I recently made a major update to my Improved Channel Select Menu userscript, which adds your subscribed magazines and liked collections to the channel select button in the header....
I check in here quite often, but for now, I'm just focusing on clearing spam and keeping the instance alive. In January, I was working on the AP module, and there has been significant progress in the work, which hasn't been publicly published yet. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year, I developed a skin condition that...
Thanks a ton for the update Ernest! It's great to hear from you, and I hope your health improves soon.
That being said, I do have a few things I'd like to suggest.
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In February, I spent my time visiting doctors and undergoing treatment with medications, which often had very unpleasant side effects. Therefore, I decided to hold off on any major updates to avoid causing even more chaos.
If I'm interpreting this correctly (i.e., that you chose not to give any updates as to prevent people freaking out), I don't think this was the best move. I understand where you were coming from, but (if you were able) some sort of small status update would've been preferable to a month-long silence (especially since you'd previously said that you'd be unavailable for only 2–4 days). A simple "Hey, I'm currently not doing well. I'll get back to things as soon as I'm feeling better," would've at least let us know that you were alive and that the project hadn't been abandoned.
--
Just because it's not visible that something is happening doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything during this time. In fact, two really significant things have been successful, which I've been working on for a long time and which I intended to announce soon once I recover.
I don't think this whole "holding off for a big announcement" thing is a great approach, at least not now. There are currently several issues that we're waiting to see fixed, and we have no idea which ones (if any) are being worked on. If you must wait for a big reveal though, at least telling us, "I'm still working on stuff" would be better than nothing.
--
And finally, I really suggest getting some more admins for the instance. You're absolutely correct to prioritize your health over Kbin; nevertheless, it's far from ideal for your absence to mean that spam piles up, moderation requests lie unanswered, and accounts can't be deleted. We'd all appreciate it if you could have at least one extra person on deck for whenever you're ill or in need of a break.
--
Thanks again for all you do for Kbin, and I hope things get better!
kbin.social is being overrun with spammers. Can we disable registrations on this instance so they can't keep creating new accounts? Every day I log on, I have to spend the first 20-30 minutes, reporting and blocking a bunch of new accounts....
This might be a good idea, at least until Ernest gets back. To my knowledge, he's the only instance admin, so as long as he's inactive, the spammers won't get dealt with (especially on magazines he moderates, like /m/tech).
Ideally, there could be another admin or two to deal with this stuff when he's not available, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
This has been an issue since the beginning of Kbin tmk, but when you make a post, it won't appear under sort by hot unless it has an upvote. This means that if someone forgets to upvote their own post, it just won't appear on the default sort. There are plenty of posts I've missed because of this....
Given that we're so small at the moment, why should a post need an upvote to be at all visible on the default sort? It can the only post of the past two weeks, but if there's no upvote, it doesn't get seen. It's very impractical.
And even if we go with this logic, why should the criterion for a post being seen be whether OP remembers to upvote their own post? It doesn't make sense. If you think that posts should only be seen if someone opts to go through new and give it an upvote (because otherwise it's not a "hot" post), OP shouldn't be able to do that.
Right now, we have a system where a major factor in post visibility is, "Did OP remember to click the upvote button?" It's just not beneficial.
Yeah, having posts automatically upvoted by OP would be great. I think that Lemmy automatically starts with an upvote count of 1 regardless of OP's vote, so I think Kbin should do the same. I get that Hot is meant to factor in activity and time, but it just feels super off for the only post in the past month to not appear. Surely a post that was made an hour ago is hotter than a post was made weeks back.
I've been using kbin since the Reddit exodus and I still don't really know the path to finding my way into a specific community/magazine I've subscribed to. I usually search for the name using the search function, then hope I find a thread from there in the results where I can just click directly into it. Surely there must be a...
You can go to "Settings" or "Profile" and you'll find a subscriptions tab.
Alternatively, you can install a userscript that adds a faster way of accessing them. Here's one I recently made and one made by raltsm4k.
The first request would definitely be a nice setting to have.
As for the second one, I think microblog posts are pretty easy to distinguish from threads already, as everything's organized completely differently. There's no title, the avatar is in a different spot with a different shape, the upvote button is in a different spot, there's no downvote button, etc. I think changing the color would just be visually jarring more than anything.
