Welcome to Work in Progress! Tumblr’s official ask box, where we try to answer as many questions as we can about Tumblr: what we’re working on, hope to work on, or even your suggestions! We hope it can be a little halfway between staff and you fine folk, the community.
Please note if you’re experiencing an issue/glitch/bug on Tumblr, do not send here at WIP—please file a Support request instead of sending us an ask.
somewhatavidreader asked:
Hello there. I remember when we could find the oldest posts in a specific tag using the url https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/thetagiwanttosearch?before=timestamp. Today, when browsing a tag, the url shows ?page=number. Unfortunately, entering the url with a specific page number only redirects to the first posts in the tag. Is there a way to (1) reach a specific date in a tag other than browsing manually until I get to that date? (2) browse forward from the oldest posts in a tag? (3) and most importantly pick up where I left off if my browsing session is interrupted?
Answer: Hi, @somewhatavidreader!
We do not support a “before” URL param on tagged pages, though we do in some other places, like the “Following” dashboard. This is possibly what you are remembering.
But now for some good news—we are in the process of adding better ways of filtering search results. We recently added a “year” and a “date” operator, that lets you target a specific year and even date! You can try this out by typing #cats date:2023-10-31 into the search box to get results for a tag or search term filtered to a particular day.
We hope this helps! Thanks for your question, and keep ‘em coming, folks.
smushedmuffin asked:
why arent groupchats a thing anymore?
Answer: Hello @smushedmuffin!
We were very excited about bringing native group chats to Tumblr. Unfortunately, however, not enough people ended up using them for us to feel it was worth keeping and maintaining as a feature.
Every time we build a significant new feature like that, one that consumes a lot of time and bandwidth, we try to measure whether the juice was worth the squeeze, so to speak. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out. If we kept it around, it would be yet another thing in the big pile of things we (a pretty small team) need to maintain. It is for these reasons and more that it often makes sense to just let it go. That’s not to say we are not sad to see it go, of course.
That said, while it’s more like a “slow” group chat than like our previous attempt at group chats, we are introducing a little feature called Communities to let people get together and talk in a shared space. You can find out more at the Help Center.
Thanks for your question. Keep ’em coming!
lunaeclipse1057-ao3 asked:
What changes are you expecting to be made to Communities before they are officially released and done?
Answer: Hey there, @lunaeclipse1057-ao3!
First of all, we don’t have any real definition for being “done” with Communities! There is a long, long way to go, so we’ve been thinking in terms of milestones and releases.
We had a limited alpha release with only dozens of participants and then a closed beta with hundreds of participants—and we’re now in a kind of open beta with many tens of thousands of participants. We are still working to open the floodgates one bit at a time and get hundreds of thousands of participants.
But there are many millions of people on Tumblr. So you could say that we will consider the Communities feature released in a more official fashion, no longer “beta”, when we’ve built everything out in the native mobile apps.
There are a lot of things coming for Communities. We’ve been sharing roadmap updates and more in the Communities Feedback community, for example—the latest is here! Don’t miss it.
Thanks for your question! We are glad for your interest in Communities—we hope you like it.
legowerewolf asked:
So I've heard about the migration to the Wordpress backend... Will we know when it's done? Can you get @engineering to put out something technical about what had to happen?
Answer: Hi, @legowerewolf!
We’re in the planning and prototyping phase right now—so we don’t have a lot of details to share, unfortunately. But we will share our plans and our progress as it gets clearer.
Some of the pieces we are discussing are:
We must add two things here. Firstly, this will be a long process, and it won’t be completed anytime soon, per se. Secondly, we should also use the opportunity to clarify that, besides a bug or two here or there, how you know and use Tumblr will not change at all.
This will be a big change—but an invisible one, more or less.
Thanks for your questions, and have a great day!
crazycatladyinwaiting asked:
Hi! Any chance we could ever have the opportunity to tell you *why* we’re reporting an ad as inappropriate? Like a chance to explain that “I’m specifically reporting this ad for sexual content and animal abuse”? Because I feel like you most likely have a bot reviewing reports right now, since I keep seeing the same ad again and again and again despite reporting it. I know the answer is probably no because that would indeed be a Lot Of Work, which I understand. Just throwing the idea out there!
Answer: Hi, @crazycatladyinwaiting!
We want to take this opportunity to reassure you all that real humans take the time to look at every report. This has its pros and cons.
The cons: we receive a lot of reports which, as you say, is a lot of work. Unfortunately, there is not a huge number of people available to go through them, and this will likely explain why you’re still seeing potentially inappropriate material. But hold on, here—we hope that, by the time you see this answer on @wip, someone will at least be looking into your report.
