Kbin and Lemmy should come to a consensus on how to name stuff

Is there really a reason, for example, for there to be the distinction of "magazine" and "community"? When you're federating, the same features should be called the same, if close enough. That way everyone can talk with everyone about stuff and we all immediately understand each other.

Would also alleviate confusion for any new adopters.

^I'm pretty sure this is going to be impossible though, since each sides egos will likely get in the way :D^

CrystalEYE, (edited )
CrystalEYE avatar

Not really. A magazine is a collection of articles that all are about a certain topic. It is not that hard of a concept to grasp

Plus: The polish dev called his platform kbin = karabin = rifle, the contents of a rifle are stored in a magazyn = magazine. I actually would have loved if the dev had called threads "bullets" / pocisk to keep going with the theme.

EDIT: this info might be wrong, as @minnieo pointed out. kbin is just a reference to the linux sbin folder.

I am more confused with the upvote and down vote buttons on kbin: the upvote is actually favorite, the equivalent to reddits upvote is boost, the downvote seems not to have a real function besides counting the number.

JanoRis,

mhhm, wonder if it would be possible to make a gresemonkey script that unifies everything across the platform.
Including switching the boost and favorite position. The only issue would be the url staying the same and having the /c/ or /m/ folder

Frog-Brawler,
Frog-Brawler avatar

I am more confused with the upvote and down vote buttons on kbin: the upvote is actually favorite, the equivalent to reddits upvote is boost, the downvote seems not to have a real function besides counting the number.

TIL... I've been using the upvote the same as I did with reddit.

I've not been able to wrap my head around reputation points either. I've made several comments, a couple of posts, and my reputation has gone from 0 to -1 to +1 to 0 over the course of the week I've been here.

Hobovision,
Hobovision avatar

I heard boost is +1 reputation and down vote is -1. Kinda wack if you ask me.

S4nvers,
S4nvers avatar

As far as I know that‘s because earlier in development the boost actually was the upvote, but now it‘s as you‘d expect it coming from Reddit

But I think the reputation system just hasn‘t been adapted to this yet

I‘ve just heard that from someone else around here, so take it with a grain of salt

ThatOneKirbyMain2568,
ThatOneKirbyMain2568 avatar

Right now, boosts increase reputation and downvotes ("reduces") decrease reputation. From what I've heard, this is a mistake from when boosts and upvotes ("favorites") were switched in some way that I don't really understand. Upvotes should be the thing that increases karma, and the fact that they aren't is a bug. The kbin developer has mentioned plans to fix that.

JohnEdwa,
JohnEdwa avatar

AFAIK it's from when Kbin and Lemmy started federating, Lemmy upvotes and Kbin favourites were using the same system, while Kbin boosts weren't used on Lemmy at all. So Kbin quickly swapped them around but hasn't yet properly fixed and rebranded the UI interactions.

minnieo,
minnieo avatar

a different persons polish INSTANCE is called karabin. Ernest named this Kbin in reference to linux sbin and magazines in reference to retro video game magazines. dont spread this fake pro gun stuff about ernest please

CrystalEYE,
CrystalEYE avatar

@minnieo Oh, sorry. I just read it somewhere in a comment and it made sense. Since there is no official FAQ or help page that explains it, I just accepted it as truth.

@Azzu

HubertManne,
HubertManne avatar

oh man I wonder how often I can use this today https://xkcd.com/927/

andyburke,
andyburke avatar

Don't even need to click the link to know what you're sharing.

swnt,

Haha, exactly my thoughts as I saw that link

planetaryprotection,

Every now and then I think "Why isn't X thing standardized?! Why hasn't somebody sane come along to save us form this mess!" And then I think of that strip and realize why lol

danc4498,

If we're taking a vote, I think "Magazine" is a dumb name. I saw that and had no idea what it was supposed to be.

Honestly, this specific post is the first I am realizing that "Magazine" is the equivalent of a subreddit.

Edit: if I'm being honest, I thought Community was a dumb name too.

