I've already discussed some of the reasons on Matrix, but today, I'll try to briefly explain what's going on here. Due to the increasing popularity of kbin, infrastructure changes, the cost of maintaining instances, and development-related priorities, I wasn't able to deliver the milestones on time, which are crucial for project funding (even though I'm really close to achieving that). I wasn't prepared for this and didn't anticipate such a delay in terms of the savings I allocated for all of this. The servers are still being maintained with the donations that came through buymycoffe, but there are additional costs like living expenses and other obligations. So, I had to take up temporary work to ensure the continued development of the project.
This year has also brought many other unexpected personal problems, as I mentioned earlier. Now, another one has been added to that list – I had to end my marriage and a fifteen-year-long relationship. While it's not a sudden decision, it's never easy, but it has turned out to be more challenging than I anticipated. Not just for me, and this time, I want to dedicate as much time as necessary to conclude the matter properly. I had to learn how to do many things from scratch, set up a new work environment, establish daily routines, and more.
So, why all these deadlines and promises?
It was probably the only way for me to accomplish at least the absolute minimum. There's a lot of my own code waiting for review on my local branches, but it's genuinely hard for me to push myself to it for now. The infrastructure also requires fine-tuning, and Piotr is helping me with that. And the days are passing by very quickly.
However, I'm almost ready to continue on this journey, so you can expect that in the near future, there will be a banner with information and the update date of the instance and release. After that, we will work on avoiding such longer development downtimes in case of my absence.
Are you sure you haven't changed the display mode? :)
Hey, I will try to check it this evening.
Honestly, I've been using an alternate account on Mastodon, and until recently, I wasn't aware that this was such a significant issue on other Lemmy instances until you started to clearly communicate it to me. I've temporarily taken a few additional steps to reduce the spam intensity. By the end of September, kbin.social will receive an update that should address the federation issues.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/465872/Spam-from-unmoderated-communities-magazines#entry-comment-2427760
https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/466266/Removed-Kbin-social-communities#entry-comment-2428078
The problem is that at this scale and with this infrastructure, hotfixes are no longer as straightforward as they used to be - when I could solve these kinds of issues in a matter of hours.
By the end of September, kbin.social will receive an update that will address some of the issues. For now, I'm banning spam accounts, and registration is disabled. Additionally, external links are marked as "nofollow." I just want to emphasize that this is not solely a kbin issue - I had to manually remove spam posts from Lemmy instances as well because moderation didn't federate, which doesn't happen with, for example, Mastodon.
For now, the admin of your instance can choose to defederate or remove communities, as the admin of lemmy.world did. Once I've dealt with the update, I will reach out to other admins and discuss the possibility of restoring valuable posts.
Of course, I'm taking action, and on kbin.social, those posts have been removed, which you can verify. However, for some reason, it doesn't always federate with Lemmy. It used to work before, but practically after every Lemmy update, there's something to fix in the code, or it could be related to API limits because some requests receive a "fail" status in the queues. The same applies to spam from Lemmy instances - I had to manually clean up hundreds of posts from other instances because they didn't always send AP requests, which I verified in the logs.
Do you seriously believe that it's a matter of individual accounts, and banning a user solves the problem?
I apologize for causing you trouble. I'm trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, but apart from the usual spammers, there have also been organized campaigns where, for an hour on Sunday mornings, our instance was flooded with spam from hundreds of accounts. This, of course, is causing federation issues. I've changed my priorities regarding the roadmap, and additional tools will be released soon. I will also ensure additional moderation. I will also get in touch with admins from other instances - my absence was due to personal issues I mentioned recently. Thanks for your understanding, and best regards.
Hey, I addressed this in my previous post. I'm dealing with the issue, but it will take a bit more time. Please have a little more patience.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/465872/Spam-from-unmoderated-communities-magazines#entry-comment-2427760
This week, I've been dealing with cleaning up instances from spam. Several hundred accounts were removed, along with several thousand posts - these were massive operations. It's possible that due to the volume of requests, other federated instances hit rate limits. I see that some of them are still in the queue with a "fail" status. I will gradually resend them after some time. Along with the update of kbin.social and the first release of kbin, new modeartion options will be available, including spam blocking (such as global blocking domains), a new reporting panel for moderators, and improved federation between instances. I will also address abandoned instances and ensure that each one has at least a few active moderators. I know how urgent this issue is, and it's my top priority. I just need a bit more time as Piotr and I are preparing for the update.
