What is going on with kbin - a week has passed with no sign of any life

TheVillageGuy@kbin.melroy.org to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 2 points – What is going on with Kbin - Fediverse - Mbin
kbin.melroy.org

I know some of you consider this as documented whining. I hear you but won't stop sharing my opinion and reminding. I recommend continuing commenting on the original post to keep it a bit organized (this post is a link to it)

Update: this thread has gotten out of hand. This is not what I intended, this is not what anybody should want. Let's leave it at this, for now.

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This user seems to obsessed.. All his/her previous post has been about how kbin is dying and that there now is a new fork of it. 7 days is nothing. As far as I know there are very few developers on kbin, cut them some slack will yah.

I've heard talk of mbin being a fork with more active development, is it getting "ahead" of kbin or is kbin taking changes back from it? No disrespect intended to Earnest, but a single developer probably can't keep up with all this on their own.

I'm extremely in favor of being able to interact with both Lemmy people and Mastodon people, and I wanted to switch to kbin because it seems like one of a very few solutions that can do that.

Initially I was pretty skeptical of mbin, because as a general rule the "screw the existing maintainers let's fork" people are usually mistaken about some things, but I have to say having installed and worked with both, I like mbin significantly better. My experience is minimal, and the fork was pretty recent, but mbin fixes some specific things that I had trouble with or that irked me during the short time I was working with kbin. Some significant instances also seem like they've switched over to mbin. Having kbin's "flagship" instance down for like a week didn't really help either. As I understand it, the mbin philosophy is "let's fix up the backend and get federation more solid before we do much more in terms of big new features" which I can get behind.

They're both very rough and early pieces of software, honestly as is the entire Lemmy side of things it seems to me. If you're interested because you don't want things like the 0.19 federation breakage, then I am sad to report that you might find broken stuff in kbin / mbin as well.

I honestly have no idea about the drama side of things. I wish all good things for Ernest and I'm happy with the software he 99% created. kbin has some things (e.g. combined Lemmy+Mastodon posts all in one home screen) which mbin doesn't have, which makes it kind of a shame that they're being developed apparently irrevocably separately at this point. IDK. Like I say I have no idea about that side of things.

Just my 2c as a person that installed mbin recently and likes it

(Edit: To answer the specific question, it seems like they're completely separate at this point. They split in early October with no synchronization in the separate paths of development since then, it looks like to me.)

I think this is the most level headed pro-mbin comment I ever read.

If the project could attract and retain more of this energy it would only be a good thing.

You’re making me wonder now what weird shit I’ve wandered my way into

Edit: Welp, I looked into the drama; not enough to really understand it but enough to get a general idea. All I can really say is I want no part of it.

Well I'm not involved so don't let me put you off it. :)

In broad principal I think a lively kbin fork is desirable.

It is very strange that the people associated with it spend their time doing posts like this one. No matter what you think of someone development style, tracking their behavior like this is fucking weird. Bordering on harassment. And in service of promoting their platform.

Why not announce features and bug fixes like a normal project?

But honestly I am hoping that if some more calm people get mixed up this will cool down.

Agreed, I also hope for this to be the case (and tried my besht to facilitate it), but as you can see you could say that mbin's community building is ...not so great right now.

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Mate, you are a none track record.

Recent posts:

What is going on with kbin - a week has passed with no sign of any life

What is going on with Kbin

Issues with the functioning of kbin.social

Why is kbin so full of empty stuff?

Why is kbin so full of empty stuff?

Mbin is born - Fork of kbin

Looks like the user deleted some of these posts by now.. Only two are up. But this is ridiculous behaviour..

That's because those made up posts were never made, not by me, at least

but still; this is nonsense... one week of inactivity and ur calling someone out for that? Like what?