One of my most wanted features as of late has been for the channel select menu to have my subscribed magazines and liked collections. Right now, it just contains some general feeds, but I thought it'd be super useful to also have your mags and collections there for easy access! However, given that Kbin development priorities are...
A super helpful feature that PieFed (a new fediverse thread aggregator like Lemmy & Kbin) has is an "Add Remote" button on its communities page. This button allows you to get a community on another instance to appear on your PieFed instance (and thus get the PieFed instance to start getting posts from that community)....
i get all kinds of new communities by just clicking into the remote community, and then clicking subscribe
Maybe you misunderstand what I mean. Right now, if I were to create a new community on lemmy.world called /c/thatonekirbymainisawesome, it wouldn't show up if I searched for it here on the kbin.social magazines page. That's because kbin.social currently doesn't know that this community exists and thus isn't fetching anything from it. The same goes for any other two instances. If you want a non-hypothetical example, go to sh.itjust.works and search "geometrydash". You won't find /m/geometrydash (or at least I didn't at the time of making this comment). If you go to https://sh.itjust.works/c/geometrydash@kbin.social, you just get an error, because sh.itjust.works doesn't know about geometrydash@kbin.social yet.
To fix this, someone needs to essentially tell an instance, "Hey, this community over here exists, and you should start fetching stuff from it." On Kbin, this is done by putting the community's address in the general search bar. So if I were to search "thatonekirbymainisawesome@lemmy.world" on kbin.social's, that community would finally appear, and I'd be able to subscribe from it and see any posts made after that point.
What I'm suggesting is that instead of having to type the full community address in the normal search bar (which can be unintuitive), there should be a dedicated interface for adding remote communities (i.e., letting your instance know that communities on other instances exist). PieFed does this with its "Add Remote" interface, and I think it'd be nice for Kbin (and Lemmy as well) to have something similar.
True, and the same happens here on kbin.social. However, in the case where there isn't a link to automatically do the search for you, I still think it'd be helpful to have something more intuitive than the community only appearing when the exact address is put in the general search bar.
EDIT: To give an example where this would be useful, what if you're someone on a newer Kbin instance and want to add an existing community? You'll have to know the method of doing it, and if you don't, you're out of luck. Having a dedicated button and interface for this would make it much more intuitive. When I saw PieFed's "Add Remote" button, I immediately got what it did, whereas I still have no clue how to make Kbin communities visible on most Lemmy instances.
When you're in the All Content view, the arrows on the page select always act as if you're on page 1. I.e., the left arrow never works, and the right arrow always sends you to page 2. Not sure why this is.
So, having played some #geometrydash 2.2 for a while, I'm starting to warm up to the swing. I'm still not a massive fan and way prefer the ship (which gives you more control), but the swing's long sweeps can help give sections with it a large, grand vibe (e.g., the swing section in Dastardly). Maybe my distaste is just a skill issue. Idk.
@ernest
I've noticed this week that I'm currently seeing no visual indication that the boost button is active. No underline, color, or anything.
It seems that a now-broken userstyle I'm using expects there to be an "active" class applied to the element, but it isn't anymore. Is that intentional?
Figured I should point this out to you in case you don't know already.
@Pamasich@ernest Can confirm that this is an issue. I brought attention to it a short while back, and there are also some bugs with the visuals for vote buttons not consistently working as they should.
Quiet tests of the latest changes and patching of outstanding errors are ongoing on the instance. The remaining changes will be implemented by the end of the week. I have also completed all outstanding formalities related to the project and everyday matters. Starting from next week, work will pick up pace. Until then, I would...
Nice to hear that you have these formalities out of the way!
Quick bug report: When I click the vote buttons, the actions do register but the buttons don't always change color. In other words, the vote buttons don't get or lose the active class in HTML. Additionally, the boost button everywhere has just ceased to have the active class at all, even on things I've boosted in the past.
I literally just opened Geometry Dash and was met with a terms of service pop up.
"…Why are they showing me this? Did my data get wiped or something?"
And then I see the Tower and realize that 2.2 just released.
Glad to finally see it here. Played through Dash (which is really easy for an insane imo, beat it much more quickly than usual), and it was mostly great! Only issue is that I REALLY don't like the swing copter. It's not fun to use at all.
