Take time for yourself, I don't think anyone's going to blame you for that. And honestly, I don't have any issues with the current state of Kbin, there's a couple bugs here and there but it's entirely usable otherwise. Finally, I think giving yourself a deadline to resolve personal issues might be counterproductive and make you more stressed than you should be. It sounds like you're already taking steps to help spread the workload around, I would just keep spending a little bit of time helping out the team do some stuff you can't do until you're able to get a better work life balance or something.
I guess I'm trying to say, things are great to me and I imagine you're getting that unfortunate side effect of only having people who have something to complain about reach out whereas everyone who has everything going well isn't saying anything. So, in my opinion, you can stay to course (as long as it isn't killing you mentally) and I don't think the site is suffering any for it.
I've already discussed some of the reasons on Matrix, but today, I'll try to briefly explain what's going on here. Due to the increasing popularity of kbin, infrastructure changes, the cost of maintaining instances, and development-related priorities, I wasn't able to deliver the milestones on time, which are crucial for project funding (even though I'm really close to achieving that). I wasn't prepared for this and didn't anticipate such a delay in terms of the savings I allocated for all of this. The servers are still being maintained with the donations that came through buymycoffe, but there are additional costs like living expenses and other obligations. So, I had to take up temporary work to ensure the continued development of the project.
This year has also brought many other unexpected personal problems, as I mentioned earlier. Now, another one has been added to that list – I had to end my marriage and a fifteen-year-long relationship. While it's not a sudden decision, it's never easy, but it has turned out to be more challenging than I anticipated. Not just for me, and this time, I want to dedicate as much time as necessary to conclude the matter properly. I had to learn how to do many things from scratch, set up a new work environment, establish daily routines, and more.
So, why all these deadlines and promises?
It was probably the only way for me to accomplish at least the absolute minimum. There's a lot of my own code waiting for review on my local branches, but it's genuinely hard for me to push myself to it for now. The infrastructure also requires fine-tuning, and Piotr is helping me with that. And the days are passing by very quickly.
However, I'm almost ready to continue on this journey, so you can expect that in the near future, there will be a banner with information and the update date of the instance and release. After that, we will work on avoiding such longer development downtimes in case of my absence.
If I can't meet the deadline, I will step down from leading the project and transfer full rights over the repository and instance to the contributors.
I respect you entirely but this is a bit dramatic. Not all projects can be on time due to complications and no one is asking you to step down. Please just do what is necessary - you're doing fantastic!
Yeah, It's true. Since Sunday, I've been noting errors that I'm still working on resolving. It doesn't make it easier that it's the post-holiday period, and due to travels and security measures, it's not the easiest task. I'm working to get everything back to normal as soon as possible.
I've given myself a deadline to resolve all my issues and release the first official version by the end of September. If I can't meet the deadline, I will step down from leading the project and transfer full rights over the repository and instance to the contributors.
Ernest, please don't be so hard on yourself. Deadlines slip, even for products formally released by companies, and this is more of a hobby frankly. I think what might help is less of a deadline and more of a roadmap - like, here are the major bullet point items we want to target for release by end of 2023, by end of Q1 2024, and sometimes those slip but then the roadmap can be revised.
I've been updating my own kbin instance pretty regularly, every couple of weeks, and I've seen things become more stable over time (less frustrations in upgrading, more features, etc). I'm quite happy with the progress so far. This project has grown so much in such a short time, and the fact that the kbin issues matrix is much quieter than it was speaks to the growing stability of the platform.
As far as kbin.social itself, I would agree with some other folks that you might need more volunteers on the actual instance administration and moderation front.
And as far as spam - email, the original federated messaging platform, still has that problem! Each email provider has to handle it on their own, using increasingly sophisticated methods, and they're still not perfect and it's been decades. Yes, spam is frustrating, but due to the nature of ActivityPub we will always be in an escalating war with spam. It will never be solved, only mitigated for a time.
Anyway, perhaps I've written too much here, but I have a ton of confidence in this project and also in you, and I hope you look back and see how much has been accomplished in a short amount of time, how much kbin.social has grown, and how the amount of other contributors indicates an overall great level of confidence in what you've created.
Thank you @ernest for all you do and all you have done!
Absolutely do not want to see you run yourself into the ground over kbin matters, your family and your health come first.
I don't question your judgement, but I think the "step down" bit is a bit extreme, even if you fail to meet the deadline. Worst case, maybe let the community appoint a second-in-command temporarily to get some things moving along while you take a well deserved break?
Very well said and you have captured many of my exact fears.
Personally, if the decentralized fediverse was more developed and mature, I would not be as concerned about federating with Threads. But, Meta is entering at a time when everything is really just starting to develop.
They’ll be the big instance and they’ll have a lot of influence over the others as a result.
Just to give an example, What would happen if Lemmy.world decided to cut off kbin? Kbin would lose a ton of content and access to most of the large communities. Threads, thanks to Meta’s resources and huge Instagram user base, will likely gain more active users and communities than lemmy in no time and they could do the same. The difference is I believe Meta may be more likely to down the line because an open fediverse doesn’t fit super nicely into their business model.
I understand many people disagree and that is fine; nobody knows the future. If we decide to federate with Threads then so be it, and if it turns out I am totally wrong then I will eat my words. All I am trying to articulate is that I think there is reason to be skeptical of Meta.
One of my favorite things about /kbin is that it utilizes threads and microblogs. In my experience thus far, users here seem rather shy. I don't hold it against anyone though, because I totally understand.
Federating content from the likes of Mastodon is very helpful for having discussions trickle in from the fediverse. I think it's also really helpful for establishing an ongoing daily discussion space so the thread feed isn't as cluttered. IMO, there's more potential beyond that, too (Think: drawing everyday for a month, photography-based posting/challenges while using tags for content organization, language-learning exercises, the list goes on...).The combination of threads with microblogs has shown me the power that lies behind content federation. As a result, /kbin is by far my favorite of the fediverse platforms so far.
I still have some minor issues with how it currently works. Currently, I believe the name of a magazine causes hashtags with the exact same string to federate content to that magazine. The magazine that matches the desired hashtag also takes priority, even when the hashtag isn't assigned in the magazine's settings. An issue with this is that if any subsequent magazines try to federate content using that hashtag, it won't be able to do so.
It seems as though microblogs can only federate content to either the magazine that matches the hashtag in question, or the magazine that uses the hashtag first. There's also an issue where a microblog that uses multiple hashtags will only federate content to the magazine with the first available tag. E.g. if someone writes an unused tag for the first, followed by #kbinmeta, then #fediverse third, the post would only go to the kbinmeta microblog section. It would be lovely for microblogs to be federated, or even mirrored across magazines (as in child comments/replies) that implement the same tag. Hopefully, this could also be done without adding excessive overhead to Ernest/the server. Perhaps even offer the ability to have a magazine choose to refuse federating tags that match the magazine's name.
There are also some minor issues with moderation federation, but I don't exactly want to specify here, because I'm worried it could be used maliciously.
That being said, I can't wait to see how /kbin will mature.
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