New and need help figuring out this site.

I am new here (kbin, but I guess this might post to other websites as well??) and am trying to understand how this place is similar and different from reddit. Is there a good overview somewhere? I already accidentally spammed this question three times as a microblog, whatever that is, and am trying to figure out how to actually do things.

How do I subscribe/join/whatever a community? Can I private message people?
What terminology do I need to know?
What’s up with the following people thing?
How do the points work (agree/disagree, relevant/not relevant, something else…)?
What else do I not know that I don’t know?

Thank you!

kuontom, (edited )
kuontom avatar

What terminology do I need to know?

This should suffice for now:
Fediverse: Basically a set of individual websites, the content of any one of which can be accessed through any other website from this set of websites. Read on for the 'how?'
Magazine: Similar to a subreddit.
Thread: Similar to a Reddit post.
Microblog: Similar to a tweet on Twitter.
Post: A microblog posted in a magazine.

Find the navigation menu on kbin, which is at the top of the webpage if you are on PC or tap the trigram on the top left of the web page if you are on mobile. You should see items named 'Threads', 'Microblog', 'People' and 'Magazines' in the navigation bar.

How do I subscribe/join/whatever a community?

To browse the list of all magazines or search for specific ones, simply click on 'Magazines' on the navigation bar. When you do, you'll find a search bar to search for magazines and a list of magazines sorted by the most number of subscribers. You can search for a magazine by just typing in a keyword like 'history'. The search results will bring you magazines from kbin that have the keyword 'history' in their names or descriptions. In addition to kbin magazines, you will also find communities from other sites of the fediverse.

Here are the first 5 results I get searching for 'history' in the magazine search:

  • chess
  • Etymology
  • historymemes@lemmy.ml
  • history
  • askhistorians@lemmygrad.ml

The magazines of kbin appear with just their name, as in the case of the chess, Etymology and history magazines. The communities analogous to kbin magazines on another fediverse site, lemmy.ml appear as you see in the case of historymemes@lemmy.ml. lemmy.ml is a different website from kbin.social, but you can access and interact with the content from lemmy.ml through kbin.social and using your kbin.social account. Click on the magazine name and you'll find the option to subscribe on the right side of your screen on PC. On mobile, scroll all the way to the bottom and start scrolling up and you should find it. You can access your feed with content from subscribed magazines by clicking on the list icon to the left of your username on the top right of the web page on both PC and mobile. A dropdown menu will open up with an item called 'Subscribed'. There you go.

I guess this might post to other websites as well?

You have posted to kbin.social in the RedditMigration magazine. A user of some other fediverse site will only see it if they are browsing RedditMigration@kbin.social from their site. If a user from some other website engages with your post, their user ID will appear here as username@fediversesitename, similar to how yours is username@kbin.social.

How do the points work (agree/disagree, relevant/not relevant, something else…)?

Favorite(up arrow)/Reduce(down arrow). Who favorites/reduces a particular thread/comment is public. Find the 'more' option on a comment and click on 'activity'.

Another form of engagement is boosting (find the 'boost' option near the 'reply' option on a thread/comment/microblog), which is similar to retweeting on Twitter.

Is there a good overview somewhere?

An overview of fediverse can be found at jointhefediverse.net.

Helix,

Thank you for this. The portion about the magazines is very helpful. I just started on here yesterday and had not figured that out yet. I was just browsing All and was getting bored very quickly. Now I can search for and subscribe to magazines similar to my favorite subreddits! Thanks again!

PFShady,

Thanks for this. Still wrapping my head around it all but finding I like it so far.

667,
667 avatar

It's helped me think of each instance (kbin, fedia.io) as akin to email providers like Gmail or Yahoo, only each instance (when federated) is able to access the content among other instances for you to read and interact with.

Deltafux,

Very succinct and easy to understand. Thanks for taking the time.

Hedup,

How does this handle the same community being on multiple sites? E.g. AskHistorians might be both on kbin.social and lemmy.ml. If I browse kbin.social/m/askhistorians, do I also see posts from kbin.social/m/askhistorians@lemmy.ml?

ChimpanzeeThat,

Well done on the great write up. Super helpful for lost Redditors like me.

kosmicpulse,
kosmicpulse avatar

Just wow. You made it look so easy. Thanks for taking time.

SoupOfTheDay,

Thank you for this. And while I understand why federation has its positives, couldn’t this lead to fracturing as well? Like, are we going to end up with gaming@kbin.social, and gaming@lemmy.ml as well? Or will that just end up similar to r/gaming, and r/truegaming, where you’ll just end up with splinter groups?

shufty,

I have also been wondering this

VeeSilverball,
VeeSilverball avatar

While I haven't looked into exactly how it's being implemented, I believe there will be splintering because thread scoring and moderation is something that different instances are going to disagree on(for technical as well as social reasons).

