PSA: while upvoting exists, to get the "move closer to the top" effect that reddit's upvote had, you need to click boost - RedditMigration - kbin.social
kbin.sociala small difference, but important to how people use the site
a small difference, but important to how people use the site
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Tracking the lastest news and numbers about the #RedditMigration to open, Fediverse-based alternatives, including #Kbin and #Lemmy To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/
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Horrible idea. No one sees this button, no one knows what it does, and upvotes definitely should have that effect.
Ernest is likely working on it
We talking P. Worrell or the developer guy?
Developer guy
Iād give anything to have Ernest P. Worrell back and on the case.
I somehow feel like any software he wrote wouldnāt work very well.
He has to do a physical side-quest every time anything breaks.
Vern?
But is heā¦ earnestly working on it?
well he did fix the reputation calculationsā¦ https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/462
that would be disastrous, and just serve to make sure this platform ends up like reddit
Agreed. I upvoted AND boosted your comment for redundancy.
Theyāre not redundant functions. Theyāreā¦ Mixed up on kbin right now, because things were originally built with the up button boosting content, but thatās incongruent with how Lemmy does it, so it was changed.
But boosting isnāt really about sorting at all. Itās about republishing content, so that it can be sent out to instances that have started following a group after the content was originally posted.
I believe it is more akin to āre-tweetingā for your followers.
All boosts you boost are not private and everyone can see everything you have boosted
How itās interpreted it is entirely up to the UI layer. On microblogs, itās surfaced as a retweet-like behaviour, but itās not surfaced at all here, really, except on kbin where itās used to report who has reboosted something.
At its core, itās a republish button, and just as if you were to republish someone elseās blog post on your own blog, people can see, if they look closely enough, that youāve done it.
If you follow someone on kbin, and they boost a thread, itāll show up in your feed. Itās sorta like crossposting to your user page on reddit
This makes sense ā but if nobody knows it there is lots of room for confusion.
āBoostā seems more like āupdootā than āretweetā. Perhaps more importantly why would one retweet a comment? Rather than a post?
The way content propagation works here is that someone using Website A follows a remote content source (either a user, or a group ā aka a ācommunityā or a āmagazineā), and the remote hosting website (letās call it Website B) sends all subsequent content from that source to Website A, where the requesting user can then view it. If someone from Website A was already following that content source, then they get to see all of the content that Website A had already received, and benefit from earlier users efforts. But if that person was the first from Website A to subscribe to that content source, then they only get future content.
Itās very similar to a, well, a magazine subscription in that way. NatGeo isnāt sending you their 150 years worth of back catalogue when you subscribe in 2023 (not that you should bother subscribing to NatGeo in 2023).
The āboostā button republishes content, though. Posts, comments, whatever. Hitting āboostā on a comment republishes it, and once republished the group actor (the little bot-like construct that functionally is the group) sees it as new content, and pushes it out to everyone following it. This means it will reach websites that started subscribing to the group after the comment was originally posted.
Boosting is how older content (where older basically means āfrom anytime before literally right nowā) spreads through the fediverse.
So this is one of those things like git, where you canāt explain how it works on the surface to a normal person because it barely even makes sense if you donāt know about the underlying plumbing. :\
Not awesome, but I guess thatās what you get when you graft a reddit-like experience onto a fediverse that was more or less invented for microblogging.
Thank you so much for this explanation, it really helped some of this click for me. I donāt use kbin, so the boosting isnāt so relevant to me, but Iām beginning to understand some of how the federation works together.
Iām not sure how Lemmy syncs and backfill, but under its hood, I imagine itās doing the same thing, just automatically. Lemmy groups are really spammy with boosts when viewed from Mastodon, for instance.
Yea, iām working on my own Fedi software and iām struggling with the point of boosting in the link aggregator context. Itās an odd overlap with Reddit-style reposting to appropriate subs, but based on the user.
It makes sense in the Twitter UX, but i struggle to find itās place in the Reddit UX.
I think boosts have potential to be used for crossposts, and the current implementation are just crossposts to your profile. Though theyāre likely here right now just because Kbin is a mix between thread and microblog software
yeahhhhhhh if boost came with like a menu: āBoost to: -Your Personal Microblog -Magazineās Microblog [pick] -Magazine as Article [pick]ā
then the feature would be pretty baller
(actually im not sure if your personal microblog exists soā¦maybe just the other 2)
Boosting is super important in all contexts in the Fediverse.
