andrii builds things

engineer with too many side projects | working at Tumblr | previously arandomblog31

[engineering]

Where's that comment?

Hello Tumblr! 

@jubs here, today, to tell you about a feature we're building: Comments by author!

Comments (or replies) have been around for a while, but they have always been tucked away from your regular feed, and so we're working on a few ways to integrate them into the rest of our experience.

Soon, blogs will have a Comments tab alongside Posts, Likes, and Following. There, you will be able to see posts other people have been commenting on, and, more importantly, find your own comments! This was not possible before, except through notifications if someone engaged with your comment.

We're also working on a way to surface posts commented on by people you follow in your feeds. You will be able to find those in the For You tab, and later, alongside chronological posts in the Following tab.

So, how do you identify those posts in the feeds? 

Replied posts will show a small preview right there in your dashboard, before you click anything. 

This is not out yet, but soon! In the meantime, tell us what you think and expect from this! ☺︎

[what-breaks-my-heart]

Death to reblogs and additions I guess. No more posts being circulated around through peer review I guess. Yeah sure just take away what made this webbed site unique move away from your blue ocean to the red ocean by copying your competitors I guess

[andriibuilds]

Why? If certain reblogs would now be done through comments instead and circulated the same way - how does that kill post additions?

[what-breaks-my-heart]

Do you even understand Tumblr culture? Do you understand your product?

Sincerely, frustrated Tumblr user veteran.

[andriibuilds]

@what-breaks-my-heart would you mind DMing me with your perspective and perhaps explain things I might not understand properly?

[engineering]

Where's that comment?

Hello Tumblr! 

@jubs here, today, to tell you about a feature we're building: Comments by author!

Comments (or replies) have been around for a while, but they have always been tucked away from your regular feed, and so we're working on a few ways to integrate them into the rest of our experience.

Soon, blogs will have a Comments tab alongside Posts, Likes, and Following. There, you will be able to see posts other people have been commenting on, and, more importantly, find your own comments! This was not possible before, except through notifications if someone engaged with your comment.

We're also working on a way to surface posts commented on by people you follow in your feeds. You will be able to find those in the For You tab, and later, alongside chronological posts in the Following tab.

So, how do you identify those posts in the feeds? 

Replied posts will show a small preview right there in your dashboard, before you click anything. 

This is not out yet, but soon! In the meantime, tell us what you think and expect from this! ☺︎

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

please tell us that we can toggle the visibility on/off like we can do with likes and following.

[andriibuilds]

A big benefit of having comments enabled for all blogs is this will increase accountability and quality of comments because each blog would now think twice before writing a toxic comment, knowing it will be visible to everyone. If we make this opt-in, then we will lose this benefit and both spammers and trolls will continue their current behavior and limited accountability

[engineering]

Where's that comment?

Hello Tumblr! 

@jubs here, today, to tell you about a feature we're building: Comments by author!

Comments (or replies) have been around for a while, but they have always been tucked away from your regular feed, and so we're working on a few ways to integrate them into the rest of our experience.

Soon, blogs will have a Comments tab alongside Posts, Likes, and Following. There, you will be able to see posts other people have been commenting on, and, more importantly, find your own comments! This was not possible before, except through notifications if someone engaged with your comment.

We're also working on a way to surface posts commented on by people you follow in your feeds. You will be able to find those in the For You tab, and later, alongside chronological posts in the Following tab.

So, how do you identify those posts in the feeds? 

Replied posts will show a small preview right there in your dashboard, before you click anything. 

This is not out yet, but soon! In the meantime, tell us what you think and expect from this! ☺︎

[what-breaks-my-heart]

Death to reblogs and additions I guess. No more posts being circulated around through peer review I guess. Yeah sure just take away what made this webbed site unique move away from your blue ocean to the red ocean by copying your competitors I guess

[andriibuilds]

Why? If certain reblogs would now be done through comments instead and circulated the same way - how does that kill post additions?

[andriibuilds]

This month Automattic and Tumblr is trying a new approach for building/improving features across products. As part of it, I will be spending the next couple of weeks on improving the relevance of search results with the main goal to reduce/downrank unrelated posts from global search. Let me know if there are specific search query/result pairs that are particularly bad, and I should consider as part of this effort.

[andriibuilds]

I got a chance to watch this video by @strange-aeons on reblog change rollout from last month and wanted to share a reasoning from someone who participated in development and rollout:

The reason OPs saw notes being taken away from their posts into reblogs was actually a bad idea for the rollout strategy, not the intentional end goal. We needed to decide where engagements would go for people still seeing the old (current) UI, and we somehow chose them to not go to root, like they have always been going to.

We didn’t want to isolate in how users participate in comments and reblogs - we just wanted to let users to engage with OPs and with reblogs if they want to. It was indeed a big change (especially moving the main post footer up to the OP in the reblog chain), and in retrospect we should have given a heads up, as well as performed proper beta testing (we only tested within staff).

One other goal from that change was actually to support a hierarchy and highlight best reblogs and comments on top. Personally I find notes consumption often being quite confusing on large posts, because we flatten out the whole reblog tree into a chronological list of individual reblogs and comments, and when you see a post for the first time, you can’t really read the conversations, as there are multiple conversations mixed together in that list. Reblog engagement was one of the milestones towards implementing a hierarchical view for reblogs-with-content.

As part of the rollout we actually discovered a bug where certain reblogs went completely unattributed, and this played a big role in reverting the launch.

