Came here with this show in mind. Would recommend.

Yeah I wanted to use it for work until I read that. Instead I’m just using Vimwiki since I really only need markdown and linking.

Deep Questions with Cal Newport
Learn Japanese with Masa-Sensei

kbin and mastodon

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.

Your work is appreciated. :)

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.

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.

Speaking of microblogging, I still don’t know what those are somehow lol. are they like mastodon tweets or toots or whatever? 😭

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.

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.

Hehe yeah, I’d have to agree. Studio Ghibli films are really nice. I should probably give it a rewatch some time soon.

Kiki’s Delivery Service

To add further context–I’d like to emphasize that an understanding of written Chinese would help with Kanji, but like you said, to a limited extent. When reading Kanji, there are cases where you’d have to be cognizant of Onyomi and Kunyomi (Basically pronunciations rooted in Chinese vs. Japanese). Not as important if you are strictly “reading”, I suppose. However, this would also not provide insight when reading Hiragana nor Katakana, how particles are used, rules for conjugation (polite vs. casual, past vs. non-past tense, etc.), further reducing mutual intelligibility. In some cases, Chinese characters may be visually identical to Japanese Kanji, yet have different meanings or applications. Traditional Chinese vs. Simplified Chinese is also a whole other topic.

Examples where there is some similarity:
JP: 走る
EN: Run (verb)

CN: 走路
EN: Walk (verb)

Matching characters, unrelated meaning and application:
JP: 勉強
EN: Study (noun)

CN: 勉強
EN: Reluctantly (adverb)

Furthermore, Chinese uses Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order, whereas Japanese uses Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order. Japanese also regularly uses subject omission, so it’s important to consider these things if you’re moving from one language to the other. Missing an understanding of these differences could lead to pretty different interpretations of a sentence.

That being said, having a background in Chinese would be more beneficial when picking up Japanese than the other way around, IMO.

On /kbin, there is a feature called Collections – you can group similar communities akin to multireddits. These collections can be public or private, and don’t need to have an overarching theme. Public collections are pretty handy for discoverability too.

I couldn’t agree more. There’s a time for story and exposition, and a time for gameplay. Developers who don’t let the player flow in either direction create a very jarring experience. It totally breaks the immersion.

Is Ubuntu is a requirement or am I misunderstanding?

A gaming themed park would be pretty neat

I could not agree more–I’ve also been trying to engage with content by sorting through “New” more regularly. It’s now my preferred method for discovering content.

I agree with pretty much everything you mentioned. Regarding the activity, I wish there was a bit more effort from others as well. I can understand why they don’t though–I was typically a lurker as well. It’s just unfortunate when I see posts from users that want to see more content as well before they feel incentivized to contribute, which unfortunately serves to perpetuate the problem. Not saying this is you (also not trying to antagonize any lurkers, because again, I understand), it’s just something I’ve observed. That said, I appreciate what folks like Ernest are doing. #Kbin and the rest of the #fediverse resonate with me conceptually, so I’ll continue trying to support it how I can.

I agree, one will probably come in time.

Greetings from kbin.social

The only thing I wish was 1 click less is viewing images/videos.

When you want to check out an image/video post, there’s a little icon to the left of the comments underneath the title of the post. You can click on that to view the image/video without needing to open the thread. :)

I appreciate the suggestion, however, I generally do as you suggested for other posts that I want to increase discoverability for. I also have issues when trying to bring in content from the rest of the fediverse into a particular magazine via tags. That said, I don’t want to make this a troubleshooting thread as this isn’t the intended magazine for that.

Do you keep a journal?

Yup

I’ve recently migrated to using Obsidian as my software (in fact, I use Obsidian for everything! […]

I use #Obsidian as well–taking notes on a variety of things such as projects, ideas, problems, interests, reminders, etc.

I’ve tried some different note-taking methods but those work for some aspects, but not all aspects of what I need to remember.

I agree, different things will require different solutions. There isn’t a perfect method for note-taking, otherwise everyone would probably be using it by now. To further highlight this issue, I believe looking at the considerable number of plugins and note-taking apps illustrates this. Regarding some things, I’m still trying to figure out what works for me. I doubt I’ll ever find a perfect solution either, but I’m okay with that because perfection is overrated IMO.

The way I use Obsidian is by having the daily note set up with a template which is timestamped and asks loaded questions, with tags, to help me find what subject I want to look back on in certain dates.

I do something similar, but I’ve revised how I approach my notes. In its current form, my daily notes are only filled with pages for the notes I make that day. I use tags very sparingly, only to highlight key ideas. In the first iteration of my vault, I realized that I had a tendency to overpopulate my notes with unnecessary tags. Currently, I use a hierarchical system to label my notes. While this works for me, this may not work for you, and that’s okay. It’s just something I’ve become accustomed to after switching from #Windows to #Linux. Organizing my notes in this manner allows me to navigate through my notes more quickly and effectively than rummaging through a folder-based/GUI-based methodology. Utilizing header markdown was also useful for dividing some pages into different sections which could be referenced by various other pages.

So I have tried writing EVERYTHING down.
[…]These tags can be relating to work, emotions, relationships, interactions, and ways to improve any of those.

I respect the hustle, but the mental overhead for this project sounds a bit excessive. It seems unrealistic to remember and process the information as you’re doing. This obsession with does certainly sound like ADHD, and I’m speaking from personal experience. I’ve embarked on something similar, but realized how time consuming a project like this would be. However, if this truly is important to you, don’t let me stop you. My own vault of notes is very important to me as well.