Pamasich

Pamasich, 2 days ago

I understand why they disabled public downvotes (since they're accepting incoming ones now, they don't want to expose everyone's downvotes from other instances), and I remember they gave some reasoning on Github for why it makes sense to not hide upvotes too, but do we really need incoming downvotes? I think that feature should be a toggle where you either have downvotes hidden but federated, or visible but not federated. And then the instance owner can decide what they prefer.

That's really my main issue with mbin. While I've gotten too used to the All Content view and collections, both of those are on their roadmap, so they'll be coming eventually.

Pamasich, 18 days ago

And I can see this comment from kbin, so seems to work this direction too.

Pamasich, 27 days ago

I don't know what this xz thing is about, first time hearing it. But people saying he should get more help are trying to help him, not having malicious plans like installing backdoors or whatever.

I do think people should ask less for more maintainers — the project is already opensource, so it's up to maintainers to join, not him to seek them out. But he should still get some help with managing the instance. Pauses in development are fine imo, but the instance shouldn't be swarmed with spam and account deletion requests lost in limbo just because ernest got sick or something, which can happen with the best work life balances.

Pamasich, 26 days ago

To newly federate a magazine with Lemmy, search for it using the syntax !Polytopia@kbin.social in Lemmy's built-in search. This worked for me instantly when I just tested it on lemm.ee, after confirming that it 404s before doing it.

Pamasich, 1 month ago

On Lemmy, users can send each others direct messages. It seems like Kbin/Mbin has no way of displaying those direct messages. Is that correct or is there a way to show direct messages?

Direct messages exist on kbin/mbin, but users are currently unable to send or receive them from other instances than their own. Sending is implemented but intentionally disabled by ernest, for unknown reason, but it might have to do with receiving not working.

Mbin has an open issue on this and yesterday someone said it's planned but low priority. It also links to the related kbin issue.

Pamasich, 1 month ago

Progressive web app. Modern browsers let you install a website to your phone or desktop as a pseudo-app. It'll still run in the browser, but most of the browser stuff, like tabs and bookmarks, are hidden to give you a focused and clean experience. Developers only have to ensure their website supports mobile phones and don't need to develop an entire app project to accomodate phone users.

Pamasich, 1 month ago

I was considering moving to mbin, but their decision to make downvoting private makes that a very unpleasant idea for me. Public voting was one of the initial selling points for kbin for me. If I move, then it's probably to another kbin instance like kbin.earth for now.

I appreciate that earnest made a post yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, saying that he is not dead and hasn't given up on kbin. It's not on this magazine, so I'm not sure where it was since this seems to be the most appropriate one, but in any case.

Are you not talking about this thread?

and invite other moderators

Definitely. I've applied to a handful of magazines weeks ago and have read about others having done so too. I really think magazine ownership requests should be accepted automatically on kbin.social. There's already requirements in place to whether you can make one, that should be good enough for abuse safety measures.

Instance moderators would be better, but I don't know if there's people lining up for that role whom he also can trust with it.

and contributors.

The issue here is that all contributors have moved on to mbin. You don't just look for contributors, the contributors choose to contribute. So unless he's willing to pay them, I don't think this is a problem he can solve, and I doubt he makes enough money to hire people.

Pamasich, 1 month ago

Having thought about this for a bit, I think it might actually be better for ernest if this instance died a bit. Not entirely, but it could use some redistribution of users to other instances.

Like, it wasn't meant to be this big main instance of kbin. That's just what it became. And it's got to have an effect on his stress levels and development time.

I feel like the instance is like a ballon that continually gets pumped with fresh air. Ernest constantly has to make sure the balloon doesn't pop. Maybe it would be better for it to pop so he can focus on other things?

Pamasich, 1 month ago

From what I can tell, it's mostly brought up in the discussion of a pull request for supporting federated dislikes.

That's where I originally saw it. I'm sure there's probably some more discussion on matrix though, that seems to be their main discussion platform.

Some additional links without discussions:

• The commit that removes the public downvotes
• The associated pull request

Edit: Also, to clarify, it's only seeing who downvoted that's made private, the actual amount of downvotes is kept public. It's not a Youtube situation.

