====== Town Square ======

The town square is tilde.town's communal directory: ''/town/square'', world-writable so any townie can drop in a file or start a shared project. It exists so users can collaborate on things that do not belong to any one home directory. Before it existed, making a shared space needed an admin's help.

===== The Web Side =====

''/town/square/public_html'' is served at [[https://tilde.town/square/|tilde.town/square]]. The index links a handful of clubs and projects, all world-writable:

  * Clubs: web badge club, running club, website club, toki pona club, wrist watchers, CASIO CLUB
  * ''garden/'': the community garden page, generated from townies' botany plants
  * ''bulletin/'', ''#fridaypostcard'', 夢の物語 (yumono), ''~Wi-Fi connection''

To publish there, create a directory or file under ''/town/square/public_html''.

===== What Is In It =====

Around seventy entries as of October 2026, including:

  * ''i_was_here_*.txt'': a running chain of named files
  * Club directories: ''friendship-club'', ''.hidden-club'', ''catgirl-1.9'', ''shitty-lisp-club'', ''Free~Tilde~Society'', ''gitchat''
  * Shared tools: a compiled ''neofetch'', a ''ytalk'' build, ''town_botany_autowaterer.py'', ''generate_garden.py''
  * ''guestbooks.txt'', ''chat.txt'', ''bulletin_board/'', ''darkalley/'' (a write-only directory), ''square_maintenance'' (admin notes)
  * ''zine'', a symlink to ''~zine''s home

===== How to Add Something =====

<code bash>
ssh you@tilde.town
touch /town/square/i_was_here_13.txt        # leave a marker
mkdir /town/square/my-thing                 # start a shared project
</code>

Files keep their creator as owner, so make them writable by others if they are meant to be communal: ''chmod 664'' for files, ''chmod 775'' for directories. Deleting or vandalizing other people's files breaks the town's social contract (and the acceptable use policy).

===== Other Shared Spaces on Town =====

  * ''/town/our'': a communal ''bin'' of hundreds of one-off user scripts. ''town my <name>'' runs one; ''town mkour'' scaffolds a new one
  * ''town graffiti'': edits the communal page at tilde.town/graffiti
  * ''town wiki'': reads and modifies the town wiki (pages in ''/srv/www/wiki/'', edited through the ''wiki'' command)
  * ''town planet'': the town blog aggregator; join by listing your feed URL in ''~/.planetfeeds''
  * ''town bulletin'' / ''town linkulator'': shared link boards

===== Internal-Only Services =====

Some town services only listen on ''localhost'', reachable from a shell but not the internet:

  * The local IRC server on ports 6667 and 6697 (what ''town chat'' connects to, channel ''#tildetown'')
  * PostgreSQL on 5432, which prosaic uses for its poem database
  * The MOO's data at ''/town/moo''
  * Various user-run services on high localhost ports

===== See Also =====

  * [[tilde:start|tilde.town]]
  * [[tilde:tools|tilde.town Tools]]
  * [[tilde:commands|Commands]]
  * [[tilde:glossary|Glossary]]
  * [[indieweb:internet_as_place|The Internet as a Place]]
  * [[start|Return to wiki home]]