I’m making this post because I’m shutting down my Kbin instance, kbin.lol, and redirecting it here for an undetermined amount of time. ## But why? Kbin isn’t ready. Not even close. I know the developer, Ernest, has been working his ass off trying to get everything fixed and pushed, and I really value his efforts. However, it’s still beta software, and as I’ve been unable to make a good user experience, it’s being shut down until there’s a better release, or a stable one. ## What issues? Kbin.social works fine! - There is no option to delete a user, except from the command line. Users can’t delete their own data. I have to manually process all user removal requests, with the backend. - Federation appears to be broken due to the messenger backend repeatedly crashing, with no information on how to fix it. All I did was restart the Docker stack, which shouldn’t break anything. - Compiling and running the site is extremely difficult. With Lemmy, I just pull a docker-compose, set some variables, and start it. With Kbin, I have to clone the git, change many variables across many config files, and then compile the entire stack from source(even though stable releases of some containers exist). I did eventually manage get the site running, except this leads into the next point… - There’s no way to do a stable update. I’ve tried pulling Git updates into the existing folder - that overwrites all my variables and the site doesn’t start. I pulled it into another folder, and not only does it not start, but all the users and database get wiped. I’m sure I could figure it out…but I don’t want to be providing a site to my users that’s so duct taped together. Ernest, bless his heart, is patching stuff up on the source daily - but how do I update? - It doesn’t appear to be scalable. The main instance, Kbin.social, runs slow and unresponsive because of the sheer volume of users on it(which baffles me, because it’s beta software that wasn’t ready for prime time). It’d be better if we had more instances, but it’s hard to deploy, so we don’t have many instances…it’s a never ending circle. ## Okay, so it’s got some issues. What now? For now, you’re more than welcome to join my Lemmy instance, which is right here. It’s nice and stable and I feel confident providing it as a service. I’m still subscribed to Kbin development, and if it has a proper Docker stable release, or something that just makes it easier to host, I’ll look into it again. It’d be a damn shame to let the kbin.lol domain name go to waste, lol, so I’m definitely invested in getting it running. If you happen to be a smart web developer with spare time, and would like to volunteer your skills to get it running, feel free to reach out to me, but again, it’s a hairball I don’t feel comfortable with. With the right help, though, maybe it could work. ## I don’t like Lemmy, it’s got tankie devs! Personally, to be perfectly frank, I couldn’t give a shit less. I’ve got a long history in the FOSS community and if I banned everybody I disagreed with it’d just be me, a scratch kernel, and nano. Outright political instances and instances that allow blatant racism are defederated here on my instance. Lemmy devs are willing to create a product that makes the entire internet better, and share it with everyone, for free, regardless of your beliefs. That’s good enough for me. I’d rather see the internet become a better place, than to turn our nose up at a FOSS project, because of disagreements between humans. That’s ruined enough of the world already. ## What’s a tankie? Google it. I’m not here to be political. ## Never mind all that, I just want Kbin! Well, you’re free to use any instance of anything, of course! Kbin.social [https://kbin.social] is open for signups - although I can’t guarantee that it’ll keep up with the flow of new users from Reddit. We have hundreds of Lemmy instances including this one that seem to be doing fine, if you would like. ### If Kbin can pull together a release that is actually worth running, I will deploy it and relaunch the site. - P.S. All user accounts and data from the kbin instance have been deleted. Don’t worry - your data is gone, not being kept or spied upon.

Looks like the admin for kbin.lol has some pretty valid gripes with the current status of Kbin. I have to agree, you can tell the platform is not up to speed at all.

Kbin looks visually great but the backend just isn’t there. Check out his statement, it’s worth the read.

  • Coelacanth@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    In addition to the backend, I’m not sold on the terminology used in the front end either, though visually it does look good.

    Why call communities Magazines? Why am I starting a microblog when I press new Post? Why is upvote called Favorite and what does Reduce mean? And what the hell is Boost and how is it different from Favorite?

    Still, the number one issue at the moment for sure is the slow federation and syncing with Lemmy. Communicating across different Lemmy instances is no problem, but Kbin<->Lemmy seems incredibly slow, with threads from Lemmy often lagging many hours behind when viewed from Kbin which makes it impossible to participate in conversations.

  • SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.netEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I found the same, tbh.

    I’ve been on the thrediverse using lotide until now, which is different then lemmy or kbin. There were some federation issues so lotide wasn’t federating just as the place was blowing up with more users, so I decided it was time to install one of the new pieces of software.

    I spent 3 days trying to get kbin working and federating, and just wasn’t having luck with it. Even now, kbin.social is pretty dodgy about federating, and doesn’t federate with a lot of other stuff at all.

    My instances require good federation. That’s non-negotiable because otherwise it’s just me sitting here talking to myself.

    Ultimately I went with lemmy, which I managed to get up and running quite a bit quicker.

    To be fair to kbin, it’s a super new project. lemmy and lotide have been going for years, I hadn’t even really heard about kbin 2 months ago. I think it’ll get a lot better, but it’s going to take time and effort.

    I sucked it up with respect to the lemmy devs politics stuff… Instead of bitching that they’re not exactly like me, I’m going to just be thankful to them for creating a platform we can share.

  • Kaldo@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    From what I’ve read about lemmy it’s not in much better shape, the backend is not optimized for scaling up and is held together by wishes and prayers.

    On one hand, I feel like there are software devs that would say that about literally any piece of software in production just to feel superior or because of their lack of experience. On the other… they are probably right. These are passion projects done in free time, jury-rigged in any way they could do it just to handle the absurd influx of new users.

    We all knew that this is young tech being developed “live in prod”, of course it won’t work as flawlessly as something made by a corporation with 2000 employees over the last 10 years. Or you know, be as stable and reliable as Twitter, the biggest social network that even governments use, owned by a multibillionare geniu… ok that’s it, can’t do it more😁

    I’m sure these issues will be ironed out eventually. Mastodon is in a pretty stable spot right now and hopefully kbin/lemmy get to a similar state in 6-12 months.