@juggles
Can't say I'm great at it either. Honestly, platformer game type is a weird concept for Geometry dash, but I don't mind it. The way different game modes are incorporated into it is really fun though
The weekend tasks are taking longer for me, I found another bug that causes a 500 error, I'm still working on it.. This evening and tomorrow, I will be testing the changes on the kbin.social. If there are any issues, please mention me in the post or contact me directly through the contact form.
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
Should blocking a user still allow them to vote on your posts? I'd rather have nothing to do with particular users, and it seems that they continue to show up in the activity for every single post I make around kbin.
Blocking someone means, "I want nothing to do with this person," so it makes sense that you'll be unable to see what they do. This should include direct messages, threads, comments, etc. @PugJesus's idea of a setting to hide votes from blocked users is a great idea, as you should be able to fully ignore someone you've blocked.
It also makes sense that someone you've blocked wouldn't be able to do any 1-on-1 interaction with you. If you've blocked somebody because they're spamming or harassing you, it wouldn't be great for them to be able to DM you.
However, preventing them from voting on your posts is something different entirely, as votes don't just concern the creator of the post and the person doing the voting; they also concern everyone who sees the post. Upvoting a comment is a message not just to the creator but also to everyone else that you like that comment, and the same goes for downvoting. Blocking voting is much more farther reaching than blocking DMs, and with votes being visible on the fediverse, it's a great way for trolls to hide people's views on their posts.
A few days ago I downvoted someone's comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I've ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I'm an "obvious" troll account that "apparently just exist to...
While that's definitely a notable downside, I think the upsides outweigh it.
For one, being able to see upvotes & downvotes seems to have made a lot of people a bit more thoughtful with handing them out. This obviously isn't the case for everyone — there's still a good bit of downvoting people for disagreeing with the hivemind — but I and others have observed that downvote quality is a lot better here on kbin.social, and I think that vote visibility is a big part of that.
It's also just transparency on kbin.social's part. If votes federate, anyone can set up an instance to view your votes or just go to one that shows them. Someone could literally make a website listing downvotes throughout the fediverse, and there's nothing stopping them. Kbin.social is being transparent about the fact that votes on the fediverse can be accessed by the public, and I have no issue with that.
Today, I addressed issues related to voting in the code. However, I'm currently facing infrastructure problems. Still, I'm doing everything I can to have all the changes deployed to the instance by the weekend. The federation stopped working for an hour today, but all actions were successfully restored from the queues. Over the...
Today, I made some updates to the user profile. I've introduced the capability to sort and filter content. Additionally, I've implemented a new feature allowing content filtering based on a specified date range, which is now operational across all views. While there isn't a dedicated button in the interface yet....
@Gordon_Freeman There isn't a crosspost button, but if two threads are similar, they'll show as crossposts of each other. I'm not sure exactly what the criteria are, but from what I can gather, two link threads will show as crossposts on Kbin if they have the same link. Otherwise, they need the same title (and maybe the same photo?).
@Gordon_Freeman Agreed, though it would be cool to have a button that you can click to make a crosspost. Maybe it'd send you to the thread creation page with certain things filled out to make it a crosspost.
Today, I continue preparations for refactoring. Szymon updated the environment and added a spoiler tag in the markdown editor. Additionally, there were several fixes and improvements related to collections and the People page....
Great changes! A spoiler tag button is really nice, especially since the formatting for it can be a bit clunky. On that note though, I think it'd be nice to have an alternate format for making spoilers that doesn't literally have the word spoiler in it.
It's also awesome to see that official collections are explicitly marked, but the way it's done is rather odd. It's a button that creates an "Are you sure?" prompt on the screen when you click it. It seems like something that's meant for instance owners.
I think something less obtrusive next to the collection's name would be better for marking official collections. I implemented that with a checkmark in my userstyle, and I prefer it to the button. Maybe have the text "official" show when you hover over it to indicate what it means.
I mean not having the word spoiler when writing the tag. I get that it's done for Lemmy compatibility, which is why I suggest an alternative way to do it (like how italics can be written like this or like this).
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Categories - a new feature that is essentially a multi-mags view. A new tab will appear in the user panel where you can create categories (public or private) and then add magazines to them (local or remote). In the magazine listing, there will be another tab that will list public categories...