Pamasich, 2 months ago

The project definitely accepts contributions, the mbin devs have contributed to kbin before and a few weeks ago a minor code change was committed and merged by someone other than ernest.

As I understand it, the issue is that people with merge permissions other than ernest are only allowed to merge their own pull requests, not those of third parties, which require a review from ernest.
(At least that's what I've seen explained before, though I haven't seen any proof of it so I don't fully know if it's real.)

This means a majority of contributors can't get their pull requests merged when ernest is gone. Which is why they went and made mbin when he was gone for months last time.

Pamasich, 2 months ago

Ernest hasn't abandoned kbin this time, he did post an update last week.

Today, I'm going for a minor procedure at the hospital, and I won't be available for the next 2-4 days. When I return, I'll push all the corrections and fixes I've been working on and present plans for the near future.

Him not being back yet probably means the hospital procedure didn't go as smoothly as expected, but he's not gone on purpose.

Pamasich, 2 months ago

Ernest has said in the update I mentioned in my other comment that

When I return, I'll push all the corrections and fixes I've been working on

This means he has made local commits over those 2 months that simply haven't been pushed yet.

Also, there is in fact a commit made 4 days ago. Though not from ernest.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

They both federate and they both look the same I think.

However, Mastodon search works by tags iirc. And kbin/lemmy users tend to not use tags. So discoverability is low.
The Microblog section is supposed to add the magazine's tags to your posts there, though I don't know if it currently does. I remember reading issues about it not being the case, but those were rather old, so not sure about the current status.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

I think it would be great if we could change the default sort. Would love to sort by new by default.

If there's not already a functionality like that hidden somewhere (checked in both settings menus), I'll put it on my list of stuff I want to implement via userscripts.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

• Under the post there's a "more" button behind which you can find a "report" option. I assume this goes to the moderators of the magazine, but not entirely sure.
• In the site's footer, there's a Contact link if you need to report something to the instance owner directly.
• And of course you can just message or otherwise contact your instance's owner, in this case Ernest. There's a Send Message button in the sidebar when viewing profiles.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

I'm not sure what KES

Kbin Enhancement Suite. Inspired by the Reddit extension of the same name (RES).

It's a userscript that provides many opt-in atomic features with a shared api and settings interface.

Current features include:

• hiding various sidebar elements
• bringing up a list of subscribed magazines via hotkey
• displaying the instance next to usernames and magazines
• a mail icon next to usernames which starts a new message when clicked
• notifications easily accessible in the navbar
• softblocking magazines
• syntax highlighting
• fixing broken lemmy code blocks
• and various others

Pamasich, 3 months ago

I think you're referring to the black bar below comments that are too long which can be clicked to expand the comment?

That has nothing to do with KES's collapsible comments feature as someone else brought up. It's a native kbin feature.

KES actually has a feature that addresses this by automatically clicking that bar, but it seems to only apply to thread bodies, not comments, currently. If you're interested in having it apply to comments too, try filing a new issue on Github requesting the feature. The mod in question is "Always expand post bodies" in the Threads category. This should be fairly easy to add.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

I know what they mean, because I have the same issue on my work pc (but not at home). I forgot it happens because the personal userstyle I'm using includes CSS to fix this issue entirely.

@speck get yourself Stylus if you don't have it already and try this CSS which works perfectly for me:

div.more:not(:nth-child(1 of .more)) {
    display: none;
}

Can't guarantee it works with kbin's built in custom CSS functionality, as that one seems to filter out some selectors (no logic behind which).

---

@shazbot
Basically, what happens without that CSS is that

1. Clicking the bar once scrolls me down a bit but otherwise does absolutely nothing.
2. Clicking the bar again turns the arrow upwards and spawns a new bar above the existing one.
3. Clicking the upper bar repeats step 1.
4. Clicking the upper bar again turns the arrow upwards but doesn't spawn another bar, nor does it do anything else.
5. Clicking the lower bar removes the upper one again and turns the arrow back downwards.

