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.
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Magazine dedicated to discussions about the kbin itself. Provide feedback, ask questions, suggest improvements, and engage in conversations related to the platform organization, policies, features, and community dynamics. ---- * Roadmap 2023 * m/kbinDevlog * m/kbinDesign
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Respect
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.
He using an optional feature that lets you auto populate your reply box with the OPs username.
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
You can do strikethrough text ~~like this~~
I'm viewing this from KBin and I don't see strikethrough.
That's because I put that in a code block with backticks (`), here's what it looks like normally ~~testing~~
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).
Horizontal rule ✔
Testing MD (headings)
-
bullet points ✔
- sub bullets (no tab on kbin; use 4 spaces) ✔
-
bold ✔
-
emphasis ✔
-
~~strikethrough~~ ❌
-
escaping *characters* ✔
-
code (inline)✔
quote ✔
I'm using kbin.social on desktop and it shows up fine for me, not sure what's going on on your instance
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the dev of kbin will be changing this. so up/downvotes are what affect your reputation. It's just not a priority right now
Do we know if there have been any releases since the influx of users? Or are they just focusing on backend stuff still?
There's still a lot of long hanging fruit *COUGHcollapsingthreads that would be great to have addressed sooner rather than later.
they
It's just one guy. We were a bit worried if he was even sleeping when the first big wave hit and he kept everything up by cloudflare and prayer.
Surely @ernest has some help at this point? Needs to start delegating or finding trusted maintainers if not.
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 :)
Thanks for joining! Excited to see the site grow.
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.
(Also love your username)
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.
Not bad for a 'side project', not bad at all!
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!
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Great to hear!
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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
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I made a userscript that allows you to collapse comments, that should help you out until it's added to the site officially
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.
I'm mostly focused on UI/UX for mobile.
I really don't know which is which and what does what, so I just click them both
upvote = does nothing (for now) boost = upvote (affects reputation points)
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As someone from Lemmy land this confuses me.
Have an upvote!
I think it confuses everyone. I have no idea why these two things exist in KBin. It's a complete mystery the thought process that went into it.
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.
This finally made it make sense for me. Thank you
This is the answer.
Because kbin can interface with content from mastodon AND Lemmy.
The boost is for mastodon/microblogs, the upvote is for Lemmy/threadiverse.
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Boosts are retweets, upvotes are favorites. So upvoting means you "like" that content, and boosting is kinda like sharing it to your followers.
Importantly, boosts republish posts and comments. This is meaningful because groups work by basically boosting anything that mentions it, or which is in reply to something that mentions it. And posts silently mention the group.
Why is this important? Well, if you're the first person on your instance to follow someone on another one, you don't see anything published by that person earlier than that. But if that person regularly boosts older posts, you'll get to see them.
So boosting posts and comments triggers the group to re-boost it, sending it out to servers that started following after the original publish time.
Basically, boosting is how we make sure new users on remote sites see older content.
Not crazy about the design. An upvote should be an upvote. If the upvote is useless, why is it even there?
It'll be changed soon™, so upvotes will boost reputation.
Read some of the other comments. It doesn’t sound like you’ve been following much of the chatter about the site very closely.
I click ALL the buttons and nobody can stop me!
Reported! But it's nothing personal :)
You should update your post to clarify that what you said isn't true.
Upvotes are upvotes, boost is like retweet.
The reputation calculation just haven't been updated yet.
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I do wish there was a bit more privacy involved with boosting though, as of right now anyone can see what I boost.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but just in case, that's the point of a boost. You're boosting its noticeability. It's not supposed to be private
Boost as a “shout out” being public is alright. I guess for us Reddit folks it’s like a cross post to our own u/sub that followers could see.
Upvote/downvote, though, should be private. Not sure if that’s ever truly possible though because by the nature of the fediverse it has to be replicated across to other instances and so everything is “open” as I understand it.
It may not be easily visible in the UI but it’s there in the data.
So I try to think of everything here like it’s a postcard not a letter.
Any mail carrier who sees it (and makes a copy) can see it all.
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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?
But what are upvotes and downvotes? I would have assumed upvote is fave/star. Is downvote an emoji react?
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