Go to settings and click the collections tab. Tbh, it feels a bit hidden rn, and I'd love to see at least some sort of link on the Magazines page in the future.
Today, I added new user customization options for the homepage, including the ability to set a new view. The Aggregate view is now featured in the main navigation under "All content," making it easier to navigate. Thanks for all the tips and feedback - great job ;)...
Awesome stuff! I'm loving how these features are shaping up.
A few further suggestions on the aggregate view:
Like Threads and Microblog, All Content should have a number next to it (just the number of threads + the number of microblog posts).
I think the homepage setting should be split into "homepage feed" (all, subscriptions, moderated, or favorites) and "homepage view" (all content, threads, microblogs). That'd make the current dropdown a lot less cluttered.
It'd also be helpful to have a "default view" setting that applies when you go to any magazine or feed. For example, if I go to /m/Kurzgesagt and my default view is set to All Content, it'll start on the All Content view.
Should you keep the homepage setting as it is, there are a few issues with the dropdown:
When you select something, the only text that shows is the feed, not the view.
When you select something, the option that you currently have saved moves to the bottom of the dropdown.
Not sure if this has always been a thing, but the dropdown uses "Subscriptions" while the channel list in the header uses "Subscribed".
ETA: One more issue I forgot to mention — when you click All Content on the favorites, moderated, or subscribed feed, it sends you to the all feed.
Today, a test version of the aggregate view has been introduced on the instance. It's a mix of threadiverse and microblog formats, applying all filters, blacklists, sub filters, languages etc. After selecting *, the links to sub, mod, fav change, and navigation works within the aggregate view....
The aggregate view is really nice, especially on my sub page! This feature should hopefully be even better with the upcoming federation improvements assuming they'll tackle microblog federation, as that's quite iffy right now.
Since aggregate view essentially just combining threads and microblogs, it'd be best to have it as an option on the header alongside Threads, Microblog, and People. Maybe call it "All Content" or something like that to make sure it's clear what it is. Going with this, it'd also be nice to be able to toggle the default view (Threads, Microblog, All Content, or maybe People) in the settings.
ETA: Also noticed that the color of the new comment marker has been changed to be a lot less obtrusive (at least on darker themes). Very nice! Might be a good idea to have the color change with the theme.
Today, I fixed some visual shortcomings. It is now possible to change images during post editing. The rules of the magazine have been included in the description on Fediverse to avoid misunderstandings with Lemmy users. Some changes are already on the instance, and the rest will be pushed by morning....
Improved Channel Select Menu 0.3.0 — Turbo mode support, kbin.earth compatibility, and an Mbin version! (kbin.social) angielski
I recently made a major update to my Improved Channel Select Menu userscript, which adds your subscribed magazines and liked collections to the channel select button in the header....
RE: Is Ernest still here? (kbin.social) angielski
I check in here quite often, but for now, I'm just focusing on clearing spam and keeping the instance alive. In January, I was working on the AP module, and there has been significant progress in the work, which hasn't been publicly published yet. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year, I developed a skin condition that...
So… what's going on? (kbin.social) angielski
Since the beginning of the year, there's been a bit of a pattern over on @kbinDevlog:...
Can registrations on kbin.social be disabled to stop spammers (kbin.social) angielski
kbin.social is being overrun with spammers. Can we disable registrations on this instance so they can't keep creating new accounts? Every day I log on, I have to spend the first 20-30 minutes, reporting and blocking a bunch of new accounts....
Issue with sort by hot (kbin.social) angielski
This has been an issue since the beginning of Kbin tmk, but when you make a post, it won't appear under sort by hot unless it has an upvote. This means that if someone forgets to upvote their own post, it just won't appear on the default sort. There are plenty of posts I've missed because of this....
What's the quickest way to find a magazine/community you've subscribed to? (kbin.social) angielski
I've been using kbin since the Reddit exodus and I still don't really know the path to finding my way into a specific community/magazine I've subscribed to. I usually search for the name using the search function, then hope I find a thread from there in the results where I can just click directly into it. Surely there must be a...
Two requests for microblog incorporation into the main feed. (kbin.social) angielski
First off, I absolutely love that microblogs are a part of my main feed now....
