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Ernest Appreciation Post (kbin.social)
submitted 1 year ago by Deralax@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social
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Kbin has seen a staggering amount of growth in the past few weeks, and with it a bunch of discussion about issues and bugs.

Constructive criticism will help make kbin even greater, but i wanted to take some time to appreciate how great of an app it has been to use these past few weeks, and to the sole developer @ernest for all the long hours put in to keep things running smoothly.

Keep up the great work!

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[-] ernest@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

Wow ;) I'm incredibly lucky to have come across people like you. The authors of those posts are actually right - managing /kbin is a significant challenge nowadays. It requires extensive knowledge and experience to keep it under control. But also I've never hidden that fact - the information about it is placed at the very top of the repository's readme ;) However, as I mentioned, a lot is changing very quickly https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/122333/Fediverse-won-t-replace-Reddit-as-long-as-Lemmy-is-the#entry-comment-478779. And we're all working hard on it, to improve and automate as many things as possible. Thanks to all of you, I believe I can face it head-on, and together we can create a better place. Better internet. Not just this instance, but cooperation between platforms is the key here.

Unfortunately, there are delays occurring again - I've decided that smooth website operation will be the priority this time. There are approximately 450k tasks waiting in the queue, and everything will be handled, but it will take some time. Today, we're also conducting final tests of the new infrastructure. It's taking a while because we're documenting templates that can later be used by others to create their own instances. I hope these are the last issues we have to endure ;)

Thanks for everything.

[-] Kuujaku@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I'm a firm believer there can never be too many thanks you's given so: Thank you ernest and everyone working on this.
I myself don't have much php experience other than one small site that i run, but i hope in the future i can too contribute to this project. But that said i do have somewhat more linux experience and if you or anyone here needs help with anything feel free to shoot me a message.

[-] Chetzemoka@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I just logged in and noticed the updated reputation counting system. Ernest is a man of his word, y'all. I know we're in good hands and look forward to seeing where things go in the future. Really appreciate all your hard work

[-] minnieo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

thank you for your hard work and transparency ernest ♡

[-] blanketswithsmallpox@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the hard work and much love!

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

The status update about queue-size etc is really valuable. I wonder if it might be possible to have a little status space in the sidebar

[-] Niello@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Feel free to buy him a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin

[-] Overzeetop@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Dropped my nickel in the tin. Hopefully Ernest will bank this rush for future costs.

Funny how it's easy to donate to a brilliantly run instance like this, but I wouldn't give spez a penny if he begged for it.

[-] ripcord@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Hopefully more people contribute, and on a regular basis. Even if everyone on average double the default amount, it's only like $7500 so far, which isn't that much in the scheme of things.

[-] zalack@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

I went to donate but didn't want to give my credit card number to a random website. I'd feel way better about it if there was a PayPal option.

[-] Prouvaire@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

@zalack You may want to look into "disposable" credit card number services that some institutions offer. Eg, see https://www.online-tech-tips.com/cool-websites/5-reputable-disposable-credit-card-number-services/

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

It supports ApplePay if that’s any use

[-] Rabbithole@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Dropped something in to help with costs. This thing really should be community funded.

Good luck Ernest!

[-] Tomassci@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I'm going to mention the fact that not only ernest made the platform, and runs it, he also made communities of miscellanous subreddits (which helped me as reddit refugee) and posts content into it. And manages to do all of that at the same time. Really grateful for all of that.

[-] tchambers@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago

Very appreciateive of all the work Ernest and everyone has done here.

[-] Poem_for_your_sprog@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I couldn't login for a week. Trying to test comments now.

[-] Hyperreality@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I can't read your comment. Have you tried turning your computer off and on again?

[-] muftiboy@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

is ernest the spez of kbin? I just mean does he have the power to shut me down if he wanted and delete my stuff

wondering because of what's going on with reddit

[-] Mr_Figtree@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

In a sense. Ernest has control over kbin.social, meaning he could delete any content posted directly to kbin.social, delete accounts on kbin.social, and so on, if he wanted to. The other instance admins have that same power on their own instances. He doesn't have any control over content on other /kbin instances or on Lemmy instances that federate with kbin.social, and because /kbin itself is free software he can't fully control that either. Even if Ernest turns evil you would always be able to make a new account somewhere else, subscribe to the same non-kbin.social communities that you did before, and carry on where you left off.

