The latest round of complaints about BBUST fund trading inspired me to add keyword filtering. Three users are shown kf'd here, only as an example.
Hollywood Stock Exchange forum Killfile and Info scripts
Enough! Sometimes you just can't stand another post by a particular user, or on a particular subject. CLICK -- they're gone. Three boards of "panda" posts obscuring a few bits of useful information? CLICK -- gone. Ever had a forum stalker? Let 'em know they're wasting their time, then CLICK CLICK. Maybe you've had it with debate about fund manager practices, or find "Today's change" threads annoying, or don't care for monotonous board rolling gimmicks. KA-CHOW!!!
With a killfile, you can make selected forum users and their posts disappear. Perhaps even better, you can filter posts by keywords without entirely removing any individual users. You can leave users or keywords in your killfile forever, or bring them back when you feel an episode has ended, or your mood is better, or you want to see the full scope of forum posts.
Or, you may wish to have forum page size and HSX time displayed on the main forum pages, in anticipation of certain regularly occuring events. The Info script will fill you in. Follow details in red, below.
Or, you may wish see posters' IP addresses in inner messages, either for your troll hunting needs, or just to satisfy curiousity. Follow the details in green, below.
The latest round of complaints about BBUST fund trading inspired me to add keyword filtering. Three users are shown kf'd here, only as an example.
Interface features
Reported page size varies somewhat from the number that Firefox's View Page Info display would show, but it's much more convenient.
Each time the forum is refreshed, time for the eastern US is retrieved from the US Naval Observatory. HSX uses eastern time, and appears to be right in sync with the time standard. The time display would be less useful if they were not in sync. I tried to pull time off the forum pages themselves, with limited success. GMT has been (but may not always be) available. Then, converting to eastern time is complicated by need to account for Daylight Savings Time.
For those here just for the Info script, you need only read Getting Started, below.
For those here just for the IP Revealer, you need only read Getting Started, below.
Things to remember
Keyword filters can be single or multi-word. Any term with spaces will be taken literally. You might get some use out of "bbust fund" (without quotes), but would not get results with "fund bbust" because no one's likely to ever type those two words in that order. I would enter "bbust" and "fund" separately. However, anything mentioning "fund" would be filtered, even if not about BBUST. Filtering is not case sensitive. Because filter words will also match text within longer words, there may be cases where a space before and/or after the filter word would give better results, ensuring matches only to isolated words.
You have one killfile, and it applies to all HSX forums. Killfile features are available from the main forum pages, and while viewing inner messages. Changes to the killfile will only be apparent after the forum page has been reloaded.
When you killfile a user, their actual user name is added to the killfile, rather than the nick they may be posting with temporarily. Since the user names and nicks sometimes are very different, it helps to pay attention when you X someone; if you expect it to be temporary, you'll need to know what user name to later remove from the killfile.
When a posting is removed, every message appearing in the thread as a child or grandchild reply is also removed. This is they way I think it shoud be. Otherwise, you would have out-of-context replies from non-killfiled users causing confusion. And, the types of replies made to the types of users that get killfiled are often problems in and of themselves. And, heh, it would be a big old headache to change this behavior.
The pages are modified after downloading. Depending on the speed of your connection and computer, and length of the forum page and killfile, you may get a glimpse of the unmodified page, before the killfile actions are applied.
Getting started
Note: to use the Info script with the Killfile, the Info script should be installed first, otherwise the page size display will not be at all accurate. If you already have Killfile installed, use the Greasemonkey script manager to change their order, with the Info script above the Killfile.
Choose your own killfile X color
The script will come set up to display red X's next to each user nick in the forum posts. You can change this color without knowing anything about programming.
Right-click the Greasemonkey icon. Select Manage User Scripts. Select HSX Ticker Talk Killfile in the left pane, then click Edit, below. The first time you click Edit, you will be prompted to assign a program to use for editing. Windows users can select Notepad from their Windows folder. Linux users might choose kwrite from usr/bin/. Find these lines:
//black,gray,maroon,purple,green,olive,navy,teal,silver,white,red,fuchsia,lime,yellow,blue,aqua link.style.color = "red";
Change the link.style.color from red, to one of the 16 colors listed. Don't accidentally remove the quote marks. Save the script and exit the editor. Press OK on the Greasemonkey dialog, and you've completed your first Greasemonkey tweak. Reload the forum to see the change.
If something goes wrong with your edit, don't worry. Just come here and reinstall the script. Any users you may have added to your killfile will still be there.
Killfile script version history
Info script version history
IP Revealer script version history
Acknowledgements
When I learned about Greasemonkey in June 2006, I saw the potential to create a killfile for HSX forums. I didn't think my programming skills were up to the task, so I posted two times, trying to entice someone into writing the script. Since I got no takers, I decided to try it myself. I've learned a lot, and had fun doing it. But, I started with borrowed code. It began as a modification of the Google Groups killfile by Damian Penney, which he descibed as a modification of the Metafilter killfile script written by Mystyk, "with a bit of jiggery pokery applied."
Of course, thanks go to Aaron Boodman et. al. for all the work he put into creating Greasemonkey. It's a great environment to work and play in, to make using Firefox better than ever. And Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Greasemonkey guide helped me dive into this project.
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Copyright © 2006-2008 by Eduardo Zepeda edzep@edzep.cjb.net |