I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.
The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.
Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.
This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.
This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.
Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.
You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.
Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.
This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.
You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.
The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.
“oh they’re not taking away chronological dashboard, well everything’s okay then” they also said in the post they’re making reblogs collapsed (like comments on twitter) so you won’t see the full conversation in a post. they also won’t get rid of tumblr live despite it being an annoying and cancerous data-miner that isn’t legal in much of the world. they won’t even let you opt out of tumblr live for more than seven days. they implemented a terrible photo viewer that mimics tiktok and makes it so you can’t zoom in on images. they took away the ability to view prev tags. they’re making it so you have to sign in with your email to view almost any thing on tumblr. they’ve already made it so you have to sign in to send asks, even on anon. they’re slowly phasing out custom blog themes.
the things that make tumblr at all usable and favored by us– the older web blog features, the anonymity– that is still being taken away. it HAS been being taken away for some time now. i am urging you people to reveiwbomb the tumblr app. force them to acknowledge that users do not like these changes.
re: that fucking staff post. obviously death to algorithms, but i also wanna interrogate the wider underlying assumptions of their logic there cuz. is 'success' having lots of followers & lots of popular posts??? why is that the end goal of using this website. i don't open tumblr to get attention from strangers, i open tumblr to read funny jokes and interesting commentary and to see cool art. encouraging clout-chasing will only increase user engagement if you successfully get people literally addicted to the associated dopamine hit. what if we didn't have to do that!!! what if a website could be a place you went to on purpose because you had fun there!!!!
also christ the point abt not wanting being popular to be a bad thing...... the reason being tumblr famous sucks is cuz there is a set percentage of people on this website who you do not want to interact with. and if it's 1% and 100 people interact with your posts then that's One Single Blockable Guy Who Sucks. but if it's 10'000 people! that's more Guys Who Suck than could comfortably fit in your house! there is no way to website-design out of it being annoying and terrible when there is a high school graduating class number of people interacting with you who you do not want to even know exist.
this is, in fact, a problem on every website! this is a problem offline! tumblr's userbase is just the most honest about it, because there's no ~upsides. the solution isn't to invent upsides. the upsides on other sites are shitty exploitative brand deals and a warm fuzzy feeling. i don't need those! does anyone!
the sole ~user-friendly change we actually need, imo, is to be able to mute notifications for specific posts. maybe to mute notifications from people you don't follow. but again it is not a bad thing if having 20k followers on a microblogging platform isnt really that fun. because the goal is not for everyone to have 20k followers. because nothing works like that. all the numbers cannot just keep going up. you do not want people to leave if their numbers do not keep going up because you cannot at all guarantee that. a microblogging website shld be like a children's playground! not like a fucking meth dealer!
Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.
The Diagnosis
In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience.
Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content.
To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.
Our Guiding Principles
To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.
Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Retain and grow our creator base.
Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.
Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.
Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up.
We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.
Actions & Next Steps
Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.
Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.
Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.
The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.
Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant.
Actions & Next Steps
Deliver great content each time the app is opened.
Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are.
Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds.
Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.
Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.
Actions & Next Steps
Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.
Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs.
Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.
Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread.
Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads.
Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed.
Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.
Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.
Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.
The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.
It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.
Actions & Next Steps
Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it.
Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.
Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.
Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.
Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.
Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.
Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.
Actions & Next Steps
Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.
Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.
Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages.
Test what the right daily push notification limit is.
Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.
Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.
The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.
Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.
Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users.
Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.
Conclusion
Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.
If you change the chronological feed in the name of creators, I'm hunting your dumb asses for sport. This is one of the only websites that isn't actively pumped full of infuriating algorithm bullshit.
This slate of changes is moronically out of touch with how people actually use this website, and what makes it popular.
Unfortunately, after a couple of moves, a few illnesses, and a rent upswing the likes of which you wouldn’t believe except you all definitely would because you’re living it, too, the Phantom Library is struggling to pay its hosting fees for the year.
If the Phantom Library has ever been useful to you, or you’d just like to help, my Venmo is @MaeveGlaistig and my PayPal is slipsilver AT the mail that starts with G, or please feel free to use the Library’s Ko-Fi.
The hosting fees amount to $150. Donating is strictly voluntary - please don’t if it will be a strain! The worst thing that will happen is the Library will go offline for a little while until I can afford to get it back up, so the world won’t end in the meantime.
Thank you, as always, to everyone who has helped the Phantom Library over the years. I hope we all continue to enjoy it for a long time to come. <3
And Oromë tamer of beasts would ride too at whiles in the darkness of the unlit forests; as a mighty hunter he came with spear and bow, pursuing to the death the monsters and fell creatures of the kingdom of Melkor, and his white horse Nahar shone like silver in the shadows.
I was going to write about this when I got around to writing about elvish naming conventions, but since Tolkien scholar Michael Martinez just answered my question and basically said “I have no idea what you’re talking about”, I really want to see what you guys know or can figure out.
