[On Reddit at reddit.com/r/redditalternatives, people are talking about a "Reddit 2.0."](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14pbtpt/how_hard_can_it_be_for_one_of_you_nerds_to_simply/) What do you suggest?
I just find ActivityPub kind of confusing. It works for Mastodon because that’s user-centric, and most people only have an account on one site. But the same communities can exist on multiple sites, and it’s confusing to navigate all of that.
This sounds like someone who hasn’t even tried. These instances aren’t difficult to navigate, they’re just setup a little differently. It’s like refusing to go to another country because they use metric instead of imperial (or vice versa).
Frankly, you’re incorrect. It’s an incredible pain in the neck to try and deal with the Fediverse beyond local content. Without better community merging or centralization, browsing instances becomes no different than dealing with having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes, or talking on forums before we had tabbed browsing. It’s incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
It’s different, it’s not that difficult, only mildly annoying with some compatibility issues for platforms that are still basically in their alpha phase (like kbin).
It’s incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
You and I will have to agree to disagree on this. Yes, active users continues to grow - on already dominant platforms. And by that I mean KBin.social as a platform, not all KBin instances; or Mastodon.Social, or even Lemmy.ML. Yes, there’s not a singularity yet, but even this limited plurality shows that it’s a pain in the neck to deal with the Fediverse as a whole, so pick your local poison and go for it.
Frankly, you’re incorrect. It’s an incredible pain in the neck to try and deal with the Fediverse beyond local content.
What issues have you specifically noticed with this? I’ve only seen a few - the main one is sometimes it’s hard to find magazines from elsewhere unless you already know the name of it and the instance it is on (but folks are creating websites to help others find this, so this is a problem being solved right now). The other one is that sometimes federation is slow, so posts and comments on the hosting instance can take hours to show up on another one. But there are technical fixes to this as well (I’m thinking that maybe the next version of activity pub should include a pull action, so other instances can ask for the latest content on behalf of their users from the hosting instance).
Without better community merging or centralization, browsing instances becomes no different than dealing with having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes,
I wasn’t around this far back. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What’s the issue with “having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes” ?
or talking on forums before we had tabbed browsing. It’s incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
This I remember well. Sounds like you are trying to create an account on each instance and are constantly logging out of one and into the next to keep up on the latest posts and comments. This … is not really the way to do it.
Yes, active users continues to grow - on already dominant platforms. And by that I mean KBin.social as a platform,
Don’t confuse terms. kbin.social is an instance, the platform is kbin the software.
There are problems here with this instance that go far beyond what you are saying. But that’s the nice part of federation - even problematic owners can be dealt with. Can’t say the same for a centralized service.
Yes, there’s not a singularity yet,
Why use this term? What does it even mean in this context? A singularity is a term from physics and represents when the existing rules break down, like in a black hole (collapsed star).
but even this limited plurality shows that it’s a pain in the neck to deal with the Fediverse as a whole, so pick your local poison and go for it.
Again, this suggests you don’t really understand federation. Barring one problematic instance, there aren’t any serious issues accessing all the instances you mentioned from, say for example, kbin.cafe
What issues have you specifically noticed with this?
The issue I’ve noticed first and foremost is that there is more than one identically named group. Don’t tell me that rpg@kbin.social, rpg@lemmy.ml, and rpg@foo.bar are different communities. They’re identically named communities. I’d rather have as false positive of a gun user’s instance with threads about rocket-propelled grenades, rather than having to go to each group to browse. Don’t tell me to just use the “subscribed” view. That doesn’t pick up everything in a topic, nor does it help me to find those - again, identically named - communities on other servers. Whenever a new server comes online with an RPG community, they’ll be in their own corner. They can participate as foreigners with another group, but that’s not theirs. There’s no central place for hosting these communities. If there was a server set up just to host groups, and the rest were for users, that would make sense. I immediately grew tired, trying to find all of the communities related to my interests so I can subscribe to all. I did that back in the day, joining forums and setting up a personal homepage with frames. In theory anyone can join any group, but they have to find it first.
If devs and leaders of the ActivityPub community are going to continue pushing the idea that everyone can talk to everyone else, we absolutely need some form of community merging for identically-named communities. For instance, a kbin.social user should be able to subscribe to cooking and see posts from cooking@*.* , not just cooking@kbin.social. That’s a UX issue just as much as a technical one.
I wasn’t around this far back. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What’s the issue with “having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes” ?
Back in those days, BBS mail was less “email” and more “text stored on server”. To get all of your mail from multiples, you had to connect to each of the servers in sequence, download your mail, and then read it offline and reply (any good BBS software would remember where itwas from, and offer to call back and send each message). Multiplexing meant that you could have a BBS in the NYC area, it would be able to contact and download from one in, say, PA or wherever, and they could each download threads and messages, aka federated content. The pain has been massively reduced over time, and I’m glad. My next point bounces off yours:
This I remember well. Sounds like you are trying to create an account on each instance and are constantly logging out of one and into the next to keep up on the latest posts and comments. This … is not really the way to do it.
You’re right, except in cases where I want a different psudonymity; my choice. In this case, I can’t check for new posts in, continuing with the same example, rpg@*.* without checking the group from each federated server. Posts are neither mirrored nor transcluded. That’s the point I’m getting at. I should be able to just open up m/rpg and have it cover all compatible groups.
