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.
You mentioned a lot of things that I generally really enjoy about #kbin as well.
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.
Cheers to that, I actually use one of yours -- specifically the one that changes the layout of profile pages.
Agreed -- I think Mastodon also functions similarly. It makes #discoverability a bit challenging at times, but I'm open to experimenting with it.
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.
Agreed, and to add onto this -- profile pictures are pretty easily recognizable as well.
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
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? 😭
Yes, almost all of the microblog consists of toots, published on Mastodon. /kbin and Mastodon are different software, with different features, written in differrent programming languages (Mastodon - Ruby on Rails, /kbin - PHP). Yet users of both are able to seamlessy talk to each other!
Your work is appreciated. :)
I could not agree more, LOL. Props for powering through that feeling, I'll go check out some of your magazines soon. Unfortunately, this is a problem that feeds itself, as people don't want to post because people aren't posting. Someone's gotta be first on the dance floor if we want to see /kbin thrive. I've been quite busy with IRL stuff, so I haven't been able to post as much lately. What you said about even a single comment every once in awhile really makes a difference.
Yeah, that's basically what they are. Being unfamilar with them is no problem. The great thing about #kbin is that options are available, but not forced on us. #Microblogs could become more useful/relevant with the introduction of the #allContent tab being created. Having an aggregated view is really helpful for easing into how it could be used. One way I've been messing with it is to have an overview of magazines so I can more easily be aware of any content that needs to be moderated. I think they could be useful for other stuff besides one off #tweets/#toots so you can group related posts to look back on -- themed posts over a span of time (like #inktober posts, #caturday etc). I also regularly use them in @learnjapanese for my #japanesepractice.