At no point is the comment ever expanded. When OP says it obscures text, that's just the default state where only x lines of the comment are shown and the bar covers the last line(s). The issue is the comment can't be expanded, so it keeps obscuring the text even when clicked as nothing actually moves.

Looking at the HTML source, I can see five instances of the bar existing at once on the same comment.

I tested just now to turn off my scripts one by one and KES was the culprit. Disabling it fixed the issue. I'll try checking which feature is causing it.

Pamasich, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

@shazbot @speck

For me, the culprit is the collapsible comments mod (or the standalone script if you're using that one).

edit: The root cause seems to be lines 182 to 190. But the actual troublemaker appears to be on kbin's side, not KES. When the mod's main function finishes, the comment still only has only one .more element like when it began.

I've disabled all other mods and userscripts, so it's not one of those. Also just tried to disable KES (and even the monkey) entirely, running the script from the console instead. No change either, it's still happening.

The code fragment in question copies the comment into a new children container. I'm thinking this probably makes some part of kbin confused, leading to the issues we're seeing.
It might be best to just include the userstyle I'm using in the CSS added by the mod.

This is the code between lines 182 and 190, removing which prevents the issue:

let children = previousComment.querySelector('.children');
if (!children) {
    // If not, create one
    children = document.createElement('div');
    children.className = 'children';
    previousComment.appendChild(children);
}
// Insert comment into children container
children.prepend(comment);

Pamasich, 3 months ago

Great to hear the CSS works on mobile too!

I think you pressed the wrong button when you tried to upvote my comment, I can see a downvote there from you.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

Teardown isn't working for me, tried multiple devices and turned my custom styling off.

After teardown this is how the site looks like to me. Also, it seems you need to remove the mores on teardown too. The more issue is now fixed when the mod is active, but appears again after teardown.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

This works for me now.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

It's definitely not ideal at all currently. You've already found out how to do it currently, but I'd like to point you towards some alternatives that currently exist to make this easier until ernest adds something official.

Here's the userscripts I know of, each approaches the task a bit differently:

• KES (Kbin Enhancement Suite) has a feature that brings up your subscriptions with a hotkey.
• Improved Channel Select Menu adds your subscriptions and collections to the select channel menu. It's the one with the 3 dots and lines next to your username. This one is the only one that currently supports collections I think.
• Floating Subs List adds a new (collapsible) sidebar to the left which contains your subscribed magazines.

Choose whichever sounds like more your thing, or try each and go with which works best for you.

If you're not familiar with userscripts: just get yourself either Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, or Violentmonkey from your browser's extension/addon store, then head to the script's greasyfork page (I linked you to them above) and click the big green button. For KES it's a bit special but just as simple, just use this link, it should bring up an installation page. After installing KES, you're looking for a wrench next to the user button to access its options and turn the feature on.

Pamasich, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I think the color variation would help me better process what I’m looking at.

You can change the color yourself btw. The traditional method is to install the Stylus extension/addon, but I think kbin now lets you define your own styling in your profile settings, though I haven't tried it. (tried it now and this doesn't really seem possible there, has the same selector deletion issues as magazine css)

In the HTML code, microblog posts and threads are represented differently. Posts are blockquote, while threads are article. This makes it easy to restyle them via userstyles.

So you should be able to just

div#content {
    > article {
        /* thread styling */
    }
    > blockquote {
        /* microblog post styling */
       background-color: red;
    }
}

You can also define the color in rgb rgb(255,0,0) or hsl (hsl(0,100%,50%)).

Pamasich, 3 months ago

Edit: actually, this isn't behaving as expected, it's coloring comments too... will edit this comment in a moment when I find out why.

Go to your settings (via the dropdown that opens when you hover over your avatar and name in the top right) and you should see the "Appearance" section right at the top, containing a textbox labeled "Custom CSS".

Just paste the code in there.
Here it is again for reference:

div#content {
    > article {
        /* thread styling */
    }
    > blockquote {
        /* microblog post styling */
       background-color: red;
    }
}

If you want to have a bigger textbox, you can drag it longer by clicking and dragging below the scrollbar.

