So, apparently around November 5th we stopped posting to Twitter. We didn't find out until around the end of that month and when we did nobody had the time and/or ability to look into why until this past week.
Now how we get our headlines over to Twitter is overly complicated and, frankly, idiotic. It's done by one of our IRC bots pulling headlines from the RSS feed and posting them on Twitter as @SoylentNews. The bot was written back in 2014 with hand-rolled (as opposed to installed via package manager) Python libraries and hasn't been updated since. This was breakage that should absolutely have been expected to happen. Twitter's penchant for arbitrarily changing their unversioned API means you either keep on top of changes or expect things to break for no apparent reason.
Here's the question: do we even care? We can either find someone who's willing to rewrite the bot to a new Twitter library, do it the sane way as either a cron or slashd job, or just say to hell with it since we only have two hundred or so followers on Twitter anyway. What say you, folks?
[TMB Note]: Twitter's who-to-follow algorithms really impressed me this morning when I logged in to manually post this story. How did they know we were all huge @JustinBieber and @BarackObama fans?
[Update]: We're again annoying Twitter users by spreading relative intelligence across their platform of choice. Credit goes to Crash for wisely pointing out that we don't have to code everything ourselves.
Related Stories
So, apparently around November 5th we stopped posting to Twitter. We didn't find out until around the end of that month and when we did nobody had the time and/or ability to look into why until this past week.
Now how we get our headlines over to Twitter is overly complicated and, frankly, idiotic. It's done by one of our IRC bots pulling headlines from the RSS feed and posting them on Twitter as @SoylentNews. The bot was written back in 2014 with hand-rolled (as opposed to installed via package manager) Python libraries and hasn't been updated since. This was breakage that should absolutely have been expected to happen. Twitter's penchant for arbitrarily changing their unversioned API means you either keep on top of changes or expect things to break for no apparent reason.
Here's the question: do we even care? We can either find someone who's willing to rewrite the bot to a new Twitter library, do it the sane way as either a cron or slashd job, or just say to hell with it since we only have two hundred or so followers on Twitter anyway. What say you, folks?
[TMB Note]: Twitter's who-to-follow algorithms really impressed me this morning when I logged in to manually post this story. How did they know we were all huge @JustinBieber and @BarackObama fans?
[Update]: We're again annoying Twitter users by spreading relative intelligence across their platform of choice. Credit goes to Crash for wisely pointing out that we don't have to code everything ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday December 18 2017, @12:19PM (19 children)
No twitter, no facebook, no instagram, no pinterest, no social media at all. Don't plan to ever get any either.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Monday December 18 2017, @12:39PM (5 children)
I'm with this guy (gal).
If none of the 200 followers have noticed, then just leave it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday December 18 2017, @01:06PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @03:16PM (2 children)
Joke's on you. Snot nose is a thing - filled with stuff.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday December 18 2017, @07:10PM (1 child)
When an elephant sprays with its nose, people think it is water. But itsnot.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JNCF on Monday December 18 2017, @08:09PM
DannyB, Anonymous Coward, and WizardFusion are all describing different aspects of the same Snotnose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @03:54PM
I agree that it doesn't seem necessary to continue with whatever you were doing on Twitter, especially if the staff here didn't notice it was not working right for some time, and that further, there didn't seem to be any discussion here about the problems of social network APIs that caused the issues that upset services that regular Soylenters depended on.
I didn't even know you posted to Twitter, and if you had other social media activities, I don't know about those, either. I expect there are a lot of people here that use more services than me, but it still seems like no one noticed.
There's no reason to be entirely against social media activity, though--this forum is a social network, and really it is best to remain pragmatic about this. I recognize you have to reach an audience, if only to draw them here and hope they become regulars in the audience I am a part of. There are times when the word of the user's mouth is not always enough... I couldn't tell you if any of my friends or associates come here, but we all use pseudonyms we have not shared with each other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Monday December 18 2017, @01:15PM
Me too, besides Twitter should be dead soon: "We believe in freedom of expression and open dialogue, but": https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules [twitter.com]
(Score: 1) by noneof_theabove on Monday December 18 2017, @01:46PM (5 children)
I allow people to address me properly as Mr. Anti Social.
As a believer of "scientific philosophy", all things are a tool to get from point A to B.
I did not have kids, or acquired any, in my 60+ years, so I have no need for any of that.
