/kbin - a few quick announcements
ernest@kbin.social to /kbin meta@kbin.social – 236 points – Good morning! :) Today I want to focus mainly on reviewing the pull requests you've submitted. There are many great things there that will help improve the kbin experience. That's amazing, thank you! I'm also in the final stages of sorting out the infrastructure-related formalities. Soon, the situation with the website's functionality should stabilize, and the traffic from the fediverse will gradually be restored. I've decided to delegate some tasks as I can no longer oversee everything at this stage. There are many offers of help for which I'm very grateful, and I haven't had a chance to respond to some of them yet because I only just saw them - a lot is happening, really.
As I mentioned before, new possibilities have emerged that I couldn't have imagined before. All of this is thanks to your support; you are incredible, and I thank you. That's why it's crucial for me to ensure transparency in everything we do and provide regular reports. I want to share as much information behind the scenes as possible. That's why it may seem like it's taking a long time, but I truly want to make the most of every cent.
Now, onto the bad news. I messed up.
The workload overwhelmed me, and I couldn't read all your messages. I will diligently work my way through them, but I need time.
The registration system is far from perfect, so from time to time, I manually verify and activate accounts whose activation links didn't arrive. Please check again later if you find yourself in such a situation.
The queue for account deletions is stuck. Manual fix is needed, which will be difficult until the infrastructure is moved. I have recorded all 230 account deleiton requests, and each one will definitely be deleted, but I also need time for that. I apologize for this. If someone wants their account to be immediately deleted, please send an email through the contact form starting with "DELETE MY ACCOUNT" - it will be easier for me to filter it out, and I will delete the account manually.
That's all from me. I'm going back to stirring the cauldron. Thank you for all the messages and kind words. Thank you for being here. Have a nice day!
Since Ernest doesn't mention it himself, I would like to point out that he has a BuyMeACoffee account where you can donate to him to support him for all his hard work.
Thanks I just bought him one =D
Just found this site - definitely going to be putting an effort in to getting the formula1 kbin populated.
Let's goooooooo
Bwoah
Ohhh, let’s lick that stamp and send it! 🏎️
Lights out and away we go!
FYI, there is already a lemmy community for f1 gaining some traction. Do with that what you will, just putting it out there :)
!formula1@lemmy.ml
A shame it is at lemmy.ml. I'd really like to avoid that instance, but a lot of communities are really active there.
What’s your reasoning behind avoiding lemmy.ml? Just curious as I’ve been trying to find my landing place. I’ve enjoyed kbin but have found it a bit difficult to navigate, whereas lemmy.ml and beehaw.org both seem pretty straightforward.
Concerns about the admin team and about the main dev.
Sources:
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379
https://redd.it/143o5xd
Yea they are mostly tankies. Like proper "CCP is actually good, there is no issues in xinjiang" stuff.
I've read somewhere that it's being run by "tankies". I didn't know what that meant so I looked it up and it seems that "tankies" are very militant communists.
The bigger concern is that they're very pro Russia and pro CCP, despite neither of those really being communist anymore. Two countries that are actively spreading disinfo on the internet.
Their page is a link away from a huge manifesto on GitHub with "Mao did nothing wrong," among other absurdities.
Tankies defy logic.
In the original sense of the word, it was specific to people who favored Soviet military intervention in Eastern Bloc countries. Today, I see it used on the UK political subreddits more-commonly used more broadly for people who are really anti-West and authoritarian far-left. Like, if someone takes the position that Stalin had the right idea and his vision of the Soviet Union was the right way for the world to go, they'd probably be called a tankie regardless of their specific views on the Soviet interventions in Eastern Europe.
It isn't used much here in the US, that I'm aware of.
Sadly, until federation is working, it may as well not exist.
That said, when it does start working I look forward to the battle of the f1 communities.
Eventually I think migrating communities will be a simple task. I’d love all my favorite sports communties to have an active place on kbin.
Tangent: my feeling rn is anything completely non-political should be on kbin. I’m not bashing Lemmy oe anyone else for their political stance - I probably agree with most of it - but it’s also what a casual user is going to be turned off by and it’s not what I want to be a deciding factor in wether or not a community of [x] fans is united by. Maybe it’s just cuz I’m a casual fan of a lot of sports, and/or I am someone who uses sports as a means to escape the bullshit.
