this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024

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Lemmy Integrations

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bot request for generating and managing a megathread (jlai.lu)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Snoopy@jlai.lu to c/lemmy_integrations@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Hi all !

I apologize if i'm off topic. A friend advised to post here. :)

On jlai.lu i use megathread a lot. Its main goal is to regroup all related posts to a topic and leave a link to the megathread in comment.

Here is an example : https://jlai.lu/post/3905951

So let's explain how it would work, feel free to improve this draft or tell me if it's not feasible. I'm not well tuned zith editing rights

First the user has to create a post with sections and send it to the bot. Then the bot @megathread@lemmy.tdl publish it to the community mentionned by the user.

Example :

@megathread@lemmy.tdl create a post in !agriculture@lemmy.tdl :

Farm
# Vegetable
# Market
# Climate

[!agriculture@lemmy.tdl](/c/agriculture@lemmy.tdl)

I'm an user. I explore lemmy.tdl and see a post Meat market is decreasing in Europe related to the megathread Farm for the section Market and i want to add it to the megathread Farm

So i can call this bot like this : megathread@lemmy.tdl add to Farm section Market (maybe shorter with symbole ?)

Then the bot will do 2 things :

Edit the megathread Farm and add * (timestamp of the URL) [Meat market is decreasing in Europe](URL) to the section Market
leave a comment with the link to the megathread farm

Timestamp of the url, the date of the newpapers if we can retrieve it.

To remove a link from a section, go to the link you want to remove, and write this :

megathread@lemmy.tdl remove to Farm section Market

So anyone can participate and edit the megathread. It's collaborative :)

Maybe we can find a way to rectrict it to thrusted users so we can avoid Troll, spam...an array of trusted users who can use the bot and its admin ?

Thank for reading my post. What do you think ? :)

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[–] eatham@aussie.zone 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This seems like a cool idea. I don't know how to make a bot so I can't help but I hope you find someone who can.

[–] Snoopy@jlai.lu 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Thank for your feedback :)

[–] keepthepace 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Maybe we can find a way to restrict it to trusted users so we can avoid Troll, spam…an array of trusted users who can use the bot and its admin ?

There are many ways this could work:

Have a whitelist of people who can approve/deny an addition
Have a rule on the number of votes (e.g. accept addition at +5 votes)
Maybe just on the number of downvotes? (do not add anything that received more than 2 downvotes)
Votes are public (upvotes at least are), a list of known users could trigger the bot when the comment asking the addition is upvoted by one of them

[–] Snoopy@jlai.lu 2 points 9 months ago

I prefer the whitelist. You chose people you trust and have fun
upvote/downvote : no. they are not public as only the admin and people outside lemmy can see them. I can't trust it. Posted a video about sign language, got negative vote without any reason. So I ended up manipulating vote for everyone and couterbalance them.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I could make this sort of bot easily using pythorhead, but I don't quite have the time atm. Still if you know a bit of python, this sounds very doable.

[–] Snoopy@jlai.lu 1 points 9 months ago

Thank :)

Sadly i'm a farmer and don't know any programming language except some code : css and html. Maybe so other people will be interested. :)

[–] Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com 1 points 9 months ago

Hey, pretty cool idea. So, if I understood your specifics correctly the bot's functionalities would essentially be twofold:

starting new megathreads
adding links to existing megathreads

About 1. I think you should seriously consider the idea of restricting the allowed megathread starters in a way. An easy solution would be only allowing community mods to start megathreads (and maybe instance admins? not really necessary, though, imo). So in your example only a moderator of !agriculture@lemmy.tld could start new megathreads. I think this would be preferable instead of an array of trusted users, because it would reduce the amount of configuration necessary.

would be comparatively easier on a permission side and unless any incidents happen it could probably be beneficial to allow everyone to partecipate in the megathread. However removing stuff from the megathread should definitely be restricted to mods and/or admins. Giving everyone the possibility to remove sources they disagree with in a public discussion sounds dangerous.

The biggest challenge would be designing a clear interface for users. What you have proposed:

@megathread@lemmy.tld add to Farm section Market

sounds a bit too long winded and possibly hard to remember.
Furthermore, you might want to assign some sort of unique identifier to your megathreads, as just giving them a title (like "Farm") will likely generate conflicts in the future. The "add link to megathread" action should somehow uniquely identify a megathread, both within a certain community as well as instance wide. Asking the user to provide a link to the megathread they wish to contribute to would be an easy and unambiguous solution, but it might be a bit too difficult on the UX side (bear in mind, users are LAZY).

All in all the idea sounds great, you (we?) should just discuss the specifics in detail before any code is written.