That’s about where I am, honestly. I’m starting to look for alternatives.
I can deal with the site having the occasional problem, but I can’t deal with absolutely no communication at all when things break down. Kbin has gotten too big to be a one-person operation.
This is now the fourth post I’ve seen about people starting to get fed up, and honestly, you know people are starting to hit their limits once people start making posts about their frustrations. I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.
I’m a pretty patient person and can put up with a lot of goofiness on a site, as long as there’s some kind of communication happening. But there’s none.
I was at that point last week and ended up biting the bullet and migrating my subscriptions over to this account. Really wish there was a first class account migration tool available though.
@stopthatgirl7 Same. I poked around beehaw a bit, but I am not sure its is good fit for me. Think I will check out lemmy.world, they seem to be really communicative on mastodon during their upgrade process.
But that's all I know about it. I am looking into mbin,too...but I really don't much about it.
I have been spending most of my social media time on mastodon lately.
I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.
I guess it's not quiet once I post this, but I submitted the account deletion request a couple weeks back and spent some time setting my feedly back up after 1 too many spam posts. I'm already getting my scrolling fix from rss feeds again, and this is the first time I've been on kbin in a week.
It doesn't help that whenever this comes up there's a contingent of users who jump to Ernest's "defense" by calling the folks raising these issues "concern trolls" and accusing them of shilling for mbin.
No, this is simply a matter of what is actually working well. The point of federation is that one shouldn't need to have "loyalty" to any particular instance or any particular platform. Use whichever one's working.
Thats not what you describe. Troll is used the way you did in my response to you. A reference to other people trolling in some other threads. Not accusations of the main post being a troll. At least that is the way im reading it. I guess I just assume your first comment was refering to more blatant type posts or replies.
I bet a lot of folks have just quietly given up or moved to lemmy or mbin because they’ve gotten frustrated with all the issues.
I made an alt two months ago when Kbin would never connect. I have barely been back since, so it is now my main. I hoped Kbin would come out if its slump but... that seems unlikely at this point. I'm actually quite happy on Lemmy, especially after the v0.19 upgrade allows blocking of an entire instance. I personally virtually never see any spam (maybe one comment per month) and while connection issues do occur, they are like a handful per week rather than handful per hour (it varies a lot though, sometimes it does get bad for a day or two and then weeks go by without a hitch).
I avoided the initial hurdle of making a Lemmy account for so long and, while it was super annoying, in retrospect it wasn't that bad, compared to all the other problems here and still having to go through all that, eventually.
If anyone is thinking about switching: don't worry unduly about it, just make an account and see if you like it, but you can always keep your Kbin active too, assuming Kbin remains alive.
Also, you may need to try out a few places before you find one that fits you best. But that reduces your anxiety bc you know more and don't need to worry about having to do it again in a worst-case scenario.
Considering his last post was about going to the hospital for a few days, over a month ago, I suspect he's not okay.
Regardless, I just cancelled my $5/mo donation towards the development of the kbin software. Seeing as how there hasn't been any development in over a month.
This time is probably unrelated to @ernest's supposed inactivity. Actually, his another /kbin server, https://karab.in has been brought back on 15 of February.
Oh wow, what a day for the fediverse huh? Kbin's infrastructure went down, Lemmy.ml's certs expired (or so Firefox told me), and a ton of Misskey servers got hacked and started botspamming everyone.
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.
--
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!
His reasoning is kind've... Like, off, isn't it? How would a single paragraph message saying "Hey guys, I'm not dead." cause... Chaos? Like what?
And him saying he's been working on stuff... So, he's been around and watching, but chose to work exclusively on the code when Kbin was under assault with spam, some of it illegal?
It's so crazily clear that Kbin needs additional admins to fill in for Ernest, to add more mods, to combat spam, to delete communities and accounts that have been sitting around for months, and yet still, there is absolutely no move toward rectifying any of that.
This isn't sustainable. People are saying it in this post, people have been saying it for months, there's no change. I don't mean to come down on Ernest, the dude is putting out all this work and effort for free selflessly, but it's becoming painfully clear that his personality traits (specifically the desire to do everything himself) is not only putting incredible stress onto Ernest himself, but it's severely effecting Kbin itself negatively, to the point that people are leaving and Ernest's response is... Basically business as usual.
