestions topic (and was the source of some strife—please don't restart that in here). I think it's worth trying them, but it's definitely an experiment. I also think it's important to have them be sub-groups, because having a common parent group enables posting similar topics without feeling like posting in one of them is a binary choice. Much like ~lgbt, moderation will be somewhat stricter for posts in these groups (and yes, we need a way for the site itself to indicate that).

        ~life.pets also needs some clarification: this will not be a group full of images. There will be a weekly scheduled post for posting photos and casual chat about pets (the first one will post tomorrow), but separate topics like that will be removed. The standard content in ~life.pets should be of a similar quality level to the rest of the site, such as articles, requests for discussion/advice, and so on.

      • Added ~sports sub-groups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~sports)

        This is also fairly experimental, and I don't know if we'll keep all of these sub-groups. I'd like to see if this can help encourage more posts about specific sports. I also don't like the name ~sports.american_football much at all, but I don't know what a better option is. Should we just call it ~sports.nfl? That's not quite right either.

      • Added ~health.mental (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~health)
        A lot of the topics in ~health are about mental health, and I think having a clearer separation could be useful (including having a more clearly defined space for stricter moderation, as mentioned before).

      • Added ~humanities subgroups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~humanities)

        History topics are probably the most common subject posted in ~humanities currently, and I'm curious if these subgroups will help encourage posting both more history and more non-history.

      • Removed ~games.game_design (topics merged into ~games)
        This group has always been quite inactive, and I don't think the few topics in it still need their own separate space from ~games right now.

      That's it for this time. If there were other suggestions that you were hoping to see that weren't added this time, don't take that as an indication that we won't add them someday. But this is already a lot of new groups (likely too many), and I had to stop somewhere. Let's revisit in a month or so once these new groups and the new users have had some time to settle.

      And as usual when making a ~tildes.official post, I've also topped up every current user's invites to 5: https://tildes.net/invite

      295 votes
    9. How do I filter out topics from subgroup?

      Unless I'm missing something, it seems if I subscribe to parent group but not its subgroups, the topics from subgroups still show anyway. Back when they were just tags at least I can use filter...

      Unless I'm missing something, it seems if I subscribe to parent group but not its subgroups, the topics from subgroups still show anyway. Back when they were just tags at least I can use filter but that doesn't work anymore. Is it just me or isn't that the opposite effect we'd expect from subgroups?

      Edit: Everyone explained that it's a bug. I'll just need to be patient then.

      17 votes
    10. Cosmetic bug: a.link-group:visited in groups list has same colour whether subscribed or unsubscribed

      See this image. Which groups are unsubscribed? All of the ~sports.X groups are unsubscribed, but american_football, basketball, football, and motorsports have been visited. The link-visited colour...

      See this image.

      Which groups are unsubscribed? All of the ~sports.X groups are unsubscribed, but american_football, basketball, football, and motorsports have been visited.

      The link-visited colour set by a.link-group:visited is taking precedence over the default colour otherwise set by .group-list-item-not-subscribed a.link-group, hiding the colour change associated with -not-subscribed. This is particularly troublesome when unsubscribing from a group, since one must go to the group's page – visiting the link – in order to unsubscribe.

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

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

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

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

      69 votes
    12. Thoughts on making Tildes groups more independent

      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other...

      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other things while I have your attention:

      Welcomes and thanks

      Welcome to all the new users! It's been great to see activity here increasing again lately, and I hope a lot of you end up enjoying the site and sticking around. It's really nice to read so many posts and emails from people who are excited about the principles behind Tildes. (And if you're someone who doesn't have an account yet and emailed to request an invite, I hope to get back to you relatively soon—there are about 2000 requests in the queue right now, and I'm trying to gradually work through them over the next week or so)

      I also want to say thanks to all the long-time users who have been welcoming and answering so many questions from the new people. As I mentioned the other day, my time to devote to Tildes recently is more limited, and it's been amazing to find that in practically every thread I open, people have already answered all of the questions (and often more comprehensively and eloquently than I would have). An extra special thank-you as well to @cfabbro and the other people who have been handling the demand for invites via Reddit, and to @mycketforvirrad, the unsung hero of the site who's constantly doing the thankless, almost-invisible job of re-tagging topics and making sure everything is organized.

