Here are mine! A handful of things come to mind right away, but there are plenty more:
⭐ The admin @ernest is an incredibly hardworking, kind, supportive, and an all-around good person. This is my tip top most favorite thing because good leadership and communication is essential to a good and thriving community. Ernest is a star!
⭐ The ability to edit titles!!! This is sooo convenient!
⭐ The ability to customize mags with CSS! I could spend hours doing this, it’s so fun! I don’t know any other social media site that allows you that level of freedom of customization. It really makes it feel more personal. All my mags are decked out :3
⭐ I enjoy making scripts/styles for kbin. kbin is the reason I began learning JS, HTML, and CSS. I am so happy I started learning, and it’s all thanks to kbin.
⭐Posts and conversations here are much more GENUINE. It feels like I am interacting with real people, with the goal of socializing just for the sake of socializing, which I don’t get elsewhere. Everywhere else it’s a competition to say the wittiest thing and get the most likes/upvotes.
⭐ No malicious, tricky, over-calculated algorithm. It’s very straight-forward and honest here. I love seeing a mix of upvoted/downvoted comments in comment sections too, rather than just top upvoted, because it makes me feel more apart of the conversation with everyone. Your contributions and thoughts won’t get drowned out by upvoted witty remarks, that is truly unique to kbin (and maybe elsewhere on the fediverse?).
⭐ kbin gives me the urge to contribute, interact, and create because our contributions have actual impact. Can’t say the same for other sites. Everywhere else is lurk only.
⭐ Tightknit but welcoming. kbin is small enough that I run into familiar people all the time, and I recognize usernames everywhere.
⭐ Authenticity. kbin is authentic and real. It’s not pushing a product, not manipulating what you see, not building an ad profile. It is what a forum should be.
That only scratches the surface! How about you guys? If you guys share the same favorite things as me, I would love to hear your thoughts on why.
Not sure if I can think of a favorite, but here are a few candidates:
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The fact that Kbin is built for both microblogs and threads. They’re neatly distinguished from one another, and the UI accounts for their unique formats. It’s very clearly thread aggregation + microblogging, not thread aggregation with microblog posts crammed in there or vice versa.
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The UI, which is what made me pick it over Lemmy. I just find it a lot cleaner and more pleasant, especially with the Tokyo night theme.
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The community around userscripts and userstyles, or at least what there was initially. It’s dwindled a ton, but it’s what got me to learn HTML/CSS. Being able to make a userstyle is also really nice for improving Kbin’s UI to my tastes.
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@ernest. Alongside just being kind, he also keeps us up to date and lets us be involved in the development process. The daily updates on @kbinDevlog have been awesome for seeing and helping the platform develop.
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Recently, I’ve really taken a liking to the ‘Mark new comments’ feature. I generally dislike getting too many notifications, and this allows me to keep an eye on interesting discussions.
oh where is this feature? i must have missed it
You can find it in the options in the sidebar.
Wow, I might need to clear some space on my imaginary trophy shelf (。◕‿‿◕。)
Thanks, that’s really nice. But honestly, all those cool changes lately are thanks to you guys. I just lent an ear ;-)Things I like about kbin:
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⸜(。˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝ Looks nice
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(∩_∩)/ Works in my school’s internet (unlike reddit)
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(⌐■_■) ernest is cool
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Can’t think of anything else so here is some text art: ᓚᘏᗢ
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I think you guys have covered a lot of it. During the reddit exodus I tried all sorts of places. I was first attracted to Kbin because it had a good name and intuitive interface and features, but it gets better all the time.
@ernest @kbin.social is super cool, kind, and keeps us in the loop. The community here is really chill and nice.
One thing that I think is important and I’m beginning to appreciate, is the way Ernest is developing it, I get the sense that he understands the fediverse and its potential.
Like, kbin has a lot of features that the lemmys lack. I love the way we can follow people and interact on mastodon, we have hashtag support, and now collections! The search is really good. I can post content and “via” someone from mastodon and they come over and like it!
good points! ernest really is making kbin the best it possible can be every day
I can’t agree more about the genuinity of conversations on this platform. I just love the fact that I can have a real conversation with someone.
You mentioned a lot of things that I generally really enjoy about #kbin as well.
⭐ The admin @ernest is an incredibly hardworking, kind, supportive, and an all-around good person. This is my tip top most favorite thing because good leadership and communication is essential to a good and thriving community. Ernest is a star!
Same, he also gets bonus points for listening to, and implementing suggestions. Some of them have come quite quickly as well. These factors when combined have made me feel like I’m really a part of the community.
⭐ I enjoy making scripts/styles for kbin. kbin is the reason I began learning JS, HTML, and CSS. I am so happy I started learning, and it’s all thanks to kbin.
Cheers to that, I actually use one of yours – specifically the one that changes the layout of profile pages.
⭐ No malicious, tricky, over-calculated algorithm. It’s very straight-forward and honest here. I love seeing a mix of upvoted/downvoted comments in comment sections too, rather than just top upvoted, because it makes me feel more apart of the conversation with everyone. Your contributions and thoughts won’t get drowned out by upvoted witty remarks, that is truly unique to kbin (and maybe elsewhere on the fediverse?).
Agreed – I think Mastodon also functions similarly. It makes #discoverability a bit challenging at times, but I’m open to experimenting with it.
⭐ kbin gives me the urge to contribute, interact, and create because our contributions have actual impact. Can’t say the same for other sites. Everywhere else is lurk only.
Hard agree – though it wears on me at times when I’m unable to get some engagement going after keeping at it for so long. I’ve changed my mindset about it a little while ago, so it’s not too bad.
⭐ Tightknit but welcoming. kbin is small enough that I run into familiar people all the time, and I recognize usernames everywhere.
Agreed, and to add onto this – profile pictures are pretty easily recognizable as well.
⭐ Authenticity. kbin is authentic and real. It’s not pushing a product, not manipulating what you see, not building an ad profile. It is what a forum should be.
Yeah, adding on one of your points again – it’s very reminiscent of what #forums used to feel like. However, at the same time, it feels like something more due to the addition of #microblogging. #Microblogs may not be super popular on /kbin, but I think they’re a stellar addition to the forum experience. I’ve had some nice back-and-forths with #Mastodon users from the comfort of /kbin’s UI. I think there’s more potential in what you can do with them, too.
I love this answer!! and hey, I recognize you too :D. I am glad you like my profile style
Hard agree – though it wears on me at times when I’m unable to get some engagement going after keeping at it for so long. I’ve changed my mindset about it a little while ago, so it’s not too bad.
Yea, I got burnt out a few months ago and dipped for this exact reason. I was making scripts, styles, mags, and posting content several times a day every day trying to build kbin and encourage engagement, and on that front, it pretty much never got better. I would be and still am lucky to get a handful of upvotes. It feels a bit lonely, I do wish more lurkers would consider joining the convo. There’s lots of talk about things being stale and dead, not many active niche communities, but 98% of people aren’t contributing. It’s okay to not be a content creator, but a single comment a week is better than no comments ever. I might be a taaaad salty, because of how much effort I put in, and that the lack of interactions and engagement is pretty much the ONLY thing keeping kbin from reaching it’s full potential.
Speaking of microblogging, I still don’t know what those are somehow lol. are they like mastodon tweets or toots or whatever? 😭
Collections are definitely my new favorite thing, and at the moment I believe they’re kbin exclusive.
this is the first i am hearing of it, gonna check it out now 👀