Azzu,

There should be no vote, it should just be decided between the lead devs. Users will follow and largely not care.

Cloudless,
Cloudless avatar

I nearly gave up trying kbin because of the confusing use of terms. I still dislike the term magazine, and I still don't understand the difference between threads and articles. I just want to read/write posts.

minnieo,
minnieo avatar

article = thread

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

Well, both of them are much more sensical at a glance than "subreddit." Subreddit only makes sense because of how long we've been using the term, if you came to it without prior knowledge it'd be hard to figure out the meaning.

I do agree that "magazine" is pretty terrible, though. There's no meaningful analogy between what we're doing here (threaded conversations on a particular topic) and what's in a magazine. "Community" isn't terrible, IMO, if it comes down to it I'd much prefer that one.

ekjp,

If I remember correctly subreddits actually used to be just "reddits".

JohnEdwa,
JohnEdwa avatar

Yup. When Reddit launched it was just front page, now known as the (closed down) r/reddit.com. The second they opened was nsfw, third was politics.
Subreddits were launched three years later when they allowed users to start creating their own reddits on reddit - aka sub-reddits.

cargo,

Magazine makes sense in the bigger picture when you think about. Let's break it down.

Microblog -> post. Makes sense you are posting a micro blog.
Lemmy has no concept of microblogging. So is fine using community and post naming.

Now why magazine? If you can't use post then you need an alternative and that's where article comes in. You submit an article of 4 types but what should these be in. You probably could get away with collections but something that also has articles, a magazine.

Qed magazines name (note all of this is completely made up and my justification for magazine)

agressivelyPassive,

Channels would be a way better analogy, I think.

Magazine would make sense, if the aggregated content would be more prominent. Think Google News with comment threads bolted to each entry.

ekjp,

Yeah. Every once in a while I am clicking Microblog. Is it just random comments from people? Then I am going back to the Threads. Still can't really use it properly but it happens. I don't need a replica of reddit. Once this thing settles I will figure out how to use it. Honestly though, this will turn into the same thing in a few years tops, so I am remaining much more casual now.

RoboRay,
RoboRay avatar

What you are seeing under Microblogs are mostly Mastodon posts that are flagged with the same tags as Kbin Magazines.

boothin,

microblog is the equivalent of twitter. Mastodon is the main way people engage in the microblog part of the fediverse, but kbin also has features that allow reading/commenting on/creating microblog posts

Bipta,

I prefer "bins" over "magazines" but if we wanted to sync linguistically with Lemmy it wouldn't make much sense.

guilherme,

@Azzu I was so confused about kbin using "magazines"...

cutitdown,

I think this could all be solved easily with some quick onboarding explaining terms when a user signs up.

JonEFive,

I think that's the issue. People really need to remember just how early Kbin is in it's development. Ernest is working on the main features and keeping the insurance alive (and doing a fantastic job of it). Tutorials usually come much later in the development cycle one the product is ready for the masses.

Kbin got super accelerated adoption because of the reddit drama. It's missing a lot of polish and even some core features. It is also a different platform from reddit with different goals and design concepts.

People coming here expecting a 1:1 replacement for reddit are frankly in the wrong place. There are plenty of reddit alternatives out there that are much more complete and are much closer to the reddit experience. If people are here, they need to be okay with using a different platform that is in active development and doesn't have all the kinks worked out yet.

ulu_mulu,
@ulu_mulu@lemmy.world avatar

Why? This is like going to a foreign country and demand they change their laws because you don't like them.

It's fine as they are, it doesn't take much to understand how they work, a few days of confusion won't kill anyone, having everything spoonfed to you all the time is detrimental to the mind.

Kara,
Kara avatar

Agreed, it really isn't even too confusing to explain either, Kbin uses magazines, Lemmy uses communities, but they are basically the same thing. Kbin and Lemmy are separate platforms, and shouldn't be forced to use the same terminology just because they're compatible with each other.