He may well be referring to my posts and the chaos that ensued in the comments thereof. You have a valid point. However, Ernest's communication has up to now not been very consistent, both timing and content wise. It makes sense he hasn't given updates, for the time being, as he didn't have any real improvements to announce, unlike this one, to prevent another escalation. Not the best strategy, but given the odds of a similar situation arising again, understandable. You are already part of a similar discussion it would have started and it would have been over nothing. At least now he had some (good) news to announce. I would not likely have responded though, I haven't really paid much attention since the last time. Once again I was attracted by the notification of a message, on matrix this time, leading me to have a look at what's going on. I am saying this because some people were convinced I was stalking and harassing Ernest last time, to give you an impression of what chaos he is likely referring to. Of course odds are something would have triggered my attention and I would have, as I said I won't be silenced. But other people have taken the lead this time.
Let's hope Ernest really is doing better and will do as he says, so we can forget about the past.
I hope Ernest gets well soon and can pass through all of these stuff, but I must add one point to this:
And finally, I really suggest getting some more admins for the instance.
And, as important as this, letting more people help with Kbin development.
It's impossible to maintain the code and develop new features, while dealing with all his personal life problems (which of course are a priority) and maintaining the instance all at once and almost alone.
Why not getting some help? I know that Ernest already said he has a problem trusting people, but come on, it's visible that this approach is not working and it’s not benefiting anyone.
Good luck to you!
But i think instead of waiting to announce planned things you should just show them, even in early stages.
Then we can give feedback, check your code and contribute ourselves.
You dont have to do everything, we really want to help.
On the other hand, if people really wanted to contribute, there's plenty of open issues on Codeberg that are unadressed. I agree that it would be better to announce plans in advance rather than surprise drop them, but I doubt there would be more contributions from the community.
I know. I'm just saying that the idea people would magically help out on kbin if he was more open about his plans doesn't work out, because the people willing to do so would either already be contributing to cleaning up the backlog or have moved on to mbin.
Btw, do mbin devs look at kbin issues too or do common problems have to be posted to both repositories to be seen?
Currently I wouldn't count on it as for as long as there is no activity on codeberg, looking at it in general is a waste of time. If you find an issue on both Kbin and Mbin and are convinced it is the same issue, it's definitely worth reporting on both.
Sometimes showing that things are being done is more work and way more stressful than the act of doing them, so I can relate to that.
But it would probably be a good idea to get more admins on board - sometimes one needs to take a break, and a one-person moderation team for a page with this many users cannot be sustainable in the long run. But I guess getting to a point where that is feasible, not to mention finding qualified people, might in itself be a fair share of work. :)
And of course - get well soon, Ernest! It's great to hear from you.
It doesn't have to be a show-and-tell. Just pushing your changes to a branch is enough. That way people can at least see that something is being worked on.
As a software dev I find it strange that you can go a month or more without pushing. At work I push at least daily, even if it's just a WIP commit that I reset the next day.
Exactly this is what i mean.
Name your branch something useful and push reguarly.
Ernest feels like doing so much secrecy for code that is ultimately going to be public anyways.. We wont scold you for having fucked up code. We will fix it ourselves if we have to.
I've been wondering the same thing. I really like kbin's interface, so I'm holding out that he comes back before I think about trying another instance.
We haven't heard from our developer/lead maintainer/near entirety of the staff for about a month, so it's kind of hard to say. If they are working on something in the backend, it doesn't feel like they care enough to inform the community about it.
Ernest hasn't abandoned kbin this time, he did post an update last week.
Today, I'm going for a minor procedure at the hospital, and I won't be available for the next 2-4 days. When I return, I'll push all the corrections and fixes I've been working on and present plans for the near future.
Him not being back yet probably means the hospital procedure didn't go as smoothly as expected, but he's not gone on purpose.
