Haven't even directed my browser to reddit since migrating to kbin in June, but it's never fulfilled the same dopamine hit for me. I've supplanted my online addiction with YouTube now, which because of what I flit past and what I actually pay attention to has been extremely educational because of the algorithm!
Pretty early on, I ended up becoming the head moderator for a magazine on kbin, which then made me feel an ethical sort of guilt about commenting there anymore, so really the only place I wanted to be part of the dialogue is now gone for me here on kbin. Our magazine has a much larger mirror community on lemmyworld, so our magazine is barely holding on by a thread even after an initial burst of new subscribers. Discussion is almost non-existent in the magazine, and I'm not sure if it's because we tried to instate common-sense community guidelines early, or if because we missed the momentum of growing userbase after the rexxit since most people migrated to lemmyworld instead of kbin.
I'm not even sure why I keep my account. (I know I sound like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh in this post.)
Yeah, it's a 100% self-imposed moratorium just because I don't want to appear to have a modding bias. There was a period where I was trying to enliven the community by posting a few articles each day, especially from sources not submitted to our mirror community on lemmyworld, but then my real life job was draining my soul for 3 straight months, so that endeavor fell by the wayside. Also, unless it's an article dumping on one key player, our user base doesn't tend to comment on news articles. It's a weird phenomenon I've observed.
I will add though that my hobby communities that I belong to never make it to my feed, which seems to imply that those communities are stagnant, too. I would probably comment more in those spaces, but it's rare that new threads are created, I guess.
I wish you would comment. Contributors in the sub aren't following the rules very well. I contributed pretty often, however I've slacked off since the beginning of October. The Israel/Palestine conflict has really taken over my feed (as well as some Trek and Star Wars memes). Yet with the Middle East news it's been difficult posting for some reason. My activity has been diminished severely.
I still comment a fair bit just from sorting by all > new. But yeah we're still in the early days comment-wise. The magazine I created almost never gets any comments or posts but there are a few lurkers who upvote and it slowly grows.
I've recently taken on a couple that were stagnating due to absentee mods and it's going slowly, but I still think it's important for kbin to have our own chill communities on these topics rather than outsourcing it all to the lemmys.
You must be doing something right, because I'm pretty sure I noticed your mag in my feed the other day which made me realise it's active. (I contributed an article but unfortunately it's on NZ politics because that's the only one I follow)!
Don't kid yourself. He's not "neutral" in any way, shape, or form, lol. Just looking at the rules of the place show their extreme leftist ideology. Not one word about warning the commies and sexual deviants to keep their perversion away.
I understand the issue, the changes in the federation /kbin that will occur in the coming weeks / months will make the magazines much more visible in the broader fediverse. This could be a complete gamechanger.
Ah - yikes. I was really not anticipating you seeing my mini pity party here, ernest. I know you and the team have been really working hard on kbin and I've seen massive changes with the modding panel and functions as a result of the latest instance update. I have a ton of respect for what you all are accomplishing on the fediverse and I was originally a very vocal early adopter after the first reddit migration in June. I trust that you all are shouldering a major responsibility with this instance, and I'm grateful for the fediverse at the very least. I hope when you read this you didn't get the sense that I had any criticisms of kbin as the particular user interface I use for the fediverse - just that even across the federated instances (mostly lemmyworld), my ability to doom scroll for hours a day outpaces the userbase.
I think I feel a personal sense of failure(?) or disappointment(?) that I wasn't able to usher in a similar sense of community and activity to the sub I moderate compared to reddit. I think moving over here, it felt like my sub would be the natural beneficiary of inheriting the volume of users and content that existed on reddit, but our mirror community on lemmyworld got the lion's share and it isn't even scratching former reddit heyday numbers. Also, the people in their community are... suspect. I don't care for the comments section.
I hope you didn't take umbrage to my comment. I'm eager to see what new features the kbin dev team will roll out.
