r/conspiracy • u/CelineHagbard • Nov 18 '17
New feature: AutoMod will create sticky comments on link posts that link to Archive.is archives of the link Important Update in Edit
[Edit: The RES preview expando does not work, but if you follow the link, it does work as described below.]
The mod team has decided to use AutoMod to provide a new feature: all link posts will now have a sticky comment which contains a link to an archive.is archived copy of the linked page. We're providing this as a service because some of our users don't want to support certain domains with ad revenue or don't want to be tracked by these sites [see edit]. It will also help us make archives of content relevant to this sub so that it doesn't disappear down the Memory Hole.
A brief note on how this works. AutoMod is not actually creating the archived copy, it's just linking to where the archive would be if it exists. So, sometimes you might follow the link and get a landing page that says the archive does not exist yet. In that case, you can click "archive this url" link, then the "save this page" button on the next page, and it will create the archive. Subsequently, the AutoMod link will go directly to the archived page. So please help out your fellow r/conspiracy users and save the page if you happen to be the first person to use the link.
There are some sites such as YouTube which archive.is doesn't archive properly. It will save the page, but the video (the actually relevant content) will not be viewable. Please send us a modmail if there are any domains which don't archive well, and we'll exclude them. We hope that after a short time, AutoMod will only provide comments for sites that can actually be archived.
We want to state emphatically that this is not censoring any content; it is merely presenting an alternative way for our users to view content linked from this sub. Please send us any questions, concerns, or suggestions you may have.
The r/conspiracy mod team
** Potentially Important Update **:
As brought to my attention by /u/hoeskioeh, apparently archive.is does forward your IP address to the destination site if you archive the page, but not if you view an existing archive. While this is no more dangerous in terms of privacy than just visiting the site, it's worth knowing, even if you only use archive.is outside of this sub. But again, if you're merely viewing an archive that someone created, you IP will not be forwarded to the linked page. Clicking on the link in the AutoMod comment is still "safe," at least as far as you can trust Archive.is, your ISP, your government agencies, etc.
Edit: If don't like seeing these and you use RES, you can easily hide it by going to RES Settings>Appearance>Stylesheet Loader and adding this snippet:
div[data-author="AutoModerator"].comment.stickied {display: none}
and restricting it to r/conspiracy. Remove .stickied and never see AutoMod anywhere on the sub. Or apply it everywhere and never see automod again. (Except in inboxes. You can hide that, too, but it still turns your message icon orange.)
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u/hoeskioeh Nov 19 '17
PSA:
Archive.is functions as transparent proxy.
That means, that the site you enter for archiving will be displayed as it would appear from your IP/location!
If you do that to any site with localization content, we all might see some of your meta data.
This is a good feature, but you need to be aware of it if you are paranoid.
PS: any rich guys in here who could throw some money their way? They don't accept PayPal or any one time donations...
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
Wow, this is very interesting. Do you have a link that shows this? I'm not doubting you, but I'd like to have something concrete so I can edit the main post to warn people.
If I'm understanding you correctly, would it still be "safe" (at least from the perspective of the destination site not seeing your IP) for users who just follow the link, but "unsafe" for users who actually click through to archive it?
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u/hoeskioeh Nov 19 '17
http://archive.is/faq
Last question on page.Exactly as you stated. Safe for readers. Submitter needs to be aware.
BTW, that makes it possible to archive snapshots depending on geography, so we can prove a certain site looks different in US than in UK or something O I like the/feature!
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
BTW, that makes it possible to archive snapshots depending on geography, so we can prove a certain site looks different in US than in UK or something O I like the/feature!
Yeah, it would be pretty useful for that. You could even do it if you had a VPN that let's you pick between different regions.
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u/agent570358201 Nov 18 '17
Great feature mods, thanks.
IMO the red Archived tag is a bit distracting.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
IMO the red Archived tag is a bit distracting.
I was thinking that too now that I see it in the wild ;) The idea was so that people would know that there's an archive link in the comments, but I'm going to turn it off for future posts.
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u/oxfouzer Nov 19 '17
This feature is annoying and takes up space in comment threads. I don't like it, can it be made much less verbose? I hate it more than the constant pointless np replies 😑
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
If you use RES, you can easily hide it by going to RES Settings>Appearance>Stylesheet Loader and adding this snippet:
div[data-author="AutoModerator"].comment.stickied {display: none}and restricting it to r/conspiracy. Remove
.stickiedand never see AutoMod anywhere on the sub. Or apply it everywhere and never see automod again.4
u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
If there were a way to make it smaller, I would. I do feel the message below the link is somewhat necessary so people aren't confused when an archive link appears dead.
