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.
puregrief asked:
It'd be great if we can check what we posted years ago everyday, like "on this day" or "memories". Are you planning on implementing this soon? ❤️
Answer: Hi, @puregrief!
Fun story: we tried this! A couple of times, actually. One of them is still up that you can see today: the @memories blog on Tumblr was an April Fools prank many years ago, and its posts are customized based on who’s viewing it (you!), and it has some fun things like this.
Another time, we had a thing that would show you a post of yours from long ago with a header like “Blast from the past!”—it was fun for only a handful of people… but most others who saw it really did not like it, and let us know, so we removed it.
There are no plans to bring it back at present. But thank you for getting in touch, and keep the questions coming y'all.
dreamlandcreations asked:
Hi! I was wondering if it'd be possible to access full posts even after the original was deleted? What I mean is if a post is reblogged but there's a keep reading add in it then what's under the divider is lost if the original is gone. From what (little) I understand this cut creates a sort of front for the original with a short and full version being kinda separate things. Instead of this maybe the shorten long posts setting could be the base of this function? Idk, I just wanna see old posts 😭
Answer: Hey, @dreamlandcreations!
Unfortunately, we cannot make this happen. Once a post is deleted, we don’t support a way to then un-delete it. Even if we could, that would also violate the original poster’s trust. And nobody wants that.
We are sorry it is a no here, but thanks for your question. Keep 'em coming, y'all.
fandom--collector asked:
Will there at any point be an option for mass deleting likes, either all at once or by date or tags? I am aware there's an outside computer extension that can be used for this, but as someone who only logs in on my phone, I was wondering about through the mobile app.
Answer: Hello, @fandom–collector!
There are no plans to include a function to mass-unlike posts, sorry. But there are some small workarounds, however—your best bet is a third-party extension or writing a tool that uses our API! We hope this might be of some use.
Thanks for your question, and have a lovely day.
gravelyorchid asked:
Hi! Maybe third time’s the charm of asking this. I have two separate blogs since I like having the perks of the main blog, now would it be possible to have multiple accounts or even max of 3 logged in to the tumblr app? Instead of logging in and out? Thanks! x
Answer: Hey there @gravelyorchid!
A little good news and bad news here. We will start with the good, just because.
We have actually been looking into solving this kind of problem already as it happens. So yes—we fully agree this would be great to have. There are no guarantees on when a solution may be provided though, unfortunately, at this time.
We will let you know as soon as we do. Have a good day, and thanks for your question!
g698 asked:
How about the grid visualization for feed on mobile devices app too?
Answer: Hi there, @g698!
So we can certainly say someday, we hope. We can certainly say we want it too, and it would be nice to have. That is as much as we can say to this point, but rest assured should there be news on this, we will be there and square to let you know. Fingers crossed tight—and thanks for your question.
akwardlyuncool asked:
Hi. Can you tell me why the ability to natively create nested lists was taken away with the new post editor? And subsequently when that feature may return? This is something I use on a lot on my posts and the workarounds are complicated and don't always actually work. Thanks for your time.
Answer: Hey, @akwardlyuncool!
The truth is there were several small things like this that we intended to do with the post editor—but we had to move on to other priorities before we got a chance. They are still on our proverbial to-do list, we just haven’t had the time to do them. And honestly, it’s difficult for us to justify doing them since we know they were used by a very, very, very tiny number of people.
It is unknown at this point whether such a feature may or may not return. If there is news, rest assured you will be the first to know! Thanks for your question.
mirasmirages asked:
Hi! Are there going to be more episodes of Big Week On Tumblr? They say it will be back soon in the last episode, but it’s been a while.
Answer: Hi. @mirasmirages!
May we first say that this is very sweet, and we are glad to know folks listened in!
Unfortunately, there are no plans to produce new episodes of the Big Week on Tumblr podcast at this time. While it is not out of the realm of possibility, our producer has moved on to something new.
Never say never, though. Should this answer change, you’ll be the first to know.
agapi-kalyptei asked:
Boops are the best ever, I love them so thank you so much! Kudos to everyone who worked on it, esp. the paw animations are delightful
& not to sound cold and calculating, but I'm guessing since they increase engagement quite a bit, even if just for a short while - have you thought having random old-aprils-fools-events repeated once or twice throughout the year? Both for people who weren't there to experience them, and to bring a burst of joy on more occasions than like, 1st April, 5th November (...and 15th March, etc)
Answer: Hi there, @agapi-kalyptei!
