daredevil

daredevil, 3 months ago

I just use it to bring awareness to similar magazines/communities across the fediverse

daredevil, 3 months ago

You could make a (private) collection for your subscribed magazines. Not exactly the feature you were asking for, but it's an option to curate your feed. On Firefox I have various collections bookmarked and tagged so accessibility is seamless.

daredevil, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I imagine something like this

Duly noted, I missed a line of text. Won't try to help in the future

daredevil, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I agree with you. Though, I'd also be curious to hear arguments why this shouldn't be implemented.

edit: Thank you for the replies everyone, it's helpful to hear from other peoples' perspectives.

daredevil, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

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.

daredevil, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Microblogs on /kbin are essentially short-form posts. There are times where microblogs revolve around a specific topic, but this is not always necessary. On /kbin, they are generally associated with keywords (hashtags) that allow a microblog to be sent to a magazine that targets/accepts the tag, which then appears in the microblog feed. However, on Mastodon/Twitter, you can simply write posts that get grouped with the posts of other users or your own previous posts without replying to a specific original post.

Writing microblogs and utilizing tagged keywords allows people to search for the information the writer deems fundamental to the topic they're writing about. This enhances discoverability and reduces noise, as you are able to quickly browse any and all posts that are specifically tagged with those keywords. Furthermore, microblogs may generally incorporate multiple identifying topics as you group together these keywords/tags.

For example, the @cats magazine will have an influx of posts on Saturdays from Mastodon instances which are tagged with #caturday. Writing microblogs in this way makes it so creating a thread every Saturday in @cats isn't necessary. This has a nice side effect of minimizing the need for megathreads that were found on Reddit.

Additionally, you can also search for (and click on) #japanesepractice to review exercises that I have completed in the past. There are additional posts in the @learnjapanese magazine that would not include this information. By using this tag, you can access the posts that specifically pertain to my studies.

This is in contrast to /kbin threads, where the content of the thread is the centralizing topic of discussion as opposed to the keywords.

For example: our replies are centered around what the OP has asked instead of any keywords in the original post or subsequent replies. However, /kbin is more unique than typical forums, as we can #tag the comments to achieve a similar functionality to microblogs. Honestly, I would like to see this feature be utilized more, but ç'est la vie.

daredevil, 5 months ago

I empathize, as I've spent quite some time trying to learn about content federation trying to manage my own magazines. However, /kbin is younger than its Mastodon/Lemmy counterparts, while trying to provide a unique space that allows for both types of content to exist on the same platform. While there are things that need to be resolved, I'm quite satisfied with the recent update, personally.

daredevil, 5 months ago

I might first suggest looking into a magazine/community that you're interested in. Scrolling the microblog section of that magazine might lend some insight on which keywords appear the most frequently or resonate the most with you. Pick one out, then try clicking on it or searching it with either the built in search function in the navigation bar at the top, or by checking out https://kbin.social/tag/cats as an example. Maybe even explore https://kbin.social/tag/hashtag. By replacing the tag in those links, you can check out posts containing tags with a bit more freedom, as some of the federation issues can be mitigated by searching this way. Trying to use some of these hashtags to find out specific information regarding questions or other interests, perhaps. If you have any further questions, you're free to reach out again.

daredevil, 5 months ago

Unfortunately, I don't think so. Attached below is a list of changes that @Pamasich has compiled, for your convenience.

https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/612526/kbin-social-update#entry-comment-3476317

daredevil, 5 months ago

Sure. I'll try to use your reply as an example.

Thanks for the insight! I was mainly wondering about how I should use #hashtags [...]

As you said so yourself, you are mainly wondering how you should use hashtags. As such, I would use a hashtag to highlight this key point of information. This is so that other users who may have questions regarding how to use hashtags can directly find posts that may have had the same question.

[...] on my own #microblogs and #comments but I didn't even think about using them as browsing tools.

The importance of microblogging will vary from user to user. However, I'd imagine they are/will play a big role in the #fediverse (I chose to tag fediverse here, because it's a large topic that others may seek clarification and perspectives regarding the idea and the number of ways it may pop up in conversation).

Could you maybe give more #tips about the former?

