Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby DrMcCoy » 15 Jul 2018, 00:53

Julius {l Wrote}:But if fact I encourage you to subscribe to it not via ATOM but with an actual fediverse account.


Hmm, considering I probably can't integrate a "fediverse account", whatever that is, into my RSS feed reader, I don't think that's for me.

Julius {l Wrote}:We will not disable the old planets for now, so feel free to keep using them, but I don't think there will be new feeds added.


So they will continue to drift apart? That's just bound to cause confusion. My advise would be to either keep them in sync or kill the old ones. Or maybe advertise the new ones as such, and then have them redirect after a short grace period? Just my 2¢.

Julius {l Wrote}:xoreos is on the new feed already, no worries. In fact it was the very first one I added to the dev planet.


Thanks! :)

Julius {l Wrote}:I will put all the included feeds it on the associated wikis here


If this list is generated and maintained manually, instead of automatically, this is in danger of falling out of sync, too. People make mistakes, forget things, and I know that I at least would probably forget to add one feed to the list after adding it to the aggregate relatively soon.

But yeah, having subscribers shown in the automatic connection list is also bad. And also makes the list kinda useless for checking which feeds are in there.

Julius {l Wrote}:Regarding the stale feeds... that is a feature to reduce the server load.


Okay, I hadn't thought that pulling an RSS feed and checking the timestamp for updates is that much load. But I haven't profiled it, so...

Julius {l Wrote}:They can be re-actived with one click according to the documentation.


Still means I need to remember poking you here (which, considering I'm bad at remembering things, I probably won't). Hell, I only remembered that I actually was in the feed, when after my recent update the update appeared in my feed reader, from the planetdev feed.

And also means it's more maintenance work for you.

I can understand if that's necessary to keep server load down, but I'm skeptical that this is such a good tradeoff.

Sorry if I'm sounding all negative here, I don't want to discount the work you're putting in. I just don't see much of an upside to this change? Maybe I'm not really the intended target audience.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 15 Jul 2018, 01:20

The old planets run on a server that is not under my/our direct control, so short of just redirecting the domain it will take a while to take them offline. And I honestly don't think there is much harm in keeping them online for a while. But they are very much obsolete as I added all the still functional rss feeds to the new system. But I agree that the wiki isn't perfect for storing the feed links in a human readable format... but I can't think of a better solution right now.

The advantage of the new system is that it is social, i.e. you can comment and share entries with others easily. Think of if as a sort of distributed Twitter instead of RSS. Many of the third party twitter clients actually support the GNU-Social protocol and can thus connect to an account on HubZilla system. If you connect through an Mastodon server the client options are even better.
From my perspective it is also easier to administer as it is integrated with the blogging system I hope will help reviving the FreeGamer blog. Of course anyone can easily start their own microblog on the system as well and with HubZilla even migrate it to their own server at a later point in time very easily.

System load isn't that bad, but there are a lot of feeds to pull and the server is also doing some other stuff, so I want to keep the load low.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby dulsi » 18 Jul 2018, 13:49

What are the criteria for being added? Specifically I create my Open Game Source articles but I don't have a separate feed for them. My feed also includes various pen and paper articles. Some of those are about my rpg products available on drivethrurpg. Others are reviews or small little things I've done in my home game. Would I need a separate feed to be included or are other topics allowed?

http://identicalsoftware.com/games/
RSS feed: http://identicalsoftware.com/games/rss
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 18 Jul 2018, 18:34

In theory the system can filter feeds but I have not tried that yet. Do you have some tagging in place that gets included in the RSS feed?

But in general we are more looking for 1st party feeds for the planets, if you blog about other peoples projects that I would personally prefer it to be cross posted on the FreeGamer blog itself as "guest posts".
Again in theory we could do this via a filtered RSS feed automatically, or if you have an blog on the fediverse than that would also do. I'll look into the possible options and will get back to you. But we are always open to new contributors to the FreeGamer blog.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby charlie » 21 Jul 2018, 11:53

Awesome work Julius.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 23 Jul 2018, 13:54

Sorry for anyone that had trouble to follow the planets with GNUSocial or Mastodon, please try again now. With the latest HubZilla 3.6RC a few other issues should be fixed as well.

I'll probably CNAME redirect the old plant's domains to the new planets in a few days as everything seems to be working even better than expected. Of course those subscribing by RSS will have to update the feed addresses, as I can't map it 1:1. Unless there are some serious objections to this redirection (which effectively makes the old feeds inaccessible).
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Egberto » 27 Jul 2018, 15:53

Julius {l Wrote}:Sorry for anyone that had trouble to follow the planets with GNUSocial or Mastodon, please try again now. With the latest HubZilla 3.6RC a few other issues should be fixed as well.