      Reminders

      Also a couple of reminders and things to keep in mind:

      Whether you're an old or new user, if you haven't set up a recovery email address on your account, I highly recommend that you do. A lot of people who registered years ago are trying to come back this week and finding that they don't know their password any more, and it's much simpler if they did this. (The site itself really should encourage this more strongly—it's done in a secure and privacy-friendly way, and it's impossible for me to use it to send you any email because there's no way for me to see the actual address)

      It's already been brought up in various threads a lot, but I also want to emphasize that Tildes is not the same as Reddit, and is not trying to be a "replacement" for Reddit. There are a lot of similarities between the sites, but there are also a lot of differences. The site structures are different, many of the site mechanics here work differently, and the types and style of posts that are appropriate are not the same. Please try to look around at the site and the docs and get a feel for the place, don't assume that things will work the same way here as they do somewhere else (or that they should).

      One other aspect that's different between the two sites that's coming up a lot is that Tildes does not have user-created groups, and the groups aren't "owned" or run by specific users. Currently, the only person with "true" moderation powers anywhere on the site (like the ability to remove topics and comments) is me. This isn't because I want to keep absolute control or anything like that, but Tildes has been very quiet for the last few years and more moderators haven't been necessary. If the activity stays at this level or keeps increasing, we will probably need to add more moderators soon. And related to that, the actual main topic that I wanted to talk about:

      Should we try separating the groups more?

      Even though Tildes has almost 30 groups, until now, it's really always just been one community. New users are automatically subscribed to all groups and need to manually unsubscribe if they don't want to see the topics from that group, and logged-out users see everything when they visit the homepage as well. Most users stay subscribed to almost everything, with only some of them unsubscribing from more-niche interests like ~anime.

      I've always intended to make the groups more independent, but the site's activity has generally been too low for that to be feasible. All of the groups needed to be able to reach all of the Tildes users, but there have been significant downsides to doing it this way.

      One of the main consequences (which is becoming more obvious over the last few days) is kind of ironic: by showing all groups to all users to increase activity across all of them, it actually discourages activity in any individual one. For example, I follow video game news closely, and it's currently a very busy time with tons of events and announcements. But I wouldn't want to post all of those announcements to ~games, because it would completely flood the site and annoy everyone.

      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.

      A lot of the new users have been asking to add new groups for things they're interested in (sometimes very specific, niche things), and this would allow us to try some of them out more easily to see if they'd be able to sustain themselves. One of the benefits of the groups+tags system here is that it's relatively easy to test something as a group, and if it doesn't work out, all of the posts can just be merged back into a "more comprehensive" group as a tag.

      I've also been receiving a decent number of messages from Reddit moderators that are investigating whether they will be able to migrate their community to a different platform. I've had to tell them that the current structure of Tildes wouldn't easily support it, but making the groups more independent would change that.

      So overall, I'm looking for general feedback about whether we should try this soon, and if there are any major concerns we should be careful about. I also have three specific questions I'd like input on, related to how it could be implemented:

      1. What should logged-out users see on the homepage? Just a list of links to individual groups, and they have to pick a specific one to see any posts?
      2. Should logged-in users still have a homepage made up of all their subscribed groups mixed together (Reddit-style), or should we lean further into the separation by requiring groups to be viewed individually (forum-style)? (I think I'd want the mixed style to be available long-term, but maybe starting without it would help establish the individuality more strongly?)
      3. How should we transition existing users over to the opt-in approach? Should we effectively treat everyone as a new user, and get them to select the groups they're interested in from scratch? Or should we do something like use their activity (voting, posting) to pre-subscribe them to some groups?

