I know some of you consider this as documented whining. I hear you but won’t stop sharing my opinion and reminding. I recommend continuing commenting on the original post to keep it a bit organized (this post is a link to it)
Update: this thread has gotten out of hand. This is not what I intended, this is not what anybody should want. Let’s leave it at this, for now.
Your sympathy for Ernest is good, we all sympathise with him. My main point is and has always been that kbin.social should not be run by one person alone, especially if he’s having a hard time in his daily life.
So help him out instead of trying to steal the project out from under him. I see there are other contributors in the kbin repository. This fork comes off as really sleazy.
Ernest put in the work and established a community. Now somebody comes along and tries to move that community over to a fork. That’s some bullshit. Zero creativity with the name too. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this group tries to monetize this thing if they manage to replace kbin. Community-focused my ass. If it was community-focused, you wouldn’t be on here trying to split the community.
It’s a long story… I did help Ernest / Kbin for quite a while actually. Feel free to contribute to kbin.
I have offered him my help, several times, when he finally responded he explained he’s bad at excepting help. That’s fine, but that’s one of the things which, as I’ve said in this thread before, makes him unsuitable for running kbin.social by himself
Your language… sends odd signals to people. e.g., Kbin.social is running on his own computer, which he bought, with his own money, yes? Maybe he asks for voluntary contributions to defray electricity and ISP costs. The Kbin software is separate from the Kbin.social server that runs it, you see what I mean? Why try to take his own computer away from him? Just build something better and people will flock to it instead. Heck, some people have abandoned the Fediverse entirely bc they could not figure it out, and went back to Reddit. To each their own.
Btw many of us see what is going on - have no fear about that. I personally left Kbin three weeks ago when it was down for just days and days at a time, after a similar incident a few weeks before that, and similar issues ever since the project began. But it was always free for me, I don’t believe I have any “ownership” of either the server or the project. And I made my choice for me, but if others want to stay, that’s also fine. You are trying to make sure that we know that Mbin exists? We know. Make it better and we might try it out. Give up on Kbin and step out ahead of it, if you want. If you are frustrated by the need to wonder and guess at how he will do things in the future, then bypass him entirely, if you can. He seems to want that too.
Btw check out this announcement. There are many great options, and it is wonderful to have choices, e.g. in how communicative the admins are at the server of your choice. Or any of us at any time can start our own - the sheet beauty of the Fediverse!:-)
Paid for, in part, by the nlnet foundation. So not just his own money, now that you mention it. But that’s not what bothers me neither am I trying to take his computer away. What I have asked him to do, several times, and I am not the only one, is to make sure that should something go bad in his life again other people can take over for him (temporarily)
That does sound reasonable, and I thought he gave in awhile ago i.e. at least added admins to the instance, which retains him as the sole “owner” but allows others to step in for the more day-to-day work, as you said. But at the end of the day, what he does is up to him.
And what you choose to do about it is on you - e.g. if you want to write to the nlnet foundation asking them to communicate with him and possibly withhold further funding unless certain conditions are met, that is your business.
My own business was to communicate what I did, and now it is up to you to listen to the advice offered, or not. That is the essence of freedom, so please feel free to not have to worry about something outside of your control - his actions - by focusing on what you alone can do, your own actions.:-)
I assume nlnet are capable of looking after their own business, it’s none of mine anyway. And from what Ernest has written in the past I suspect that he’s lost the grant.
He has made several promises, several times but never stuck to his words. He’s repeating his actions again, although it’s not as apparent this time as before, because there’s less people involved.
Admins is not enough, there have to be people he trusts, with full access to the server, to make sure the community can be preserved
That’s why I left. And you too. The difference is, I give it precisely zero thought on a daily basis. Don’t let him run your life even after you’ve gotten away from it. Forgive him even, if you can - not for his sake, but for yours - is what I guess I am trying to say. Also, the community has already somewhat shattered, as people are leaving it? Except I did not delete my account, I simply stopped using it (well, I did make one comment in all that time since), which illustrates how any metric based on user count may not measure the situation accurately (and ofc daily posts can always be complicated by bot accounts).
You could contribute to Lemmy perhaps, e.g. try to help get it to federate with Mastodon instances… or something. And as you said, you already are contributing to Mbin. Those kinds of positive changes (i.e., in the sense of moving forward, rather than looking back) are all that you can do, in the end.
Well, that’s my two cents, fwiw:-).