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Tildes – a non-profit community site

tildes.net

11–20 of 77 posts

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#12
What struck me immediately was how fast this site loaded. No font popping, no cookie waivers, no newsletter nagging, no huge images, no JavaScript fade-in, no scrolljacking, no signup wall. Funny how practical it is to make a functional forum and news aggregator that Just Works.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this and would love to get an invite!

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#13
post #2

I discovered Tildes several months ago. I have no affiliation but I thought the HN crowd might appreciate it. I like the approach the creator is taking with the site and is a great candidate for a Reddit-like community with more intelligent discourse.

> Reddit-like community with more intelligent discourse

I feel like that's an unfair assertion. There is a lot of intelligent discourse on Reddit. There is also a lot of utter garbage on there, sure, but byte for byte, there aren't many websites with as much quality content as Reddit.

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#14
post #5

(Tildes is my site) The best explanation of the site's goals is probably still the original announcement blog post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Here's the discussion on HN at the time (note that the site was totally private at that time and you couldn't even view it without an invite yet): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 Feel free to ask any questions, and if you're interested in an invite…

As an avid Redditor I love this!

The company I work for, Coil, is specifically looking to enable sites like this have an alternative revenue model that is not based on ads[1]. If you have any questions you can reach out to me matt[at]companyurl

I would also suggest you check out https://www.grantfortheweb.org/

[1] https://coil.com/creator

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#15
post #5

(Tildes is my site) The best explanation of the site's goals is probably still the original announcement blog post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Here's the discussion on HN at the time (note that the site was totally private at that time and you couldn't even view it without an invite yet): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 Feel free to ask any questions, and if you're interested in an invite…

The post states you're supported by donations. How do you go about keeping the site up and financially healthy based on just donations?

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#16

What struck me immediately was how fast this site loaded. No font popping, no cookie waivers, no newsletter nagging, no huge images, no JavaScript fade-in, no scrolljacking, no signup wall. Funny how practical it is to make a functional forum and news aggregator that Just Works. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this and would love to get an invite!

Thanks! Keeping the site minimal and fast is definitely one of my main goals, and I'm never going to add any third-party assets, advertising, or anything like that (for both speed and privacy reasons).

There's quite a bit more info about my approaches from a technical perspective here: https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#18
What's to stop this from falling into the same trap as always? They grow, user donations aren't enough to sustain them anymore so they have to look into alternative ways of getting money, users hate it, they start a spinoff that promises to be better, rinse and repeat.

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#19
post #15
post #5

(Tildes is my site) The best explanation of the site's goals is probably still the original announcement blog post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Here's the discussion on HN at the time (note that the site was totally private at that time and you couldn't even view it without an invite yet): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 Feel free to ask any questions, and if you're interested in an invite…

The post states you're supported by donations. How do you go about keeping the site up and financially healthy based on just donations?

It really doesn't take much when your goal is "sustainable". The site's actual expenses have always been more than covered from donations, and the current servers can probably easily handle at least 100x the traffic. The goal now is just bringing in enough to be able to pay myself a somewhat respectable salary.

Here's the current month's financials (this is linked from below the donation goal meter on the home page): https://tildes.net/financials

Re: Tildes – a non-profit community site

#20
post #5

(Tildes is my site) The best explanation of the site's goals is probably still the original announcement blog post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Here's the discussion on HN at the time (note that the site was totally private at that time and you couldn't even view it without an invite yet): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 Feel free to ask any questions, and if you're interested in an invite…

As an avid Redditor I love this! The company I work for, Coil, is specifically looking to enable sites like this have an alternative revenue model that is not based on ads[1]. If you have any questions you can reach out to me matt[at]companyurl I would also suggest you check out https://www.grantfortheweb.org/ [1] https://coil.com/creator

Wow. These links opened new doors I didn't know existed. I've been experimenting with sponsorship ads to fund my sites because I'm very against the current advertising model. However, Coil looks to be an interesting alternative to the ad model as a whole.
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