We probably should decide how much conflict we want to imagine happening here lol.

Wars from the 1700s-1800s (a couple hundred years ago from today) just aren’t thought about much during my regular daily life, but none of those were global catastrophes right.

So if we can manage to avoid major nuclear destruction, then it could be pretty tame after 300 years!

Assuming we don’t all destroy each other, then we mostly keep our knowledge base, so we don’t need to restart from a basic agrarian culture lol. Someone saved wikipedia right??

There will still be an unbelievable amount of losses from starvation alone, so we’re definitely restarting the population from small communities.

But 300 years of repopulation, and 300 years battery research might actually get us to something approaching the early 1900s again! (Around the 1930s is when about half of American households had electricity.) Cities are possible, we start getting back into shipping between countries or continents. If we add internet into this mix, we get even further!

Honestly, if we’re talking about hundreds of years (and humans don’t self-destruct) then I actually think we don’t get set back too far on the grand scheme of things lol.

I supported a pre-emptive Threads defederation, because I expect them to Embrace-Extend-Extinguish the fediverse for the sake of profit.

For the BBC, I don’t feel as overtly opposed. They don’t really have the user base to overextend us with, even if they tried to get their audience on mastodon lol. They haven’t seemed blatantly profit driven in the past. And they’re starting their own instance, using fediverse tech.

Does anyone think this is the BBC’s Embrace step? It’s not sparking any alarm bells for me, but can I get a sanity check?

Here’s their accounts, for the curious:

@BBCRD

@BBC5Live

@BBCRadio4

@BBCTaster

@Connected_Studio

@BBC_News_Labs

Oooh, I’m excited to try this out! But later, 'cause I’m just on mobile, and kbin doesn’t have a save function yet lol.

Wow, I’m pretty impressed with BC for this.

Having font support really legitimizes a language. It’s basically impossible to make digital content if you can’t type in your language, so this is really unlocking a lot for the readers and writers of all those languages!

Just tagging things as Porn or Gore is a great idea! Let’s mark stuff as what it is, not where it’s… supposedly unsafe? lmao. Yes, you shouldn’t be looking at porn while working, but there are plenty of non-work places where it’s still not really appropriate.

I think there could be an argument for Gore being called like “Trauma” or something instead. Porn is broad, and I’d like another tag for “Viewer Beware” even if there isn’t specifically Gore in it. A Gore tag feels more like a Sex tag, yes porn is sex but there’s plenty of porn that isn’t specifically sex.

Okay, yeah. I do slightly prefer ‘website’ but I’m having trouble disagreeing with you here lmao. I’m willing to leave ‘link’ alone, if we make the other ones less ambiguous!

Magazine ->Community

Strong agreement.

Link -> Article

Maybe Link -> Website even, 'cause it’s not always an actual news article.

Thread -> Post

Agree, mainly because I think most of us would say “I’m going to post this on kbin” but I haven’t found a verb I like for …starting? a new ‘thread’ lol. “I’m going to thread this on kbin”??

And also for branding issues lol, vs that big company.

Post (In microblog) -> Blog

Room for improvement here, but good start I think.

Commented -> Discussed

I think Comments is fine. Discussion is fine. I actually think this is where “threads” could have been used lol, but let’s not.

Badges -> Labels
Labels is good. Badges isn’t quite right. Stamp? Banner? Flag?

The fediverse should be more resistant to this (I hope). The people in charge of instances are pretty comparable to super moderators since they both can control a lot of internet real estate. The fediverse’s response to bad instance owners is to just switch to an instance that’s run in a way that you like better. Or even better, make a new instance that’s less bad!

If there’s an instance with a problem super moderator, then the same solution should work right? Go elsewhere, or make a new magazine. If there’s a single problem user dominating all communities in multiple instances, well. Time to start “@free.folk” or whatever lmao.

If I think my comment is more relevant than all the others I see, I even boost myself lmao. No shame hahah.

When I’m contributing to the conversation, I upvote myself. When I’m no longer contributing to the original discussion (like I’m talking with someone and we get somewhat off topic), I don’t upvote myself anymore.

It’s more about what order a new person should see stuff!

