I like to explore new/all sometimes to find new communitiies so that's unfortunately not helping. And it's really only a problem with hexbears, everything else blocks just fine.
Same experience here, blocking does not work, Ernest knows but I guess it's not priority number one right now. It's a deal braker for me. Thank you so much for the filter option!
Hi, this feature is still available and working in KES under Threads > Permanently Hide Posts. The hide link appears next to the more button, not inside of the more menu. Give it a try.
This is one of the biggest issues and barriers to discoverability with the Fediverse in my opinion.
As I understand it, unless an instance has already subscribed to a community (magazine in kbin parlance), then in order to make that community (magazine) appear in your own instance, you need to:
First search for the community (including the community's home instance) name in the magazine search function.
The search will come up blank, but the act of searching for it will trigger a backend request for your instance to start federating content from that community. However there's no message to tell you that it's doing that. It just looks like that community doesn't exist.
Further, it may take up to several days (in my experience) for federation to start, ie, you have to repeat the search for the community and only then can you subscribe to (follow) that community
And when it does start, it only starts grabbing new content. So first it looks like the community doesn't exist, then it takes a long time for content to appear, and then it looks like the community is sparsely populated unless you go back to the community's home instance, rather than staying in your own instance, to catch up on old content.
Further pinned posts aren't federated (at least between lemmy and kbin I believe), so you can't even rely on a "here's what you need to know" introductory post to orient new members.
Contrast this to reddit, where (because it's a centralised system) searching for a subreddit produces immediate results, you can join a subreddit immediately, and you can immediately see all current and past content for that subreddit. Much more intuitive and useful to users.
Unfortunately the activitypub protocol that underlies lemmy and kbin doesn't appear to have been designed for reddit-like communities in mind. Ie communities that tend to feature long-form content, posted relatively sporadically, and where having access to the community's archive is very useful to members. It works somewhat better for twitter-like communities where it's easier to jump in "mid-stream" and - because posts tend to be only a few words long - you're more likely to start seeing new content after only a short delay.
I wish that this is something that's addressed at the Fediverse level.
there actually is a way to "backfill" content, being the outbox. (although it was not meant to be used this way, from what i can see from reading what little documentation is out there)
lemmy uses it to federate about 10 or so (i think it was?) of the latest posts, and most microblog implementations use to federate the "pinned" posts of an account
activitypub has quite a lot of quirks, both spec-wise and implementation wise, and there are many reasons including an apparent near civil war inside the working group which resulted in this messy state it's ended up in
honestly the fact that this protocol works at all is a miracle
@Doll_Tow_Jet@kbin.social I don't know if that's the official word for it but I'm using "backfilling" to refer to loading the history of a person or group after first federating with it.
the outbox is a special collection (list in activitypub speak) that's intended to work kinda like an old school email outbox where you put messages to be delivered and it would deliver them to the inboxes of people (and servers that were offline at that time would later pull them in from the outbox)
or, well, that's what the spec says. nobody uses it like that in reality because activity pub was intended for a completely different kind of social media than how it ended up being used (it seems to expect more "everything apps", including an entire client api that would completely abstract away the instance into nothing more than a dumb pipe for activities unlike the current reality where instance software dictate what you can do)
this probably confused you even more but it's getting pretty late here so I can't words good, sorry!
Hello, I have added this feature to KES (third party extension) today. I believe it is working correctly based on your requirements:
Show an icon next to magazine names on the main thread index (https://kbin.social or https://kbin.social/sub if logged in). Click this icon to "softblock" threads from that magazine from appearing on your main thread index. This does not block the magazine outright: you can still go to the magazine directly, so it is less aggressive than a total block.
Show a Softblock/Unsoftblock button in the sidebar of magazines, as well as in the Magazines index located at https://kbin.social/magazines. As you would expect, this button has the effect of adding/removing a magazine from your filters.
Show a tab at the top of the Magazines index that you can use to centrally manage your softblocked magazines. For the time being, this is merely informational.
Full details can be found in the release notes here over at /m/enhancement.
Let me know if this gives you the functionality you wanted.
I think it'd be simpler to just change the block button so it does that. Adding a new "filter" button would lead to newcomers being confused on what the difference is. Besides, I don't think there's much benefit to being completely unable to view a magazine.
If you didn't get an answer elsewhere yet: You click the button and it sits pending until approved (whether its Ernest approving manually or an automated batchjob I don't know). Seems to be once a day or so, so could be either but that's just anecdotal. That's it tho. Click the button and wait, no other steps lol.
Either way, once approved the magazine will just appear in your moderated list on your profile (no notification or anything from what I've seen) and from there it's yours to do with as you want. I've claimed a dozen or so over the last day or so to delete (unused ones people sat on).
You can have a look here to see a test instance with some of the things that are coming, Ernest (the admin) has been merging in a range of tickets including bug fixes, UI improvements and other bits.
There seems to be an ever growing backlog of feature requests and bug fixes in the issues list but a fair bit is getting sorted out behind the scenes.
Now since I think about it -
I did a few tweets years ago before I deleted my account but I've never read it much. Just a message here there - I never followed full conversations. (And nowadays I rather not go here anymore)
So I'm pretty much out of the loop with how Twitter works as well 😂
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.
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.
Thanks for the insight! I was mainly wondering about how I should use hashtags on my own microblogs and comments but I didn't even think about using them as browsing tools. Could you maybe give more tips about the former?
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).
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.
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.
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.
Thanks Daredevil. Hmm. While the following search:
https://kbin.social/search?q=broadway+sondheim
does produce my post, the search query seems to act as a logical OR rather than a logical AND. Ie, it returns posts with tag #broadway OR #sondheim. Is there a way of constructing a search with a logical AND?
Further, this search:
https://kbin.social/search?q=broadway+lesmis
should produce any number of posts, but returns nil results.
Eg, this post is tagged with both #broadway AND #lesmis, but does not appear:
And there are a number of posts tagged with #lesmis: https://kbin.social/tag/lesmis which, one would assume, should also appear in the search results.
So searching for single tag queries seems to work well, but searching for text queries is inconsistent.
Unless... using the search bar ONLY searches the body of the post, rather than also the associated tags? Whereas searching for tags ONLY searches for tags attached to a post, but not the text of the post itself? If so, then it would be great if kbin had the ability to do logical AND searches on tags to help narrow down results.
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.
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. :)
Yeah I am aware of slow growth.
My magazine takes lots of its material from a YouTube channel so at least for now their activity would go more or less hand in hand with mine/ours.
I'd be happy to receive even readers! Posting there isn't a necessity for me, for now at least.
The name of the magazine is the same than the YouTube channel's.
I added some tags to the magazine's description and into its settings.
Looking at/testing crossposting at some point.
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