      Thanks, please let me know what you think. The current growth and activity is a great opportunity for us to try some new things on Tildes that would be able to move it forward, and I hope we can figure out ways to do it well. (And if it ends up not working, we can always change things back)

      I've also given 5 invites to every current user, so feel free to use those if you know anyone that would like to join: https://tildes.net/invite

      (Edit: and to set expectations, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to reply to anything substantially, but I'll absolutely be reading all the discussions)

      533 votes
    13. How would you feel about a PC building/tech deals group?

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

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

      22 votes
    14. Under what group would, for example, cars or motorcycles go?

      For many they are considered ~hobbies so ~hobbies.cars and ~hobbies.motorcycles would be a logical place. I don't know if ~transport would be a suitable main category for this since then trucks,...

      For many they are considered ~hobbies so ~hobbies.cars and ~hobbies.motorcycles would be a logical place. I don't know if ~transport would be a suitable main category for this since then trucks, tractors, trains and boats could also go there without bloating hobbies' sub-groups too much.

      I'd like to hear your input on this, cheers.

      23 votes
    15. 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
    16. 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
    17. “Which group should this go to?”, “Which tags should I use?”, and other posting anxieties.

      A short story Last night, I posted an article about fraud related to COVID funding in the United States. I debated about where to put it. Was it ~news since it was an investigative report that was...

      A short story

      Last night, I posted an article about fraud related to COVID funding in the United States.

      I debated about where to put it. Was it ~news since it was an investigative report that was just released? ~finance because it was about money? ~health because it was about COVID?

      In reading through other comments here, especially related to our current group structure I’ve noticed other people expressing similar sentiments about submitting things.

      The same goes for tagging your topic. What are the right tags? What if I use the wrong one? There’s a non-negligible amount of anxiety regarding submitting things to the site.

      If you go to the article I posted, and then click Topic Log on the sidebar, you can see what got changed. I realized I forgot to add the tag usa. You can then see that another user changed the capitalization on my title, moved my post from ~news to ~health, and added additional tags.


      The betrayal(?)

      Someone moved my post? Someone changed my title? Without telling me?! 😡

      Yes, they did, and I’m here to tell you that I couldn’t be happier about that. It’s not a betrayal; it’s a collaboration. 🥰

      Submissions on Tildes aren’t like other places. You won’t get your hand slapped here for not following the right protocol, especially because there’s not a fully clear protocol in the first place. Topic placement, tagging, and titling are all things that often require judgment calls. It’s not uncommon for the titles we see on Tildes to actually differ from published titles to make them less clickbaity or clearer, for example.

      Furthermore, Tildes isn’t a place where people are competing to post content. There’s no karma to be harvested or influencers to influence. On other sites, big news items will often get dozens or hundreds of duplicate posts because, on other sites, who posted the content matters a whole lot. People will post and repost things because it’s important that they, individually, get “credit” for that.

      Tildes works a bit differently, with submissions being owned more by the community at large rather than individual posters. It doesn’t mean we don’t have our own content (and it definitely doesn’t mean someone can or will edit the actual body of a post, like what I’m writing here), but more that the content’s place and appearance in the community is something we work together on. If you want to discuss something and you see someone already posted it here, that’s not a bummer — it’s a great thing! It saves you some work, plus you know at least one other person is on the same page as you and wants to discuss the same thing.


      Which group should this go to? Which tags should I use?

      Don’t worry too much about those things! We’ll collaborate on them. There are several users here who are librarians of Tildes, dutifully organizing submissions behind the scenes.

      When I first started posting, I was nervous about getting my tags and title exactly right. I’d occasionally post a title with a typo and cringe, hard, wondering if I needed to delete the post entirely.

      Now, when I post, I’m happy that if I don’t know what to do exactly or I make a mistake, someone else will come along and help me out with it. No more anxiety!

      I hope all our new users can feel that way too. Having your submissions reorganized is not combative; it’s collaborative. Don’t stress about posting anything perfectly. Someone will help you out if need be.

      104 votes
    18. Do you think an ~engineering group would make sense?

      I think it would, that's something that interests a vast number of users. Things like construction, bridges, buildings, city planning, trains, etc. Right now they can go to ~misc or ~design which...

