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Hello everyone!

This is u/TheArstaInventor, I have contributed to many communities as moderator both here on kbin.social and on lemmy instances like lemmy.world (my profile) and lemmy.ml. I have also made guides in the past to help new users migrate from reddit to the fediverse and was also part of the r/RedditAlternatives moderation team, helping several efforts within the community for migration especially during the Reddit API hype (although we all know at some point that had to subside down and organic growth is the long-term key anyways).

It's been a couple of months since I have been inactive as I am a student and I was very busy and didn't really have any time and was tightly packed, leading me to take a few months of time off social media in general, and I have now noticed that several things have happened in the past couple of months while I have been away, and this affects the future of the communities I moderate, including this one, and where I am planning to head my efforts towards in the future moving forward.

1. Kbin: Unfortunately the opposite of what I hoped for, it looks like development have stalled rather than taking off, when I was active a couple of months ago, the development was already slowing down and bots/spams were an issue, and unfortunately looks like things have only gotten worse. I understand and read the thread from Ernest and what he has been dealing with in his life, which has unfortunately negatively impacted the platform and I do hope he is able to turn things around at some point!

2. Lemmy: I wrote a post here on lemmy a while back, opened and ran a few communities there side by side with kbin.social and we have seen some nice growth there, I was honestly not yet decided on which platform to go for, as I was wondering if I should just switch to Lemmy due to the slow down of development with Kbin that was already an issue back then as well.

Now, as a moderator, I have looked at everything, the spam/bot has gotten worse and on all the communities I have moderated at Kbin is filled by spammers, I think at this point I must look elsewhere as I've patiently stayed supportive of this project and been here for a long time, and I am certainly not saying Ernest can't take things uphil from here, but I no longer can move forward blindly based on optimism as the past of Kbin has simply shown a downhill so far and that makes life much more difficult for us mods maintaining and investing time in these communities.

Now about Lemmy, as I mentioned, the experiment was pretty successful, after all Lemmy has always been the biggest and the oldest reddit alternative in the fediverse, despite my long discomfortness with the developers (being tankies) and they're not so clean history due to their beliefs, although that directly does not affect development and certainly isn't the reason/influence of my decision to not invest my time at Lemmy. The main problem for me with Lemmy is that the platform feels stagnant, and the development just doesn't seem fast paced either (for new features and etc, as it's pretty big and mature, adding new features or things would be slower compared to a newer/younger alternative with active developers).

At last we have Mbin, I never gave it serious consideration but even after so long after forking, looking at Mbin's development progress at Github after coming back myself from being inactive, Mbin has been developing actively and there seem to be several contributors working and helping the project out, while Kbin has been mainly/only being carried by Ernest so far, which is also because Mbin allows pull requests that can be merged by any repo maintainer (with merge rights in GitHub) and only one approval on the PR is required from one of the Mbin maintainers, this allows for much easie/more contribution - I really like this open community approach especially with Mbin.

That being said, I have made the tough decision to move forward to Mbin, this community will be archived later and I hope to see all of you continue your engagement that you've made so far in the community there at m/AskMbin which is where we will be heading towards, I will personally be moving to https://thebrainbin.org/, one of the many instances of Mbin (find other Mbin instances here). Although if you want to hold off and don't want to move instances, you absolutely don't have to! This is a change that only affects us moderators and the community itself, all you have to do to continue to be part of the AskKbin community in it's new future direction, is subscribe to our community from your existing instance even if that would be in Kbin or Lemmy, it certainly doesn't have to be mbin! The power of the fediverse!

Again we hope to see you there and if you would like contribute to this new effort and direction for AskKbin -\> AskMbin as a moderator, please message me here or at mbin so I can add you as mod in our new community!

Edit: Also wanted to mention, this is just the beginning, I will slowly be moving the rest of my communities to Mbin's thebrainbin.org instance, if you are subscribed to any of my other communities please keep an eye out for a new similar announcement.

Edit 2: We have also opened a discord server! If you are interested in keeping up with my iniatives and show your support, please join my server and stay up to date!

