Is Tildes semi-dead?
Posted by AdvancedHard@reddit | RedditAlternatives | View on Reddit | 20 comments
I just noticed that the lost commit in their code repo is from 6 months ago: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/commits/master
Also the website itself has very small amount of posts posted per day, is it walking in its final months?
chesterriley@reddit
The number of commits on git is completely meaningless. If the software is finished it doesn't need any commits and shouldn't have any more commits without a very good reason.
FuckIPLaw@reddit
The invite only thing really put a damper on its growth. Which is the point, but you still need to be getting in at least as many users as you lose if you want to keep a community going long term.
Ajreil@reddit
The developer behind Tildes has explicitly stated that he doesn't want infinite growth. A small niche community is fine.
Tildes saw a bunch of growth during the third party apps blackout. I bet the website is about as active as it was before the exodus.
FuckIPLaw@reddit
A small niche community still needs some growth to survive, though. Enough to offset the normal attrition that happens over time even if the users are generally with a site. People die, people have lifestyle changes that make spending time on forums hard, and so on.
MSZ-006_Zeta@reddit
It feels like a very insular clique to me.
Have an account there from a few years back but never used the site as it seemed like only certain views were accepted, such as liberal or centre left political views.
Nakken@reddit
Have you tried actually interacting with people or is it just the feeling you get? I've found that it's not the specific view that's the issue but tone and general conversation abilities and coming directly from reddit this can be a challenge albeit a good exercise.
Delicious_Ease2595@reddit
He is spot on with certain views are only accepted, if not Deimos can certainly total ban you.
Tildes is a better micro-reddit with Deimos as only admin and dictator for life.
JimothyJollyphant@reddit
a challenge albeit a good exercise
Thanks to reddit's new design and killing new.reddit.com, I don't know how to quote something anymore.
Anyways, allegedly users got banned for having unpopular views and if this is true, then it disincentivizes you to contribute anything at all. You won't be learning much and won't be getting the excercise you're refering to.
Nakken@reddit
Did you mean old.reddit.com? Because that's where I am now...as long as its holding up.
I mean if a couple of users complaints is enough for you to dismiss it overall maybe it just isn't for you I guess.
JimothyJollyphant@reddit
Nope, new.reddit.con was the link you could use to access the version previous to this recent redesign. I'm probably going to have to switch back to old.reddit. Or try tildes or lemmy I guess.
And yes, I'm kind of sick of excessive censorship, rightfully so in at least some cases.
pyeri@reddit
It was very much predictable. For starters, the invite-only model put a great check on the network growth. Not saying it's a bad thing but that puts the onus on you to use other ways of ensuring network growth. And even on top of that, you start becoming intolerant of slightly differing opinions and start banning them, your network is eventually bound to stagnate as there are only so many folks in this universe who will absolutely conform to your views or ideas.
WWWeirdGuy@reddit
It should be pointed out that tildes has been a slow site long before the exodus. 40 posts a day seem to track. It's just that there should have been an significant increase after the exodus. I'm guessing a lot of people (like me) figured out how the site worked and took a backseat waiting for change.
It's wild how much big an opportunity Deimos missed out on. Tildes was basically perfectly set up and ready to be the new reddit. He did stick to his guns though, I'll give him that.
Nakken@reddit
Yeah and Demios have repeatedly said this was never the goal and I'm personally glad he stuck to his guns. Maybe you could be the change you're so patiently waiting for :)
WWWeirdGuy@reddit
Look you can define "reddit" as you like. The point is that the dilemma is keeping your treehouse or creating a space with better online discourse. Deimos is/was perhaps the person in the best position to do it, so understandably people are frustrated.
If anything this is a huge compliment to Deimos.
Nakken@reddit
I agree. I understand that some people want more users/activity but it seems like the people who are frustrated wants a reddit-clone or more "free speech" and that's never been the idea behind Tildes IMO so it doesn't really bother me.
prankster999@reddit
Can you elaborate on all of this?
What "exodus" are we talking about? Also, what opportunity did "Deimos" miss out on?
WWWeirdGuy@reddit
I'm referring to the reddit "blackout", and people seems to want to get off reddit more and more.
