Reddit refugee here with a big question, How do we create a subreddit-like experience here?
Most discussions about kbin right now are focused on the user side of things, what about mods who want to bring their communities to kbin? I’m not talking about moving all the existing discussions and content, just making the actual place for new content and discussion complete with moderation.
Would creating a magazine do this?
@Nodachi216 Magazines are the kbin equivalent of a subreddit. They have two large categories of content, threads and microblogging. Threads are any content not a “post” while threads are articles, links, and media posts. Threads are what you see on the “front page” with posts showing up in the microblogging part of a matching magazine.
@dannekrose Could you expand on the difference between threads and microblog posts (are these what are referred to just as “posts”?)? I think my confusion comes from the fact that I see, in this magazine, for example, plain text posts in both the thread and microblog section, so I’m not sure what the difference is.
When you open up kbin.social or any other kbin instance at the moment, you’ll be taken to the “front page” or main page which will show a list of “threads” with the following:
- Up and down vote arrows to the left
- A title, then maybe a description or some other body.
- Under each entry will be the person who added it, how long ago and which magazine it was added to.
- There will be a comment count, boost count, and the “more” button for each of these you see on the main page.
Those are “threads” and will have one of the following types:
- Article
- Link
- Photo
- Video.
They will not be of type “post.”
I used the term microblogging because that’s the menu item you have to select from inside a magazine to view “posts.”
Looking at my screen which is almost certainly the same as that for kbin.social, after I select a magazine via the “Magazines” menu item at the top of the front page (or some other location where the magazine link takes you to the magazine page), it shows me a new “top bar” that consists of the following:
[Site name] /m/[magazine name] Threads Microblog People Magazines.
By default, when you open a magazine page, it will have the “Threads” menu item selected. It will look similar to the front page in that it will have a list of “threads” with the up and down vote buttons to the left, a title, and some content underneath depending on the type: article, link, photo, video.
If you click the Microblog menu item, it will show a much different screen with an empty text box at the top with the built-in editor, a selection box to the bottom right with the current magazine selected already and some other options.
Below the text box you will see options for changing the ordering of the content below. The content below this box are all “posts” that either originated on this instance, or else were federated in from other platforms like Mastodon, Calckey, etc.
From a user’s perspective, this is the difference between a “Thread” and “Microblog” and is a distinction I believe doesn’t exist in Lemmy. (I don’t actually know though, since I’ve never actually used Lemmy)
Under the hood, the different types - article, link, photo, video, and post - use different Activity Pub types to distinguish them. I don’t know exactly for all of them, but I know kbin articles are federated as type “Page” while Mastodon, for example, sends out posts as type “Note.” A “Note” is then treated as type “Post” by kbin and will not show up in the “threads” view (that’s the view with the upvote and downvote buttons to the left, the nice title and content in the middle and comment counts). To view “posts”, you must look at the Microblog link for the Magazine that the content was created in, or routed into if it is a new post from an outside platform.
I don’t mean to sound condescending or rude so if I did, that is a lack of skill on my word choices and I apologize.
I hope that helps clear up some confusion!
@dannekrose Thank you for the detailed reply, and that definitely gives me a better big-picture understanding.
I think I know enough now to be able to refine my question a bit. It sounds like a kbin Article is different than a kbin Post in that it has a different ActivityPub type and is displayed in different tabs of the kbin UI (Article in Threads, and Post in Microblog).
But what about from a poster’s perspective? Say for example I’m posting a text-only question. Why would I want to choose to create a Post vs. an Article or vice versa? I’m sure I’m missing something, but they both seem to have the same basic features even though they have a different UI.
The Why is going to be a bit subjective so I’ll try to lay out the more “concrete” differences between creating a thread (of which article is just one type) and a post.
Posts:
- Will federate to all your direct followers regardless of platform. If they are using a microblogging platform like Mastodon, this means it will show up in their home feeds just like any other post.
- Will not be seen on the “front page” by default since the default behavior is to have the “front page” show threads, not posts. A person can click the “Microblog” tab at the top to view all the posts instead, but that requires a click.
- Posts, unlike threads, will display the conversation without needing to click. You can compare by checking it out on kbin.social, but you’ll notice that the threads on the front page will just have the opening title and a small description, but will not show the comments or replies to it. If you click on the microblogging tab, you’ll see posts along with their replies automatically without need to click on them.
- Posts do not have subject lines. This means that typically on a platform like Mastodon, the post will show up without any content-warning masking the body.
- While threads are relatively widely supported on other platforms, posts are almost universal due to being a core part of the microblogging Fediverse.
- I don’t know for sure, but I believe posts don’t show up on Lemmy instances. Someone will have to correct me on that, though.
- Replying to the OP Post is more intuitive. To reply to a Post, you just have to click at the bottom of the OP’s Post on the “reply” link. This is different in a Thread (if you’re trying to reply to the OP and not a comment)
Threads:
- Have a subject line and a body. This means on non-kbin/lemmy instances, it is likely that any content that is federated to them (Mastodon, etc) will show with a content warning and masked body.
- Will potentially show on the front page by default.
- Can show and embed media which can be displayed by default depending on an individual user’s settings.
- Depending on the type, will federate in unexpected ways. Links, for example, that have a description can show on Mastodon without the description (I believe) and thus makes for unexpected behavior on non-kbin platforms.
- Threads will give you the option to add Badges to the content when you create it. I don’t know when that will be fully implemented, but I suspect it will be a way for Magazine subscribers to “customize” the presentation of their thread depending on which badge(s) are applied.
- Replying to the OP’s initial content can be more troublesome. For a thread that has a lot of comments on it, in order to add a comment, you have to scroll to the bottom of all comments (or all the comments on the first page of comments) to see the comment box. Replying to an existing comment on a thread is easy as the comment has a “reply” link at the bottom of the comment, but for a thread, the “add a comment” box is below all the current comments.
These are just the differences that I can think of off the top of my head. Also, if I’m wrong on any of these, I hope someone corrects me.
Thank you and I hope that helps.