It seems like having more admins here would be greatly beneficial in combatting that problem. Is Ernest open to having additional admins? AFAIK he is the only one, and he's cleary biting off more than he can chew.
So you went and thought: "Let's take this chance to make an unverified claim and advertise this other instances in a single post!"
but it was a shitty move, let me tell you.
Magazines can be deleted. There is a Delete Magazine button in the Magazine Panel of any magazine you own (on the General tab, first one).
However at this time it does not appear to be an automatic thing (I believe Ernest has to clear then manually). I've deleted around a dozen so far (which were taken care of within 24h) and have had over a dozen more as well waiting for deletion (which have been sitting there for a month+ as Ernest has been busy as of late, and then the holidays and such).
A few suggestions that may or may not be satisfactory for you:
Using KES, enable General > Hide sidebar elements > Random threads, Random mags, Random posts. The randomly populated sidebar is fundamentally flawed; I suggest disabling its content altogether.
Next, enable General > Filter advertisements. This second feature is by no means foolproof, but will reduce a lot of noise, and is periodically updated on a rolling basis.
It would be nice if the report feature had a way to indicate if the problem is spam, content or whatever other issues people might have. You could have a threshold for spam reports to put the account in review and prevent of hide it's posts.
I have to type 4 letters for every spam I see. I'd prefer to check a box (on my phone where typing is annoying this is even more useful) I do this dozens of times per day - it gets annoying fast.
A short pull-down list would work well: Spam, Harassment, Site ToS Violation, Thread/Group Rules Violation, etc.
This way you can automate rules like: if an article get's N spam or harassment reports it's put into the review queue and hidden until a Moderator can review it.
@Kierunkowy74
Yes, moderators can access the reports tab within the magazine panel. Every report must include some reason, hence moderators see them. Regarding bans: without giving a proper reason, no ban can come into effect.
You can also check the modlogs on kbin and lemmy instances for bans (does not apply to mbin). @bayaz@jayrhacker
Most forums have dedicated categories for common stuff like this. Written reports are fine if an explanation is needed, not for the newly created samename37 spambot account illicitly selling drugs (or something that is probably phishing, like the delta airlines refund ticket type stuff) without really doing much to hide it.
It's the same communities and overwhelming at times to the point it doesn't even feel productive or even needed to report it. This is the lowest of low-hanging fruit.
Lots of places that list ernest as the only moderator. Some I've seen are on communities such as: fediverse, internet, opensource, science, random (which also pulls content from various places, which had the added minus that spam from other instances will not have deletions federated). Even the ask communities are sometimes hit, or for instance in this community there's a spam thread for pills in Dubai right below this one in new (from 2 days ago).
Specifically I'm talking about stuff you'll either see piled up in the new feed OR in the 'random threads'/posts section. My new feed isn't lotsa spam like it was earlier, but the sidebar currently is.
You don't like bufo toad venom? I like to start my mornings by sipping a little bufo toad venom while reading kbin. Buy bufo toad venom today.
In all seriousness...I don't know if you saw my last thread about KES in this magazine, but I suggest giving it a try. I've extended the filter coverage based on your feedback, and those magazines should essentially be expunged of garbage for the time being.
As for the sidebar, I believe the implementation is fundamentally flawed because it loads content that, AFAIK, doesn't respect your actual block settings. I suggest disabling the random threads element altogether in KES by navigating to General > Hide sidebar elements.
I don't know if you saw my last thread about KES in this magazine
I did. I would still be commenting about it as I don't think extra stuff should be necessary to fix a problem like this. Filters should exist especially for new accounts (even the most cautious implementation could make a big difference), comparing names to banned accounts before account creation too (or shadowbanning so they don't just choose different names).
because it loads content that, AFAIK, doesn't respect your actual block settings
Oh yeah, funnily enough the one thread in my image that isn't spam was from a community I blocked. (at least I think it was, hard to tell with different instances)
Also to add to my list above, I just noticed a lot of spam posted in the food community. Also checking from the top of the magazine list with default sorting: tech, TodayILearned, space, showerthoughts, programming (though some of the spam is related SEO-type garbage). Books has 1 piece of spam and 1 user (probably bot given the post with 503 - Service unavailable in a title) who just aggregates Amazon links+descriptions.
