I've sent requests for taking over dead communities including a private message and haven't heard anything. I'm concerned that the project will stagnate and, with it, the community.
I put in a request to take over a magazine last year when its previous moderator disappeared, and ernest actioned it pretty quickly. It looks like he hasn't posted for a month or so now though - hope he's doing okay. Running this thing must be a hell of a weight to carry.
I hate to say it, because I've been really pleased with kbin for the most part. I've liked being able to dip my toes into the Mastodon side without yet another account; I like the interface; and my interactions with Ernest have been nothing but pleasant. I certainly hope all is well with him personally. But whether it's legitimate medical issues or undisclosed burnout, the instance and platform are struggling.
The good thing is that everything has been federating and most of us have been interacting with Lemmy and mbin users daily anyway; it's "just" a loss of fake internet points and comment history to move. I'm trying to put that off, but the mobile site/pwa is only okay, API rollout has stalled (meaning app development has stalled as well), admin activities can't happen with Ernest, and technical issues with the instance are becoming more common.
I think the Reddit API mini-exodus last year hit at that exact "sweet" spot, in terms of numbers and point in kbin development, where one dev/admin could almost keep up with it, but not quite. Suddenly this thing he was noodling with to combine Lemmy and Mastodon has thousands of people wanting it to be production ready. I don't begrudge him anything even if it is just burnout, but if that is the case then maybe it's time to bless mbin as a successor and start migrating people off kbin.social or find someone else to admin it and ugrade it to mbin. Ernest has built up a ton of goodwill; if he's done, then he's done (and of course, if he's ill then he's ill). Who among us could stand up a minimum viable product of a reddit clone and admin two instances? Not me, that's for sure.
Edit: I checked, and Ernest's Polish-language instance karab.in is completely down right now.
We have all been very lucky that these open source projects are there as an alternative, and there are ways Ernest can step back if being the sole PM of a sprawling social network project isn't good for him. I just don't want it to happen in a way where people are left with a bad taste in their mouths for the Fediverse or him personally.
I agree completely with you about the state of kbin and what it means for Ernest: if it's become too much for him, or he has medical issues, just ask for help.
That said, I don't know what to say about switching to mbin: I don't know what caused the split, and honestly the 2-3 threads by some noisy bozos going "KAY GUYS KBIN'S DEAD, YOU'RE ALL INVITED ON MBIN" don't exactly make me wanna rush there.
The initial split largely seemed to be that people were submitting code fixes and Ernest wasn't accepting them or updating /KBin fast enough for them. The lack of API that was already done and approved by Ernest and ready to go (that to my knowledge still hasn't been implemented on KBin!) seemed to have been the last straw that got them traction.
Ernest doesn't want to band aid fixes, he wants to fix the underlying problems and eliminate the "tech debt" he's already accumulated rather than letting it continue to pile on to the point that fixing anything becomes unmanageable due to all the band aids. This is GOOD, but it means everything will be much slower. MBin is just pedal to the metal and literally accepting any bit of code at all, which also isn't really sustainable for a product that people want to use.
At this point, I dunno though, Ernest has been gone for a month and the site has been super slow and blips up and down all the time. I REALLY hope he's ok, but I'm not sure of the long term viability of /KBin anymore and am wondering what if the next blip just doesn't get resolved???
I agree on the MBin bros thing, 100%. Their attitude has really made me not want to even consider their project at all. I don't like the tankie devs on the Lemmy side of things, but, at the same time don't really think that matters all that much. If they do something bad, people can break off and spin off like MBin did.
To me, ideal world, enough people donate that Ernest can pay himself to work on it full time and maybe hire an extra FT dev (Nabu Casa hires like 30 devs to work on Home Assistant without taking in any VC debt or 3rd party money, so, it's at least feasible, but they built up 5ish years of goodwill before they spun up Nabu Casa and people were still initially skeptical), but that's not going to be possible if he disappears constantly so it's a catch-22.
Seriously though, I really hope he's ok and this hasn't been because something happened to him. It's really ominous that his last communication indicated he had surgery coming up and then complete radio silence
It wouldn't be impossible to find a middle ground between pushing the pedal to the metal and solving the underlying problems, Mbin has more active maintainers and people who collaborate with pull requests. Considering that, Ernest and the Mbin team/community could work together. We all want the same thing, a quality Kbin working.
Thanks for the explanation :)
Recent news told us that Ernest is alive and kinda well, so that's a relief; still, the question remains that he probably get help, as developing and adminning could be too much to handle.
Also, like u/Facni also said, there could be a middle ground between the fast&furious of Mbin and the slow&steady of Kbin, and everyone would benefit from it.