1y ago

Edit: TIL it doesn't matter if you make your community on Lemmy or kbin, they're federated and will have equal exposure

Thanks everyone for the help.

Original post: I want to create a niche community, but considering Lemmy can't see kbin magazines, wouldn't it make more sense to make the community on Lemmy, that way people from both Lemmy and kbin can be a part if it?

Maybe I should have posted this on a nostupidquestions community, I don't know.

54 comments

Lemmy can see kbin magazines. I'm on a lemmy instance right now.
kbin.social itself has had some federation issues in the past month, but I think that's more growing pains of a new platform than anything inherent in the system itself.
- Oh, maybe that's where I got the idea that Lemmy couldn't see them, I've only been on the fediverse for a couple weeks. People were saying Lemmy couldn't see kbin, but I didn't realize that was temporary.
  
  There's some suspicion that the specific instance lemmy.ml is rejecting incoming requests from kbin via a configuration, but lemmy.world, lemmy.ca, beehaw, etc. seem to be federating well enough.
  
  G'day from a Kbinaut :)
- Yeah this seems to be a temporary thing. I've been following the federation issues we've been having on kbin and I'm hoping they can resolved as everything stabilizes.
  I'm unsure if the ingest from kbin Lemmy was working because last I checked they were returning error responses on requests that had "kbinbot" in the name.
  
  I'm unsure if the ingest from kbin Lemmy was working because last I checked they were returning error responses on requests that had "kbinbot" in the name.
  It's only lemmy.ml, not all of lemmy, that's returning a forbidden response on requests from kbin.
  
  There definitely seems to be something going on but I haven't found solid problem replication steps.
  For example it may be because the instance the thread was posted on is lemmy.ml but I expected the thread here: https://kbin.social/m/asklemmy@lemmy.ml/t/163712/former-current-Twitter-users-what-do-you-do-on-there would still sync up with where the version of the thread where the OP is located https://lemmy.nz/post/314511 even if it the instance where the thread was posted (maybe?) doesn't federate with kbin.social: https://lemmy.ml/post/1868037
  It's possible my mental model of fediverse working is just still very basic and thread instance is the ultimate arbiter?
- I hope kbin gets federated by lemmy.ml it seems they have been rather trigger happy with blocking. It seems we will have to wait and see which instance is the most free.
  
  A lot of the original Lemmy instances are quite trigger happy. It's one really nice thing about the new instances with new admins who block but still prefer not to unless it's really necessary.

Lemmy can see kbin magazines. I am posting this from Lemmy!
- Caveat: Magazines, just like lemmy communities from other instances/servers are not there by default. Users or admins have to seek them out.
- Well I feel stupid, is this new that Lemmy can see magazines? Originally could they not?
  
  Don't. I think it was broken.
  
  No it's not new, that's the whole idea of the fediverse.
  There has been some technical issues but they should just share all content.
  
  When I joined I could, then I think maybe federation was wonky for a bit there, but it seems to be all good now.
  (hi from lemmy)
- But how did we get here? On kbin trying to search for a Lemmy community I can't find it, and on Lemmy looking for kbin the same happens. And yet here we are because someone figured out how to find it and subscribe.
  
  Those kinds of things are slowly being ironed out, I believe.
  
  If nobody has ever subscribed to a foreign instance's community/magazine before, it won't show up on your home instance. Currently, the best way to pull it into your local instance is to copy its web address on the other site into your local search.
  e.g. If you wanted to pull in kbin.social's AskKbin from lemmy.world you'd find its URL, https://kbin.social/m/AskKbin, and paste that address into your home instance's search box. As long as somebody has done this once, AskKbin will now show up in regular community lists, searches, etc.

what's the difference between a kbin magazine and a community?
- It's mostly the same, but magazines also include hashtags from microblogs like mastodon.
- Nothing really, they just use different names for the same thing. Like how Reddit has subreddits.
  
  oh interesting
  if this was posted to a kbin magazine I'm here viewing it from a Lemmy instance
- Same thing, just different terms.

OP could you edit your title with an accurate statement? Like: TIL it doesn't matter if you make your community on Lemmy or kbin, they're federated and will have equal exposure
That way people will get the right impression even without going to the comments :)
(btw I downvoted your post for now but I upvoted a comment because I felt bad about taking away your karma for asking a totally reasonable question)
- Will do. I'll use your title suggestion as it's early in the morning and I don’t want to think for myself :p
  
  Thanks a lot! I'm so glad title editing exists here
- OP could you edit your title with an accurate statement? Like: TIL it doesn't matter if you make your community on Lemmy or kbin, they're federated and will have equal exposure
  That's a good idea. @UnhappyCamper

lemmy users can see kbin magazines but kbin magazines are a bit less discoverable since lemmy in particular has tools to help with finding cross-instance communities. I don't really like lemmy so I didn't bother making my more niche groups lemmy-specific.

It honestly depends on how centralized you want to be. Do we want all communities on the largest lemmy instance or do we want them on many different instances, some of which are kbin? Suppose there's a security hole in Lemmy code that needs to be updated. It'd be good for some of the communities to be on Kbin while that's being fixed, and vice versa.
But really, kbin and lemmy have small but essential differences. I adore the kbin integration with Mastodon and it's hashtags, so I'm going to prefer a kbin server with that for any communities I make. They can still be found. They can still hit the front page if they get a good thread going. They still show up in the newest feed.
- Lemmy.world recent incident was a great demonstration of the benefit there is to spreading what instances communities are created on. There was some grumbling about /r/Android coming and making their own instance and then lemmy.world/c/Android merging with them there, but turns out it's good to not have all the eggs in one basket.

I'm on lemmy and looking at your post.

you'll get exposed alright

54 comments