Never was very into Tumblr. I havent even bothered checking to see if they took down my blog. The callout culture and general bitchiness of the content regurgitators that made up the majority of that sites users put me off it. I used it mostly to follow artists i liked. a few of the ones that were more "content aggregators" as well, but I had no interest in anything made esclusively of collections of the work of others.
Since by the looks of it, tumblr imploding has brought a whole lot of people that are willing to put money into supporting a new home, It seems likey that things here will be shuffled around a bit to accomodate what works best for the new hybrid community.
if there is one single thing that would most recreate the ability to browse like people did on tumblr, it would be the ability to follow a tag. obviously this probably represents an entire new kind of data class and would be a bunch of work, but most freinds i know who were still actively using tumblr did so by browsing tags mostly.
that feature is pretty much perfect without drawbacks beyond implementing it. unlike a lot of other things that are possible but should be carefullyconsidered.
tumblr became infamous for the toxicity of its users, because it was mechanically designed to make loud and insane people the only things you would ever hear. calling people out in reblogs became a tool of harrassment that could last for years after the original poster had deleted the original post, often one they made while they were a kid. if any ideas about making the blog function here work like that, it would bring with it all the problems tumblr had.
beyond making tags more robust, i have geniune concerns that steps may be taken that, in the good intentions of accomodating a completely new userbase (wtf are these. GIRLS? ew) accidentally recreate many of the exact problems that drove out so many of us in the first place.
(oh yeah, and the X votes to see the score thing is bypassed when you create a ink to a work in the forums, idk if thats intentional)
TomFulp
Following tags is a really cool idea. I've noted it in our internal Feed ideas list so we don't forget it as things progress. Also keen on having tags for artists to create a better recommendation system for who to follow... I feel like many years ago I totally underestimate just how powerful tags were and would become. The cool thing is we set up an Elasticsearch cluster, which gives NG a lot more potential for powerful search and filtering features, vs what we had a few years ago.
We are planning a reblog feature / activity feed on user pages but I do hope the vibe stays chill and relatively drama-free like it has for years now... Hard to predict what will happen there.
The "X votes to see score" feature was added yesterday and we made a list of other areas where it needs to be addressed (namely search results and forum links), however we're leaving that be while getting back to some other updates.
sheepwave
Having slept on it, the "meritocracy" nature of voting might be enough to prevent toxic callout feedback loops from getting out of hand. tumblr's problem was that once something got going, the only way to interact with it was via positive feedback.
If reblogging and non-creator "aggregators" featuring of links to work on thier own feed for your own followers is something you guys think will work for your vision of your site, then go for it, but definitely don't fall into the trap of changing your own culture completely.
also, me from ten years ago is currently in shock im actually responding to something tom fulp said to me. lol.