I see a lot of comments pointing out bugs and saying something along the lines like “they need to fix this ASAP, otherwise… something something”.

As a software developer myself (not in the fediverse), I can tell you one thing:

Keep in mind that all of this literally escalated pretty quickly, and no one was prepared for that. What started out as a hobby project of some enthausiasts, quickly turned into a high demand over the course of a few days.

Having hundreds of enthusiasts use a software is different than having thousends of “average” people using it. 100 users won’t detect many bugs, and if they do, they’re more tolerant since they know it’s all volunteering. But thousands of users will detect even more bugs that no one bothered to deal before.

Once the userbase grows and the demands are clear enough, this should be tackled, eventually.

So yeah, hang in there.

  • Guadin@k.fe.derate.me
    3·
    1 year ago

    To add: we are not paying (for) anything, we are not the product, all the costs are covered by volunteers. So if a server is a bit wonky or slow, remember that you’re not entitled to anything.
    And as you said, the software needed to go from 20 to 100 in a blink of an eye. Where they thought they would have time to handle everything gently and in due course needed to be done much faster.
    Furthermore, most developers also run an instance (which suddenly needs to be scaled and troubleshot), need to answer questions, moderate, handle PR’s on github and solve bugs. All while also having a family and other acticities to attend to.

    • ernest@kbin.social
      6·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for that, it’s true, I need to remember especially about that last point. Later, I will write a few words about what was happening behind the scenes during these days. I wasn’t there alone. Not anymore ;)

      kbin is much older; it was a side project. Recently, I took it more seriously :)

      • Guadin@k.fe.derate.me
        1·
        1 year ago

        That would be a really great read about the behind the scenes. Looking forward to read it, whenever you have the time (and motivation) to write about it.

  • sailsperson@kbin.social
    3·
    1 year ago

    Hopefully my experience can help some people see the bright side of going off Reddit.

    To me, Reddit has been a great platform in almost every possible way - except meaningful engagement. At some point, I realized that any somewhat big subreddit that I frequented for news and discussions of topic I’m interested in is plagued by dead-end threads: karma farms through reposts, lame jokes and similarly low-effort content that’s breeds equally low-effort comments, and things that don’t provoke any sort of discussion in general.

    Joining the protest made me go to difference places, especially forums big and small, where the only real way to engage with the community was to actually reply to what they said. I quickly realized that Reddit has long turned into another brainless scroller akin to Instagram or Twitter, which all may have their place, but that’s just not what I joined Reddit for back in the day.

    Now that I’ve basically kicked the Reddit habit, I’m finally enjoying the Internet again - it’s not the same as it was in the 00s, and it will never be, but it’s much, much better than going to a single website, owned by a single company, for nearly everything I want to do online.

    Today, I finally have a proper choice for the first time in years. A lot of that choice consists of the fediverse, with different scopes and goals, but some is just basic and mainstream places I’d forgotten because of the convenience that Reddit seemed to bring.

    Today, I’m finally having actual conversations with people in the communities I choose to interact with, rather than just reading through the witty chains of comments.

    I know that Reddit means different things to different people, but to me, it has lost its meaning long ago, and it’s only with the protest that I managed to kick the habit of going there for basically nothing. As surprising as it is, the whole thing lead me to enjoy my online life much more, and actually engage with the topics on the old, deeper level of fun, rather than just being exposed to an absurd amount of things, each pretty shallow and uninspired.

    • Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Absolutely agree. I’ve not only created a Kbin account, I also now have a Tildes account, and I’m actually using my Mastodon and Substack accounts. I’m lurking some old sites I hadn’t really visited in over a decade (Metafilter, Fark). Im also checking out other forums and microblogs. I’m having real conversations and finding meaningful links (as opposed to reposted TikToks and memes). It really feels like the Internet i used to love.

  • Gamers_Mate@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    The site has made a lot of progress in the time it has been an official project. The only bug I have had so far is nsfw stuff from other instances showing up. I bet this is one of the priorities at the moment.

  • Flaky_Fish69@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    To be honest, I’m surprised at how quickly kbin/Lemmy/etc stepped up to the challenge. Like. no. they just onboarded how many new people from reddit? and… oh noes…sometimes I had to refresh a few times?

    Just one question… where’s the donuts and coffee? I was told there’d be donuts and coffee.

  • nate3D@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    I also think a lot of people either were not around to experience or simply have forgotten over time how unstable Reddit was in the beginning. This is already a much more feature-rich and stable platform than Reddit was in the beginning; we will get there!

    And now that I’m not doom-scrolling r/all I’ve actually been able to get back to my own personal projects :D

  • SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.netEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been on this part of the fediverse for years (via lotide rather than lemmy or kbin, but I’ve been here), and kbin itself is incredibly new. I’d never heard of it more than about 3 months ago, and I’m constantly on the watch for new stuff because I always believed this part of the fediverse had huge potential.

    Honestly, considering how new it is, kbin is shockingly good. Go back and look at reddit 3 months into development!

  • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    There are also some bugs that don’t manifest when a few users use a software, they do when there’s massive load, making things even more complicated.

    I’m not a dev but I work in IT, entitlement in some users is baffling to say the least, especially when it’s about stuff people give out for free.

    • Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      We all have to remember that each instance is either brand new or relatively young. I’m on kbin.social, which is run by one dude, @ernest, and before the big Reddit exodus i think kbin.social had something like 30 active users. It’s remarkable what he’s building here.

      • 0xpr03@feddit.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        another part that I know from personal experience: you made something new, kinda tiny, not 100% there - you probably didn’t expect this to really take off (see fediverse in general), so you don’t go all the way to fix UX problems or annoying things - because your stuff may not ever be used by more than those few hundred people (which is a lot already for hobby projects), it may even die out in two years

        and then the bomb drops and you have random users trying to use your side project

        imagine linux would get adopted overnight by a few thousand windows users that didn’t like the windows 11 migration…

      • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        Absolutely! I’m on lemmy.world, there were less than 500 users when I joined 2 weeks ago, now there are 38K, crazy growth, both devs and admins are doing a fantastic job.

  • Timwi@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m a hobby web programmer and I’m completely blown away by how smoothly this site runs, how well it scaled, how full-featured it is despite its youth, and how unbelievably dedicated the developer (ernest) is. I cannot possibly have a single complaint.

    In fact I’ve often thought about giving back by helping with the development. I’m just a little guy but maybe some little contributions help too. Unfortunately I’m just not very experienced with PHP.

  • TechnologyClassroom@partizle.com
    1·
    1 year ago

    The moral of the story is to support projects that you might want to use in the future even if they are not finished yet before you need them. Mastodon and Lemmy have been around for years. When the mainstream alternative suddenly becomes lame, it isn’t an emergency on the devs part.

    You can apply this to most alternatives. Support GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape if you are an artist using Adobe products. Support mixxx, audacity, and lmms if you are a DJ. Support LibreOffice if you use Microsoft Office.

    • adonis@kbin.socialOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      I agree on most of your examples, except GIMP… no… just no! Sorry, the software is acceptable at best, and the devs are resistant to UI/UX improvements/suggestions… so again… nope

    • kreynen@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      So is Kbin. Both projects use the AGPL license, but Kbin is a PHP/Symfony based solution while Lemmy is primarily a Rust backend with a Typescript front end. If someone is going to run an instance or contribute to the code, they are likely going to choose the stack that they are most familiar with.

      With a lot of #Drupal experience, the Kbin code is very approachable for me… but as other commenters have already said… whatever floats your boat.

      The Kbin and Lemmy projects aren’t competing as much with each other as the ActivityPub driven communities are competing with the walled gardens.