Anyways, a welcome sight to see F1 on Kbin. Now someone get the NFL and Soccer and I’m good.
there is an inconsistency I have noticed between kbin and lemmy in the format that such links are presented. The problem is in the exclamation mark. In lemmy it is required to show it is a community, however here it is not
For example if you write it as https://kbin.social/m/formula1@lemmy.ml you'll see it works. (Ok, the content is outdated because of the known problems but the you get the point)
relatedly, trying to do an @ communityname sometimes mixes up a link to the user with that name vs the community with that name.
It appears to be federating now.
Suggestion: If you have work that can reasonably be farmed out, you might try writing up a list of what you need people for and asking for any volunteers and setting up something to let them handle some of the load.
I don't know whether that will work, but just doing reviews of pull requests on GitHub for a new project expanding rapidly may be a full-time effort for someone, much less all this other stuff.
From experience escalating other projects, he's probably at the stage where the urgent (the site collapsing) is done before the important (delegating tasks). If he stops to delegate tasks, the normal functioning of the site will collapse.
Anyone who wants to volunteer and don't know where to start can start by going to the currently opened PR and reviewing them, testing them, improving them. Of course @ernest will have to review them afterwards. But if three independent developers say they already tested and reviewed and reported the potential mistakes, that makes his life much much easier.
The author of "The Phoenix Project" would argue that you gotta just take the L for a minute while you reorganize. Because a lynchpin like ernest is never going to have a good moment to stop and reorganize, you just gotta do it now.
I very much agree with this suggestion!
Right now the future of Kbin rests solely on /u/ernest's shoulders. That's a bus factor of 1.
He's apparently found some people to help with the infra side of things - which is the hardest thing to do. This means more focus on improving the product. :D
@ernest Please hang in there and take a breath. This site is amazing quality for a beta given the insane traffic coming over from the /r debacle. Pace yourself. Development and testing is a marathon, not a sprint (no pun intended).
I hope the many new arrivals (like me) appreciate how far kbin has come so quickly. /r wasn't solid for quite a while.
I've been in a position similarly unenviable to yours. It's exciting but stressful. Even if it all feels incredibly high-priority, don't burn out; it's a marathon not a sprint!
I've been picking through issues and working on fixes locally to try and get you bundled-up PRs that use the systems and conventions you've already established, instead of just taping discontinuous new on top of everything. However, despite being a grumpy old PHP and JS veteran, I'm somehow a relative newbie to Symfony and Stimulus, so I hope I'm not doing more harm than good lol.
I think /kbin has a big future.
This is a WILD situation for anyone to find themselves in. Thank you for all your hard work and warm welcome.
Take care of yourself, eat your veggies and don't skip leg days. Once again - great job, thanks!
Just chiming in to say how much I appreciate all the hard work you’re putting into this. Managing this sudden influx of traffic with so little down time and such grace is really impressive and hasn’t gone unnoticed. Cheers mate.
@ernest, have you seen this?
By u/blahism over on r/KbinMigration
@ernest, have you seen this?
By u/blahism over on r/KbinMigration.
double post
The system was having problems a few days back.
Hey @ernest what time zone are you working out of? Just so people know when you might be active.
Lately, it has been very inconsistent with that, but there wiull come a time to stabilize it ;p CEST
Thank you so much for your transparency and efforts! The only thing I can envision you're going through is that scene from Silicon Valley in which they try to bump server capacity and scale. I can imagine that it is not an easy task, it is amazing what you have achieved so far and I am confident that the platform will grow over the months to come.
@ernest I've been working on a 3rd party app for kbin. I'm gonna be running a beta test within a month or two. Would love to know about official API support, seems like you're pretty darn busy. For now I'm working around that and cloudflare protection but not sure how that'll scale eventually heh. So just an FYI.
@ernest lol so you got slashdotted and people are paying you a ***** ton on buy me a coffee as an apollogee. lol wtf. never change reddit and internet.
Being overwhelmed is not messing up. Taking care of number 1 should always be a priority.
Am glad to see some delegation happening. Developing, running and modding a service as large as KBin has become is no easy task for 1 person and you've done spectacular so far.
Number 2, too. Hemorrhoids are no joke.
Anyone else having a problem with notifications? I receive zero notifications about any post or comment I make here if someone comments on it. Dunno why but I only know people commented if I find my post or refresh it later....... is this a setting I'm missing?
@cassetti Currently, only notifications with user mentions seem to be working. I will try to fix that today.
I’m just in awe that you’ve managed to keep this instance up. Congratulations on that and your clear communication. It really must be overwhelming.
Good news you’ve found people to delegate to.
First and foremost, I try to make it a good fun :) Yah, the people here are wonderful.