I disagree with your latter point. kbin.social has hit a reasonable mass of users to have a strong local community and become a platform unto itself, running on kbin software. I’m not interested in a smaller community. I joined Reddit because it was the largest single-site community on the Web. I want the monolithic community, and I accept the costs that incurs, including ads or ad-first design. Right now, the fediverse is just fragments at the foot of the tower of Babel, each speaking a separate tongue, even if some are intelligible to others.
I don’t care about the difference between Mastodo, kbin, & Lemmy. They’re web software which are trying to replace a monolith, and have seen imited success. I don’t care about political leanings. I’m talking about a UX issue. If you want to defed from a site, and receive no more content, then so be it, that’s the right of an Admin.
There’s still chaos in terms of instances and softwares. Until we all settle on one software that does the job, and until we have a way to have a single community again, Reddit remains the superior option. There is only one r/RPG, it works on Highlander rules - there can be only one. How many groups in the Fediverse named m/RPG or c/RPG are there? Why must each user be forced to answer that question?
That’s what would fix things for me; make the federation 100% behind-the-curtain so that I don’t have to think about it. I don’t care about the backend, I’m not hosting, the value to me is ad views only, not cash. I’d argue a solid 80% of users on corp-owned social media wouldn’t understand even if you simplify it. The fediverse/threadiverse is not a drop-in replacement for Reddit. Until it is, I’ll keep one foot in spez’s yard. If Meta’s Threads product does become an ActivityPub community and solves this issue, I’ll move there
.
Apologies for any typos or bad formatting, I ran up against the 5000 character limit, and tried to edit down - and the ‘more’ popup actually pops under the next comment in my browser. I’m sure I could fix it somehow, but I believe everything is still intelligible.
Apologies for any typos or bad formatting, I ran up against the 5000 character limit, and tried to edit down - and the ‘more’ popup actually pops under the next comment in my browser. I’m sure I could fix it somehow, but I believe everything is still intelligible.
No worries, it’s intelligble, and I get it as I got hit by the same thing.
I disagree with your latter point.
Okay, but I don’t think you’ve adaquately explained why.
kbin.social has hit a reasonable mass of users to have a strong local community and become a platform unto itself, running on kbin software.
But it can also join with older, more established communities on lemmy instances like lemmy.world and the two can share content with each other. From a kbin.social account I can fully participate on lemmy.world bar two exceptions (owning a lemmy.world magazine and being a lemmy.world admin), and the reverse is equally true. Hence why I view lemmy/kbin as essentially a single platform.
In your case, “local” seems to mean central to the server. But why is this an inherently important attribute?
I’m not interested in a smaller community.
Again, the point of federation - the different parts (instances) merge into a single platform and community. Each instance hosts a smaller part of the whole community, instead of needing a megacorp capable of hosting the entire one on a single set of servers. Ideally, seamlessly, but in practice I admit there are still some rough edges to work out (e.g. multimagazine support).
There might be a point here when dealing with magazine fragmentation - but reddit has the same problem to a degree and we can borrow their solution (multireddits/multimagazines) to resolve that issue here as well.
I joined Reddit because it was the largest single-site community on the Web. I want the monolithic community, and I accept the costs that incurs, including ads or ad-first design.
Yes, but why? This is the part that is yet to be explained. I think the dangers of single-site centralization have already been demonstrated (e.g. loss of 3rd party apps, mods losing their subs when protesting, folks getting permabans for no apparent reason or for obviously incorrect reasons, etc.)
I don’t care about the difference between Mastodo, kbin, & Lemmy. They’re web software which are trying to replace a monolith, and have seen imited success.
Following this to the extreme, you shouldn’t want to use either twitter or reddit, because they can’t talk to each other. Right? (Okay, single sign on is possible, but after that you still have to interact with their websites and apps separately.)
The fediverse lacks the first mover advantage of being born in the ninties or early aughts and also lacks big megacorp backing, but it has seen bigger growth than single site replacements like Squabbles or Tildes, and I suspect federation is a big driver of the difference there.
Right now, the fediverse is just fragments at the foot of the tower of Babel, each speaking a separate tongue, even if some are intelligible to others.
Except that they all speak the same language (ActivityPub) and differ from big monoliths like twitter and reddit that can’t talk to anyone else. So from an intelligibility perspective they are a step up.
I don’t care about political leanings. I’m talking about a UX issue. If you want to defed from a site, and receive no more content, then so be it, that’s the right of an Admin.
That’s what would fix things for me; make the federation 100% behind-the-curtain so that I don’t have to think about it. I don’t care about the backend, I’m not hosting, the value to me is ad views only, not cash.
Again, sounds like if we did have multimagazine support (as I described earlier) then things would be fixed for you. If I’ve missed anything, please detail that out.
The fediverse/threadiverse is not a drop-in replacement for Reddit.
So actually there’s an active effort to re-expose lemmy’s API as reddit’s own API (allowing folks to use things like PRAW with lemmy and even kbin thanks to the magic of federation). In theory third party apps could simply point to a server hosting this API, instead of reddit’s site, and just work with the fediverse.
I know that’s not what you meant, but that is pretty drop-in.
Until it is, I’ll keep one foot in spez’s yard. If Meta’s Threads product does become an ActivityPub community and solves this issue, I’ll move there
It likely would because it seems like it won’t federate with the rest of us and just either be a single instance or at best a group of instances controlled by fb that only federate with each other. Either way the number of duplicately named magazines is strictly limited.
