Lately I often read about kbin.social being similar to lemmy but more accessible. So I created an account there to check it out. My experience so far is a little mixed. From kbin I can access all Lemmy posts, although I find the interface less intuitive to join new communities. So from the kbin side it feels like an other Lemmy instance.
But when searching for kbin from this Lemmy Account, I do not find much. I feel like I am missing some basic concept, that makes it pretty clear. Why this is such a one way experience.
So now I am wondering: How does this work, what are the difference, what do both sites have in common?
kbin looks good but I can’t get over the fact that its backend is written in PHP. In the long run, lemmy’s Rust backend will probably be way more resource efficient and thus better for hosters. We’ll have to see though, since tech stacks aren’t the most important thing. But for me a Rust backend is a huge plus.
It’s still PHP but it’s not the unholy spaghetti mess that PHP 5 once was. PHP gets a bad rep for all the shitty websites from the early 2000s that people ended up inheriting from other teams, but modern PHP with typing, classes, and ORMs is quite pleasant to work with.
Take a look through the kbin source, I find it quite readable to the point it may just as well be C# or Java with some dollar signs sprinkled in.
I’m sure it’s fine code, I just can’t imagine it’ll ever be as efficient as Rust.
If it can run on PHP8 you get JIT compilation, which should go a long way to closing any gaps (if they exist, which I suspect not).
Lemmy is not bottlenecked by anything related to the Rust code and neither is Kbin most likely. Modern php is efficient enough for it to not really matter (contrary to Python or Ruby etc.).
Modern PHP is better than PHP5 but it still uses that brain dead execution model where every request starts the entire framework from scratch.
From what I’ve found thus far:
- Community is smaller currently due to being newer but connects to the Lemmy, Mastodon, etc communities so it doesn’t feel small.
- Definitely needs a mobile app for collapsing comments, notifications, etc but installing on mobile through the browser works quite well.
- Would like the ability to delete new magazines to change the URL for instance which I currently can’t figure out how to do.
- Calling communities magazines is a little confusing but nothing serious.
- The ability to sign up without an email like Lemmy would be a huge bonus.
- The privacy policy and UI is much nicer than on Lemmy.
- Signing up is open compared to Lemmy which requires an explanation and review.
Most of these things will likely and hopefully come with time as the platform is developed. Other than that I feel this will most likely be my safe haven from the bs Reddit (fuck spez) has pulled.
Signing up is open compared to Lemmy which requires an explanation and review.
Only on certain instances. Lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, for example, require you to answer some questions (I’ve heard people say beehaw requires you to write an essay, lol) which I think is primarily to avoid being overrun by bot accounts. Not all instances do, though. sh.itjust.works has open registration, for one.
Fwiw my application to BeeHaw I submitted last night was like 4 sentences and approved in < 10 minutes.
I don’t think they’re looking for anyone’s life story of personal philosophy on life and the universe ya know?
I have not applied to beehaw, myself. I dislike the lack of a down vote personally. I think it’s a useful utility to have as long as people don’t abuse it… Which people always will, but I don’t think that merits taking it away. That’s the great thing about decentralized services, though!
Downvotes are used to show disagreement without an explanation which just stifles discussion, and for off-topic comments reporting them works as an alternative.
I do prefer user moderated conversations through downvotes but with the way they are used I don’t really trust us users enough for that.
I just don’t necessarily think the feature should be removed just because it isn’t always used as intended. I know there are folks who use it as a “disagree” button, and that’s… fine, I guess lol. I think Lemmy does a decent enough job of preventing abuse of the downvote button by removing the concept of karma. There are no imaginary internet points to be gained or lost. As a bonus, you can always turn vote values off entirely for yourself, as opposed to disabling downvotes on an instance. That way you can upvote/downvote organically, without your perception being skewed by existing votes.
I wouldn’t necessarily refuse to use a service based solely on whether it has a downvote feature or not, but I think downvote serves a different purpose than reporting. If I were on a platform that didn’t support downvotes, I do think I would feel obliged to be a lot more liberal with my upvotes, lol. Which… maybe that’s not a bad thing. 🤔
But again, through the power of federation we can both interact on a platform that can satisfy both our beliefs, and that’s a pretty awesome thing.
What might be neat is a user preference that allows one to enable or disable downvoting just for you. If you disable downvoting then you get a different view of the community and comments that only accounts for upvotes.
I guess things like this could also be done just on client side. Kbin and Lemmy definitely need better clients. 😅
But when searching for kbin from this Lemmy Account, I do not find much. I feel like I am missing some basic concept, that makes it pretty clear. Why this is such a one way experience.
Not sure if i understand correctly, but instances can only show you what they are aware of. This does not really depend on the underlaying software (unless it is specialized, like PeerTube maybe).
Is there a reason why instances couldn’t just index and show all the communities from other federated instances?
Right now you have to do this to add a community from another instance:
- Visit it, look in communities, copy the link to the community
- Go back to the instance you were, paste link into search box and hit enter, then click the link, open sidebar, and click subscribe.
I don’t see why instances couldn’t just have an index over communities on all federated instances, so it’s a one click action to subscribe to any community in the entire Lemmy fediverse.
If this was implemented it would lower the bar for new users enormously, and encourage a lot more cross instance subscriptions.
