Reddit Migration

I really like the quality of the conversation over there but felt a little bit uneasy at the way the structure was influencing their community's culture.

The whole thing is owned/controlled by this one guy Deimos, everyone there is a mod but he is the only admin. He sort of gardens it, as in he deletes whole conversations if he doesn't like the direction they are taking the community in. Understandably there was a lot of reference to "Deimos says" and "Deimos thinks" when they discussed the reddit influx.

When I learned it was impossible to create or join a smaller community I noped out of there. I'm not interested in "gaming", I'm interested in a few smaller games only.

I feel like on average their conversation quality is higher than the other alternatives. However, as you said, it is not very diverse.

Tildes also feels very “primp & proper” so to speak. While the conversations are generally very civil and of good quality, I also feel like the place is ruled with an iron fist; step a little bit out of line, and you’re pretty much gone. This is then coupled with the fact that you’re not able to make custom communities.

In the end, its good for civil discussion within the bounds of what is already considered acceptable by the admin. I almost feel like it has the opposite problem Reddit does - whereas conversations on Reddit are largely driven by bots and the hivemind, Tildes is controlled by Deimos and whoever Deimos approves of.

i spent some time there a few years back. it seemed.. sanitized.. and lacked any personality. im a silly person, i like silly things. silly isnt allowed there, generally. it felt like you had to have a stick shoved waaaay up your asshole to participate.

I haven't browsed tildes so don't have impression to give, but Reddit is Fun dev made a tildes app which I think is pretty cool. Decided to download it now. It's called Three Cheers for Tildes.

Tildes could be intersting, but difficulty of sign ups I think is what would keep it from becoming bigger. But, maybe that's what they want. Their way of controlling their own "instance".

I browsed around it for a good 20 minutes or so. My initial knee-jerk reaction is that I would not want to join a community with no ability to create or join specific areas that could be narrowed down to more specific topics. “Gaming” for example (and as someone else already mentioned), has to be video games, of all forms (retro, console, computer, homebrew, hacks - from all years) alongside board games, card games, browser games, children’s games, educational games, physical toys, etc. It’s a mess, to me at least. There aren’t even that many categories.

It is also very sterile-feeling. I appreciate a good old-fashioned text wall, but no options for background and text colors even? (Maybe that is an option if you are able to log into the site)

Waitlists are almost always just for hype.

I really love Tildes, but the comments in this thread are fair enough criticisms, and pretty accurate.

The only thing I'd clarify in the comments here is that there's not really a "waiting list" for invites. Deimos accepts emails requesting invites, and people receive access as he responds to each email. Users also get 5 invites every few weeks, so you can ask people for one here or on /r/redditalternatives. Or in the invite threads that are posted in /r/tildes. And the invite system isn't used to make it feel "exclusive" (especially since it's pretty easy to get one,) it's used because the site has been around for years with an existing userbase, so there's an effort to gradually add users to Tildes so the site doesn't just turn into 99% disgruntled redditors.

Tildes simply doesn't have the goals of "reddit alternatives" that are hoping to launch a new, popular site. It's just doing its own thing. Personally I find it refreshing, but it's definitely not for people who want to be part of the next "reddit" with millions of other people.

Actually, since you all aren't being assholes about your criticisms of it, this gives me a good feeling about kbin. I was going to try this site as an alternative before I found Tildes and have been spending most of my time there, but I'll probably hang around here eventually, for content that doesn't belong on Tildes (image posts, memes, and other silly stuff.)