#so default really kinda is a sweetspot there

[calamitaswrath]

Soo, it has been a while since the last poll - the server shutdown for X just really took all the momentum out of that for me. Though it also didn't help that I didn't quite know what poll to run next. But now I do, so now it's time for:

(Link to beard poll for M!Cross)

[cyle]

Hi, in regards to the public api, will 3rd party apps be affected in any way by upcoming changes ? The one I use - multitab Tumblr - is primarily for mass media browsing, so when I click on the "via" blog username attached to a post , it takes me straight to the blog, instead of the previous reblog.

This is obviously unrelated to what anyone is saying about viewing parent reblogs, since that's for conversations, reading previous tags and removed comments. My use case is just for the sake of finding blogs that act as human driven curated collections of media interconnected by this "via" feature. So empty reblogs are incredibly useful to me. But I'm worried they'll get pushed under the rug if this whole system gets redesigned and plastered across the public api.

To make it clear, the user being able to traverse the entire stretch of the via chain isn't important for this particular use case. Simply one via per post - the blog which this post was reblogged from, the blog directly before. So the entire via chain still needs to exist for any via to exist - but it doesn't need to be readily available to traverse by tapping the via. Essentially, if the via acts as it currently does in multitab Tumblr, and the android app I believe - ie tapping it takes me to the via blog of the post I'm viewing, as opposed to the via reblog of the post I'm viewing - that would be perfect.

Maybe I'm asking all this a little too early since I'm still not fully sure how this new post redesign will work. But multitab Tumblr seems to have adopted all the new post and reblog interface redesigns that the default Tumblr app has employed so far. Reblogs are no longer displayed as stacked and indented username lists with lines like they used to be in the old school tumblr textpost screenshots that float around the internet. So the posts have already had a redesign from their original design. and I'm not sure if this new design will be steamrolled over the current one over there too, through API changes. I'm not sure if the multitab Tumblr developers chose to change it, or if they had no choice because the api changed.

Closing thoughts: if Tumblr does end up looking and acting like twitter, that's fine because I like twitter and its many clones, I think it's kinda nicely coded and I like the modularity of posts and threads and how everything links together to facilitate conversation. And it's intuitive, which is why it's popular. However, Tumblr is and always has been the best site for human driven content curation in my opinion, because of the via blog being easily accessible in every post that is a reblog. So by all means , make it flashy and modern and twitter-like, but please don't remove the via blog, at least keep it in the public api.

Tumblr has a media focus, an archive view, pagination by date and post count through the API.... All these things which separate it from twitter in that its focus isn't entirely on conversations, but also media and curation and mass browsing. Essentially Tumblr = twitter + are.na + magic (the via). Please keep it that way. It's such a sweetspot between all these things. And this new post redesign could make it even better if only the via stays.

I suppose it's a niche ask? But a lot of people I'm sure find new blogs they like through clicking on the via instead of the source. I really think it makes tumblr what it is for people. Some blogs are so interconnected and I can see that they've clearly used the via to find a new blog to reblog from, again and again. It just makes everything so interconnected. Thank you times a million. I hope everything is as clear as possible hence the lengthy ask.

hey, yeah, there are no planned changes with the public API. if anything, myself and others on staff are continuously campaigning to open it up more and more, it's just difficult to prioritize that among the many things we have to do. i agree with basically everything you've said here!

"Tumblr = twitter + are.na + magic" is a fun way to put it.