Because #BotsInSpace is shutting down () I'm looking for a new home for my bots.

Greg

@Edent @bot (I have a testbed in action at https://greg-kennedy.com/phpAP but none of these are actually posting much of anything)

see also @TestAccount

Pete Prodoehl 🍕

@Edent Thank you!! I need to try this...

Andy Piper

@Edent @bot I like the idea!

Andy Piper

@greg @Edent @bot you’ve both earned a mention in the next Trunk & Tidbits blog post (_probably_… actually, I may have a limit or the post could get a bit long this month!)

Terence Eden

@flippac thanks. Are you able to follow @bot ? Does that work?

Curtis Wilcox

@Edent
If I use a "See more posts on bot.viii.fi" or "Open original page" link on its profile page on my instance, I get what looks like raw json. Could that redirect to the root page instead?

https://bot.viii.fi/bot

Terence Eden

@cwilcox808 please raise it as an issue on GitLab so I can keep track of it.
Thanks.

danbri

@bot @Edent when I first explored mastodon seriously a couple years ago the culture was dominated by traumatised Twitter survivors and there seemed to be a strong consensus against any kinds of automation. Has that softened?

Terence Eden

@danbri yup! There's 1st class support for labeling accounts as bots, and excellent API support.
Some of the more vocal commentators have found some other shiny rock to complain about.

Roufnichan LeGauf 🌈

@Edent Some bizarre code in there.

in_array( $inbox_message["actor"], $followers_ids ) ? $from_follower = true: $from_follower = false;

Removing the duplicated code, this is just

$from_follower = in_array( $inbox_message["actor"], $followers_ids ) ? true : false;

And ... ? true : false is redundant, leaving:

$from_follower = in_array( $inbox_message["actor"], $followers_ids );

Terence Eden

@barubary your pull request is very welcome.

Roufnichan LeGauf 🌈

@Edent But then I'd have to create a gitlab account and, worse, write PHP.

Terence Eden

@barubary I'm happy to hold your hand while you do so.

Cogito Ergo Disputo

@Edent @bot question: you say it won't store messages sent to it. How does the Fediverse work in that regard? Messages sent in general are lost if not stored by the recipient? So as owner of such a bot I would effectively never be the wiser as to the feedback on the automated content, right?

Terence Eden

@Disputatore messages are stored in several places.
1) The user who sends the message usually retains a copy.
2) The recipient's server receives a copy (and can choose to save it or not).
3) Anyone following the sender will usually receive a copy of all their messages.

I could save a copy of mentions. But that comes with increased disk space, having to handle deletions, and risk that someone will store abusive content on your server.

Cogito Ergo Disputo

@Edent thank you for taking the time to walk me through it. I have some suggestions that I will eventually post as issues in your gitlab repository. Hopefully that's adequate. I would fork it, but that would force me to recover my rusted-to-pieces programming skills, not to mention actually learning PHP and probably having to learn a whole bunch of stuff required for this particular domain.

Ted Gould

@Edent neat, would be cool to have this on PikaPods so that folks could set it up without knowing how to run a server as well.

https://www.pikapods.com/

Need to figure out an idea for a bot

Terence Eden

@ted you'll need to speak to them about that.
But, personally, I don't think it is suitable for anyone other than tinkerers.

Arjen Haayman

@Edent @vincent @bot I'm using feed2toot to read RSS and post to mastodon. But that wouldn't work with this bot since posting to it isn't like to a regular mastodon instance, is it?

Terence Eden

@haayman @vincent that's correct. My code doesn't replicate the Mastodon experience.