add more functionality to the LJ Talk bot
Title
add more functionality to the LJ Talk bot
Short, concise description of the idea
Currently, the LJ Talk bot supports essentially 3 commands: post (subject optional), help, and ASL. I would like to add more functionality to "post".
Full description of the idea
I was looking through the code for the LJ Talk bot (sometimes known as Frank) to find a list of its commands (for documentation purposes). While I was there, I found that a few parts of the "post" functionality were commented out and not yet implemented: posting to a community and posting with custom security.
In order for these to be added, they'd need a syntax that could be expressed with regular expressions. I'd like to suggest for posting to a community "Post to community:" as that is similar to other site text. For entry security, maybe a word after Post, e.g. "Post friends to communityname: [Subject] blah blah blah"
An ordered list of benefits
- Added usefulness.
- More people using LJ Talk (if only for the bot) to post entries.
- Brings this method of posting in line with some of the most basic clients.
- Fairly easy to code, since some of it is done already.
- Developer attention to this part of the code (which has been barely touched since 2007) may lead to other features being added, such as choosing userpics and adding tags. Maybe even private messaging, if that's easy (although that's another suggestion.) That said, if all that gets added, I'd suggest adapting the email posting syntax instead.
- It would make the upcoming FAQ section on "what are the bot commands" a little more substantial ;)
- Added potential for errors, through mistyping or misunderstanding.
- The internal regexes would become more complicated.
- More complex syntax can be a little harder to document.