. I’d argue a solid 80% of users on corp-owned social media wouldn’t understand even if you simplify it.
To get all of your mail from multiples, you had to connect to each of the servers in sequence, download your mail, and then read it offline and reply
Multiplexing meant that you could have a BBS in the NYC area, it would be able to contact and download from one in, say, PA or wherever, and they could each download threads and messages, aka federated content.
Then I’d argue that the fediverse looks more like the multiplexed BBS. I mean, federated is literally in the name. We don’t have the pain that comes from using non-multiplexed BBSes here.
You’re right, except in cases where I want a different psudonymity; my choice.
No, I’m still right in this case. Your alts can still take advantage of federation and subscribe to magazines on other instances and reply and so forth.
In this case, I can’t check for new posts in, continuing with the same example, rpg@. without checking the group from each federated server.
No, not true. That also applies in the “original” case (where you only have one account in the fediverse). This is the multimagazine/multireddit thing already touched upon above. That’s legit, but let’s assume for the sake of argument these three points: 1) there is a working version of Artemis (the kbin app), 2) it supports multimagazines, 3) there’s a json format from the websites that list magazines that can be imported into Artemis to automatically generate a multimagazine for the user that’s local to the smartphone.
The above problem is solved, as you can use that Artemis, passing it the magazing listing website, and get a multimagazine set up with all the different RPG magazines. Maybe Artemis even supports optionally autoreloading so as new RPG magazines are setup (either in new instances, or someone makes a /m/TrueRPG on an instance that already has /m/rpg) your multimagazine is automatically updated.
Posts are neither mirrored nor transcluded.
They are to the instances. Some people are going farther and trying to mirror articles between different magazines using bots. However, I kind of feel the multimagazine feature would be enough to check this box.
That’s the point I’m getting at. I should be able to just open up m/rpg and have it cover all compatible groups.
We’re not there yet, but it’s also not too far off.
That said, I find your view that multimagazines are essential to be interesting. I only first heard about multireddits only after I’d permanently parted ways with reddit.
There’s still chaos in terms of instances and softwares.
This is actually a good thing. Monoculture is bad, diversity is good.
Until we all settle on one software that does the job, and until we have a way to have a single community again,
Too easy for a single disease to wipe things out in that case.
Reddit remains the superior option
Where one can be permabanned at random, with a non-functional appeals process where it’s virtually impossible to get ahold of an actual human? Where you can have the ownership of your sub that you spent years working on seized and taken away and handed over to someone else?
I’d argue that reddit has a different disease, and it’s showing why both centralization and monoculture are bad (third party apps being killed off because they never supported anything but reddit itself is an example of the latter).
There is only one r/RPG, it works on Highlander rules - there can be only one.
You’re kidding, right? How many subs in reddit have RPG in the name and actually broach the same topic? r/rpg_gamers , r/RPGdesign, r/TabletopRPG, r/StrateyRpg, r/RPGCreation, r/solorpgplay? This last one doesn’t have rpg in the name, but - r/Solo_Roleplaying?
If you are really going to push that reddit only has one sub for the role playing game community, then I’m going to need you to explain to me in detail how each of the above subs is different from r/RPG and from each other, and why they are a separate community from any other sub with rpg in the name.
How many groups in the Fediverse named m/RPG or c/RPG are there? Why must each user be forced to answer that question?
Dunno, but how many subs in reddit that have rpg in the name are there? Why must each redditor be forced to answer that question? (The answer to the second is they don’t need to answer that question at all - either on reddit or on the fediverse.)
The issue I’ve noticed first and foremost is that there is more than one identically named group. Don’t tell me that rpg@kbin.social, rpg@lemmy.ml, and rpg@foo.bar are different communities. They’re identically named communities.
Since lemmy terms a “community” as the same thing as a kbin magazine, but community can also have a more expansive meaning, for clarity I will refer to lemmy magazines and use community in it’s more expansive scope.
rpg@foo.bar isn’t a real thing obviously but is your standing for an rpg magazine on any other instance.
rpg@lemmy.ml and rpg@kbin.social appear to be two separate magazines, hosted on two difference instances, and owned and moderated by two separate groups of people, but about the same topic - role playing games. If you ignore the instance part of the name, then they have identical names - which makes sense because they cover the same topic.
There is a UX issue on kbin where the instance part of the name is hidden, but there are also kbin styles that fix this.
Getting fixated on the identical name part is getting hung up over a minor technicality. Remember that reddit has a similar issue with very similarly named subs, where you might have /r/X and then /r/TrueX and /r/XOriginal - something that was encouraged by reddit’s own policy, where instead of getting involved with a mod of a sub they would just encourage you to make your own sub.
I’d rather have as false positive of a gun user’s instance with threads about rocket-propelled grenades, rather than having to go to each group to browse
I think this is legitimate. This was solved on reddit with multireddits but kbin doesn’t have an equivalent yet.
If devs and leaders of the ActivityPub community are going to continue pushing the idea that everyone can talk to everyone else, we absolutely need some form of community merging for identically-named communities. For instance, a kbin.social user should be able to subscribe to cooking and see posts from cooking@. , not just cooking@kbin.social. That’s a UX issue just as much as a technical one.
Good point. Even if kbin/lemmy don’t support it, maybe we can get multimagazines working first at say an app level (like in Artemis).
