colin mitchellApr 6, 2023

Friends, I'm considering a change to how botsin.space operates and would love input.

I think I want to remove the ability to post to the public timeline. No one would have to make any bot changes, I would change the server so that when a bot requests to create a public toot, the status is actually set to unlisted.

My main reason is several complaints that bot statuses are polluting the public timeline. I don't have a strong opinion, but it also seems like a reasonable change. Feedback please!

Sure go ahead
51.4%
No thank you
33.9%
Something else
14.7%
Poll ended at .
Show threadcolin mitchellMay 16, 2023

Hi folks, so based on some feedback here, I've implemented a bit of code here on botsin.space to limit public posts.

Once an account makes a public post, any posts for the next six hours will be set to unlisted. This feels like an ok compromise to allow a certain amount of bot traffic on the public feed, while not polluting the timeline all that much.

The code is live now but not extensively tested so if anything seems sideways please let me know.

Show threadThe Astropath has movedMay 20, 2023
@muffinista This seemed like a good idea to me before (and I voted in favour of it), but I had one casualty pointed out to me, which is a bit of a shame. For @DXRandoActivity we tag individual playthroughs with unique hashtags (or certain events like "you beat the game!"). Unfortunately it looks like browsing hashtags will only show public posts, so it's basically luck-of-the-draw now which posts show up via hashtag.
Show threadThe Astropath has movedMay 20, 2023
@muffinista Any idea if there's a solution, even if it's just local to botsin.space? We have many users who will just browse to the page without having an account, as we often share the posts on Discord, etc.
Show threadcolin mitchellMay 20, 2023
@theastropath yeah, that's definitely a downside. I'll poke around a bit and see if there's something we can do
Show threadJocelyn EtienneSep 25, 2023

@muffinista @theastropath

Hi,

First, thanks for botsin.space server which is great for our scientific community in Mastodon!

I just noticed this new-ish behaviour in my bots.

I understand the motivation, but for some of my bots this creates an issue : e.g., this post https://botsin.space/@Rxiv_cytoskeleton/111124236968388134 is tagged #actin, which is a keyword that me and probably others are following. But as you know, being unlisted, it won't appear in a keyword search...

Can we discuss this?
Thanks!

Rxiv cytoskeleton (@[email protected])

📰 "PDZ Domains from the Junctional Proteins Afadin and ZO-1 Act as Mechanosensors" by 🔬 Vachharajani, V. T., DeJong, M. P., Dunn, A. R. http://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.24.559210v1?rss=1 #Actin

botsin.space
Show threadcolin mitchellSep 25, 2023
@jocelyn_etienne you're certainly welcome to share your opinion, but in all likelihood i'm not going to make a change here
Show threadJocelyn EtienneSep 25, 2023

okay, well. Is it because it really solved issues of flooding or is it because you are lacking the time needed to consider a change?

And do you know of alternatives?

I can't say that I have much time myself to devote to my bots, but I feel sorry that I took some to develop a way to automatically #tag their posts and that this is now mostly useless.

@muffinista

Show threadcolin mitchellSep 25, 2023
@jocelyn_etienne I'm not inclined to make a change because in my opinion it's working exactly as intended. A subset of your posts are making it to the hashtag - in fact, they are the only content I see on the tag. If someone values the content, they can follow the bot. I view this as good behavior but you're obviously welcome to your own opinion. This is the only instance behaving this way so far as I know, so you can always move the account elsewhere to get your desired behavior
Show threadJocelyn EtienneSep 25, 2023

@muffinista

...well, this is the wrong way around : following the bot gives many more results than following the hashtag, someone interested in actin won't want to scan all the bot's toots.

Anyway, it doesn't sound like there's any middleground to be searched for, I'll try to find an alternative solution for these bots.

Show threadThe Astropath has movedSep 25, 2023

@jocelyn_etienne @muffinista There's an open issue here discussing another path, sort of an in-between visibility between unlisted and public: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/23038

I noticed mastodon.bot as a potential server that doesn't have the same "unlisted" requirement, but honestly the longevity and stability of botsin.space is making me want to stay here for the time being.

Unlisted posts with hashtags should show up only in the hashtag feed and the person's profile, but not main feeds · Issue #23038 · mastodon/mastodon

Pitch The point of an unlisted post is to be unlisted from the main feeds, federated and local, so when somebody uses a hashtag on an unlisted post it should exclude the main feeds but still show u...

GitHub
Show threadJocelyn Etienne

Thanks @theastropath for pointing this, I've added a note on my own reasons to support this.

Same feeling about mastodon.bot vs botsin.space, plus simply the lack of time to migrate the bots...
But that also means the work I've done at implementing the harvesting those hashtags is now mostly lost, since even when one follows an account the search for hashtags excludes the unlisted ones...

Sep 26, 2023 at 7:16amWeb