Book Club Notification System Development

[TobiasW]

With apologies to the ABBC in which the discussion was previously taking place…

@TobiasW

I kinda wish there was a way to get notified of calls for nominations and voting across the book clubs one is interested in without having to set threads to “Watching” (which will get you a lot of notifications you might not want). When I was less active in the forums, I missed several votings that I was interested in.

@Gorbit99

Could just have a quick website you can turn on push notifications for, then when it’s voting time, someone creates a notification there.

@Gorbit99

I see this is starting to take up form. Seems like an idea then.

@TobiasW

Yeah, I made a todo entry for it. Sadly/luckily I have enough programming in my life that I don’t feel the need to do it immediately

@Gorbit99

I was thinking about quickly whipping up some site. Maybe I try the idea I had earlier.

@TobiasW

In my opinion, to make it good you’d need:

• Notifications that also work while the page is closed (and get later delivered when the browser is reopened)
• Granular control for subscribers what they want to subscribe to (e.g. “only voting for the BBC” or “call for nominations, voting and book starts for the ABBC”)
• A way to authenticate club leaders so you don’t need to send out every single notification by yourself

I have ideas for all of that, but it’s more than half an hour, so… todo list for now.

@Gorbit99

@TobiasW

Notifications that also work while the page is closed (and get later delivered when the browser is reopened)

That’s what push notifs are for, on mobile they even get delivered through regular notifications any time.

The system I was thinking about goes something like this:

• If you log in, you can request editor access.
• I personally accept that editor request
• At this point, you have access to the existing book clubs, and can create one if it doesn’t yet exist
• When selecting a club, you have the option to send out notifications to all subscribed members, be that a new book starting up, voting period, nomination period, whatever.
• Without logging in even, you can see all the book clubs that were created, and can subscribe to them

In the future this can be extended with notification types, so if you don’t want to see nomination periods, you can leave them out, book club leadership, if trust for some reason becomes an issue (though I doubt it). Etc etc.

[TobiasW]

@Gorbit99

That’s what push notifs are for, on mobile they even get delivered through regular notifications any time.

Yep, I know. Still needs to be set up though, that’s why I mentioned it. I never used it, but I think you either need your own server or use a service, so some research included. (After the little research I did, Webpushr seemed best in the free tier).

@Gorbit99

• If you log in, you can request editor access.
• I personally accept that editor request
• At this point, you have access to the existing book clubs, and can create one if it doesn’t yet exist
• When selecting a club, you have the option to send out notifications to all subscribed members, be that a new book starting up, voting period, nomination period, whatever.
• Without logging in even, you can see all the book clubs that were created, and can subscribe to them

Sounds good!

I was thinking of using the WK API (and authorize usernames) instead of a login/registration system to:

• Make sure it’s not some other person pretending to be someone else on WK.
• Not save passwords - I don’t want to be responsible for potential data breaches. (And not having to build a registration system is always nice.)

[Gorbit99]

@TobiasW

Yep, I know. Still needs to be set up though, that’s why I mentioned it. I never used it, but I think you either need your own server or use a service, so some research included. (After the little research I did, Webpushr seemed best in the free tier).

If you are willing to have a bit of a more complex setup (or a library), then you can use firebase cloud messaging. It’s completely free and works on all major platforms

@TobiasW

I was thinking of using the WK API (and authorize usernames) instead of a login/registration system to

I also dislike logins, because I would rather have others worry about this, but using the wk api is not enough in my opinion. It’s a bit clunky, you need to store the api key on the client side, etc etc. Instead I want to either authenticate properly or use a regular “sign in with google” or similar thing

[ChristopherFritz]

One route for people who are able to use UserScripts would be a UserScript something like this:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Testing
// @namespace    none
// @version      0.1
// @description  pending
// @author       pending
// @match        https://community.wanikani.com/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    // Test showing a message:
    if ('ABBC Title' in localStorage) {
        //HandleTitleChange('This is a test of the nomination.')
    }

    // If the stored title is more than a day old, update it.
    let currentDate = new Date()
    let lastUpdatedDate = 'ABBC Title Updated' in localStorage ? new Date(localStorage.getItem('ABBC Title Updated')) : new Date('1/1/2001')
    const daysSinceTitleLastChecked = (currentDate - lastUpdatedDate) / 1000 / 60 / 60 / 24
    if (daysSinceTitleLastChecked < 1) {
        return
    }
    let url = 'https://community.wanikani.com/t/x/34698/1.json'
    fetch(url)
        .then(res => res.json())
        .then(out => HandleTitleChange(out.title))
        .then(out => localStorage.setItem('ABBC Title', out.title))
        .then(out => localStorage.setItem('ABBC Title Updated', new Date()))
        .catch(err => { throw err })

})();


function HandleTitleChange(newTitle) {

    const oldTitle = localStorage.getItem('ABBC Title')
    if (oldTitle === newTitle) {
        return
    }
    if (newTitle.toLowerCase().includes('nomination')) {
        console.log('Seeking nominations!')
    }
    else if (newTitle.toLowerCase().includes('voting')) {
        console.log('Now voting!')
    }

}

This is just a proof of concept. The idea is that once per day, it checks the title of the ABBC thread, and if there is a change, it pushes a message to the Javascript console.

