Crimson Red Sports

It seems that WALL-E is an automated program that puts CBS-promoting posts on football boards. Some of the stuff is interesting, but this stuff kinda detracts for the homegrown community feel of the board. Opinions?

Lately I've been the one to start posting our stories each morning.  I'm pleased to have WALL-E do it instead of me.  It takes 45 minutes (or more) each day.  

But I await the fine tuning needed to eliminate outdated posts and those of little interest to us.  Bottom line: if it works, I'm happy with it.  I welcome being repacled.

I'd be interested to know more about how it works, the implementation, and how much manipulation SC can do with the settings.

The verdict is still out with me. I want to know how well he will do with coaches interviews, particularly CNS.  :lol2:

Im fine with it if it's something the board operators have arranged. I was under the impression it was uninvited.

It was created by Dr. Frankenstein, who goes by the name Supercoach on this board.

SC said it should be better once it catches up with the past stories, which others have previously posted.  That's why it seems like a spambot for the moment.

My only tweak would be to filter out stories about a rival we just played beyond Monday, no Tuesday morning QB for me.

He was invited. Chech, WV and I all welcomed him to the CRS yesterday. I even gave him a few posting tips and WV invited him to visit Big Fish. I got a lttle concerned he would not come back when CB tried to steal his girlfriend.

I have a list of rss feeds in a database table, along with a list of php regex search expressions that he uses to decide if the article should be posted.

When I first add a feed there is a little bit of a backlog since the rss feed typically has the 10 most recent articles.  Some of those articles may be several days old.  I am going to make a change so that on the live server he ignores all of the initial articles for a new feed and will only post the new ones that come down.  That will get rid of the stale article problem.  On my test server it is useful for me to see all of those articles so I can see what he posts and what he throws away.

As for determining what is relevant and interesting, that will be up to me (us) to figure out the correct combination of search terms.  Now that I have the php regular expression code, the filtering can be much more sophisticated than the simple keyword search I had initially.  I am certainly open to suggestions on what types of things to search for.  We can also exclude things based on search terms, like skipping all articles that have "Scarbinsky" as the author.  It is a very powerful set up, we just need to get the right search expressions in place.

Another idea I had was to have WALL-E send everything to a moderator board and then let the moderators decide if it is worthy to move to the Quad.  That is kind of the last resort since it will create work for the mods.  Hopefully over time I can get the filters tweaked to the point where he only gets the articles we are interested in.  There is a bit of a trade off between posting an article that isn't that good vs. missing an article that is important.

IDK what was with CB yesterday. He even said he wanted to steal your couch. ???

And I certainly appreciate the effort.  I know you spend a lot of time doing that, along with MD and some others.  My primary motivation for WALL-E was to lesson the workload.  I want you to be able to get your coffee in the morning, come to the site, and find that there are already several good articles sitting there waiting for you to read.  Pretty much the same experience that everyone else is able to have because you get up before daylight and post the articles for the rest of us to read.

There are some things that WALL-E will be great at, and others that will be difficult, but perhaps possible in time.  For example, last saturday he monitored all of the scores for the games that were in our pick 'em contest, posted an updated score anytime it changed, along with the time remaining in the game.  This is a perfect task for him: mundane, tedious, boring, but easily automated.  I also plan to use him to gather up the list of games and point spreads, create a page with all of them listed, and then allow the members to vote on which games should be in the contest.  He should do a pretty good job with that one too.

Finding articles is pretty easy to do too.  The tricky part will be figuring out what should be posted and what should be thrown away.  That will take some time to get right.  But once we get it right, we will get the news as soon as it breaks, long before any other site.  This is because we will be monitoring dozens of news outlets, not just one.  So it won't matter which site breaks the news first, if we are monitoring them it will show up here within minutes.

:-[

I just saw the article from 2009.  I blame CBS for sending out an old article, but I will be adding a check for the article date instead of just assuming the new items that show up in the list are actually new articles.

 :unsure: :-\ :dunno:

I think it is a welcome. Growing pains are always a part of something good. I really think it will be as great as cotton candy once it is finalized. Great job to all of you. RTR!