      I think it would, that's something that interests a vast number of users. Things like construction, bridges, buildings, city planning, trains, etc. Right now they can go to ~misc or ~design which doesn't seem appropriate.

      5 votes
    19. ~nature or ~earth group?

      I have a nice video about butterflies to post. It's not really ~enviro material because although there is a little bit of mention of climate crisis I want to post it mostly because "aren't...

      I have a nice video about butterflies to post. It's not really ~enviro material because although there is a little bit of mention of climate crisis I want to post it mostly because "aren't butterflies awesome look at these awesome butterflies and how cool they are"

      Sure it could go in ~misc but it seems odd there's a group for ~space and not one for down here on ~earth. I prefer ~earth to ~nature because I think there's human earth stuff which is cool too (I know, I know, humans are part of nature but you know what I mean). Also because it balances with ~space.

      Anyway, was just a thought. Not going to lose sleep over it.

      Additionally, in the sidebar, putting group descriptions in the title attribute might be useful - so I don't have to click into each group to see what it's criteria is when I'm trying to find where to post something non-obvious.

      6 votes
    20. Animal group

      Can there be an ~animals group, please? Where we can share animal photos, discuss animals, etc. Alternatively; there could be more specific animal groups like ~cats, ~dogs, etc.

      6 votes
    21. Groups don't show unsubscribed topics

      On https://tildes.net/groups it looks like at least on Firefox 88 the normal link color: a.link-user:visited, a.link-group:visited is overriding the unsubscribed color:...

      On https://tildes.net/groups it looks like at least on Firefox 88 the normal link color:

      a.link-user:visited, a.link-group:visited
      

      is overriding the unsubscribed color:

      .group-list-item-not-subscribed a.link-group
      
      4 votes
    22. Tildes within a tildes

      This is an idea I've had for awhile, I wanted to have it written down somewhere for future reference. This would likely be a substantial undertaking, but I haven't seen much discussion on the...

      This is an idea I've had for awhile, I wanted to have it written down somewhere for future reference. This would likely be a substantial undertaking, but I haven't seen much discussion on the concept.

      What if Tildes was able to have internal tildes? We would be able to 'start a tildes group' and have all~group.tag discussions under it. You could invite members to your ~group, and only those members could vote/comment/see on the internal group that they are part of.

      This would make it so we can grow tildes, keep it small, and have personal obsessions and ideas. For example, I run a few discords that are part of nascent old/antique ideologies and philosophies, and we have been looking to move off of Discord (horrible for conversations and debates). I realize we could start our own forum or Tildes server, but the idea of tilde branches would be interesting to see play out in practice. I'm sure this has already been brought up, and will likely never happen, but I would love thoughts on the matter if you have them. This would likely be a large undertaking and I haven't really peeked at Tildes source since launch, so I'm not sure how the structure is these days.

      12 votes
    23. 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
    24. Search for tag site-wide?

      Clicking a tag provides the search results for that tag in the local group. Since some topics appear across groups, I think it'd be useful to view site-wide results as well, optionally. Does that...

      Clicking a tag provides the search results for that tag in the local group. Since some topics appear across groups, I think it'd be useful to view site-wide results as well, optionally. Does that already exist?

      9 votes
    25. Change group color on unsubscribe (on the groups page)

      Perhaps the post was posted in the wrong place and can be moved or deleted. But it's not entirely clear. There is a page: https://tildes.net/groups Where is it written: Group name colors:...

      Perhaps the post was posted in the wrong place and can be moved or deleted. But it's not entirely clear.

      There is a page: https://tildes.net/groups

      Where is it written:

      Group name colors: subscribed / not subscribed. You can change your subscription status to a group in its sidebar when you are viewing it directly.

      I decided to experiment and unsubscribe from some groups. However, there are no changes on this page. Perhaps it’s just me or I’m doing something wrong.

      7 votes
    26. New groups and site mechanics - 2021 edition

      The last group request thread was last year. With all the meta-chat lately it might be time for a new one, and maybe expand a bit more in terms of site organization in general. I mainly want to...

