Why do posts that aren’t from kbin show “kbin.social” next to the title?

CarlsIII@kbin.social to /kbin meta@kbin.social – 92 points –
59

Highly recommend both the script Kbin Federation Awareness and kbin social add home-instance name to username. Makes it a lot easier to tell where things are originating from at a glance!

The former takes people from other domains and makes their posts green text on green background. The colors are manually set and not reflective of any magazine styles or the like, but I have no idea why rgba(20, 45, 20, 1.0) is the color someone chose. I recommend anyone who wants that script edit line#41 to something like GM_addStyle('[data-is-federated-content="true"] { background-color: #EEE; }');, but even then this is a bit annoying to have to do manually.

It works on dark theme (I use only dark).

On dark it's light (white) text on dark green background, and it looks fine (I would prefer black or similar, but this works).

Your edit breaks dark design because you get white/grey background.

I can't read shit on comments now with the script that colors comments based on federation

I went a bit farther and used the built in variable to set color, as well as setting the font weight down to match the "n hours ago" text, and changing " - " to "@" so that the uesrname matched the standard fediverse string that you can put into search boxes

I'll publish this properly as soon as greasyfork sends me an email to authenticate my new account, but in the meantime here's the source. EDIT: Email has yet to arrive 13 hours later, I doubt it's going to. Anyone interested feel free to publish this somewhere it's easier for people to install.

// ==UserScript==
// @name        kbin social add home-instance name to username (modified)
// @namespace   english
// @description  kbin social add home -instance name to username, modified to match style and fediverse formatting
// @include     http*://*kbin.social*
// @version     1.16
// @run-at document-end
// @require       https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/jquery@3/dist/jquery.min.js
// @license MIT
// @grant       GM_addStyle
// ==/UserScript==

$( document ).ready(function() {
    $( ".user-inline" ).each(function() {
        // get username URL and text, then remove username from URL and paste the instance name after username (not if instance is home-instance of kbin.social

        var homeinstance = $(this).attr('href') ;
        var myname = $(this).text().trim();

        var homeinstance2 =  homeinstance.replace( "/u/@" + myname + "@"  , '');

        if( homeinstance2  !=   "/u/" + myname ){ //show nothing if home-instance kbin
            console.log(homeinstance2 );
            $(this).append( "<span>@" +  homeinstance2 +"</span>" );
        }
    });
}); //end each username a href

var style = document.createElement('style');
style.type = 'text/css';
style.innerHTML =   '#content a.user-inline span{color: var(--kbin-meta-text-color); font-weight: 400}' ;

document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(style);

Wish I could use these on FF mobile.

You can use Tampermonkey on Firefox mobile to run these scripts. I just installed both of them they work great!

This is the way! Though I personally prefer Violentmonkey.

While I personally agree with you on desktop Firefox, Firefox on Android (or at least most user-facing versions of it), have a curated list of approved addons and it's generally impossible or at best incredibly difficult to install any addons outside that list. Tampermonkey is included but Violentmonkey is not.

If you enable developer mode in android firefox, there is option to add custom addon collection.

It is only couple of steps.

Also firefox beta/nightly has couple of additional addons by default

Not incredibly difficult, it just requires 5 min setup, and creating your add-on collection

All of these userscripts are great. I just wish someone would do one to get rid of card view

You mean the thing you get when you hover over someone's profile pic?

Why!?

Not sure if it's just a me problem or a wider known issue but both of those scripts stop working for me when I have infinite scrolling enabled. They work great on the 1st page but when it loads the next page they both stop working.

I think I remember that it was explained as follows: the link next to the title shows where the thread (or link or image) is hosted. Since kbin.social has a copy of the thread on it's servers, it shows it is from there (clicking on the title will get you there). If you post a link from, say cnn.com, the text will say "cnn.com" as that is where the title-click will get you and where the text is hosted.

@Guadin I can only speak for myself, but seeing “kbin.social” as the “source” of a post because the “source” it’s referring to is a local copy is actually counterintuitive and confusing. If a post was made in Lemmy.world, it should say Lemmy.world. Otherwise, it is not providing information that is useful in anyway. After your explanation, yes, of course it would make sense that a post from other instance has a copy here in my local instance, but isn’t that just something we can just assume? Especially since nowhere else on the post (while viewing my feed) does it indicate which instance the post is from (you have to either click on the post and scroll past all the comments, click on the community name and scroll past all the posts on the first page—impossible if you’ve enabled infinite scrolling—or do some shit with copying and pasting a url that I don’t want to bother doing because I should just be able to tell where a post is from by looking at it. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.)

The problem goes in how you would change the coding on that, since it's based on how the fediverse works.

To see the original ite it's from I look at the magazine on the sidebar below the thread stats, that'll tell you where it comes from.

