this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Like the title says, if you want to upvote something on KBin, you should use the Boost link, not the upvote button (Why? Don't know...)

The upvote button doesn't seem to do much, but Boost accomplishes what Reddit's upvote did. So if you're looking to encourage a post, use the Boost link.

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[–] KuchiKopi@lemmy.world 288 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Thanks! I'll upvote this for visibility.

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[–] dannekrose@kilioa.org 172 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@HamSwagwich

This is a result of the original design. Kbin, up until just before the peak traffic hit, was using boosts as upvotes and favorites/likes were just below the post/thread (where boost sits now). Lemmy does it the way it is now (likes = upvotes) so Ernest changed it to match Lemmy behavior. But just as he changed it, he hadn’t changed the calculation for reputation to match when the server nearly melted down and he has to spend all his time just trying to keep the site alive by himself.

[–] iamhazel@beehaw.org 35 points 2 years ago
[–] garrettw87@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I see you’re on a different Kbin instance. Was this intended to be a threaded reply, out of curiosity? Because it shows up as a top-level comment on the post for me.

[–] Awwab@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago (11 children)

He using an optional feature that lets you auto populate your reply box with the OPs username.

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[–] Shortcake@kbin.social 131 points 2 years ago (1 children)

the dev of kbin will be changing this. so up/downvotes are what affect your reputation. It's just not a priority right now

[–] BedSharkPal@kbin.social 32 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Do we know if there have been any releases since the influx of users? Or are they just focusing on backend stuff still?

There's still a lot of long hanging fruit *COUGHcollapsingthreads that would be great to have addressed sooner rather than later.

[–] ChillChillinChinchilla@kbin.social 67 points 2 years ago (1 children)

they

It's just one guy. We were a bit worried if he was even sleeping when the first big wave hit and he kept everything up by cloudflare and prayer.

[–] BedSharkPal@kbin.social 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Surely @ernest has some help at this point? Needs to start delegating or finding trusted maintainers if not.

[–] lohrun@fediverse.boo 58 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yeah there are a bunch of us in the dev chat now. Some of us have set up our additional kbin instances such as myself. I’m still looking through the code and getting up to speed but hope to contribute to the main code base soon. (Right now I’m experimenting with some features I wrote on my instance)

So yes, it’s mainly been Ernest up until this point but he is starting to get additional support from the community :)

[–] Upvotes_Kills_Birds@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thanks for joining! Excited to see the site grow.

[–] lohrun@fediverse.boo 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thank you! I’m excited to see the site grow as well. We seem to be building a nice place to hangout and have good discussions unlike the site that shall not be named.

(Also love your username)

[–] ernest@kbin.social 36 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yes, there is a very strong team there now, and I will gradually delegate responsibility in certain areas. I need to focus on my own milestones. However, I want to do it slowly because there are many pitfalls here that are a consequence of kbin being a side project. But the organization on Matrix was amazing, and I didn't even lift a finger for it.

@BedSharkPal @Upvotes_Kills_Birds

[–] Teppic@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

Not bad for a 'side project', not bad at all!

I'm very much enjoying your side project, and we all appreciate all the effort you've put in as we've stressed it to (and no doubt beyond!) It's design limits.

I also appreciate the way you pop up and contribute to random threads!

[–] dejf@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

Your level of engagement with the community is absolutely spectacular. I'm glad to have found myself a cozy little Internet space and wish you the best of luck with this one hell of a side project!

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[–] BedSharkPal@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

Great to hear!

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[–] Kichae@kbin.social 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There have been fixes submitted by volunteers, but I don't think they've been reviewed and approved. And I don't think there have been any new releases.

