UnanimousStargazerWhat's the benefit of using Kbin over Lemmy?
I set up both, and kbin was up while I couldn’t get on world for 36 hours. Granted it turns out I had to just quit the app to get it loading but I didn’t know that for a couple days and kbin worked fine
I like the UI better, like that it interacts with things like Mastadon, and, what was honestly the biggest thing, doesn't have a dumb auto-refresh I can't disable (which Lemmy did (at least for a while)).
They both have a lot of growing up to do. Not being able to collapse threads in kbin is driving me crazy; especially for long threads with many nested levels, I can't tell what is even top-level.
There's two different PRs with collapsible threads in codeberg. Fingers crossed one or the other get merged soon.
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/167
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/704
Add support for collapsable comment threads/trees on click
#### Resolves https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/9 ### Description When you click on the comment collapse/expand indicator, it will now collapse and hide all its children. If you click it again, it'll show all its children again. NOTE: I've opted for a simpler solution for nested comment threads (if you have a collapsed thread in another collapsed thread, expanding the one at a higher level will expand the whole thing, TODO: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/284) for now to get this out as a "V1" ### Testing Tested it by bashing locally on a thread's comments with various levels of nesting (gif attached). Also tested on user profile where comments show and there are no regressions. ### Demo GIFs  
Nice! I knew about 167 but not 704. Here's hoping!
Lemmy got rid of the auto refresh you’re referring to. No more live updates.
That's good news. I'm fine with it as an optional setting, but I hated trying to read something and poof
exscapeThere are several userscripts for collapsible threads, I've used them since like day 2 after the Reddit shutdown!
I use this one: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/468923-kbin-improved-collapsible-comments
Works both on desktop and Android (Firefox + Tampermonkey).
This. Is. AWESOME! So many so cool features!
1chemistdownLook up kbin enhancement suit KES. They have android, iOS and Mac that I know of. Simple to add and they’re implementing a lot of features
kbin Enhancement Suite: a community-curated script manager that lets you customize your kbin experience - /kbin meta - kbin.social
A couple of weeks ago, @[email protected] made [this post](https://kbin.social/m/kbinStyles/t/75584/kbin-megamod-proposal-and-proof-of-concept-for-integrated-collection-of) about a project that they were working on. Since then, @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] and I have been hard at work, and we...
This. Is. AWESOME! So many so cool features!
I hate that I have to rely on some other add-in, but this makes things so much easier. Thank you!
The auto refresh was what brought me here. The layout kept me.
For people who prefer Kbin for the interface: Lemmy has alternative interfaces of their own. See alexandrite.app/for the most common one.
maegul (he/they)A working link: alexandrite.app
Also vger.app for mobile.
If you’re on lemmy.world, they’ve put vger natively on the instance at m.lemmy.world.
I would prefer staying on Kbin but until voyager implements Kbin accounts I’ll have to stay on this one. Voyager is just OP.
YMSThanks for the pointer. This really looks much more pleasant than vanilla Lemmy, I'll have to keep an eye on that.
nickapos@[email protected] lemmy is a bit more mature so it has more users also there is an element of politics.
I think both have a lot of space for improvement and we should keep politics out of the discussion.
I think both have a lot of space for improvement and we should keep politics out of the discussion.
IHeartBadCodeLiterally was that Kbin started with the letter K, and thus matched with my going DE, KDE. So really just a matter of taste I guess. I always recommend people to use what they like.
donutsHonestly I mainly just wanted to try Kbin after having already tried Lemmy before.
ChozoKbin also has Mastodon integration (though it's still being worked on and isn't in its final form yet), which I think is handy because I'm hoping that Kbin doesn't defederate from Meta, so that I can also still have an account to keep in touch with people I care about who are going to be using Threads without having to manage another account elsewhere.
I also prefer the layout to Kbin better. While the stock Lemmy layout is nice (it does a fantastic job of emulating the old.reddit layout), I like the fact that Kbin shows a little bit more text about each post. It also keeps more data public (like your votes and reputation scores), which I actually prefer being out in the open, as it helps weed out people who may be giving bad faith arguments in various discussions.
themadcodgerIf kbin.social does defederate from meta, you can migrate to another kbin server that hasn't. That's one of the nice things about the fediverse!
