I’m curious if there are any discussion platforms out there that fall between Reddit and image boards in terms of structure and moderation.
The main thing I’m looking for is a platform that organizes discussions by user-created tags instead of communities or subreddits. This would allow more flexibility in categorizing topics.
A tag system could hopefully make it easier to filter out or avoid content you don’t want to see. This could include topics like graphic violence, abuse, self-harm, pornography, hate speech, politics, religion, phobias, anything related to past traumas, etc.
I know some communities allow you to filter by flair, but I’m imagining a more customizable tag filtering system to really tailor what you do and don’t see.
Does a platform with this kind of tag-based organization and filtering already exist?
Is this not how mastodon/twitter works?
Sounds like Tumblr. Mastodon or Kbin/Mbin on the Fediverse do this too.
I was an early reddit user from before the time subreddits existed. Much of the user base, including myself, were asking for tag functionality, but the subreddit concept was introduced instead. I guess they needed a way to moderate tags, and that was their solution. Decades later, they told those same mods to go fuck themselves, so maybe they should have just used tags in the first place like they clearly expected subreddits to act.
Tumblr, Twitter/X, Mastodon.
Aka “microblogging” sites.
What I’m really looking for is the same tagging method of image boards where everyone collaborates tagging content. I think hashtags are just spam and tags are non disruptive metadata that can actually help organize content.
That is exactly how it works with Tumblr, not so much the others. The tags are not part of the post itself, and others can add more that the OP didn’t add.
Cool, that’s what I was looking for. Thanks!
Danbooru
I’d allow users to choose from a set of predefined tags, not create their own.
And namespaced tags could be cool. So you could have aww:caturday or pcgaming:rpg
The site UI would need to be really good or lots of tags on a single post would look awful.
And I wonder how bad actors would attack it? Mistagging probably, but how effective could that be?
I think you just invented Usenet
I don’t know how image boards manage it, but they are always curated properly; I’ve yet to see troll tags.
Extensive moderation and copious bans
I had this idea years ago where users would utilize tags rather than cross posting. I really hate x-posting, but a lot of users like subscribing to subs. Tags would allow you to both subscribe to or filter out a very specific topic wherever it happens to be posted.
I guess you could add search alerts or keyword filters and eliminate x-posting.
That’s a good idea with the tags.
I think the only structure that I wouldn’t change is the conversation tree.
How would tags be created? From a list or just any word?
Any word would be better but would make filtering trickier.
I think the only advantage of subs over tags is that it spreads the moderation workload.
(There are other ways to moderate tho. Strange experimental voting and filtering )
Surely there is a center of research for this stuff somewhere. Actually that would make a good sub.
What about imgur zhich is basically an imageboard for redditors
