New kbin user guide (preparation for impending wave of reddit migrants in July)

CoderKat, 10 months ago

The how to subscribe to a magazine guide sadly won't work if you're the first to subscribe to it within kbin. Unfortunately, the guide to doing so might scare people away. You have to search @magazine.domain in the search (not the magazine search!).

Some of these things really highlight changes that need to be made. Like my above example. It's bad that there's two ways to subscribe to a magazine (one being completely unintuitive). It's bad that the whole thread vs post thing is so confusing. It's bad that we call something magazines while most of our content, which comes from Lemmy, calls them communities (and also has syntax for linking to them that doesn't work for us).

Friend, 10 months ago

Thanks for pointing out, I've updated the how-to. Hopefully that covers it.

ApollosArrow, 10 months ago

As an update from our previous convo. It looks like I am still receiving content from Feddit.de after blocking the domain

https://imgur.com/a/v9aZsJR

Neato, 10 months ago

Isn't there already an app called kbin? It advertises itself at the bottom of kbin.social in mobile.

cyberian_khatru, 10 months ago

A few points:

-I feel like even this short guide is overcomplicating it for 90% of potential users. Just add a tl;dr at the start about checking out the relevant settings (top bar, notifications), subscribing to magazines, and navigating to the "subscribed" feed. Like, if I want a hot shower I don't need to know where the water comes from or how pressure is determined by the bermoulli formula, just say what do I press to get the water to come out hot.

-Explain that collapsible comments are coming and there's a userscript for people who are into that.

-I don't think that this separation of tiers is efficient for anyone. Like, if I want to know how to see the local feed is that lurker or addict.

-I think it's overcomplicating threads and microblogs. Yeah, I didn't know there was a difference between replies and comments but it's never been relevant for me this past month. One is like reddit and is compatible with lemmy, the other is like twitter and lets you talk to mastodon users (and misskey, and calckey,...).

-On that note, some people get overly confused with the concept of federation (in part because people usually overcomplicate it when explaining), and this problem is compounded on a platform that also interacts with instances from other platforms. You can just keep it simple and say "you have an account on a website which has its own content. There are others that look exactly the same with different users and content, but you have access* to all of that too".
*unless admins decide to defederate specifically from your website, like what beehaw did.

Ironic that I said to keep things short and then wrote a huge comment.

Friend, 10 months ago

Thanks for the long and thoughtful comment. This is really helpful. I will do my best to take on board your points over the next few days.

CarlsIII, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

@Friend. Do you have any tips for being able identify which instance a post is from? The “@**.” part of an instance name is usually cut off, and often the post title will say “kbin.social” next to it even if it’s not a kbin post. The only way I know for sure to tell is to click on a post and scroll past all the comments.

Edit: for example, this post: https://kbin.social/m/youshouldknow@lemmy.world/t/100869/YSK-If-you-make-popcorn-in-a-pot-on-the

The post title clearly says kbin.social next to it. By he community label just says “youshouldknow.” It looks the same way from my home page: The only reason I know it’s actually on Lemmy.world is because I scrolled past all the comments, and also it’s in the url (which i am only looking at here because I copied and pasted the direct url for the post.)

Edit 2: I should probably also clarify that I am on mobile, so mouse-over’s are a no-go.

Friend, 10 months ago

Please can you share a screenshot?

Here's what I see what I select the burger menu while on the magazine.

Maybe your screen size or text size is different to mine though.

CarlsIII, 10 months ago

@Friend Hopefully this posts correctly. The post was on youshouldknow@Lemmy.world, but it only shows “youshouldknow”, and I have no idea why it says kbin.social next to the title. I’m hoping to be able to tell the name of the instance without having to click a bunch of places first.

Friend, 10 months ago

Ah ok thanks I understand now. Unfortunately there is no zero-click solution that I know of. The only thing I can offer is the one-click burger menu solution.