I'll probably CNAME redirect the old plant's domains to the new planets in a few days as everything seems to be working even better than expected. Of course those subscribing by RSS will have to update the feed addresses, as I can't map it 1:1. Unless there are some serious objections to this redirection (which effectively makes the old feeds inaccessible).


A couple of days ago I was able to subscribe to the feeds using Mastodon, I waited ... but the content doesn't appear. I suspect that I can't send messages either. :(

Could be something I'm doing wrong?
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 30 Jul 2018, 21:01

There seems to have been a federation bug in HubZilla3.6 that I just updated to. I now updated to 3.6.1 which hopefully solved that. Can you try again some time in the near future? Also note that only new posts from the planets will be federated, not the backlog of previous ones.

You can also add me
{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
poVoq@social.freegamedev.net
to see if that works. Just send me a @ message. Edit: @Egberto: You got my reply?
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Wuzzy » 06 Aug 2018, 11:06

Still waiting for Hedgewars to be added.
https://hedgewars.org/feeds/posts.xml
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 06 Aug 2018, 13:11

Has been on there from the beginning. Just no news being posted by them as far as I can tell.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby charlie » 07 Aug 2018, 14:39

I'm curious as to what software elive uses:

https://forum.elivelinux.org/
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Wuzzy » 07 Aug 2018, 15:51

No, Hedgewars really is not in the list of feeds.

https://planet.freegamedev.net/
Crtl-F Hedgewars = 0 results
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 07 Aug 2018, 18:34

@Wuzzy: Ah, those are the old planets. We are in the process of retiring them. The new one is here: https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/planet (but since the Hedgewars project hasn't posted any news for a while it will not show up there either as only posts from the last 3 Months are retained.)

@Charlie: wrong thread? Elvie seems to use Discourse as a forum though.

Edit: Does anyone else subscribe to the planets with Mastodon? Egberto seems to only get an empty feed, but all the ActivityPub federation settings seem to be ok from HubZilla. Would be nice if anyone could confirm them working.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Wuzzy » 09 Aug 2018, 08:59

I have to be honest with you: I hate the “new” planet already.
- No list of feeds
- Very hard to find any particular feed, no links to the feeds themselves
- Search doesn't work (it tells me something about an account, seriously?)
- Texts are cut, making the front page less useful
- Doesn't like it if JS is off

As it stands now, this is a serious downgrade. If you are going to nuke the current planet, it should not have broken features and have at least all the features of the current planet, not fewer. But I hope you will take that stuff into account before the final rollout.
Otherwise, it would be wiser (and easier) to just stick with what works.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 09 Aug 2018, 13:40

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:I have to be honest with you: I hate the “new” planet already.
- No list of feeds
- Very hard to find any particular feed, no links to the feeds themselves
- Search doesn't work (it tells me something about an account, seriously?)
- Texts are cut, making the front page less useful
- Doesn't like it if JS is off

As it stands now, this is a serious downgrade. If you are going to nuke the current planet, it should not have broken features and have at least all the features of the current planet, not fewer. But I hope you will take that stuff into account before the final rollout.
Otherwise, it would be wiser (and easier) to just stick with what works.


Yeah, that there isn't a list of feeds is one of the pain points, but due to the fact that internally RSS feeds and user subscriptions are identical this can not be changed. I started keeping a manual list though, just need to get around updating the game planet one. The (much shorter) one for the Devplanet is here: https://social.freegamedev.net/wiki/dev ... Feeds/Home

I'll look into if there is an option to enable searches for non-logged in / subscribed users, but from the quick glance it doesn't seem like something that can be easily enabled. I also don't really see the point of it for a planet that rotates posts regularly anyways. But I somehow get the impression that you are using the planet for something entirely different?

That the text are "cut" is a setting I could change, but some of the feeds pulled have really long entries and thus collapsing them is actually a vital feature to make the front page usable at all. I am also not quite sure I understand why you would object to that?

Regarding the last point... I actually looked for a new system that would work *at all* with JS disabled. But I think this is a reasonable compromise between advanced usability and low system requirements, and all the JS delivered from social.freegamedev.net is fully FOSS (note though that there is the optional feature to embed third party media such as Youtube to which this obviously doesn't apply).

All in all the new planets are a serious upgrade in nearly all possible features, especially when looking at if from a usability of integrating it into a federated user feed. I agree that when using it only as a regular website, it isn't that much of an upgrade, but except for the lack of a nice to manage/view feed lists (which is IMHO an issue from the maintainability point of view and not from an end-user perspective), I don't see any major downgrades unless you are using it for a totally different purpose (which I have not fully grasped it seems).

Oh and the old planets don't work right now. They use a decade old software which is totally unmaintained and a major PITA from a maintenance perspective. Which is precisely why is isn't being updated anymore and half of the feeds in it are dead.

