I made my home here permanently now. It seems like such a friendlier place but how are you all doing?
Haven’t even directed my browser to reddit since migrating to kbin in June, but it’s never fulfilled the same dopamine hit for me. I’ve supplanted my online addiction with YouTube now, which because of what I flit past and what I actually pay attention to has been extremely educational because of the algorithm!
Pretty early on, I ended up becoming the head moderator for a magazine on kbin, which then made me feel an ethical sort of guilt about commenting there anymore, so really the only place I wanted to be part of the dialogue is now gone for me here on kbin. Our magazine has a much larger mirror community on lemmyworld, so our magazine is barely holding on by a thread even after an initial burst of new subscribers. Discussion is almost non-existent in the magazine, and I’m not sure if it’s because we tried to instate common-sense community guidelines early, or if because we missed the momentum of growing userbase after the rexxit since most people migrated to lemmyworld instead of kbin.
I’m not even sure why I keep my account. (I know I sound like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh in this post.)
I understand the issue, the changes in the federation /kbin that will occur in the coming weeks / months will make the magazines much more visible in the broader fediverse. This could be a complete gamechanger.
Ah - yikes. I was really not anticipating you seeing my mini pity party here, ernest. I know you and the team have been really working hard on kbin and I’ve seen massive changes with the modding panel and functions as a result of the latest instance update. I have a ton of respect for what you all are accomplishing on the fediverse and I was originally a very vocal early adopter after the first reddit migration in June. I trust that you all are shouldering a major responsibility with this instance, and I’m grateful for the fediverse at the very least. I hope when you read this you didn’t get the sense that I had any criticisms of kbin as the particular user interface I use for the fediverse - just that even across the federated instances (mostly lemmyworld), my ability to doom scroll for hours a day outpaces the userbase.
I think I feel a personal sense of failure(?) or disappointment(?) that I wasn’t able to usher in a similar sense of community and activity to the sub I moderate compared to reddit. I think moving over here, it felt like my sub would be the natural beneficiary of inheriting the volume of users and content that existed on reddit, but our mirror community on lemmyworld got the lion’s share and it isn’t even scratching former reddit heyday numbers. Also, the people in their community are… suspect. I don’t care for the comments section.
I hope you didn’t take umbrage to my comment. I’m eager to see what new features the kbin dev team will roll out.
Oh, come on, I’m not that sensitive ;-) Constructive criticism helps me set goals, prioritize tasks on my board, and broaden my horizons when it comes to the overall experience with the platform. I really appreciate that. The fact is that Lemmy had a lot more time. I remember when they started federation tests, I was writing my first line of code. Some things just need time to mature. For me, it’s not a race. I simply have a clear goal that I’m determined to achieve - to create a solid, accessible platform that others can benefit from and enjoy. Who knows, maybe it’ll become the best in the entire fediverse someday ;-) Now, after the break, I’ll be working on federation but also on customizing the feed to tailor it as much as possible to individual needs. Cheers!
@HandsHurtLoL wait, are mods not meant to comment? I’m doing it wrong.
Edit: nvm, you’re modding politics, I can see why you’d need to remain neutral for that.
Yeah, it’s a 100% self-imposed moratorium just because I don’t want to appear to have a modding bias. There was a period where I was trying to enliven the community by posting a few articles each day, especially from sources not submitted to our mirror community on lemmyworld, but then my real life job was draining my soul for 3 straight months, so that endeavor fell by the wayside. Also, unless it’s an article dumping on one key player, our user base doesn’t tend to comment on news articles. It’s a weird phenomenon I’ve observed.
I will add though that my hobby communities that I belong to never make it to my feed, which seems to imply that those communities are stagnant, too. I would probably comment more in those spaces, but it’s rare that new threads are created, I guess.
I wish you would comment. Contributors in the sub aren’t following the rules very well. I contributed pretty often, however I’ve slacked off since the beginning of October. The Israel/Palestine conflict has really taken over my feed (as well as some Trek and Star Wars memes). Yet with the Middle East news it’s been difficult posting for some reason. My activity has been diminished severely.
I still comment a fair bit just from sorting by all > new. But yeah we’re still in the early days comment-wise. The magazine I created almost never gets any comments or posts but there are a few lurkers who upvote and it slowly grows.
I’ve recently taken on a couple that were stagnating due to absentee mods and it’s going slowly, but I still think it’s important for kbin to have our own chill communities on these topics rather than outsourcing it all to the lemmys.
You must be doing something right, because I’m pretty sure I noticed your mag in my feed the other day which made me realise it’s active. (I contributed an article but unfortunately it’s on NZ politics because that’s the only one I follow)!
It definitely feels like the kbin hosted magazines that have overlap with Lemmy magazines are struggling to get attention/engagement. I think part of it is just that so many people are over there and don’t look at federated content, so more kbin users don’t bother with contributing to our own magazines.
I’m not sure what the answer is to fix that, or if it’s even something that needs to be fixed since we federation we’re still receiving and engaging in content. Would love to see more activity on our home turf though.