At this time the answer is similar to the many of you folks asking, nay, pleading, to bring back the Boops. It will have to be no for now, but we also have to thank you heartily for all of your enthusiasm.
Things can change of course. Should this be the case, you’ll either see it through @changes or here at @wip!
circumference-pie asked:
A very very minor thing I have been curious about for a while, and I'm finally asking: why do you calculate queue posting times the way you do? For example, if I set my queue to post 3x a day, naively I would expect it to post every 8 hours. But in reality it posts every 6 hours with a 12 hour gap between days. Why complicate the math like that?
Answer: Hello @circumference-pie!
Buckle up y’all, it’s story time again!
First: nobody who works at Tumblr right now was a part of the work of planning the default queue implementation, which was more than ten years ago. So the full story behind “Why does it work that way?” has unfortunately been lost to the sands of time. All we can do is tell you how it works today and surmise some reasons why. The queue is actually a very clever system and part of how it works explains some of why it works the way it does. Also, there have been attempts to do what you ask—we still have “Queue 2.0” available in your Tumblr Labs settings, which tries to get closer to how you expect things to work.
Anyway! How the queue works today is not actually a queue in the traditional sense. There is no single list of posts that are in “your queue”. Instead, when you “Add to queue” after creating a post, we’re actually scheduling it to post at a future time, as if you had used the “Schedule post” option instead. We’re just calculating that time on your behalf when you use “Add to queue”, based on your settings, and how many other scheduled posts you have already. We use a secondary “index” model, called “ScheduledPost”, to keep track of posts you have scheduled on your blog. We do mark the ones that are a part of “your queue”, but the data model doesn’t keep one list of your “queue” per se.
You can see this in action on your blog, hiding in plain sight. If you add a bunch of posts to your queue, and then schedule a post for a specific future date, you’ll see both in your blog’s “queue” list, side by side. Because technically to us, they’re the same thing: queued posts are really just another kind of scheduled post, relying on the same always-running service to publish scheduled posts across all of Tumblr. Here’s a fun fact: we typically have about ~14.5 million future posts to publish from this list at any given time and are publishing hundreds of these scheduled posts every second.
So when you’re adding a new post to your queue, what we’re doing behind the scenes is starting at the beginning of your “day”, and creating time slots based on your queue settings. If a time slot is already filled, we move on to the next one. That’s why the default queue scheduler works how you describe—we’re trying to fill those “slots” based on the start of the day, rather than trying to divide the calendar day evenly. This just makes it much simpler for us to understand, scale, and predict when our “peaks” will be. At peak times, the publish-scheduled-posts service is publishing tens of thousands of posts in a manner of seconds. We did rewrite that post-publishing part of this architecture a few years ago to improve its efficiency and solve a lot of “lost post” bugs, but we didn’t change how “Add to queue” works.
However, the Queue 2.0 project available in Labs was an attempt to change the queue system to work as you expect—instead of starting at [beginning of day] and creating enough slots to fit [number of slots] every [number of hours], it tries to divide the calendar day into [number of slots] and fit the result back to the original algorithm’s mapping of the day. We never productionized this alternative approach, because it has a few bugs that some blogs hit in extreme cases, and we’ve never had time to fully fix them. It also can cause a bit of weirdness when time zones diverge, like with daylight savings time. Also, a lot of people prefer the default algorithm, and we haven’t thought of a nice way to transition everyone from one to the other. So for now, both options exist, and you can choose which algorithm for queue-slot-generating you want to use. We hope that makes sense!
While complicated, it is a great example of a system built by engineers to make sense and be scalable and predictable. But sometimes these kinds of systems, while clever, aren’t very intuitive to understand without digging into how they work.
Thanks for your question, and keep ’em coming.
novatheastropirate asked:
Hiya!! I know this was brought up in another answer a little while ago, but I thought the idea of creating "custom dashes" for different kinds of things you follow was really fun and helpful!! Is there any possibility of something like that getting rolled out on a larger scale? (Thank you so much!! 😊)
Answer: Hey, @novatheastropirate!
So we can say that we’re looking into it as a possible future feature of Patio, since that has been successful. We should also add that it is more than likely that we’ll work on that when we start tackling a later version of Patio, but it’s certainly on our wish list and we are glad it’s on yours too.
Keep your eyes peeled y’all. You know where you will find news: here at @wip or @changes.