Lastly, I might consider tagging tips here. Say someone is looking up information regarding how to use a #hashtag. Well, if they stumble upon this post, they might be inclined to do a subsequent search by combining any number of the tags you/I have mentioned. This will allow them to either join keywords to perform more refined searches, or incentivize them to delve into related topics they might not have otherwise considered. For example, they might combine #fediverse #tips to find more information about, well, fediverse tips. They might also now search #fediverse #microblog #tips as well.

daredevil, 5 months ago

Entering both tags with whitespace to separate them is what I had in mind. Using the tags you asked about together brings up your post as the first result, for example.

daredevil, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Apologies, I misunderstood your earlier question. My previous response had the search bar at the top in mind, not by browsing through https://kbin.social/tag/*. At the moment, I'm not aware of a way to search multiple tags using that specific method. While I did make some proposals for searches, I hope there will be ways to add further granularity to searches. Making information easily accessible regarding search syntax would also be very handy. Some examples would be Duckduckgo's bangs, Discord's search syntax, and Duckduckgo/Google's ability to search within specific sites (as in, site:reddit.com). I would hope that this could translate to /kbin's search via targeting specific magazines, users, microblogs, comments, etc. Perhaps one day.

daredevil, 5 months ago

Yeah, #search #functionality and #syntax on #kbin has room to grow, I completely agree. While I've tried getting familiar with it in the past, I am by no means an authority on the subject. In fact, this back-and-forth was already helpful for teaching me a bit more. If you feel strongly about this, I might suggest bringing it up here, so that Ernest can look into it when he has time. However, if you'd rather not, then I may find some time to try putting something together later.

daredevil, 5 months ago

You can pull up a feed of the threads that you've upvoted/favorited in the sort method next to your username on the top right. If you change the view to microblogs, it also changes the feed to microblogs that you've favorited. It's a bit different from saving from Reddit/Lemmy, as I don't think there's a way to display saved comments yet, but I hope this will help a bit at least.

daredevil, 6 months ago

If you find an abandoned magazine that you feel needs to be deleted, you have an option to request ownership and subsequently delete it. I requested ownership of one such magazine and I'm considering deleting it, myself. I may also consider doing this for some other magazines eventually as well to contribute how I can.

daredevil, 6 months ago

I imagine transferring ownership is a manual process, but on the off chance it's automated, I've requested ownership and intend to delete it right after.

daredevil, 6 months ago

I've taken care of it. 🙂

daredevil, 6 months ago

Unfortunately, you'll need to either wait until the owner has not logged in for a month, or ask if Ernest will allow you to claim ownership early.

Source/more information here

daredevil, 6 months ago

An "abandoned" magazine is one where the owner has not logged in for 30 days. You'll probably know when a magazine/community you're subscribed to is "abandoned" when applying for ownership of a magazine is enabled.

Source

daredevil, 6 months ago

An "abandoned" magazine is one where the owner has not logged in for 30 days. You'll probably know when a magazine/community you're subscribed to is "abandoned" when applying for ownership of a magazine is enabled.

Source

daredevil, 6 months ago

No problem. Something to consider though, is that simply moderating the magazine until it's "abandoned" by the owner may end up being the solution. I understand that may not be ideal. While I empathize with your situation, the rules that Ernest establish also exist for a reason. However, I also do not intend to speak on his behalf. I hope things work out for you either way.

daredevil, 6 months ago

Perhaps it's worth a shot to reach out to Ernest about that. It's very apparent that you're one of, if not the most consistent contributors to that magazine. Based off of a cursory glance, the person who took the ownership hasn't made any contributions. Best of luck.

daredevil, 6 months ago

Just a friendly reminder--claiming ownership/moderation privileges could just be a temporary thing. Implementing this system allows us the freedom to share and pass on the responsibility as our situations change. :) Best of luck with @manga and @bitwig.

daredevil, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

He replied earlier in this thread--you could try a DM to start. Alternatively, pinging him here may also be an option. I'm not sure which would be best. Apologies.

daredevil, 5 months ago

That's fantastic news! I'm glad your hard work was recognized. :)

daredevil, 5 months ago

I think it's great that you're interested in this! It may be scary, but it can also be pretty exciting. I would say to start small. There might be a lot of things to consider: establishing rules, the overall vibe of the #magazine, your audience, the type of content you want to see, etc. Pick on one, focus on that for a day or so. If you plan on making new magazine, you'll be free to take your time with this. Growing niche magazines tends to be on the slow side. IMO, that's better for those who are new to this, so they can have time to acclimate to the tools and considerations you'll be presented with. It may also allow you to really reflect on the direction you'd like to take your magazine.

As #niche #communities tend to start slow, people will be hesitant to post content. Unfortunately, when content is rare, people are less inclined to post. This is a problem that reinforces itself, as others are unlikely to post when there is no content. You'll probably need to be "the first on the dance floor", so to speak, if your goal is to grow your magazine. This will likely test your patience, as you will probably be one of, if not the only active posters in your magazine. Picking a magazine name that might see usage in the #fediverse and #mastodon might prove useful for #federating content via the #microblog section. However, if you wish to pick a more unique name, more power to you. Something to consider, is that you may wish to create a sibling magazine that can accept a tag that would federate posts with regularity.