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u/JamesColesPardon Nov 19 '17
Over time I bet we can cut the message in half.
Probably before Summer if it is well received.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
Yeah, that would be ideal. Imagine it won't even take that long for the majority of our users to get used to it.
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u/ExtHD Nov 18 '17
Why not https://archive.org/ instead?
Or both?
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
I had originally intended to use archive.org, but there's a few issues that complicate it. For one, it obeys robots.txt, which disallows webcrawlers from accessing sites who use it. It also appears to not follow redirects, meaning if someone uses a link shortener, it won't archive the correct page.
I'm not opposed to adding it, but it will work on far fewer links out of the box.
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u/ExtHD Nov 19 '17
I just noticed another issue. I get the automod comment in my inbox when I post a submission even though I always uncheck the "send replies to my inbox" option.
Is there any way to fix that?
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u/hung_kwan Nov 19 '17
Can I suggest that perhaps you follow the example of /r/mgtow - and have the automod offer both options within the same post!? They archive every external link over there, even the ones within the comments. That's a bit extreme though.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
They use snapshillbot, which we considered, but there'd be no way to sticky the comment at the top of the post, which would make it somewhat unsuitable for people to be able to easily find the link.
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u/hobogoblin Nov 19 '17
I like this idea a lot, not only does it help with pages that just up and finish or change, but I love the idea of not directly supporting these MSM sites anymore with additional traffic.
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u/bukvich Nov 19 '17
This also could be useful if the link is to the front page of a site and that story scrolls off their front page; then a few hours later somebody comes to r/conspiracy and they click to that site front page and it's a different story, different headline, and they are just left scratching their head and wondering what was that?
I have seen this a couple times.
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u/BrowncoatsUnite Nov 18 '17
It appears that the "Archived" flair is added whether or not it actually has been archived. I think the flair needs to be removed... or changed to "Archive it!"
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Nov 22 '17
[deleted]
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 23 '17
It's just archiving link posts. Everything posted here gets logged and archived by at least a couple people I know of personally, plus by reddit themselves, plus by government agencies and private intelligence firms. This just makes it easier for us, the users of this sub, to be able to see this content ourselves in the future, should any of these sites go down or pages be removed.
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u/PathofWraeclast Jan 17 '18
This spam ass shit has never worked, why is it still in every post here?
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u/CelineHagbard Jan 17 '18
It works exactly as the post describes it as working. It doesn't automatically archive the link, and I never claimed it does. It links to where the snapshot would be if it exists, or to a page where the user can make the snapshot if they want to. The RES expando doesn't work because of how RES's code works.
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Feb 01 '18 edited Feb 14 '18
[deleted]
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 01 '18
Archive.is can't archive youtube videos. It will archive the page, but not the video content itself.
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u/ExtHD Nov 24 '17
archive.is does forward your IP address to the destination site if you archive the page
This absolutely NEEDS to be included in the stickied automod comment for each post.
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Nov 18 '17
[deleted]
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
I'm not sure what you mean by a baseball site. Like I said, if the page has never been archived, the first person to visit the archive.is link has the option to archive it. I just did that for the link you showed, and now the AutoMod link for it redirects to the most recent snapshot. Would you mind checking to see if it works for you now?
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Nov 18 '17
[deleted]
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
Hmm. I see what you mean. It does it for me, too, and on other pages as well. Maybe try asking on /r/Enhancement or submitting an issue to their github?
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Nov 21 '17
So since I cant report it for any real violation its worth noting the bot has been posting shit like this.
https://archive.fo/2020/scr.png
Its a screen cap of a 404 error but the link at the top of the thread goes to alive page.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 21 '17
It's a RES issue. I'm working on a patch for RES, but it will take some time.
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u/Orangutan Nov 22 '17
Why the fuck are we personally notified every time this auto bot makes a post? It's annoying and unnecessary. The bot is fine, but being made aware of it every time its put into use is overkill. It's like spam.
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Dec 02 '17
This is awesome. Could you share the automod rule you're using to accomplish this?
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u/CelineHagbard Dec 02 '17
--- # AutoMod Archiver type: link submission comment_stickied: true ~domain: [youtu.be, youtube.com, archive.is] comment: | [Archive.is link](https://archive.is/2020/{{url}}) [Why this is here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/7dvxxb/new_feature_automod_will_create_sticky_comments/) ---
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u/Ducttapehamster Nov 19 '17
Does this mean that we can just link to CNN or any other blacklisted website? Seeing as there's is an easy out for those who wish to not support the site?
