Thank you for the transparency about the situation! Taking time to resolve personal problems is not something to apologise over, we’re all thankful for the incredible work you’re doing so we can use Kbin.
@FfaerieOxide me too. I like it, I love the platform, I don't have an issue with the outages, and I like the way Ernest understands the fediverse.
If there's an outage fine, I just go to another fediverse account til kbin.social comes back. We all have other things in our life, sometimes projects have to take a back seat.
Also I have a lot of sympathy for Ernest wanting to retain control. It's his vision, let's let him do it his way.
Edit: the spam seems to be on mags that have Ernest as sole mod, so that might be an easy fix.
@FfaerieOxide yes! Well not officially, but after Arotrios had been gone a long time I applied to mod it, mainly as a sort of caretaker/safe pair of hands so that Arotrios will definitely get it back if he returns.
I don't know why/where Arotrios went. I kind of thought he'd be back by now.
I think a lot of us have had the same thoughts looking around kbin.
We all appreciate the work Ernest has done, but we really need someone to dedicate some time to picking out a team to help him, but it seems like that's not happening for whatever reason. I know there's a few other people in the codeberg, but I believe there was a falling out there. What we really need in addition to that though is just generic admins.
Ernest said in a previous post with some Mbin drama that he's very, very slow to trust people, and that's why he's been slow to give anyone else admin access to the project.
That may have been okay when only a few hundred people were using Kbin, but the project far outgrew what a single person can manage, especially since he's not only the main developer of the backend and frontend of Kbin, but also the only admin, moderator of multiple communities, AND decided to tackle making a Mobile Kbin app since that other one became vaporware. That is WAY too much for a single person to handle and still have any sort of existence offline.
This has been brought to his attention, but as you mentioned, nothing changes, and he continues the cycle of putting incredible load on himself, and then burning out. It's not sustainable, and unfortunately his lack of trust in others, and an unhealthy level of self-reliance, will ultimately keep Kbin from thriving.
Hey, I will get back to this thread and the comments at the beginning of next week. I am able to quickly address some of the issues you mentioned in your post. Changes will undoubtedly be implemented gradually, but for now, the redesign of the ActivityPub module takes higher priority. Once that is completed, the development of the frontend part of the platfrom will truly pick up pace.
Additionally, the suspension of other work was a conscious decision on my part. I believe that the code at this stage needs to be deeply refactored, and that's exactly what I am doing. Solid foundations are the only option for the project to survive and grow in the long term, and to be properly scalable. Adding more blocks to what I have always considered a prototype (which forks do) makes no sense to me.
While that's definitely a notable downside, I think the upsides outweigh it.
For one, being able to see upvotes & downvotes seems to have made a lot of people a bit more thoughtful with handing them out. This obviously isn't the case for everyone — there's still a good bit of downvoting people for disagreeing with the hivemind — but I and others have observed that downvote quality is a lot better here on kbin.social, and I think that vote visibility is a big part of that.
It's also just transparency on kbin.social's part. If votes federate, anyone can set up an instance to view your votes or just go to one that shows them. Someone could literally make a website listing downvotes throughout the fediverse, and there's nothing stopping them. Kbin.social is being transparent about the fact that votes on the fediverse can be accessed by the public, and I have no issue with that.
Kbin.social is being transparent about the fact that votes* on the fediverse can be accessed by the public
This is important. The kind of petty, persevering trolls that @billothekid2 is worried about are exactly the kind of people who'd be likely to look up who downvoted them.
Kbin just makes it clear to us that this info is out there. Anonymous voting isn't possible in federated social media.
Also, even if they wanted to I don’t think voting could be made anonymous at this point, either. I’m not a programmer in any sense, but I imagine it would totally break federation. Total anonymity would probably need to be a feature from the start.
Kbin at least puts it out there so you know it’s not totally anonymous. Sometimes I wonder how many lemmy users are unaware of this because the software doesn’t make it apparent.
Hmm... I'm no expert, and probably not even competent at these sort of matters, but the thing that popped to my mind was "something something encryption something something trust". I wonder if this has a smart solution.
No. The whole point of Federated software is that things happen on one server, and by the very design of the system those things get shared out to other servers. "Things" could be anything from posts to comments to up/down votes.