Here’s the link to the response: https://middle-earth.xenite.org/short-questions-and-answers-vol-8/ For another source, https://www.elfdict.com/w/elrond?include_old=0 says:
Conceptual Development: The name Elrond first appeared in early Silmarillion drafts from the late 1920s (SM/38) and was first published in the Hobbit in 1937. His name appeared in The Etymologies from the 1930s in two forms: Noldorin Elrond “Starry-dome” (Ety/EL) and Ilkorin Elrond “Vault of Heaven” (Ety/ROD), both with essentially the same etymology as his later Sindarin name. In a few places Tolkien considered alternate etymologies for this name: in his notes on “Words, Phrases and Passages from The Lord of the Rings” from the 1950s-60s, he suggested the final element might be rhond “body” (PE17/183), and in a letter to Rhona Beare from 1958, he suggested the initial element might be archaic †Ell “Elf” (Let/281). Both of these seem to have been transient ideas.
And something similar about Elros, which means “star-foam”.
Basically, I’ve heard at least two different translations for the names Elrond and Elros, and I’ve also heard at least two different options for how they got their names. I’d really like sources if you know them, because things are often circulated as canon when in fact, someone just made them up. I imagine this is discussed in some History of Middle Earth books I haven’t gotten around to reading, but some of you have.
Elwing named them
First, Elrond and Elros might be the mother-names given to them by Elwing. This makes a lot of sense, since El- names are very common in her line: Elwe/Elu Thingol, Dior Eluchil, Elured, Elurin, Elwing. The only person who doesn’t seem to have an El- name is Luthien, and I assume she does and we just don’t know it (since most elves have three or four names). If she named them, then these are the names they went by their whole lives. And mother-names are often used publicly, so that’s all right. This also fits with the explanation of their names: star-dome or “vault of heaven” and star-foam, both describing the night sky. This is what Michael Martinez says is most likely, also adding that there is evidence of Quenya versions of their names, which makes sense with Earendil as their father.
Gil-Galad’s people named them
The other version I’ve heard (and this is the one I really want to find a source on) is that Gil-Galad or his people named them when they found them after they were sent away by Maedhros and Maglor. In this version, they were named because of how they were found: Elrond sitting in a cave and Elros playing in a waterfall. Then Elrond means “elf of the cave” (a translation Tolkien Gateway supports, though it says the name is referring to the caves of Menegroth) and Elros means “elf of the spray”. However, the elfdict quote above claims that the translation of “el” as “elf” was rejected by Tolkien.
If this is how they were named, it’s really interesting to question why they kept using those names instead of their mother-names. Are they rejecting the memory of their early life and the other people they’ve lived with? Are they saying they’re different people now? Or is it just that everyone started calling them by the nicknames and they couldn’t seem to go back? This would also mean that they were called something else entirely by Maedhros and Maglor, which would be interesting to write about.
Maedhros and Maglor named them
I don’t know if I’ve ever actually heard this or it was just a misunderstanding of the above. For a while I thought it was Maglor who found them in the cave and waterfall. This would also explain the existence of a Quenya version of Elrond. It would be fascinating if they kept the names that their kidnappers gave them and a really strong sign that they were a genuine family… or that they were brainwashed beyond recognition.
They were named more than once
I think it was the Tolkien Professor who I remember talking about the fact that some characters are given the same name by more than one person independently. The best example is Aragorn being named Elessar by the people of Gondor, who had no idea that it was already one of his names. This could have to do with foresight (e.g. a declaration that he will be named Elessar) or just the way that fate works in Middle Earth (I’m pretty sure Luthien was already called Tinuviel before Beren came along). So it’s possible that Elrond and Elros were given those names for one reason by their mother and for an entirely different reason by someone else.
Please tell me which story you’ve heard and if you know a source for it!
As far as I know, there are two places where Tolkien says who named Elrond and Elros: in one it was the Feanorians, in the other it was Elwing.
Letter 211, written in 1958, the Son of Feanor named them:
*rondo was a primitive Elvish word for ‘cavern’. *rosse meant ‘dew, spray (of fall or fountain) […] Elrond and Elros […] were so called because they were carried off bby the ons of Feanor […] the infants were not slain […] [but found] in a cave with a fall of water over the entrance. There they were found: Elrond within the cave, and Elros dabbling in the water.
I cut a fair bit of extraneous material, but this indicates that Elrond was named “elf-cave” and Elros “elf-spray” by the Feanorians because of where the two were found. El at this point means “elf,” which Tolkien later abandoned in favor of “star,” but there’s still a connection to Elves, who named themselves after the stars.
Problem of Ros, written after 1968, Elwing named them:
The names Elros and Elrond that Elwing gave to her sons were held prophetic, as many mother-names are among the Eldar.
Tolkien then spent some time debating with himself the etymology of -ros and -wing, but the name Elrond and the element El- in both Elwing and Elros’s names are Sindarin; (either -ros or -wing may or may not come from a human language). It’s not stated outright, but I’d bet anything that the el- element is a dynastic reference to Elu Thingol.
Personally I go with the version where Elwing named her sons. It comes from a later source, it fits with her family’s naming patterns and the names are prophetic. There also aren’t any other (personal) names recorded - I can’t believe that Elwing didn’t give them names and I think Elrond at least would prefer the name Elwing gave him. (Elrond in Fellowship calls Elwing his mother with no mention of the Feanorians and, also per Problem of Ros, he views himself as preferring the lineage of Sindarin Thingol to Noldorin Turgon, so I think he would prefer his mother-name. That obviously is my own personal interpretation; there can be different ones!)
So a couple different versions that Tolkien wrote: pick which one you want or ignore HoME and the Letters and go with something else. I’d give the Elwing version slightly more weight, but it’s up to you.