P.S.: One possible option for you might be to just pull the aggregated ATOM feed here: https://social.freegamedev.net/feed/planet and display it in your own RSS reader. I think the issues you outlined above could be easily solved that way.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 10 Aug 2018, 14:16

Turns out the search issue was just a bug in HubZilla. As soon as I update it, you should be able to use the search without being logged in.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Wuzzy » 03 Sep 2018, 17:56

So. Currently https://social.freegamedev.net/ is completely useless as a website as you need an account to view anything. This sucks.
Isn't this even supposed to be useful in a browser at all? Is this just a backend thing now?

Also, don't forget to fix the links at the top of the forums page (Blog Chat Wiki Planet PlanetDev PlanetRev FreeArtSearch LibreGameWiki OpenGameArt) when everything is ready.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 03 Sep 2018, 18:55

Why would it be useless without an account? You can view any channel with public posts just fine, such as the Planets for example.
There is also the public stream that is accessible from the menu, or just click here: https://social.freegamedev.net/pubstream
I guess I could show the public stream instead of the login by default (Edit: should be default now, maybe I will still make it a bit more beautiful).
An alternative would be to put for example the general discussion group there, see: https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/freegamedev (but it isn't used much yet)

The problem with the links at the top is that I don't have full access to this forum, so while I could redirect the domains to the new plants (which I will do eventually I guess), I can right now not change the actual links at the top. That doesn't mean we can not change them at all, but the persons able to do so are rarely active here anymore. Which is the main reason why I am slowly migrating additional services to servers that I have full access to.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby c_xong » 04 Sep 2018, 00:04

Oh hey, just noticed that the tag should be called "SHMUP" not "SHUMP" https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/ ... &cat=SHUMP
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Wuzzy » 05 Sep 2018, 19:54

Oh. Funny. Now I can see the posts. Nevermind then. I guess I was unable to see the posts before because of some bug or migration work or something. Anyway, whatever the reason, now it seems to be fixed.

I even saw Hedgewars in the feed, yay! I like RSS. :-)

Speaking of RSS, here's a crazy idea: How about turning the feed that you see on the planet homepage and turning it into another RSS feed? The RSS feed of RSS feeds. :D

Edit: The Hedgewars feed should be added to the following categories (in addition to Artillery-Games):
- Turn-based
- Strategy

Also, boy, these categories are messy.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 06 Sep 2018, 02:26

Like this? :p
https://social.freegamedev.net/feed/planet
But I really encurage you to get an fediverse account. Either on our system or on any other server that runs GNUSocial, Hubzilla or Mastodon (or self-host your own), as the main advantage of the new system is that you can interact with the posts and it isn't just a one way RSS feed.

About the categories... yes its messy and I will probably hide them soon. The problem is that some RSS feeds come with their own tags that are auto imported, so that my nice system of categories continues to get messed up. There is however an alternative tag system in Hubzilla. I just need to figure out how to utilize it best for the planet feeds.
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 06 Oct 2018, 08:38

There is now a 3rd planet related to open-source Augmented and Virtual reality software & games. Suggestions for additional RSS feed are welcome.
https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/arvrplanet
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 13 Oct 2018, 06:58

Has anyone tried to subscribe to the planets on Mastodon? I thought it would just work, but according to this: https://gme.one/channel/yahananxie/&mid ... 72b85f7480

There seems to be a specific issue that prevents RSS sourced posts to propagate to ActivityPub / Mastodon :(

Edit: this behaviour is confirmed. For now there seems to be no proper way to propagate these RSS posts outside the Hubzilla federation (other than the aggregated RSS feeds of course) due to the way copyright attribution is structured in ActivityPub and apparently also OStatus. Hubzilla has a nice attribution feature so there it is less of concern. Really a pity as one of the main reasons I move the planets to it was to allow Mastodon users to subscribe to them :-/
Maybe I will set up yet another bridge like this: https://github.com/dariusk/rss-to-activitypub
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby SecureUvula » 21 Oct 2018, 00:02

I'm back on Mastodon, on freeradical.zone, so if you get something that works with Mastodon I can try it
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Re: Planet feeds (and DevPlanet feeds too!)

Postby Julius » 01 Feb 2019, 12:09

I have set up https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge to fetch RSS/ATOM feeds from various non-RSS compatible services like Youtube or Twitter. Any suggestion what to add to our new planets now that this is possible?

I started with the Open Source Games youtube channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCaoiUeZllBKcQlNi5DREjYg

Edit: the above mentioned issue with Mastodon might be fixed with the next Hubzilla release as the new zot6 protocol seems to be more compatible with ActivityPub and might work around this better? Lets see.
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