Improved Channel Select Menu 0.2.0 — Makes your subscribed magazines and liked channels more accessible (greasyfork.org) angielski
One of my most wanted features as of late has been for the channel select menu to have my subscribed magazines and liked collections. Right now, it just contains some general feeds, but I thought it'd be super useful to also have your mags and collections there for easy access! However, given that Kbin development priorities are...
Could we get something like PieFed's "Add Remote" button? (kbin.social) angielski
A super helpful feature that PieFed (a new fediverse thread aggregator like Lemmy & Kbin) has is an "Add Remote" button on its communities page. This button allows you to get a community on another instance to appear on your PieFed instance (and thus get the PieFed instance to start getting posts from that community)....
The page select arrows don't work in the All Content view (kbin.social) angielski
When you're in the All Content view, the arrows on the page select always act as if you're on page 1. I.e., the left arrow never works, and the right arrow always sends you to page 2. Not sure why this is.
RTR#47 Silent tests are being conducted on the instance (kbin.social) angielski
Quiet tests of the latest changes and patching of outstanding errors are ongoing on the instance. The remaining changes will be implemented by the end of the week. I have also completed all outstanding formalities related to the project and everyday matters. Starting from next week, work will pick up pace. Until then, I would...
RTR#46 Some tests on kbin.social (kbin.social) angielski
The weekend tasks are taking longer for me, I found another bug that causes a 500 error, I'm still working on it.. This evening and tomorrow, I will be testing the changes on the kbin.social. If there are any issues, please mention me in the post or contact me directly through the contact form.
A case for preemptively defederating with Threads (kbin.social) angielski
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
Blocking and Downvote Stalking (kbin.social) angielski
Should blocking a user still allow them to vote on your posts? I'd rather have nothing to do with particular users, and it seems that they continue to show up in the activity for every single post I make around kbin.
I'm starting to see some serious downsides to being able to see who downvotes you. (kbin.social) angielski
A few days ago I downvoted someone's comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I've ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I'm an "obvious" troll account that "apparently just exist to...
RTR#37 Fixing bugs and further optimization work, continued (kbin.social) angielski
Today, I addressed issues related to voting in the code. However, I'm currently facing infrastructure problems. Still, I'm doing everything I can to have all the changes deployed to the instance by the weekend. The federation stopped working for an hour today, but all actions were successfully restored from the queues. Over the...
RTR#35 User profile enhancements: sorting options, new date range filter, reputation points fix (kbin.social) angielski
Today, I made some updates to the user profile. I've introduced the capability to sort and filter content. Additionally, I've implemented a new feature allowing content filtering based on a specified date range, which is now operational across all views. While there isn't a dedicated button in the interface yet....
RTR#31 Further refactoring, update Symfony to 6.4 and other deps (kbin.social) angielski
Today, I continue preparations for refactoring. Szymon updated the environment and added a spoiler tag in the markdown editor. Additionally, there were several fixes and improvements related to collections and the People page....
RTR#29 Another boring update: Categories and bug fixes (kbin.social) angielski
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Categories - a new feature that is essentially a multi-mags view. A new tab will appear in the user panel where you can create categories (public or private) and then add magazines to them (local or remote). In the magazine listing, there will be another tab that will list public categories...
RTR#28 New Homepage Options, Improved Aggregate View, Support Us Box (kbin.social) angielski
Today, I added new user customization options for the homepage, including the ability to set a new view. The Aggregate view is now featured in the main navigation under "All content," making it easier to navigate. Thanks for all the tips and feedback - great job ;)...
RTR#27 Aggregate view, work on federation (kbin.social) angielski
Today, a test version of the aggregate view has been introduced on the instance. It's a mix of threadiverse and microblog formats, applying all filters, blacklists, sub filters, languages etc. After selecting *, the links to sub, mod, fav change, and navigation works within the aggregate view....
RTR#22 Further improvements interspersed with code refactoring (kbin.social) angielski
Today, I fixed some visual shortcomings. It is now possible to change images during post editing. The rules of the magazine have been included in the description on Fediverse to avoid misunderstandings with Lemmy users. Some changes are already on the instance, and the rest will be pushed by morning....
Roblox’s CEO predicts “thousands” of adults will meet in Roblox dating experiences (www.theverge.com) angielski