I’m not endorsing their behaviour, but I can imagine myself doing something similar to Pips. I’m just hoping to show an alternative perspective here, maybe it’ll make the spam more tolerable for you lol.

I follow basically all the warhammer hobby magazines/communities I come across. They’re all still growing, some a little quicker, but honestly there isn’t a single clear winner. Since they basically all would benefit from more content and activity, shouldn’t I post to several admittedly very overlapping groups?

There’s only so much content I can contribute as a single user. I either make an OC post when I’ve painted something up, or I’ll link like the one or two noteworthy news articles for this week lmao. I can’t create bespoke content for each instance.

I do want them all of them to succeed, or any one of them to succeed. They’re all starving for content most days. But right now, the fediverse just doesn’t have the critical mass yet. So how should we grow it?

Eventually, a clear winner will emerge, and I’ll probably prune my subscriptions list. But we’re in the spring of the fediverse, it’s just too early to tell which sprouts will flower best.

I love your question! I think these words are examples of a trochee!

In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee (/ˈtroʊkiː/) is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.

It’s usually easy to recognize a word that’s a trochee because it’ll sound like kids TV show title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Power Ranger Mega Turtles lol.

In this case, it’s trochaic dimeter because there’s two trochees. “LET’S-go RAN-gers!” You may have heard of iambic pentameter, somehow that one always seems popular to people. Well an iamb is just the reverse of a trochee, and pentameter means you’d put five of them on each line.

Now that you know what trochees are, you’re gonna see 'em everywhere. Or maybe that’s just me lol.

Edit: For extra fun, what do you think is going on with the clapping afterwards? I feel like we’re doing something with this at the end, but it’s late and I should go to sleep hahah. Good luck!

I feel like it would be nice to pull at least some content when the first person opens the box lol. Maybe the last 10-100 posts, or from the past 30-90 days, or whatever.

Maybe do this kind of smaller sync every time another user subscribes to it until it’s fully synced up, 'cause that means we all really want the content lol.

Kbin could do that independently right? Or would ActivityPub need to change to allow that?

@effingjoe Ooh, yeah the autofill is a really good idea! 'Cause sometimes a post is relevant to the magazine, but doesn’t want all the tags from that magazine.

Okay lol so who do we talk to now to make this happen?

I think we could have multireddits by using tags, no? We’d just need a magazines tags to automatically be applied to any content in it, and then I could just have my #tech feed, my #ask feed, and my #cycling+#bikes+#bicycles feed lol.

I think it would be good to look at cross-posting across multiple magazines/communities too while we’re here. It’s an adjacent problem here, and I feel like we can find a nice solution for both here.

As things are now, if we just amalgamate 6 different /tech communities, there’s going to be a lot of duplicate threads lol. If I want to post a news article to several places, it’d be nice to be able to just list them off and click post just once. Then in the multi-feeds, it’ll only be listed once please!

Hmm interesting. I do think it’s just as important that we double-defederate unfortunately. Meta/Threads has to be treated as if it’s contagious.

If we stay federated with an instance that has accepted the Embrace, what do we do when the Extend happens? Is that when we defederate? Will we even recognize it?

EEE only works because it’s difficult to see it happening to you. Instances that ally with Meta/Threads will actually present the same threat of EEE, or even a greater threat, because the Extend step may appear to come from non-Meta instances.

Imagine ActivityPub upgrades developed by a Meta/Threads-ally, let’s say improved inter-instance moderator tools. That sounds good right?

It’s basically all the exact same arguments again, but with a middle man.

• Meta/Threads have different foundational priorities (namely, profit) and real incentives to monopolize.
• Meta-ally instances have real and implied incentives to accommodate
  Meta/Threads.
• And we have incentives to accommodate the instances that we federate with, so of course kbin would use the well-developed new mod tools right?
• Seems crazy not to, even if it was developed by a Meta-ally. Right?
• Great! Repeat for thousands of tiny changes, that’s called Extend.

That’s how accepting EEE works, each little step looks great but big picture we’re unknowingly in trouble. We’ll have to treat any Meta/Threads-ally as if it is Meta/Threads. (Hell, some of them probably will be lol, the fediverse is just asking for astroturfing lol.)