It's not one week of inactivity, this has been going on for months. If you want to start accusing me of things please read into the entire situation first, starting in October, on the kbin dev matrix

It's not one week of inactivity, is has been going on for months

Looks at 2 months straight of kbin devlogs since October, when the man was having pretty significant personal issues

Not to mention he was: recently sick; tended to financial issues, and personal matters; formalities relating to the project. This isn't even mentioning that he communicated this in the devlog magazine. Or the fact that he has implemented suggestions multiple times at the request of the community to enhance QoL, and allowed users to have agency in making mod contributions.

You might want to take your own advice. This has also allowed me to revise my earlier statement. You people are actually insane.

I am fully aware, you don't have to inform me about the situation. Reading the devlogs alone is nowhere near enough to get a grasp of the full situation.

Please link to your previous statement so I can read it. I hope you did leave your original one as well.

You are calling people insane, defaming them without due diligence, think about that before continuing

defaming them without due diligence, think about that before continuing

The irony here is unbelievable rofl you can't make this up. My previous statement was calling you childish and desperate for attention. Thanks for reminding me of that fact, so I can stop wasting my time. It is very clear you're not interested in a genuine and constructive conversation.

It seems you are suggesting I am defaming somebody here. That would be ironical, I fully agree and I'd join you laughing, at myself. If I am misinterpreting you let me know. However, please do prove somehow that I am defaming somebody, anybody. I would seriously be delighted to be proven wrong in this matter.

Calling me childish and desperate for attention. Way less striking than calling an entire group of people insane, but still unnecessarily degrading. Resorting to such language comes across as being desperate to winning a conversation.

About constructive conversation. Calling people insane is not the way to enter one. Talking about irony.

I am very interested to hearing how and where I defamed anybody.

I mean, I'm all for options, and I'm glad there's plenty of folks working to make sure there's alternatives to a single way of doing things, but are still federated.

But, dude, you're being a bit of a douche here. It's whatever, as long as mods of this C/ don't have a rule against it, but just from the casual user perspective, your post is douchey. Maybe that's intentional, though I don't think so, and I hope not. But there it is.

It’s weird to advertise yourself like this, just post that you’re welcoming new members for your cool project

If that were my intention, I would. If things were going ok with kbin I wouldn't have posted this. Or if the chaos in October hadn't happened

I just don’t get why it’s a big deal, kbin is a beta passion project and forking it is encouraged, why spend your time upset about someone’s project even if it’s chaotic?

I am not upset, if anything I am a bit worried about losing loads of kbin users should kbin.social fail

@TheVillageGuy take a look at this post that showed up on my feed along with the present one: Why I started Sublinks: A timeline of events.

It seems like this person had a somewhat similar experience to yourselves in that they were frustrated with the development of lemmy. Some effort was made to contribute but it didn't work out. The frustrations mounted and eventually a new project was the only way forward.

Same the mbin folks, a chat server was a useful off-threadiverse venue where ideas coalesced and relationships were built. As a participant in mbin do you catch my drift that they are roughly parallel trajectories? I'm not in either community don't know the details.

But notice how the problems with other people or orgs is only mentioned in that they are relevant to this story. And while it does allude to some problems which were emotionally taxing, the focus on what was done to fix it and the outcomes.

So far the mbin project still exists and I do see people using it. If it's going to be a long term thing youse should consider how you are representing yourselves. Being a weird Earnest accountability stalker is off putting. If you were doing it on your own behalf it would be a little disturbing. But you so clearly are doing it as some sort of ambassador in order to suggest people use mbin; and other mbin people have said similar things so I am not intending to single you out. This behaviour makes you and by extension mbin seem like a bunch of unhinged petty drama queens. It give a shine to the project as a whole. It is unnecessary. It will continue to have no helpful impact on the outcomes of kbin.

I think it is possible at this point to set a new tone if you want. Try the link, maybe even get to know these folks if you don't already because I bet it would be productive. Youse are probably facing similar issues with federation. Just need to decide what chat software to use.

This behaviour makes you and by extension mbin seem like a bunch of unhinged petty drama queens.