For example, I run @learnjapanese. However, most people will be unlikely to write #learnjapanese on Mastodon. However, I also run @japanese, which federates the #japanese tag from Mastodon instances. You can add additional tags in the magazine settings menu, which allows the federation of posts that contain other hashtags. I've pinned a microblog in both magazines' #microblogging sections to point to each other to increase #discoverability and awareness of related resources. Speaking of discoverability, Ernest recently implemented a #crossposting feature to /kbin that further increases discoverability and accessibility. Posting the same link/image to related magazines will allow users to see other magazines this content is posted to. This appears in the comments section of the thread, directly below the content of the post itself. Ideally, this would generate additional traffic and increase visibility for the smaller, but related magazines. This has been an extremely welcome addition, as someone who is moderating smaller magazines and trying to bring awareness without spamming advertisements.

If you have any further questions, please let me know. I have also subscribed to your magazine. Good luck. :)

daredevil, 5 months ago

Sorry, I couldn't tell you. I'm just trying to spread some awareness. Your best shot is asking Ernest.

daredevil, 5 months ago

Yes, I'm aware of this. The magazine is not publicly listed as a magazine you moderate -- I do not see it listed in your profile. I noticed this problem a little over a week ago. While cleaning up abandoned magazines, I noticed in my profile it still says I have about 70 magazines that I moderate. An issue has already been raised.

https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/1324

daredevil, 5 months ago

Glad to hear you got it taken care of.

daredevil, 3 months ago

Since @ernest is the owner for that magazine, I think moderator requests have to go through him. Unfortunately, he was dealing with a slight fever awhile ago, and has been dealing with financial planning and project formalities awhile back as well. Hopefully things haven't gotten worse. For what it's worth, I think it's great you're eager to contribute. There have definitely been some spam issues recently. I hope a solution can be found soon. Maybe even something like posts which have a <10% upvote-to-downvote ratio over a day/week can be temporarily quarantined until an admin approves of it. Anyways, best of luck with modship.

daredevil, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I would also love it if we could prevent microblogs from federating to a magazine, as banning currently does nothing to prevent this issue and seems a bit counterintuitive. Similar to the concerns OP raised RE: commenting, this seems like it could be another vector for bad actors to attack from.

daredevil, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I understand wanting to help the platform grow, but I don't think invalidating the opinions and contributions of a-man-from-earth is a good way to approach it. The holier-than-thou attitude might also have the opposite effect that your original post is attempting to achieve. The lack of active moderators is certainly an issue, along with spam and the existence of various federation issues are problems as well. I get that these things take time, so I'm being patient. The platform still has it's flaws, however I still enjoy kbin and am contributing when I can.

daredevil, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I understand wanting to help the platform grow, but I don't think invalidating the opinions and contributions of a-man-from-earth is a good way to approach it. The holier-than-thou attitude might also have the opposite effect that your original post is attempting to achieve. The lack of active moderators is certainly an issue, along with spam and the existence of various federation issues are problems as well. I get that these things take time, so I'm being patient. That said, I still enjoy kbin and contribute how and when I can.

daredevil, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I've been struggling with #kbin/#mastodon #federation for awhile now, it's been disheartening. I've been trying to be more active about following various users and domains in hopes that more content will #federate to the #magazines I moderate. However, it hasn't really proven to be helpful. In some cases, I can't even find particular instances that users post from via kbin. I can find the instance by going to the page itself, but I suppose it may just take more time than I thought? In some cases, trying to follow a user takes me to an error page, and repeated attempts prove unsuccessful. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it's rather confusing when I can see posts from a given instance, yet can't search for the instance itself to federate more content. I've tried asking about it, and no one seems to know or be able to help. Searching the fediverse for information is also difficult due to the noise I have to sift through.

With that said, I know there's other stuff to consider: Ernest is planning a big update for kbin, some instances have restricted federation with kbin due to moderation not properly federating to other communities, and kbin being a younger platform than #lemmy/mastodon. I'll try to be patient, there's just some features that I really hope mature soon as there are features I'd like to use, but can't yet. Also, before this gets misconstrued again like it has in the past, I am still enjoying my time on kbin and support Ernest's efforts in regard to this platform. I wouldn't still be posting here if I weren't enjoying my time here.

daredevil, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Thanks for the reply.

