Friend All Button or Reading List / Grant Access Button

[justinfinchfletchley]

Title:
Friend All Button or Reading List / Grant Access Button

Area:
admin console or possibly entries

Summary:
Basically, some journal communities like insanejournal enable you to create a form in a livejournal entry that access the admin console to add a group of friends with a click of a single button.

Description:
I don't know if this is possible to implement as I don't know what goes into it, but certain journal communities that were based on livejournal code (specifically insanejournal but previously also greatestjournal), you were able to create a submission form that basically accessed the admin console and let a user add everyone listed by the form to their friends list. This would be slightly different in function as dreamwidth uses both an access and subscribe option but overall I think the theory is the same.

The best I can point to is this for reference:
http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=165&view=full

But it's very helpful in RPs to be able to provide members with one easy click method to add all the other members of the community to their reading/access list.

Poll #1129 Friend All Button or Reading List / Grant Access Button

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 28

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
4 (14.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
7 (25.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (25.0%)

(I have no opinion)
10 (35.7%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[cesy]

Does it work if you just post the form from their FAQ on DW, possibly changing the admin console commands as appropriate? (What are the new commands for subscribe and grant access?) I don't think it actually needs any change on DW's side, other than possibly putting it in a FAQ, or better still, an entry in dw_nifty.

Their caveat about looking at things before you click on them is wise, but it would be reversible, if tedious to reverse, so it sounds like a good idea for communities that want it.

[yvi]

Yeah, it's not really a feature as much as a "we put code you can use into an FAQ".

[justinfinchfletchley]

It doesn't work if you just use the code as a cut and paste (with edits for dreamwidth's console and commands). I already tried it on both LJ and DW and neither work.

[yvi]

*nods* The ability to do that was probably taken out because it's a minor security issue to be able to put console commands into a link. I can see how it would be nice, but it can also be misused, if only to annoy users.

If at all, I think it should be implemented as having a way of "review and okay these commands", so that people don't miss a "ban_set xxx" command.

[justinfinchfletchley]

I actually assumed it wasn't available mostly due to the fact that DW is based on LJ code (and LJ does not allow it so far as I can tell - granted, I could have made some kind of mistake in my edit attempts).

I can see the security risk definitely, though (to me) it seems fairly low if people realise they need to only use a button by someone they trust, because you can't use it on another user's account. You can only use it with the name you're logged in under, so far as I know.

In any case, alas, it doesn't look like many people are interested, which I understand as the only real time I've wanted to use it is for RP-community purposes.

[cesy]

Have you tried it with zvi's corrected commands for access/subscribe?

And it would be good to get more RP-communities over here, so features relevant to that are worthwhile, even if not many of the current volunteers are RP-ers.

[justinfinchfletchley]

I basically used something like this (with one of the users from the comm). I didn't try it with more than one or two users, and I didn't even try a remove function. I'm not expert, so I could have easily made an obvious mistake.

<form method="post" action="http://www.dreamwidth.org/admin/console/"><pre><input value="" size="32" type="text" name="remoteuser" /><textarea style="display:none;" cols="10" rows="1" name="commands">

manage_circle add_read username1
manage_circle add_access username1

</textarea></pre><input value="Friends" type="submit"></form>

[cesy]

yvi and I have had a bit of a look at this, and it seems to be more complex than it first appeared to me. IJ don't appear to publish the code they're running on (the page where it should be just links to LJ), so I've opened a support request about that, and we'll see what happens.

[justinfinchfletchley]

Sounds good to me. :) Damn IJ, however, for not publishing their code! Might have made things a bit more straight forward.

[cesy]

squeaky has replied. (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=3853)

He said, "We currently just reference LiveJournal's code. We don't have our code posted publicly because there are some things that could compromise privacy right now. Need to clean it up some before we can put it online."

I think if you, yvi and I can discuss this in PM, we should make a list of useful IJ features that we want to look at, and see if he's willing to show us the code for just those parts.

[justinfinchfletchley]

I'm happy to discuss anything in PM. But to be honest, I really don't use IJ terribly frequently, and the feature I listed above is the only one I can think of that I've made use of that hasn't worked here. The rest of what I've done is pretty translatable to DW. I'm not sure what other features they have that aren't on DW at all that we'd want to ask him about.

[zvi]

manage_circle add_read username1
manage_circle add_access username1 trustgroup1
manage_circle del_read username2
manage_circle del_access username2

I think those are the relevant bits of code

[justinfinchfletchley]

No, I actually tried that before I even submitted this post. It doesn't work just to cut and paste the code, and change it to the dreamwidth admit console with the relevant code. I don't know enough about this feature to understand why it works on IJ but not DW. But it doesn't work on LJ either. It says the submission form is invalid or something (I can't remember exactly). But if it had been merely a matter of cut and paste, I wouldn't have bothered making it a suggestion.

[zvi]

While I agree that what is described on insanejournal isn't a feature so much as a script recipe, I think that creating a feature like that might be desirable on Dreamwidth, if the DW version provided you with a list of the people to whom you were granting access/subscribing and restricted itself strictly to subscriptions and access.

The script as written could be used to do any console command, without the user seeing it first. I think one can delete the journal from the console. :(

[yvi]

http://www.dreamwidth.org/admin/console/reference Looks like deleting from the command line isn't possible anymore? But banning and removing users from communities still is.

[kyrielle]

+1

[instantramen]

I like the basic idea, but I'll leave ideas about implementation to people who actually know what they're doing.

[aveleh]

I like the idea of passing commands to the console but leaving it up to the user to read and execute it.

[valentinite]

Just commenting to note that I was just about to suggest this or something else, but then searched and it already had. An automatic "synchronize this journal to this community's reading/access list" was how I was going to phrase it, but both suggestions are answers in search of the same problem -- friendslist/circle maintenance for large journal-based RP games, where people enter and leave all the time, and even maintaining a list of console commands is a pain for the moderators.