Of course, I'm not trying to suggest that a third-party prophylactic tool is a definitive solution to what is ultimately a separate problem, just trying to be pragmatic here and restore basic readability for end-users, whether the filtering is done at the source or after the fact.
Let's be real here, we are talking about unmoderated magazines on an instance where the developer is AWOL and using a framework that is lacking many basic features. Even with moderators, manual moderation can be a big ask and is time-consuming for free volunteers, depending on the volume of posts or how rudimentary the moderation tools are.
I actually don't read kbin magazines much, so I wasn't aware of the extent of the problem until I started opening those magazines more closely, and felt that something is better than nothing.
On the magazines you mentioned, I do see a few anomalous patterns that I'll start filtering. For the most part, with filtering enabled, they were almost entirely free of garbage, save for a few patterns I may have missed on the first few passes. /programming and /food I need to take a deeper look at. The /food thing is good intel, because the use of Amazon referral links in the threads is something that can be generalized to other situations beyond books. Posting referral links is definitively block-worthy.
I also noticed some stuff that by any other name would be considered a thinly-veiled ad, such as specific users only posting articles to web sites they own and operate. I'm not talking about bots as such, but actively promoting one's own content--even when such content is on-topic for the magazine. I declined to filter this stuff yet, because it received a lot of upvotes and seemed to be received favorably, maybe because the readers felt it was at least germane to the topic at hand? I think this is probably true for /food as well, because the line between "content" and "promotion" is unclear here, since what is a food blog if not a product generating click revenue? It seems like the tolerance threshold for that sort of thing is higher in a magazine like /food versus some other magazine. Anyway, I digress. I'm not treating such stuff as in scope, just filtering what is blatantly noise.
On food I was actually talking about the non-related spam, such as the x8 newest. Mostly gummies and pills, though maybe you're already blocking those like you said (and this might apply to the below text too).
Though looking at it there are also some semi-related local-specific self advertisements by likely bots (Best X in location Y / near me). So I wasn't talking about food blogs, but I do see some of those that are downvoted (and they are clickbait-y). One of the blogspot ones (the one who marked it as 18+) has one thread about Quora SEO and another thread called "hot girl" (random woman outside)
Aside from blocking I could see soft hiding (especially with ratings and/or grouping), though I'm not so sure how well that would work with assessing a thread or a user. Though I notice a lot of accounts like this don't seem to comment much if at all.
@shazbot@insomniac_lemon To be clear, you're talking about /m/food on kbin.social? And particularly the threads side?
I'm the mod for that community, and I'm not seeing any amazon links, gummies, etc. I'm usually pretty good about deleting those within at most 24 hours of them being posted. But, if you're still seeing them, either there's a glitch or I'm doing something wrong.
Right now, I'm seeing 51 threads total, and the newest one is a month old (tagliatelle link). Are you seeing something different?
I agree with you about the questionable food blogs and probably-ai-generated content. I've been on the fence about whether to delete those, but I decided to let it slide and hope that upvotes/downvotes would take care of it. Also, I didn't get any user reports about them, so that was another metric to consider. For now, I'm just doing the absolute minimum of deleting obvious drug spam and amazon links (or, at least, I thought I was). If you notice anything especially egregious (where on earth do you see this 18+ spam nonsense?!) and could take the time to report it, I would really appreciate it.
To be clear, you're talking about /m/food on kbin.social? And particularly the threads side?
I'm the mod for that community, and I'm not seeing any amazon links, gummies, etc
Amazon links no, that was Books and the other user misspoke in one of their comments.
The other stuff, you deleted some of it after I commented, some is still there. Screenshot attached, the last one is about food but is that user's only post and looks awfully like a thinly-veiled advertisement.
EDIT: I should have started with "thanks", by the way. I appreciate the response.
This is so weird. I don't see any of those first four posts. I see the fifth (I'm actually the downvote), and I agree it's sketchy, but I'm trying to get just the absolute worst out for now.
Also, I have two posts you don't have. I'm viewing this directly in Firefox -- are you in an app of some kind?
