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ELI5: What's the differences between Lemmy and kbin?
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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lemmy is the more mature platform, whilst kbin is newer and more feature rich.
What it amounts to is that kbin can do things that lemmy can't do, but the things that they both do, lemmy tends to do better. And as kbin is effectively in alpha at the moment, it doesn't have much documentation, making installation and configuration a challenge.
The biggest point of difference in features is that kbin is aware of other fediverse content in a way lemmy isn't. kbin and lemmy both talk to each other really well, but kbin also natively supports other types of fediverse groups (gup.pe, friendica and chirp). kbin also lets you see non threadiverse content, by attaching hashtags to groups. So if you set up say a cycling group on kbin, you can also make the group watch the #cycling tag, any any mastodon or other micoblogging content will appear on a special tab in your cycling group.
Now that is a powerful feature. Great way to fill a feed with content too.
I think that will have me switch eventually, but it sucks its php.
I'm hoping they add that feature to Lemmy soon enough and switching won't be necessary.
Well I also wish the current lemmy fork wasn’t a genocide denying tankie so let’s see how that plays out. That makes me not want to code contribute to his fork.
Thanks, your post makes sense. Will Lemmy have the opportunity to adapt to do what kbin does that it can't, or is that a ground up change?
The hashtag watch feature would be trivial to implement. Properly implementing groups compatibility would be a bit more work though. I think it's mostly going to be a matter of competing priorities more than anything else
(Not shooting the messenger, just as info for other readers.)
Using hashtags for this seems like an idea with some severe limitations because it can only see the posts it has happened to come across otherwise. (Unlike the other group formats.)
@ada @meteorswarm
Yep, but that's true of keyword search on all fediverse platforms, and unlike lemmy, you can follow micro blog fedi accounts from kbin, so you can federate non group content in more readily
Yes, keyword search works poorly on fedi is what I'm saying 💁🏻♀️
Using that as a basis for group talk can end up being super unreliable in some situations.
@ada @meteorswarm
No more than anywhere else on the fediverse
Yes, it works poorly everywhere on the fediverse, is exactly what I'm saying.
Hashtags on Fedi can be good for organizing stuff within a single account or instance, or it can be used for other things like trigger specific bots, but they can not (as you know) work like an IRC channel like they did on Twitter.
That's why I'm not happy about kbin elevating that misfeature and legitimizing its misuse as if it were as robust as the other federated group protocols are. It's not the end of the world or the worst feature on the planet, I'm not that worked up about it, it's just not good, is all.
(Again, not blaming you for that ofc, you only reported on it, and that was awesome, thanks.)
@ada @meteorswarm
It's not a "misfeature" though. The inherent nature of decentralisation is that there is no single "true" view of the network. You can only ever see part of it, and you ultimately have to curate that view so that it fits your needs. This is part of that.
Correct, and that's exactly why it does not work for group things.
If fedi is like email, and it is similar in many ways, a Lemmy community is like a mailing list. People can send to the list and the threads on the list from different servers. And there can be separate communities about the same topics just as there can be separate mailing lists about the same topics.
But hashtags in email wouldn't work as a replacement for mailing lists. Hashtags in email can still have some use, within a mailing list or in a specific conversation, but it's something very different from a mailing list.
On kbin, if people think that "Oh, here is where the posts about cycling will show up" but the magazine is just based around a hashtag, there's no way for people to participate deliberately. It's misleading.
Using hashtags as if it were tumblr or twitter is anti-decentralization and drives people into using the biggest instances only. Groups a la gup.pe and Lemmy and Friendica is a solution to that. It's only a partially decentralized solution, since each group itself is centrally hosted (exactly like mailing lists were), but it's at least a solution, whereas misusing hashtags that way isn't.
@ada @meteorswarm