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Tildes – a non-profit community site
- nbrempel 7y agoI 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.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago> a great candidate for a Reddit-like community with more intelligent discourse. Except the mod makes no effort to explain policies like HN mods do, and will ban accounts without explanation or recourse. Very clannish, IMHO.
- elric 7y ago> 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.
- mrzool 7y agoSo is this kind of like HN but for everything? I’m digging it.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y agoReddit clone? I think HN was a redditclone too right?
- itslennysfault 7y agocorrect
- earenndil 7y agoTo be fair, reddit was originally a usenet clone.
- dredmorbius 7y agoBetter Reddit is more like it.
- johnnyAghands 7y agoThis looks great! Can anyone sponsor an invite for me?
- hmhrex 7y agoI would also be interested in an invite, this looks like the type of community I've been wanting.
- solarkraft 7y agoYep, I can. How can you be privately reached?
- johnnyAghands 7y agoHi@vprasanth.com, thank you!
- raptorraver 7y agoI’d be very happy if someone could invite me aswell. This looks really promising.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Deimorz 7y ago(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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 Feel free to ask any questions, and if you're interested in an invite please just email the address in the blog post and I'll send you one soon. It's not intended to be difficult to get an invite, I just want to keep the growth controlled while a base site culture and more features get built up.
- matdehaast 7y agoAs 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/ https://www.grantfortheweb.org/ [1] https://coil.com/creator https://coil.com/creator
- hmhrex 7y agoWow. 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.
- elric 7y agoThe post states you're supported by donations. How do you go about keeping the site up and financially healthy based on just donations?
- Deimorz 7y agoIt 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 https://tildes.net/financials
- rglover 7y agoAny chance of an invite from an existing user? This post alone has me thrilled: https://tildes.net/~talk/l4d/you_must_time_travel_to_any_time_before_1799_and_never_come_back_where_do_you_go https://tildes.net/~talk/l4d/you_must_time_travel_to_any_tim...
- squiguy7 7y agoI can send you a code if you drop me a message. My email can be found in my profile.
- windthrown 7y agoJust email your request to invites@tildes.net
- jagger27 7y agoWhat 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!
- Deimorz 7y agoThanks! 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 https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation
- m463 7y agoumatrix says there is one site: tildes.net no subdomains, no cdns (which nowadays track instead of cache), no third party anything. refreshing.
- tootie 7y agoI only browse reddit on https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com for that reason. You can disable thumbnails and then the front page weighs less than 1MB.
- astrea 7y agoWhat'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.
- Deimorz 7y agoThat trap happens because of sites basing themselves on venture capital, advertising, and chasing growth/profit. Tildes is a non-profit with no advertising or investors, so none of that pressure is there. There's no danger of donations not being enough to sustain it. The expenses are already far more than covered and it could easily stay running in its current state forever.
- city41 7y agoHow do you know donations will keep up with usage? I felt like the OP was referring to a situation where Tildes takes off and becomes large organically. I'm currently building a site that I am considering attempting to make possible via donations, much like Tildes. Any advice you can share? How well have donations been working? Any gotchas? Thanks for any insights you can share!
- _ps6d 7y agoYou can see the site's current expenses and donations here: https://tildes.net/financials https://tildes.net/financials The costs to keep it running are already covered by over 10x with the current donations, and I believe the existing servers could easily handle at least 100x the current traffic level. In terms of advice, I'd say: - Don't go into debt (or take any investments) to launch the site. - Build something lightweight so the costs are low. Use dedicated server(s), avoid cloud hosting like AWS. - Incorporate as a non-profit if you can.
- stevewodil 7y ago+1 for transparency of financials, that's a really awesome idea
- Semaphor 7y agothere are several people asking for invites. pm me or reply here and I'll invite you (Until my ten invites run out). In roughly 7h because I'm going to sleep now. In a recent census we realized we have very few non-tech people and women, so please help us even the scales by reaching out if you see this ;)
- neodymiumphish 7y agoI would love an invite!
- yanokwa 7y agoI'd love an invite!
- Y_Y 7y agoI would also like an invitation. This is how I felt when Gmail started.
- lubujackson 7y agoI would love an invite, thanks.
- excitedleigh 7y agoI'd also like an invite!
- dotism 7y agoMay I have one?
- rex_lupi 7y agomay I have one, if you still have some available?
- geolgau 7y agoHope it's not too late. Do you have one left for me?
- Semaphor 7y agoSadly I’m out of the edit window, so I’ll do it as a reply: If you don’t have any contact information in your profile, I really can’t send you an invite.
- stevewodil 7y agoEDIT: All invites are now gone, sorry I have 10 invites available, send an email to stevewodil@gmail.com for an invite code. Include your Hacker News username in the message so I can verify you. EDIT: All invites are now gone, sorry
- bartread 7y agoThis is great: fast, interesting content, comments, voting, but... I can't do anything until I get an invite. Tedious. This invite only model sucks an 18-metre radius dog anus. We've seen it far too many times before. It's really boring and overdone and needs to die. Seriously, just let us in. And I know what you're thinking, "Wow, this comment is super-obnoxious and we don't want this kind of person in here", but check my karma: it's pretty good. You've just crossed a line. The problem here is I'm getting old and one day I'm going to die and I only have so much breath left in my body, so I don't have the time or the patience for your infuriating invite only model. Please: stop arsing around and open it up.
