So I'm on Tildes less often these days so I'm not keeping up with certain things as much as I used to. In particular, I really like the recurring "What games are you playing" topics but I'm often not noticing them in my skimming of the front page, especially if I haven't checked in in a day or two and it's not near the top.

So what if there was a feature, specifically for recurring topics, to subscribe to them where it gives me a "New Instance of Weekly Topic" notification in the same was as the "New Comment Reply" notification? It's probably not useful since we basically just have one recurring topic right now. But I'd honestly like to see more of these recurring topics, especially a "What are you listening to right now" one and even ones that automatically reoccur for TV shows (Episode 1, Episode 2, etc.) rather than an open thread.

So this is a very simple question. There's a free talk thread for everyone to talk about the TV shows they have watched in the preceding week. Every once in a while we use that thread to talk about movies (I did that just now. My justification is that I watched the movies on my television), but the thread asks specifically for TV shows so it feels kinda weird. So maybe we should have a recurring thread for movies? If not, I'd suggest changing the TV thread to make it explicitly welcoming to discussions about movies (in that case, maybe it would be ideal to make the thread appear both in ~tv and in ~movies? I don't think that is technically possible right now, but I leave the suggestion).

IMO one of the major issues with online debates, arguments and heated discussions is that they often tend to escalate rather steadily over time, and as each side gets more frustrated with the other they also tend to slowly get more personal as well. I am admittedly guilty of falling into this trap occasionally myself too, which has got me thinking about ways that Tildes (the site and the users here) can potentially help deescalate unproductive arguments and allow people to disengage more effectively from them. To this end I thought it might be a good idea to have a brainstorming session regarding that.

To start things off, here are most of the ideas I could find related to this issue that have previously been proposed and are already on Tildes Gitlab (click ▶ to read the full details):

Feel free to voice your support or criticism regarding the above suggestions, offer up ideas to potentially improve them, or even propose your own brand new ideas related to this issue in the comments here as well.

p.s. Once again, the point here is to open up the conversation and get ideas flowing freely, so let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week #1, #2

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

Despite me still being a little distracted thanks to WoW Classic and somewhat absent from Tildes lately as a result, since it's been a few weeks since the last Unofficial Weekly Discussion topic, I wanted to make sure to get one posted this week. And since it's been a while, I wanted to try something a bit more lighthearted and fun than usual to get things flowing again. So here it is:

What is your most "thinking outside the box", "pie in the sky" and/or "out there" idea for Tildes?

It doesn't matter whether you think it's really a good idea or not, it will work or not, it would ultimately have a net positive or negative effect, or how impossible it might be to implement; Let's just get the creative juices flowing and start throwing out our "craziest" ideas for the site!

p.s. Once again, let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week #1, #2, #3

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

Inspired by @Lawrencium265's suggestion from a few days ago on advanced topic tag filtering:

After the discussion the other day on expanding groups into sub groups I had an idea about topic tags, advanced tag filtering rules. The main argument against sub groups is that it would sequester people away from each other. By allowing more advanced tag rules you could subscribe to topics that you're interested in, but further filter those if they include topics you don't like or allow certain threads that would get filtered out unless they contain a tag you are interested in or are within a certain group. I think this would attract different people to threads that wouldn't normally be and allow more diverse discussion and insight. So instead of having gaming.tabletop you would use the tabletop tag under gaming and those who are not interested in it can filter it out and those who are solely interested in it can subscribe to it, and then if a topic gets tagged in an unrelated group that you otherwise wouldn't be interested inyou will know about. This also has the side benefit if preventing cross posting or duplicates.

I have decided that the topic of this week's unofficial discussion is going to be on the Tildes topic tag system. But rather than make it specifically on topic tag filtering and that idea in particular, I figured we could open the discussion up a bit more and have a community brainstorming session on the topic tag system in general. I.e. Anything related to tag browsing, tag filtering, tag organization/standardization, etc.

Feel free to comment on any of the open "topic tag" related issues on Tildes Gitlab that pique your interest and you would like to discuss more in depth, propose your own new ideas related to topic tags, or even just spitball.

The point here is to open up the conversation and get ideas flowing freely, so with that in mind, let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week - #1

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

Since @Deimos has stated he will likely not be restarting the tradition of the Official Daily Tildes Discussions, which is something I and a number of other users greatly enjoyed and miss, I have decided to attempt to take on the responsibility of continuing them unofficially (with his blessing). And since these are not official (so won't be in ~tildes.official, which everyone is subscribed to and probably shouldn't unsubscribe from), I will only be doing them weekly instead of daily, and we now have topic tag filtering (so unofficial weekly discussion can be filtered out), hopefully the people who found the official daily discussions annoying can more easily ignore/hide these unofficial ones.