Thanks!

if Waldo does as good of a job as our resident story posters then go wid it ...
it will give Chech and MD more time to do whatever it is they need to do .
as long as HSC still post his game recaps it will be fine ...   :worship:

one thing , Chech and company pretty much post the stories I would
seek out to read anyway , let them give Waldo tips on story subject  :lol2:

two things , on the pick em' ? can Waldo use his powers to assist anyone ?
say like Ricky ?   :dunno:

This is fixed now.  It checks the date and ignores anything that is over 24 hours old.  This has the added benefit of also skipping the stale articles when starting up a new feed, but posting the ones from that day... which are probably the ones that prompted me to add the feed in the first place.

Hey thank you XBAMA for thinking of me cause I need all the help I can get. RTR!

It's easy enough for mods to delete posts of outdated articles.  Let us know when you've finished fine-tuning him, and from then on we can simply delete as needed.

It could have been worse. I could have burned it:
(http://dubsism.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/west-virginia-burning-couch.jpg?w=372)
 :lol2: :lol2:

no problem bro'  ... wasn't trying to be ugly with my statement ,
I promise you that ,  I figured if Waldo could help you that
maybe he could help all of us that need it too ...

your a real nice guy so you were the obvious choice as a tryout
for my idea , I thought it would be less chance of a "no"   :lol2:

RTR  Ricky and Waldo !  RTR ! 

Supercoach sure takes good care of us around here , RTR  SC ! 

You mean I've been replaced by a machine and am no longer wanted and loved?



(http://myfantasticescape.danoah.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/man-cry-crying.jpg)




SuperCoach, what happens from here on is on you!!




(http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/inspirestock/inspirestock1112/inspirestock111203054/11416194-a-man-with-rope-hanging-around-his-neck-showing-a-hand-gun.jpg)

I'm kind of out in left field on WALL E, but if you feel it is good for CRS, then it is plenty good with me. ;)

We'll still need you to sort through the legal ramifications. Don't do it!

 :o :o :o


 :tinfoil:


RTR MD !!!!!!!   :wave:

Gimme 500 e-creds or I'll jump!

(https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSK8S7W7eClH7Zktcnawdpc8U2JxpiTTH3cOE0xx5NXUIr30Siywg)

Okay then. 250?

:lol:

How about 1?  #+

AWW MD we love ya man your always useful to us. I sure appreciate what you post. Besides i think your a Braves fan too. lol, RTR!

I've changed my mind about the WALL E, I don't like it.  :hand1:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/HAL9000.svg/200px-HAL9000.svg.png)Hal?

There's hope for mankind!!!!


 #+ #+ #+ #+ #+





(http://www.ryanbyrd.net/newramble/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/norobots_sml.gif)

I can change how he works to suit us.  If you don't like something he is doing, please let me know.  I ask that you be specific though so that I can better understand the issue.

Thanks.

I think Wall-E may stifle discussion instead of encourage it.  All it does it post links to multiple stories without any discussion starter.  The sheer number of stories posted, coupled without any personal input or commentary on those stories, clutters up the board to such an extent that, I suspect most of the board's participants are actually posting less.

I think you did an excellent job of stating my opinion. It's information overload, with stories coming so fast, which causes other stories to be "pushed down" the list so they are out of sight, out of mind before you can read it. I don't know how you can get the robot to sort the better stories from the others, though.


 ???

SC's next move is to replace us with Bots. The weather guy will be easy enough, but it'll be more difficult to replace you and I. PM me a "code word" so I'll know it's still you!

That is great feedback guys.  I have been looking at it from the standpoint of how many article posts are there on a page compared to normal discussion posts.  That is pretty comparable to before WALL-E actually, so in my mind we were doing OK.  However the speed at how fast things move off the first page is something I did not consider.  So I went back to page 5.  That page covered about 2 1/2 days.  Page 1 right now covers about 9 hours I think.  So that is a huge difference in how fast the board is moving.  On the other hand 2 1/2 days for a page is probably too slow.

Maybe about 1 page per day would be about right?  What say ye?

Some ideas to slow things down:

1)  Have WALL-E post multiple stories to the same topic.  Maybe all of the al.com articles go to one topic, espn to another, cbs to another, etc.