Don’t tell me to just use the “subscribed” view. That doesn’t pick up everything in a topic, nor does it help me to find those - again, identically named - communities on other servers.
I wouldn’t as that’s not what that view is for. You want to view a multimagazine that covers a given topic like rpg rather than see your own subscriptions.
Whenever a new server comes online with an RPG community, they’ll be in their own corner.
They can participate as foreigners with another group, but that’s not theirs.
They can go as far as to mod magazines in another instance. How are they thus foreigners? This is the point of federation - that equal standing to view, post, contribute, moderate, etc across instances.
If there was a server set up just to host groups, and the rest were for users, that would make sense.
From a centralized, non-federated point of view.
There’s no central place for hosting these communities.
Because there is no need for that. I’d point to the example of r/blind - they continue to maintain their sub on reddit but officially the community is also available on their own lemmy instance as well as through their own website. One community, but not centralized anywhere.
I did that back in the day, joining forums and setting up a personal homepage with frames. In theory anyone can join any group, but they have to find it first.
With federation, you don’t have to go that far. Communicating across instances works automatically and you only need one account to do so, as opposed to creating a new account on each forum.
I immediately grew tired, trying to find all of the communities related to my interests so I can subscribe to all.
I’d recommend you check out some of the older posts on @RedditMIgration as there are lots of links to community (not magazine but community in the broader sense) run websites that try to solve this by listing all of the magazines on instances.
This is probably simpler and more fruitful than searching manually.
Honestly like, the dude you’re responding too is referencing BBSes and using the web before tabs. If a user like that is expressing some confusion, disorientation, or irritation, you should regard it the way you might your grandfather critiquing your home. He could be cantankerous, but he probably does have some insight stemming from decades of experience. NTOG and I have been on opposite sides of almost every thread I’ve encountered them in but it’s pretty clear they know their way around message boards, so if something is confusing them it might be a bit confusing yet.
I’m just as old as he is, maybe only a few years younger. I started to learn computers on a Commodore VIC 20 and 64, used tape drives for storage. I entered into BBS near the end of its popularity, however I used chat boards, AOL, and Geocities…old forums as well. I also moderated a forum for a few years on a Star Wars fan site before the admin shut it down and I moved to Reddit.
I have a lot of experience navigating forums as well…Fediverse sometimes takes a little bit more digging to find what you want. The point I was also trying to make is that these platforms are also in their infancy, their alpha programming state. So things will change, the platform will develop. This kind of thing isn’t built in a day, yet IMHO it’s so much nicer not having ads forced down my throat on desktop every five posts.
If this person doesn’t like the experience here, then there’s nothing saying he can’t go back to Reddit.
Hardly. People are taking the federation and making it more complex than it needs to be. For the average user, you pick the most popular website, you sign up, you subscribe to communities. That’s it. The nuances of the fediverse are irrelevant to a new user.
Genuinely I don’t understand the issue? You can search the Fediverse from one instance using the Magazines tab in Kbin to find places to sub, or sub to communities you find in all feed etc? Is the issue to do with the duplication of communities at present and lack of clarity which ones are more active?
For me at least the federated set up works well, but I need more visibility of total community sizes when searching Magazines. The search shows me the number of users subbed from this instance, where as I’d also like to know the total number of users subbed across the fediverse to guage how big that community is overall.
Also as you mention, it would be good to see duplicate communities merged across instances - but some of that is the reddit migration with 1000s of new users creating the communities with the same name on multiple instances in a short amount of time. Consolidation will take time (and sometimes there may be a good reason to have two separate communities with the same name) but long term there does need to be tools to allow communities to migrate base from one instance to another or merge; otherwise there is a risk a community could die if an instance falls over.
But I’m not switching between instances - I was initially and realised it was pointless. I have chosen to be on 2 instances - Kbin.social and Feddit.uk, deliberately to keep my UK and generic feed separate for now, and also to have a Kbin and Lemmy experience. I personally strongly favour Kbin at the moment. I don’t get the analogy of tabbed browsing or separate forums; you can see the whole fediverse from one instance (barring defederated instance like Beehaw). What am I missing?
You can search the Fediverse from one instance using the Magazines tab in Kbin to find places to sub, or sub to communities you find in all feed etc?
This is the first thing. I think this might not always be turning up everything due to the delays with federation. While we might be able to agree that this is good enough, I think another reasonable person can look at this and say that there’s room for some technical improvements.
Is the issue to do with the duplication of communities at present
This is the second one. As others have also pointed out, reddit has the same issue so it’s not unique to federation (tho this person seems to get hung up specifically on the precise naming to make it federation specific). I think we can adapt the reddit solution (multireddits) to here as well though to solve this (i.e. come up with a scheme for multimagazines).
But I’m not switching between instances
This is the third one, but I think this is not valid. As you say, one can choose to have multiple accounts on other instances, but it’s not needed to participate on the other instances. This person says it’s their choice to have the other accounts - but then makes a big stink over the effort of having multiple accounts. Like if it’s that much trouble then just don’t do it.
long term there does need to be tools to allow communities to migrate base from one instance to another
I thought that this might be an issue but actually I raised this point and it wasn’t responded to.
The fourth one is that this person seems to consider kbin.social its own distinct platform - which doesn’t make sense in light of federation - and seems to prefer centralization in general (despite seeing the good from multiplexing BBSes), but I’m waiting on a response as to why this should be the case. Like what are the specific arguments to prefer centralization to a single server or a single instance?