The only way to have anonymous voting would be to make the up/down votes strictly local to a particular server, which kind of defeats the purpose of a federated system.
Actually, our downvotes don't federate out, and we don't get incoming downvotes either, so you could totally make them private within an instance since that information doesn't leave the instance anyway.
Not advocating one way or the other, just pointing out that it technically could be an option.
I think it would be possible. The software would just have to record a downvote, saying “we checked out this account and registered one downvote, and everything was valid”. The downvote is only reversible on the original instance the logged in user is on, anyway, and that’s between the user and server. The identity doesn’t have to be displayed to others on the original instance or federated.
Someone could literally make a website listing downvotes throughout the fediverse, and there's nothing stopping them.
This is why I agree that it should be shown upfront. A lot of people won’t like it, but I think users should be somewhat aware that it’s all technically visible.
Someone is gonna make an instance that does exactly this at some point. It will be inevitable as the fediverse matures.
This is a result of the original design. Kbin, up until just before the peak traffic hit, was using boosts as upvotes and favorites/likes were just below the post/thread (where boost sits now). Lemmy does it the way it is now (likes = upvotes) so Ernest changed it to match Lemmy behavior. But just as he changed it, he hadn’t changed the calculation for reputation to match when the server nearly melted down and he has to spend all his time just trying to keep the site alive by himself.
I see you’re on a different Kbin instance. Was this intended to be a threaded reply, out of curiosity? Because it shows up as a top-level comment on the post for me.
Yes, but my bigger point is that it’s not threaded as a reply to one of that user’s comments.
Edit: Oops, nevermind. I saw their comments elsewhere down here but didn’t realize they were OP. Just one of the interface things on Kbin that needs improvement.
Edit 2: I need to figure out how to do strikethrough text on here
Let me preface my response by saying: my answer is kbin specific. It might or might not also apply to mbin since they may have changed things (or kept older features that kbin changed) since they forked. I know a few of the differences between them, but I haven't kept up with most of mbin's specifics.
Also, if anyone stumbles into this in the far future: note that this post is from March 2024. If that seems like a long time ago, check for newer information...
Can searches be made more specific? On Lemmy, you could define whether you wanted to search for communities/magazines, threads, comments, users and urls.
You can search for magazines specifically from the magazine page. The general search searches in microblogs, thread text -- but not the thread title(?), and comments/replies, I think. You can search for exact user profiles as well with the "@ user @ instance" syntax -- e.g. searching for @TamperTanuki@fedia.io shows a link to your profile as the result. (That also applies to magazines/communties -- e.g. @kbinMeta@kbin.social will find both a user called "kbinMeta" and this magazine as search results -- but searching for magazines from the magazine page is probably better for most use cases.) You can sometimes also find the local version of a federated thread if you search for the original post URL. Note that searching for a post on another instance may not always work; if you're copying a link to a thread you found in a comment post and someone linked to their instance's local version of a thread and that isn't the original source it probably won't find it. (I've had decent luck with it in practice though. For the latter problematic case, load the post on the instance and then find the fediverse link which should take you to the original source and then search for that to find it on your instance.)
@piotrsikora@ernest -- FYI searching for this thread by the exact title "Multiple questions regarding Kbin" does not find it currently but searching text like "as a new Kbin/Mbin user" will find it. Is that a bug?
@piotrsikora@ernest -- Searching for a URL that is not a thread causes a 50x error.
Lastly, you can change the result order (newest/controversial/oldest).
You can change newest/top/hot/active etc. for the results on kbin by clicking on the tabs above the search results.
To send toots/tweets, do I have to specify a magazine? I seem to be unable to send a toot without specifying a magazine first, although I only try to adress a mastodon user directly.
Unclassified microblogs (e.g. from Mastodon users) usually end up in random, but I'm not sure how to post them intentionally since I don't use the microblog feature much. Hopefully someone else can chime in with an answer for this.
Is this even the right magazine to ask these questions in? Is there a dedicated kbin support magazine?
It's fine for kbin questions but you might get a better response for details about your specific instance (which runs mbin) on a local magazine like /m/fedia@fedia.io maybe? Sorry if that doesn't link correctly; I rarely link anything other than lemmy communities. (EDIT: https://fedia.io/m/fedia )
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?