Not to mention as a programmer, exposing myself and personal information for no real benefit.
SN needs to evaluate their standing and from the facts presented, time and energy would be better served somewhere else.
Not to say a different venue might be worth the effort.
As far as Twitter, from the movie War Games, "the only winning move is not to play."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Monday December 18 2017, @05:29PM (4 children)
That's what I thought when I delete bitcoin mining software in 2008 from my computer.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 18 2017, @09:40PM (3 children)
Do you know anyone besides twitter that ever made a nickle on twitter?
Seriously: non sequitur !
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @05:55AM
> Do you know anyone besides twitter that ever made a nickle on twitter?
What do you mean, "besides" Twitter? AFAIK, Twitter has yet to show *any* profit.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:00AM
Hey hey, I wasn't defending Twitter. Just sharing my misery :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:54AM
Whoever provides Twitter with bandwidth, I guess.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday December 18 2017, @07:09PM
Ditto.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 18 2017, @09:23PM (1 child)
Linkedin?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @11:29PM
Nah they only post on soylentnews. You know a social media platform. Using code based on one of the early web social media platforms... They never use it.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday December 18 2017, @09:37PM
Ditto, I'm not a product for some social media company.
As another poster pointed out if nobody even noticed it was broken for over a month then nobody is paying attention to the feed anyway so why bother having it?
The focus should be on maintaining and updating Soylent.org itself, worrying about a twitter feed no one seems to care about is just wasted effort.
My ¥2
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 18 2017, @09:48PM
I'm with Needsakleenex
I don't twit, facepalm, instabate...nothing.
I don't even gab.ai...i found I did not need it ( not being a Kardashian).
Nope, nope, nope!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Tuesday December 19 2017, @01:21AM
Agree - they are all evil.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:20PM (7 children)
So nobody complained in 1.5 month of this "service" not working properly... seems like a brain dead answer to me.
I use the RSS service, that just works as it should. Why overcomplicate things?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @12:23PM (5 children)
Two weeks and change but yeah, you do have a point.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DavePolaschek on Monday December 18 2017, @02:02PM
I noticed. But I've been sick and didn't have the energy to go figure out what was up. I just spent two weeks not reading SN.
If I'd gone another two weeks, I probably would have shut off the recurring donation I have set up. Not saying this is a reason to fix the twitter feed, but in my case, it probably will make the difference between me checking SN once in a while and deciding that SN is something I don't really need to waste my time on.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Monday December 18 2017, @09:42PM
Actually I'd vote to get off twitter, even if that took more work than staying on twitter.
No reason to feed that poisonous creation.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:30PM (2 children)
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 11 2018, @08:14PM (1 child)
Yeah, turns out zapier is a stingy bitch about how many items they'll post for you per month without paying them twice as much as it would cost to rent another server to do nothing but that, so we're not using them any more. I wrote a temporary perl script to handle it again until I can get something done up properly and stuck into the code base.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday January 11 2018, @10:19PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Touché) by TheRaven on Monday December 18 2017, @01:10PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:24PM (2 children)
SN belongs to the free internet, not the social (corporate) media side.
(Score: 2) by quixote on Monday December 18 2017, @02:02PM
Seconded.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:04PM
Agreed.
Although I wouldn't oppose a Mastadon feed. I mean I wouldn't read it (at least not yet) but it'd be better than Twitter :)
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Monday December 18 2017, @12:26PM (12 children)
N/T - I'm too lazy to comment on the reason why "I don't care".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @12:31PM (11 children)
Because I'm pretty sure what the consensus will be already. I wasn't looking for a majority vote, just wanting to know if enough interest exists to make it worth the effort of writing new code and keeping on top of it this time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Crash on Monday December 18 2017, @04:31PM (2 children)
It looks like Zapier should solve the problem without utilizing an unmaintainable script.
https://www.google.com/search?q=post+to+twitter+from+rss+feed [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @08:26PM (1 child)
Outstanding idea. Implemented. Free year's subscription for saving me the bother of having to deal with Twitter code again.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Tuesday December 19 2017, @01:13PM
Excellent! Thank you!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday December 18 2017, @07:45PM
We'd be better off with you getting a nice bottle of Whiskey and taking the night off. I was honestly surprised we posted to Twitter at all.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 18 2017, @09:43PM (5 children)
Why not?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Monday December 18 2017, @10:09PM
Where did TMB give you the idea he was going to be interested in appealing to the masses?
