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Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

blog.tildes.net

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Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#11

Post by azban »

m0meni wrote: post #8
_ps6d wrote: post #3

Hi HN - I left my job at reddit about a year and a half ago, and a few months later decided to try starting a non-profit and work on building a new site that would be able to address a lot of the issues that I felt were hurting online communities. I've kept it very quiet until recently, but have started telling people about it and inviting them to the alpha over the last couple of weeks. The site's still very minimal…

What's the tech stack?

from the docs:

  Here's some of the main technology being used on Tildes:

  Python 3.6 with the Pyramid web framework
  PostgreSQL 10
  Redis 4
  intercooler.js and jQuery.

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#12

Post by Mahn »

I'm intrigued, but I think it could use some sort of a demo or something to get an idea of what to expect. As it stands I don't know if I really want an invite, because other than the ideology, which is great, I don't know what is there. (I get that it's a Reddit derivative, but still, I like to play with things before committing to them).

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#13

Post by http-teapot »

m0meni wrote: post #8
_ps6d wrote: post #3

Hi HN - I left my job at reddit about a year and a half ago, and a few months later decided to try starting a non-profit and work on building a new site that would be able to address a lot of the issues that I felt were hurting online communities. I've kept it very quiet until recently, but have started telling people about it and inviting them to the alpha over the last couple of weeks. The site's still very minimal…

What's the tech stack?

https://docs.tildes.net/technical-goals#use-modern-versions-...

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#14

Post by notheguyouthink »

Is this project trying to do anything to solve/improve manipulation / disinformation by large entities?

That's my largest concern in the modern era - information is very difficult to ingest not due to discovery, but trust. One finds it difficult to ingest information from a non-educated domain. Disinformation has made this problem infinitely worse.

Thoughts?

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#15

Post by Deimorz »

pythonistic wrote: post #6

Over the years, we've seen reddit increasingly turn into an echo chamber. I've been personally voted down for telling people in a general subreddit that the anger they feel about ${Political Party A} is the same way that the opposition feels about ${Political Party B}. What mechanisms are you planning to implement to, for lack of a better phrase, increase exposure to and improve tolerance of different points of view?…

This is definitely one of the most difficult aspects, and already something that we've had some good discussions about on Tildes. There are some people involved already that have been moderators of some of the really divisive subreddits, and I've also had a lot of conversations over the last year with mods from subreddits that work very hard to promote civil discussions even on controversial topics - places like /r/ChangeMyView and /r/AskHistorians.

In terms of pure mechanisms, there are a few things. Tildes doesn't have any downvoting, so that alone takes a lot of the "conflict" out of interactions. Also, for the foreseeable future, new groups won't be user-created, so this means that people can't create very "extreme" little sub-groups (on either side) that treat each other like enemies. We've also been talking a lot about a sort of trust/reputation system (https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future), which will make it so that if people get banned for being an asshole, they can't just create a new account and immediately carry on doing the same thing.

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#16

Post by Semaphor »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #10

What will be your policies on adult content? And I don't just mean porn. For example, the BDSM community counts as "adult" but it's not necessarily pornographic.

> This has some interesting possibilities—someone filtering out all nsfw posts would also not see anything tagged nsfw.gore, but someone else could choose to filter only nsfw.gore and still see posts with other tags like nsfw.nudity or plain nsfw.

That section from "Mechanics" [0] makes it sound like there will be no adult content ban. There is more that makes me think that, but this makes it pretty clear.

[0]: https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#18

Post by zellyn »

It's been fascinating to watch every online environment almost inevitably turn to mush over time.

Of particular interest to me are Wikipedia and StackOverflow, where the pedantic rule-following, rule-enforcing insider group eventually squeezes all joy and then all productive life from the the system.

Actually, I have little hope for Wikipedia's solving the problem, due to their governance model and political structure, but StackOverflow has economic incentives to solve the problem, so I follow them with interest.

Reddit seems to remain vibrant, albeit often a wretched hive of scum and villainy depending on subreddit…

Add Tildes to the list of projects I'm watching with keen interest. I believe the question of how to keep a massive online community healthy is actually a key problem of our times.

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#19

Post by Semaphor »

_ps6d wrote: post #3

Hi HN - I left my job at reddit about a year and a half ago, and a few months later decided to try starting a non-profit and work on building a new site that would be able to address a lot of the issues that I felt were hurting online communities. I've kept it very quiet until recently, but have started telling people about it and inviting them to the alpha over the last couple of weeks. The site's still very minimal…

Hi, I remember you ;) Anyway, quick question: How do you expect to prevent people using "troll" or "noise" comment tags as their alternative to a downvote button?

Re: Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

#20

Post by andrewmcwatters »

So, what is it? No screenshots, all talk. The world doesn't need another Digg clone, it needs something brand new. We have enough ripoffs already. Are you going to implement up and down voting? If so, why promote a voting model that empowers the 51% and silences 49%?

Sorry this isn't a popular sentiment, but downvoting my comment proves a point. I have a valid concern, but repeated downvoting on HN leads to a situation where I'm afraid to comment on anything and never provides me the ability to downvote comments myself.

Edit: Hah, what irony https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics#lack-of-downvoting

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