First, I think Ernest has done a fantastic job and I’ve been rooting for him this whole time. But it’s becoming clear it’s all too much for him without the support of a larger team.

Over the last several months there have been multiple posts about the spam problems on this instance, both here and on other instances. We’ve been fortunate so far they haven’t simply defederated us.

Now when I go to the Hot page it’s 12 hours out of date.

It’s with a heavy heart I looked into a kbin fork mentioned in another thread in this magazine: Mbin.

GitHub: https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin

Instance list: https://fedidb.org/software/mbin

The largest instance: https://fedia.io/

I’ll miss you Kbin. It’s been good. Thanks Ernest!

It’s not the purpose of this post to support any particular instance. Feel free to mention your own alternatives below.

  • Chozo@kbin.social
    16·
    8 months ago

    Does anybody happen to have contact with Ernest outside of Kbin? It’s a little concerning that his last update over a month ago was that he was going in for a medical procedure and that he’d only be gone for a few days. I hope he’s doing alright.

    • s0ckpuppet@kbin.social
      7·
      8 months ago

      The sole maintainer of the project has been totally MIA for a month and the site has gone down or partially not worked repeatedly for months now. Now we’ve got issues with post federating on time and spam bots. It’s not sustainable like this. I really appreciate what Ernest has done and am a big fan of Kbin, but he’s clearly spread too thin and apparently wont allow people to help him.

        • s0ckpuppet@kbin.social
          1·
          8 months ago

          Yep I decided to switch accounts to this username from another one I had been using that is kinda attached to my freelance business. I felt like it wasn’t the wisest move to get into occasional debates with strangers like that. Some people just lose their mind if you disagree with them online.

          So I requested deletion close to a month ago and it still hasn’t gone through. Will it ever? Who knows

        • FaceDeer@kbin.social
          6·
          8 months ago

          This site never worked without a hitch.

          That is not a ringing endorsement.

          I was very enthusiastic about kbin when it launched, I donated a fair bit to Ernest in those early heady days. But if he’s refusing to accept help from other devs and admins I don’t think it’s sustainable, something like this just can’t work as a one-man show. I wish him all the best but if that doesn’t change I don’t see this working in the long run.

            • FaceDeer@kbin.social
              7·
              8 months ago

              It has been getting worse for me. In addition to the sporadic outages, the spam, and the slow federation, I’ve had to develop the habit of refreshing the page before I try to respond to or vote on any comments. If I open the page and let it sit for a few minutes before trying I invariably get an error. It definitely didn’t used to be that way.

              If it was that bad for you from the outset I’m surprised you stuck around. I wouldn’t’ve. I’ve only held on because I started to feel “settled”.

        • s0ckpuppet@kbin.social
          1·
          8 months ago

          I get where you’re coming from, but don’t really agree that because it’s been bad it’s fine that it continues to be bad or even worse when these are solvable problems. The issue with recent posts federating in a timely fashion is pretty concerning for one.

          But even if I did agree with you about the site errors, the huge gaps in any communication are a big issue. It’d be great to know what’s going on. And not being able to get an account deletion honored is frankly unacceptable. I’ve had one pending for close to a month. And having the entire project tied up with one person who just disappears without warning is also a big problem. Administering this instance all by one’s self is already impractical. But doing that and also single-handedly running a software project of this complexity and magnitude on top of that is really hard to rationalize.

          Anybody remember what happened Artemis? All that effort and community support poured into an app with a single dev holding the whole thing together and poof. She’s gone and the app is no more. I still don’t think anybody’s heard from her since.

          Huge props to him for what he’s achieved, but Ernest needs to accept help. It’s that simple.

    • sab@kbin.social
      6·
      8 months ago

      I appreciate kbin a lot and I hope Ernest will get back to development when he’s ready, but I don’t think it makes sense for him also to be responsible for administrating a major instance. That’s a huge job.

      I’m not entirely sure where I’d move to yet, but if kbin.social is not properly moderated it makes sense to go elsewhere. At some point other instances might have no choice but to defederate.

      That’s different from giving up on the software - I do still appreciate Kbin a lot. :)

      • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
        3·
        8 months ago

        I see alot of people complaining about this or that on the site, but not interacting with what people who are posting are still posting. Not posting anything of their own save complains about the site being as fucked ever it was or instigating jumping ship.

        Honestly it’s hard to tell what people want at times.

