PSA: Upvote is not an upvote like you are used to (like Reddit) - "Boost" is the Reddit Upvote
Like the title says, if you want to upvote something on KBin, you should use the Boost link, not the upvote button (Why? Don't know...)
The upvote button doesn't seem to do much, but Boost accomplishes what Reddit's upvote did. So if you're looking to encourage a post, use the Boost link.
This is a result of the original design. Kbin, up until just before the peak traffic hit, was using boosts as upvotes and favorites/likes were just below the post/thread (where boost sits now). Lemmy does it the way it is now (likes = upvotes) so Ernest changed it to match Lemmy behavior. But just as he changed it, he hadn’t changed the calculation for reputation to match when the server nearly melted down and he has to spend all his time just trying to keep the site alive by himself.
I see you’re on a different Kbin instance. Was this intended to be a threaded reply, out of curiosity? Because it shows up as a top-level comment on the post for me.
Yes, but my bigger point is that it’s not threaded as a reply to one of that user’s comments.
Edit: Oops, nevermind. I saw their comments elsewhere down here but didn’t realize they were OP. Just one of the interface things on Kbin that needs improvement.
Edit 2: I need to figure out how to do strikethrough text on here
As a desktop kbin user, there's no strikethrough. Unsure as to why, if kbin is markdown. Strikethrough is considered advanced markdown formatting so I'm guessing kbin didn't include it. Now I'm curious to see how much common markdown is visible on kbin's desktop platform.
Guide for those unfamiliar with markdown, so you can see what I'm doing. ✔ means I can see it on desktop kbin, ❌ means it remains unformatted (formatting characters remain).
So sometime in the future an upvote will be used to score the post and get it on the "frontpage", and a Boost is just like a save feature to save posts to my microblog?
i wouldnt call boost a save feature per say, but since we arent on mastodon it pretty much looks like one so i guess you can call it that lol. yes, eventually the reputation will be fixed and upvotes will affect it as it should, its just not a priority for now
Yeah there are a bunch of us in the dev chat now. Some of us have set up our additional kbin instances such as myself. I’m still looking through the code and getting up to speed but hope to contribute to the main code base soon. (Right now I’m experimenting with some features I wrote on my instance)
So yes, it’s mainly been Ernest up until this point but he is starting to get additional support from the community :)
Thank you! I’m excited to see the site grow as well. We seem to be building a nice place to hangout and have good discussions unlike the site that shall not be named.
Yes, there is a very strong team there now, and I will gradually delegate responsibility in certain areas. I need to focus on my own milestones. However, I want to do it slowly because there are many pitfalls here that are a consequence of kbin being a side project. But the organization on Matrix was amazing, and I didn't even lift a finger for it.
I'm very much enjoying your side project, and we all appreciate all the effort you've put in as we've stressed it to (and no doubt beyond!) It's design limits.
I also appreciate the way you pop up and contribute to random threads!
Your level of engagement with the community is absolutely spectacular. I'm glad to have found myself a cozy little Internet space and wish you the best of luck with this one hell of a side project!
@ernest I can't imagine how stressful it is for you. I've run a few larger projects (ShowEQ back in the day, being one of the bigger ones), but nothing that blew up so quickly like Kbin has and I don't envy your position. I really appreciate the work you've put into KBin and I want to see it succeed!
There's several of us now with kbin installed locally and a decent dev chat channel that's pretty busy. I think so the end it's still him physically marking PRs as approved and merging it in / deploying, but at least there's a few contributors now :)
There have been fixes submitted by volunteers, but I don't think they've been reviewed and approved. And I don't think there have been any new releases.
Hopefully things pick up speed now that Ernest has a server admin to look after things here
You can have a look here to see a test instance with some of the things that are coming, Ernest (the admin) has been merging in a range of tickets including bug fixes, UI improvements and other bits.
There seems to be an ever growing backlog of feature requests and bug fixes in the issues list but a fair bit is getting sorted out behind the scenes.
Do upvotes/boosts and downvotes pass from one instance to another? I assume not. So if I upvote a post from lemmy.world that's hosted on kbin.social...what happens? It only affects lemmy.world?
Although the name "boost" is a little odd. kbin is more than than just a link aggregator. kbin is also a semi-blogging platform (View the microblog feed rather than threads) that interacts with Mastodon. If you boost something, it is the same as reblogging (re-tweeting) a post and generates a reblog post on Mastodon. The developer is going to change it to where the up and downvote impacts reputation rather than the current boost and downvote button. A technical oversight but they acknowledge this and plan on changing it in the future however internet points is not really a priority so no one knows when the change will roll out.
You seem really good at this stuff so I hope you don’t mind me asking. I’ve followed some people on Mastodon and Kbin but I have no idea how to view a feed from just the people I follow. I don’t think it’s a feature on Kbin yet but maybe I’m missing something.
My understanding is your "subscribed" feed shows stuff from people you follow as well as the magazines you're subscribed to. Mastodon users' posts typically end up in the microblog section which can be found here. whereas kbin/lemmy users often posts threads which can be found here. It's mixed in with the magazines you subscribe to. I don't think there's a way to just get the followed users without the magazines you're subscribed to.
As I understand it, it’s a feature that is inherited from the underlying ActivityPub protocol which is designed to support all kinds of social network architectures.
If you use Mastodon, their usage makes a lot sense. A ‘favourite’ (upvote on Kbin) is a private thumbs-up to the poster - a pat on the back that has no algorithmic importance.
A Boost is more like a Retweet. Boosting something makes it show up in your followers’ timeline. I guess if you follow a person on kbin, Boosts will do that too and boosted stuff will show on your subscribed home page.
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