It does occur to me however that if a paid shill were to try to promote a centralized service over an open source federated one, a way to win folks over might be to present oneself as a highly experienced technical person with direct expeirence in both kinds of systems, but who ultimately prefers centralization and has good technical arguments to back it up, including pointing out flaws or gaps with the existing federated system. And also insist that more people flock to the single overloaded flagship instance, perhaps causing it to overload and die off.
Not saying for sure that this is the case here, but food for thought.
Not saying for sure that this is the case here, but food for thought.
Nah, I don’t think it is the case here at all. The guy had an opinion and was expressing it. I didn’t agree, but it’s good to see some proper discussion going on.
FWIW The biggest thing I would like to see implements sooner rather than later is a way to handle multi magazines, chiefly because it’s not actually that much of an issue yet. A bigger deal seems to be people asking is there a community for X, y, z. So if there’s a plan in place then that would be good.
But even the way on some Reddit subs mods sometimes have a list of ‘Associated Subs’ (so a Reading sub might basically give a shout out to Books, Literature, etc… would be good
Nah, I don’t think it is the case here at all. The guy had an opinion and was expressing it. I didn’t agree, but it’s good to see some proper discussion going on.
FWIW The biggest thing I would like to see implements
I think @kbinMeta is the typical goto for things of this nature.
But even the way on some Reddit subs mods sometimes have a list of ‘Associated Subs’ (so a Reading sub might basically give a shout out to Books, Literature, etc… would be good
But the same communities can exist on multiple sites, and it’s confusing to navigate all of that.
I mean, on Reddit the same communities can exist on the same site. I’m a member of r/europe and r/europes, and of r/introvert and r/introverts…
Federation isn’t the cause of competing communities. What happens on Reddit is that eventually enough of a mass of people congregate around one sub for a topic, and that becomes the de facto main one. The same thing will happen here.
True, and this is also a side effect of the mass migration from reddit. People have created multiple versions of the same community name on different instances. Things will consolidate over time, and people will navigate to the most active community (or communities).
But the other aspect of the fediverse is you can have more than one community with the same name; thats a benefit. Like why should there be only 1 “PCGaming”; different groups of users might want to form their own community which approaches the matter in their preferred way. So you could have 2, 3, or many different communities reflecting different ethoses, based on different instances. That’s not a bad thing, but might be hard for people to get used to initially coming from the monolithic approach on Reddit.
This sounds like someone who hasn’t even tried. These instances aren’t difficult to navigate, they’re just setup a little differently. It’s like refusing to go to another country because they use metric instead of imperial (or vice versa).
Frankly, you’re incorrect. It’s an incredible pain in the neck to try and deal with the Fediverse beyond local content. Without better community merging or centralization, browsing instances becomes no different than dealing with having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes, or talking on forums before we had tabbed browsing. It’s incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
It’s different, it’s not that difficult, only mildly annoying with some compatibility issues for platforms that are still basically in their alpha phase (like kbin).
Yet the community of active users continues to grow.
You and I will have to agree to disagree on this. Yes, active users continues to grow - on already dominant platforms. And by that I mean KBin.social as a platform, not all KBin instances; or Mastodon.Social, or even Lemmy.ML. Yes, there’s not a singularity yet, but even this limited plurality shows that it’s a pain in the neck to deal with the Fediverse as a whole, so pick your local poison and go for it.
What issues have you specifically noticed with this? I’ve only seen a few - the main one is sometimes it’s hard to find magazines from elsewhere unless you already know the name of it and the instance it is on (but folks are creating websites to help others find this, so this is a problem being solved right now). The other one is that sometimes federation is slow, so posts and comments on the hosting instance can take hours to show up on another one. But there are technical fixes to this as well (I’m thinking that maybe the next version of activity pub should include a pull action, so other instances can ask for the latest content on behalf of their users from the hosting instance).
I wasn’t around this far back. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What’s the issue with “having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes” ?
This I remember well. Sounds like you are trying to create an account on each instance and are constantly logging out of one and into the next to keep up on the latest posts and comments. This … is not really the way to do it.
Don’t confuse terms. kbin.social is an instance, the platform is kbin the software.
Actually it’s well understood that kbin.social is getting too large and it’s not good for instances to get this big in general - so it’s kinda a good thing that other instances haven’t exploded as much. See https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/122067/Jim-is-invading-the-finer-things-club-aka-kbin-social-is and
I’d argue that this is a technically a different platform - microblogging vs what reddit/lemmy do. But by the magic of federation we get both in kbin.
There are problems here with this instance that go far beyond what you are saying. But that’s the nice part of federation - even problematic owners can be dealt with. Can’t say the same for a centralized service.
Why use this term? What does it even mean in this context? A singularity is a term from physics and represents when the existing rules break down, like in a black hole (collapsed star).
Again, this suggests you don’t really understand federation. Barring one problematic instance, there aren’t any serious issues accessing all the instances you mentioned from, say for example, kbin.cafe
Certainly.
Can you guys stop with the civil discourse and the well thought out responses? We’re trying to replicate reddit here!
Fuck you and your opinion!