Personally, there's already absolutely no way I'm ever going to use mbin, no matter what, just because these people nauseate me.

Agreed, every post I see from them further paints them as very childish and desperate for attention.

Yeah honestly feels like finding a McD clown advertising inside a Burger King..
And every fork gives me the idea of stretching resources further thin.

Yeah that makes sense and frankly I was a bit scared at first that mbin wouldn't last long. But it's still here and actively being developed. What we have to try to avoid Indeed is forking again.

Your opinion is welcome and duely noted. I am posting this on my own behalf, no others related in any way to mbin are involved

When I have time I will read the link you've supplied

However, Please don't spin the situation of kbin so that it looks like I'm the one causing it or making it up. Reality remains that one person controls the main hub kbin.social and has proven and admitted before that he can't handle it by himself.

However, Please don't spin the situation of kbin so that it looks like I'm the one causing it or making it up.

... nobody did...

... you do realize that nobody did, right? Read the post again.

Sure. If you do too.

This behaviour makes you and by extension mbin seem like a bunch of unhinged petty drama queens.

every post I see from them further paints them as very childish and desperate for attention.

What's a kbin?

kbin is federating server product, like lemmy, but also includes the miroblog portion of AP.

kbin.social is the flagship instance of this software.

mbin is the community fork of kbin, made after concerns regarding the original developers restricted development pipeline.

many of us are concerned that kbin.social could go sideways at any time because it seems to lack any communicative management or development.

there are several mbin instances that can provide a near identical experience that are prepared to assist users should hey need a new home.

A different ActivityPub application something like Mastodon+Lemmy in one.

This is exactly the reason I forked kbin in the past, the fork is community-focused called Mbin.

Dude, just build a better product and let it speak for itself. Or maybe try contributing to kbin. It’s not cool to always be harping on the guy for his development pace and trying to pull people over to your fork. Like, we’re supposed to hop over there because you’ve made more commits this week? How do we know your project would be any better off if it ever blows up the way kbin did?

That kbin dude got tens of thousands of subscribers overnight and then put on blast with bug reports and feature requests. He’s done a good job running the site too. He’s got a pretty good track record as far as I’m concerned. He hasn’t asked for shit in return except a little space to maintain his sanity.

Your sympathy for Ernest is good, we all sympathise with him. My main point is and has always been that kbin.social should not be run by one person alone, especially if he's having a hard time in his daily life.

So help him out instead of trying to steal the project out from under him. I see there are other contributors in the kbin repository. This fork comes off as really sleazy.

Ernest put in the work and established a community. Now somebody comes along and tries to move that community over to a fork. That’s some bullshit. Zero creativity with the name too. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this group tries to monetize this thing if they manage to replace kbin. Community-focused my ass. If it was community-focused, you wouldn’t be on here trying to split the community.

It's a long story.. I did help Ernest / Kbin for quite a while actually. Feel free to contribute to kbin.

I have offered him my help, several times, when he finally responded he explained he's bad at excepting help. That's fine, but that's one of the things which, as I've said in this thread before, makes him unsuitable for running kbin.social by himself

Your language... sends odd signals to people. e.g., Kbin.social is running on his own computer, which he bought, with his own money, yes? Maybe he asks for voluntary contributions to defray electricity and ISP costs. The Kbin software is separate from the Kbin.social server that runs it, you see what I mean? Why try to take his own computer away from him? Just build something better and people will flock to it instead. Heck, some people have abandoned the Fediverse entirely bc they could not figure it out, and went back to Reddit. To each their own.

Btw many of us see what is going on - have no fear about that. I personally left Kbin three weeks ago when it was down for just days and days at a time, after a similar incident a few weeks before that, and similar issues ever since the project began. But it was always free for me, I don't believe I have any "ownership" of either the server or the project. And I made my choice for me, but if others want to stay, that's also fine. You are trying to make sure that we know that Mbin exists? We know. Make it better and we might try it out. Give up on Kbin and step out ahead of it, if you want. If you are frustrated by the need to wonder and guess at how he will do things in the future, then bypass him entirely, if you can. He seems to want that too.