Oh, come on, I'm not that sensitive ;-) Constructive criticism helps me set goals, prioritize tasks on my board, and broaden my horizons when it comes to the overall experience with the platform. I really appreciate that. The fact is that Lemmy had a lot more time. I remember when they started federation tests, I was writing my first line of code. Some things just need time to mature. For me, it's not a race. I simply have a clear goal that I'm determined to achieve - to create a solid, accessible platform that others can benefit from and enjoy. Who knows, maybe it'll become the best in the entire fediverse someday ;-) Now, after the break, I'll be working on federation but also on customizing the feed to tailor it as much as possible to individual needs. Cheers!
My man, you're straight up fighting it up there with one of the largest websites on the internet with vastly more resources and you're delivering. You deserve the praise and encouragement.
It definitely feels like the kbin hosted magazines that have overlap with Lemmy magazines are struggling to get attention/engagement. I think part of it is just that so many people are over there and don't look at federated content, so more kbin users don't bother with contributing to our own magazines.
I'm not sure what the answer is to fix that, or if it's even something that needs to be fixed since we federation we're still receiving and engaging in content. Would love to see more activity on our home turf though.
That's a general issue with the internet, and is not just a fediverse issue. In fact, fediverse gives you the power to move to instances with moderation policies that you like, rather than forcing you to use a centralised platform.
I've enjoyed my time on the fediverse but have been disappointed with the leveling off of growth and lack of participation in niche communities. I still visit Kbin several times weekly, but it isn't like the old days when I would spend tons of time on Reddit. I have left my old Reddit account redacted and haven't started using it again, as that time is over. There are some communities and niche interests that unfortunately, it looks like Reddit will always be the main home for since we didn't hit the critical mass for people to move those communities over here. Because of that, I've started a new reddit account (with my real name attached, and started actively participating in those communities). For me, Reddit is no longer a place to anonymously participate in community discussions (because those discussions were becoming increasingly worthless alot of the time), but a place to participate with my IRL identity in communities related to topics or hobbies I care about. The anonymous community stuff is fulfilled by Kbin/Fediverse which I prefer now.
agree here. growth dipping and lack of participation pushed me away a bit. i didn't mind it being small, but when i saw i was the only one in my communities ever contributing content, i felt discouraged.
I still use Reddit a bit (on desktop only), mostly to check on some niche communities that aren't really on the Fediverse yet, but Kbin has been very nice also. It's nice and chill, and overall a lot less fascist/bigot friendly, which is refreshing.
niche communities with activity is what's really lacking here, would make all the difference. though, when attempting to fill those niches, which i have attempted, it seems there's not many people around who are interested.
i havent been active here for weeks, months maybe, but before i was arguably one of the most active on the site during and after the reddit stuff. i do miss making scripts and styles for kbin, the feeling of community, and the urge to create content. coming back i see a lot of activity died off, expectedly, but there is a tight-knit but welcoming community that has formed and it's nice too see. does feel a bit empty though?
Of course I need to access information I can't find elsewhere at Reddit once in a while but if I create content in there, it's about kbin only.
Looking at interesting discussions to be a part of, trying to make kbin a more fleshed-out service with ideas rushing through my head, enjoying the reputation points dripping in 😃 And trying to come up with different themes under a topic to a magazine while dreaming to get even a few more peeps over there!
Absolutely love it here. Kbin is awesome, and I love the fediverse. I'm way more about content creation here than I was on reddit because I want to be part of this. @ernest keeps making it better too.
I love interacting with all the instances and also I love the access to Mastodon content. I was never on Twitter or Mastodon before but now I follow these cool people I found from my community microblogs.
I never run out of internet, the fediverse has all I need. Yet, I feel more productive irl than I used to be.
A search result took me to reddit last week and was shocked by how many bots, shills, and just how much general anger and fighting is over there. Also they seem to have more dumb or trolling people than I remember.
That reddit blackout did me a huge favour. Never going back. The future is federated.
Sounds good! Not a big priority, I just think it would be nice since kbin has access to both. Like others have said here, I appreciate the work you're doing!
@testing yeah I like that too. Sometimes when I'm looking for a community I accidentally use the general search instead of the magazine search and end up down all these rabbit holes!
