Kbin has seen a staggering amount of growth in the past few weeks, and with it a bunch of discussion about issues and bugs.
Constructive criticism will help make kbin even greater, but i wanted to take some time to appreciate how great of an app it has been to use these past few weeks, and to the sole developer @ernest for all the long hours put in to keep things running smoothly.
Wow ;) I'm incredibly lucky to have come across people like you. The authors of those posts are actually right - managing /kbin is a significant challenge nowadays. It requires extensive knowledge and experience to keep it under control. But also I've never hidden that fact - the information about it is placed at the very top of the repository's readme ;) However, as I mentioned, a lot is changing very quickly https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/122333/Fediverse-won-t-replace-Reddit-as-long-as-Lemmy-is-the#entry-comment-478779. And we're all working hard on it, to improve and automate as many things as possible. Thanks to all of you, I believe I can face it head-on, and together we can create a better place. Better internet. Not just this instance, but cooperation between platforms is the key here.
Unfortunately, there are delays occurring again - I've decided that smooth website operation will be the priority this time. There are approximately 450k tasks waiting in the queue, and everything will be handled, but it will take some time. Today, we're also conducting final tests of the new infrastructure. It's taking a while because we're documenting templates that can later be used by others to create their own instances. I hope these are the last issues we have to endure ;)
Thanks for all the work you do, and I hope you find it rewarding. Most of all, look after yourself mentally and physically. The same goes for the whole team.
The fact you are being transparent and honest about your work and plans for the future, is a huge bonus. Even admitting to setback and problems, is refreshing. I certainly don't expect a super human running the show, and everything to be perfect. If anything, that would make me question the place and avoid it. So many places talk rubbish, spewing out a word salad, but actually say nothing. Even worse, they say one thing and do the precise opposite. You come across as .... well, the total opposite of Spez and those running Deaditt.
Thank you for putting the time into this. I'm really enjoying what you're creating here and I look forward to all it can become. Please pace yourself and find help where you can. Don't burn yourself out!
What you've done here is truly impressive. Reach out to the community when you need help and stay healthy. It's clear you know what you're doing and thanks for all the hard work!
I just logged in and noticed the updated reputation counting system. Ernest is a man of his word, y'all. I know we're in good hands and look forward to seeing where things go in the future. Really appreciate all your hard work
I'm a firm believer there can never be too many thanks you's given so: Thank you ernest and everyone working on this.
I myself don't have much php experience other than one small site that i run, but i hope in the future i can too contribute to this project. But that said i do have somewhat more linux experience and if you or anyone here needs help with anything feel free to shoot me a message.
Hopefully more people contribute, and on a regular basis. Even if everyone on average double the default amount, it's only like $7500 so far, which isn't that much in the scheme of things.
Sprog is the cat we all know and love
I've asked myself: 'will he make the move?'
Sprog's poems make life a little more fun
Hard to accept this joy might be done
Signs of life are a blessing from above!
Very new to kbin, and the fediverse in general - and I genuinely wondered if this was an appreciation post for Ernest P. Worrell. I'm disappointed but now I am educated about this other Ernest! :)
Hey @ernest, keep up the amazing work! I know that it's still early days for kbin, but I can't wait to see what you'll implement next! While it's still rough around the edges, there's no denying that it's getting better and better. Dziękuję!
yes. ernest is the admin and host of kbin.social. however, if ernest abuses his power then people can easily spin up new instances of kbin (and have already done so) and you can simply use that instead. Or you can host your own instance. and all of the content is shared across them.
It looks like the author of the guide -- who is not Ernest -- is maintaining a branch where they're writing said guide and that the last commits on that branch are only 11 hours old as of this writing and haven't yet been merged into the main kbin repo. Here's their WIP guide, about as fresh as you're gonna get admin docs for kbin:
Welp, that's way too advanced for me. And, I suspect, for most people. I'm going to stop suggesting "spin up a new instance" as a solution to fediverse problems.
