Lately I have seen a few posts here and there from accounts that have been silent for a while, where I can't help but feel that these new posts are made by different people or that the initial posts they made were intended to "pad" the account. In other words, they feel a bit like spam and because of that I would like to "flag" them somehow.

The obvious question people will have is likely "Why not just comment about it under the post?"

I have done that various times, and it has the opposite effect of what I'd like:

1. Commenting boosts the post for people who sort based on comments or activity.
2. From what I have observed, when a post has one comment, it is more likely to receive more votes as well. If it has more than one comment, it will receive more votes. This, to me, bizarre voting behavior is something worthy of a meta discussion in itself. But from what I gather, people seem to think that it indicates discussion. Making them think that there must be something worthwhile about the post. This obviously doesn't apply when it's just the OP sharing a quote and me raising a concern.
3. Sometimes I am not entirely sure and would like to have someone with more insights behind the screens take a look at it. If I commented my suspicions while being wrong, that would suck for everyone involved.

Basically for the first two points I am not sure what a good solution would be. I am not advocating for a downvote ability, though something would be nice.
For the third point, I guess I am saying that I am missing the ability to report a post. With comments, I can use the malice label and write out a report, for posts there is no such thing.

To hide votes on one’s own posts and comments from oneself, that is. I’d prefer the ability to choose whether or not to view the vote count on my own interactions, though I do enjoy having the option of upvoting other people.

This isn’t a tildes specific preference, btw, just an aspect of social media I find trying overall.

Not too much to say here. It's pretty barebones right now. Dunno if it's a major goal, but given the whole point of tildes was for it to encourage better discussions, it'd probably help if the reply feature was looked at a bit.

1. I believe that the formatting help should contain the word "Spoilers" in the header for expandable sections. It's probably the most common reason I find myself going to the help doc of a site, because most other things just follow markdown format these days, and yet that word doesn't exist on that page and I still consistently see people asking how to do it.

2. I like that you can resize your replies. I hate that it's possible to accidentally resize the box UNDER the sidebar making it impossible to get to the scroll bar or the resize "'grip" on the lower right corner.
   https://imgur.com/a/xDVTigJ

3. How much of RES can be emulated?
   The normal reply view, with most of the shown buttons pushed:
   https://imgur.com/a/GW5eNeY
   And the large editor mode for more substantial posts:
   https://imgur.com/a/XCdNEfN

It's a pretty clean interface that does 3 important things in my eyes:

1. Gives you LIVE previews. Matters more on reddit where it's easier to accidentally screw up your line breaks and get formatting you were not expecting, but for more complex posts it can be annoying clicking back and forth between the preview pane.

2. Quick buttons for common features. I know the markdown for most things, but buttons are nice, especially for "oh shit i want this whole section to be a quote/codeblock/spoiler" moments.

3. The "i'm going to write the wheel of time in this window" large mode which can help ensure somewhat decent flow for more complex topics.

Some of this matters more due to reddits nature as a community resource (games/hobbies/whatever all have large pinned threads, and hell their own mini wikis), but again just wanted to bring this stuff up as it's either kicked me in the teeth or prevented me from making larger posts/topics more than once.

Edit- and i suppose to make my case I had to edit this because I screwed up my line breaks and forgot how they get handled with numbered lists. If i could just see the preview and make the change i'd use it more, but since it requires just clicking off, scrolling down, checking my work, clicking back, finding my place, and editing, I find it just easier to post and uh...fix it in post.

Hi everyone, first of all, thank you for creating and maintaining this site - I don't think I've ever seen a more constructive and friendly general-purpose community online. :)

In the last few weeks, after getting access to tildes, I stumbled multiple times over an interesting article that I thought that would fit on Tildes. But I didn't see a button to post it on here. I assumed it has to be something related to rating or account age. I was wondering how long it would take. Maybe a month?

The volume of posts here is pretty low, so I never saw a reason to visit one of the groups - I only visited the front page. Only now I found out, that the button to post something is only visible if the user is currently on the page of a group.

I don't know if this happened to someone else, but I personally find it really unintuitive that there isn't a button on the front page to post a topic. Reddit, Lemmy, Discourse etc. all have it like that.

Did anyone have a similar experience? Or was this a concious choice?

I've noticed that there are primarily text posts with some links thrown in, and I do like the "real" conversation that it brings, instead of the shitposting that ends up all over Reddit.