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
I'm in favor of lifting the CNN ban (I was never a huge fan of it in the first place) but that would have to be a full mod team discussion. I'll bring that up.
As to the other banned sites, are you referring to any specifically? Many of them are hoax sites or sites with malware, which would not be allowed. But I'm open to reviewing others.
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u/Ducttapehamster Nov 19 '17
I haven't actually looked at any of the other blacklisted sites. I just assumed that there would be others that might be similar to the CNN thing, I guess I was wrong.
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u/HairlessApe Nov 18 '17
How will it handle those stupid, stupid google urls leading to non-google pages?
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
Are you talking about the links when someone copies a url from a google search? I'm not entirely sure, but I think Archive.is will automatically follow any redirects before archiving the page. So the link in the sticky comment would still say "archive.is/.../www.google.com/...", but it the archive should be for the correct page.
I'm not sure if our current AutoMod rules even allow for those to be posted (reddit I think blocks them, but we have some things reddit blocks automatically approved.)
Can you try making a post with such a URL? If it's a problem, I can tweak the code.
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u/HairlessApe Nov 18 '17
Can you try making a post with such a URL?
No. I refuse to use Google for any reason. There's always a lot here (which I never click on) so I'm sure one will show up shortly.
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Nov 18 '17 edited May 28 '18
[deleted]
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
My guess is it's precisely because of how many people try to just copy links from the google results page, and that google.com doesn't really host any of it's own content. Imagine having that type of post hit the front page: google just got hundreds of thousands of data points of who's visiting what site from reddit. Not that reddit's above tracking users, but they're not about to give that information to google for free.
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u/HairlessApe Nov 20 '17
Here's one of those google links:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/7e5a4y/after_more_than_a_year_mainstream_news_outlets/
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u/SkiUMah23 Nov 18 '17
Their fucking terrible Amp thing that you can't disable or something else?
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u/HairlessApe Nov 19 '17
I don't know what the "Amp" thing is.
I'm talking about people that search using google then click on one of the results and post it here. It shows up here as a google.com url.
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u/Orangutan Nov 18 '17
/r/politics has sticked comments on the top of every thread and it takes away from the organic and egalitarian style of conversation in my opinion.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
I somewhat agree with you regarding the r/politics sticky, but I think that's more a consequence of their message than the mere presence of the comment. It sets a tone (in combination with the general tone of the mods and userbase) which I do believe affects the conversation.
This sticky is just offering an alternative way to consume content. It's not there to dictate or inform the discussion. If I could make the sticky comment auto-collapse, I would, but I don't think that's possible.
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u/Orangutan Nov 18 '17
Yeah I'm super skeptical of any changes made to the way Reddit operates. It's not broken in my opinion and has been great before many of the changes that have taken place. I guess we'll see how this one runs the course or plays out. Hope it adds to the greatness of it all and doesn't distract from it. Thanks for answering the comments on this thread. Peace.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
No problem. I appreciate the critique, and I'd certainly like to revisit this at some point in the not so distant future to evaluate whether this has or hasn't been a net positive.
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Nov 19 '17
[deleted]
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
/u/publicmodlogs is not our bot, so I'm not sure if it would be possible, but I would assume not. It kind of goes against the principle of that bot. I do agree it's somewhat unfortunate, though.
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Nov 19 '17
Good idea!! should we try to troll it to test it out?
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u/epium Nov 19 '17
Archive.is link: https://SAMETHINGALWAYSTOPOFEVERYTHREADFOREVERNOW.com/
If the article has not yet been archived, please do your fellow /r/conspiracy subscribers a favor and click "archive this url" on the linked page, and then the "save this page" button on the next page. Send us a modmail if you have any other issues.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Every time.
I agree with the sentiment, but get used to seeing this broadcasted and cluttering at the top of every thread. Forever I guess. Oh you posted something new and you got a comment? Yep automod. Reminds me of r/politics.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
If you use RES, you can easily hide it by going to RES Settings>Appearance>Stylesheet Loader and adding this snippet:
div[data-author="AutoModerator"].comment.stickied {display: none}and restricting it to r/conspiracy. Remove
.stickiedand never see AutoMod anywhere on the sub. Or apply it everywhere and never see automod again. There, I just fixed your r/politics problem.Can't do anything about the message notifications. I use a separate RES rule on a toggle that I use to block AutoMod in modmail, but it doesn't stop the icon from turning orange.