Like, I'm sure you're about to say something like, "It's actually really easy! Just sjuehejsishebjfkoapwlheu jsjudhwnakalziziuw ksksoducyenwon znxjisiwnsbshoo nsjwisiakla. But also make sure you wjowownwnejdicinfnskso mwkslosidubnekskppppmamajsij jdjduhxbdnskoskwnmjcbdbw or else it will explode." Because that's what I'm going to hear. We don't know what "bare metal" or "docker" means, or what a "VPS" is.
I don't think that that really collides with @Otome's point, which is how much power Ernest has. She's saying that Ernest can't really do what spez is doing with Reddit. Spez controls Reddit in a way that Ernest cannot control kbin, or more-broadly, the Fediverse. Spez could simply deny access to Reddit to third party clients.
There are people who are going to be writing guides and packaging the software. There are a number of kbin instances that Ernest does not personally control, not to mention compatible software. The bar will continue to lower, but it is already low enough that if Ernest cannot "turn off" kbin if there are sufficient people who want to use it.
The overwhelming majority of people in the world cannot deploy or maintain an email server either, if you asked them to do so off-the-cuff. But there are many people running email servers around the world, and many people who can and would do so, were the need to arise. No one company "owns" email and can simply deny access to it because of that.
The point is that kbin and lemmy and such operate as email servers have, or Usenet servers, or IRC. The source code to servers is publicly-available and could be forked, if the need arises. Many different organizations run their own servers. And no one person can deny access to the system.
Right. so while the majority of users may struggle due to the technical nature, the reality is that currently there appears to be 75 different kbin instances. meaning if this (1) instance has problems, you can simply move to one of the other 74 instances and keep using kbin as normal. Even if ernest decided to 100% shut down kbin.social, those other instances still exist and he can't touch them.
Also, @Aesthesiaphilia, it looks like some provider just announced that they're providing managed kbin instances (like, they set it up, handle updates and such) starting at $10/month.
That isn't necessary to achieve what Otome-chan is going for, but will probably bring down the bar for people who want to have full control over their site but don't want to deal with the technical side or want to only deal with a limited amount of it.
On this instance technically yes. But that's the beauty of the fediverse. Don't like the moderation of an instance? Move to another! Ernest only has control over instances he runs,and same goes for everyone else.
Negative, because spez is a dick and ernest is a cool dude. Having said that, Ernest is the person who build kbin (the software) and also kbin.social (this instance of the kbin software), amongst other things.
Thus far he's proven to be a great guy, but in case he lives long enough to become a villain, yes - he owns this instance, and if he's ever taken over by some space parasite, he has the ability to shut down this instance and delete everything uploaded to it; but the beauty of the fediverse is, if you don't trust an admin of this instance, you can join a different one, and still talk to people here; if you don't trust any admin, you can spin up your own instance, and it will still be able to communicate with all the others; and if you don't trust anyone, even yourself... well, fediverse will not solve that problem.
He is the kbin admin, who has such powers yes, but he‘s not running a company of underlings or making money off this so it would be in bad taste to compare him to a CEO like spez.
If you are concerned about him, you can make an account on another instance where you trust the admin more or if you don‘t trust anyone at all you can also spin up your own instance on a Raspberry Pi or something.
An important point to make is that even if you make an account elsewhere, you can still access the content and communities here and on other Kbin/Lemmy instances.
In a sense. Ernest has control over kbin.social, meaning he could delete any content posted directly to kbin.social, delete accounts on kbin.social, and so on, if he wanted to. The other instance admins have that same power on their own instances. He doesn't have any control over content on other /kbin instances or on Lemmy instances that federate with kbin.social, and because /kbin itself is free software he can't fully control that either. Even if Ernest turns evil you would always be able to make a new account somewhere else, subscribe to the same non-kbin.social communities that you did before, and carry on where you left off.
I'm going to mention the fact that not only ernest made the platform, and runs it, he also made communities of miscellanous subreddits (which helped me as reddit refugee) and posts content into it. And manages to do all of that at the same time. Really grateful for all of that.
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