Released idkbin 1.3.1! This update tweaks the scroll-to-top button, adds icons to the activity bar, and adds sort icons where they were missing before.
You mentioned a lot of things that I generally really enjoy about #kbin as well.
⭐ The admin @ernest is an incredibly hardworking, kind, supportive, and an all-around good person. This is my tip top most favorite thing because good leadership and communication is essential to a good and thriving community. Ernest is a star!
Same, he also gets bonus points for listening to, and implementing suggestions. Some of them have come quite quickly as well. These factors when combined have made me feel like I'm really a part of the community.
⭐ I enjoy making scripts/styles for kbin. kbin is the reason I began learning JS, HTML, and CSS. I am so happy I started learning, and it's all thanks to kbin.
Cheers to that, I actually use one of yours -- specifically the one that changes the layout of profile pages.
⭐ No malicious, tricky, over-calculated algorithm. It's very straight-forward and honest here. I love seeing a mix of upvoted/downvoted comments in comment sections too, rather than just top upvoted, because it makes me feel more apart of the conversation with everyone. Your contributions and thoughts won't get drowned out by upvoted witty remarks, that is truly unique to kbin (and maybe elsewhere on the fediverse?).
Agreed -- I think Mastodon also functions similarly. It makes #discoverability a bit challenging at times, but I'm open to experimenting with it.
⭐ kbin gives me the urge to contribute, interact, and create because our contributions have actual impact. Can't say the same for other sites. Everywhere else is lurk only.
Hard agree -- though it wears on me at times when I'm unable to get some engagement going after keeping at it for so long. I've changed my mindset about it a little while ago, so it's not too bad.
⭐ Tightknit but welcoming. kbin is small enough that I run into familiar people all the time, and I recognize usernames everywhere.
Agreed, and to add onto this -- profile pictures are pretty easily recognizable as well.
⭐ Authenticity. kbin is authentic and real. It's not pushing a product, not manipulating what you see, not building an ad profile. It is what a forum should be.
Yeah, adding on one of your points again -- it's very reminiscent of what #forums used to feel like. However, at the same time, it feels like something more due to the addition of #microblogging. #Microblogs may not be super popular on /kbin, but I think they're a stellar addition to the forum experience. I've had some nice back-and-forths with #Mastodon users from the comfort of /kbin's UI. I think there's more potential in what you can do with them, too.
I've been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon's responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that'll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn't be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can't have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they're probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there'd be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that's why they're separate to begin with. You don't see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don't necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the "All Content" tab if you'd like, they're styled differently enough that it's very clear when you're looking at a thread and when you're looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I've been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that's what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that's also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, "Wait, what's this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated," even if you tell them to ignore it.
It's probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I'm expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would've made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin's magazine system). However, this doesn't mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I'd love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn't mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
#Kbin actually handles this really well. Whenever it detects 2 of the same #thread (at least that's how I think it works), it'll group them and only show one of the threads on your feed. If you click on it, right under the thread will be the other #cross-posted threads on other magazines, each of which has its own upvote/downvote and comment count. You can click on any of those threads to switch to a certain magazine's thread and see the #comments there. Also, when you comment, it only goes to the thread you currently have open.
#Kbin has a #feature to kind of deal with this called #collections. Instead of subscribing to all #magazines of a same type or even name, you can put them in a collection (or find a collection where somebody already did that) and then favorite that collection see all of those magazines in your feed. Splitting up the discussion is still not ideal but at least this lets you see all of it at once and increases #discoverability.
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
First time I’ve seen this bot. I would be interested in learning how to cross-post from #kbin to #Lemmy in a way that preserves the original username the way this bot did. Is that possible without 3rd party tools? I can login to a Lemmy instance and then crosspost any Kbin thread to a Lemmy community, but then the author becomes myself, not the original Kbin author.
Had a chance to play around with then new #kbin collections feature, and it's really nice. Think of it as lists in Mastodon, but you can optionally share your collection publicly.
Today, I added a box of related/random collections - I must admit that the ones you created are fantastic. Collection names can be repeated since they are user-assigned. I added the option to mark a collection as official - those with the highest number of followers in a given topic and with a specific name can be marked and...
Regarding Collections: I'm wondering if it might be useful to allow transfer ownership of collections as well? Probably low priority, but this could be useful if:
The owner becomes inactive
A #kbin magazine or #lemmy community becomes problematic + has inactive moderators
Other magazines/communities become more/less relevant over time, thus the collection needing adjustments
Re 1:
Could be mitigated on kbin magazines due to magazine ownership transfers, however, may pose an issue on federated magazines from lemmy
Also could be mitigated by the creation of a new collection, hence probably low priority
Re 2:
Could be low priority in regard to certain magazines/communities becoming inactive over time, however, the chance to miss out on discussions and threads should possibly be considered
However, this is also mitigated by also creating new collections -- I just think people generally like to avoid migrating when followings settle in.
