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/kbin meta @kbin.social TheArstaInventor @kbin.social

Feature Requests/feedback from a Kbin magazines' moderator.

Been helping moderate some many huge communities here on kbin such as m/AskKbin, m/Redditmigration and so on, trying to contribute in ways I can.

And over the course of my time here at Kbin, here are some of the features I really, really wish comes to Kbin one day.

  • Banners for magazines: Right now we moderators are only able to make new logos and use that for our communities, but unlike Reddit or Lemmy, Kbin has been lacking the ability to make a banner apart from the Logo, the banner would help a lot more with not only the customization of the magazine but the overall appeal to it. This of-course should be optional as not every community would be going for this kind of look based on it's topic, but for the majority, this can really add more to the experience.

  • More optional applicable permissions to moderators when owners add them: Right now, when I add a moderator, they can only delete, ban and moderate posts in general, but accessing the mod panel is impossible unless you are an admin, so this means, moderators can't help owners with community rules, description, or even attach a new logo. There should atleast be some kind of supermod option or role that I could enable for the mods, so that this remains an optional but needed feature for some (and I am one of them).

  • Community Engagement: This is just, to put it lightly, lacking. For example, if someone make a really good post, everyone else is immediately ready to upvote/downvote and jump on the comments, but taking that first step of posting a good thread is just really, lacking. One of the reasons I believe for that is also because the platform feels very stale or dead in plain sight. To solve this, we could implement online status (OPTIONAL, I know not everyone will be into this), but we seriously need to figure out a way to make the site look more live and active, online status like Discord or Reddit (oh yes, reddit has this too, but this is optional and can be disabled) can really help add a more live and active feel to the community, this can in-directly encourage more engagement and the users will feel more inclined to particpate when they see others online.

Reddit also has some other features like showing "X number of people are viewing this thread", again adding that more of a live engaging feeling to the platform.

  • Wiki: I seriously hope we can get a dedicated area to put our wiki stuff similar to on Reddit, right now I have so far done this by making a thread and pinning it, but a wiki built into the sidepanel would a lot more seamless and integrated, plus people wouldn't have to look for in multiple places and will be good to have rules, description and everything in the sidepanel.

If yall have more, add them in the comments, this is what I remember so far.

Thank you for reading!

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26 comments
  • I second all the suggestions except the currently reading/online one: in my experience, seeing "currently reading" statistics just makes dead places feel more dead. It's also not a useful statistic: it doesn't tell you how good a post is, or provide any information about the poster, or even show how popular it is (because you can't really extrapolate about the average engagement from only one datapoint). You can't do anything with the number.

  • I'm not a mod, just an active user so my opinion on the first two doesn't really matter (even though I do think these would be good additions). I agree with the need for wikis as well.

    That said, personally I could not care less about whether someone is online or how many people are reading specific thread - what I care about is actual interaction with other users, i.e. discussion. I treat kbin/lemmy like a forum rather than a constantly moving social-media site like Twitter so take this as you like. It's not like it would affect my use of the platform in any meaningful way.

  • Banners for magazines

    You should be easily able to add a banner using the magazine CSS. Though that's not being federated currently, I hope magazine CSS federation gets added in the future at least between kbin/mbin instances.

    This should give you a banner above the threads section:

    main > header {
        /* Change both of these */
        height: 100px;
        background-image: url(https://i.imgur.com/zWuVa7U.png);
    }
    
    

    While this should give you one that also extends over the sidebar:

    #middle:before {
        width: 100%;
        display: block;
        content: '';
        /* Change these two: */
        height: 100px;
        background-image: url(https://i.imgur.com/zWuVa7U.png);
    }
    
    

    Changing the #middle to #header would put it above the kbin header (with the logo, the threads/microblog buttons, etc).

    Community Engagement

    There is an Active People section in the sidebar.

    I think the issue here is that kbin simply doesn't have a lot of users yet.

    One of the reasons I believe for that is also because the platform feels very stale or dead in plain sight.

    This won't improve if you show people "0 people are viewing this thread" on every thread. Actually, it would worsen the impression that the site is dead.

    • what is mbin? keep seeing it but dont know what it is

      • A while ago, kbin's development came to a standstill because ernest was gone for weeks and the project's contribution guidelines are very restrictive.

        Many contributors, including major ones, decided to leave the project and work on their own fork which uses more open contribution guidelines based on consensus.

        They adopt all the changes ernest makes to kbin, but have their own features on top of that. I believe fedia.io, for example, runs mbin now.

    • Thank you so much! I will make use of this, what you can do with CSS is amazing although not so newbie friendly which I am to CSS, so a user-friendly option to add a banner similar to logo would be good still.

      And regarding my suggestion about user engagement, showing how many people are viewing live actually does not work like that, it only shows the number of people viewing it live when the post is brand new/24 hours and when nobody is viewing it, it won't say 0 but simply not be shown at all.

      Again that was a mere example, just like the online status was as well, my main reason to mention those things is to possibly spark an idea of something even better that could help kbin, but not really copy what reddit already his, they were mostly just examples of what we could have similarly or just get the thinking process going on there :)

      • Update: unfortunately the banner CSS given did not work, here is the imgur link I was trying to add to m/cars for reference: https://imgur.com/a/SDy0s5O. The issue is that even after I followed your instructions and posted it on the CSS box from mod panel, I tried refreshing, banner just does not pop up.

        Maybe if you could help me out here, i'd really appreciate that, thank you again!

  • Just a user but the Ability to Mute People & Magazines instead of just ban them would be really helpful.

    • I second this as well, as a moderator, we don't have to outright ban everyone, will be easier to give people a 2nd chance.

    • More optional applicable permissions to moderators when owners add them: Right now, when I add a moderator, they can only delete, ban and moderate posts in general, but accessing the mod panel is impossible unless you are an admin, so this means, moderators can't help owners with community rules, description, or even attach a new logo. There should atleast be some kind of supermod option or role that I could enable for the mods, so that this remains an optional but needed feature for some (and I am one of them).

    This is something I have noticed. It would be nice to have the magazine panel open to more moderators than just the owner (though, I understand why it may have been set up like that to begin with.)

    Also, are reports also submitted and viewed under the magazine panel?

  • Good ideas 👍

    However due to the way activitypub works there is no way to know how many people on other instances are reading a post, only on the same instance.

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