- daviross 7y agoI have no dog in this fight, but check my karma: it's pretty good. You've just crossed a line. What does that have to do with anything? You're not wrong that your comment is super obnoxious, so if you're aware of the issue... why not just not? (I'm sure that the response would be "the invite-only model merits being a jerk in response", but given the topic is community it feels like believing something that self-serving/self-perpetuating of malbehavior ought to be disqualifying.)
- panarky 7y agoTildes is a nice community. We don't tolerate assholes. If deimorz lets you in, please do better than this comment.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoThis could also be described as being cliquish, or an echo chamber.
- panarky 7y agoI've found Tildes to be welcoming to a wide variety of ideas, opinions and world views. We're hostile to trolls, saboteurs, personal attacks, self-promotion and repeated empty or trivial junk comments. If it's cliquish to discourage activity that makes social spaces miserable, then that's the kind of clique I'd like to belong to.
- _fs 7y agohttps://tildes.net/register?code=EPFF9-HWU9Z-4D5U6 https://tildes.net/register?code=EPFF9-HWU9Z-4D5U6 https://tildes.net/register?code=B2M91-W6VD5-ABFG8 https://tildes.net/register?code=B2M91-W6VD5-ABFG8 https://tildes.net/register?code=LGG9Q-26K5G-LU8RK https://tildes.net/register?code=LGG9Q-26K5G-LU8RK https://tildes.net/register?code=GBLXM-N3GPO-V4MN4 https://tildes.net/register?code=GBLXM-N3GPO-V4MN4 https://tildes.net/register?code=MWMSC-2970F-VPWYM https://tildes.net/register?code=MWMSC-2970F-VPWYM https://tildes.net/register?code=2LDQG-FJ1N2-SM8F0 https://tildes.net/register?code=2LDQG-FJ1N2-SM8F0 https://tildes.net/register?code=GLF5C-JHMWP-MV4YH https://tildes.net/register?code=GLF5C-JHMWP-MV4YH https://tildes.net/register?code=9HBBF-WC5CC-LBJQX https://tildes.net/register?code=9HBBF-WC5CC-LBJQX https://tildes.net/register?code=ASYR8-V3KQJ-U96N7 https://tildes.net/register?code=ASYR8-V3KQJ-U96N7
- Deimorz 7y agoTo save anyone else the trouble of trying, all of these links have been used now and are no longer valid. If you want an invite, you can just email me as explained in the announcement post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes
- dredmorbius 7y agoI've been on Tildes since Early Days, same username, really like the features and development. And I've got a few invites. Reply and ping via email (see my HN user page) if interested.
- chrysoprace 7y agoSigned up and it looks great! Looking forward to seeing it grow. The main reason I actually use Reddit is because there's a community for almost anything. I had a quick browse through the issues/roadmap but; do you have a plan to allow user-created groups or subgroups? For example, ~food is too general for bread-making and so reddit has communities like https://old.reddit.com/r/breadit https://old.reddit.com/r/breadit, which is a great place to ask for baking advice specific to baking bread.
- Deimorz 7y agoYes, that's definitely planned over the longer term, but the community is too small to support highly-specific groups for now. Various other "reddit clones" have made the mistake of allowing users to create communities immediately, and they ended up with thousands of inactive, abandoned ones. Even reddit itself didn't support subreddit creation for over 3 years. It takes a long time to have a userbase large enough for it to work. In the meantime, Tildes has a pretty flexible tagging system to help categorize topics, and tags can transition into formal groups quite nicely.
- chrisfrantz 7y agoIs this the official launch? Tildes is great, glad it’s getting exposure here. It was interesting watching the community unfold on a subreddit before eventually migrating over to a hosted third party site.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoHm. This is rare (for me). Something i liked because at first glance nothing which is disturbing or annoying from a design point of view. Has usable themes even, with the exception of the solarized ones. Always wondered who the people are which would profit from that, or what displays? Could maybe use some setting for different padding. Edit: Different padding as in tiny/small/compact/cozy/comfortable/large/huge view like in some google apps?
- petecox 7y agoTop discussion currently is on Hitler. No thanks, I'll give it a miss.
- bananamerica 7y agoHave you actually read it? Stories about killing Hitler and saving millions of lives are a staple of science fiction, and an interesting way to reason about time travel. I created that thread as a creative exercise for others to partake in good, light-hearted fun. Despite the subject, there were absolutely no cases of misbehavior. That's what you get when you're in a heavily moderated community that takes being nice to each other very seriously.
- petecox 7y agoYes, I did. 'Light-hearted fun' perhaps but it strikes me as in very poor taste as someone whose parents lived through the 1940s. Okay, you went there - to its logical conclusion in which your time adventures messing around with the past inadvertently sees the Axis win the war and the 1000 year reign commences as forseen. And nobody wants that. 'a heavily moderated community that takes being nice to each other very seriously' would describe this forum, for the most part. Thus my reluctance to join another community comprised somewhat of HN invitees merely to discuss topics HN might find taboo such as time travelling assassination of historical figures.
- bananamerica 7y agoI am truly sorry my thread offended you. I assure it was not my intention to provoke that reaction in anyone.
- aabbcc1241 7y agoHow is it better than here? (I like both at the moment.)
- kidfiji 7y agoBy any chance does anyone else have an extra invite?
- byproxy 7y agoYep. Dunno the best way to send it out, though.
- bananamerica 7y agoI have 10 invites available, send an email to mrbig033@protonmail.com for an invite code. Include your Hacker News username in the message so I can verify you.