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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Magazine dedicated to discussions about the kbin itself. Provide feedback, ask questions, suggest improvements, and engage in conversations related to the platform organization, policies, features, and community dynamics. ---- * Roadmap 2023 * m/kbinDevlog * m/kbinDesign
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I've been struggling with #kbin/#mastodon #federation for awhile now, it's been disheartening. I've been trying to be more active about following various users and domains in hopes that more content will #federate to the #magazines I moderate. However, it hasn't really proven to be helpful. In some cases, I can't even find particular instances that users post from via kbin. I can find the instance by going to the page itself, but I suppose it may just take more time than I thought? In some cases, trying to follow a user takes me to an error page, and repeated attempts prove unsuccessful. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it's rather confusing when I can see posts from a given instance, yet can't search for the instance itself to federate more content. I've tried asking about it, and no one seems to know or be able to help. Searching the fediverse for information is also difficult due to the noise I have to sift through.
With that said, I know there's other stuff to consider: Ernest is planning a big update for kbin, some instances have restricted federation with kbin due to moderation not properly federating to other communities, and kbin being a younger platform than #lemmy/mastodon. I'll try to be patient, there's just some features that I really hope mature soon as there are features I'd like to use, but can't yet. Also, before this gets misconstrued again like it has in the past, I am still enjoying my time on kbin and support Ernest's efforts in regard to this platform. I wouldn't still be posting here if I weren't enjoying my time here.
Just wanna say I agree - it can be a frustrating process to figure it all out.
This confused the fuck out of me until I realized that Mastodon instances have the option for users to allow or deny follow requests. Basically, if you click on someone's follow and nothing happens (or you get an error page), what's happened is that you've sent them a follow request that they have to approve. Kbin's interface fails here (hopefully will improve with update) and does nothing. If they do chose to let you follow them, you'll see their account update.
Go to the poster's account, and follow them. If Kbin hasn't actively federated the site yet, it usually does so pretty quickly after a follow. This usually also lets you link to the community they posted to.
Check your magazine's Microblog section - you may be getting more content than you realize. Your magazine tags will determine what additional content (aside from #yourmagazinetitle) your Microblogs pick up. Everything from Mastodon users shows up there on Kbin.
Thanks for the reply.
This makes sense, and reflects what I've just seen regarding a user I was trying to follow earlier.
My follow has updated, however, I'm still unable to access https://kbin.social/d/urusai.social. This isn't a huge deal, just something I wanted to draw attention to, I suppose. Perhaps it'll federate some time down the line. To future readers, I'll try to remember to edit this comment with an update if and when it happens.
edit:
Thanks to @Arotrios for the answer
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/469791/Just-Curious-How-long-does-it-take-for-a-kbin#entry-comment-2460389
Additional context here
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/469791/Just-Curious-How-long-does-it-take-for-a-kbin#entry-comment-2460434
I actually check this daily and have reset my tags on a few occasions to see if it would help on top of what I mentioned previously. I've also changed the sort options (e.g. new, hot, top, etc) just in case, to check whether or not things have been federating. What has been confusing to me is, the content federation seems to work when I search the tag outside of my magazine. For instance, I see #japanese microblogs federated to @japanese yet I do not see the same in @learnjapanese. This has also been an issue with @residentevil as well. Oddly enough, even users I have already followed do not have their content federated to these magazines at times, even though I have checked their history and seen them use the tags I've assigned to the magazines. I could simply be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what it is.
Edit: Now that I think about it, there have even been very occasional instances where I have seen content federated to @residentevil in the past. I remember following them and then have seen them post with the tags on a future occasion, but those subsequent posts were not federated to the magazine. Pretty odd, but I'll just attribute it to kbin's growing pains. I hope this isn't coming off as too negative, I've just been really trying to nurture these little communities and better understand this system.
