PhilipTheBucket

joined 1 month ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 2 points 1 week ago

It is and I could. I'd be fine doing it, but why not just read them when they come up in !fediverse@lemmy.world? I've been trying not to create communities that are going to be duplicates or spam, or split the user base between one way of reading articles and another way of reading articles. Do you want it as a DM, maybe?

I think an even better way would be software that can follow the original Wordpress feed, if they have one, but Lemmy can't do that right now.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not a problem at all. I think a better way to do that will be to let moderators of existing communities add the bot to their existing communities. Someone asked about doing that, and it's easy to set up the bot to make it possible, so I think I'll just do that instead. I don't need to create a duplicate community for anything that's already got one.

I'm fine with the existing structure, with one community per periodical. I tried !coding_blogs@rss.ponder.cat and !science_streams@rss.ponder.cat and it looks like some people are into that type of structure, but I'm thinking mostly in terms of one-periodical communities or moderators from off-instance communities being able to add things.

Are there any that you would cherry-pick that you think you would personally use? I'd be perfectly willing to add them, if so.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I don't think that the Austin or Texas communities are useful as communities. Do you mind if I delete them?

Are there other feeds from your OPML that you would really like to have in Lemmy?

 

!coding_blogs@rss.ponder.cat

A selection of coding and tech related blogs. If you'd like me to add any, let me know.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Than there is problem with I don’t trust media will write the truth anyway, so giving them few bucks will probably not change that. But it is important for us to know what other people know.

Are there any media sources that I'm hosting feeds for which you feel that way about? I think the problem is much worse in a lot of free content, and I've been trying to bring in honest and high-quality sources when I'm adding news sources.

While this is outside of our current discussion, they need to find better model.

If it is a daily newspaper, maybe paywal new articles and release after sone reasonable time (like a week, or month… or a year).

I don't understand, can you explain more?

Edit: I understand now. That's outside the scope of my abilities... I would like to be able to offer a paid subscription with a deal that provides access to a wide variety of paywalled content, like a site license at a university, but I think that's also outside the scope of my abilities. You're right that they need a better model.

I like your idea of separating feeds, to keep paywalled content out of my feed.

It seems like a good compromise. I certainly understand that if someone's decided not to read paywalled content, putting a lot of it into their Lemmy feed in a way that's difficult to disable isn't a good thing to do. I think separating the paywalled content into a separate user so it's easy to block is probably a good pragmatic solution.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Most of the most popular RSS communities are free. I like some of them that are paywalled and a little way down the list, like !thenewyorker@rss.ponder.cat and !theatlantic@rss.ponder.cat, but most of the top ones are free. One of the really nice things about one community per source is that you know which ones to subscribe to and which ones you'd have to pay for that you can block.

If you don't know the New York Times has a paywall, and you click on a link to them, that's a learning experience for you at this point. I think some of the griping about paywalls is just entitled. It's okay if people made content for you and they want to get paid. At the same time, I'm not trying to spam people who don't want paywall content. If I can make a quality-of-life improvement for people who don't want to get burned by paywalls on random links from places they've never heard of, then fine.

I also want to give shout-outs to some feeds that are way, way down and trying to charge money for very high quality stuff:

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submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
 

I've been seeing some complaints about paywalled content being posted in the rss.ponder.cat communities.

Here's my proposal:

  • Split the bot into two users: free@rss.ponder.cat and paywall@rss.ponder.cat.
  • Make a rule similar to some other communities, forbidding people from posting full text or links to archive.is on the paywalled communities.
  • If you like some of the paywalled content, subscribe to it. You can afford $5-10/month for one or two sources, and it'll help them a lot. Creating good content on the internet isn't free.
  • If you don't want the paywalled content, block the paywall bot and you won't have to see it in your feed.
  • If you don't want any of it, block both bots or the whole instance.

It's a real problem that Lemmy communities sometimes have paywalled content from 50 different sources, which makes it annoying to use and unreasonable to tell people to subscribe to content they want to read, because they would need 50 different subscriptions.

I think the RSS bot is a better solution than just ripping off content from all the high-quality online news sources and shrugging your shoulders if they go out of business and can't do it anymore a year from now. Everybody wins. High quality online news can still pay their bills, and you get a good way to stay up to date on it within Lemmy.

I'm posting this here instead of in the meta community because I have a feeling that most of the people who are saying they don't like the paywalled content are not subscribed, and I'd like to get feedback from the community as a whole.

What do people think?

Edit: I've implemented the proposal. There are now separate bots @free@rss.ponder.cat and @paywall@rss.ponder.cat.

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submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat to c/meta@rss.ponder.cat
 

I added feeds for some other good organizations. Give them a follow. Subscribe to them. Give them money so they can survive.

Grist

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices. Since 1999, we have used the power of journalism to engage the public about the perils of the most existential threat we face. Now that three-quarters of Americans recognize that climate change is happening, we’ve shifted our focus to show that a just and sustainable future is within reach.

!grist@rss.ponder.cat

Mother Jones

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, reader-supported newsroom founded in 1976 that reaches millions of people each month across our website, social media, videos, newsletter, and print magazine. Mother Jones is produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting, which also produces Reveal, the weekly investigative radio show and podcast.

Our newsroom investigates the big stories that may be ignored or overlooked by other news outlets, including about democracy and voting rights, racial justice, reproductive rights, and food and agriculture.