We can trust instances that don’t have economic incentives. But any instance that shows they can be swayed by money, or that shows they’ll accommodate instances driven by profit, well they’re showing that they’d consider eating us to become the next reddit.

Wait so when am I supposed to boost? Upvotes sort now, so I should usually upvote and boost when I think something should be at the top?

Huh, okay! I’m mostly nodding along in agreement here.

I was never much of a social media user, however, I think one thing that reddit did right was the awards. Unfortunately, the moderators likely didn’t see any of that income (something to keep in mind considering the budding state of alt social platforms). Point being, I think something like that is much more rewarding than an upvote, while a conversation outweighs both.

Interesting, that’s unexpected! I’m surprised because I see huge piles of reddit awards as pretty comparable to huge blocks of discord emoji reactions, and you said you don’t want the emojis lol. Do you just like that actual money was committed, or what’s going on here?

I think we should very cautiously approach how we handle money and transactions affect anything around here, so… strong hesitation lol.

I’d argue that it isn’t healthy at all. But this circles back to the clout chasing argument. I think healthy discussion is going to give a user more than an arrow can ever give, while also promoting critical thinking and the development of more substantial connections among users and the community.

Huh. Okay, well. My initial reaction is confusion, but I’m willing to review my beliefs lol.

So of course, healthy discussion is incredibly valuable and positive. But what if I don’t really have anything meaningful to say?

For example, imagine I see a thread where someone has refinished their bench (probably in a woodworking or DIY kind of magazine). Let’s say I arrive late to the thread too, so plenty of people have already asked all the interesting questions like techniques, what products were used, origins of the bench etc. So usually this is where I’d just upvote lol.

I don’t want to pass by with no interaction, so… I guess I’ll pick random small talk so they know I like it? “Neat! Can’t wait to see your next project!” or something?

So instead of 25 high quality comments and 60 upvotes, that thread likely ends with 50 comments of which half really just say “Nice!” (+ an unknown amount of upvotes). I suppose it’s nicer to hear the specific words of encouragement, but it is certainly much more effort and likely a poorer noise:signal in the comments lol.

@charles Well so I’m fully guilty of this lol: On discord, when I see two dozen hype reactions, I click all that apply lmao.

I don’t think we should sort by emojis lol.

Discouraging Clout Chasing Behaviors:
Promoting Content Quality and Relevance:

I see your goal here, but how would this actually work? Like what buttons does the user see?

Are we all still collectively deciding what counts as valuable contributions? If so, this sounds veryyy similar to what we already have using either upvotes or boosts lol.

• “Agreement” sounds like an upvote. I like this content.
• “Mark as quality” sounds like a boost. More people should see this.

So what metric(s) do you actually want implemented?

alternative ways to measure influence and impact (insightful comments, fostering discussions, valuable contributions).

If those are the buttons you think we should have, I don’t think the internet can be objective enough to make these reliably more useful than an upvote.

If I see buttons saying “Insightful / Fosters Discussion / Valuable”, I’m mostly going to just hit any or all of them when I like the content. And I’ll click none of them when I dislike content, 'cause duh that’s not insightful or valuable!

So what should we actually do to achieve these noble goals?

Engagement, interactions, relevance, and authenticity

Ehh, sorting by interactions can encourage excess commenting or spamming near content you want promoted. More interactions doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality. I’m commenting several times on this post, but it could have been one commentary for the exact same content. Should this thread’s quality be treated differently based on my format?

Unfortunately, engagement is highest around controversial topics, which again doesn’t necessarily indicate the highest quality content.

I’m pretty sure sorting by relevance is how YouTube & TikTok try to serve you content, but I don’t think we should aspire to black box algorithms.

Agh, I swear I’m not trying to just shoot down all your ideas. I’m trusting based on your writing that you’re open to collective constructive criticism. You’re obviously thinking here, thinking more than most people do lol.

It’s just that this is a very complex issue, that will need very nuanced solutions. Humans have spent a heck of a lot of time, money and effort trying to figure about it, and we still seem to get it wrong a lot haha.