When am instance subscribes to a content source - be that a user actor or a group actor - on behalf of a user, it only requests future content. Back catalogues are not fetched by default. Boosting re-publishes the content, so that it is received by new followers.
With a group actor, the boost triggers the actor to reboot the content itself, sending it out to new subscribers to the group, and filling in that back catalogue.
I like this comment but I donāt know what im supposed to do about it
Boost things.
if old content isnt fetched for a newly subscribed instance to see, how are users going to boost that content in the first place?
Users who can see the content need to boost it?
Users who use the website that the community is hosted on have access to the full library of it. They need to boost stuff. And people who subscribe from remote sites need to boost older content that theyāve seen.
but relevant users cant see it, its never fetched for them to see it. Sure users on the home instance can see it, but theyāre on the home instance, itās already fetched for them. Ive run into this problem on here, where there is a lot of content on other instances that isnt visible from kbin. I have the option of visiting the home instance to see it, but it takes me completely off of kbin, I cant boost it from that page.
Someone just needs to follow. The community owner either needs to seed the community to big instances using accounts on them, or people who find the community via other instances need to subscribe and know that fresh content will come. Then they can boost older content from the hosting site.
Things take some conscious effort here. That isnāt necessarily a bad thing.
āThen they can boost older content from the hosting site.ā No thatās the problem. Like you yourself said back catalogues arent fetched. They canāt see the older content to be able to boost it, theyāll only see new content.
If my instance follows a community at time t = T, and your instance starts following it at time t = T+10, I can boost content posted between T and T+9 so that you can see it.
Meanwhile, if people on the hosting instance boost things posted from times earlier than T, we both get to see them. Then, once theyāre visible to us, we can continue to boost them for new instances to see.
If boosting is meant to be a solution to the back catalogue problem, then itās a horrible way to do it. Youād have to go through and boost every single post from before the hosting instance was followed, and then itād only show up the user page of the guy who went to all of that effort? (or, realistically, bot).
If what Iām saying is accurate (and Iām still not sure because this is admittedly a bit too complicated for me) then it doesnāt sound very useful since individual profiles arenāt nearly as important in a forum context when compared to something like twitter, and especially when you can just upvote something and have that show on your profile. Unless Iām mistaken and anything youāve upvoted doesnāt propagate to another automatically instance while boosts doā¦ but I donāt think thatās a big enough distinction to have two different buttons? You could just have an upvote also do that.
Where are you getting that impression from?
This seems needlessly convoluted.
This is why the functionality was hidden behind the upvote button initially, but people wanted the arrows to match the arrows on Lemmy.
I see it as similar to the āsaveā function on Reddit, except itās public. Iāve started using it on things that I think I might like to read again later (and so by extension anyone whoās ālike meā would probably want to read it too).
āBoostā comes across as a bug, not a feature. People should have one vote, not two.
i disagree, itās a great functionality that people should learnā¦ and hereās the simple pointā¦ you can BOOST a comment you disagree with, so that your argument AGAINST the comment will get more visibilityā¦ reddit is dysfunctional, and this mechanism can help fix one of the problems reddit cannot get rid ofā¦ this mechanism can help discussion, and fight against things like brigadingā¦
think about it a minuteā¦ someone makes a really TERRIBLE point that you can dismantle easilyā¦ tear it down, and BOOST the hell out of itā¦ reddit cannot accommodate thatā¦ keeping those two functions separate is criticalā¦
this will help keep every thread from becoming a popularity contest that is entirely predictable, once people figure it out
edit to add: iāve only been using this platform for a few daysā¦ but i promise you, it works the way itās supposed toā¦ try it outā¦
Should they? It seems to me that we should have way, way more control over how we choose to sort things.
That should be one of the options, of course, but we can have so much more here.
I second this. It should be a simpler UX
I literally do not see this boost button anywhere. I just spent 2 minutes mousing over every button around your comment and I cannot find it.
Boosting is only available on kbin
@tryplot oh for real? I had no idea. My brain said ālooks like Reddit upvotes, must work the same wayā. The up/downvote buttons are placed prominently in a way that suggests they are impactful, whereas boost is just kinda tertiary / seems less important.
Agreed, location of voting and boost should be swapped, at least until voting means something.