I'm putting together a wishlist so I'll add it there :)

_sigma, 10 months ago

this userscript can show it
https://kbin.social/m/kbinStyles/t/27201/kbin-enhancement-script-QOL-updates-for-the-kbin-UI

CarlsIII, 10 months ago

@_sigma

@Friend

How does that work? Is is a safari mod?

NotAPenguin, 10 months ago

https://greasyfork.org/en/help/installing-user-scripts

CoderKat, 10 months ago

It's sadly very annoying. What I usually do is I long press the magazine name if I'm in the front page. That will show the URL. I otherwise usually just use the URL of the page I'm on (it should have /m/foo@bar -- unless it's a local magazine, in which case it won't display the domain). But I know that isn't user friendly nor likely available on apps.

It needs to be improved. And the UI should stop hiding it (eg, the front page will show "gaming" instead of "gaming@lemmy.ml"), because the domain is a critical part of the magazine name.

cendawanita, 10 months ago

@CarlsIII try click on More at the original post and select Copy to Fediverse. That'll get you the originating url. This works for every type of post and comment.

@Friend

CarlsIII, 10 months ago

@cendawanita

@Friend

Again, this is all way more work than it would be if the post just showed the instance in the first place. I already know I can find out what instance if I do some scrolling and clicking. I would prefer to just have the “@beehaw.org” added to the community name in the post (and to not display “kbin.social” on posts that aren’t even from kbin. I still haven’t heard an explanation for that.)

cendawanita, 10 months ago

@CarlsIII aye no worries - fair ask

@Friend

ToKrCZ, 10 months ago

Very useful, thank you! I will share this with my friends :-)

ArtieShaw, 10 months ago

Damn. Saved.

Thank you for this because I've been flailing a little bit. I've commented on some posts but I'm not always entirely sure where I am when it comes to the different instances.

(#lostredditorsinaction #whyiseverythinginGerman #itsOKIcanreadGerman #shitwasjustconfusing #confusingIEL)

Elevator7009, 10 months ago

My biggest issue with hopping over to the Fediverse was choosing an instance to sign up for. I did know that the point was _de_centralization so I picked one of the smaller ones, but not one so small that it’s probably run by one person who will shut it down in 3 months or by a person who will only have the instance up when they want to browse kbin. I used https://fedidb.org/software/kbin to check instance size. You might want to add choosing an instance to this guide as well.

simo, 10 months ago

Thanks for the guide, I'm still praying for an abilty to hide posts. Better yet, have them vanish when you upvote/boost them.

Kotking, 10 months ago

@Friend https://mas.to/@sjosjo/110589535586009725 This post mentioned that you can get rss feed from lemmy, you can also get rss feed from kbin in same way and not only magazine but users too. For Mastodon add .rss to end of user.

iamsgod, 10 months ago

can I ask here? but how do we see parents comment and/or shrink/expand comment tree in kbin? I can do it in lemmy, but lemmy is buggy as hell

also, is it possible to move create new post on the top? I don't want to scroll to the bottom of the page to post something

glittalogik, 10 months ago

Is there an easy way to compile/aggregate selected subscriptions into a multireddit equivalent?

I saw a mention somewhere of adding magazines to 'racks' but no idea if that was a current/upcoming feature or just wishful thinking...

Friend, 10 months ago

No but it's a frequently requested functionality. I think it would be great :)

mem_somerville_kbin, 10 months ago

TIL that the moderation logs are public. That was kind of surprise to look through.

Prodi_g123, 10 months ago

I'm fairly new to kbin but will definitely give it a read

Friend, 10 months ago

Thanks! Let me know any feedback :)

Riptide502, 10 months ago

Finally figured it out. It was a little confusing at first, especially since every app substitute has its own problems. Memmy app seems to be working the best for me, aside from a few bugs.

So far the experience has been better. “All” seems to have less negative threads, which is so refreshing. No more /r/Politics, /r/WhitePeopleTwitter or /r/Antiwork. I swear all those communities do is just post ragebait and spam depressing headlines.