After pasting the code into the textbox, scroll to the bottom of the settings page and press the "Save" button between the Notifications and Account Deletion sections.

You should now see microblog posts in your main feed highlighted in red.

---

Now you can go back and change the color to something you actually want to see.

You can replace the red with another color name, or you can look up your desired color using this color picker and then copy the HSLA color it outputs below the color picker.

I recommend HSLA over the other options because it's easy to change later. It's just a base color + saturation + lightness + transparency. Rather than having to mix red green and blue in your head like you'd have to for adjusting rgb.

If you just want microblog posts to be a bit lighter or darker (depending on your theme) than threads, you can use hsla(0,0%,100%,0.15) (this makes them lighter, change the 100% to 0% for darker). Tweak the transparency (the last value) to change the intensity of the color change.

Besides the background color, you can also change other CSS properties. Just add additional lines in the pattern property: value;.
For example, you can set a border using border: 1px red solid;, which creates a red solid border of 1 pixel width.
I like to use this site as a reference myself for what properties exist and how they're used.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

The images I'm using here probably won't work as embeds, but opening them as links should work.

Depending on if you use Firefox or a Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Edge, and almost all the others), get yourself the Stylus extension (chromium) or addon (firefox).

Once installed in your browser, open the extension by clicking on the icon next to your address bar. If it's not there, there's a puzzle piece button to open a list of all your extensions where you can click on it. I'm writing this from an Edge perspective, so for other browsers, especially Firefox, this might not be entirely accurate.

This opens up a menu where your current styles are listed and can be turned on/off (well, the list is empty for now of course), and there's buttons to "Manage" and "Find styles".
Above those buttons, there's a link to the current page. Click on the kbin.social part of that link.

This should open up the editor in a new window.
Just copy and paste the following code into that window.

div#content {
    > article {
        /* thread styling */
    }
    > blockquote, > blockquote + .comments > blockquote {
        /* microblog post styling */
        background-color: red;
    }
}

Give the style a name to the left and hit the yellow "Save" button. The site will update in real time, you shouldn't even need to reload it for the changes to take effect after saving. In fact, after saving it once, you don't even have to keep saving it after every change in my experience.

I've changed the above code a bit to also cover the replies to posts, that's what the .comments stuff is about.

This will give you a very red background. I just chose this for the example to make the change obvious to see at a glance. You can replace the red with another color name, or an RGB or HSL value for a more granular choice.

I recommend using HSL if you want to tweak the color later without having to open up a color picker. You just choose a base color, how saturated it should be, and how light you want it. And optionally the transparency.
The HSL equivalent for red is hsl(0,100%,50%).

If you just want microblog posts to be a bit lighter or darker (depending on your theme) than threads, you can use hsla(0,0%,100%,0.15) (this makes them lighter, change the 100% to 0% for darker). Tweak the transparency (the last value) to change the intensity of the color change.

Besides the background color, you can also change other CSS properties. Just add additional lines in the pattern property: value;.
For example, you can set a border using border: 1px red solid;, which creates a red solid border of 1 pixel width.
I like to use this site as a reference myself for what properties exist and how they're used.

Pamasich, 3 months ago

Thanks, this is the best implementation idea for this I've seen yet imo, will definitely be using this from now on.

I haven't found any bugs yet, but I'd like to request two future improvements:

• Changing the order of magazines and collections

::: spoiler Details
I have like three collections and a ton of magazines, so having to scroll through all the magazines to reach the collections is a bit of a pain. It's still much easier than before this script, but it would be even better if I could move the collections above the magazines.
On the other hand, someone else might have the opposite situation and would prefer it the way it currently is, so unlike the other user I'm not asking you to just swap the order.
I think the ideal solution would be adding a setting somewhere to determine which comes first. So every user can tailor the functionality to their needs.
:::

• Support for turbo mode

::: spoiler Details
Ernest added turbo as an optional mode in the past months (you can find it in the sidebar options). It turns the site into a single page experience, which means kbin.social links don't open the website anew entirely but rather replace the page content, including the changes your script makes. This cuts down on loading time, but it also causes scripts to break.

