How can we make it more popular?

  • OpenStars@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Content ofc, but also I’m on Kbin, and the software here is atrocious. 100% of the time after like a minute goes by while I read a post and read the comments and then want to upvote/boost or write a comment, it asks me to re-login on a mobile Firefox. Also, if I comment on something and someone responds, but then a moderator removes the entire post on another instance, it breaks my entire Notifications - not just that singular one, but the entire process of receiving notifications for anything I say (the good news is that it only breaks the one page that it occurs on, so if I make enough other comments it will eventually fall behind the curve, but that’s still a whole page of notifications that I will never be able to see, ever). Also there is no API at all. Also… well, you get the idea.

    At this point, I would move to Lemmy except… account migration is a lie. I already asked people to follow me from Reddit to Kbin, and I’m not doing that again.

    You will be baked, and then there will be cake.

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        On my desktop I almost never have any issues at all. Same browser, different OS (Android vs. Mac) seems to make the difference. The first issue is often called the “login bug”, and all of these issues are widely known and discussed. But yeah, ymmv:-).

        I get that it was released too soon, which is why I would have liked to try Lemmy, except then I will not get notifications (specifically Messages) from my old account. There are a LOT of rough edges still, all around the Fediverse.

        Which is my answer to the OP’s question: fixing those should definitely help retain people:-).

    • norbert@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Sometimes kbin will ask me to login again but I just refresh and it’ll show me logged in, I think it’s a federation issue if people haven’t interacted with the post or something?

      Other times it’ll ask me to login and return a CSRF token error and if I refresh it again, it’ll fix it.

      Minor bugs, everything has mostly been pretty smooth. Just using a shortcut on my homescreen, no apps or anything.

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yes, refreshing solves it - despite it being called the “login bug”, you do not actually have to log in again - thanks for making sure that people know:-). It seems that after some time - a minute? - has passed, it has already forgotten who you are, and it needs to be reminded again. But it’s annoying b/c who reads a post, all the comments on it, and writes out a response, all in under one minute!? (on a mobile screen no less, with those keyboards) And if you write a second comment, it will happen again. And again, and again, forever - at least it is predictable:-P.

        The Notifications issue is pretty debilitating though - you must have managed to avoid ever running afoul of it (it does seem fairly rare), but it blocks your ENTIRE Notifications, from EVERYONE, from every instance, every post, every comment you’ve ever done, and permanently increases your Notification count, which can never be viewed and thus never go back down to zero. I even tried going back through every post and comment that I have ever made in the last several months, but I still have a “1” there that I cannot ever view (b/c once the moderator of another instance removes it - which btw Kbin lacks any moderation tools at all iirc - you cannot view the post anymore, hence you cannot view the comment of the person who replied to you, hence it is “unread”… forever). Eventually the situation that causes the error message will fall behind and you can view the newest page of results (but not the entire page on which the original comment occurs), but then the whole thing can happen again, and again, and again, each time burning your entire Notifications system all over again.

        Not being able to receive Notifications almost defeats the point of a social media site?! And unlike the former issue, the latter still applies when accessing from a desktop computer. So I would not call that one a “minor” bug - it is more like a rarely occurring major one. I am glad that your own experience has been smoother than mine though:-).

    • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      For what it’s worth, I’ve heard that there’s a major update coming this month sometime for Kbin, first in a while, so it might get a lot better (with the expected new bugs to chase). On desktop it’s been mostly okay with the occasional glitches, but the real question that is hard to measure is how much is getting in and out from the fediverse properly. Hard to have a baseline when all the software is beta at best.

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Oooh, that is exciting! Yes I did not mention (my answer was already getting long-ish for social media) that the desktop experience is more or less perfectly fine, at least insofar as the first issue is concerned, but the notifications issue still applies (you must not have ever happened to comment on a post that was later removed by a mod on another instance? or else the issue could be sporadic, who knows:-D), and anyway a social media website that suffers such severe accessibility issues from a mobile device could definitely be a factor in causing a drop in number of active users… It will get better over time, but as it currently stands, it is far from perfect. (Though I’m still here:-P)