I still use reddit for some of the niche community-based subs that haven't been replicated here, like What's That Book?, a place where a while bunch of readers and librarians try to help people find books they remember a bit about, but not the title or author. That one is a lot of fun because people are so excited when they get an answer, and because the community is strong enough that most people do get answers. It seems like it would be hard to recreate that experience here. Similar is the Learn Math subreddit, where people ask about things they aren't understanding or can't figure out in their math studies, at pretty much any level, and the community comes up with multiple explanations and thoughts. The variety of questions and the in-depth answers are remarkable.
Generally it just feels a lot smaller and a fair bit more homogenous here. I like this site too, but it kinda feels like what reddit used to be is just gone now.
Using an open source client of my choice (voyager) that I actually like better than the reddit clients I used before, enjoying fewer posts with less, but usually better, more interesting and/or funny contents and comments. The only thing I miss is the rust (programming) community, which ironically didn’t really move to lemmy (but still got smaller/less active on reddit), so I sometimes still lurk that subreddit while obviously not contributing anything to it myself.
With Artemis development on hold and the corresponding instance down, I started using this account again.
Are there any other mobile apps out there? I ended up experimenting with Lemmy a bit, but I find myself coming back to kbin. The communities I follow seem much more active here.
I miss my local city sub and Detroit Lions, that’s the only thing I can’t seem to replace here on fedi
There is so much less pretentious misleading alienated crap here. Love that. I’d like some more non-repost interesting videos, that’s something I miss… But totally worth the tradeoff of not getting pissed at how dumb of shit you can post and still get positive mass response. Plus the feed here has an end. No more oops I spent an hour looking at shit
@kwomp it might depend on the instance that hosts the community and/or you?
Votes are not treated the same way across the fediverse and we're not actually all seeing the same vote scores.
For example, beehaw doesn't have downvotes, full stop. Kbin has downvotes but doesn't federate them - if you downvote me I won't see it, and vice versa.
I’ve cut out half my lemmy use because of the political extremism on here from Hexbear and Lemmygrad. Lemmy.ml isn’t all that much better. I’m not the only one drifting away because of it.
Hang in there. I’ve heard word that soon users will have the ability to block entire instances. Personally, I’ve just blocked every Hexbear account on sight, and it seems to be improving my experience. I’ve also started to unsub from .ml communities, since I’ve noticed the same things you have.
I think it will make a huge difference. Personally, I never understand why defederation is frowned upon. There are some instances that are just so toxic that they don’t deserve to be heard.
For the record, I’m a bit of a political extremist myself being an anarchist, but the users that I dislike are people who dunk on you without even giving you a chance, and political opinions that excuse things like authoritarianism and genocide. There’s a lot of that on hexbear, lemmygrad, and even .ml
On the whole, Kbin and the wider fediverse have been great! I feel that I've been able to engage a lot more meaningfully with others here, though that's likely due to it being relatively small. Likewise, I've been posting a lot more to help this place grow, which has been great.
The whole decentralization aspect is particularly great. From Kbin, I can view threads from other Lemmy & Kbin instances as well as microblogs from Mastodon instances, and it's great to be able to view all of those in one place with Kbin's UI.
All of that being said, there are definitely some growing pains, primarily related to activity. Outside of general communities on big Lemmy instances, people don't post much. This is the case with any social media site — way more people are willing to view or even engage with content than to post it — but I can't help but wish that some of the people voting and commenting on posts would also make some of their own and contribute to magazines. Often, this is due to people just not having ideas for what to post (speaking from experience), but I think a lot of it is people just not thinking to post that cool thing they saw somewhere else or on another magazine.
There are also a lot features that have yet to be implemented on Kbin. Microblog federation is very poor, there isn't a built-in subscriptions panel, the image UI in post creation provides no visual feedback, you can't follow tags as useful as it would be, moderation is still limited unless you're the owner and have access to the magazine panel, etc. Of course, Ernest et al. can only work so quickly, and the progress that has been made so far is great — for example, the crossposting UI is awesome and has helped me discover more magazines — but the lack of features does still impact the experience regardless of what can be done about it.
Kbin is great, and I'm hoping that development continues at the current pace. Above all, I'm hoping that a few more people here decide to post a bit more regularly or at all.
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