If you've experienced how Mastodon federates, it doesn't precisely show all the interactions that a user on a different instance has had on a post, or how many followers they have, because Activitypub is federating specific events instead of a compete and current "user status". That makes it more efficient to do federation, but it means you only know what you're subscribed to, basically. And that's going to happen with interactions between kbin and lemmy instances too.

The term magazine makes sense for this, since that means that subscribing to "gaming" on different instances is like being a subscriber to two competing "gaming magazines", each with their own editorial staff, letters and comments, etc.

Doodledraw,

Thank you.

shufty,

does kbin have an 'all' where I can see popular things from other Lemmy instances?

assplode,

Thanks! I'm new here too and this is very helpful 😁

Bender_B_Rodriguez,

So I get the favorite and reduce, magazines, etc. But one thing I haven’t seen anyone talk about is “boost”. What does boost do? I figure it helps to “boost” someone’s comment above others more so than an upvote? Do we only get a set number of boosts to use?

kuontom, (edited )
kuontom avatar

Boosts are like retweets on twitter. There is no limitation on boosts.

Added to original comment.

Oodlesofpoodles,

Thanks for asking and to everyone with the helpful replies. Still somewhat confused/overwhelmed but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it. In the meantime I’ve been going around like a dummy boosting instead of upvoting (favoriting?). Hopefully the communities (magazines?) realize many of us are new and forgive our mistakes as we transition.

Relyc,

How do I save this and come back to it later?

BobRoberts,

I think you save by using boost.

PrunesMakeYouPoop,

It would be nice if some of these buttons, such as 'boost', had a little 'i' icon that one could mouse over for info on what the button does.

Scalpel,

Another Reddit refugee chiming in. I've been on Reddit and ONLY Reddit for ages... everything in the fediverse seems so alien. Kbin seems the most familiar so far.

Thanks for asking the questions, and huge thanks to the folks answering!!

What do y'all recommend for actually navigating the fediverse? Like, looking at the URL, the social part of kbin.social tells me this is kind of a hangout spot focused on conversation and less on content; but then I see magazines like this one and other topics like medicine and news, so... .social has everything? I see I can navigate magazines and such within .social, which seems like exactly what I'm looking for in an escape from Reddit, but I'm wondering if I skipped a step in landing on .social, and should first weigh it against the kbin.OtherOptions?

There's also the whole seeing content on other platforms thing - how do I actually do that? Like from here on kbin, can I add something on Lemmy (which I aslo don't know squat about) as a... magazine? follow? something else?

SoupOfTheDay,

I’m going to chime in, but fair warning, it’s just what I think, so I could be wrong.

The .social doesn’t actually mean it’s only for social things. It’s similar to a .com or .org. We can put anything we want up on it, similar to Reddit. We can have threads about non-sense similar to r/askreddit, or very detailed discussions similar to r/askhistorians or r/science.

I believe at the moment kbin and lemmy aren’t talking to each other, or if they are, it’s more complicated than it should/will be in the future. The whole point of these sites is “federation”, each is its own little mini-group/site/“Reddit”. Like the US is made of states. At the moment I’ve heard kbin federation is either turned off or not working, so believe the borders are closed. But eventually it’ll be turned back on and we will be able to visit other federated sites/places like lemmy and mastodon.

At the moment I think the big difference is the UI and how things look on your originating site. But as things grow moderation and content will also be a difference. In theory maybe you don’t like the way the gaming part of kbin is moderated but you like lemmy’s, you’ll be able to see posts and visit that site through kbin one day.

Also, a magazine on kbin is basically a subreddit. You subscribe to it, like you would a magazine. Then you can see the posts. Boosts are apparently like following a hashtag on Twitter, but I never did Twitter, so I don’t know exactly.

Unblended,
Unblended avatar

Okay, so I've been using Mastodon for years so I basically understand the idea of how content is propagated.

People on your instance are following someone and so you see the people they follow on your feed, or else they boost posts that they can see in which case people can see them on your feed.

I know this is using the same protocol but I'm trying to understand a few things --

It sounds like each instance has separate magazines, so this means different instances have different magazines. How does it handle it when two instances have magazines with the same topic? No real attempt at trying to merge the two? It seems impossible to do with distinct mods from separate servers with different rules, did someone figure out a way?

Similarly, if someone from @kbin.pub wants to comment on a thread in a magazine on @kbin.social or whatever (assume valid instances), how do they know that the thread exists? They subscribe to that magazine on a different instance and then see it in their own home page? Or does them subscribing to a magazine on another instance make that magazine appear to others on their own instance?

