Good people of papsweb, His papness and I have been discussing how we might inject social media and other news stories directly into a thread, so that discussions can take place the instant that SFC news breaks.
We’ve got some ideas about how this might work, but I thought it would be useful to see if others have ideas that might improve the concept.
What we are currently thinking is to grab news stories as they break on here, and then create a post in a thread - perhaps entitled Latest Saints’ News, with a link to the story in question. Posters could then read the story, quote it and, pass comment.
We could also monitor Twitter for tweets that have the #saintsfc tag, and then post them into a thread. This would need a little bit of intelligence so that we could determine if a story was truly breaking, and then, and only then, create a post. Without this there would simply be too many tweets and noise.
Anyway, now you have an idea of what is tecnically possible, do you have any suggestions about how best to implement the ability to create posts from ‘stuff’ we can easily find on the Internet and social media?
Personally, I’d be rather wary of using #saintsfc. It gets spammed up with colossal amounts of crap. Feels like a huge amount of work, for what is probably a rather limited pay off. Of course, I could be way off on estimating how hard that would be to implement. (There’s a good reason I’m a designer and not a developer).
One suggestion for if using the tag is maybe to select certain Twitter users, for example people at the club (not neccessarily the official account, as it is quite ‘noisey’) or certain respected journo’s that may have relevant information. Heck maybe even some of the wannabe transfer hacks, could be good for lol’s - if only pulling #saintsfc tagged tweets it should keep the amount of crap down to acceptable levels.
I’m all up for anything that will drive some footy chat over here. So enough of my not altogether that useful thoughts. Over to some smarter people.
Now this sounds like the next level to me. I am not sure how you tec people do it, but how great would it be to have breaking news come up, while chatting on a forum! One tab open instead of 2!
Yeah, agreed re #saintsfc KRG, but I should be able to do some semantic statistical stuff that tells me that certain themes are being discussed. That said, I like the idea of specific twitter posters. Perhaps active Twitter bods could suggest some reputable accounts to follow?
As I said, you clever folk are clever
Happy to have a look and make a stab at starting a provisional list, I’m sure others can help fill gaps. I imagine adding/removing users wouldn’t be too big a job?
Yeah, agreed re #saintsfc KRG, but I should be able to do some semantic statistical stuff that tells me that certain themes are being discussed. That said, I like the idea of specific twitter posters. Perhaps active Twitter bods could suggest some reputable accounts to follow?
Personally I would only use stuff from @SouthamptonFC, the rest is usually conjecture and gossip.
Maybe it would be possible to set up seperate threads?
One that collates all the transfer rumours & gossip etc - which is good this time of year in lack of real football talk. And then one for the Official Saints Twitter. That feed pumps out loads of stuff, granted a lot of it is good, but it does generate a lot of ‘noise’ too.
I’d be more tempted to not bother including it. As most ‘news’ on there is confirming things that are speculated anyway. Not that often any great surpises come through there.
I actually thought that the conjecture and gossip would be pretty valuable in the threads.
Isn’t that the oil that lubricates the cogs during the summer and January transfer windows?
The idea of seperate theads might work if I could divide sources likely to be conjecture, from sources likely to be communicating news.
How about if I count the down-votes on articles that are automatically posted?
If I start to see lots of down-votes on news from specific sites/twitter accounts, then I might be able to infer that the community feels that these sources are less valuable, and I could then ignore them or post those sources in a Conjecture thread.
Yeah, agreed re #saintsfc KRG, but I should be able to do some semantic statistical stuff that tells me that certain themes are being discussed. That said, I like the idea of specific twitter posters. Perhaps active Twitter bods could suggest some reputable accounts to follow?
As I said, you clever folk are clever
Happy to have a look and make a stab at starting a provisional list,
Yes please, KRG.
I’ll collate the details at the top of the thread.
Originally posted by KRG
I’m sure others can help fill gaps. I imagine adding/removing users wouldn’t be too big a job?
Typcial designer, eh papster? Telling coders how much effort is involved in something they don’t understand!
I’ve always wondered why we haven’t cured cancer yet. It seems pretty trivial to me.
But, no, KRG. There wouldn’t be a great deal of effort involved.
I think it’s a brilliant idea, though as a non-Twitterer I can’t really offer any help on reliable feeds.
Regarding additional thoughts etc., I like both KRG’s and Sfcsim’s ideas above. As an infrastructure kind of chap and not a coder though, I really have no idea how difficult either would be to achieve. Would it be possible, for instance, to auto-post feed stuff into a specific thread, according to its subject (the subject of the feed data, that is)? So, for example, a thread about the signing of a particular player would be updated by feed data as well as posts from actual human beings.
Imagine we create an account - a 'bot if you will, and that 'bot is like a version of trousers from the other place - but doesn’t vote Tory and thinks Thatcher was a slag.
Anyway, this 'bot never gets bored, actually scrap that because trousers never got bored, either.
OK, let’s try another angle.
So imagine that everytime the 'bot finds a story out there, he * summarises it, and then makes a short post with a summary and a link to the main article.
Other posters can then quote the 'bot’s post, and up- and down-vote it. These up- and down-votes give me (the bot’s father) an indication as to whether the story is considered speculation or has substance. These same up- and down-votes will train the 'bot to post more from reputable sources, and to ignore less accurate articles/tweets.
That’s the sort of thing I have in mind Goatster, and as I say, not a word cloud in sight.
I heart (shit emoticon) you Bletch. It’s like the future of Forum heaven being dangled in font of my interactive face. Give me your sweaty links Gigabyte boy. Learn my nasty search rhythm code monkey.
I heart (shit emoticon) you Bletch. It’s like the future of Forum heaven being dangled in font of my interactive face. Give me your sweaty links Gigabyte boy. Learn my nasty search rhythm code monkey.
FACE, ARMS, SPEECH, TIME.
SPEECH is 6 letters. Bletch. Come on. TALK CHAT LARK JEST SIGH
