Today, a technical server malfunction occurred. Unfortunately, it wasn't the planned update yet. The upcoming one will definitely be much shorter ;)...
As soon as the site came back up I was looking for any of the changes, so I'm glad you posted. Stinks to have an unplanned outage but I'm looking forward to the planned one! I hope it goes well!
I've just discovered that lemmy.world (and potentially other) users I've banned from my magazine are still able to comment, comments I can't see on kbin but that do show up on lemmy.world....
This week (at the latest at the beginning of next week), there will be a several-hour technical break. A banner with detailed information about this will appear 24 hours before the planned work....
Ernest has previously said that this will be an upgrade to address several issues, such as those related to federation, spam and lack of moderation tools.
This week, I've been dealing with cleaning up instances from spam. Several hundred accounts were removed, along with several thousand posts - these were massive operations. It's possible that due to the volume of requests, other federated instances hit rate limits. I see that some of them are still in the queue with a "fail" status. I will gradually resend them after some time. Along with the update of kbin.social and the first release of kbin, new modeartion options will be available, including spam blocking (such as global blocking domains), a new reporting panel for moderators, and improved federation between instances. I will also address abandoned instances and ensure that each one has at least a few active moderators. I know how urgent this issue is, and it's my top priority. I just need a bit more time as Piotr and I are preparing for the update.
/kbin is certainly not dying, as @fr0g pointed out, work on new features and bug fixes is ongoing. However, it may give the impression that it is, and for that, I take full responsibility and owe you an explanation....
Take time for yourself, I don't think anyone's going to blame you for that. And honestly, I don't have any issues with the current state of Kbin, there's a couple bugs here and there but it's entirely usable otherwise. Finally, I think giving yourself a deadline to resolve personal issues might be counterproductive and make you more stressed than you should be. It sounds like you're already taking steps to help spread the workload around, I would just keep spending a little bit of time helping out the team do some stuff you can't do until you're able to get a better work life balance or something.
I guess I'm trying to say, things are great to me and I imagine you're getting that unfortunate side effect of only having people who have something to complain about reach out whereas everyone who has everything going well isn't saying anything. So, in my opinion, you can stay to course (as long as it isn't killing you mentally) and I don't think the site is suffering any for it.
Thank you @ernest for all you do and all you have done!
Absolutely do not want to see you run yourself into the ground over kbin matters, your family and your health come first.
I don't question your judgement, but I think the "step down" bit is a bit extreme, even if you fail to meet the deadline. Worst case, maybe let the community appoint a second-in-command temporarily to get some things moving along while you take a well deserved break?
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.
If I can't meet the deadline, I will step down from leading the project and transfer full rights over the repository and instance to the contributors.
I respect you entirely but this is a bit dramatic. Not all projects can be on time due to complications and no one is asking you to step down. Please just do what is necessary - you're doing fantastic!
I've given myself a deadline to resolve all my issues and release the first official version by the end of September. If I can't meet the deadline, I will step down from leading the project and transfer full rights over the repository and instance to the contributors.
Ernest, please don't be so hard on yourself. Deadlines slip, even for products formally released by companies, and this is more of a hobby frankly. I think what might help is less of a deadline and more of a roadmap - like, here are the major bullet point items we want to target for release by end of 2023, by end of Q1 2024, and sometimes those slip but then the roadmap can be revised.
I've been updating my own kbin instance pretty regularly, every couple of weeks, and I've seen things become more stable over time (less frustrations in upgrading, more features, etc). I'm quite happy with the progress so far. This project has grown so much in such a short time, and the fact that the kbin issues matrix is much quieter than it was speaks to the growing stability of the platform.
As far as kbin.social itself, I would agree with some other folks that you might need more volunteers on the actual instance administration and moderation front.
And as far as spam - email, the original federated messaging platform, still has that problem! Each email provider has to handle it on their own, using increasingly sophisticated methods, and they're still not perfect and it's been decades. Yes, spam is frustrating, but due to the nature of ActivityPub we will always be in an escalating war with spam. It will never be solved, only mitigated for a time.
Anyway, perhaps I've written too much here, but I have a ton of confidence in this project and also in you, and I hope you look back and see how much has been accomplished in a short amount of time, how much kbin.social has grown, and how the amount of other contributors indicates an overall great level of confidence in what you've created.
Yeah, there is no need for "final solution" style accountability here. This was a project that a single developer was working on when the stars just happened to align and drive a lot of attention to it at once. A commercially oriented website in the same situation would struggle to deal with it and be forced to take out loans in order to expand staffing and infrastructure capacity.
The phrasing of Ernest's initial post suggests that there is at least one exploitable vulnerability that spammers are taking advantage of and can't be openly discussed until the gates are closed. I understand the frustration and optics problem that comes with "easy and important fixes" sliding on the schedule (i.e. the topic of the other thread), but look at it this way:
Ernest is too slammed with work to be consciously creating more work for himself.
He needs the spam and bot problem to go away so ASAP so that it stops taking time away from him. This includes the missing moderation tools, spam/bot campaigns that are operating at a scale that those additional tools would have difficulty addressing regardless, and the issues he can't talk about yet that were hinted at above.
If he is waiting to push out a fix to problems that would greatly reduce his workload, there are very good reasons for it.
If he is not able to push out fixes that reduce his workload, it stands to reason that fixes unrelated to them are also sliding.
We're back (kbin.social)
Today, a technical server malfunction occurred. Unfortunately, it wasn't the planned update yet. The upcoming one will definitely be much shorter ;)...
Magazine bans not federating with lemmy.world (and potentially others) (kbin.social)
I've just discovered that lemmy.world (and potentially other) users I've banned from my magazine are still able to comment, comments I can't see on kbin but that do show up on lemmy.world....
October: kbin.social planned technical outage (kbin.social)
This week (at the latest at the beginning of next week), there will be a several-hour technical break. A banner with detailed information about this will appear 24 hours before the planned work....
Questions related to blocking users and domains. (kbin.social)
I've noticed a few things when blocking users....
Spam from unmoderated communities/magazines
Both !infosec and !science are being spammed constantly with opioid ads and other non-sense....
Remember you can donate to help support the development and maintenance of kbin and/or Ernest directly (kbin.social)
Ernest recently posted a site update, which included this note:...
Is Kbin dying? I wanted to address the deleted thread and provide some insight into the current situation. (kbin.social)
/kbin is certainly not dying, as @fr0g pointed out, work on new features and bug fixes is ongoing. However, it may give the impression that it is, and for that, I take full responsibility and owe you an explanation....
/kbin Translations (translate.codeberg.org)