I guess I'm trying to understand how this system is handling discovery and moderation in a forum system where different instances split up a forum, it would be neat if things were somehow interleaved.

WookieMunster,

deleted_by_author

    •
    pilvlp,

    As a redditor or for about 10 years - it wasn't always intuitive and simple as it is now. We're going through another learning process.

    katalaree,

    You're right that reddit is a lot simpler to use but the name Fediverse well.... it does depict what the the site is built on. Fediverse = Federated (servers are built following a federated architecture) Interconnected (these servers can interconnect together) universe.

    Youthless52,

    I understand that the threads in a magazine represent different posts + related comments, but I don't understand how Microblogs relate to a magazine and how they relate to Toots on Mastodon.

    • Are the Microblog posts tied to a specific magazine? The Microblogs seem to change when I look at different Magazines, which is pretty different from how I would expect to see Tweets or Mastodon Toots.

    • How do the Microblogs under, say, /m/RedditMigration relate to toots on Mastodon? Are the same Toots are are they different because they are within Kbin and are organized within a magazine?

    • Is it accurate to say that the Microblogs under /m/RedditMigration are basically unaffiliated posts without threads within the magazine?

    atypicaloddity,

    I don't understand how Microblogs relate to a magazine and how they relate to Toots on Mastodon

    Mastodon has toots (individual posts), while lemmy has communities (moderated communities containing posts and comments on those posts).

    Kbin has magazines, which are both. When you open a magazine, you'll see the threads in it, but you can click on microblog and see the 'toots' of that magazine too, which are one-off posts that don't belong to a thread. So you can, for instance, start a new thread on m/RedditMigration, or you can just make a one-off 'toot' on m/RedditMigration. It's basically a subreddit with a Twitter feed.

    What I personally don't know is how Mastodon toots are categorized here. Every time I look up a toot here it appears to be in the 'random' magazine.

    SoupOfTheDay,

    Are boosts/toots just going to end up as a spam wall with stream of conscious posts by users?

    atypicaloddity,

    Definitely maybe? I'd compare it to watching a hashtag on Twitter, except these posts are targeting a single topic instead of a dozen different hashtags at once.

    I believe that mods for each magazine can moderate the microblog to reduce spam or enforce rules, but I haven't looked into it yet.

    SoupOfTheDay,

    I may have chosen the wrong fedverse to jump into. I’m “old” and I never got into Twitter. So mashing up Reddit and Twitter is going to end up making me yell at the clouds and kids in my lawn.

    atypicaloddity,

    Haha well there's always lemmy. And once this site gets federation up and running you'd still be able to interact with kbin from lemmy. Pick an instance or instances you like the interface for; going to lemmy doesn't really mean leaving kbin, after all!

    SoupOfTheDay,

    Is lemmy more like Reddit, and mastodon more like Twitter?

    Also, would I need to create a lemmy account?

    atypicaloddity,

    That's right.

    So generally no you wouldn't need to create a lemmy account to interact with lemmy. For instance, I have an account on fedia.io (which is a kbin instance like this one) which I use to interact with lemmy (for example: https://fedia.io/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world is a view of the lemmyworld community on lemmy.world).

    You could do the same thing from kbin.social, but federation is borked right now due to load/CloudFlare. So I'd recommend making an account on lemmy somewhere while things here get sorted out, and eventually you can just choose the site with the interface you prefer, like moving from Hotmail to Gmail.

    cassetti,

    I'm still trying to figure out why I can post things but I get zero notifications when I click over to the notifications page. I only realized one of my posts was getting popular because it was on the top of "all" or whatever it was. Lol - otherwise I can't even see my old posts to find them..... sigh.

    I think I like Squabbles more than Kbin - it's just too complicated/confusing

    667,
    667 avatar

    Click on Profile Name (top right) > Settings > Notifications > Enable what you want; notifications are opt-in.

    SoupOfTheDay,

    Thank you for telling us this. I can understand having some notifications opt-in, but not having replies to comments on by default is surprising.

    Otome-chan,
    Otome-chan avatar

    kbin, but I guess this might post to other websites as well??

    Welcome. You're on the kbin.social website, which is the main "kbin instance". This group (known as a "magazine" on kbin) is also hosted on kbin.social. Users from other websites that "federate" with kbin.social can see your post and interact with it. Right now federation is a bit not working due to the reddit hug of death. so mostly it's us kbin users that can see it. Elsewhere you might stumble upon groups or users from other sites, and your content will be posted there if you interact with them.