So the basic idea here is using a low-resolution texture that is designed specifically to be upscaled (anything but the first 3) to a simpler smooth aesthetic. Pixel blob/triangle/hexagon etc in with a 32x-or-lower texture (which is all that is downloaded), crisp shape(s) out. Also probably things like lineart for faces (or other similarly composed pieces), generally less colors hopefully preventing ambiguous details.

Batch conversion / post-processing / basic filter (to preview) are all options, but a live shader in an editor would be more useful. Even better for multiple outputs to see results for different shaders and make designs with their quirks in mind to make specific looks (esp. if multiple shaders can be used), or even just an option to tinker with (say if other pixel-art programs are better).

For an editor, I'd want to use Krita (a G'MIC filter would be fine but the ones I tried weren't great\\) or maybe a web editor. GIMP would be fine too.

For a medium I probably want to use Raylib, Godot 3.X (with this aesthetic at least), or maybe even Krita animations? Basic 2D/3D, tile maps (per-layer filtering?), bump maps or other PBR/shader inputs, texture warping, using sprites in 3D, animation etc all seem interesting.

SDF (Signed Distance Field/Function) textures are a similar endpoint (and I would consider using Inkscape for that).

---

For some backstory, I don't really want the pixel art look (especially because I'm not so good at it) nor do I have the skill for a painted look. I'd rather have resolution-independent\* art, but upscaled could allow using raster art's tools/features for better support and easier tools/creation/aesthetic etc. particularly for learning/practice while still allowing for higher resolutions than tested for.

I could probably just go for untextured 3D with vertex colors, but I kinda don't want the extra complexity or needing to use Blender. Though both 2D polygons and 3D meshes could be used alongside upscaled textures.

\*= Like THE EYE, but there are issues like it needing not-yet-released-PR which may not perform well if used to create an entire scene, plus AA support not being everywhere even for basic polygons, or language bindings being unavailable for some languages in 4.X (ones that work in 3.X).

\\= Upscale [Scale2x] works somewhat (16x with x 8 scale factor to get a 128x texture), though the preview appears broken and you must manually resize your canvas before running it. I suspect this is because it is an older filter.

Meta note: No tags used because the relevant ones I could think of all relate to content, particularly pixel art which this doesn't really relate to aside from specific intention and maybe some techniques.

Are there any add ons for Kbin or any existing features within it that would let me filter out posts based on selected keywords? So if I didn't ever want to read any posts that mentioned bitcoin or covid for example, does anyone know of a way to achieve that on kbin? Sort of how RES could do that on reddit.

\#AskKbin

AskKbin is back to federation with Lemmy.world!

Backstory - AskKbin was one of the several communities removed from some of Lemmy's instances like Lemmy.world on their side, which means users from Kbin were able to see all the content from Lemmy instances normally, but users from Lemmy on the other side of the fence were not able to see certain Kbin communities and we were one of them unfortunately - This was due to bot spams flowing throughout certain communities with inactive moderators at the time, while the Kbin's development was also temporarily paused back then during that period due to Kbin developer's personal issues that he wanted to handle first, but ever since the development resumed, we've got a new fantastic built-in redditrequest-style system allowing users from our community to takeover communities from moderators that are no longer active. This allowed me to takeover and revive AskKbin, among other communities, removing all the spam, placing bans on spammers while Kbin developers have also removed and addressed spams sitewide with a cleanup which has also helped us decrease this issue in a wider context. (Lemmy.world admins' original announcement regarding the above)

With that being said, as a result, after discussions with lemmy.world admins, Ask Kbin is now back and users from instances such as Lemmy.world should also be able to access our community from now on, we're glad to have everyone back!

Fundamental what/what not to post here issue needs to be solved

There is a fundemental issue (understanding) of what type of posts belong and not belong at AskKbin so far. Our original (and long-term) purpose has and will be a place for thought-provoking discussions across the fediverse, heavily inspired and similar to AskReddit, although so far this community despite multiple heads up from moderators, has had the issue of many people regardless using it as a support sub or asking general questions about Kbin itself or even the Fediverse even though the right community is KbinMeta.

Considering Kbin and the fediverse as a whole is still in a young, but developing stage, we don't want to take drastic actions on this yet although once Kbin as a project reaches more maturity, we will get back to fixing this problem through moderation.