      The last group request thread was last year. With all the meta-chat lately it might be time for a new one, and maybe expand a bit more in terms of site organization in general.

      I mainly want to take this opportunity to make the recent meta feedback a bit more actionable: Which current problems can be solved via site mechanics? Will leave some thoughts in the comments.

      35 votes
    27. Is there any interest in a Cryptocurrency group on Tildes?

      I know chat about cryptocurrency hasn't been extremely popular here in the past, but I am curious if there is enough interest now to make a group for it. I am looking for a place to discuss it...

      I know chat about cryptocurrency hasn't been extremely popular here in the past, but I am curious if there is enough interest now to make a group for it. I am looking for a place to discuss it from an enthusiast's perspective because Reddit is just getting a little too crazy for me.

      13 votes
    28. When seeing a tag in a group, there is a link to take you back. I think a link to see that tag in all groups would also be nice?

      When you click in a tag in a tildes group, you see the topics that have been posted in that group with that tag according to your filters. There's also a link to go back to normal viewing. I think...

      When you click in a tag in a tildes group, you see the topics that have been posted in that group with that tag according to your filters. There's also a link to go back to normal viewing. I think an option to see that tag in all groups would be a neat addition, even if not particularly important. Thoughts?

      15 votes
    29. 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
    30. Are there any requirements to creating a group on Tildes?

      I've been playing Destiny 2 and I have so many questions. I thought about reaching out to people who actually know what they are doing. Since I'm moving away from Reddit and other sites like that...

      I've been playing Destiny 2 and I have so many questions. I thought about reaching out to people who actually know what they are doing. Since I'm moving away from Reddit and other sites like that I thought about creating a D2 group here on Tildes. However, If it requires "work" as a moderator or something like that I would honestly pass.

      So my questions are: can anyone create a group? As a creator do you have to do any "work" on that group?

      Thanks

      14 votes
    31. The case against ~news

      The longer I use Tildes, the more I question the effectiveness of ~news. /r/news made sense on reddit, where they didn't have a robust cross-group tagging and filtering system. I think Tildes be...

      The longer I use Tildes, the more I question the effectiveness of ~news.

      /r/news made sense on reddit, where they didn't have a robust cross-group tagging and filtering system. I think Tildes be better served by eliminating ~news entirely and replacing it with a news tag with a date property, which would allow for nice chronological filtering for catching up on news stories, especially if the article date could be scraped somehow. Miss a week of news? Search the tag with a date range, get all news stories for last week, perhaps with a minimum comment threshold to see what sparked discussion.

      I think ~gov (or politics) would be needed as a replacement, as it's a major driver of most news stories, but there's so much more to politics than just news, and those discussions don't exactly fit anywhere nicely at the moment, esp if it's a random blog post relating to recent events in the news. Almost every other group serves as a nice catch-all for most other common news categories.

      The only issue I would see would be when ~gov would overlap with the other categories, which would likely happen a lot..but that happens with the current ~news too. I think that could be further mitigated by having a sort of x-post system blurring the lines of tags and groups even more, where ~gov would take precedence but posts would then also appear in the tagged groups for users not following governance otherwise.

      That's actually a foundation of my more insane idea of completely eliminating traditional groups by letting people build their own groups in the form of prioritized tags, but that's another post for another time.

      17 votes
    32. ~personal should be a thing

      I understand we have ~life but I think something more ~personal would be more beneficial, life could pertain to a lot of different things but personal would be far more effective. We could also...

      I understand we have ~life but I think something more ~personal would be more beneficial, life could pertain to a lot of different things but personal would be far more effective.

      We could also have ~personal.blogs for us to submit our personal blog posts that don't really have a place anywhere else.

      Would open and connect the community a lot more, allow for advice, general questions, and more.

      24 votes
    33. Can someone explain subgroups to me?

      Why is it that there is ~tildes and ~tildes.official? Why not just ~tildes and ~announcements? Why not just ~health and ~coronavirus? Why not just ~games and ~game_design? I understand the appeal...

