@Ernest has pushed an update which allows users to request ownership/moderation of abandoned magazines. Ghost/abandoned magazines were fairly prevalent after the initial wave of hype due to users either squatting magazine names or becoming inactive for other reasons. Now is your chance to get involved, if you were waiting to do...
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. :)
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.
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.
This led me to @neatchee, who is the instance owner. You might try following them, but I agree, that's an odd bug.
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.
Yeah, posting to Kbin from Mastodon instances is a challenge. Kbin filters and tries to assign incoming hashtags to existing magazine hashtags.
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.
Second, it's random which of your magazine hashtags will pull content and from who. The order of the hashtags doesn't appear to affect this.
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)
To those genuinely interested in moderating (kbin.social)
@Ernest has pushed an update which allows users to request ownership/moderation of abandoned magazines. Ghost/abandoned magazines were fairly prevalent after the initial wave of hype due to users either squatting magazine names or becoming inactive for other reasons. Now is your chance to get involved, if you were waiting to do...
Just Curious: How long does it take for a kbin post to reach mastodon? (kbin.social)
Or a thread to lemmy. Basically, how long does "federation" take?...