They were swapped before, and were recently changed to this for Lemmy compatibility, but things like the algorithm and reputation counting havenāt been updated yet.
What does the upvote/downvote do, could someone kindly explain?
Of course, allow me to illuminate for you what it actually does: Nothing.
Edit: Wow thanks so much for the upvotes everyone thatās really productive! Hahaha
Upvoted.
The upvote button does nothing, but the downvote button subtracts reputation.
As it stands now the upvote works as a favorite or like, downvote lowers reputation, boost raises reputation. Itās a bit confusing and thereās an open ticket on this. Iām not sure if all old actions will carry over or when the operations change itāll get reset.
Is this a UI issue or a fundamental flaw of the Fediverse? In other words, is this only confusing because of how the UI and thread display logic respond to the data theyāre getting? Is this just an issue of how the comments thread is ordered, and the fact that it isnāt what the user would expect? (I only ask because Iām curious and want to know how this place works)
To the best of my knowledge, this is a temporary kbin-specific thing. Pretty sure I saw Ernest mention there is a change in the works with the next updateā¦ in fact: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/116811/PSA-every-interaction-you-make-with-various-posts-on-kbin#entry-comment-462816
As Bluskale mentions itās a Kbin UI thing but it will be changing in the future.
if it works as a favorite where do you go to see your favorited content?
If you look to the hamburger icon in the top right of the screen next to your username thatās the channel selector. Favorites is the third one down in the list.
that is currently the situation due to boost and favorite being switched to make kbin more compatible with lemmy, but post and user reputation are currently still counting boosts.
Whatās the difference between upvoting and boosting?
Upvote is akin to āfavoriteā on ActivityPub, Boost is akin to reblog on ActivityPub.
Thatās one thing I donāt like about kbin. Iām used to upvotes and downvotes and trying to be Reddit and Twitter at the same time just doesnāt work. I think we should leave microblogging to Mastodon and concentrate on link aggregation.
Makes just about as much sense as communities being called āMagazinesā and threads being called āArticlesā. There is a lot to like about Kbin but also a lot that boggles my mind.
No, reputation on your profile is just bugged.
Upvotes are upvotes.
Stop spreading this please.
This isnāt the case though? Upvotes (aka favourites everywhere else) are what affect the āalgorithmā the functionality thats broken is Karma tracking.
I think actually itās both.
I think Hot and Top are sorted according to upvotes + boosts (weighted x2) less downvotes. I think the plan is reputation will work the same way (once it gets fixed).
ā¦but reading this thread I wonder if that needs a rethink - people seem to boost rather more liberally than expected/intend in order to game this algorithm.
It was thought/expected that, since boosts effectively retweet the comment, they would be used quite sparingly - this is why they have a relatively high significance.
We could probably do with some clarity on all of this because this line of discussion has been repeated many times and there is quite a lot of hearsay and misinformation being parroted. @Ernest ?
I think itās because of all of the posts that say āboosts are upvotesā, and people are just confused, so they use the boost button alongside the upvote button. Once this gets fixed, the amount of boosts will probably go down
And this exchange is already out of date!
Iām enjoying being on a platform where improvements are made daily!
Boosted and upvoted because I think youāre right. š
This isnāt true. Posts and comments are sorted by upvotes, downvotes, and age. The place where wires got crossed with regard to upvotes and boosts is āreputationā on your profile. Boosts are supposed to be like retweets.
But also keep in mind, anyone can look at your profile and see what you have boosted.
So thereās a privacy issue with boosting threads/comments.
For example, https://kbin.social/u/tryplot/boosts
I can see you boosted a thread about Biden and Assisted Deaths
everyone can see your likes too! itās important to how activitypub works for all that to be public
tap more, activity to see the likes on pretty much anything on kbin
Where votes are labeled āfavouritesā :)
In a way I like that this is all openly public vs just the devs and admins being able to see it. Either way somebody was going to pay attention but now itās obvious to users.
Boosting is like retweeting, it doesnāt make sense for it to be private.
Just so everyoneās aware, upvotes and downvotes are also public, due to how federation works.
honestly surprised mine isnāt majority self boosts.
PSA boost all your own posts for positive reputation
I know youāre boost mining with this postš
Boosting makes me feel good
WTF is a boost button? Have never seen anything like that on here.
Itās something on kbin, not on Lemmy. Youāre seeing this post coming over from the kbin website.