2)  Maybe have a morning edition, a lunch edition, an afternoon edition, and an evening edition.  Everything that comes out from say midnight to say 10 AM goes to a one new topic each day.  Then maybe 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM goes into the lunch edition thread, etc.  This could be separated out by al.com, espn, etc too.

Any other ideas?

^^^This^^^

Sad, but true. Here's SuperCoach's version of Marshal Dillon with Festus.




(http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/Content_2009_07_15__03_39_32/robot-t-pre001.jpg2c1f1b4c-4806-4188-be69-6ba75099179aLarger.jpg)



 :( :( :(

#+ :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

PoorOl BAMAWV:

(https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7J3lF1KjNnywpaS7JyGmmzjMfKxxUBHukTMOeQxFLjoIry1Wo9Q)

(https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYxm8cihbwZOPv-Jru9lnS14IkwT33N_SYKjbM9Lj8kwuMqiAx)

WV tomorrow.

Sorry I can't help myself. I'm just not as good at passive aggressive.  :-[

1.  About 1.5 days per page, I think.  That'll give everyone a chance to see and comment on every thread.  Otherwise it just zooms past.  As it is now, it reminds me of my days at WABB Radio in Mobile.  Back in the 60s music came on the Top 40 and left, all in 3 weeks.  It was too fast, but that's why so much of that music is still here.  We never had time to tire of it, as had happened before the late 60s.
2.  Better to be more selective than load up a thread with non-related stories.  The idea is to initiate discussion, which won't work well if discussion is going in different directions.
3.  Not sure I followed the time thingy.  But most football news is released after practice/interviews, then late night/early AM.  General stories come all day long.

Enough.  Football time.  Thanks for doing this stuff, SC.   #+

(http://laurenoutloud.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ist2_244788-robot-cat.jpg)

(http://www.nmri.go.jp/eng/khirata/fish/model/ppf01/ppf01a.jpg)

WALL-E can only do the grunt work.  It is up to the people to bring the insights.  Think of WALL-E as your personal assistant.  He goes to the same stories that we normally read and does the boring part of setting up the quote, link, etc so we can skip to the discussion.

I think we would all agree that there is a lot of value in having the stories pop up here within just a couple of minutes of them getting published.  Maybe the real issue is that I just need to get better at filtering them out so that we only get the good stuff.  It is actually a good position to be in.  If we have too many stories to read, then if we figure out how to only bring the really good stuff then that would be a huge benefit to the site I think.

For example, if I set up a robot to monitor the Memphis Commercial Appeal site and immediately post any article that mentions Auburn and either (NCAA or investigatXXX or sanction or scandal or violation), that would probably be something we would all jump on immediately if we got a hit, and we would be thrilled to see it before the rest of the boards.

On the other hand, every little article that comes out of al.com does not necessarily warrant a new topic.

It is a powerful technology.  We just need to figure out how to let it serve us best.  There will probably be some problems and discomfort while we are figuring out how to use it.

He has only been going full time for a couple of days, and to be honest all of my effort during that time was spent just getting the thing running.  Yesterday I spent some time making the articles look "purdy" when he does post, fetching the pictures that go with the article (if any) etc.  I haven't really done any tuning at all on the search terms.  While I have a powerful search capability in place, at this point I am still using it to just do some really simple keyword searches.  I think the value will be come more evident in the days and weeks to come once I start to get the proper filtering in place.

The first test was just to see if he can find articles from our favorite sites and post them for us.  I would say he passed that test.  :lol:

Good points.  I think the answer is for me to focus my efforts on trying to figure out how to find the really good stuff and post it as it comes out, and then ignore all the "fluff".

Yeah, let's try 1.5 a day and if it's still too fast we can cut back, again.



The Miss Kitty robot.



(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2010/03/xenogenesis.jpg)

Bear with me for a little while and I will try to get him dialed back soon.

May the Bear be with you.   :unsure:

No problem, you have until 10 pm tonight.




(http://ak8.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/2147804/preview/stock-footage-angry-senior-man-looking-and-pointing-at-his-watch-isolated-on-white-background-not-in-time-too.jpg)

If that is Hawaii time I might make it.  :lol:

(http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/clint-eastwood-trouble-with-the-curve-movie.jpg)

"I'm goin' for a 6-pack.  Have it done when I get back."