    I already accidentally spammed this question three times as a microblog, whatever that is,

    The word "microblog" refers to the sort of social media that Twitter is. That is, very short multimedia "tweets". Here on the "fediverse", we have microblogging. Notably this surrounds the website "mastodon" (mastodon.social I believe is their main site), but kbin is awesome so we get it as well. If you check the microblog section you'll see a lot of mastodon users (who are using a website that is very similar to twitter).

    How do I subscribe/join/whatever a community?

    Communities are referred to as 'magazines' here on kbin. you can join them how you join a subreddit: go to the magazine's page, then click "subscribe" and it'll be added to your home feed (located at kbin.social/subs)

    Can I private message people?

    Yes. If you go onto the person's profile, there should be a "message" button. Just like on reddit.

    What terminology do I need to know?

    Magazine - This is kbin's equivalent to subreddits. Notably, on lemmy these are referred to as "communities", and since you may interact with lemmy users while using kbin, it's important to note the difference in terms.

    Fediverse - This refers to the collective of federated websites. So kbin.social, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, beehaw.org, mastodon.social, etc. they all "link up" and share content.

    What’s up with the following people thing?

    Following people should work how it does on reddit and twitter. You can follow them to have their posts show up in your home feed.

    How do the points work (agree/disagree, relevant/not relevant, something else…)?

    You can treat upvotes/downvotes how you do on reddit (liked content, relevant, etc). Though notably the "upvotes" work as "likes" on other platforms. For instance if you like a microblog from mastodon, it gets treated as "like" on mastodon. Notably there's also "boosts" which work as a "retweet" or "share" button.

    Please ask if there's anything I didn't mention :)

    olrik,
    olrik avatar

    Thank you very much, this was very helpful. I am also new here and to the Fediverse and trying to understand it's intricacies and features. I was particularly puzzled the microblogging part, just as OP but your post helped a lot.

    Otome-chan,
    Otome-chan avatar

    Yup. a good way to think about it is that the "threads" side of things is a reddit clone. while the "microblog" side of things is a twitter clone. and kbin just mashes them together. the "microblog" stuff on the fediverse came first with things like mastodon. and now we're getting the "threads"/reddit style stuff with sites like kbin and lemmy.

    Everyone can see all the content though, it just shows up differently depending on the site you use. For example, people on mastodon can see our comments here in this "thread" but to them they just see it like regular tweets/tweet-threads.

    Bendersmember,
    Bendersmember avatar

    How do you create a text thread on kbin? I see how to add a post, but don't see the word thread anywhere in the + drop down menu. Are all the add options threads and then the singular post? If so then how would you add a thread that is just text? Haha sorry, no sleep so I'm sure I'm phrasing this all wrong.

    BobRoberts,

    Apparently you have to select “add new article” to make a new thread. Adding a new post just adds to the chat room like continuous scrolling of random comments known as the microblog.

    Bendersmember,
    Bendersmember avatar

    Thanks! I did end up finding that answer burried in the comments of another thread. I feel like that info should be higher or more accessible. But thanks for the answer, I think that was my last big hurdle with wrapping my mind around this new site.

    Otome-chan,
    Otome-chan avatar

    kbin has two sections: threads and microblog.

    microblog only has one type of thing you can do "post". So when you "create a new post" that's under microblog and works how you'd expect twitter to work.

    for threads, there's the other options. for text threads, the one you want is "article" so "create a new article". It's weirdly named for whatever reason. Links are obviously links, images/photos are obviously such. videos seem broken right now. but "article" is the one you want for a text post. Also keep in mind that if you do other submissions you can also submit a text post along with it.

    Avoid "post" unless you want to submit to the microblog section (which is mastodon/twitter).

    Bendersmember,
    Bendersmember avatar

    Thanks for the clarification.

    Horik,
    Horik avatar

    I just spit beer reading "hug of death"

    Otome-chan,
    Otome-chan avatar

    idk if you're familiar with reddit lingo, but that's what it's called lol. someone links a small/niche cool site on reddit, and then thousands or millions of people go flood and ddos the poor site killing it and preventing it from being up. but not out of malice, but instead out of love. hence "hug of death".

    SoupOfTheDay,

    To add to what Otome-Chan said, one of the reasons kbin is running so slowly is that cloudflare anti-DDoS service is running on it which also helps prevent “hugs of death”. Hopefully it gets mitigated soon, this 5 seconds to comment is rough.

    RheingoldRiver,

    Can you explain how it would work if someone were to boost a specific comment ? I sort of get the idea of boosting a post, if I'm following you and you boost a picture of a cute puppy then I'll see it even though I'm only following the cats magazine, but how will a boosted comment show up? won't that be totally out of context? What's the point of boosting a comment?

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