New Forum Feature

[pigoo3]

We're starting some RSS Feeds in the "Schweb's Lounge" area. The goal being to highlight or introduce some current/hot topics in the technology area for forum members to read & discuss. If you see something interesting...please give the article a read...then please feel free to continue discussing in the original Mac-Forums RSS feed thread.

The forum member doing the posting is "OneMoreThing...". OneMoreThing has been with Mac-Forums since 2005 (one of our longer term members). "OneMoreThing..." is not a human...but part of the Mac-Forums artificial intelligence community of members!

Please...if you see "OneMoreThing..." posting RSS feeds...they are legitimate posts...please don't report them. "OneMoreThing..." is a sensitive virtual being...and it hurts his/her feelings.

Thanks & enjoy,

Mac-Forums Staff

[ferrarr]

Sorry, there was a lot of posts from "OneMoreThing" this morning, it caught me off guard.

[Slydude]

I saw that flurry of posts by "One More Thing" this morning, including the one you reported Bob, and almsot flagged it as spam. Good thing I noticed who posted it. Probably best not to upset virtual beings. Especialy the sensitive ones.

[pigoo3]

Totally understandable Bob. Always appreciate it when members report questionable looking stuff. We investigate each & every reported post...and take the appropriate actions.

Being a new thing...these posts probably do look somewhat odd or suspicious. Some testing was being done prior to the announcement in this thread...and you caught things between testing, implementing, and announcing.

Hopefully forum members find these news items interesting...and discussion worthy in the same thread they are started.

Thanks,

- Nick

[IWT]

"OneMoreThing..." is not a human..

Mac-Forums Staff

I'll bet that's my wife

Ian

[krs]

Please...if you see "OneMoreThing..." posting RSS feeds...they are legitimate posts...please don't report them. "OneMoreThing..." is a sensitive virtual being...and it hurts his/her feelings.

Thanks & enjoy,

Mac-Forums Staff

Sorry, but I find there is really nothing to enjoy.

I used to specifically look at the "New Post" section of the Mac Forum - a half page is all I needed to look at and I was pretty much up-to-date.
Now I need to scroll through dozens and dozens of posts from "OneMoreThing...." of which 99% are of no interest to me and even worse, a bunch are very much Windows specific which shouldn't even be posted in a Mac Forum.

As a minimum, I would suggest to give "OneMoreThing..." its own area/folder where people interested can check the posts rather than cluttering up the "New Posts" area.

Knute

[pigoo3]

The new RSS feeds are only about 24 hours old at this point...we didn't know exactly what the quality & quantity would be of the articles....thus some tweaking along the way is necessary to fine tune things.

Thanks for the feedback Knute,

- Nick

[harryb2448]

The bot is a spammer for mine.

[chscag]

Here's a simple suggestion for Knute, Harry, and anyone else who doesn't want to scan through our RSS feeds:

Just pick out and read/reply to those posts that interest you. After doing that, you can select the "Forums Action" menu item at the top left of your screen, and select "Mark Forums Read".

It's really not a big deal scanning through several pages of "New Posts" but if it poses a hardship for you, it's easy enough to skip over.

[Slydude]

@Harry

Could you test something for me. It might solve your problem with the RSS feeds:
1. Click on one of the RSS feeds from OneMore Thing.
2. When the link opens with the post, on One More Things Avatar.
3. A new page will open with several options. Choose "Add to Ignore List" and confirm the choice.
4. Once you've read any other posts you're interested in from New Posts mark all forums as read.

If I'm right the feeds will no longer appear in your New Posts list. When I tried this earlier the feeds still appeared in my New Posts lists but I think that is because I am a moderator.

[krs]

It's really not a big deal scanning through several pages of "New Posts" but if it poses a hardship for you, it's easy enough to skip over.

It's not a hardship, it's just really a waste of time.
Maybe some "tweaking" will help to at least get rid of all the non-Apple posts.

I look at it now and the first one I see is:
How to Use a PS3 Controller With Your Windows PC

then
How to Turn off Gmail’s Smart Compose on Android
Geek Trivia: Which Comedy Group Can We Thank For the Naming Origin Of Spam Email?
EA is the latest to nix its E3 press conference
J Dilla-inspired sampler makes it easy to create beats on your phone
Watch SpaceX's Crew Dragon return to Earth starting at 2 AM ET
YouTube adds fact checks to search results on sensitive topics
Music streaming services are fighting a big royalties increase
Microsoft is first major cloud provider to open African data centers
Facebook only cares about privacy because it has to
After the Galaxy Fold, Samsung has two more foldable smartphones coming
calc.exe is now open source; there’s surprising depth in its ancient code

etc. etc.

No wonder that people thought it was spam since it essentially is.

[krs]

@Harry

Could you test something for me. It might solve your problem with the RSS feeds:
1. Click on one of the RSS feeds from OneMore Thing.
2. When the link opens with the post, on One More Things Avatar.
3. A new page will open with several options. Choose "Add to Ignore List" and confirm the choice.
4. Once you've read any other posts you're interested in from New Posts mark all forums as read.

If I'm right the feeds will no longer appear in your New Posts list. When I tried this earlier the feeds still appeared in my New Posts lists but I think that is because I am a moderator.

Doesn't work - I get this, ha, ha:

Sorry OneMoreThing... is a moderator/admin and you are not allowed to ignore him or her.

[pigoo3]

Some tweaks to the RSS feeds were made about 4.5 hours ago. To the best of my knowledge in that time...only about two new RSS feed articles were posted...and one of them was about how Apple is no longer refusing to fix iPhones with 3rd party batteries. This article is VERY relevant to the Mac-Forums community...and is certainly NOT spam!

Any other RSS articles being referenced in posts in this thread since about 11:30am EST today...would have been before the tweaks...and not really relevant anymore per this discussion...since changes/tweaks have been made...and the majority of future RSS articles should be of more interest.

Thanks,

- Nick

[Slydude]

Thanks for testing that for me. I guess the ability to put One More Thing on Ignore is one of the perks that comes with being an admin/mod. I took One More Thing off of my ignore list right after testinng because some of the feeds, while not directly Mac-related, are of interest to me.

The news about Disney having its own streaming channel, for example, will likely mean subscribing to another content provider. Once that setup launches I doubt they will leave their content in other areas such as the iTunes Store. This would presumably include the content developed with Pixar as well as some/all of the Star Wars related content.

Hang in there a bit as things are tweaked. We had a similar feature at one point while we were part of iNet. IIRC the content was more Mac/Apple centric though it did include some non-Apple contnet.

[krs]

...only about two new RSS feed articles were posted...and one of them was about how Apple is no longer refusing to fix iPhones with 3rd party batteries. This article is VERY relevant to the Mac-Forums community...and is certainly NOT spam!

Yes, that's exactly why I think the suggested "Ignore List" would not be a good solution.

If the tweaking of the RSS feed can provide mostly (as in 80 - 90%) Apple related articles, I for one would be happy.
Prior to the last tweak it seemed to be the other way around.