There, better? :)
The issue I’ve noticed first and foremost is that there is more than one identically named group. Don’t tell me that rpg@kbin.social, rpg@lemmy.ml, and rpg@foo.bar are different communities. They’re identically named communities. I’d rather have as false positive of a gun user’s instance with threads about rocket-propelled grenades, rather than having to go to each group to browse. Don’t tell me to just use the “subscribed” view. That doesn’t pick up everything in a topic, nor does it help me to find those - again, identically named - communities on other servers. Whenever a new server comes online with an RPG community, they’ll be in their own corner. They can participate as foreigners with another group, but that’s not theirs. There’s no central place for hosting these communities. If there was a server set up just to host groups, and the rest were for users, that would make sense. I immediately grew tired, trying to find all of the communities related to my interests so I can subscribe to all. I did that back in the day, joining forums and setting up a personal homepage with frames. In theory anyone can join any group, but they have to find it first.
If devs and leaders of the ActivityPub community are going to continue pushing the idea that everyone can talk to everyone else, we absolutely need some form of community merging for identically-named communities. For instance, a kbin.social user should be able to subscribe to cooking and see posts from cooking@*.* , not just cooking@kbin.social. That’s a UX issue just as much as a technical one.
Back in those days, BBS mail was less “email” and more “text stored on server”. To get all of your mail from multiples, you had to connect to each of the servers in sequence, download your mail, and then read it offline and reply (any good BBS software would remember where itwas from, and offer to call back and send each message). Multiplexing meant that you could have a BBS in the NYC area, it would be able to contact and download from one in, say, PA or wherever, and they could each download threads and messages, aka federated content. The pain has been massively reduced over time, and I’m glad. My next point bounces off yours:
You’re right, except in cases where I want a different psudonymity; my choice. In this case, I can’t check for new posts in, continuing with the same example, rpg@*.* without checking the group from each federated server. Posts are neither mirrored nor transcluded. That’s the point I’m getting at. I should be able to just open up m/rpg and have it cover all compatible groups.
I disagree with your latter point. kbin.social has hit a reasonable mass of users to have a strong local community and become a platform unto itself, running on kbin software. I’m not interested in a smaller community. I joined Reddit because it was the largest single-site community on the Web. I want the monolithic community, and I accept the costs that incurs, including ads or ad-first design. Right now, the fediverse is just fragments at the foot of the tower of Babel, each speaking a separate tongue, even if some are intelligible to others.
I don’t care about the difference between Mastodo, kbin, & Lemmy. They’re web software which are trying to replace a monolith, and have seen imited success. I don’t care about political leanings. I’m talking about a UX issue. If you want to defed from a site, and receive no more content, then so be it, that’s the right of an Admin.
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There’s still chaos in terms of instances and softwares. Until we all settle on one software that does the job, and until we have a way to have a single community again, Reddit remains the superior option. There is only one r/RPG, it works on Highlander rules - there can be only one. How many groups in the Fediverse named m/RPG or c/RPG are there? Why must each user be forced to answer that question?
That’s what would fix things for me; make the federation 100% behind-the-curtain so that I don’t have to think about it. I don’t care about the backend, I’m not hosting, the value to me is ad views only, not cash. I’d argue a solid 80% of users on corp-owned social media wouldn’t understand even if you simplify it. The fediverse/threadiverse is not a drop-in replacement for Reddit. Until it is, I’ll keep one foot in spez’s yard. If Meta’s Threads product does become an ActivityPub community and solves this issue, I’ll move there
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Apologies for any typos or bad formatting, I ran up against the 5000 character limit, and tried to edit down - and the ‘more’ popup actually pops under the next comment in my browser. I’m sure I could fix it somehow, but I believe everything is still intelligible.
No worries, it’s intelligble, and I get it as I got hit by the same thing.
Okay, but I don’t think you’ve adaquately explained why.
But it can also join with older, more established communities on lemmy instances like lemmy.world and the two can share content with each other. From a kbin.social account I can fully participate on lemmy.world bar two exceptions (owning a lemmy.world magazine and being a lemmy.world admin), and the reverse is equally true. Hence why I view lemmy/kbin as essentially a single platform.
In your case, “local” seems to mean central to the server. But why is this an inherently important attribute?
Again, the point of federation - the different parts (instances) merge into a single platform and community. Each instance hosts a smaller part of the whole community, instead of needing a megacorp capable of hosting the entire one on a single set of servers. Ideally, seamlessly, but in practice I admit there are still some rough edges to work out (e.g. multimagazine support).
There might be a point here when dealing with magazine fragmentation - but reddit has the same problem to a degree and we can borrow their solution (multireddits/multimagazines) to resolve that issue here as well.
Yes, but why? This is the part that is yet to be explained. I think the dangers of single-site centralization have already been demonstrated (e.g. loss of 3rd party apps, mods losing their subs when protesting, folks getting permabans for no apparent reason or for obviously incorrect reasons, etc.)
Following this to the extreme, you shouldn’t want to use either twitter or reddit, because they can’t talk to each other. Right? (Okay, single sign on is possible, but after that you still have to interact with their websites and apps separately.)
The fediverse lacks the first mover advantage of being born in the ninties or early aughts and also lacks big megacorp backing, but it has seen bigger growth than single site replacements like Squabbles or Tildes, and I suspect federation is a big driver of the difference there.
Except that they all speak the same language (ActivityPub) and differ from big monoliths like twitter and reddit that can’t talk to anyone else. So from an intelligibility perspective they are a step up.
Seconded.
Again, sounds like if we did have multimagazine support (as I described earlier) then things would be fixed for you. If I’ve missed anything, please detail that out.
