What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts it?

dibbers

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and a very good evening to ya!

I was just reading and come across a "news bot" that went off to say BBC news or what ever and then grabbed the story and then posted the contents of the story into a thread? not sure how good they are or even if they exist? i know we have bots that go about and read and that (as you know i was chatting to one !! that's another story!)

What would be the chances of it happening? and how hard would it be to do? Not even sure if it would be a good idea? but as people search etc for news storys (what ever it may be) then they'd get a smack in the face at the top of the search engines with "DW" Guess we could have the latest news for the relivant section as a sticky in what ever thread and topic we wanted?

I know that "meta" is crucial? and search bots love it, what about a "news bot" ? a bot that will go off maybe to an RSS feed or the like and then come back and post it on the forum?

Guess you see where I'm coming from?

Just another idea to throw in the mix....

Ta.

Dibbs.


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Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

I think Mick and Digidude mentioned something alone these lines. DD more for sat news I think.
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

a bot 'script' does exist, you tell it what RSS feeds to monitor, and itll then monitor that feed for an update, and as soon as its updated, it can post it as an actual thread, it needs quite a bit of tweaking by admin to set it up though
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

a bot 'script' does exist, you tell it what RSS feeds to monitor, and itll then monitor that feed for an update, and as soon as its updated, it can post it as an actual thread, it needs quite a bit of tweaking by admin to set it up though

Doesn't take that much tweaking, although I've only ever done it on PHPbb. I've used these before and unfortunately the downside to them is that they become that frequent no-one ever really bothers to read them, then you just end up with a sub forum filled with content.

You need to be selective over which RSS feeds to use and considering our platform, it does need to be something across definitive areas (i.e. The register, Demonoid, CNET etc)
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

I know this topic is a little old (sorry)

But we did have this many years back and it fetched RSS feeds, and exactly like exos mentioned the site gets full of news that no one reads as the news content is delivered to frequently.

I will have a little look and maybe setup a trial forum inside the main news forum.

I love news, so if it works then great!

Mick
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

how do we block the rss posts showing in new posts Mick please

Good point lol.

I will have a look mate :)

Mick
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

I was just looking through CP see if I could block it too Shaun
I know you could remove rooms from view, dunno if its still there though
Ill keep looking
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

Right I set it to not show posts in the search engine, hopefully that will also effect the new posts :)

Obviously the ones already there will be in the forums index as they have been indexed, it should be from going forward.

Mick
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

looks like Im still getting them

ahh could be because someone replied to one lol
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

what am i looking at ? the little RSS feeds to the right of the posts? or the new one along the top that tells me so many un-read posts?
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

I have about 20 or so RSS feeds in new posts :(
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

Right I am going to try an re-install the selective forum filter hack.

Its for vb3 but I heard with some editing it should work for vb4 :)

Wish me luck, lol let's see what we can do.

Mick
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

Right I set it to not show posts in the search engine, hopefully that will also effect the new posts :)

Obviously the ones already there will be in the forums index as they have been indexed, it should be from going forward.

Mick

Still getting them here, same as Rat & shaun. There does seem to be a lot of them too, think the bot that fetches them's a bit too keen?
HH.
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

yep still happening here Mick
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

Try the selective forum filter now

SETTINGS ---> General Settings ---> (at the bottom) there is a exclude list :)

Regards
Mick
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

Can I make a suggestion or rather ask a question , if you use an account specifically for RSS feeds (rather than yours Mick) can you not control the posts? IE. post as private or something?

Sorry if thats rubbish, i just don't know VB that well.
 
Re: What about a "news bot" ? goes off and grabs a news story & then comes and posts

I just put it as mine to test it out.

100% If members like the areas or reading them then I would make a new user *News Bot* or something to indicate that it is feeds from the net.

Mick
 
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