AnonymousLlamaYep keen on the layout overall
The votes being public to end users is a big thing I really like that kbin has; I really hope that functionality eventually makes it over to lemmy’s front end once a lot of the fires are put out.
Transparency has continually been whittled away over time from online interactions. Seeing who wants to boost or bury something gives so much more context to content, especially to outside observers passing by.
garrettw87This is a very contentious topic right now, and it’s not clear at the moment whether votes will remain public or be made private. There are some very vocal proponents on both sides.
oh, I’m aware
Apart from what has already been said (politics, basic UI) there are a couple more things worth mentioning:
- Kbin’s interface is muuuch more customizable than lemmy’s: browsing form a web browser (desktop or mobile) let’s you modify your viewing experience as much as any mobile app for lemmy (but lemmly itself doesn’t). From infinite scrolling vs pages to font sizes and such.
- kbin allows for (mastodon-like) boosting of posts, which is like a super-upvote that lemmy just doesn’t have.
- on kbin you can subscribe to mastodon users aka federate with mastodon. Something that lemmy also can’t.
Other than that only personal taste matters in the end, and both federate with eachother, so enjoy it from wherever you are.
There's also several contributors who are actively working on improving the settings and adding in new features. I've been proposing a few changes for the mobile UI, letting you change up the mobile layout but all of that things take time (and add complexity) so it's slow moving
Also the ability for users to block instances and domain like mastodon has, which is pretty cool.
This is a big one. There were some contributions from either instances or bots on my feed I didn’t like that I just blocked, and my feed is fine now. No need to ask for defederation of the whole community when you can do it yourself.
You can block users/bots on Lemmy too
godlessBut not instances or servers, that's a much needed feature to de-porn my feed.
Yep, although it’s almost been a year since the request so I don’t know how high it’s priority wise.
Since the question was why people use Kbin that is a big one for now, at least for me although I have an account there I just prefer lemmy since Kbin seems to be too much on its infancy and also the fact that because it doesn’t have an open API as of now, there are (almost) no apps developed.
Given the massive uptake in the last month I’m hoping a lot of old issues are now being looked at!
I’m still searching everywhere for the ability to block entire instances in kbin (on mobile). Can you please elaborate on how it is done? I only see magazine pages with the block option.
If you click on the menu next to the Kbin logo, at the top there’s a clog and a triangle. The triangle is the federation one.
KissakiI was confused what boosting is. Docs said it’s basically a repost/share.
So I think super like is misleading. Even if your super liking is the reason you share it, they’re two different things.
harmoneaSo I think super like is misleading
It's literally not. Over here, on top of the "repost to your profile under your boosts section" functionality it's intended to have, it also counts as 2x rep for the poster.
Key word also
The presence or absence of that single word doesn't change the fact that nothing OP said was wrong eh ;P
Nobody claimed what they said was wrong. The thesis is that it may be misleading (through omission of the second half of what it does).
See, the problem here is that you're treating an off-the-cuff casual explanation as a "thesis." Please don't bring this absurd habit over here, where people have to feel compelled to cover absolutely every interpretation and hedge every outlier for great of getting nitpicked to hell and back. Literally no one enjoyed that environment.
CthuluVoIPI think it’s reasonable to argue, “a super like that also shares the post is functionally different from just a super like.” It doesn’t seem nit-picky when discussing the reasons why someone might choose one service over another to want to be precise about the mechanics of one of those services, no?
I pointed out it does more. You replied claiming “It’s literally not.” which is simply factually wrong.
Are you saying nobody should point that out? On this discussion platform?
You could have just left it there. If you have that much of a problem with the word thesis maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t take things so literally. If you have a problem with how this went, maybe you should not make false statements or let it go earlier.
I don’t think there’s a need to cover everything at all.
CosmicApeIt was the first one I tried 🤷♂️
TeaHandsGood a reason as any tbh.