We have been working on addressing those problems with a version that I think could both preserve reblogs model and remove the confusion on what exactly you are engaging with (is it OP, a particular reblog, the whole chain? no one can really tell). And we plan to send it to the early testers first. Let me know if anyone wants to test it too

[sabertoothwalrus]

they listened!!!

on the latest version of iOS they added a way to filter posts on a blog’s search, including the ability to see ONLY someone’s original posts!

[purpleguitar]

all hands on deck!

the new content filters and the flagging system require every reblogger to appeal independently from the poster.

What is happening?

With the latest tumblr content filter updates, every reblog is flagged independently from the original post without the OP knowing. This means that if your post is reblogged by someone and that reblog is flagged, you won't know. The note count will go up, but the note is hidden: you can't see it on the rebloggers blog or any other reblogs branching from the flagged post.

What should I do?

Every reblogger needs to appeal for their own reblogs. Thankfully the review time on Tumblr's side has been fast, usually in a couple of hours they restore the post. If you can notify the OP, grand. If you have time, leave a support ticket, choose feedback and tell them why you think this is a bad model.

Why and how should I do it?

We all know the latest and contested change about the note counts that was thankfully rolled back, but its ramifications are still in use. Tumblr now considers every reblog a post in its own right, as you can see from the new banners for the same post as above:

The turn this website has taken regarding the ownership of posts is at best discouraging and at worst a massive disrespect done to all the artists, creators, gifmakers, fic writers and meta writers out there, making fandom fun and alive. If artists, writers and gifmakers don't get autonomy over their own art being shared on this website, how is a reblog different from a repost, something tumblr actively discourages from doing? How can the OP appeal for a post if they don't even know it's flagged? Why are we taking away ownership of the art from the artist, the human behind it?

How do I appeal?

Tumblr has this very useful feature, both on the website and on the mobile app:

You can find all the flagged posts on your blog either by going to the relevant blog>right hand menu, below Posts, Followers, Activity>Review flagged posts on the website OR by going to Settings>Review flagged posts on the mobile

Then you click on Appeal, and write a very short reason why, describing the post. You can even write this:

This post has nothing that is against the User Guidelines.

Let's keep fandom culture alive, folks.

[andriibuilds]

There was a bug with sexually explicit appeals/reviews not propagating through reblogs, which we just fixed now - let me know if this is still happening for you

[andriibuilds]

Are you actually tumblr-staff affiliated and is there any way you can confirm that if you are?

Yes, I am one of the leads on Tumblr product team. You should be able to see my badge, which only staff members have

[changes]

New: Search operators for better searching!

We hear you, and we share your frustrations: it’s hard to find a specific post. You know it has a particular tag or phrase, and it was posted on this date, or at least, within a specific year. But you can't find it!

So, today, we’re excited to announce that you can use ✨ advanced search operators ✨ in the search bar now! You can now say potato from:staff year:2021 to easily enjoy that video of a potato being microwaved again.

Before we jump into the details, a couple of caveats to note:

These search operators are only available in the main Tumblr search bar. They don’t work in the search bar in individual blogs.

The search operators only work on posts created in 2017 or later.

OK! Let’s go explore these operators!

Exact phrase match

When you surround your query with regular double quotes (not curly quotes), it will match posts with that exact phrase in the post's text content, or that exact phrase as a tag.

For example, "chappell roan is roan of arc" matches posts with that exact phrase in the content, and also matches posts that have the exact tag #chappell roan is roan of arc.

Match operator

By default, the query matches the post on either the text or the tags.

You can use match:text to specify you want to search the post content, or match:tags to search the post tags. For example:

sword world match:text looks for posts with the words "sword" and "world" in the post content.

sword world match:tags looks for posts with the words "sword" and "world" in the post tags.

From operator

Use from:blog or from:@​blog to find only posts by a particular blog.

For example, halloween from:staff finds all posts by @staff that has the word "halloween" in the post content or tags.

Year operator

Use year:YYYY to find posts from a particular year.

For example, halloween year:2019 finds all posts from 2019 that has the word "halloween" in the post content or tags.

Date operator

Use date:YYYY-MM-DD to find posts from a particular date.

For example, halloween date:2019-10-08 finds all posts created on October 8, 2019 that has the word "halloween" in the post content or tags.

All together

You can combine all the tools above to form even more specific queries:

Congrats! You’re now a Tumblr search wizard! 🪄

Other syntax

As a reminder, you can already search by a tag, or by multiple tags:

Prefixing your query with # performs a tag search — that is, it will find posts with that exact tag. For example, #star wars will only return posts with the #star wars tag.

You can search for multiple tags at at time. For example, #star wars #art will find posts that are tagged with both the tag #star wars and the tag #art.

You can combine this with the new operators to find what you are looking for!

We will add a guide for this new syntax soon to our Help Center.

Tumblr Patio support

The enhanced syntax makes Tumblr Patio even more powerful. You can now open multiple search columns each with different fine-tuned queries that use the syntax above to get you customized feeds.

Feedback

We’d love to hear what you think! Please share your feedback in the replies and reblogs of this post, or by reaching out to Tumblr Support.

[andriibuilds]

Tumblr Search Improvements?

What are the biggest things that we are missing or broken in Tumblr search? Feel free to share your pain points or ideas on how to make Tumblr search the best.

Please also specify whether this is for a global search, tag search / community hub, or search within a blog.

[andriibuilds]

Hello everyone!