I was curious, though, if there were any plans to add a ~pics or something similar. I know the goal of Tildes isn't to be a true Reddit replacement of course, but I wasn't sure whether image boards were planned or were being left out to help encourage actual discussion.

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

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

• In my feed today: https://tildes.net/~tech/16nj/second_brain_software_of_choice
• A very similar thread last week: https://tildes.net/~creative/1639/what_do_you_use_for_note_taking_writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A the philosophy page on content says:

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

and

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

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

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

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

So, what am I suggesting?

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

My angle is, essentially:

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

I should point out two things:

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

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

Edit:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some closing questions:

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

Right now when I click user menu I see this:

User menu
Profile
Your posts
Your bookmarks
Your votes
Your ignored topics

I think it would easier to if we could differentiate between posts we made on other's submissions and our own submissions. Don't know if this is easy to implement, but for me at least, it would make searching through my stuff here way easier.

Sometimes I write an introduction to an article and add relevant tags, and then discover it is a repost when I hit post. I know I should use the search function, but since there's an automatic anti respost feature already, could it maybe be made available sooner? Maybe others would find this useful as well. Thanks!

I have some music links I was thinking of posting. However, I didn't want to flood ~music with 10 new links at once. It can make a category look like it has really homogenous content to newcomers when a single poster has posted a bunch of links at once. What I'd like to do is post one per day for the next several days. But I don't want to potentially forget one day because I got a little busy, or whatever. Would it be useful to be able to create a topic but set it to not post until a particular day or time?

I have an idea for Tildes.
You can give people the option to promote their own posts ,using either real money or cryptocurrency, so their posts can appear on the homepage, they get exposure and they support Tildes whilst doing it! Other people can also tip posts, both Tildes and the OP get a share of the revenue! The money Tildes makes from this will be able to support the site!

Please add this. I don't want annoying Google ads.

Do we have any statistics on how many users have been banned and why they’ve been banned? What information should be or remain public? Some forum sites let you see the banned users post and comment history from prior to their ban; is there any value in that?

Unrelated; how many Tildes-ers are we up to now?

Basically the title. I'm not going to navel-gaze too much here because it's not that much of a complex problem.

Currently, as it stands, if a submission is older than x days (where x may be 3, but I'm not sure), new comments in that submission will no longer cause Tildes to bump the thread to the top of the list in activity view. Additionally, after 2 weeks, a note will be appended to the comment posting view indicating community standards around commenting on older threads.

The scenario I'm seeking to solve is where one submission covers an event of some duration longer than a few days—where Tildes users feel repeated or recurring submissions are not warranted. My example is this thread about a YouTube video series that was released in three parts, but all discussion has been placed in that submission, presumably because no one has felt that duplicating a post for each new part of the series is worthwhile.

Perhaps if a certain proportion of comments occur within a timeframe, after the submission has been aged out of the sliding window where new comments cause a bump in activity, a bump should still be allowed, but should require more than 1 comment to trigger said bump?

There's some fairly good discussion in that thread that feels wholesome enough that it could be exposed again to the wider Tildes community—because right now everyone interested in that thread is operating under the implicit assumption that to read and participate about this topic, they have to remember to go back to thread y.

I've found myself ignoring a lot of posts that are simply lifted and reposted from the front page of HN without any meaningful discussion on them.

I wish there was a magic filter that'd auto-ignore posts for me that are currently trending on HN or Reddit, as I only really come here for the niche topics and discussions.

This got me thinking: what does the rest of the community use the feature for?

In text posts, like this one,, we can see the name of user who created it. But if it is a link post then it shows site name in it's place. To see who created that post we have to open the comments page. Site name can be moved to article details line where the date of publishing and word count is. That way both info can be shown.

Reason. Both information is shown at same place currently 1. which can confuse new users. for example. Notice after four times mentioning site name there is a username. 2. both can't be shown together.

One thing I'm uncertain about Tildes is how informative its posts are meant to be. I've been keeping myself from posting hype threads about upcoming movies (Dune, Ride Your Wave, etc.).
What type of balance is tildes trying to strike? I'm in favor of shitposting, but against images, since I think text encourages the type of discussion I'm looking for a community. So I'd like to see copypasta, but I'm not sure what the general consensus is.

Edit: I'm looking less for general examples than some sort of hard and clear rule. I'm seeing comments which disagree somewhat and leave ambiguities, but I believe the criteria should be better laid out.