But for now, we kindly ask that unless you are a newbie who is super lost, please make sure your submissions are thought-provoking and not a support or low-effort post. Tons of great examples can be found throughout the internet or even AskReddit itself if you are new to "Ask" type communities.

Future plans for AskKbin (Plans to recruit more moderators and more)

We have so far managed with a single moderator (me), but as the community grows and now that we are back to moderating with Lemmy's instances, we need more moderators to keep the community clean more than ever.

Mod applications are not open yet, but once they are, this section will be edited and a new post linked with mod application will be pinned in our community here, so watch out for that!

We will also upgrade our Kbin sidebar rules and information with guides and other resources linked for new users as AskKbin is one of the biggest communities on Kbin, this can be one of the first places many new users end up landing on.

Lastly, we also plan on designing and implementing new banners that will go well along with the logo, making the community more appealing than ever for Kbin users.

For those who have stayed here and contibuted, even in the dull/difficult times, thank you! And we hope to see more people connect and have great thought-provoking discussions!

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.

how do I hide my YouTube channel without deleting comments?

\#AskKbin

hi @AskKbin

please when will you add the languages that are translated in codeberg? thank you

(it's been a while since some of them are 100%, look issues in codeberg)

\#kbin #l10n #translation #fediverse

What are your favorite sites ??

\#AskKbin

How do I block a domain? In the "Settings" page there's "blocked" and in there is "domain" but it's "Empty" - how do I add a domain to block?

\#AskKbin

What are good web hosting service for a social community platform? should I use AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Something else?

\#AskKbin

does anyone know of a deepweb social network?

\#AskKbin

I see from this Wikipedia article that the fediverse has a LOT of other stuff going on like Friendica, Pixelfed, Streams, Peertube, etc. Does my kbin logon work across the fediverse or do I have to create multiple logons across the fediverse?

In my long experience working with artists across all media, one of the things that I've found the most rewarding is discovering their inspirations, which often lead to new creative ideas of my own.

So I thought I'd ask Kbin, what inspires you? Is it a piece of music? A novel? A poem? A picture? A philosophy? A spiritual text? What lifts your soul to song? A software? A science? A symphony?

What gets your creative juices flowing?

Full disclosure - I am the mod of @13thFloor, which is dedicated to engaging the creative spirit. Your inspirations and creativity are more than welcome there as well.

Greetings all,

I have an assignment for my Geosciences class where I have to ask others, preferably those not from the United States, why the US struggles to believe in Science, particularly topics such as The Big Bang Theory.

Why do Americans, compared to most of the world, seemingly propagate Creation myths while simultaneously rejecting the very notion of Science?

How does your community (or country) regard The Big Bang? Is it largely accepted in your culture(s)?

Finally, what could the American education system or government do to help its citizens increase their Scientific literacy?

Thank you for any responses, it is greatly appreciated!

Enthrone

\#AskKbin

I noticed that he is the moderator of this community and many others, such as:

• r/RedditAlternatives
• r/AmazonLunaHub
• r/SearchWithAndi
• r/cloudgaming
• r/searchengines
• r/ChargerDaytonaSRT
• r/ChargerDaytona
• r/Kia\_EV9
• r/HyundaiONIQ
• r/DriveIndi
• r/electriccars
• r/TeslaModel4
• r/ioniq7
• r/E1Series
• r/SearchKagi
• r/polestar2
• r/CohostSocial
• r/ManyverseSSB
• r/Manyverse\_Social
• r/StudyInSweden
• r/EducationAtEurope
• r/HydrogenFCVehicles
• r/CitroenAmiCar
• r/ProjectBloodstrikeBR
• r/Hydrogen\_Vehicles
• r/AmazonLunaPortal

and 28 more in /kbin

How is he able to manage all these communities? What are his motivations?

I'm curious to know more about this person who seems to have a lot of influence and control over the content and discussions on Reddit and /kbin. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders about this.

I am by no means attacking u/TheArstaInventor, but I'm genuinely interested in his motivations.

As a car enthusiast, I can think of a good one, the Ford Nucleon.