@Ragnell

@Guadin

Sigh…there’s no sidebar on mobile. Does nobody else here use mobile?

If you are on kbin you can access the sidebar info on mobile by tapping the three bars/‘hamburger’ icon at the top left of the page once you are in a thread.

Well, from the front page there is a "Posted by dude to thiscommunity" note, and if you press on the community name on mobile there's a little popup that tells you the full address of the community.

You would change it to return the instance name, which is only so hidden it appears in every Misskey or Calckey post, site logo included. It does require using an if statement or two, though, to account for out-of-network links.

That depends on how you want it. While I get your point and struggle with it myself, it shouldn't really matter where the original is. The name after the title is mostly useful with pictures, videos and links. You'll see where it is from, if it is reliable (who clicks sketchy links or reads fake news) and where you're going when you click it. For articles, I agree it could be better. Maybe they'll change it to make it more intuitive.

@Guadin What would make sense to me, is if the community name shown was the full community name. For example, I should show Chat@beehaw.org” instead of just “Chat”. The fact that it only shows “chat”, and the only visible instance name is “kbin.social” makes things extra confusing.

And yes, I know you can get this information from a certain amount of clicking and scrolling, or from the sidebar which isn’t visible on mobile, but I see no reason why it couldn’t just show “@beehaw.org” after “Chat.”

Yes, that is actually a nice idea. Or keep the formatting as is (with magazine avatar and name) but add an icon for external magazines. Or maybe add the "(kbin.somethingelse)" text over there so it is extra clear that the originating instance is not the one you are currently using.

And besides that there are maybe ways to see the same information (albeit in a cumbersome way), ideas to make kbin/the fediverse better and more user friendly is always good. Getting into the fediverse is weird already (the whole concept is not really something people are used too, besides perhaps email), so better make all the rest a breeze.

@Guadin

Huh…so if I replied to that post, I wouldn’t be replying to the actual post, but a copy of the post? Are the comments I’m reading responding the the original post or the copy?

As the OP I am seeing responses from many difference instances during the thread. That is the fun part

Well, technically you will respond to a "copy" of the post. However, everything is federated (shared). So your comment (the "original" on kbin.social) will be a "copy" on the other server (for instance lemmy.world). So while technically speaking people could be responding to "copies" of comments/post, everything will be shared between servers.

To make it more clear (perhaps): I have my own instance/server (k.fe.derate.me) and I use my own link, website and interface to type this reply (not related to kbin.social). When I hit "send", my reply will be stored on my instance. However, kbin.social will recieve a "message" from my instance that I replied. kbin.social will then save a "copy" of my reply on their instance/server and you will receive a notification that I replied. When you open your notifications and click on it you will see my reply, but it will be the local copy of kbin.social.

So I’m on kbin. And your comment can be described as

On kbin.social from k.fe.derate.me

And my reply when you see it would be

On k.fe.derate.me from kbin.social

everything is federated (shared)

hopefully. it's early days so i dont think everything always makes it. unless i'm dumb. cause i've made posts to magazines on other servers and it seemed to never make it there. and could have been for any number of reasons. its the wild west right now.

That is true. Federation is broken on lemmy (due to an update and due to blocking (not defederating) by lemmy.ml) and kbin is in alpha/beta test so also not working 100% reliable. And then you have the massive surge of users which no one was prepared for so a lot of servers where running at max capacity and dropping or delaying updates.

As I understand it, you'd be responding to the copy and (after a random amount of time) the comments on each copy would sync.

To drive this home, recent updates to some lemmy instances have caused them to have janky federation issues despite not being blocked. Now and again comments across instances won't show up or I'll only get the thread under an image post that for some reason forgot the image when it copied over.

But the original was fine when I checked. I just don't have an account there in order to comment and it hadn't synced correctly for me.

Oh and by the way, I made an error. So if you see my long answer twice (once as a reply to you and once as a new comment) that was my dumb ass using the wrong input box.

The Kbin.social you're seeing isn't the instance it's in, it's the site you're going to.

Like if the page was linking to imgur, you wouldn't see any instance. You would see Imgur.com

Every text-based post is going to say kbin.social unless it's using a direct link to the instance source (in which case you would be going to that instance's site rather than the article as it shows in kbin)

If you hover over the startrek, it will show what instance it's from.

It could be good to add, but basically the instance source isn't shown directly on the feed.

edit: I don't get the downvotes though. The thread was asking why it is the way it is. I'm just explaining how it works, not saying that there isn't a problem with it (also noted a bit further down I do agree it should be added somewhere)

@AnonTwo

I am on mobile, and therefore can not hover.

Which is a good point that it should probably be put directly on the feed somewhere, I agree there

Even on desktop, it's not a good UX. It'll get changed. Ernest just needs time, and more people need to contribute code.