• 11 Posts
  • 35 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: April 17th, 2023

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  • In the latest thing with Reddit’s /kbin, it was still in the early prototype phase (and remains so to this day). Prior to this, practically only I and a few friends were using it. It wasn’t ready to handle the sudden creation of dozens of instances or accommodate thousands of users. Additionally, real-world issues emerged that demanded my immediate attention. I made the decision to take a step back instead of getting caught up in a race, opting to build solid foundations, which is exactly what I’m doing now. In my opinion, this will be better for the project and potential contributors, ensuring that their work will be utilized to the best possible extent.





  • Oh, come on, I’m not that sensitive ;-) Constructive criticism helps me set goals, prioritize tasks on my board, and broaden my horizons when it comes to the overall experience with the platform. I really appreciate that. The fact is that Lemmy had a lot more time. I remember when they started federation tests, I was writing my first line of code. Some things just need time to mature. For me, it’s not a race. I simply have a clear goal that I’m determined to achieve - to create a solid, accessible platform that others can benefit from and enjoy. Who knows, maybe it’ll become the best in the entire fediverse someday ;-) Now, after the break, I’ll be working on federation but also on customizing the feed to tailor it as much as possible to individual needs. Cheers!









  • You see, I don’t know how I would act now in hindsight. You have to take into consideration that, at the peak, hundreds of people willing to help appeared out of nowhere, people I didn’t know at all. By nature, I am rather distrustful and approach new relationships cautiously - I really need a lot of time to get to know another person well. It’s true that after some time, a certain structure began to take shape, but not everything is always as it seems at first glance - especially when so many strong personalities converge in one place. Perhaps it was a mistake that instead of addressing many things publicly, I tried to solve them in private conversations.

    And you’re right, anyone who knows me a bit knows that I have trouble asking for help. Sometimes, I take too much on myself, which is not good in the long run. I’m working on it. But this time was something more. I promised to take care of things, and under normal circumstances, it would probably be easy for me because I have some experience in resolving such situations. But these were not normal circumstances. I realized this too late. I was just overwhelmed by real life. So many problems collapsed on me that I could never have anticipated. These were the worst months of my entire life. I don’t want to write too much about it or make excuses, but at some point, even getting out of bed or eating something became difficult. When I tried to get back to the project, the thought of the backlog and how many people I let down made me feel sick. That’s why I’m really glad to be where I am now. I can only apologize to you and try to fix some mistakes. I need to do it at my own pace. I want to clean up the mess, find my rhythm, and then engage in broader communication with people. I’m still recovering on my own.

    What I did was indeed a bit malicious, but I believe it was the only way to achieve the intended effect. The fact that I really like you all should not mean that I will be uncritical of your work. I don’t want you to fully trust everything that comes from me - only in this way can we fully utilize the potential we have in developing the fediverse. Frontend errors are just a trivial matter; they can be quickly found and fixed. However, the situation is completely different when it comes to backend mechanics. Seemingly minor errors when I was developing karab.in made me undo them for weeks. With larger instances, there may not be a second chance. This is not a centralized system, you have to consider others above all. That’s why I am so sensitive to it and have so many doubts about making changes.

    It’s not that I want to make things difficult for you. I really care about mbin developing in the right direction. I am curious about what the future will bring. I would like kbin to remain rather ascetic, subtle, and something that you need to learn and understand a bit, rather than having everything handed to you on a platter. Mbin can be a different face, with more features, bolder, and I know that you have many great ideas for it. A simple example is the labels for marking mods/admins/ops that you are currently working on - kbin has it marked in a subtle way with a faint left border outline - you can do it differently, and that’s great. As someone very wise once said, “If it’s not diverse, it’s not the fediverse.

    @melroy I am sure that this is just the beginning of our shared adventure. I hope you won’t hold a grudge against me for long ;) Guys, I deeply regret that we met at this stage of my life, but as I say, all I can do is try to fix my mistakes. Thanks for everything!


  • Yes, I say this fully aware - there are many things that I have failed at. Much of what I said, I failed to achieve. However, I never wanted to keep people on a leash; I am more of a person who prefers to stay on the sidelines and engage in what brings me the greatest pleasure - coding, just like any other contributor.

    Believe me, I tried to delegate tasks, had many private conversations and discussions. Perhaps it wasn’t visible from the outside. However, in that mental state, the last thing I wanted to do was resolve conflicts among adults, and it all started to boil down to that. As @BaldProphet mentioned - “microcosm of the open-source community.”

    Moreover, there were too many different visions of the project, ignoring requests, etc. That’s precisely why I decided to temporarily halt development, to secure the future of kbin. It was my decision, and as I mentioned, forking turned out to be the best thing that could happen. As you can see, the differences are not that significant, but it will be easier for all of us - especially since we can always draw inspiration from each other, and I don’t think anyone has a problem with that.

    However, I still maintain contact with many people, and sometimes they mention to me the attitude of certain individuals on mbin’s Matrix - it is at least puzzling. In any case, I want to stay away from that and focus on my work with contributors who understand and prefer my approach.



    1. kbin has a tag view - you can click on it, and it will display content from the fediverse, merged with Mastodon posts and other microblogs. The type of content found there depends on the instance and any relay connections. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the chaos in large Mastodon instances.

    https://kbin.social/tag/NewYork
    https://kbin.social/tag/silenthill

    1. It’s something I’ll be working on in the future. I’m focused on integrations with various platforms and convenient browsing of multimedia content coming from them. Currently, it’s done provisionally and is not the final solution.

    I won’t comment on the rest because I’ve always hated the Twitter format. But I know that there are many people who find it appealing. Mastodon didn’t suit me either, despite several attempts to use it.



  • I assure you that I didn’t intentionally push incorrect code into the repository. These were my first lines of code in a really long time. I simply got involved in other things that I wanted to finish first, and I noticed the edge case in the meantime, but it wasn’t a priority. I saw that you were syncing and I was hoping to benefit a bit from it once you fixed it. I didn’t expect the review to happen so quickly. By the way, I was genuinely curious about how this project management method works because, you know, I’ve always avoided such an approach. Merloy, you know how much I owe you, and I appreciate what you’ve done for the project, as well as the other Mbin contributors. Our overall visions haven’t always been the same, and I think it’s great that kbin has been forked. You see for yourself how my work looks until the release - there are many things I’ll be refining over time. That’s why I’ve put a hold on all other PRs, and now I want to focus on this.