During the 1950s and 1960s, there was considerable interest in nuclear power and its potential applications. This led to the idea of using nuclear energy to propel cars. The concept behind a nuclear car was to utilize a small nuclear reactor to generate steam, which would then power the vehicle's engine.

Of course back in those days, this was extremely futurustic and some at the time thought this would be a game changer, but ultimately, the safety aspect was one of the biggest reasons why this idea was dropped, and I probably don't have to explain why it may not have considered to be safe, I mean, it was using nuclear power, so even if the engineers tried to make it as safe as possible, IF something went wrong, it would have been catastrophic.

Ever since then, the interests in the automotive sector has shifted to Electric and Hydrogen.

Still, a very intriguing concept car and idea.

Outside cars, you have blimps, and I personally believe if we tried to make something like a hindenburg today with existing technology, we might have been a lot more successful than back then (as it goes way back to 1930s), there are still some blimps used occasionally, I also don't believe those use hydrogen(?), but they are not the "game changer in air travel" it was once seen as, although we can't rule out a comeback.

What about you guys?

Original Post

Hello everyone! I'm launching a website for Kbin Migration today, a very very simple, basic and hopefully easy to use website with useful resources to help users move to Kbin and the fediverse from Reddit!

Before I started working on the website, I initiated and worked on launching r/KbinMigration, and worked on my first guide here.

But ever since Reddit attempted to ban my initatives here (just like it did with my past lemmy initatives) such as r/KbinMigration just to unban it later thanks to the community noticing Reddit's attempt at censoring it, and of course, me sending messages to r/reddit's mods explaining how they banned r/KbinMigration for "spam" ridiculously when we literally had only 2 pinned posts back then.

But I later realized that putting my resources on Reddit that help people migrate from Reddit probably isn't my greatest idea, and I shouldn't be surprised if Reddit ever decides to ban my iniatives in the future for good, especially if it gets bigger, hence I decided to stop updating my guide from r/KbinMigration and instead work on my own simple website, just a place outside Reddit where I can display the resources without having a potential risk of losing it which would mean making it inaccessible to those who need it.

In the past few months, I have taken other initatives as well, the most important one being my arrival to r/RedditAlternatives mod team (thankful for the opportunity!), to help the sub with moderation in my free time and improving the sub along with the other guys in the team, in ways we can. Apart from that, I also help moderate huge communities on Kbin itself, such as m/AskKbin.

This website is an important step in realizing my vision in hopefully being people from Reddit to Kbin and the Fediverse, and I hope all of you find it useful!

If you have any feedback for any of the guides/resources we have on Kbin Migration, let me know! I will continue to push more updates and new resources as this is just the beginning, hence more to come. I will also be promoting and sharing this initiative inside Kbin, especially within the communities I already moderate as well. I want this to be a user/community-run initative, so those who have any feedback, it will be very very valuable and certainly help me shape all the current and future resources we will have on Kbin Migration!

Thank you :)

EDIT:

Update V2, improved readability of text on the website, especially page text on guides, as we were using grey before but now we've switched to white, which means all the text should now appear clear and a lot more readable. This change was made based on user-feedback.

The main, first and introductory guide "The redditor's guide to how Kbin works" is now pinned on top by default, all other posts/guides will be shown after that. This change was also based on user-feedback.

Additionally, users can also now follow the website, and comment on any of the available guides to leave feedback and etc.

My magazine @GooglePlayDeals has no subscribers except me. Most probably because it's new and was just created a few days back and I don't know how to advertise it on kbin. On the other site, there were subs we could link to to get subscribers.

I've seen some people who have their magazine name next to their username. How do they do that? Probably saw it on lemmy world i think.

When eating at home, how do you cook your hot dogs?

\#AskKbin

How much of this works with Mastodon and Pixelfed? Hi, @AskKbin community! (ง ื▿ ื)ว I created a couple of groups on a #Lemmy instance to see how well they got along with #Mastodon & #Pixelfed. Even though I could create posts from Mastodon comments made from Lemmy were invisible to Mastodon users and vice versa. I like the fact that #Kbin allows tagging contents in magazines. Is there something else I should know to post from other socials?