I am new here (kbin, but I guess this might post to other websites as well??) and am trying to understand how this place is similar and different from reddit. Is there a good overview somewhere? I already accidentally spammed this question three times as a microblog, whatever that is, and am trying to figure out how to actually do things.
How do I subscribe/join/whatever a community? Can I private message people?
What terminology do I need to know?
What’s up with the following people thing?
How do the points work (agree/disagree, relevant/not relevant, something else…)?
What else do I not know that I don’t know?
Thank you!
This should suffice for now:
Fediverse: Basically a set of individual websites, the content of any one of which can be accessed through any other website from this set of websites. Read on for the ‘how?’
Magazine: Similar to a subreddit.
Thread: Similar to a Reddit post.
Microblog: Similar to a tweet on Twitter.
Post: A microblog posted in a magazine.
Find the navigation menu on kbin, which is at the top of the webpage if you are on PC or tap the trigram on the top left of the web page if you are on mobile. You should see items named ‘Threads’, ‘Microblog’, ‘People’ and ‘Magazines’ in the navigation bar.
To browse the list of all magazines or search for specific ones, simply click on ‘Magazines’ on the navigation bar. When you do, you’ll find a search bar to search for magazines and a list of magazines sorted by the most number of subscribers. You can search for a magazine by just typing in a keyword like ‘history’. The search results will bring you magazines from kbin that have the keyword ‘history’ in their names or descriptions. In addition to kbin magazines, you will also find communities from other sites of the fediverse.
Here are the first 5 results I get searching for ‘history’ in the magazine search:
The magazines of kbin appear with just their name, as in the case of the chess, Etymology and history magazines. The communities analogous to kbin magazines on another fediverse site, lemmy.ml appear as you see in the case of historymemes@lemmy.ml. lemmy.ml is a different website from kbin.social, but you can access and interact with the content from lemmy.ml through kbin.social and using your kbin.social account. Click on the magazine name and you’ll find the option to subscribe on the right side of your screen on PC. On mobile, scroll all the way to the bottom and start scrolling up and you should find it. You can access your feed with content from subscribed magazines by clicking on the list icon to the left of your username on the top right of the web page on both PC and mobile. A dropdown menu will open up with an item called ‘Subscribed’. There you go.
You have posted to kbin.social in the RedditMigration magazine. A user of some other fediverse site will only see it if they are browsing RedditMigration@kbin.social from their site. If a user from some other website engages with your post, their user ID will appear here as username@fediversesitename, similar to how yours is username@kbin.social.
Favorite(up arrow)/Reduce(down arrow). Who favorites/reduces a particular thread/comment is public. Find the ‘more’ option on a comment and click on ‘activity’.
Another form of engagement is boosting (find the ‘boost’ option near the ‘reply’ option on a thread/comment/microblog), which is similar to retweeting on Twitter.
An overview of fediverse can be found at jointhefediverse.net.
So I get the favorite and reduce, magazines, etc. But one thing I haven’t seen anyone talk about is “boost”. What does boost do? I figure it helps to “boost” someone’s comment above others more so than an upvote? Do we only get a set number of boosts to use?
Boosts are like retweets on twitter. There is no limitation on boosts.
Added to original comment.