So actually there’s an active effort to re-expose lemmy’s API as reddit’s own API (allowing folks to use things like PRAW with lemmy and even kbin thanks to the magic of federation). In theory third party apps could simply point to a server hosting this API, instead of reddit’s site, and just work with the fediverse.
I know that’s not what you meant, but that is pretty drop-in.
It likely would because it seems like it won’t federate with the rest of us and just either be a single instance or at best a group of instances controlled by fb that only federate with each other. Either way the number of duplicately named magazines is strictly limited.
That, sadly, I find myself in agreement with.
Then I’d argue that the fediverse looks more like the multiplexed BBS. I mean, federated is literally in the name. We don’t have the pain that comes from using non-multiplexed BBSes here.
No, I’m still right in this case. Your alts can still take advantage of federation and subscribe to magazines on other instances and reply and so forth.
No, not true. That also applies in the “original” case (where you only have one account in the fediverse). This is the multimagazine/multireddit thing already touched upon above. That’s legit, but let’s assume for the sake of argument these three points: 1) there is a working version of Artemis (the kbin app), 2) it supports multimagazines, 3) there’s a json format from the websites that list magazines that can be imported into Artemis to automatically generate a multimagazine for the user that’s local to the smartphone.
The above problem is solved, as you can use that Artemis, passing it the magazing listing website, and get a multimagazine set up with all the different RPG magazines. Maybe Artemis even supports optionally autoreloading so as new RPG magazines are setup (either in new instances, or someone makes a /m/TrueRPG on an instance that already has /m/rpg) your multimagazine is automatically updated.
They are to the instances. Some people are going farther and trying to mirror articles between different magazines using bots. However, I kind of feel the multimagazine feature would be enough to check this box.
We’re not there yet, but it’s also not too far off.
That said, I find your view that multimagazines are essential to be interesting. I only first heard about multireddits only after I’d permanently parted ways with reddit.
This is actually a good thing. Monoculture is bad, diversity is good.
Too easy for a single disease to wipe things out in that case.
Where one can be permabanned at random, with a non-functional appeals process where it’s virtually impossible to get ahold of an actual human? Where you can have the ownership of your sub that you spent years working on seized and taken away and handed over to someone else?
I’d argue that reddit has a different disease, and it’s showing why both centralization and monoculture are bad (third party apps being killed off because they never supported anything but reddit itself is an example of the latter).
If you are really going to push that reddit only has one sub for the role playing game community, then I’m going to need you to explain to me in detail how each of the above subs is different from r/RPG and from each other, and why they are a separate community from any other sub with rpg in the name.
Dunno, but how many subs in reddit that have rpg in the name are there? Why must each redditor be forced to answer that question? (The answer to the second is they don’t need to answer that question at all - either on reddit or on the fediverse.)
Since lemmy terms a “community” as the same thing as a kbin magazine, but community can also have a more expansive meaning, for clarity I will refer to lemmy magazines and use community in it’s more expansive scope.
rpg@foo.bar isn’t a real thing obviously but is your standing for an rpg magazine on any other instance.
rpg@lemmy.ml and rpg@kbin.social appear to be two separate magazines, hosted on two difference instances, and owned and moderated by two separate groups of people, but about the same topic - role playing games. If you ignore the instance part of the name, then they have identical names - which makes sense because they cover the same topic.
There is a UX issue on kbin where the instance part of the name is hidden, but there are also kbin styles that fix this.
Getting fixated on the identical name part is getting hung up over a minor technicality. Remember that reddit has a similar issue with very similarly named subs, where you might have /r/X and then /r/TrueX and /r/XOriginal - something that was encouraged by reddit’s own policy, where instead of getting involved with a mod of a sub they would just encourage you to make your own sub.
I think this is legitimate. This was solved on reddit with multireddits but kbin doesn’t have an equivalent yet.
Good point. Even if kbin/lemmy don’t support it, maybe we can get multimagazines working first at say an app level (like in Artemis).
I wouldn’t as that’s not what that view is for. You want to view a multimagazine that covers a given topic like rpg rather than see your own subscriptions.
They can go as far as to mod magazines in another instance. How are they thus foreigners? This is the point of federation - that equal standing to view, post, contribute, moderate, etc across instances.
From a centralized, non-federated point of view.
Because there is no need for that. I’d point to the example of r/blind - they continue to maintain their sub on reddit but officially the community is also available on their own lemmy instance as well as through their own website. One community, but not centralized anywhere.
With federation, you don’t have to go that far. Communicating across instances works automatically and you only need one account to do so, as opposed to creating a new account on each forum.
I’d recommend you check out some of the older posts on @RedditMIgration as there are lots of links to community (not magazine but community in the broader sense) run websites that try to solve this by listing all of the magazines on instances.
This is probably simpler and more fruitful than searching manually.
Honestly like, the dude you’re responding too is referencing BBSes and using the web before tabs. If a user like that is expressing some confusion, disorientation, or irritation, you should regard it the way you might your grandfather critiquing your home. He could be cantankerous, but he probably does have some insight stemming from decades of experience. NTOG and I have been on opposite sides of almost every thread I’ve encountered them in but it’s pretty clear they know their way around message boards, so if something is confusing them it might be a bit confusing yet.