Basically, if you click on someone's follow and nothing happens (or you get an error page), what's happened is that you've sent them a follow request that they have to approve.

This makes sense, and reflects what I've just seen regarding a user I was trying to follow earlier.

If Kbin hasn't actively federated the site yet, it usually does so pretty quickly after a follow.

My follow has updated, however, I'm still unable to access https://kbin.social/d/urusai.social. This isn't a huge deal, just something I wanted to draw attention to, I suppose. Perhaps it'll federate some time down the line. To future readers, I'll try to remember to edit this comment with an update if and when it happens.

edit:
Thanks to @Arotrios for the answer
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/469791/Just-Curious-How-long-does-it-take-for-a-kbin#entry-comment-2460389

Additional context here
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/469791/Just-Curious-How-long-does-it-take-for-a-kbin#entry-comment-2460434

Check your magazine's Microblog section - you may be getting more content than you realize. Your magazine tags will determine what additional content (aside from #yourmagazinetitle) your Microblogs pick up. Everything from Mastodon users shows up there on Kbin.

I actually check this daily and have reset my tags on a few occasions to see if it would help on top of what I mentioned previously. I've also changed the sort options (e.g. new, hot, top, etc) just in case, to check whether or not things have been federating. What has been confusing to me is, the content federation seems to work when I search the tag outside of my magazine. For instance, I see #japanese microblogs federated to @japanese yet I do not see the same in @learnjapanese. This has also been an issue with @residentevil as well. Oddly enough, even users I have already followed do not have their content federated to these magazines at times, even though I have checked their history and seen them use the tags I've assigned to the magazines. I could simply be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what it is.

Edit: Now that I think about it, there have even been very occasional instances where I have seen content federated to @residentevil in the past. I remember following them and then have seen them post with the tags on a future occasion, but those subsequent posts were not federated to the magazine. Pretty odd, but I'll just attribute it to kbin's growing pains. I hope this isn't coming off as too negative, I've just been really trying to nurture these little communities and better understand this system.

daredevil, 7 months ago

This led me to @neatchee, who is the instance owner. You might try following them, but I agree, that's an odd bug.

Thanks, it's worth a shot.

If a post contains a hashtag that is taken by another magazine, that magazine usually gets the content instead of yours. Your magazine's hashtag has to appear first in the text. Your Japanese forum is probably catching all of the #japanese posts before they get to LearnJapanese.

So it seems as if @japanese gets priority of the #japanese hashtag due to it being the name of their magazine? Or possibly that they had the hashtag first? I hope multiple magazines are able to federate the same hashtag eventually. @Acala, the admin of @japanese has been inactive for the past few weeks. That's rather unfortunate, as the magazine has no published threads in addition to an inactive moderator.

Second, it's random which of your magazine hashtags will pull content and from who.

That's unfortunate, but helps to clear things up.

The only way to ensure a post gets from Mastdon to Kbin or Lemmy is to put @yourmagazine@kbin.social in the post tag. This will make sure it shows up on Lemmy, and will get your post to the Kbin Microblog of the magazine 90% of the time. If you want to be extra sure, do it like this:
@yourmagazinename@kbin.social #yourmagazinename (then any following hashtags)

This has been very informative, thank you. I'm probably not gonna bug #mastodon users to add this to their posts, but if I ever decide to use mastodon myself I'll keep this in mind.

Hopefully the update will clean this up a bit.

Agreed, kbin as a platform is the most interesting for me, and I hope to see things turn out well.

daredevil, 7 months ago

Fantastic, this has been very enlightening. I appreciate your time and effort.

daredevil, 7 months ago

I'll keep an eye on our instance of urusai.social and let you know in the future

daredevil, 7 months ago

I'm not OP, but I've been having issues in regard to consistency when trying to federate microblogs to kbin magazines

daredevil, 7 months ago

Any tags associated with a Magazine will pull in those posts that include those tags.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case in my experience. I have a tag associated with a magazine I run. When I search #residentevil, I'm able to see several posts that don't get pulled to my magazine. Would you have any suggestions or tips?

daredevil, 8 months ago

Mods seem to be fairly inactive as well. Pretty unfortunate.

daredevil, 8 months ago

I'm aware. I don't think that reply is really necessary of a tag as I'm sure you and I both know he's busy. This problem is fairly common among kbin native magazines as well and not limited to the federated ones where Ernest is assigned as the owner and moderator. And yes, I'm also aware that it's something Ernest has talked about and plans to address. I'm not hating, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still an unfortunate situation.

daredevil, 7 months ago

Contributed 50 translations to Japanese yesterday :) I'll continue contributing how I can