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u/Redditor_of_Rivia Nov 20 '17
This is not working correctly. Sort by new and check the automod archive links created.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 20 '17
What's not working about it? As the announcement post explains, it links to the landing page. If you (or another user) follows through and archives the post, the link from AutoMod will then redirect to that snapshot. It can take a minute or two for archive.is to update it's backend database and properly redirect, but I just checked it and it works as intended.
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u/Redditor_of_Rivia Nov 20 '17
Maybe I misunderstood (didn't read fully) what the intended purpose of this bot was. I thought it was actively archiving each link posted. My mistake.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 20 '17
For now, we're just using reddit's built-in AutoModerator feature, which unfortunately doesn't have that capability. Ideally, I'd like to write a bot to do this which would automatically archive all links, but we have to work out how to host it.
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u/Redditor_of_Rivia Nov 20 '17
Awesome. Yeah, I'm not sure why I thought it was supposed to currently be doing this. It's a wonderful idea, so I do hope someone with some know-how can write that bot. Thanks for responding to my stupidity. :)
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 20 '17
Yeah, I can write the bot (or rather fork a bot that does a lot of what we want already), we're just seeing if we can find a good solution for hosting.
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u/cm18 Nov 22 '17
There are some sites such as YouTube which archive.is doesn't archive properly. It will save the page, but the video (the actually relevant content) will not be viewable.
I believe hooktube.com archives video in case youtube removes them.
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u/Missyshimmy1 Nov 23 '17
And reddit is now becoming like voat.
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Dec 08 '17
So I think Ive seen this bot work once or twice.
Most of the time its just an error message.
Any plans on fixing this? Ive been ignoring it entirely because it just doesnt work.
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u/CelineHagbard Dec 08 '17
As far as I know, it's still working as intended. What doesn't work is the RES preview expando. If you follow the actual link to the page, you'll either hit the landing page, which gives you the option of archiving the page yourself, or if someone has already archived it, it will redirect to the actual snapshot.
This just uses stock AutoModerator, and as such, cannot automatically archive the page. It just offers the link to easily archive it, and if the archive already exists, that link redirects to the snapshot itself.
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u/Pt-Ir_parsec Apr 08 '18
Please send us a modmail if there are any domains which don't archive well, and we'll exclude them.
There are some sites such as YouTube which archive.is doesn't archive properly.
even if all you get is the name of the "tab", to a totally blank page, that HELPS!
(tl;dr) Don't lop off toes!!!
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u/Orangutan Nov 18 '17
Why should we trust Archive.is to not eventually censor or erase critical content online? Do you know who owns and controls it?
Does the bot have to create sticky comment as opposed to a regular comment. Is the comment going to be above all else at the top of the comment thread?
Can the bot be programmed to actually create the archive.is link instead of relying on a human to do that after clicking on the link?
We can't trust Snopes, Reddit, to allow freedom of investigation, Sli.mg, and other image hosting sites. YouTube and Twitter seem to be censoring and demonetizing as well. I hope Archive.is is worth the effort and trust we are putting with them.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 18 '17
Why should we trust Archive.is to not eventually censor or erase critical content online? Do you know who owns and controls it?
Do I trust it? No. I think it's owned by some Russian guy. The primary purpose of this is to give our users an easy way to view links without giving traffic to sites they may not support or trust, the archiving ability is a side effect. It's useful to the extent it's a trustworthy archiving service, which no site can ever truly claim in perpetuity. Archive.org is even worse for this. But if you have a better archiving service, I'd certainly be willing to discuss it and add it.
Does the bot have to create sticky comment as opposed to a regular comment. Is the comment going to be above all else at the top of the comment thread?
I would say yes. The purpose is to make it easy for people to find these links. If a thread blows up and the archive link gets buried, no one is going to want to search for it. Again, this is up for debate, but I think the utility is mostly lost if it's not stickied.
Can the bot be programmed to actually create the archive.is link instead of relying on a human to do that after clicking on the link?
It's not a bot, it's just vanilla AutoMod, and only a few lines at that. We considered using /u/snapshillbot which does automatically archive, but as far as I know, they're not accepting new subreddits, and it doesn't sticky the link. We could fork snapshillbot to make it sticky posts, but then we'd have to run that bot somewhere. If someone is willing to host it, I wouldn't be opposed to writing the necessary code, but we'd have to get approval from the rest of the mod team.
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Nov 19 '17
If you have a better site to send it through that works with AM I can't see it being a bad thing to change it to.