It would be great if the script were to support turbo mode eventually, especially if Ernest makes it the standard in the future (it is marked as experimental currently, so that's probably the eventual intention).

To do so, you'd have to attach a MutationListener to the body element like I did here. But that will run many times more than just on navigation, so you'd also have to ensure your code does support being run multiple times without breaking.
:::

Pamasich, 3 months ago

Patreon or Liberapay.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

You should contact @ernest I think. He's the admin of the instance. Though, I think he's on a christmas break with his family right now, judging by his inactivity over the recent days and what he said in the last devlog.

If it's just about preventing your access to your account though, I think setting a password that you don't know would do the trick. Maybe set half of it yourself and have someone else contribute the other half, so neither of you knows the full password.

I do think you're putting yourself down too much about the quality of your posts. Referencing a comment of yours here. I've looked a bit through your history and didn't really see anything out of the ordinary.

And, when someone’s a shitty poster like me, don’t m people usually want those kinds of people to delete their accounts?

Not really. If the account is a problem for you, sure, get it deleted. But no one's wishing for you to delete it.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

Click on their name to access their profile and then there's a Block button.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

I can see recent (few hours ago) comments of mine on lemmy.world (and kbin.social is in the linked instances list), so it doesn't look like it actually stopped federating. But yeah, I can't access kbinmeta from over there.

edit: I think I've read, back when ernest was gone, about some big Lemmy instance blocking kbin.social magazine federation because of the bot spam in so many magazines. I assumed it's just rumors, but is it actually real and still a thing lemmy.world is doing?

Pamasich, 4 months ago

And the people there are smallbrained for all flogging to one instance

I know you're from ani.social yourself, but you're telling that to kbin.social, THE main kbin site that according to fedidb has 23 times the active user count of the next biggest kbin/mbin instance (not counting artemis.camp since it's dead, but that one was 1/12 of kbin.social's size). We're really doing the same thing even more.

Pamasich, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Better to use /m/cars which OP mentioned. I removed the image from mine, just leaving a red box as a reference for a codeberg issue. So it doesn't show how it looks with an image.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

If you want some more CSS modifications to try out, there's a magazine for them btw. Though it also includes userstyles, there's some full custom themes for magazine CSS there too.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

Check if any userstyle/userscript is hiding it maybe? It's definitely still there for me, and I'm sure @ernest would have said something if he was A/B testing removing it.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

Open source, non-corporate instances should be able to grow, and that growth will be stunted if most people who want to interact with the fediverse are deciding to go to corporate, profit-driven instances.

The issue is, how does defederating not promote leaving for Threads or instances that federate with Threads?

I think it's a good argument against Threads federating at all, but a poor one for defederating from Threads.

If Threads produces 95% of content in the fediverse, and your instance defederates from them, then your instance just doesn't have access to those 95% of content. Threads and its friends will be a lot more attractive then because it has 19x the content of what you have access to on your instance.

I think this will still lead to people leaving for the threads fediverse.

---

Also, I get the argument for Mastodon, but does /kbin actually have anything at all to fear here? Sure, the user numbers and content would be way higher than the rest of the fediverse. But Threads is a Twitter contender, not Reddit like /kbin and Lemmy. We will only see their content in the microblog tab.

Is the microblog tab actually that important to most people, that the instance could become dependent on Threads for dominating it? I honestly don't see it happen, I feel like this is an imported issue from microblogging platforms that's just repeated here despite being a non-issue for us.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

A while ago, kbin's development came to a standstill because ernest was gone for weeks and the project's contribution guidelines are very restrictive.

Many contributors, including major ones, decided to leave the project and work on their own fork which uses more open contribution guidelines based on consensus.

They adopt all the changes ernest makes to kbin, but have their own features on top of that. I believe fedia.io, for example, runs mbin now.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

That's weird. I was testing it out with a userstyle, which worked, so I assumed it would work with custom css too. But I guess there might be some restrictions in place? Seems very restrictive though if that's the case here. Not even the first one I gave works. I'll see if I can find anything out.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

Okay, so I've created a magazine and tested some stuff out.