      Why is it that there is ~tildes and ~tildes.official? Why not just ~tildes and ~announcements? Why not just ~health and ~coronavirus? Why not just ~games and ~game_design?

      I understand the appeal of hierarchical tags. However, if posts in subgroups don't collect into their parent groups, then why even have them at all?

      https://tildes.net/~tildes/pia/can_someone_explain_subgroups_to_me#comment-55ml

      12 votes
    34. How do I know how to properly tag my posts?

      Say I wanted to create a thread about running. Running is a sport and hobby. Sports is often seen more as the professional side of things (say, Olympic running). Then again, many runners take...

      Say I wanted to create a thread about running. Running is a sport and hobby. Sports is often seen more as the professional side of things (say, Olympic running). Then again, many runners take their hobby quite seriously and definitely exercise it as a sport. How do I know which one of those two groups is the more appropriate?

      8 votes
    35. What happened to subscribe/unsubscribe on the groups page?

      I remember there being subscribe/unsubscribe buttons on https://tildes.net/groups By default new accounts are subscribed to every group, earlier I could just goto that page and unsubscribe from...

      I remember there being subscribe/unsubscribe buttons on https://tildes.net/groups

      By default new accounts are subscribed to every group, earlier I could just goto that page and unsubscribe from groups I'm uninterested in. Looks like now you have to goto each group page and unsubscribe there.

      11 votes
    36. New group created for news and discussion of COVID-19 coronavirus: ~health.coronavirus (everyone subscribed by default)

      As suggested, I've created a new group now named ~health.coronavirus that we can use to try to keep the topics about the coronavirus somewhat more quarantined contained. I've subscribed everyone...

      As suggested, I've created a new group now named ~health.coronavirus that we can use to try to keep the topics about the coronavirus somewhat more quarantined contained. I've subscribed everyone for now, but if you want to segregate the information more easily I'd suggest unsubscribing from it (which you can do from its sidebar or the groups list) and visiting it individually when you want to look at coronavirus news.

      I know there are probably some quibbles about the name, but I decided to go with this one for a few reasons, including that it's by far the more commonly-known and used term overall, it's generally easier to type (especially on mobile), and some XKCD-style "the spider" logic.

      One specific thing we need to discuss is how to decide when some topics should be in there vs. some of the other groups, especially since there are so many widespread effects. Like most moderation-ish subjects, we won't be able to draw a perfect line, but I think in general we should try to put more "general" updates/advice/discussion in the new group, while topics can go into other groups only when their impact is especially heavy on that group's subject.

      For example, I think it makes sense for the announcement that NCAA games will be played without fans to stay in ~sports, because that's a very major announcement for a sports event. E3 being cancelled similarly makes sense to stay in ~games. Those are major, important announcements regardless of the cause being the coronavirus.

      Deciding when something goes in ~news vs. ~health.coronavirus will be more difficult, but I'm sure we can probably do a reasonable job of it by trying to base it on only putting the very most significant events in ~news. It's not incredibly important to have everything categorized perfectly and most people probably subscribe/check both groups anyway, so we'll just do the best we can.

      I'm going to start trying to move a lot of the existing topics into there, and I'm sure some others will too. This might be kinda chaotic for a bit.

      I think it would also be great to start trying to put together some good resources on the ~health.coronavirus wiki. If some people are willing to start taking that on (and feel free to post a topic in there to ask for help/suggestions), it would be much appreciated. And if you don't have wiki permissions but would like to be a part of that, message me about it or leave a comment here asking, and I can give you the ability to create/edit pages.

      Anything other feedback or discussion about it to start with? Should we set up any regularly scheduled posts in there or anything?

      64 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. Do you think a ~community would be helpful?

      I personally think it could be helpful as a group for us to attempt guiding ourselves to cooperate and do stuff like timasomo. Alternatively it could end up being swallowed by petty drama and be...

      I personally think it could be helpful as a group for us to attempt guiding ourselves to cooperate and do stuff like timasomo. Alternatively it could end up being swallowed by petty drama and be really horrible.

      2 votes