Over the past couple days you may have noticed that our friendly @[email protected] had not been posting episode discussion threads. The reasons for this can be traced back to a breaking api change on an external website (see here, here, and here for more info). Well, thanks to the work of @[email protected] , our friendly neighborhood Shinobu is back (sans polls).

However, I thought this might be a good opportunity to gauge the community’s feelings about automated episode discussion posts. The fact of the matter is that our community at [email protected] is not as big or active as the anime subreddit that the bot was designed for. Most of Shinobu’s episode discussion threads spend their whole lives without ever receiving a single comment.

It makes me wonder if, because of the smaller size of our community, should Shinobu not make posts for shows that the people here aren’t really watching/commenting on? Perhaps Shinobu is limited to only posting threads for shows in which the threads have been active? At the moment, there is no automated way of enabling/disabling shows in this way, but it could likely be done manually with some sqlite database tinkering (I say as somebody not running/maintaining the bot).

I am not a mod or the maintainer of the bot, simply an interested party wanting to get others opinions that are active in this community.

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    The problem that I see is that Shinobu is playing two roles, both important but neither done flawlessly: gathering info for the series, and episode discussion threads. As such, I’m going to suggest a different approach:

    1. Create a new comm called [email protected]. The only user allowed to post/comment there should be the bot.
    2. Once per series, the bot would create in !anime_series a thread containing: JP and EN names of the series, cover pic, short description, external links (MAL, Kitsu, etc.), and a reference code for that series (for example “56498” or “bokunopico”.
    3. The bot would still create episode threads in [email protected], as it does now.
    4. For each thread created in the !episode_discussion, the bot would add a new comment for the thread in !anime_series. That comment would contain Episode ## discussion: [!episode_discussion@ani.social](insert link here).
    5. The bot would not post threads automatically in other comms. Instead, it would look for posts or comments pinging it, followed by the reference code and episode number. Like this: !shinobu@ani.social 56498 01.
    6. When the bot finds those three things, it edits the relevant comment in the relevant [email protected] thread, adding a link to the thread where it found it. Like this: Episode ## discussion: [!episode_discussion@ani.social](insert link here), [!anime@lemmy.ml](insert link here). The bot would also answer the post/comment pinging it, saying episode discussion added to the database! [link](insert link here) or similare.

    I believe that this would be the best approach, because:

    • There’s a central repository for information about the series, inside Lemmy. If you want to look for new series to follow, or for a discussion about a specific episode, you go there and follow the links provided.
    • The most laborious part of creating disc threads is to gather external links. The bot would do it for us.
    • There’s at least one discussion thread about each episode, created automatically. It’s also in a centralised place, so nobody can complain “waah bot spam”. You’re only seeing bot content if you’re fine with it.
    • Even if you’re really sloppy creating a discussion thread elsewhere, as long as someone in it pings the bot correctly, people will find it.
    • You won’t see content for series that nobody is watching, unless you follow the bot comms.