Transferring collection ownership could also be excessive/unnecessary? Thoughts? Does the status of an official collection change automatically based on the user count?
Also regarding collections: After following a collection -- going to a collection's page and attempting to unfollow is described as "delete". This may give off the wrong impression to unfamiliar users. Perhaps "unfollow", or "unfavorite" may be better suited? I also wonder if it may be more appropriate to have favorited collections appear at the top of the collections view so users can quickly find the collections they follow in order to avoid being buried by the popular ones. This could also potentially be solved by giving subscribed collections its own tab in the navbar next to magazines? Is that perhaps too many tabs in the navbar?
Anyways, thank you so much Ernest. I know some people were unhappy about /kbin's development progress for awhile, but I'm really glad I stuck with it. Despite the challenges that came your way, watching you get back into the swing of things and /kbin's growth has been a joy to be a part of. The consistent communication and having our feedback be heard is also a big plus. As always, looking forward to what else is on the way.
Edit: Also, really glad to hear you're prioritizing sustainability, balance, and a strong foundation for the future. I hope you're able to get the support you're looking for, so you can give this project the time and effort you think it deserves. It's clear you care a lot about this project.
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Categories - a new feature that is essentially a multi-mags view. A new tab will appear in the user panel where you can create categories (public or private) and then add magazines to them (local or remote). In the magazine listing, there will be another tab that will list public categories...
I did not expect to see the #collections/#categories feature be implemented so quickly after mentioning it in only two threads ago. It's really exciting watching #kbin develop. However, when I tried making a private and public test case, both returned with 50x error. Even though some actions are successful despite showing this error, I couldn't find my attempts at using this feature under Settings > Collections or Magazines > Collections. Regardless, your work is certainly appreciated.
Another update to my #kbin userstyle idkbin (now at 1.2.6.1)! The "new comment" marker recently added by Ernest is now stylized by idkbin (mainly to work with rounded edges), and a bug with borders has been fixed. #kbinmeta#kbinstyles
@ernest
Is there currently a way to see threads boosted by followed users as a #kbin user? If not, is that something you're planning to add eventually?
I like Lemmy. Active development, lots of third party apps, active community, etc but what other Fediverse projects are worth getting into like this one?...
Nobody in this thread seems to have mentioned #Kbin. It's an instance that aims to combine the #microblog structure of instances like Mastodon with the thread structure of instances like Lemmy.
your internet connection is really really bad, and you still want to see what's happening on the fedi, but your browser simply won't load mastodon, misskey, friendica, pleroma etc?
you may try kbin instead > this fedi platform is ultra lightweight #kbin#fediverse
Miło nam poinformować, że na nowo utworzonej stronie wsparcia największej światowej instancji /Kbin - czyli #Kbin.social - znaleźliśmy się w doborowym towarzystwie wśród organizacji wspierających projekt 👍
Dziękujemy @ernest za docenienie pracy Piotra @piotrsikora i wsparcia naszej Fundacji 👏
Zapraszamy również Was do wspierania tego polskiego projektuw #fediverse, który zdobył ogromne międzynarodowe uznanie:
Hi @maegul, I just wanted to let you know. It's not perfect yet, but it's something I'll be working on in the coming months after the first release. Thanks for pointing it out, it's a relatively simple change, but it makes a significant difference in the overall experience.
testing keeps on testing, using some hashtags > let's see whether these hashtags help to improve visibility of kbin posts on other fedi platforms #test#kbin#federation
✨ What is your favorite thing about kbin? ✨ ( kbin.social )
Here are mine! A handful of things come to mind right away, but there are plenty more:...
An alternative perspective on Alien.top and the Fediverser project
Tl:dr: Remember the human, even if the project doesn’t work, it wasn’t as useless as it may seem, resources consumption may be concerning...
When /some/ YT videos get special download-resistent treatment but not others
For example, this invidious instance offers a download option for a YoutTube video, as that instance does for all YT videos:...
RTR#30 Monthly Recap and Planned Next Steps ( kbin.social )
Today, I added a box of related/random collections - I must admit that the ones you created are fantastic. Collection names can be repeated since they are user-assigned. I added the option to mark a collection as official - those with the highest number of followers in a given topic and with a specific name can be marked and...
Like This? You May Like...
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RTR#29 Another boring update: Categories and bug fixes ( kbin.social )
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Categories - a new feature that is essentially a multi-mags view. A new tab will appear in the user panel where you can create categories (public or private) and then add magazines to them (local or remote). In the magazine listing, there will be another tab that will list public categories...
Which of the Fediverse projects are worth getting into?
I like Lemmy. Active development, lots of third party apps, active community, etc but what other Fediverse projects are worth getting into like this one?...