@downpunxx Kbin is certainly not dying, as @fr0g pointed out, work on new features and bug fixes is ongoing. However, it may give the impression that it is, and for that, I take full responsibility and owe you an explanation.
Several factors have contributed to this situation. The first and most significant reason is my family issues, which I must prioritize. I'm doing my best to stabilize the situation as quickly as possible, but not everything is within my control. The second reason is unfortunate financial matters. When Kbin suddenly gained popularity, the project's maintenance costs far exceeded my initial estimates. While community support still allows for the cluster's maintenance, I also need to take care of my own livelihood and commitments. Another reason involves spam campaigns and other issues that I need to address behind the scenes. I don't want to go into specifics right now, but there will come a time when I can share more. My top priority is to resolve all these matters so that I can return to working on Kbin full-time.
I spend every spare moment writing code and reviewing code? from other contributors. It's a lot of work that goes into development, and I try to verify every accepted pull request and make improvements when I can. It also takes up a lot of time, more than it may seem. I have also delegated some responsibilities and permissions to the Kbin core team (https://codeberg.org/org/Kbin/teams), which has allowed the project to continue to grow, and I am immensely grateful for that. However, I still want to maintain overall control, although over time, we will work on better processes to make it less dependent on me.
I paused updates on kbin.social some time ago until the release of the first version. Hence, the impression that nothing is happening. Kbin is, in fact, developing so rapidly that I wouldn't be able to respond to potential issues quickly enough, adding to the stress.
I've given myself a deadline to resolve all my issues and release the first official version by the end of September. If I can't meet the deadline, I will step down from leading the project and transfer full rights over the repository and instance to the contributors. Of course, this includes the budget I mentioned earlier, earmarked for instance maintenance.
I feel truly awful about this. I can't even keep up with threads on Matrix Spaces, notifications here, etc. Right now, the only way to contact me is through the contact form. However, I want to catch up on everything as soon as possible and stabilize the situation. It's crucial to me, but at the moment, I can't put it above family matters. I apologize for letting you down, and I appreciate your words of support. If it weren't for such an amazing community, I might have given up a long time ago.
@unofficialkbinguide That's amazing. Merloy is right, it would be great to have some of this in the official wiki. I would go a step further, I'm in the process of preparing a new project page. I would be very grateful if I could use your work there. If you don't mind and have an account on Codeberg, please send me your username in a private message, I'll add permissions to the repository, and we can work on this together.
Hi there, I'm currently working on solving the problem. There will be significant changes this month. I know it's taking longer than I initially announced, but this will be a really solid release. The contributors have made an incredible work and I didn't want to miss anything.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/381108/Lots-of-new-spam#entry-comment-2209332
This month, the largest update is planned. It's taking a long time because part of the team is returning from vacation, hence the delays. I hope that the update will resolve some of the most pressing issues. I'm also trying to remove spam systematically, but currently, the code is my priority. After implementing the new version, I will seriously address the community.
If there's anything urgent, currently contacting through the form is the quickest option. Cheers!
The mechanism itself is already ready, but there are so many other changes that the next server update won't be that easy. Additionally, I had to solve several private issues that effectively distracted me from work, sorry for that. At the beginning of September, everything will start to stabilize, and that's also when all the changes will be on kbin.social.
Thanks for reaching out, I'll look into it today.
@OvergrownSkeleton more moderate
The magazine also has its own panel, available if you are the owner.
At the end of the day, I wanted to thank you for that reminder. Sometimes I really need it. For now, these two PRs will have to suffice. I'm sure I modeled them after Postmill. I can promise I'll get back to this and do it right.
Thank you for that, Adam.
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/1005
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/1006