Offsite news?

[jilles]

A few days ago a new forum "offsite news" has been created with lots of news messages. These make it hard to find the actual efnet-related messages in "View posts since last visit". Who runs that bot and is there any way to avoid the news appearing in "View posts since last visit"?

[munky]

The forum's have been somewhat quiet of late, so we thought we'd try this to see if it invoked more discussions.
unfortunately, no, there's currently no way to automatically ignore posts from that forum. you can click on the offsite news forum and 'mark all posts as read' and then go back and check the 'posts since last visit'

[wundr]

The forums have been somewhat quiet of late, so we thought we'd try this to see if it invoked more discussions.

That's a reasonable idea, but they are coming at too fast of a pace to keep up with and post a reponse. If someone actually posted a reaction to an "offsite news" post, the thread would be pushed off of the page (or at least to the bottom of it) within a couple hours. This makes it hard for anyone else to see the comment and then reply to it again, which is required for it to be a "discussion". Maybe a few news posts a day (~5?) would be enough?

Right now, I, too, am finding it more annoying than anything else. I think it's a good idea, but needs a little tweaking.

[orange1]

how many sites does it currently check? maybe do fewer sites, or see if there's a way to update once or twice a day with just a topic for each site w/headlines in the topic.

[lucy]

i think its way slower than it was the 1st day.

[munky]

when i first created it, i had wired, cnn, bbc sci/tech, the register, slashdot, and arstechnica
now it's ars, bbc sci/tech, and slashdot
if it's still too much, i could nix another, most likely bbc sci/tech

[lucy]

just dont nix the one that talked about using cats for fuel for cars...
i need to know about stuff like that

[wundr]

just dont nix the one that talked about using cats for fuel for cars...

looks like they've all been nixed now...

gave up on it, munky?

[munky]

the script used to grab the rss feeds apparently had some bug that was posting the same articles over and over, every 15 minutes.