!motherjones@rss.ponder.cat

The Marshall Project

The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.

!themarshallproject@rss.ponder.cat

 

I made some communities that are fed from batches of YouTube streamer RSS feeds:

I left them open for anyone to post videos that aren't in the RSS feeds. Since they're not flooded with content like some of the others, and not specific to one feed only, that seems like it should be fine. I'll also add or remove streams if anyone decides they have preferences about what streams should go into each category.

I'm not sure how this will work. To be honest, it's just me testing an idea. I probably will open up the RSS bot soon to people giving the bot RSS URLs and the bot creating communities for them, so maybe these should be one community per channel, with people signing themselves up instead of me curating a list of channels. I want to try this way first, though.

As always, let me know what you think.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 9 points 1 month ago

Have some logos. We can say they are CC-BY licensed if you want to use one.

 

Another RSS feed of high quality journalism.

"When the founders of The Atlantic gathered in Boston in the spring of 1857, they wanted to create a magazine that would be indispensable for the kind of reader who was deeply engaged with the most consequential issues of the day. The men and women who created this magazine had an overarching, prophetic vision—they were fierce opponents of slavery—but they were also moved to overcome what they saw as the limits of partisanship, believing that the free exchange of ideas across ideological lines was crucial to the great American experiment. Their goal was to publish the most urgent essays, the most vital literature; they wanted to pursue truth and disrupt consensus without regard for party or clique."

Subscribe: !theatlantic@rss.ponder.cat

 

"To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing."

What could be better than that?

Subscribe: !propublica@rss.ponder.cat

 

I'm trying to add news sources that aren't just a big bunch of different sites that all repackage the AP newswire. FP seems like serious global news.

Subscribe: !foreignpolicy@rss.ponder.cat

 

Hackaday.com serves up Fresh Hacks Every Day from around the Internet. Their playful posts are the gold-standard in entertainment for engineers and engineering enthusiasts.

/c/hackaday@rss.ponder.cat hosts every post from Hackaday for your Lemmy reading pleasure.

!hackaday@rss.ponder.cat

 

NOVA

NOVA is the most popular primetime science series on American television, demystifying the scientific and technological concepts that shape and define our lives, our planet, and our universe. The PBS series is also one of the most widely distributed science programs in the world, and is a multimedia, multiplatform brand reaching more than 55 million Americans every year on TV and across digital platforms. NOVA’s important and inspiring stories of human ingenuity, exploration, and the quest for knowledge are regularly recognized with the industry’s most prestigious awards.

RSS Feed community: !nova@rss.ponder.cat


E&E News

Founded 25 years ago, E&E News dives into the ever-evolving landscape of energy and the environment to keep professionals informed, empowered, and a step ahead with original, compelling, and non-partisan journalism.

RSS Feed Community: !eenews@rss.ponder.cat


Inside Climate News

Founded in 2007, Inside Climate News is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that provides essential reporting and analysis on climate change, energy and the environment, for the public and for decision makers. We serve as watchdogs of government, industry and advocacy groups and hold them accountable for their policies and actions.

We have earned national recognition for our work and many of the most prestigious awards in journalism, including the Pulitzer. Already one of the largest dedicated environmental newsrooms in the country, ICN, through its local reporting networks, is committed to training the next generation of journalists, and to strengthening the practice of environmental and justice journalism.

RSS Feed community: !insideclimatenews@rss.ponder.cat

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I completely agree. Maybe my phrasing was careless. I wasn't trying to be critical of the pace of accepting PRs or anything. I only meant that I think more flexibility in the frontend would help, instead of needing any minor UI change to go all the way through a cycle all the way up to you, incorporating it into the core codebase, and then filtering back down to an upgrade by the instance admin. But please don't take it as blaming you for any of that situation. I was raising it in the effort to propose a solution and also to advocate against people just complaining about the moderation tools and then moving on, and waiting for you to make them happy.

I did look at the backend plugin system PR, although sadly not enough yet to have any opinion or feedback on it. I do think a frontend plugin system, of sorts, could help a lot. I'm not sure when I will have time but I will try to put together something on this instance to show what I'm talking about, and if I do wind up doing it and it's well received, I am completely open to putting it together as a fixed-up and official PR for the main codebase.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'll make an AI chatbot that only wants to talk about Dark Souls. How about that, as a compromise?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat -1 points 1 month ago

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Content warning, imperialism.

I didn't write this. G.K. Chesterton did.


White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 2 points 1 month ago

That is fair. Might be worthwhile talking to instance admins and core devs about how best to make use of it? Putting it behind some admin approval or administration might be the best way.

That's a good idea. And then, if it turns into a mess of botspam, it's not my fault.

 

I started up my own instance and now I have realized that there's no reason anyone would join mine instead of any other instance.

That's no good. What neat stuff would the Fediverse like to see in a Lemmy instance?

  • Follow RSS feeds in your Lemmy feed? I have that already, in a way, but it would be nice to be able to do it for any feed automatically without it being clunky.
  • Follow Mastodon users? Or tags?
  • Embedded video? That seems costly.
  • Hackability? The ability to run your own customized front end? Or good scripting features in the browser console?
  • A better looking UI? This one is functional but it's not pretty.
  • Better moderation? I have heard the Lemmy tools aren't that good.
  • Something else?
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