Btw check out this announcement. There are many great options, and it is wonderful to have choices, e.g. in how communicative the admins are at the server of your choice. Or any of us at any time can start our own - the sheer beauty of the Fediverse!:-)

Paid for, in part, by the nlnet foundation. So not just his own money, now that you mention it. But that's not what bothers me neither am I trying to take his computer away. What I have asked him to do, several times, and I am not the only one, is to make sure that should something go bad in his life again other people can take over for him (temporarily)

That does sound reasonable, and I thought he gave in awhile ago i.e. at least added admins to the instance, which retains him as the sole "owner" but allows others to step in for the more day-to-day work, as you said. But at the end of the day, what he does is up to him.

And what you choose to do about it is on you - e.g. if you want to write to the nlnet foundation asking them to communicate with him and possibly withhold further funding unless certain conditions are met, that is your business.

My own business was to communicate what I did, and now it is up to you to listen to the advice offered, or not. That is the essence of freedom, so please feel free to not have to worry about something outside of your control - his actions - by focusing on what you alone can do, your own actions.:-)

I assume nlnet are capable of looking after their own business, it's none of mine anyway. And from what Ernest has written in the past I suspect that he's lost the grant.

He has made several promises, several times but never stuck to his words. He's repeating his actions again, although it's not as apparent this time as before, because there's less people involved.

Admins is not enough, there have to be people he trusts, with full access to the server, to make sure the community can be preserved

That's why I left. And you too. The difference is, I give it precisely zero thought on a daily basis. Don't let him run your life even after you've gotten away from it. Forgive him even, if you can - not for his sake, but for yours - is what I guess I am trying to say. Also, the community has already somewhat shattered, as people are leaving it? Except I did not delete my account, I simply stopped using it (well, I did make one comment in all that time since), which illustrates how any metric based on user count may not measure the situation accurately (and ofc daily posts can always be complicated by bot accounts).

You could contribute to Lemmy perhaps, e.g. try to help get it to federate with Mastodon instances... or something. And as you said, you already are contributing to Mbin. Those kinds of positive changes (i.e., in the sense of moving forward, rather than looking back) are all that you can do, in the end.

Well, that's my two cents, fwiw:-).

@melroy Dude, you need to reign in your street team. This post and all the others like it are harassment done on behalf of you and your project. And you are here posting in support, condoning it.

Tracking a person's online activity is fucked up stalker behavior. It doesn't matter what role they play in what project. It is harassment and obviously intended to menace. No matter what OP says, everyone can see this is the case. Look at the comments on the page. Do you see comments like this about any other open source project?

It's really likely this will escalate. Nothing good is going to come of this. Kbin won't be developed any faster. Mbin's reputation will deteriorate, attract fewer users/contributors than it otherwise might have and specifically repel friendly helpful people who don't appreciate this kind of thing. Your instances may be de-federated for failing to stop harassment. OP will sink further and further into whatever miserable spiral they are in. You personally will be associated with all of it because as a community leader you come here to encourage OP in this unhinged behavior. Find a way to redirect this energy into something that is useful for your project, or disassociate from it.

I was reminded of the situation by a notification of this comment on my post. I realized it was a week ago and out of curiosity checked Ernest's dev blog and the codeberg repo to see if any progress had been made. That is not tracking, that is not stalking, that is not harassment.

You said before you were not involved. Well, now you are. This thread has now been escalated from defamation to false accusations against me, by you.

For real, stop trying to silence me, @melroy and others by pretending I'm committing crimes, and by trying to install fear of further escalation.

Stop trying to blame me for this situation.

Wow, I didn’t realize making more commits and changes means something is better.

I mean, if something is working and it’s working decently well… does it need a nightly change or frequent updates? It not being updated as often as it normally does is not a bad sign imo.