PSA: Upvote is not an upvote like you are used to (like Reddit) - "Boost" is the Reddit Upvote
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.
Thanks! I'll upvote this for visibility.
Bruh, you got me laughing hard.
418 upvotes / 3 downvoted = You one funny Person
I am brand new to KBIN n loving it so far
Thanks to OP I got me answer .. that's the first thing I didn't get;
"What's the diff between n upvote and boost ? "
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.
the dev of kbin will be changing this. so up/downvotes are what affect your reputation. It's just not a priority right now
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.
I made a userscript that allows you to collapse comments, that should help you out until it's added to the site officially
You can have a look here to see a test instance with some of the things that are coming, Ernest (the admin) has been merging in a range of tickets including bug fixes, UI improvements and other bits.
There seems to be an ever growing backlog of feature requests and bug fixes in the issues list but a fair bit is getting sorted out behind the scenes.
I'm mostly focused on UI/UX for mobile.
So if up/down votes will be fixed in the future, what would boost mean at that point?
I really don't know which is which and what does what, so I just click them both
Boosts are retweets, upvotes are favorites. So upvoting means you "like" that content, and boosting is kinda like sharing it to your followers.
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.
As someone from Lemmy land this confuses me.
Have an upvote!
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.
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.
As I understand it, it’s a feature that is inherited from the underlying ActivityPub protocol which is designed to support all kinds of social network architectures.
If you use Mastodon, their usage makes a lot sense. A ‘favourite’ (upvote on Kbin) is a private thumbs-up to the poster - a pat on the back that has no algorithmic importance.
A Boost is more like a Retweet. Boosting something makes it show up in your followers’ timeline. I guess if you follow a person on kbin, Boosts will do that too and boosted stuff will show on your subscribed home page.
Not crazy about the design. An upvote should be an upvote. If the upvote is useless, why is it even there?
It'll be changed soon™, so upvotes will boost reputation.
Read some of the other comments. It doesn’t sound like you’ve been following much of the chatter about the site very closely.
I click ALL the buttons and nobody can stop me!
Reported! But it's nothing personal :)
But boosts don’t do anything on places that don’t implement like here on Lemmy. …no?
Yeah seems redundant.
A boost is like a retweet, from my understanding - so must be a basic bit of functionality built into ActivityPub, I’d guess.
Yep. Though activitypub calls it something else as well. It's renames all the way down
I do wish there was a bit more privacy involved with boosting though, as of right now anyone can see what I boost.
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
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.
for me, the main selling point of kbin over lemmy was the transparency in user interactions on here. the last straw on the camel's back over at lemmy for me was seeing blatant vote manipulation hiding behind the end-user anonymity; kept an eye on some accounts that would instantly always get the same number of upvotes, dependent on the specific account, less than 3-5 seconds after posting. it was always some single-digit amount (I assume to not get flagged by the system), but that's all it takes to signal others to feel safer upvoting it.
the same can be done likewise to bury others' content that they can view as competition to what they want seen, multiple early downvotes can act as a subconscious deterrent to others
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?
The votes are federated but peeps post from time to time that they arent perfectly synced.
been wondering about comments too... but I guess those are supposed to somehow sync across all instances. otherwise how am I replying to you from Lemmy?
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.
Right, so boost behaves like Reddit upvote at the moment. So the title of the post is accurate still.
No it does not.
Boost behaves like a retweet and upvotes like upvotes.
The reputation calculation just haven't been updated yet, that doesn't mean an upvote isn't an upvote.
Upvotes are what shows as upvotes because that's what they are.
Reputation is just something on your profile page that's currently wrong.
Your post is spreading a misunderstanding, there's already been other confused people posting.
And if everyone just reads and listens to OP they'll all be doing it wrong when it gets fixed, all because you aren't happy that your "reputation" score isn't changing. The software is scarcely a month old folks, and until a week ago was the work of one guy. People need to relax a bit.
But what are upvotes and downvotes? I would have assumed upvote is fave/star. Is downvote an emoji react?
I believe you are correct about upvotes. To my knowledge, downvotes don’t federate at all (ActivityPub may not support them, for all I know), so what they do here is merely affect reputation points.
Why doesn't Kbin have the [+] and [-] buttons for collapsing or opening comment threads? Or, if it does, where can I find that setting?
It's coming. There is already a fix someone created that is waiting to be reviewed and merged into the site.
There is no boost on Lemmy instances, though
What happens when a kbin user boosts my Lemmy post? What happens when I upvote their post? So many questions
I boosted you from kbin, and I have a follower on mastodon.world.
Therefore you have a toot federated to mastodon.world : https://mastodon.world/@CylonBunny@lemmy.world/110596451235144258
Every time you boost a lemmy post, an angel gets its wings! And a demon gets its pitchfork. And a trans person gets their gender validated. And a nazi gets punched in the face!
If I understand correctly, when a Kbin user boosts a Lemmy post, it will work like an upvote, bringing it up. But it wouldn't affect anything for Lemmy users. But when a Lemmy user upvotes a post from a Kbin user, it will just be shown as an upvote but not effect reputation or anything, but will upvote it for lemmy users.
boost (93)
Well played.
In my understanding, boost is retweet and upvote is upvote. So upvote is the Reddit upvote but it doesn't change your reputation?
Glad to hear, I had no idea about this.
thanks, im boosting this. now if i could just not scroll to the furthest down for replying...
Took me a moment to figure out what you were even talking about. The boost button is translated as "upvoto" in Portuguese, so that doesn't help...
Maybe it should be something like "promover" (promote).