Actually a lot is changing in /kbin, and this recent period has brought the most changes in months. Slowly we are coming back to life, and this time I will be better prepared.
In the latest thing with Reddit's /kbin, it was still in the early prototype phase (and remains so to this day). Prior to this, practically only I and a few friends were using it. It wasn't ready to handle the sudden creation of dozens of instances or accommodate thousands of users. Additionally, real-world issues emerged that demanded my immediate attention. I made the decision to take a step back instead of getting caught up in a race, opting to build solid foundations, which is exactly what I'm doing now. In my opinion, this will be better for the project and potential contributors, ensuring that their work will be utilized to the best possible extent.
Today, I added a box of related/random collections - I must admit that the ones you created are fantastic. Collection names can be repeated since they are user-assigned. I added the option to mark a collection as official - those with the highest number of followers in a given topic and with a specific name can be marked and...
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
There have been no recent changes in this area in /kbin. It seems that Lemmy instances have completely lost connectivity with the rest of the world. Test comments written on Mastodon in lemmy post are not federated.
Yep, images attached to Mastodon post also do not display in Lemmy comments. I'm afraid I won't be able to do anything about it on my end. I'll report the bug to the Lemmy devs, although they've probably already noticed it.
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Categories - a new feature that is essentially a multi-mags view. A new tab will appear in the user panel where you can create categories (public or private) and then add magazines to them (local or remote). In the magazine listing, there will be another tab that will list public categories...
This is just a prototype, there will probably be some errors to fix ;-) But I want to see how it performs in practice and over time, I will refine the whole thing, and that will take a bit more time.
I don't understand how content grouping can be used for potential abuses, to be honest. Collections are related to the user, so it will be subject to instance moderation in case of such an attempt. The community can also switch to private mode - then this content will not be aggregated in collections. Moreover, from what I know, there are already external tools that do similar things.
I understand now, I'll think it over during the weekend. I haven't really considered it before because the fediverse is still a relatively small and close-knit community imo. Excluding a specific instance would likely involve PR proposal to Lemmy's repository, but that's fine. Thanks for the feedback.
Actually, I named it incorrectly. I treated as private collections those that don't appear in the listing, but you can still share them with friends. I changed it so that they are truly private, and I will add another status someday - non-public.
These points are not a priority, but relatively easy to achieve. They will gradually appear on the instance in between working on significant things. It's worth following https://kbin.social/m/kbinDevlog
You need to inform your instance that such a community exists. Usually, it's enough to type the URL https://kbin.social/m/OriginalDocuments into the search bar while logged in on Reddthat.
Today, I added new user customization options for the homepage, including the ability to set a new view. The Aggregate view is now featured in the main navigation under "All content," making it easier to navigate. Thanks for all the tips and feedback - great job ;)...
Discuit just went open source, could federation be next?
Announcement post here: …substack.com/…/df5f002f-e27a-46a6-b30d-7641b266b…...
RTR#30 Monthly recap and planned next steps
Today, I added a box of related/random collections - I must admit that the ones you created are fantastic. Collection names can be repeated since they are user-assigned. I added the option to mark a collection as official - those with the highest number of followers in a given topic and with a specific name can be marked and...
/kbin Issues (codeberg.org)
Does adding a photo to a comment not work with federation?
I commented in a discussion and added a photo. Others could see it....
A note regarding images in the community.
Hey everyone!...
RTR#29 Another boring update: Categories and bug fixes
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Categories - a new feature that is essentially a multi-mags view. A new tab will appear in the user panel where you can create categories (public or private) and then add magazines to them (local or remote). In the magazine listing, there will be another tab that will list public categories...
Feature comparison - kbin vs Lemmy
There's a chance that I have forgotten something or missed something....
OriginalDocuments - the actual thing, without editorializing (kbin.social)
Original Documents...
Is Saltburn the most divisive film of the year? (www.theguardian.com)
cross-posted from: kbin.social/m/movies/t/664183...
RTR#28 New homepage options, improved aggregate view, Support Us box
Today, I added new user customization options for the homepage, including the ability to set a new view. The Aggregate view is now featured in the main navigation under "All content," making it easier to navigate. Thanks for all the tips and feedback - great job ;)...
The State of Developer Ecosystem in 2023 Infographic (www.jetbrains.com)