Quick one for the Gitlab:

Just how comment submitters get a few minutes of breathing room to make adjustments and edits to their comment before an indication the comment has been edited appears, it'd be nice if the topic history which records title adjustments/tag changes/tilde moves doesn't record history by submitters just after posting?

Usually, I'll forget to add a tag or two, or decide the title can be appropriately clarified further within a minute or two of submitting. Today I made a particularly egregious mistake which is now recorded for all time (and further documented here!) by submitting that post to ~tildes initially!

Usually, edits by the post submitter within the first few minutes aren't of particular consequence, so recording them is a bit much, in my view. This would generally dovetail well with the notion that Tildes discards information if it isn't needed. Thoughts?

I have a question about AMP links in new topics.

I posted this with the AMP link as an experiment. After a few days of life at 2G data speeds I have begun to appreciate the benefits of AMP. Also, fast load times seem to be in line with light and quick philosophy of Tildes.net.

One downside of AMP is that it is a mobile layout which is not ideal layout on desktop with high resolution.

What do you all think of using AMP links in topics?

I was reading a discussion about this on here earlier today, and I've already lost it! 😬 Sorry if this is just creating more noise, but we clearly need better ways to find content. The search feature will go a long way, but here are some other ideas:

Tag search. On any topic with tags, the tags should be clickable links to URLs like https://tildes.net/tag/elder+scrolls. This page would show all topics that use that tag, with sort and filter options. There should be a way (maybe built into the search form) to type any tag and jump straight to this page.

Recently viewed topics list. Reddit shows a sidebar listing the last n posts you viewed. It's admittedly a little creepy seeing your history displayed like that, but it's a useful way to jump back into conversations for follow-up later. The old Reddit design had a "clear" button to delete the history, but curiously that is no longer present in the redesign. (Privacy features like that should not be overlooked here.)

Saved topics. Another feature from Reddit. Every post has a "Save" link below it, that adds the post to your personal saved posts list, which can reached from your profile. Saved post lists are only visible to the users that own them.

Repost detection. I really like how Ask MetaFilter helps posters make sure their content is fresh before they publish it. The submit button under the new post form is labeled "Preview" and clicking it shows what the post will look like before publishing it. This gives posters the opportunity to proofread and ensure their text formatting is correct. More importantly, the site scans the content of the post and displays a list of five possible existing posts that match it:

The following previously-posted questions might be related to the question you're asking. Please take a look before posting to see if any of these answer your question.

This flow adds an additional click before you can actually post, but I think it's for the best. The slowdown politely nudges you toward considering the quality and originality of what you're about to say, without being overbearing. The main MetaFilter site also checks all URLs you enter to see if anyone has posted them before. Note that these tools don't prevent anyone from posting, they just empower users to avoid reposting and reinforce good posting behaviors.

Repost flagging. I have a half-baked idea about allowing users to flag topics as reposts, but I haven't seen this implemented before. This would be separate from voting. A user wishing to flag a topic would be asked to provide the URL of an existing topic it duplicates. This wouldn't affect the topic itself, other than to add a small banner to the top of the page: "n users flagged this as a repost of the following topics: [list of links]". Then anyone would have the ability to [agree], [disagree], or append a link to the list. Public consensus would affect the future of the topic... if enough others agree the topic is redundant, it could be auto-deleted or just algorithmically prioritized lower than non-reposts. If enough disagree, the flag could be auto-removed from the topic. The usernames of the flaggers should be public, and there should be a way to view both a user's frequency of flagging and whether consensus agreed with those flags. Accountability would be important for this sort of system.

Ability to subscribe to users. I saw the other feature request for a "friend" mechanic. I agree with the commenters who said it would be too much like a social network. However, I could see a use case for a "Subscribe" button on a user's profile page, just like the ones on group pages. This would cause all topics posted by that user to be included in your main page, even if they are in groups you aren't subscribed to.

I'd be interested to hear your feedback on these suggestions, as well as other ideas specific to increasing content visibility.

I may have inadvertently created the first repost in Tildes in ~comp and was wondering if there are plans for a notification on posting a new topic that has already been posted.

I know that this sort of check is easily 'bypassed', but personally, had I know it had been posted already I would have voted & joined the existing discussion.

I think if we could detect the same URL, at least in the same group, maybe even with a time modifier of within the last week, it would help consolidate the discussions.