Like you, I’m a passionate user of K.Bin but lately, I’m noticing that things are getting kinda stale around here. The most recent thread in this, the top-level magazine on K.Bin, is 4 days old. Many other top 25 magazines are also suffering from a similar lack of fresh content. I run /m/scifi and it’s been continuing to grow and thrive over the past 4 months for one simple reason. If you want to Supercharge K.Bin, then remind yourself of those four little words every day:
It’s the content, stupid.
This should be the defacto slogan of K.Bin - you wanna get people off of Reddit? It’s the content, stupid. Stop complaining that Reddit sucks - we KNOW it sucks - but K.Bin won’t become the sane alternative if there’s nothing to read or interact with, there.
I’m just one person, but I’m doing my part and I know others are doing the same. If we can transition from 1% of the crowd adding new content for the other 99% to lurk and read to 5% of the crowd adding new stuff for 50% of the crowd to respond to and the other 45% to lurk and read, we’ll be well on our way to defeating Reddit.
Food for thought - have a great weekend.
The problem is that Kbin sucks as well. For example, /m/science lacks actual moderators and gets flooded with spam on the regular. And even where there are active moderators, moderation actions often do not get federated.
I was hoping these issues would get fixed soon, but here we are, three months after the Reddit apocalypse, and Kbin is still not a fully functional platform. For example, I filed bug #1102 fifteen days ago, and this has still not been resolved. And bug #570 has been open since early July.
If Kbin wants to become and stay relevant, it needs more hands on deck.
No, the problem is that you’re a person who posted 34 diff. items to K.Bin and two bug reports and you think that qualifies you to comment on K.Bin overall. Not for nothing - what qualifies me to speak on this topic is that I’ve been posting stuff every day to /m/scifi (with time out for vacations and illness). I know there are things wrong with scifi and K.Bin - but I’m putting the time in to make things better. What are you doing? You moderate /m/men and your stated goal is “This magazine is dedicated to discussions of issues that men and boys face, especially disadvantages or discrimination due to their gender, from an egalitarian perspective.” People want stuff to read, not people to point at ‘the problem.’ K.bin is fine for what it is - if you want ‘more hands on deck’, go be one of those hands.
Jesus H Christ… congrats on being the one millionth person on kbin to say “What are YOU doing?” while talking down their literal list of what they are doing.
a-man-from-earth is right, Kbin is in a sorry state right now. I still get asked to login when I want to comment, despite being logged in, at which point it takes me to the home page. Viewing a reply to your comment is still not pagination-aware.
Ernest has said this version of kbin is frozen until he rolls out the next, hopefully the end of September, so by his own admission Kbin as we know and use it is the same pile it was months ago. That said I remain hopeful that the next rollout will be a big improvement.
Back to the topic, if the site isn’t easy and intuitive to use, or if it’s broken and remains a thorn for a long time, then you can’t expect people to go out of their way to do the thing you want them to do. That’s not how the world works.
a-man-from-earth has submitted bug fixes to try and improve the site so people might be more willing to stick around and post themselves, while you’re just posting content that’ll eventually become irrelevant. What are YOU doing? (See? It’s asinine right?)
I understand wanting to help the platform grow, but I don’t think invalidating the opinions and contributions of a-man-from-earth is a good way to approach it. The holier-than-thou attitude might also have the opposite effect that your original post is attempting to achieve. The lack of active moderators is certainly an issue, along with spam and the existence of various federation issues are problems as well. I get that these things take time, so I’m being patient. That said, I still enjoy kbin and contribute how and when I can.
So, I post content (on average once every 3 days, despite my drop in activity this month), I engage in the comments (more than you do, if we’re counting), I moderate a community, and I file bug reports in an attempt to make this a better platform.
So yes, I am doing my part, and that does qualify me to comment on the state of Kbin. Suggesting I don’t is toxicity we don’t need here.
And pretending that Kbin is just fine won’t help this platform to become successful. And yes, despite my criticisms, I want this to be a successful Reddit replacement. But it’s struggling to become relevant, and I’m frustrated with its lack of progress.
People also want interesting discussions on topics they care about. I know that because for years I was a moderator of a small but active subreddit.
The m/men magazine I moderate used to be the #20 most active one on Kbin, a place you’re now proudly proclaiming m/scifi has…
I’m waiting to see if ernest’s promised next version of Kbin will actually improve things, especially on the moderation side. Otherwise I have to reconsider where to direct my efforts.
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