I’m just as old as he is, maybe only a few years younger. I started to learn computers on a Commodore VIC 20 and 64, used tape drives for storage. I entered into BBS near the end of its popularity, however I used chat boards, AOL, and Geocities…old forums as well. I also moderated a forum for a few years on a Star Wars fan site before the admin shut it down and I moved to Reddit.
I have a lot of experience navigating forums as well…Fediverse sometimes takes a little bit more digging to find what you want. The point I was also trying to make is that these platforms are also in their infancy, their alpha programming state. So things will change, the platform will develop. This kind of thing isn’t built in a day, yet IMHO it’s so much nicer not having ads forced down my throat on desktop every five posts.
If this person doesn’t like the experience here, then there’s nothing saying he can’t go back to Reddit.
Hardly. People are taking the federation and making it more complex than it needs to be. For the average user, you pick the most popular website, you sign up, you subscribe to communities. That’s it. The nuances of the fediverse are irrelevant to a new user.
Genuinely I don’t understand the issue? You can search the Fediverse from one instance using the Magazines tab in Kbin to find places to sub, or sub to communities you find in all feed etc? Is the issue to do with the duplication of communities at present and lack of clarity which ones are more active?
For me at least the federated set up works well, but I need more visibility of total community sizes when searching Magazines. The search shows me the number of users subbed from this instance, where as I’d also like to know the total number of users subbed across the fediverse to guage how big that community is overall.
Also as you mention, it would be good to see duplicate communities merged across instances - but some of that is the reddit migration with 1000s of new users creating the communities with the same name on multiple instances in a short amount of time. Consolidation will take time (and sometimes there may be a good reason to have two separate communities with the same name) but long term there does need to be tools to allow communities to migrate base from one instance to another or merge; otherwise there is a risk a community could die if an instance falls over.
But I’m not switching between instances - I was initially and realised it was pointless. I have chosen to be on 2 instances - Kbin.social and Feddit.uk, deliberately to keep my UK and generic feed separate for now, and also to have a Kbin and Lemmy experience. I personally strongly favour Kbin at the moment. I don’t get the analogy of tabbed browsing or separate forums; you can see the whole fediverse from one instance (barring defederated instance like Beehaw). What am I missing?
It seems like it boils down to four things.
This is the first thing. I think this might not always be turning up everything due to the delays with federation. While we might be able to agree that this is good enough, I think another reasonable person can look at this and say that there’s room for some technical improvements.
This is the second one. As others have also pointed out, reddit has the same issue so it’s not unique to federation (tho this person seems to get hung up specifically on the precise naming to make it federation specific). I think we can adapt the reddit solution (multireddits) to here as well though to solve this (i.e. come up with a scheme for multimagazines).
This is the third one, but I think this is not valid. As you say, one can choose to have multiple accounts on other instances, but it’s not needed to participate on the other instances. This person says it’s their choice to have the other accounts - but then makes a big stink over the effort of having multiple accounts. Like if it’s that much trouble then just don’t do it.
I thought that this might be an issue but actually I raised this point and it wasn’t responded to.
The fourth one is that this person seems to consider kbin.social its own distinct platform - which doesn’t make sense in light of federation - and seems to prefer centralization in general (despite seeing the good from multiplexing BBSes), but I’m waiting on a response as to why this should be the case. Like what are the specific arguments to prefer centralization to a single server or a single instance?
It does occur to me however that if a paid shill were to try to promote a centralized service over an open source federated one, a way to win folks over might be to present oneself as a highly experienced technical person with direct expeirence in both kinds of systems, but who ultimately prefers centralization and has good technical arguments to back it up, including pointing out flaws or gaps with the existing federated system. And also insist that more people flock to the single overloaded flagship instance, perhaps causing it to overload and die off.
Not saying for sure that this is the case here, but food for thought.
Nah, I don’t think it is the case here at all. The guy had an opinion and was expressing it. I didn’t agree, but it’s good to see some proper discussion going on.
FWIW The biggest thing I would like to see implements sooner rather than later is a way to handle multi magazines, chiefly because it’s not actually that much of an issue yet. A bigger deal seems to be people asking is there a community for X, y, z. So if there’s a plan in place then that would be good.
But even the way on some Reddit subs mods sometimes have a list of ‘Associated Subs’ (so a Reading sub might basically give a shout out to Books, Literature, etc… would be good
You’re probably right, I may have been overreacting. I guess I’m a little bit paranoid about this because of a recent reveal, see https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/92172/Why-Reddit-and-u-spez-must-win and https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/121064/You-are-winning
I think @kbinMeta is the typical goto for things of this nature.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me too.
With respect to lemmy/kbin I am literally browsing these threads from startrek.website and it feels totally normal.
I mean, on Reddit the same communities can exist on the same site. I’m a member of r/europe and r/europes, and of r/introvert and r/introverts…
Federation isn’t the cause of competing communities. What happens on Reddit is that eventually enough of a mass of people congregate around one sub for a topic, and that becomes the de facto main one. The same thing will happen here.
True, and this is also a side effect of the mass migration from reddit. People have created multiple versions of the same community name on different instances. Things will consolidate over time, and people will navigate to the most active community (or communities).
But the other aspect of the fediverse is you can have more than one community with the same name; thats a benefit. Like why should there be only 1 “PCGaming”; different groups of users might want to form their own community which approaches the matter in their preferred way. So you could have 2, 3, or many different communities reflecting different ethoses, based on different instances. That’s not a bad thing, but might be hard for people to get used to initially coming from the monolithic approach on Reddit.