RoundcatI was introduced to kbin first, and after giving both kbin and lemmy a shot, I decided on kbin as my primary. I prefer the layout mostly. Yes I know you can customize lemmy to get it to a similar look and feel, but kbin feels great straight out the box. The Mastodon integration is interesting, and its nice to keep up with what's going on there at the same time on one site. Also as federation users, we are encouraged to join smaller instances to lighten the load of ml and world, and kbin seems to be a good compromise of joining a smaller instance that isn't too empty. Also, with the recent hacks happening with the bigger lemmy instances, I feel like I made the right call sticking around here.
EatALimeKbin does a better job of putting new posts in front of you even before you have subscribed to anything, so I think it is easier to find interesting things to read. Kbin is newer than Lemmy, so Lemmy had the advantage in familiarity for people. More people had heard of it when Reddit's API drama blew up and that gave Lemmy a distinct advantage when people picked a new platform. Kbin also has some annoyances like not being able to collapse comments and vote buttons being at the top instead of the bottom of posts and comments. If someone has written a lengthy comment, I want to read through the whole thing before I decide how to vote and I don't want to scroll back up to get to a vote button. To reply to a post you also have to scroll through the comment section. In some cases it's good to see if someone else has already said what you are going to say, but in other cases if someone is looking for personal stories, you don't necessarily need to read everyone else's story before submitting your own.
Personally I have this kbin account and a lemmy account as well. My Lemmy server seems to go down more often and the default sort always shows the same days old pinned posts from my server admin that I can't seem to hide after reading. On Reddit, I didn't have to switch sort to see newer stuff so Lemmy comes across as pretty stale sometimes even though there is a fair amount of posting going on.
On lemmy the default is Active, which basically boosts any post that still has some recent chatter going on but is otherwise “stale”. In the settings though you can change the default sort. I’ve gone with Hot, which is I think the default sort on kbin too.
Can you change the default sort on kbin? I could work how to.
But Hot is broken in Lemmy, it shows old stuff like it’s hot. The system is broken, but I think there is a PR on the way.
I’ve heard that the “hot surfacing old posts” bug is more prevelant on instances that haven’t restarted for a while. It still shouldn’t happen, but I don’t think it’s universal.
Hmmm … it seems fine to me. I’d heard it was broken before though.
In what way is it broken?
kamihekuLike the parent said, it surfaces old (as in years old) posts as “hot”. Not sure if that’s the case still, but I have definitely noticed it before.
Ah … right … yea I’ve seen that happen occasionally … I had actually presumed that something had been changed with that post, perhaps by an admin or something cleaning stuff up, and that triggered a new timestamp for the post.
Maybe still a bug. I’ll keep track now of when it happens as it might help sort it out.
But still, that’s rarely the case for me. Just went down a fair way in my feed now and there wasn’t a single occurrence of it. Could it be particular communities causing it, maybe from instances on older software?
Otherwise though, Hot seems to do what I’d want. Combine with a bit of New or Top for an appropriate time window and I’m all good.
For comments, Hot/New/Top all do what I’d want too.
𝓢𝓮𝓮𝓙𝓪𝔂𝓔𝓶𝓶It’s still a bug. My server is at 0.18.2 and 8 regularly see old posts if I sort by Hot.
Links to Communities or Instances?
FWIW, just checked mine and no problems (and I’m subscribed to plenty of communities).
This is the bottom half of the first page of my subscribed feed and I restarted my lemmy instance yesterday to make a config change.
Yep, that looks bad (obviously). I just went to the science community, sorted by Hot, and yea similar things appear towards the bottom of the feed.
Seems like the sort of thing that would be a minor and fixable bug. I don’t have time to chase down github issues right now, but I’ll try checking older communities to spot these occurrences. Naively I’d guess something like dates or vote-scored being truncated badly or something.
Thanks!!
OK, I couldn’t help myself, and checked GItHub. Seems the issue may have been fixed hours ago. Don’t know when the new version will ship though.
Seems the issue may been to do with the process that updates the ranks of posts not being able to catch up to older posts, and so they show up with out of date ranks/scores. That process has been optimised, apparently, and should have no problem keeping up with all of the posts.
Hey! Thanks for explaining. How can I use/Download Kbin?