With the explanation out of the way, on to the topic for this week:

Suggestions/ideas/concerns for future unofficial weekly discussions

I thought it would be appropriate to have the first one of these be a bit of an open-ended, meta-meta discussion on the future of these topics. And to kick things off:

• What would everyone here like to see discussed in these topics in the future? Are there any particular site features (planned, suggested or theoretical), policies (tagging, moderation, etc), or other meta issues/subjects you would like to be the topic in future discussions?

• What would you like us to try to achieve with these discussions? Should we have any specific goals in mind, or should they just be fun brainstorming/theory-crafting/naval-gazing sessions?

• Does anyone have any suggestions for me with regards to how I should handle these discussions? Is there anyone out there who would like to help me with these in some capacity going forwards?

• Does anyone have any concerns regarding these unofficial discussions, and if so, can you think of any ways we can try to address them?

The floor is open, and I am all ears. :)

Tildes Official Docs : Donate to Tildes | Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board

This took a long time to compile but the goal is to make it easy for people to see what changes happened since the last recurring topic (similarly to @Bauke's "Tildes issue log"), I plan to do this monthly since I think things will probably calm down a bit.

I won't mention minor changes such as design changes or typos to keep this still readable, I hope you understand. I also took the liberty to combine certain commits to make it more compact.

I'd like to allow for conversation and cooperation in the wikis this way since people can discuss changes they plan to do here with others before they reach and someone wishes to have their explanations which might appear rude so please discuss your changes here before doing them so you can see what other people think of your changes (and probably help too!).

(Please message me directly if you see mistakes as to avoid potential noise)

Global

May 24th

• Tildes wiki comes out
• @deing imports most (if not all) of the unofficial wiki's resources

~tech

May 25th

• @lionirdeadman added IceCat, Wire and Rocket.Chat in ~tech/FOSS-Recommendations

~books

May 25th

• @synergy-unsterile added week#20 to ~books/reading
• @cadadr creates ~books/reading_list to add listings of what people read

~music

May 26th

• @Kelsier created ~music/discover_new_music to list websites where you can discover new music
• @Whom added links, review and journalism section, databases to ~music/discover_new_music
• @cfabbro added Youtube sources to ~music/discover_new_music

~anime

May 26th

• @Whom created ~anime/useful_links to link to streaming services, manga services, tracking sites, news, reviews and others
• @lionirdeadman added Viewster and TubiTV to anime/useful_links

~news

May 27th

• @deing added Election Night 10 to ~news/index

~lgbt

May 26th

• @alyaza created ~lgbt/lgbt_resources to list resources for lgbt help services

May 27th

• @alyaza added US resources to ~lgbt/lgbt_resources

May 30th

• @mftrhu added italian resources to ~lgbt/lgbt_resources

~movies

May 31st

• @dubteedub created ~movies/recurring_topics

~tv

May 31st

• @dubteedub created ~tv/recurring_topics

~talk

May 25th

• @LukeZaz creates ~talk/index

May 31st

• @LukeZaz updated ~talk/index recurring topics

~comp

May 25th

• @ali added courses to ~comp/index

June 1st

• @sniper24 added Dice Roller to ~comp/index's programming challenges

~tildes

May 24th

• @lionirdeadman added information about wikis in ~tildes.official/mechanics
• @alyaza creates ~tildes/Hierarchical_tag_short_rules
• @alyaza addeds info about recurring. in ~tildes/hierarchical_tags

May 25th

• @Deimos puts all official docs to ~tildes.official
• @synergy-unsterile added note clarify Deimos on Mobile app to ~tildes/FDAQ

May 26th

• @synergy-unsterile creates ~tildes/sitemap in attempt to map all of them
• @Algernon_Asimov added Editing topics information to ~tildes/how_to_guide
• @Algernon_Asimov added tagging information relating to ~humanities and ~science to ~tildes/hierarchical_tags

May 31st

• @Algernon_Asimov revised Examplary label rules to ~tildes/how_to_guide

June 2nd

• @Deimos renames some ~tildes.official pages
• @Algernon did a bunch of changes across ~tildes.official in an effort to reorganize it.

June 3rd

• @Eylrid specified that users with Deimos' permission can edit tags in ~tildes.official/instructions