HPR4133: Mastodon as a way to comment to HPR episodes

Mastodon as a way
to comment to HPR episodes
Prompted by Knightwise

I should be easier for listeners to discuss shows.
There have been several times I have intended to leave a comment on
a show, but I forget by the time I get back to my PC
Mastodon is made for community interaction.
If you are active on mastodon, replying to a mastodon post is
probably easier than the HPR comment form.

HPR Bot

HPR has a mastodon bot that makes a post when a new show is
released
The Bot's post and replies can be used as a comment system for
HPR
https://botsin.space/@hpr

Easy
Methods to including Mastodon on a static page

Each post has an embed link, but it does not include replies.
JavaScript can be used to display the post and replies

Example
https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-static-blog-with-mastodon/
Carl Schwan - KDE developer

Neither of these is ideal

Mastodon API

Mastodon has an API that can be used to pull a list of status
updates.
The comments can be pulled from the API and added to the static
site.

Proof of concept

HPR site using RSS feeds as the data source
https://gitlab.com/norrist/hprfeed2db

Full episode feed
Comments feed.
HPR Episodes 3637 and 3654

https://hpr.norrist.xyz/episodes/HPR3637.html
https://hpr.norrist.xyz/episodes/HPR3654.html

Add a new step to pull in the HPR Bot post replies as comments.
As a demo https://hpr.norrist.xyz will have mastodon comments on
recent episode pages.

get_mastodon_comments.py

load_comments_from_bot()

look for status updates regex
"New Episode: hpr(\d+) :: "

get_thread_comments()

builds list of descendants - aka comments

update_db()

loops through list of comments
extracts - author, content, , pubdate, ...
inserts into sqlite database along with data from full episode and
comment feeds.

HTML template displays mastodon comments underneath the comments
from the comment RSS feed.

Mastodon Comment Moderation

I didn't implement any moderation, but there are a few possible ways
to do so

Maintain a list of approved contributors. When an
unapproved commenter posts

notify the admin that there are comments by a new commenter
skip adding any comments to the database until the commenter is
added to the approve list

Maintain a list of approved comments

comments have unique id
Add approved comment ID to a database
Only display approved comments.

Going Forward

Even without including mastodon comments on the HPR Page
Increase awareness of HPR on Mastodon

Follow the HPR bot on mastodon.
Tag yourself when one of your shows is posted by the HPR.
Add your mastodon account to your HPR profile / show notes.
Comment on the HPR bots mastodon post.

Links

My mastodon account - https://noc.social/@norrist
Python to get mastodon comments -
https://gitlab.com/norrist/hprfeed2db/-/blob/main/get_mastdon_comments.py
Example page with Mastodon Comments -
https://hpr.norrist.xyz/episodes/HPR4126.html

This page may not have any mastodon comments depending on when you
check the page.
Check a more recent page if there are no mastodon comments.