Pinned
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.
With platforms like X (formerly Twitter) struggling and decentralized platforms growing, how does Tumblr position itself? Do you see Tumblr as a bridge between traditional social media and the emerging open web?
Answer: Hi there @mohdasif!
Thank you for your question. As it happens, we recently answered something similar right here.
In short: we are currently working on migrating Tumblr’s backend to WordPress, and this will take time and effort. You can also check out this recent article for the latest on our Fediverse plans.
Keep the questions coming, folks.
Is there any possibility for being able to add videos in reblogs as well as original posts?
Answer: Hey, @littlemetalbiter!
Good question, and timely: this could certainly be fun, and video is something we are taking another look at right now. But while this is an idea that we’re interested in, we haven’t put it on the roadmap yet—we’re focusing on the fundamentals of video on Tumblr first, and this idea is not something we can talk about with any certainty.
You’ll get news and updates over at @changes as and when we’ve got ’em. Keep the questions coming!
Hi team! Hope you're well and having a great (start to the) week!
With the introduction of communities, can we also introduce a few new controls for them? Particularly blocking communities from showing at all, the same way we'd block users. I've been using Patio a lot (love it!) and have both my regular and 'For you' dashes showing, but the 'For you' dash keeps throwing communities at me that I really don't want to see. Clicking Not Interested does nothing and there's no other way to not see them - they keep appearing and it's been driving me buggy (help!).
Thanks all!
Answer: Hello there @inclines!
As it happens, we answered something very similar to this very recently—we have recently added a new option to dismiss the Community from getting recommended on For You. If you want to know more, you can read all about it in Communities Feedback right here.
Thanks for the question! Keep them coming, folks.
hi wips! i noticed that the ask limit came back after not being there for a while (at least for me) and i was wondering why that was? i know that content creators like myself are often multifandom and love interacting with many different blogs and if too shy/uncomfortable using their blog, love the anon feature for that reason. i know that spam can be an issue, but is there anyway that we can get rid of the ask limit again or increase the amount of asks in the time limit and implement some kind of feature from the blogs end to limit asks they receive? i know it’s probably easier said than done, but i’ve seen bunch of mutuals/other blogs complain about ask limits so i thought i’d ask :’) have a nice day/night!
Answer: Hello, @hykwrld-main!
Some context for you: we fixed the ask limit as asks were being abused by scammers, but it was never meant to be removed! So what we really mean to say here is: our bad. These things happen from time to time and we apologize for any inconvenience.
Thanks for raising this with us, but we would gently remind you here that in the future something like this is best reported to Support, so the right folks can look into it.
Have a great day! Keep the questions coming.
Love what you guys are doing!! Y'all rock! One thing I wanted to ask: think we'll ever get the ability to change badge order? Unless I'm doing something wrong, I can't seem to rearrange my badges into the order I'd like. Gotta have that aesthetic don't'cha know!
Answer: Hi, @tyrantchimera!
Good news. You can already change the badge order! Just remove your badges, and then re-add them in the desired order.
You can find out more about badges at the Help Center here, and more about changing your blog’s appearance right here.
Thanks for your question, and have a good day. Keep them coming, folks.
Would there be a possibility of implementing a filter for AI generated images that works similarly to those for adult/18+ ones, so that users can report unlabeled AI content and it is hidden from those who aren't interested in it?
Answer: Hey there @main-therese!
While adding an AI-generated Community Label would be nice, for example, that would require a lot of changes that we do not have the resources for right now—unfortunately, there just isn’t space for it on the roadmap.
But it is a good point, a good question—and a super interesting idea! This is certainly something we want to take a deeper look into, so keep an eye on @changes for the latest news.
Question, can all members of a group tumblr schedule post? If so I assume the scheduled post of each member is isolated from the influence of another. if only administrators then i comprehend
Answer: Hey, @richardmurrayhumblr!
Good news! Any member of the group blog can schedule and queue posts, and no—they won’t interfere with each other.
Regular members can’t change other member’s posts, though (such as change their scheduled time, for example)—only admins can do that.
You can get the complete guide to group blogs over at the Help Center. We hope this helps—and thanks for your question!
Hello, will there ever be an outbox to go with our inbox so we can see the asks we've sent?
Answer: Hey there, @planetpluuto!
Thanks for your question. We have good news and bad news about this:
We hope that helps. Have a lovely day!
So I stumbled upon this post about Tumblr and IndieWeb, and do you guys are still planning to do it? This is something that makes me more interested in Tumblr being "my part of the web" than ActivityPub
Answer: Hi, @arthrfrts!
This is an interesting question, and we must first thank you for your feedback about IndieWeb.
Regarding your question, we can say that it’s certainly possible, and we are discussing it—we would like to see this happen as much as you. That said, resources are stretched right now, and we haven’t put it on our roadmap yet. However, feedback from our users helps us set our product priorities, and this is feedback that we will be passing along to our leadership to consider. So we would ask you all to keep the feedback coming, and thanks for getting in touch.
As you may have heard, we are currently working on migrating Tumblr’s backend to WordPress, and this will take time and effort. You can also check out this recent article for the latest on our Fediverse plans.
Have a great day!
Hi WIP!
Now that Community posts etc. are being added to the “For You” feed.
