So… what's going on?

ThatOneKirbyMain2568@kbin.social to /kbin meta@kbin.social – 28 points –

Since the beginning of the year, there's been a bit of a pattern over on @kbinDevlog:

  • Ernest posts, saying he'll get back to regular devlogs in 1-4 days;
  • Absolutely nothing happens for the next 2 weeks or so;
  • Ernest posts again, saying he'll get back to regular devlogs in 1-4 days;
  • etc.

Now, it's understandable for your plans to change in response to unforeseen events popping up or foreseen events taking longer than expected. From what I can tell, the delays have been due to formalities and medical issues, and I absolutely believe that Ernest should prioritize his physical health over Kbin.

That being said, if you can't go back to the usual pattern of development within the time frame you promised, then it's best for people to know sooner so they aren't left wondering what's happening. If you said 2 days but you need to delay, I'd like to know soon after those 2 days as opposed to getting silence for 2 weeks.

This time around, the culprit of the silence may be complications in a hospital procedure he recently underwent as per his most recent devlog. However, that doesn't explain the periods of nothing before then, so I'm still left wondering why quick updates have been so infrequent over a 2-month period.

Additionally, there are some major problems being caused by Ernest's absence:

  • Big magazines that Ernest moderates, like @tech, are riddled with spam.
  • Abandoned magazine moderation have been unanswered, so people can't pitch in to deal with spam even if they wanted to.
  • Nothing has happened on the Codeberg for over 2 months (except for one translation-related change which wasn't done by Ernest), so we're in the dark as to what progress is actually being made.
  • Kbin is still, well, in an undeveloped state, meaning issues like poor microblog federation have persisted for months.

So, @ernest, if you're in a position to answer, what's going on rn, and could you have someone moderate the instance or work on the project in situations like this where you're absent? I hope this doesn't come across as unnecessary whining, but I think this pattern is becoming a genuine problem.

4

I think a lot of us have had the same thoughts looking around kbin.

We all appreciate the work Ernest has done, but we really need someone to dedicate some time to picking out a team to help him, but it seems like that's not happening for whatever reason. I know there's a few other people in the codeberg, but I believe there was a falling out there. What we really need in addition to that though is just generic admins.

Ernest said in a previous post with some Mbin drama that he's very, very slow to trust people, and that's why he's been slow to give anyone else admin access to the project.

That may have been okay when only a few hundred people were using Kbin, but the project far outgrew what a single person can manage, especially since he's not only the main developer of the backend and frontend of Kbin, but also the only admin, moderator of multiple communities, AND decided to tackle making a Mobile Kbin app since that other one became vaporware. That is WAY too much for a single person to handle and still have any sort of existence offline.

This has been brought to his attention, but as you mentioned, nothing changes, and he continues the cycle of putting incredible load on himself, and then burning out. It's not sustainable, and unfortunately his lack of trust in others, and an unhealthy level of self-reliance, will ultimately keep Kbin from thriving.

I understand the desire to keep kbin a solo project in order to maintain control over it, but if this is going to see any success in the long term, then there needs to be a team. I like kbin over lemmy for the interface and mocroblog integration, but the spam and lack of updates are taking its toll. At the very least, there needs to be another admin or two to look after things whenever Ernest isn't around.

At this point, the best thing would just to move to an instance using mbin, a fork created by many devs who contributed to and wanted to improve kbin but were upset at lack of progress. With Ernest's many absences all the improvements weren't being merged. Many instances using the name kbin, such as the one I'm on, have switched to mbin long ago and have many of the features and fixes that have been requested and long waited for.