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @10:10PM (3 children)
Because I was asking from a "my time" perspective not a "site direction" one. A morning's coding is worth it to me if even a handful of people are significantly inconvenienced but if literally nobody cared I wasn't going to screw with it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @03:12AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 19 2017, @04:29AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk01eeKMD_I [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 19 2017, @04:44AM
Oh don't go making me out to be all altruistic now. I code for SN because I enjoy using SN, so if a bit of my time helps get me a few more people worth arguing with, I consider it a personal win. Plus, and this is no small consideration, I do so enjoy showing the folks over at the old site how it's done. Didn't they promise unicode support "soon" a year ago or more?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:25PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Popeidol on Monday December 18 2017, @12:40PM (5 children)
Right now, anybody who solely consumes SN via twitter has no idea a poll is taking place. Maybe we should manually tweet this one time to get their input?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @12:48PM
Probably a good idea. Done.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DavePolaschek on Monday December 18 2017, @01:56PM
Thanks for suggesting this. I consumed SN via twitter and had no idea...
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday December 18 2017, @03:08PM (2 children)
And those who solely consume SN via RSS have no idea either.
Why isn't the new polls being announced on RSS?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @03:18PM (1 child)
Because that's the first time it's been suggested to my knowledge.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Funny) by MostCynical on Monday December 18 2017, @08:40PM
Soylentnews, where everyone is very busy fixing things, until they find new ways to make their lives harder.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Funny) by chromas on Monday December 18 2017, @12:53PM (6 children)
You just need to grow the audience engagement with intelligent social brand integrations using monetized influencers and dank memes.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @01:02PM
Twitter apparently don't allow dank memes or anything else that might be found offensive to protected classes anymore as of some time today. See here [twitter.com].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday December 18 2017, @01:10PM
Weird Al said it better [youtube.com] - a bit retro already, I know, but more comprehensive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Monday December 18 2017, @02:04PM (3 children)
What's a dank meme? Is goatse one?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday December 18 2017, @02:36PM (2 children)
Shrek memes [listenonrepeat.com]
(mostly dead) [youtube.com] MLG [youtube.com] memes [youtube.com]
any drug memes [youtube.com]
Pepe? [archive.is]
any bullshit tbh [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday December 18 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)
I feel both happy and out-of-touch that I had only seen/heard of one of those.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:29PM
Memes are not something to invest in, a humorous subculture of nonsense. Being out of touch with memes is like not keeping up on Cosmo, nothing of value is lost.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Shimitar on Monday December 18 2017, @01:07PM (2 children)
Never ever cared for Twitter.
My 2c: drop it.
I was even unaware SN had a twitter side, i am not even sure why it had one in the first place?
Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday December 18 2017, @01:26PM
As above. I must have subconciously seen the 'Twitter' link on the left side of the screen, but I've never given it any thought at all, even though I make limited use of twitter myself. My reaction to this post was "what twitter feed?"
Let the twitter account wither and die.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @02:39PM
That was, of course, to get this guy [soylentnews.org] to make an account :P
(Score: 3, Funny) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 18 2017, @01:10PM (28 children)
Let it die - you don't need those 200 followers. Also, remove yourself from search engines - that's for uncool people. Limit posting for users "downvoted" by the 10 people on this site to 1 per week instead of 1 per day. Then, I would delist yourself from dns and email those 10 people the IP needed to access the site. You got way too many users and way too many comments. Per article, it should all fit on one page, so you guys don't have to scroll down.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday December 18 2017, @01:24PM (2 children)
In a way, I am impressed that someone took the time to sit down and type all of the above, and from a registered account (not AC) no less.
I do not get my news by twitter and would be unaffected by headlines via twitter either way. I looked into auto-tweeting for one of my web sites a few years ago and it looked like more trouble than it was worth.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @01:38PM
The coding itself isn't that big of a deal if you're already maintaining something like Rehash but the non-versioned API and breaking changes to said API mean you either keep up with every little change to it or expect your code to break without warning. Stripe (my personally preferred SN CC processor to code for) does their API infinitely better. It's versioned, so additions and changes do not break everyone's code whenever $new_programmer decides $old_way sucks and everything should be done $new_way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:24PM
Sometimes a rage-boner is all that gets you out of bed in the morning
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday December 18 2017, @01:59PM (18 children)
When you click on the ID for this comment, it shows no moderation / score breakdown. Does that mean it got set to -1 server side by TMB & co? If not, then what gives?
