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This week we are rolling out an experimental new KYM Collector Bot that will archive images from various subreddits. Content from some subreddits will be directed into specific entry galleries (/r/wholesomememes > Wholesome Memes), while others will be uploaded to the bot account /photos/ feed to be sorted by staff and moderators. We will likely be opening up the ability for scrapbookers to select entries for unsorted uploads as well.

The images uploaded by the bot account are not shown on the All Images page by default if you are logged in. To view them on that page, go to the "General Settings" tab on your profile settings page and make sure the "Collected Images" button is selected (shown below).

Feel free to chime in here with any feature suggestions or bug reports.

Which subreddits will it gather images from? Also how does it decide whether meme is archive worthy?

While it seems to work pretty well within its set parameters, the sheer amount of content it's uploading here is flooding the gallery and drowning most of the other user uploaded content.

While it seems to work pretty well within its set parameters, the sheer amount of content it's uploading here is flooding the gallery and drowning most of the other user uploaded content.

That's why we put in that setting to turn it on/off in the 'All Images' feed. It is turned off by default. You have to opt-in to see them in that feed.

"Which subreddits will it gather images from? Also how does it decide whether meme is archive worthy?

Right now it is only a few since we are still testing it. Currently, the list is:

• /r/dankmemes (unsorted)
• /r/wholesomememes (sorted to Wholesome Memes)
• /r/HydroHomies (sorted to Hydro Homies)
• /r/BikiniBottomTwitter (sorted to SpongeBob Squarepants)
• /r/MemeEconomy (unsorted)
• /r/Animemes (unsorted)

All of these are archiving from the front page of the subreddit sorted by "hot".

I'm seeing the bot's images in the gallery even though I haven't turned that option on.

How much of the subs' hot pages does it get? I hope it doesn't scrape through the whole thing at whatever intervals it checks. I can see it being useful to get maybe the top 5 posts, but transfering the entirety of Reddit's excrement directly into our hallowed database at all times seems excessive.

I'm seeing the bot's images in the gallery even though I haven't turned that option on.

Looking into this today.

Were you seeing it in the "All Images" gallery or another entry gallery?

I had the same issue so I first turned on the setting, then off and the feed was botless after that. Good thing I found this thread just now and learned that you can actually shut that thing down.

Then I turned the setting back on and off again and it looked like it wouldn't disable the bot anymore. After I was tired of messing with it over and over I logged out, logged in and it was fixed. Weird. Or maybe it just activates with a delay? Hopefully it stays off from now on.

Logging out and back in actually fixed the issue for me. I hope it sticks.

Just tried logging in and back out – it worked the first time I went to the All Images gallery, but after that I started seeing them again.

We're still figuring out a fix for this. I was able to confirm that logging out then back in does appear to fix it for now.

Yeah, funny thing, this just now seems to have kinda stopped working for me.

Nevermind, it fixed itself. A few of the Bot's images managed to sneak past the filter somehow, I guess.

I'm seeing posts from it and I have it blocked!

Okay, for some reason, Collector Bot's posts are starting to show up starting on like page 10 of the main gallery even though I've logged out and back in.

Not gonna lie, I'm getting kinda sick of this.

Hey, thanks for the information. That detail is very useful. I expect it can be fixed. Also we have quality control tools. We're keeping an eye on what people like. Thanks again.

I think it would be a good idea to, if not just kill the bot, decrease the volume of its uploads, and reevaluate what entries it uploads to. There's also the problem of a lot of Reddit-specific in-joke content.

Logging in and out doesn't seem to work anymore. Once I log back in I'm sent to the front page now for some reason instead of the image gallery where I logged out, and once I go back to the image gallery, Collector Bot posts keep showing up.

Logging in, out and back in again isn't hiding the collector bot posts.
I have the option to see the bot's posts turned off, but they're showing up regardless.

Following my post above I have noticed that since the KYM Collector Bot's posts becoming visible again, if I enter the forum section of the site and then return to the general gallery, the bot's posts are hidden. Not sure how repeatable that is tho.
On another note, could it be possible to make opting-out of the collector bot's posts apply to the specific image galleries as well as the All gallery?

I can corroborate visiting the forum section making KYMCB's posts disappear (for the most part, anyway; a few pictures managed to slip past the cracks again).

On another note, maybe it's just me, but it seems like there's so many Collector Bot posts that when they're visible, they actually hide some of the non-Collector Bot posts, and cause other posts to show up again later in the main gallery. Or maybe I'm just losing it.

…Scratch that, going into the forums and then back only worked once for me. God, I'm getting tired of Collector Bot's crap.

What the fuck. I refresh the gallery and suddenly the Collector Bot posts are gone. I refresh again and they come back. Nothing makes sense.

Okay, now I'm positive Collector Bot is hiding other posts, because I refreshed the image gallery, and this time CB's posts disappeared, and a bunch of images were there that weren't there before I refreshed.

KYM Collector Bot is finding new ways to piss me off.

The bot is now uploading images from subs that don't even have entries…. …Why??

So after like three days of the system actually working, of me being able to browse the main image gallery without any Collector Bot posts showing up, Collector Bot posts have started to sometimes pop up again. You guys almost had me believe you had everything fixed you rascals, you!

I can't log out anymore? Clicking on Logout just takes me to the front page and I'm still logged in. So I don't know if logging out and back in works or not anymore for making Collector Bot's posts go away, but now I can't even try anymore.

Hello, me again! Just thought I'd report that I was lucky enough to not have to deal with Collector Bot, but once I refreshed, their posts were visible again.

Trying to log out (as if that still even works on CB's posts) still takes me to the front page but still logged in.

So in other words, it's still a complete crapshoot as to whether KYM Collector Bot's images get blocked by default like they're supposed to.

KYM Collector Bot's images are back again, even tho they're meant to be disabled.

How y'all doing

Fine, I hate it

It's garbo, it floods the site with a deluge of bullshit. it makes it hard for anything to get noticed at certain times of day because it's immediately knocked off the first few pages of "new" and lost within a sea of contentless noise

you're essentially adopting the modern-day Steam strategy where everything has a meager two minute spotlight before being forced into obscurity forever. all to make way for low quality filler that no one will ever click. there's no reason to have a stream of material this constant because it just dilutes the quality and makes things that actual humans are posting harder to notice

Not that any of that matters of course, because this is just some half-baked scheme to get people clicking more posts to generate more ad revenue, isn't it?

Delet this bot

seriously though, why is this bullshit still inundating the gallery?
it's obviously a horrible idea

That's why we have them hidden for logged in users in the /photos feed by default. We pushed a fix for this but there may still be some issues. Is it not working for you?

it is when I'm logged in, but that just brings up another issue where i fail to see the point of this deluge in the first place if it's only appearing to users who can't interact with the site anyway

and when i'm inprivate or something (which is often) it's just annoying to sift through

It's mostly about trying to scale our ability to thoroughly catalog internet memes, and image archiving is just super important when it comes to that. At some point, it's just difficult to rely on staff/users to catalog a good portion of the memes that are out there.

Additionally, we eventually want to be able to do deeper analysis on memes. Automatically collecting them, tagging them and running OCR on the captioned text is part of what we are doing, and I hope we will be able to do some interesting research using that data at some point.

I'm still seeing these images no matter what I seem to do.

Why was it pulling from the SuperStraight subreddit before it was banned? Who the fuck is running this bot?