Usernameblankface,
Usernameblankface avatar

This is very much what this is like. Kbin and Lemmy do not have to confirm to reddit's norms. I'm glad it's different here.

minorsecond,
minorsecond avatar

I just hope we don't end up calling them "sublemmys" and whatnot, like what I keep seeing suggested. Let's just make a clean break with reddit and start something new and better.

Usernameblankface,
Usernameblankface avatar

Yes, a clean break is what I'm going for.

GunnarRunnar,

I don't understand why you'd be glad the same stuff has different name depending where you are accessing it from.

And it's kinda whatever, not that hard to grasp concept of magazine=community but it's a hindrance especially to newcomers. Maybe just call them magazine-community or something to avoid confusion.

0x1C3B00DA,
0x1C3B00DA avatar

This is how language works. People will call them whatever they want and eventually everyone will learn these things are synonyms. There are even people calling them sublemmys even though that's nowhere in the UI of lemmy. Newcomers will be a little confused and then they'll learn and it won't matter.

GunnarRunnar,

That's not because of language evolving with the need for same thing from different places or nickname that's grown out of a subgroup. It's by design, kbin (afaik) is a fork of Lemmy and decided they want to use a different name - maybe because they wanted to differentiate themselves from Lemmy, I'm not sure actually why. Certainly they didn't take into account both Lemmy and kbin growing side by side both profiting from other's success. Either way, it's a failure of design for the fediverse, time will tell if it actually matters though.

(You can sure argue language works by assigning word to describe thing but usually it's meant that meanings can grow and change with time with the population.)

And I'd argue sublemmy thing is a thing at all because community-magazine thing isn't that obvious. You never heard anyone in Reddit call them anything else than subreddits or subs.

0x1C3B00DA,
0x1C3B00DA avatar

Language change doesn't have to result from a "need" for a new word. It can happen just because ppl choose to use a different word. And the developer of kbin is a Polish speaker. Maybe he chose "magazine" because the Polish word makes more sense to him than "community" (I know about the rifle pun. Wordplay works even better when there are multiple meanings)

Either way, my point is we currently have at least 4 words to describe these things (group, community, magazine, sublemmy). Users will coalesce on one or learn that they're all synonymous and won't even notice when someone uses a different term than they use

GunnarRunnar,

Yeah, language can be changed by a (conscious?) design decision. But whether that change is necessary is up to debate and just because you could doesn't mean you should.

Some users will learn the terms and some won't but what I mean is that it's a hindrance either way. And defense isn't "that's language" the defense is "that's my design vision".

cutitdown,

Saying they should do something isn't a demand. To me, it'd be more akin to the EU sharing currency, various regulations, etc. It just makes things easier for those within it and tends to be mutually beneficial, but it does take same to find agreements that every member is cool with.

Mintyytea,

I feel like it’s not that bad to be uniform in some ways though. There’s lots of different email sites, but the way they’re organized/labelled is very similar.

I feel like if you want that kind of beautiful system where everything’s decentralized yet still able to talk to each other, then it’s better if some things are standard.

Even the general strategy kbin,lemmy, mastodon use have similarities to be able to talk to each other. They’re all on the fediverse.observer where we can see all their stats in one place. There was uniformity in a good balance. All three of these use activity pub, which I hear is a good thing. If not, I think there would be less synchronization? And then people might say, hey, we should let everyone develop the way they like, and it’s true, but there’s a good benefit in making some stuff the same

trynn,
trynn avatar

What you're proposing is pretty antithetical to the way the fediverse works. Kbin and Lemmy are two completely different pieces of software that just happen to communicate with each other. There can easily be more (and probably will be in the future) that name their version of a subreddit something else entirely. Heck, Reddit could conceivably add activitypub federation and then you'd literally have subreddits as part of the fediverse.

The entire point is that things are decentralized so the users and developers that make use of the fediverse can do whatever they want with it and so that no single person, organization, or community can enforce their decisions on everyone else.

Ronno,
Ronno avatar

Agree and disagree.
Agree, because it would make things easier.