[-] Otome-chan@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

yes. ernest is the admin and host of kbin.social. however, if ernest abuses his power then people can easily spin up new instances of kbin (and have already done so) and you can simply use that instead. Or you can host your own instance. and all of the content is shared across them.

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Or you can host your own instance

People keep saying that, but I can't find any good guides on how to do so.

[-] Otome-chan@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

that's because kbin is hardly a month old and still a wip. unfortunately that means to get something up is gonna be more technical.

[-] tal@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

There's someone on the issue tracker writing a guide. Let me dig up a link.

EDIT: It went into the main repository two weeks ago. Here's the PR for that initial commit:

https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/409

It looks like the author of the guide -- who is not Ernest -- is maintaining a branch where they're writing said guide and that the last commits on that branch are only 11 hours old as of this writing and haven't yet been merged into the main kbin repo. Here's their WIP guide, about as fresh as you're gonna get admin docs for kbin:

https://codeberg.org/lilfade/kbin-core/src/branch/admin-guide/docs

The main repository's admin docs are here:

https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/src/branch/develop/docs

@Aesthesiaphilia

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Welp, that's way too advanced for me. And, I suspect, for most people. I'm going to stop suggesting "spin up a new instance" as a solution to fediverse problems.

Like, I'm sure you're about to say something like, "It's actually really easy! Just sjuehejsishebjfkoapwlheu jsjudhwnakalziziuw ksksoducyenwon znxjisiwnsbshoo nsjwisiakla. But also make sure you wjowownwnejdicinfnskso mwkslosidubnekskppppmamajsij jdjduhxbdnskoskwnmjcbdbw or else it will explode." Because that's what I'm going to hear. We don't know what "bare metal" or "docker" means, or what a "VPS" is.

[-] tal@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I don't think that that really collides with @Otome's point, which is how much power Ernest has. She's saying that Ernest can't really do what spez is doing with Reddit. Spez controls Reddit in a way that Ernest cannot control kbin, or more-broadly, the Fediverse. Spez could simply deny access to Reddit to third party clients.

There are people who are going to be writing guides and packaging the software. There are a number of kbin instances that Ernest does not personally control, not to mention compatible software. The bar will continue to lower, but it is already low enough that if Ernest cannot "turn off" kbin if there are sufficient people who want to use it.

The overwhelming majority of people in the world cannot deploy or maintain an email server either, if you asked them to do so off-the-cuff. But there are many people running email servers around the world, and many people who can and would do so, were the need to arise. No one company "owns" email and can simply deny access to it because of that.

The point is that kbin and lemmy and such operate as email servers have, or Usenet servers, or IRC. The source code to servers is publicly-available and could be forked, if the need arises. Many different organizations run their own servers. And no one person can deny access to the system.

[-] Otome-chan@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Right. so while the majority of users may struggle due to the technical nature, the reality is that currently there appears to be 75 different kbin instances. meaning if this (1) instance has problems, you can simply move to one of the other 74 instances and keep using kbin as normal. Even if ernest decided to 100% shut down kbin.social, those other instances still exist and he can't touch them.

[-] tal@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Also, @Aesthesiaphilia, it looks like some provider just announced that they're providing managed kbin instances (like, they set it up, handle updates and such) starting at $10/month.

https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/131142/We-are-launching-KBIN-fully-managed-service

My guess is that there will be other providers.

That isn't necessary to achieve what Otome-chan is going for, but will probably bring down the bar for people who want to have full control over their site but don't want to deal with the technical side or want to only deal with a limited amount of it.

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I agree, I was going on a bit of a tangent because people keep saying things like "you can just host your own instance".

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

It’s a work in progress about self-hosting an instance of a really new and fast-moving piece of software. I’ve no doubt things will get simpler.

[-] Niello@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago
[-] Gandalfthewhite@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

What is a cinnamon roll

[-] Dean-North182@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Just looked it up. A cinnamon roll refers to someone who is sweet, innocent and deserves better.

[-] IvanTheTerribleWaiter@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

A cinnamon roll is an amazing sweet pastry that is soft and gooey and can be eaten with or without a vanilla glaze on top.

[-] Gandalfthewhite@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

The glaze is required

this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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