Also, I have two posts you don't have. I'm viewing this directly in Firefox -- are you in an app of some kind?
That is weird, and nope also Firefox. I see what you do if I log out though. I checked, I don't seem to have that user blocked, and the spam still there then gone on logout/private-window is something else entirely.
EDIT: I don't see those 2 posts because they are categorized as Macedonian. I have it set to English only. Though the posts look like they are in English.
Yep, I meant to say /books when I was talking about Amazon links. Sorry.
As for the posts on /food, I have totally vanilla settings (no language filtering or anything) and I saw all of the posts you both mentioned.
Well, with the exception of the garbage posts, because in answer to lemon's earlier question, those have long since been scrubbed on the filter side. But they did exist before I started filtering.
All of that low hanging fruit kind of stuff has been banished, and I am mainly working on edge cases at this point.
Ouch, what a bug. I knew some of the moderation wasn't being federated, but I can't imagine how a kbin user isn't seeing the latest version.
To be clear, you see the spam when logged in, then don't see it logged out, then see it again when logged in again?
I don't see it regardless of whether I'm logged in or not. Also, I don't think I've ever been able to see it because I don't see the posts in a quick look through the moderation log.
Would you mind posting an issue about this? https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues Or, I can do it if you don't feel like it and don't mind me using your screenshots. If you do post it, just please emphasize that this makes it impossible for moderation to happen because the moderator literally cannot see the posts.
Thanks again for trying things out and sharing your info!
To be clear, you see the spam when logged in, then don't see it logged out, then see it again when logged in again?
Correct.
Or, I can do it if you don't feel like it and don't mind me using your screenshots
I haven't used codeberg yet, so I'll just say sure you can use my screenshots/words. It also directly affects you as a mod more as you've said, anyway.
Using those usernames/profiles to look at the posts directly, I don't suppose there is anything that might detail what is going on? There are ~500 open issues, maybe this is some existing database/caching issue possibly related to post/community IDs? Though I am still not sure why viewing would differ by user.
Using those usernames/profiles to look at the posts directly, I don't suppose there is anything that might detail what is going on?
Can you get me the full usernames including domains (e.g., PellyNews@blah.blah)? More info couldn't hurt when compiling the issue report.
The only thing I can think of is that maybe you are somehow "subscribed" to other domains because you follow some magazine/community there, and I am not, so the posts don't show up for me. That doesn't really make sense, but neither does anything else.
I did do a little searching for terms like "delete", "cache", and even "different", and didn't see this exact issue anywhere. The closest I found was this: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/875 . It doesn't seem like a federation issue, though, since we are on the same instance. But, if you wanted to experiment further, you could try either downvoting or commenting on the spam to see whether that makes it visible to me.
Okay, thanks for your patience. I think we've hit the limit of what we can do at this point.
Nothing changed with your downvotes or comments. Going through kbin.social/u/{user}, I was able to view and delete PellyNews's threads. I am unable to do anything with the other two users. Even though I can see they exist, the relevant threads do not show up for me under their profiles.
I'll file the issue and keep just deleting what I can until things are sorted out on the backend. Thanks again for your help on this.
Looking at the modlog, the ones you removed were posts (microblogs). Relevant to the issue?
Nice catch!
With your direct links, I was able to see those threads. I attempted to delete two of them, and the modlog shows that I was successful. I've left the third for now as evidence for any developers who care to look.
Regarding "unban", I'm hoping that's just a bug in how things are printed. The ban does show up in the moderation log.
@insomniac_lemon It ended up being super simple -- my profile was hiding the 18+ posts by default. All I had to do was uncheck a box, and everything appeared again. Kind of a clever way by the spammers of getting around some moderation if it was intentional. It sounds like the kbin devs might consider changing the defaults on that for moderators to avoid this in the future.
Starting to feel like there's more SPAM than posts on Kbin, at this point.
I sort by new and comb through reporting "SPAM" and blocking users, but it's a never-ending cycle it seems and users reported for SPAM are still posting (hence why I block them in addition to reporting the individual posts).
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