The pros: easy. Real humans read every report! Safety and security online are of the highest importance, which is why we hope we will always have real humans on hand to read every report and endeavor to resolve them as quickly as possible.
To answer your original question, there are no plans to let you all tell us why, at present. But we want to assure you the work that goes into this from the staff side of things is considerable, if unseen.
Thank you for your question, and we are sorry that it has taken longer to resolve than we would like.
deadgodjess asked:
Hi! Will we get the ability to pick & choose who can & and can not reblog betond the "anyone" & "noone" options? I'm thinking along the lines of how we can decide that only people who have followed us for at least 2 weeks can reply to our posts. If it's possible, it would be cool to have a "Only me," "Only Mutuals" and "Only ppl who've been following me for at least 2 weeks" options.
Answer: Hello there, @deadgodjess!
You have a point here—it is wildly inconsistent. Between replies, mentions, and reblogs, all three options have different options.
Ideally, it would be great if the same options were available for all three, that they were ordered and worded the same, and were consistently presented. For example:
It’s not sure where this falls on our priority list as things stand, given it is not without its complications, but leave this with us. If there are any updates, you will be the first to know. Thanks for your question!
yppngmtt asked:
is it possible (or will be possible) to create lists? it's one of the few features i really like from twitter but as far as tumblr goes, the closest thing i can find is blog subscriptions, and that requires me to have notifications on + it's only one set of blogs, no tags
being able to create separate little tabs filled with different niches of tags and blogs i can just easily switch between would be so nice!
Answer: Hey there, @yppngmtt!
As luck would have it, we have been experimenting with an idea just like this—which we call Collections!
We had it available as an experiment for a little while and learned a lot. Right now, it’s on the back burner as we work on Communities. But do stay tuned for more info, as we very much intend to return to this someday. And hopefully sooner rather than later.
Thanks for your question—and keep ’em coming, people.
qthewhatever asked:
(on mobile, android app)
there used to be a green bar at the bottom of the screen whenever you made or reblogged a post, which said "Posted to [blog]" and, if tapped on before it disappeared, took you directly to the post's permalink. I used that a TON, because it allowed me to quickly edit or delete something I posted too soon, without losing my place in the dash.
the new "Blaze" popup has taken the place of that bar, and seemingly no longer functions as a link to the post. it also pops up with every. single. reblog. I do not want to Blaze every post I see. in fact, I am already paying for Ad-Free to block all Blazed posts, and I do not allow mine to be Blazed.
please put in a way to revert the popup back to how it was. the message has been received, my answer is "no thank you", kindly give me my functionality back.
Answer: Hello there, @qthewhatever!
So, first things first. We can say for sure that it should not be showing every single time. There was an issue identified which could have led to this, but it was fixed on v35.4.1 which was released on July 16. It also shouldn’t show for reblogs, so we’ve fixed that, too.
This feature forms part of an experiment we are undertaking for Blaze over the last few weeks, and it should appear once every three posts. Even so, this might be a little much, so we will tweak it and look to reduce the frequency.
We are still gathering data to determine the overall success or failure of the experiment, and we hope to wrap it up soon. At that point, we will know what, ultimately, to do with this feature.
But we appreciate your feedback and hear you loud and clear. You will be the first to know what happens with this going forward.
nornirthefrog asked:
two questions...Will there be a time in the future where Tumblr users might be able to monetise their posts similar to that of twitter users do with some of theirs (obviously subscription based)? or if we buy a domain from Tumblr can we put our own ads into the website to make money…is that allowed?
Thank you!
Answer: Hey there, @nornirthefrog!
Thanks for getting in touch. We are glad you asked, but this is a complicated question. We have made some efforts with similar ideas before but with mixed results. Let us explore it in three parts:
We hope that helps to clarify things. Keep the questions coming, folks!
bander28 asked:
I wish there was an option to simply view all reblogs, rather than with tags or without separately, or even all notes- reblogs with and without tags and comments, and likes, all together and chronological. It's nice that we can filter!! But it would also be cool if we could have the unfiltered option as one of the choices.
Also wrt to notes, it would be nice, when someone reblogs a post and adds an image, if there were some indication of this having happened or way of knowing about this in the activity feed; currently this is not the case, at least on desktop
Answer: Hi, @b-a-n-d-e-r!
All good questions. You can actually still see the single feed of notes on the blog network if the blog has the custom theme option enabled in its settings. We used to have this in Tumblr itself, but honestly, it gets very overwhelming very quickly, and it becomes difficult to find the content you want, hence the separation now.
As for the second point: we agree! As it happens, we are still working on improving activity items and updating the reblog one to indicate when a reblog has just added an image without text is on our to-do list. We will have updates for you here, and hopefully before too long. Keep an eye out here and at @changes.
Thanks for getting in touch. Keep the questions coming, folks.