"The magazine from the federated server may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance."
"The magazine from the federated server may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance."
Anyone know why I keep getting this message when I try to access a community/magazine through kbin?
This is a great question and certainly confusing for those not used to the federation aspect.
A quick explanation:
If the magazine has a domain name at the end of it that isn’t the same as your kbin account, then it means that the magazine’s “home” is on a different instance.
Example:
technology@fedia.ioThat means that all the instances (servers) will push content and updates to the “home” instance and receive updates and content from the “home” instance.
When an instance (server) subscribes for the first time to a magazine on a different instance, it will start to receive new content from that moment forward. However, older content isn’t pushed out to the newly subscribing instance. You can think of it as subscribing to a newsletter or something. You won’t automatically be sent copies of all the older content but you will get new things moving forward.
You can have older content show up by manually entering the direct link to the older content into the search bar on your home instance (in this case kbin.social) but it’s a manual process.
That why the message shows up about “may not be complete” since it doesn’t know how much total content there is on the remote instance.
This topic (called “backfilling posts/contents”) is one that has been discussed on the Fediverse for some time.
Thank you for the explanation! Interestingly, older content is showing up for me but not newer content. Your explanation makes it seem like older content would be "delayed", but is the same true for newer content?
Older content won't be delayed. It won't show up at all, unless someone on another server boosts it.
Newer content can be delayed just due to volume of traffic.
this isnt right, new content from the home instance still isnt displaying when viewed from kbin
It's because kbin hasn't fully imported all the content that would be displayed on that page in the actual instance.
It's not local community, and as the federation in kbin is still spotty, you're gonna keep seeing until it improves.
I have simple goals trying to migrate from reddit: find and join communities, and see and participate in the content of those communities. So far the fediverse has been broken on both aspects, there are communities that are invisible to the search engine, by design, and content that is invisible to any other instance.