DMs do not work between kbin and lemmy as far as I know. I have a lemmy alt linked in my profile in case lemmy users want to DM me.
You should be able to send messages to local users on your instance though by going to a user's profile and clicking "Send Message" on the right side.
Trying to access the send message interface for your account from kbin doesn't work here, so I doubt mbin/kbin DMs work. (@ernest this seems to redirect to login and then immediately to the home view instead of opening the message page or showing an error -- is this a bug?)
Hope that helps!
@piotrsikora@ernest -- this thread did not show up on other instances (e.g. I couldn't see it from my alt on reddthat.com despite being subscribed to this magazine from there as well) when I found it originally. I upvoted it here on kbin.social and now it shows up on reddthat. Is that a federation bug (either on fedia.io's side or on kbin.social's side)?
@piotrsikora -- FYI: I got a lot of 50x errors trying to edit this comment.
Thanks for taking the time for your long message. I tried searching for this topic on my lemmy alt. This topic did not show up on either my fedia account, nor the kbin magazine at first, but does now. One more oddity I noticed is that the mbin UI did not hotlink your mentions, but the lemmy UI did so correctly.
Unclassified microblogs (e.g. from Mastodon users) usually end up in random, but I'm not sure how to post them intentionally since I don't use the microblog feature much. Hopefully someone else can chime in with an answer for this.
I can answer this, go to your own profile, choose add new post (not thread) and then from the "select a magazine" dropdown choose random. Then just use your @ tag like normal if you want to @ someone in the fediverse.
Hi @piotrsikora. Great to see that kbin is responsive again and returning to usability. If possible, could you please give an update on what is going on currently with federation? It looks like some things are getting through (e.g. I can see this thread on reddthat) but threads from most lemmy instances are not showing up in a timely way in /newest still and at a quick glance it looks like communities in my collections are maybe a half day behind -- with many threads from the past week or more missing entirely.
I'm assuming some of that may be on the lemmy side -- 0.19 has a major issue with sequential message distribution as seen with lemmy.world <-> reddthat.com federation (see this bug report and this comment if you're unfamiliar) -- but it'd be best to hear from someone who has access to the infrastructure about what's going on rather than guessing.
In particular, it'd be helpful to know:
What kind of delay should we expect for threads and comments we create here to show up on Lemmy communities?
What kind of delay should we expect for threads and comments other people create on Lemmy/mbin/etc. instances to show up here? (Obviously this may vary from instance to instance, but in general are things cleared up now on the kbin side for receiving new threads quickly?)
Are comment notifications still delayed from local kbin replies -- or has that been fixed with the infrastructure changes?
Are federated upvotes propagating quickly? (It is very discouraging if you post something and it gets no interaction at all -- knowing if there's federation delay in upvotes would help with distinguishing between "no one saw this", "no one liked this", and "people probably saw it and maybe liked it but the response hasn't made it to kbin yet")
Is federation still playing catch up and old missing threads/comments will be backfilled eventually, or have they been dropped to get things back in working order?
Have any major instances defederated with kbin.social during the recent problems?
Also, should we @ you in addition to @ernest if we encounter problems on kbin.social?
@e0qdk
I can only check federation with our mastodon server (pol.social), and now is very quickly (about seconds).
Queue on kbin.social is empty, so everything should work instant. Maybe lemmy.world add some limitation due to problem with kbin.social.
Feel free to add if you encounter some problems with infrastructure ;)
There was a bug with KBin some days ago where it would send huge amounts of federation activities to Lemmy instances which would overload them. To mitigate this, lemmy.world and some other instances had to block kbin.social. I believe the .world admins tried to get in contact with @ernest. You can read some more details here.
I would also suggest that you and Ernest join the Lemmy Admin chat on Matrix where this problem was found and discussed.
That’s about where I am, honestly. I’m starting to look for alternatives.
I can deal with the site having the occasional problem, but I can’t deal with absolutely no communication at all when things break down. Kbin has gotten too big to be a one-person operation.
This is now the fourth post I’ve seen about people starting to get fed up, and honestly, you know people are starting to hit their limits once people start making posts about their frustrations. I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.