In the first code I posted, I used the child selector (>) to select <header> elements directly inside <main> elements. For some reason, custom CSS doesn't seem to support the child selector. No matter where I try to use it, the style isn't applied.

The following code worked for me on my magazine:

main header:has(h1[hidden]) {
    height: 300px;
    background-image: url(https://i.imgur.com/wbZa4eI.png);
    background-size: 100% auto;
    background-position-y: -150px;
}

I removed the child selector and instead used :has(hi1[hidden]) to make sure I only get the target element. Without it, it would also replace the background of the individual thread titles.

The image you're trying to use is a bit large, so I've included an example usage of background-size and background-position to change the size of the image and what part of it actually gets displayed.
With background-size, the first value is how wide the image should be, while the latter value is how high. Percentage values are relative to the element's size. So the width and height properties. You can also set absolute values, like I did with height in pixels in this example.

The big issue with this one though is that it'll only apply to the Threads and All Content views. Other views, including Microblog and individual threads, don't have the <header> element I'm looking for here.

I modified it to apply to more views:

h1[hidden] {
    height: 300px;
    background-image: url(https://i.imgur.com/wbZa4eI.png);
    background-size: 100% auto;
    background-position-y: -150px;
    display: block;
    color: transparent;
    user-select: none;
}

The last two lines are there because this actually displays the name of the magazine on the banner. Since that's kind of redundant, since it's already in the bar at the top, I'm hiding the text and making it not selectable.

This one does work in all the views I tested except for when looking at a thread and its comments.

Though, something worth considering in case you intend to just use this code as-is: I just used pixels for simplicity. But the result might look entirely different on other screen resolutions than mine. Here's a list of better units to use if you want it to look the same on all screens. You can use percentages, pixels, and these other units interchangeably anywhere.

---

About the second code I posted, for some reason :before, much like the child selector, doesn't seem to work. I can very much target the #middle and #header elements from custom magazine CSS, but :before doesn't do anything.

I'm not sure why this is. I see no security reason to block them, so I assume it's not intentional. It's a bit hard to debug :before specifically because I don't know any way to get its styles without making it visible. So I have no idea if something is overwriting the style or if the selector just doesn't work, like is the case with the child selector. I'll have to look into this a bit more over the weekend.

Pamasich, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I can see it. Maybe it's the point I mentioned here:

Though, something worth considering in case you intend to just use this code as-is: I just used pixels for simplicity. But the result might look entirely different on other screen resolutions than mine. Here's a list of better units to use if you want it to look the same on all screens. You can use percentages, pixels, and these other units interchangeably anywhere.

Maybe the values I gave are too small for you to see on your screen?

edit: wait, why does the image not work, I literally just uploaded it

edit 2: not sure if you can view this since it's blocked in some countries, but here's a catbox upload.

edit 3: right, I just noticed that, because I'm mixing percentages and absolute units here, the image actually moves around as I change the screen size. I'll refine the example with more reliability later today.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

I'm currently using this code on /m/pamasich:

h1[hidden] {
    height: 12vh;
    background-image: url(https://i.imgur.com/wbZa4eI.png);
    background-size: cover;
    background-position: center;
    display: block;
    color: transparent;
    user-select: none;
}

To me, this works both on pc and mobile.

Though, the one on /m/cars right now works for me too.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

Say, do you see any custom CSS anywhere? I mean, I'm not even sure which magazines use it anyway, do you see something on /m/pamasich? Besides the test banner, I also made the magazine name in the sidebar red.

If you don't see anything changed there, do you maybe have custom CSS turned off? In your settings, there's an option Ignore magazines custom CSS under a text field that lets you enter personal custom css. Make sure that's not checked.

Pamasich, 4 months ago

Good to hear!

Pamasich, 2 months ago

I assume ownership requests need to be manually approved by ernest, right? I've tried applying to some (not ernest-managed ones) weeks ago because of spam on them and nothing happened yet.

Pamasich, 1 month ago

Make sure to actually mention him if you want this to be seen. @ernest