        • sab@kbin.social
          1·
          8 months ago

          I guess the beautiful thing of being federated is that the content is separate from the software. If people enjoy the software but find kbin.social to be too unstable, they might very well jump ship to https://fedia.io/ or something (or even start their own instance), and we will still get to enjoy their content. :)

          I don’t have much patience for people complaining about how their instances are being run considering how easy it is to move somewhere else. Discussions and constructive criticism is of course a different matter, but the beauty of the fediverse as far as I’m concerned is that you can take the “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else” attitude to the extreme without really being a jerk. :)

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
      5·
      8 months ago

      When Kbin isn’t working I check out Lemmy but it just feels too cluttered. If I didn’t need to get paid I’d help Ernest out but, ya know, capitalism 🤷‍♂️

      • wjrii@kbin.social
        4·
        8 months ago

        Many of the lemmy instances have two or more front-ends available. I find https://photon.lemmy.world/ with the dark them and “List” post style looks pretty nice. There’s at least one that just simply replicates old reddit.

        • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
          1·
          8 months ago

          Can you say “fag” on lemmy.world yet or is a huge list of words that get replaced by " [REMOVED] " still hardcoded over there?

            • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
              3·
              8 months ago

              Maybe you should think of non-awful words to use, instead.

              Fag is a beautiful word which accurately describes me and 4/3 of my friends.

              I’m all for kicking people who weaponize hate speech off of platforms but restricting the language marginalized groups can use to refer to themselves is contrary to the ends hardcoded banned word lists would seem to’ve been implemented to engender.

              It isn’t even one instance making that decision as I understand it—it’s hardcoded into Lemmy (as opposed to kbin or whatever other options may exist).

              • Chozo@kbin.social
                2·
                8 months ago

                I understand the idea of reclaiming a slur. But general audiences might not recognize what you’re saying for what it is. And nothing stops a bad actor from making the same claims and using the terms in bad faith, hence why it’s generally easier from all sides to use different verbiage.

          • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
            1·
            8 months ago

            Do y’all not like pertinent-to-the-conversation questions about hardcoded word bans on some of these platforms or are the downvotes on the above post due to issues y’all take with fags reclaiming and self-referring using anti-them slurs?

            • tjhart85@kbin.social
              4·
              8 months ago

              For me, you saying “hey, can I use slurs over there yet? Specifically, ___” is a bit like the dudebros that yell out “Equal rights, equal fights!” as they pretend to punch a woman … like … why the fuck did your mind go there immediately … it’s a bit disconcerting.

              Had you said something like “Do they still have the hardcoded blocked words, still? I used to laugh whenever someone from England tried to mention cigarettes and it gets [REMOVED]! Haven’t seen that in a while though” I don’t think you’d have gotten the downvotes.

              Just my opinion, others may have had different reasons to dislike your comment.

              ETA: Your other comment wasn’t showing before. You identify as the word and want to be able to use it and not have it be labeled as hate speech when it’s against yourself … So … I’ll update my “had you said” to “Hey, are they still redacting fag over there? We’re trying to take that word back into the community (similar to how queer has largely been taken back) and it’s real fucking hard when it’s [REMOVED]!” instead.

  • Rottcodd@kbin.social
    12·
    8 months ago

    Funny thing…

    Underneath all of the sycophantic language, this thread somehow still has the same stench as the past mbin concern troll threads.

    I’m just not buying it.

  • dragonist@kbin.social
    7·
    8 months ago

    I’ve been feeling it too, and have been on the fence about jumping ship. My block list is growing so fast it’s just a touch obscene. So many pill pushers junk websites and… random and science are hit so hard it’s frustrating.

    • Seraph@kbin.socialOP
      9·
      8 months ago

      Mbin is a software “fork”. Meaning they took a snapshot of Kbin code and made their own improvements from then on.

      Fedia is an instance, or a federated portal, and one of the ways you can use Mbin code. This is the largest Mbin instance - it has the most users.

  • readbeanicecream@kbin.social
    2·
    8 months ago

    @Seraph According to https://status.lemm.ee the federation is not receiving data on real time from any kbin or mbin instance. I am following kbinmeta there and the most recent post is from three days ago. Fedia and kbin.run (both mbin) looks like two weeks ago is the earliest.

    Edit: Looks like ot took about 21 hours for a kbin post to hit lemm.ee. No comments
    …just post. So a 21 one hour delay so far.