Not sure what's going on with the kbin.social/d/ view of urusai.social, but I was able to find posts (not threads) here:
https://kbin.social/search?q=urusai.social
This led me to @neatchee, who is the instance owner. You might try following them, but I agree, that's an odd bug.
Yeah, posting to Kbin from Mastodon instances is a challenge. Kbin filters and tries to assign incoming hashtags to existing magazine hashtags.
If a post contains a hashtag that is taken by another magazine, that magazine usually gets the content instead of yours. Your magazine's hashtag has to appear first in the text. Your Japanese forum is probably catching all of the #japanese posts before they get to LearnJapanese.
Second, it's random which of your magazine hashtags will pull content and from who. The order of the hashtags doesn't appear to affect this.
The only way to ensure a post gets from Mastdon to Kbin or Lemmy is to put
@yourmagazine@kbin.socialin the post tag. This will make sure it shows up on Lemmy, and will get your post to the Kbin Microblog of the magazine 90% of the time. If you want to be extra sure, do it like this:@yourmagazinename@kbin.social #yourmagazinename (then any following hashtags)Hopefully the update will clean this up a bit.
@Arotrios @readbeanicecream @daredevil fwiw I can confirm that URUSAI! does not have any restrictions on kbin.social. And I'm able to load your kbin profiles from our Mastodon instance without issue.
I'd need to look into how the /d/ implementation in kbin works to know more.
But if you toss me the URL of a mastodon instance that DOES show up there without issue I might be able to learn something :)
@neatchee @daredevil I think perhaps someone has to post a link hosted on your instance for it to appear. For instance this works:
https://kbin.social/d/mastodon.social
but smaller instances like this:
https://kbin.social/d/pagan.plus
...don't seem to, generating a 404 because no one has created a link or thread back to a pagan.plus post (although their users post over to kbin often). Possibly posting link (in the url field of Add a Link on Kbin) to an urusai.social hosted post will do the trick.
@Arotrios @readbeanicecream @daredevil this sounds very plausible. Unexpected, but it would make sense that kbin's /d/ path is showing you the directory of content from your server's local cache and not querying the target server.
Which kinda makes sense, honestly: since that feature is trying to list everything kbin knows about from the target server, populating it for the first time would definitely cause a significant load on that instance
@daredevil @neatchee - Looks like the linked post is what did the trick. I posted here to the Fediverse community to let them know about your instance (it's pointed at your pinned intro post).
As such, this link is now working for daredevil:
https://kbin.social/d/urusai.social
And will allow subscriptions.
Fantastic, this has been very enlightening. I appreciate your time and effort.
@Arotrios @readbeanicecream @daredevil and it answers my question: it is not the full server firehose, just the posts already known to the kbin server
@Arotrios @readbeanicecream @daredevil now I'm really curious how it works when you subscribe to a server. Is it pulling in that server's public and local feeds? Or is it only showing you posts from users on that server that your instance already knows about
~~Only that it knows about to start, but I think that once it gets subscriptions to the domain, it starts pulling more automatically. I could be wrong, however - I'm not sure which activities aside from posting are federated.~~
EDIT: I was wrong - the domain only grabs Threads, so Mastodon posts will likely not show up this way. They may get indexed if they're sent to a kbin magazine using the
@magazinename@kbin.socialformatI'll keep an eye on our instance of urusai.social and let you know in the future
Thanks, it's worth a shot.
So it seems as if @japanese gets priority of the #japanese hashtag due to it being the name of their magazine? Or possibly that they had the hashtag first? I hope multiple magazines are able to federate the same hashtag eventually. @Acala, the admin of @japanese has been inactive for the past few weeks. That's rather unfortunate, as the magazine has no published threads in addition to an inactive moderator.
That's unfortunate, but helps to clear things up.
This has been very informative, thank you. I'm probably not gonna bug #mastodon users to add this to their posts, but if I ever decide to use mastodon myself I'll keep this in mind.
Agreed, kbin as a platform is the most interesting for me, and I hope to see things turn out well.