An extended version could:

• Add something to the user interface of the forum to show there is a call for nomination or voting.
  • This could include a link to the book club thread, but it can’t link to the specific post for voting.
• Always show that interface item (rather than only when the thread title is found to have changed).
• Have an option to dismiss/remove the interface item (until there is another title change or X days have passed).
• Support multiple book clubs.

Advantages

• Zero maintenance once the script is finalized. The script checks for updates for each user by monitoring each book club thread’s title.
• If there’s any reason to push out an update to the script, it can be done the same as other UserScripts are handled.

Disadvantages

• Doesn’t work for situations where you can’t use a UserScript.

[Gorbit99]

I have a few reservations about this approach.

The biggest is that it only works, if you go to the community forums, and I don’t think this could easily be solved.

It also requires one person, the maintainer of the script to manually input the URL of all of the threads, that need attention like this, which isn’t very flexible, if someone for example wanted to start a separate book club suddenly about horror manga, or a specific mangaka, or horror manga from a specific mangaka.

Lastly, if there’s ever a typo in the title, that basically breaks the system. Not likely, but can easily happen.

[ChristopherFritz]

@Gorbit99

The biggest is that it only works, if you go to the community forums

True.

This only solves the situation of “I want to know when there is a call for nominations or voting, but I don’t want to put the thread on Notification” without consideration of people who otherwise get notifications without visiting the forum.

(That’s why I say this isn’t a complete solution, only a limited one.)

@Gorbit99

It also requires one person, the maintainer of the script to manually input the URL of all of the threads, that need attention like this

An alternate approach is to have a UI that can add/remove any thread ID to the notification (perhaps with a limit on how many threads can be added). But then it gets fragile if those threads don’t change their title, or don’t use specific words in the title for nomination and vote events.

@Gorbit99

Lastly, if there’s ever a typo in the title, that basically breaks the system.

If someone running a book club has a typo in the thread title, they deserve to have their pay docked for two weeks.

[deliana88]

@ChristopherFritz

This only solves the situation of “I want to know when there is a call for nominations or voting, but I don’t want to put the thread on Notification”

Just to clarify, so I’m understanding what you’re trying to accomplish (apologies if this was previously discussed): you’re just looking to be notified of Nominations / Calls for Voting in the main 4 book club threads?

• Advanced
• Intermediate
• Beginner
• Absolute Beginner
  (+maybe Visual Novel)

In that case, I think the thread IDs likely won’t change (unless there’s a hard limit to the number of replies allowed forcing a new thread or something, or someone adds a new main category, as happened with Visual Novels).

Alternative would be checking for any new updates on threads in the book club category:

Book Clubs

and see if ANY mention nominations or voting, but that might get you false positives.

[ChristopherFritz]

@deliana88

you’re just looking to be notified of Nominations / Calls for Voting in the main 4 book club threads?

There may be more potential features being talked about in the overall discussion, but for my script, yes, this is specifically what I targeted.

@deliana88

Alternative would be checking for any new updates on threads in the book club category

I like the idea, but there is one issue that comes up.

It looks like the JSON file returns the top 30 threads, three pinned, so it’d be 27 of interest.

As I write this, the list includes both ABBC and ABC, but not BBC. This means the script, were it using the list of recent posts, would miss the BBC thread if it had nominations open or voting, but hadn’t received any recent postings. (Threads tend to be a bit more lively during those times, though.)

[deliana88]

@ChristopherFritz

There may be more potential features being talked about in the overall discussion, but for my script, yes, this is specifically what I targeted.

Gotcha. I feel like if it’s just the main ones you can probably safely just reference the thread ids, since I doubt those would change.

Only risk would be if no one updated the title, or, as @Gorbit99 said, if they typoed it. You could probably check for a close match on words “nominate,” “nomination,” “vote,” “voting” or similar, though, and catch that.

[Gorbit99]

@deliana88

Gotcha. I feel like if it’s just the main ones you can probably safely just reference the thread ids, since I doubt those would change.

Not sure exactly what you’re talking about, he is referencing the thread ids, though in the form of the thread URL.

@deliana88

You could probably check for a close match on words “nominate,” “nomination,” “vote,” “voting” or similar, though, and catch that.

Just use the system WK uses for checking how close an answer was we all know that never goes wrong

[ChristopherFritz]

The real issue with my code comes up when BBC reads the manga adaptation of “My nomination went to vote and I was banished to another world so I’m starting over as a chef overlord.”[1]

[1] Not an actual series.

[Gorbit99]

@ChristopherFritz

[1] Not an actual series.

yet

I actually did look around for a whole 5 seconds for a series that would mess the system up. Ranking of the kings is sadly “ranking” of the kings.

[deliana88]

@Gorbit99

Not sure exactly what you’re talking about, he is referencing the thread ids, though in the form of the thread URL.

Yup, I just meant that probably hard-coding those 4 ids as-is would likely be fine, since they shouldn’t change!

@ChristopherFritz

The real issue with my code comes up when BBC reads the manga adaptation of “My nomination went to vote and I was banished to another world so I’m starting over as a chef overlord.”[1]

Hopefully the next really popular series doesn’t contain one of the key words, though that would be amusing in its own way.

… goes to change code

if ( keywordMatchesFunction() && (title != “New super popular Nominating series”) )