Disagree, because one of the value propositions of the fediverse is that every platform can be managed independently, while still interacting with the same content. Heck if they call it peanuts in one platform, and oranges in the other, all fine with me

JonEFive,

Yup. That's the beauty of the fediverse. Don't like the way one app manages content? I've got good news - there are at least two dozen other apps to choose from.

If you don't like the way Kbin does things and think it should be more like Lemmy, just go join a Lemmy instance. Neither platform will be perfect or will satisfy every whim of every user.

CIWS-30,

Honestly, while I like Kbin and understand what "Magazine" means, it would make a lot more sense and would've been easier to onboard if they'd also gone with "Community" it's more intuitive.

Ni,
Ni avatar

I've found myself saying magazine/group/community to cover my bases, so having a common name might be nice.

Sooperstition,

I get where you’re coming from: a common terminology will help make kbin and lemmy more accessible to each other’s users and to the wider world.

That being said, I think it’s fine to have separate terms (communities vs magazines) as long as the platform (lemmy, kbin, etc) calls it that consistently and it gets adopted into the common language of the platform.

I also think that having different terms for each platform emphasizes how connected the fediverse is! This would point to a larger discussion of how seamless federation should be, but I think it’s good for each platform to have its own identity under the fediverse.

Jon-H558,

I don't think it matters. The whole point of federation is you can have systems with front end that looks like users want and backend still talk, so doesn't matter what the front end decides to call it's bits and bobs and is more a feature than a bug

Zednix,
@Zednix@lemmy.ca avatar

Magazines is a silly name.

Mintyytea,

I agreee. With email, there’s different email websites I can use, but it would put me off if I made a gmail account, and everything was labelled differently there compared to thte other email websites.

Like if inbox was called something really strange, I just think it would put me off a lot. I use kbin, and even I think it would help if these were renamed. Kbin is new too! Only a month old, so I don’t even know if the developers felt strongly about calling it a magazine or just needed to label all of these in a way that made sense to them.

But yeah I try to be inclusive and use “communities/magazines” but it feels kind of ridiculous because it’s so long. I don’t even like “communities” because it is so long to type…I like “forums” for both. It makes sense because they are forums, and it’s short. I don’t mind “communities” though, and it would be so great if kbin wants to consider relabelling, but they technically also don’t have to and I still will use it.

But I still think it’s the smart thing to do to make it easier for others to use. Should try to decrease friction so people can use their tool to do other things, rather than spend so much time figuring out how to use the tool.

retronautickz,

Why? They are different platforms.

Mastodon, Misskey, GoToSocial and Pleroma don't use the same terminology either.

Evono, (edited )
@Evono@lemmy.world avatar

Kinda more liking the lemmy terminology.

Specially because Kbin is way smaller than lemmy and kbin kinda makes it hard to search for lemmy content.

What i mean is this example here from right now

Kbin https://i.imgur.com/tMjblnl.png ( no lemmy entries )

Lemmy.world https://i.imgur.com/7MmHcak.png

Another

Kbin https://i.imgur.com/PVfPDts.png ( No lemmy again )

Lemmy https://i.imgur.com/2NPZ1Cc.png ( tons of Lemmy communitys + Kbin )

User size Lemmy is also way , waaay bigger than Kbin.

lemmy

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats

Kbin

https://kbin.fediverse.observer/stats

trynn,
trynn avatar

Use the search field in the Magazine tab on kbin if you want to find magazines/communities. You'll find plenty of Lemmy communities with that.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • RedditMigration
  • PowerRangers
  • DreamBathrooms
  • Durango
  • magazineikmin
  • mdbf
  • Youngstown
  • vwfavf
  • slotface
  • ethstaker
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • kavyap
  • tsrsr
  • ngwrru68w68
  • normalnudes
  • osvaldo12
  • cubers
  • everett
  • GTA5RPClips
  • cisconetworking
  • hgfsjryuu7
  • InstantRegret
  • tacticalgear
  • tester
  • modclub
  • khanakhh
  • Leos
  • anitta
  • All magazines
    •