Hopefully things pick up speed now that Ernest has a server admin to look after things here

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[–] artillect@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

I made a userscript that allows you to collapse comments, that should help you out until it's added to the site officially

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[–] mrbubblesort@kbin.social 27 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I really don't know which is which and what does what, so I just click them both

[–] minnieo@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (5 children)

upvote = does nothing (for now) boost = upvote (affects reputation points)

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[–] BaldProphet@kbin.social 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Boosts are retweets, upvotes are favorites. So upvoting means you "like" that content, and boosting is kinda like sharing it to your followers.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

Importantly, boosts republish posts and comments. This is meaningful because groups work by basically boosting anything that mentions it, or which is in reply to something that mentions it. And posts silently mention the group.

Why is this important? Well, if you're the first person on your instance to follow someone on another one, you don't see anything published by that person earlier than that. But if that person regularly boosts older posts, you'll get to see them.

So boosting posts and comments triggers the group to re-boost it, sending it out to servers that started following after the original publish time.

Basically, boosting is how we make sure new users on remote sites see older content.

[–] darknavi@vlemmy.net 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As someone from Lemmy land this confuses me.

Have an upvote!

[–] HamSwagwich@kbin.social 22 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I think it confuses everyone. I have no idea why these two things exist in KBin. It's a complete mystery the thought process that went into it.

[–] riktor@kbin.social 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Although the name "boost" is a little odd. kbin is more than than just a link aggregator. kbin is also a semi-blogging platform (View the microblog feed rather than threads) that interacts with Mastodon. If you boost something, it is the same as reblogging (re-tweeting) a post and generates a reblog post on Mastodon. The developer is going to change it to where the up and downvote impacts reputation rather than the current boost and downvote button. A technical oversight but they acknowledge this and plan on changing it in the future however internet points is not really a priority so no one knows when the change will roll out.

[–] FrostBolt@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

This finally made it make sense for me. Thank you

[–] garrettw87@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

This is the answer.

[–] ChillChillinChinchilla@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Because kbin can interface with content from mastodon AND Lemmy.

The boost is for mastodon/microblogs, the upvote is for Lemmy/threadiverse.

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[–] Otome-chan@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

boost is "retweet" or "reshare". upvote is 'like'.

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[–] ArugulaZ@kbin.social 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Not crazy about the design. An upvote should be an upvote. If the upvote is useless, why is it even there?

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 15 points 2 years ago

It'll be changed soon™, so upvotes will boost reputation.

[–] garrettw87@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

Read some of the other comments. It doesn’t sound like you’ve been following much of the chatter about the site very closely.

[–] Crayon8027@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I click ALL the buttons and nobody can stop me!

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[–] ndr@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

But boosts don’t do anything on places that don’t implement like here on Lemmy. …no?

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[–] Defluo@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Do upvotes/boosts and downvotes pass from one instance to another? I assume not. So if I upvote a post from lemmy.world that's hosted on kbin.social...what happens? It only affects lemmy.world?

[–] Dick_Justice@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

The votes are federated but peeps post from time to time that they arent perfectly synced.

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[–] Sylveon-Z@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I do wish there was a bit more privacy involved with boosting though, as of right now anyone can see what I boost.

[–] 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social 16 points 2 years ago

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but just in case, that's the point of a boost. You're boosting its noticeability. It's not supposed to be private

[–] Adama@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

Boost as a “shout out” being public is alright. I guess for us Reddit folks it’s like a cross post to our own u/sub that followers could see.

Upvote/downvote, though, should be private. Not sure if that’s ever truly possible though because by the nature of the fediverse it has to be replicated across to other instances and so everything is “open” as I understand it.

It may not be easily visible in the UI but it’s there in the data.

So I try to think of everything here like it’s a postcard not a letter.

Any mail carrier who sees it (and makes a copy) can see it all.

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[–] NotAPenguin@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

You should update your post to clarify that what you said isn't true.

Upvotes are upvotes, boost is like retweet.

The reputation calculation just haven't been updated yet.

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[–] scamper@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (6 children)

But what are upvotes and downvotes? I would have assumed upvote is fave/star. Is downvote an emoji react?

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