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The Nineteenth Byte, our main chat room, has some feeds. These post new challenges, meta questions, sandboxes posts, and some other assorted things. Unfortunately, they're kinda slow. New Main Posts and New Sandboxed Posts often take between ten and twenty minutes, and New Meta Posts can take up to an hour.

That brings me to New Posts, a tool I made not too long ago which lists new questions and answers on CGCC. It turns out that it's insanely fast, so much so that it's practically instant. I later decided to apply this concept to a bot, and made two chat bots: New Posts and Sandbox Posts.

Currently, they live in Redwolf's Redundant Room. New Posts is responsible for posting new main and meta questions, while Sandbox Posts posts new posts from the sandbox (unintuitive, I know :p).

Should we replace New Main Posts, New Meta Posts, and New Sandboxed Posts with these bots?

If the answer is yes, there are a few additional points that will need a consensus:

  • Should we use the names New Posts and Sandbox Posts, or change them, or keep the names as New Main Posts, New Meta Posts, and New Sandboxed Posts?
  • These are technically normal users rather than feeds, so they show up in the users list. Should they be designed to always be in the room, to prevent them from constantly entering and leaving?
  • Should some posts be delayed if active conversation is going on?
  • What should we do with the other three feeds (Newly Featured Questions, New Bounties With No Deadline, and New Loophole Proposal)? Should they be kept, converted to bots, or removed altogether?
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  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes, they should. The third one seems tricky to detect though, and everyone wants to see a new question that they can FGITW. \$\endgroup\$
    – emanresu A
    May 22, 2021 at 4:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ausername Main posts probably wouldn't be delayed, but delaying meta posts could be a reasonable thing to do \$\endgroup\$
    – Rydwolf Programs
    May 22, 2021 at 4:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ausername That gets a lot more complicated, and having spam immediately posted could be good for review purposes anyway (unlike with NMP where it's 15m after it's already closed :p) \$\endgroup\$
    – Rydwolf Programs
    May 22, 2021 at 4:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ True, never mind. \$\endgroup\$
    – emanresu A
    May 22, 2021 at 4:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ But since these are like regular users, could they auto-delete posts that get several downvotes within the 2-minute edit period? \$\endgroup\$
    – emanresu A
    May 22, 2021 at 4:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ausername only if they have enough reputation \$\endgroup\$
    – hyper-neutrino Mod
    May 22, 2021 at 4:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ausername That is an interesting idea, although the disuption would already have occured \$\endgroup\$
    – Rydwolf Programs
    May 22, 2021 at 4:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ @hyper-neutrino I think they meant deleting the chat message not the post itself \$\endgroup\$
    – Rydwolf Programs
    May 22, 2021 at 4:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ Oh. Yeah that could make sense. I mean, it's not much work for an RO to just throw it out, but that's an interesting idea \$\endgroup\$
    – hyper-neutrino Mod
    May 22, 2021 at 4:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ @hyper-neutrino Yes that's what I meant. / \$\endgroup\$
    – emanresu A
    May 22, 2021 at 4:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ I have never felt there was a problem with Feeds interrupting a conversation, so I think there's no reason for these to have that feature either \$\endgroup\$
    – pxeger
    May 22, 2021 at 12:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ Suggestion for title: "Should we fire Tim?" :P. About the second question - I think they should constantly stay in the room instead of constantly entering and leaving, since new posts will come in often. \$\endgroup\$
    – user
    May 23, 2021 at 15:27

2 Answers 2

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Replace the Feeds

Feeds are easily editable by ROs. I suggest that we replace the 3 Feeds by these bots for a trial period, say a week. If, at the end of that period, we like the bots, then they stay. If not, we bring the Feeds back.

Personally, I prefer "New Sandboxed Posts" to "Sandbox Posts", and I believe having them always in the room is less disruptive to the user list than them leaving and joining (after all, this is literally a problem we've had before). As to "pausing" for a conversation, I've got no opinion on this. It'd be a nice feature, but I'm not sure how beneficial it'd actually be.

As for the other feeds, it'd probably be a better idea to see how these bots do, before converting all of them. But even then, I'm not sure we need these feeds to be especially fast, as they generally don't require immediate action in the same way that NMP/NSP do

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Replace the 3 primary feeds and keep the 3 less used ones as feeds

The 3 primary feeds:

  • New Main Posts
  • New Sandboxed Posts
  • New Meta Posts

are worth having as dedicated bots, since it's useful to have them work faster. (and I agree with caird's answer - we should try them out for a week to test reliability and whatnot).

The 3 other ones:

  • Newly Featured Questions
  • New Bounties With No Deadlines
  • New Loophole Proposal

are sufficiently infrequently used that I don't see any purpose in running dedicated bots for them; the 10-minute delay of Feeds is perfectly acceptable.

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