I have no issue with the score. It's unquestionably a Troll.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @02:04PM (2 children)
Negative karma has always done that. It's just almost never an issue since pretty much every troll on the site is entertaining enough to someone to keep positive karma.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @05:26PM (1 child)
Strange... I thought you guys came from slashdot. Old guys from slashdot know what a troll is - someone who posts fake shit to spam the site. Someone who posts a point and makes fun of your loser ass in the process - that's not a troll. That's someone making fun of you. You remember high school - right? That time people would stuff you into a locker and laugh at you, while making a valid point that you are a loser and a dork, when you convinced yourself that you're just being picked on because your schmart? I guess you really do think you have a lot of users and way too many comments so you should limit them to shit a tiny group of people on here disagree with and mod down?
Actually, I'm wrong. Things get modded down because you dorks can't handle being made fun of - it brings back bad memories of the inside of that locker and masturbating to gif files on your 14 inch CRT while we all got actual pussy. I guess it was a troll then.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday December 18 2017, @06:27PM
Ok, I haven't commented yet.
Might as well let it drop. While I don't have first hand information, second hand information from a lot of different sources says that twitter comments tend to be boring and stupid. (This might have to do with the old "80 chars or less per twit" limitation. I believe that's been removed, but there are network effects, and traditions die hard.) As such, I expect most of the folk who post from there reflect then general twitter community.
What you need is a similar agreement with places like Scientific American, New Scientist, python-ideas@python.org, etc. but those places are probably so full with current users that this wouldn't be attractive to them. But it would be nice to improve the quality of posts, which means that if you link it should be with a quality site, and I haven't heard anyone I respect say that twitter qualifies.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @05:31PM (14 children)
Interesting. What exactly does that moderation do for you? You dorks with your moderation seem to be reading just fine the stuff your moderation is meant to hide from you.
So a troll then? Had 200 people on twitter, about 20 users on this actual site, let's dump those 200. I think I fired a guy who thinks like you yesterday. Did you get fired yesterday over email?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday December 18 2017, @05:51PM (13 children)
Who gives a shit who you fired? Sounds like you're a career-obsessed, sociopathic suit who gets kicks out of firing people because you don't like their attitude. You live for the system and you're part of the problem. If anyone's a dork, it's you.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @07:07PM (8 children)
He's just trolling you. He doesn't actually have a job, much less create them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @11:03PM (7 children)
Storage Architect at a fortune 100 company, with 20 years experience. I fire dorks stuck in their own little world who have zero sight of the big issues at hand and live in their stupid little world. Any more bright theories loser?
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @11:35PM (5 children)
Yeah? realDonaldTrump has you beat. He's the President.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @04:55AM (4 children)
Umm, yeah. As I said, people making fun of you are not trolls - they're just enjoying themselves. Let me give you some more ammo for your crazy:
Started out as a unix admin, then and oracle dba for a couple of years, c++ and java development for a couple of years, then ended up doing emc shit that I've stuck with. make over 250k, live in a skyscraper and own a bunch of apartments I rent out, speak 6 languages, lived in 5 countries and visited over 100. Yes, I also made a bunch of money on bitcoin. I'm outgoing and get really hot girls with little effort. I'm also quite built and fight well - took the karate where they teach you to actually hurt people instead of running laps. Although after about 35 it's been less and less lifting and more and more ems, due to laziness. I do smoke though and can't permanently quit since highschool though, so you got that on me. In addition, I'm really into shisha smoking, and that's even worse. Got hooked on that shit in doha and it stuck - so damn relaxing, so fucking bad for you.
It's amazing how some normal people's lives, such as mine and my coworkers' are so much above the level you're at that you think someone is bullshitting. Do you think if you told a piss-smelling methhead about your real life he'd call you out as making it up? And I do really enjoy firing people like you. Nerds who are average but think they are very very smart. Admitting shit that's wrong with them would be like punching yourself in the stomach. You might realize your life is pretty damn crappy and get depressed. Puff up that chest buddy.