I’m a pretty patient person and can put up with a lot of goofiness on a site, as long as there’s some kind of communication happening. But there’s none.
I was at that point last week and ended up biting the bullet and migrating my subscriptions over to this account. Really wish there was a first class account migration tool available though.
@stopthatgirl7 Same. I poked around beehaw a bit, but I am not sure its is good fit for me. Think I will check out lemmy.world, they seem to be really communicative on mastodon during their upgrade process.
But that's all I know about it. I am looking into mbin,too...but I really don't much about it.
I have been spending most of my social media time on mastodon lately.
I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.
I guess it's not quiet once I post this, but I submitted the account deletion request a couple weeks back and spent some time setting my feedly back up after 1 too many spam posts. I'm already getting my scrolling fix from rss feeds again, and this is the first time I've been on kbin in a week.
It doesn't help that whenever this comes up there's a contingent of users who jump to Ernest's "defense" by calling the folks raising these issues "concern trolls" and accusing them of shilling for mbin.
No, this is simply a matter of what is actually working well. The point of federation is that one shouldn't need to have "loyalty" to any particular instance or any particular platform. Use whichever one's working.
Thats not what you describe. Troll is used the way you did in my response to you. A reference to other people trolling in some other threads. Not accusations of the main post being a troll. At least that is the way im reading it. I guess I just assume your first comment was refering to more blatant type posts or replies.
I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.
I made an alt two months ago when Kbin would never connect. I have barely been back since, so it is now my main. I hoped Kbin would come out if its slump but... that seems unlikely at this point. I'm actually quite happy on Lemmy, especially after the v0.19 upgrade allows blocking of an entire instance. I personally virtually never see any spam (maybe one comment per month) and while connection issues do occur, they are like a handful per week rather than handful per hour (it varies a lot though, sometimes it does get bad for a day or two and then weeks go by without a hitch).
I avoided the initial hurdle of making a Lemmy account for so long and, while it was super annoying, in retrospect it wasn't that bad, compared to all the other problems here and still having to go through all that, eventually.
If anyone is thinking about switching: don't worry unduly about it, just make an account and see if you like it, but you can always keep your Kbin active too, assuming Kbin remains alive.
Also, you may need to try out a few places before you find one that fits you best. But that reduces your anxiety bc you know more and don't need to worry about having to do it again in a worst-case scenario.
Considering his last post was about going to the hospital for a few days, over a month ago, I suspect he's not okay.
Regardless, I just cancelled my $5/mo donation towards the development of the kbin software. Seeing as how there hasn't been any development in over a month.
This time is probably unrelated to @ernest's supposed inactivity. Actually, his another /kbin server, https://karab.in has been brought back on 15 of February.
Oh wow, what a day for the fediverse huh? Kbin's infrastructure went down, Lemmy.ml's certs expired (or so Firefox told me), and a ton of Misskey servers got hacked and started botspamming everyone.
@ThatOneKirbyMain2568
given the sheer size of threads, most fedi platforms still lack well-developed moderation tools > this is a tough nut to crack, thus preemptive defederation is a must when it comes to threads
Well, for the span tags, I haven't seen other tags being an issue. If you see a code block where the same issue occurs with other tags, tell me so I can update it.
If there is another Reddit exodus, for example, or if we get a surge due to the Threads thing, I feel like many will just turn back due to the UI alone.
I don't know if ernest's views changed since the last exodus, but iirc people joining the platform wasn't really his intention, it just happened. Kbin hasn't even had a proper full release yet, it's still beta software, so I don't think people bouncing off is that big an issue yet.
With the abandonment of Artemis (formerly kmoon), kbin is now only really usable by the mobile site.
That's the case for now, but app development is still happening with other projects:
ernest has mentioned intentions to revive his kbin app project
I understood OP to be talking about mobile specifically. If there is a way to get the userstyles on mobile it's gotta be like 20 steps long. If someone could somehow wrap it all up in an easy package that would be one thing but idk if it's really a viable solution.
I understood OP to be talking about mobile specifically.
And that's why I said Firefox or Kiwi. Both of those are mobile browsers (the latter is chromium) that support extensions, so you can just install your favorite monkey and stylus and add userscripts/userstyles the exact same way as on desktop.
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