Tildes had big influx of users and thereby a good opportunity to kickstart a new space for people to migrate to. One of the things stopping people from migrating is the need for a site to reach critical mass where most people stop spending effort purely for support of the site.
Tildes is fairly similar to reddit and ready to use, when many contenders were not. It works because it has been used for many years by a small amount of dedicated and quality contributors.
However Deimos supposedly is wary of scaling the site. For example by making other people moderators(which overloaded him at one point). Users themselves cannot create their own spaces for their communities, which hinders people finding each other on this new site. Basically you need to make due with more generalized tags
Tildes being invite only dampens growth of course, but here was an opportunity in leaning into that, possibly working the same way pirate sites work. IE you have some responsibility and incentive to invite quality contributors. Hell it is even possible to use users post history on sites as a reference in order to get into a new site. It's not exactly a new idea, but hard to do historically due internet forums not being that old and all.
Instead there was a constant refilling of invites and a free for all, which was fairly obvious on the site.
Deimos also has a paternal style of moderating where instead of targeting specific users he will shutdown a whole thread. Not a big problem on low-effort forums, but in forums where people can spend hours on typing something out it discouraged quality contributions, ironically leaving the low effort in.
prankster999@reddit
With regards to Moderation...
Could Deimos not just allow for a "everything goes" within the context of the site rules, and also implement a "three strikes and you're out" report function?
I feel that if a certain post / comment gets reported a certain number of times from users, then this should be the catalyst for the admin team to crack down on bad behaviour.
Otherwise... live and let live...
With regards to your argument about Tildes being fairly similar to Reddit... Especially with regards to how people find or keep tabs with each other.
I feel as if there are major structural weaknesses with how Reddit is set up as a site.
What you're talking about is Reddit being structured in a way where it also acts like a social networking site. Alas, Reddit has a really weak social networking component.
If Tildes is similar to Reddit in this regard, I'm not surprised that people find it difficult to find each other.
Yeah, that could be a problem... Which then makes you wonder as to what the "incentive" could be in getting "quality contributors" on board. And that usually boils down to paying them. Which then changes the overall direction of the site, and makes it a commercial operation. So how do you monetise it? Do you make the platform free and resort to ads? Or do you make people pay a joining / subscription fee?
The problem with a lot of these Reddit Alternatives... And this is also a problem with people wanting to leave the Reddit site... Is that everybody wants an "alternative"... But nobody wants to pay for it.
WWWeirdGuy@reddit
This is getting into the weeds and one could write half a book on this. In regards to moderation. The moderation system is already pretty great (or goes in the right direction) imo, and I'll tie that to the two subsequent points. My criticisms was more that you can't realistically scale the site with only one mod.
There is a good argument for "serious"/formal forums that strive to be a place for constructive discussion to partially be social media site. Which is that not knowing someone (or not understanding someone), undermines good faith discussions. (Lookup principle of humanity and/or principle of charity). I think a lot of people has negative connotations with "social media sites", but the point is to simply humanise users in the mind of each user. This ties to moderation, because on reddit thing's are very either/or. Report leads to mod action or it doesn't. On Tildes you can effortlessly tag comments. For example with "noise", which may not be rule breaking, but still undermines discussion. This in turn makes moderation easier for mods(/Deimos).
Your point about payment is well taken and I agree, but I still think there is ocean of possibilities before that point. Keep in mind that the" innovation " or value from vote based forums is that we can pool together small amounts of labour, which people are therefore willing to do. It is perhaps useful to look at it as crowdfunded curation of content. This is argueably why improvements on reddit (ideally)does not lie in exclusive privileges or moderator action, because it does not lean into this central strength. Hence needing a payment model as you see with your eagle eyes. Just to underscore this, having been a mod on reddit. We would try to message regular (toxic)users on their behaviour in the most tactful way possible, but it would be taken as a veiled threat. Regular users could do this as well, but of course reddit is not designed for this and as a user you have little incentive or leverage.
A lot more can be said, especially about quality contribution. I am also not disagreeing with you, but rather airing out some topics that I feel are missed. IMO there is relatively too much focus on mod abuse or censorship, but we can draw very clear and sensible lines between quality, humanizing users and moderation imo.
kdjfsk@reddit
that shit was DOA.