What's really enjoyable about that is your mentality keeps you from improving and actually making something of yourself and enjoying life to the potential that I enjoy life. Just knowing you keep yourself living what I would consider substandard puts a quiet smile on my face. You win, you win. I'm a troll. The real Donald Trump in fact.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday December 20 2017, @09:40AM (1 child)
Wow! I'm impressed! You do all that and still have time to troll users on a relatively small platform.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:31AM
Yes, I have that relaxed nice life and still find about 2 minutes per week to make fun of retards on here for my enjoyment. What is it that is too much for you to grasp here?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:47PM (1 child)
Pro-tip: If you're looking to impress someone, you need to come up with a life that's better than what the person you're speaking to already has.
Elite-pro-tip: Money isn't how you win at life. It's just a means to an end.
When the person you're talking to works for himself, makes enough at it that he never has to work more than one day in four on average, and can drop everything whenever he feels like it and be in his boat on a lake fishing half an hour later? Yeah, you're not going to impress by touting your corporate shackles and living in the same structure as hundreds or thousands of other people.
Next time try something like telling me about your sweet new bass boat.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:28AM
Only retards buy boats - they are a terrible investment, a constant cause of annoying maintenance problems, and if you use one, they tie you down to a small area. If I need a boat I rent one where ever I am. I only read the last line of your post. I spend about half my time traveling around the world, about half at home, and about 5 days a month total at the office.
You started this thread by asking users not on twitter whether they use your twitter feed. Then you started this ball swinging conversation, at which you lose. You are a moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:05AM
You think they have a "stupid little world" because ironically you're the one that is too far up your own ass to see the bigger picture. Your "big issues" are only big in the context of pissing away decades of your life in the sole name of big bucks and big business. You're seeing just a shitty little fraction of what it is to be alive. One day you might look back and wonder what the fuck you were thinking.
(Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 18 2017, @11:09PM (3 children)
sounds like you're the person who gets fired for having an attitude destructive to the goals of the team. i'm assuming the goal of a site like this is to have users. dumping users is idiotic, and people who would suggest doing so fails the goal of the site. of course i may be wrong, and the people who created this just really want 10 people talking to each other in a private chat. they should all get a room and get this thing off the web then. which i do believe was in my original suggestion.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday December 18 2017, @11:48PM (2 children)
OK, I'm willing to bury my flaming for one second to consider your point. I'll grant you that a dwindling user base is not necessarily a good goal for this site to have.
However, I'm just not seeing that dumping the twitter account would have lost all that many users. I don't get where (like, what part of your ass) you keep pulling this 10 users figure from? I could probably think of 2-3 times that if I just counted the hardcore that have written hundreds or thousands of posts and post many times a month. And that's not even counting ACs. Someone else estimated there are thousands of registered users, maybe over 7000.
Out of 200 twitter followers I bet quite a few browse the site directly and of those that don't a good few probably lost interest a while back, so I'm not buying this 200 vs 10 comparison.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @04:46PM
hey i don't use twitter but I remember reading that bots were an issue, and people like wanna be celebs or just the celebs themselves, or sales people, or people that need validation and will take it any way they could -- could spend $10 or more to some guy in the internet who will then bam add 100, 1000, 10000 followers just like that
all compromised and bot accounts and stuff like that.
the idea is that people then see you have a lot of followers and might read what you post
soylent here doesnt seem to have decided that bot followers contribute to the forums, or that twitter bots arent a thing anymore.
however, there were also bots that just latched onto accounts in an effort to then introduce a sexy woman that totally doesnt want to turn into a male in another country that is intending on stealing money from you in some way.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday December 20 2017, @04:27AM
I've registered about 30 accounts over time, as I've forgotten passwords and got sick of low karma posting limits. 7000? yeah retard. there are clearly 7000 uniq users reflected in the comments here. or, you know, it's 10 of you idiots over and over again. the op idiot is literally asking people on the site whether they care about people who read the stuff here outside of this site, and you 10 of course say "no, twitter is useless to us, dump it." that's a loser that not only does not bring any benefit to the site, he is actually damaging to the site, and does not realize he is a retard. you know, like you 10 retards.
(Score: 4, Funny) by inertnet on Monday December 18 2017, @03:05PM (5 children)
Maybe we should impose a 140 character per posting limit..