Could you add something like a “Don’t show this to me again” option; or some other way to filter out or block specific Communities?
(The algorithm keeps trying to recommend the same Communities to me; I would like to give them a metaphorical thumbs down, so that the algorithm can bring me recommendations for other, more interesting Communities. 🙂)
TY in advance!
Answer: Hey there @pamprinninja!
Well, what timing.
We have recently added a new option to dismiss the Community from getting recommended on For You, as it happens. And if you want to know more, you can read all about it in Communities Feedback right here.
We hope this helps. Have a great day!
Joke request: can we add a confetti or other fun visual effect to the block button?
The ability to block people, tags, and keywords is so powerful for curating our online experience and I love that about Tumblr. And I think it would be funny to celebrate and encourage this self-care with virtual confetti. Imagine.
Answer: Hi there @vaguelygenius!
A joke request! Who doesn’t love a joke request?
We had never thought of this before, but it’s definitely an idea. Perhaps even an April Fool’s idea. It would be a lot of fun, that’s for sure. We’ll throw this in the mix with other joke requests and fun ideas and see what comes of it.
Thanks for your question! Keep those joke requests coming, folks.
Would it be possible to implement more options for the dashboard? For example, adjusting font sizes and font faces manually on the user end, not just via the themes available by default. I find a lot of people use <small> html tags and the text is too small for me to read, but could easily be fixed if I could bump up the font size for that. On that note, would it be possible to implement more html tags for text posts, like super/subscript, code text (in-line, not for the whole paragraph element), more colors and headings, etc.?
Thank you!
Answer: Hi, @acidcorrodes!
It’s a good question, but it is unlikely that we will be adding these kind of appearance options to the dashboard. That said, we will more than happily point you to some available third-party browser extensions to do the trick instead! For adjusting the font face and font size, for example, you might want to try out Palettes for Tumblr—or, if you’re comfortable writing your own CSS, maybe Stylus would give you the font freedom you’re yearning for.
On that note, would it be possible to implement more html tags for text posts, like super/subscript, code text (in-line, not for the whole paragraph element), more colors and headings, etc.?
It is a fact that there are several of us among Tumblr Staff who would love to see this as much as you. Sadly, this is the kind of thing that would take a full project team to properly implement across our web, Android, and iOS clients—and there are much more pressing issues for our development teams to address at the moment.
We hope this was enlightening! Please do keep the questions coming.
Are there plans to include boolean operators (AND, OR, & NOT) and parentheses to the current search operators that were recently added?
Answer: Hey there @fourcheesecalzone!
This would be very cool to have! Our team is currently busy improving the in-blog search experience, so we might work on this during our next Hack Week. But this is definitely something that we would love to work on—watch this space and keep an eye at @changes!
hi! I like threadable replies, but I've noticed that mention notifications are a little different since threadable replies were implemented (I think.) If I'm remembering correctly, we used to be able to click the notification of a mention in a reply on a post & we'd be taken to the reply that mentions us. Now, we click the notif & are just taken to the post itself. This is fine if the post only has a few notes, we can scroll through and find the mention in the replies, but if it's a post with a lot of notes it can be almost impossible to actually find the reply that mentions us. I've had multiple instances where I've been notified someone mentioned me in a reply and clicked on the notif only to give up and not be able to read what they actually said to me because there's hundreds of replies and I'm taken to the post itself instead of the reply I was notified about. I'd love if this could be changed so we could get taken to the actual reply when we click on the notification.
Answer: Hey there, @ecstaticallyelectrifying!
We believe what has happened here is that before there were threads, if you sorted replies from the newest, received a notification, and soon opened the post, the last reply would be at the top.
We agree that it has become harder trying to find the comment that notified you. This is because there is currently no available option to change the sort inside the threads—and because someone might be replying to an old reply (therefore not at the top).
The great news is that we have plans to improve this soon. Watch this space! You’ll get updates over at @changes, and hopefully, it won’t be too long until you hear more on this.
Thanks for your question!
I hope this is the right place to ask: is it possible to get tumblr-wide stats on what time period gets a particular ratio of reblogs? I'm curious about, of all reblogs on tumblr in a given month, what percentage of them reblog a post made in the last day, the last week, the last month, the last year, the last five years, or the last ten years.
Answer: Hey, @zinderant!
We think we get what you mean here—but we have answered in a few ways just to be sure!
Whether you are asking about a way to see the overall number of Tumblr’s reblogs in a given time period, or for a specific post, then either way this is not something we are going to be implementing anytime soon. It would be nice, for sure, but it also seems a little not-Tumblr.
What we can point you towards, however, is the About page which shows you the number of posts that were made the day before. You can see an example in the screenshot below:
Thanks for getting in touch! Keep the questions coming, folks.
I saw that community post are starting to be recommended on the For You page now (cool!) but I was wondering what the symbols next to the user icons meant? Like the star, the shield, and the people?
Answer: Hi, @fourcheesecalzone!
When it comes to those particular badges, they mainly indicate the role of the author in the community they posted, so:
In some cases, we might also use a reblog badge if the post gets reblogged into the community. You can find a complete guide to moderating Communities in the Help Center article here.
We hope this helps, and thanks for your question! Keep ’em coming, folks!
