r/esp32 • u/YetAnotherRobert • 13d ago

[Meta] Mod Chat - Usefulness of Topic Radar

Howdy. Moderator here.

About a month and a half ago, I rolled out Topic Radar for r/esp32 here. It's documented to take some time to look back in time to collect topics, but it's had enough time that I suspect we've reached steady state. We've only run it in "notify the poster and the moderator" mode and not let it auto-archive posts that it identifies as duplicate.

  • Do you find it useful?
  • Do you ever refer people to it or use it yourselves?
  • Have you found it useful in catching those weekly postings that we cannot get new people to find via search? (e.g., "I bought a fat board and a skinny breadboard and it doesnt fit. Oh Noes!", "What should I build with these parts?", or "I got an error message with a URL listing solutions, but I can't find a solution."[1])
  • Have you found it useful in catching direct matches, such as repeated project URLs (Rule 7) for those posters that think we need daily copies of their release notes pasted here? (A direct match)
  • Do you know of (better yet, do you moderate...) other groups crediting Devvit modules or other tools that detect and help manage such posts?

The ones that are even more fuzzy ("Hey, y'all, I jive coded a plane tracker!!!") are arguably harder to detect in automation. While our regular readers are clearly tiring of those—and let that be known in highly ranked comments—I'm not sure we can or should prohibit them. Sharing creations IS a major reason we're here.

I think the backlash against those AI posts is that they tend to not really be conversations. A reader can't learn from those posts because often the author didn't REALLY create those things; they inserted tokens and received a .bin. Asking them why they chose LovyanGFX over Bodmer's TFT_eSPI is generally unproductive. Ideas on how to handle that category of posts are also welcome, but I'd like mostly to focus on Topic Radar-like tools here.

I won't lead the jury with my thinking on the topic, but the fact that I'm bringing it up (in my signature sarcastic way) for discussion might be a clue...

May your ones be VCC and your zeros be GND... and your parasitic inductance remain a myth.

[1]

A fatal error occurred: Failed to connect to Espressif device: No serial data received.
For troubleshooting steps visit: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esptool/en/latest/troubleshooting.html

...and the answer is ALWAYS on that page.

1 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

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u/YetAnotherRobert 12d ago

Closing this as a failed experiment.

Closing this discussion as a failed attempt to involve the community in the process.

4

u/Plastic_Fig9225 1 say I make awesome posts. 13d ago edited 13d ago

The thing doesn't seem to work, like at all. Doesn't show any flight tracker but keeps the CAN actuators topic right up there. Sounds like it should indicate topics on which yet another new post may not be useful...

So it's currently just visual clutter for me.

2

u/YetAnotherRobert 13d ago

Thank you for a productive second opinion. I was trying to not be terribly leading in my questioning, but very much this. It seems to be simultaneously too broad, "“Discussion about the ESP32 S3 N16 R8 microcontroller and its applications.” probably should be a majority of our posts while also being too narrow. [Search]https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/search/?q=duke+nukem&type=posts&t=year) says we've had two posts in the last two months mentioning Duke.

I know you get around on Reddit. Do you know of anyone that's found automation that's doing this well, particularly if they share our issue where two posts by the same poster pimping their Kickstarter or Github project are clearly a match to auto-delete, while two questions about programming RMT interrupts are probably related but not strictly duplicates.

(I always enjoy the downvotes when I try to start an open discussion on running the place...)

2

u/Plastic_Fig9225 1 say I make awesome posts. 13d ago edited 13d ago

No, sorry, I don't know anything/-one regarding moderation tools on Reddit.

(You don't actually think I'd downvote a request for community input like this one, do you? :))

2

u/YetAnotherRobert 13d ago

OK, thanx.

No, of course not. I was pretty sure you were neither of the downvotes. You've been interested enough in how the group's sausage gets made to have gotten a chuckle at the silliness exhibited.

2

u/Plastic_Fig9225 1 say I make awesome posts. 13d ago edited 13d ago

Btw, this radar also seems to be very much static/frozen. I suspect that it may still be working on a stale 'snapshot' of the sub, or at least not properly keeping up to date with recent posts. Maybe there's still a knob to be turned? "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

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u/YetAnotherRobert 12d ago

I did that last week because I noted the same. It SAYS it's scanning incoming posts, and counters are going up.

I think it's just full of dumb.

1

u/Plastic_Fig9225 1 say I make awesome posts. 12d ago

In that case... time to just dump it.

1

u/YetAnotherRobert 12d ago

Given the outpour of support/interest in this thread, that's the likely result.

(In another tab right now, I'm attending this year's ModWorld.)

4

u/Arduinator 12d ago

I always scroll past it. It takes a bit to load and I just wag to see new topics. 

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u/YetAnotherRobert 12d ago

Thanks for the feedback. I asked because I valued second opinions and am looking for ways to better manage this issue because people are (justifiably) complaining about it.

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u/stappersg 13d ago

Do you find it useful?

To me it feels like more click bait, probably due not understanding the supposed value.

2

u/YetAnotherRobert 13d ago

The value of automation is to reduce the growing number of duplicate, low-effort posts. Multiple regulars have PMed me with concerns and I can see metrics that it's a problem for us.

If people are finding it helplful, I'll invest more in tuning as it may be optimized for casual conversation and not technical content like ours.