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday December 18 2017, @04:28PM
The the IRC bot when it starts to work again could re-tweet all our posts as tweets and not just posts. Double our social media exposure. Awesome! But I do wonder how long it would take before we are shut down by Twitter for various hatecrimes.
That said I didn't even know there was an IRC bot posting headlines to Twitter. So it going down is more or less a non issue for me. As someone else mentioned, if nobody noticed or complained for about a month and a half then we might as well just let it rest in peace.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 18 2017, @04:43PM (3 children)
It's 280 characters now. Pretty soon we can fit War and Peace in a tweet.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @05:11PM (1 child)
War has three letters, Peace has five. I'm pretty sure they both already fit into a tweet together.
However I also notice that you can fit more War than Peace into twitter comments. ;-)
[Note: Yes, I know what War and Peace actually refers to. No need to educate me on that.]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday December 18 2017, @05:32PM
#LittleRocketMan [twitter.com] says I declared war in a tweet, I didn't. Maybe soon!
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday December 18 2017, @09:56PM
Perhaps it could be programmed to do something interesting like retweet all the +5 comments, or the -5 comments if there ever are any, (or 280ish characters of it ...) in a thread under the topic it has shared.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Wootery on Monday December 18 2017, @01:41PM
I, too, don't use Twitter. I'm pretty neutral on the matter, but lean slightly toward keeping it. It's what the IndieWeb folks call the POSSE model, [indieweb.org] and I don't see how spreading the SN word can be a bad thing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Monday December 18 2017, @01:51PM (4 children)
I think you're going to get two answers to this question - either "I don't use it so I don't care," or "I care, therefore I want someone to fix it."
The thing is, fixing/not fixing the twitter integration is a binary yes/no question. I think the more interesting question is "how important is fixing the twitter integration compared to other priorities?"
All our admins are volunteers (to whom IMO we're all insufficiently grateful most of the time, myself certainly included). They only have so much time and effort they're willing/able to pour into a project like this. So, to me, the question isn't a binary one - it's where "fix the twitter feed" should fit into other priorities our busy admins might have to make the site better. What are the other items this would compete with for attention?
My personal view is that this should be a low priority - I think it's a nice potential way to get the site discovered by new users, but it seems pretty clear based on current usage it's not really accomplishing that goal.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @02:18PM
Yeah, that's basically what I want to know. If we've got even a dozen active folks who use Twitter as their primary gateway to SN, I'll probably go ahead and spend a morning automating posting again. It's not a huge time sink keeping up with breaking changes to their API but it is a time sink.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday December 18 2017, @05:38PM
The other question is.... how likely are others to find SN from Twitter? (i.e. is it a source to drive referrals to SN?) If not then the ayes and nays should have it. If it's possible that SN ultimately gets more support from having Twitter then it might be worth it. (Even though I'm personally in the "twitter is for twits" camp.)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 19 2017, @03:02PM (1 child)
Also should consider how much work it is. If a Twitter newsfeed is trivial amount of work, then, yes, do it. But if Twitter in its corporate ways is going to keep breaking the API (where have we seen that tactic before? Let me think... oh yeah, Microsoft!) and make it a lot more work, then have to choose.
Is there any alternative to Twitter? Some independent system? Maybe make your own Twitter! :D
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:10PM
Haven't used it myself yet, but it seems like Mastodon is to Twitter what diaspora* is to Facebook:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @02:01PM (2 children)
Twitter is for birds whose only way of communicating (ignoring the visual aspect) is to tweet and for immature people / children who still think the world revolves around their every mini-thought or activity. Intelligent/educated people have better and more effective ways of communicating.
(Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Monday December 18 2017, @03:55PM (1 child)
Intelligent/educated people have better and more effective ways of communicating.
Unfortunately he is technically the president, and what he says on twitter has an effect on the world, so following him is quite sensible
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:02PM
But only if knowing what he said gives you an understanding of what follows and how you actions might insulate you or allow you to take advantage. This is were 'tweets' fall down, it really is for the birds. If he is the level distraction needed, the mind boggles at what's being done behind the curtain.
(Score: 5, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Monday December 18 2017, @02:10PM
We have a twitter bot?
(Score: 4, Informative) by splenolymph on Monday December 18 2017, @02:22PM (1 child)
As per the subject...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 18 2017, @02:35PM
Noted. May get back to you on that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.