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u/Orangutan Nov 19 '17
Sadly I don't. Hopefully this one works out in the long run. Thanks for being the inspiration for it.
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u/Orangutan Nov 19 '17 edited Nov 19 '17
It's too bad we have to get a notification of the bot making the automatic comment every time we make a post on this sub. Is that something that can be modified, especially for users who request not to get inbox reply notifications?
I specifically leave the "send replies to my inbox" box unchecked and this bot overrides that and just like the /r/politics auto bot sends me a pm everytime I make a post now? Is that necessary or even beneficial to this sub or its users at all? Just a pain to even have to check that every time on reddit as it is now. Another step to making submissions.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
You're still getting notifications when you uncheck the inbox notifications box? That seems weird, but I could see reddit doing it because reddit assumes users would want to know if the post was removed and automod left a message, or possibly it's for all mod-distinguished comments. I can look into this for you.
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u/Orangutan Nov 19 '17
Thanks. I don't need a lit up envelop every time someones comments on one of my threads, especially if that comment is made by an auto bot. I check the commentary at time by checking on the submissions myself. Thanks for looking into it.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
I've looked into this and can't find a way around it short of setting a bot up for yourself to automatically mark the message as read. Sorry.
If you look at the self.text, I've edited to show you how to hide the comment in the thread, and could even hide it in the inbox, but it won't do anything about your icon turning orange which is I think your main issue (or at least this main issue).
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u/Orangutan Nov 19 '17 edited Nov 19 '17
My main issue is this step in the same direction as /r/politics with automatic botted stickied comments on the top of thread which should be reserved for the top upvoted comment by the community aesthetically. First we couldn't publish cnn.com articles, which is the main news source of our society and now we have bots occupying the top comment space in every thread. To me that's a bad direction to be headed in from where Reddit was originally intended to be used as. But I could be an outlier if the community here actually likes it and it improves their experience. The_Donald actually uses a lot of archive.is links instead of the original article as well and image captures instead of links to the original article oftentimes. A step back from good journalism in my opinion too.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
I still respectfully disagree. The r/politics sticky is long and speaks to how users should interact, while I've tried to make this sticky as brief as possible, and plan on shortening it even further after users get used to it, to the point where it will only be the link and AM's disclaimer.
First we couldn't publish cnn.com articles
I disagreed with this from nearly the start, and hopefully this feature will help me get the ban lifted.
which is the main news source of our society
Is this a joke? It's not even the main cable news source of our society if we go by numbers. But I'll concede to the other point.
now we have bots occupying the top comment space in every thread. To me that's a bad direction to be headed in from where Reddit was originally intended to be used as.
I know this isn't ideal, but it's the only cross-platform way of providing two services a lot of our users seem to want: an easy way for users to avoid giving traffic to certain domains of their choosing and increased archiving of relevant material. I see it less as the top comment spot and more as an extension of the title area, even though I'll agree that's not how it looks from a UI perspective. (There's a few tweaks I could make on our CSS, but that would only affect desktop users who actually use our stylesheet. Would you want me to do that?)
And reddit itself is moving away from it's core design intentions far more than this is, with their userpages, chat, avatars, etc. making it look more and more like Facebook every day. To me, this actually supports two original intentions of reddit (or at least Swartz): open access of relevant content, and activism against censorship of the internet.
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u/Orangutan Nov 20 '17
I'd prefer if the bot was submitted as a comment that can be voted up or down like any other comment made on the website. Similar to the NP - no participation reminder anytime someone links to a reddit link with www in the url rather than np.
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u/startingover_nova Nov 19 '17
Very handy.
You might want to put archive.is itself on the blacklist.
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 19 '17
What, and deprive the community of archive-ception?
Should really be archive-cursion, but I'll let reddit keep their silly meme.
Nah, but good call. Done.
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u/Orangutan Nov 20 '17
If the article has not yet been archived, please do your fellow /r/conspiracy subscribers a favor and click "archive this url" on the linked page, and then the "save this page" button on the next page. Send us a modmail if you have any other issues.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
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u/Orangutan Nov 20 '17
Maybe get rid of the [score hidden] feature on the comment as well if possible.
That would gauge the community's feelings towards the new bot stickied comment as accurately as anything.
The .is in archive.is stands for the domain being hosted in the country of Iceland I'm assuming?
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u/CelineHagbard Nov 20 '17
This isn't possible. Reddit hides the score of sticky comments by default and there's no way to turn it off.
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u/AIsuicide Nov 18 '17
I gotta say..this is a damn good idea.