Ban RSS Feeder

[slug]

Is it me or is there a lot of spam cropping up on this forum.  I say smite them till it quits

[Zarniwoop]

Its not a spammer, but an intended feature.

Its a mod that I have added to the forum to post information from RSS Feeds into the forum.

I have selected feeds that are both relevant and in keeping with the message areas of the forum and is intended to enable new content to be posted automatically that would otherwise have to be found on other websites.

In order to keep our web profile high we need content, hopefully useful and interesting, both to enhance the experience for our existing community and to hopefully attract new people to our little corner of the 'tinternet. Now I have asked on the boards before for people to post content from games played, post upcoming events etc etc. Some people have answered that call but not all, I also can not keep posting additional content myself as that would look self serving and I post a fair amount already.

Now because of the way the feed poster works, grabbing older entries first, and I have set it to only grab 1 entry each time it looks, there is a backlog for it to go through hence the high amount of posts. Once it has caught up, the changes should be less frequent and slightly lower post count.

As with all mods I add here I welcome feedback, but I rarely get it. I understand the concerns and not all of the posts will be of interest to everyone, but if they had been posted by a real person as opposed to an automated system I would not be inclined to remove them as they are not offensive or inappropriate.

We have had several real spammers join and post on this forum but each time, apart from poor grammer, the posts have actually generated responses from other members which is good in my books. I always check the links they add to their signatures to vet them to ensure they are not pointing to any inappropriate websites and if anyone is ever offended or worried about any posts made on this forum they are welcome to contact myself or Crazyfrog to deal with it.

I hope you understand the reasons behind this latest addition and hope you will bear with me on this to see how it works out over the next few months. I will review it again then, in conjunction with any other feedback, to see if it has proved to be a benefit or not.

[EvilGinger]

Slug,
To be honest I am sympathetic to your post, however I also understand exactly why Zarni's doing it and agree with him on that. I think the best thing we can all do is see how it pans out & in the mean time make sure we use this lovely forum as much as we can to further dilute RSS content with real people posting stuff. I would pretty much love this to be a one stop shop for my gaming addiction as surfing round the number of groups I am a member of is cutting into my ability to be involved in each of these discrete communities.

I am posting here as much as I can.

what does every one else think?


 Ginger

[slug]

My beef was that on one day the last 10 posts were from the RSS feeder, some of the feeds seemed a little bizarre and couldn't understand them, maybe that was just me.

[EvilGinger]

slug

Prod your lot to post a bit on here as their older escapades warmed the cockles of a Evilginger Heart I am mine

 Ginger

[slug]

Your wish is my command

[EvilGinger]

thank you 

 Ginger

[EvilGinger]

I think I am winning on this one though it would be lovely if more people joined me in out posting the RSS feed I dont want it to look that much like I have taken over the forum & have Zarni locked in a box like a Hobbit sorry I meant halfling.


So come on folks some one else post & try and beat me 

 Ginger

[Snakes in the Tiki Lounge]

I'm not really interested in trying to outspam the link-bomber, personally, but you go for it if you fancy.

[EvilGinger]

 
No actually I was not interested in just spamming the forum I was interested in using it for what its for,  which is as I feel you need to be reminded posting gaming related content which might interest others. I found it ironically amusing that I had managed to out do the RSS feeder, hence my post here.

I would also like to remind you that the RSS feed isn't "Spam"  but was started because this forum nearly died from lack of member generated content, I took that as a challenge to do my part and enliven the place. I hope I have achieved this. I would like others to do the same. As I like reading the stuff people post here about their games, and other things. However if you dont want to that's your prerogative &  fine but dont moan when its not there any more because no one supported it.

 Ginger

[Dat]

For me, the only annoying thing about it is that its' updates are posted in the 'recent posts' section, not allowing me to see what stuff actual people have posted recently.

I'm guessing Zarni could crack his coding fingers and create a separate update section for the RSS Feeder. This would solve the main problem with this thing and keep everyone who cares up to date on what the Feeder has to say. Is this feasable? Seeing as the recent posts section exists in two places at both the top and bottom of the page, we could replace one of them with the RSS Feeder update section.

Thoughts?

[EvilGinger]

Good point Dat & I did raise that with Zarni when I first saw the RSS feed posts, I am not sure that works with feeder Mod he is using. 

The problem was at the time and may be still is that real people even Squirrels or work crazed semi insomniac EvilGingers where not posting enough to keep things viable, so we got RSS feeds chosen so as to be relevant to the forum & posted to the board which covered the topic. Speaking of which I haven't seen any RSS feed for the last couple of days so it may have been turned off or run out of backlog to post.


 Ginger

[Zarniwoop]

Unfortunately with this version of the forum there is not an easy way to exclude the RSS Feed posts. There is a MOD for SMF 2.0 that allows Admins to exclude Certain areas from recent posts which may be a possibility in the future when I upgrade (though SMF 2.0 Final is not yet released)

I have added on the top menu a "Latest Posts" link which shows the last 100 posts on the forum, in a similar format to the Recent posts areas or you can click on the link ("View the most recent posts on the forum.") in the forum stats area near the bottom of the page.

The only other way is to remove permissions for the "News" child boards for normal members and have it as a reqested access? but this would be messy to administer.

[Dat]

Just having a latest posts link at the top solves my problem. Being able to see the last 100 posts allows me to take note of what folk have posted. Good stuff!

[EvilGinger]

Thank You Boss

 Ginger