Video links for the BBS

[fiddlingfrog]

Because “Show Full Post” doesn’t include embedded videos I have been replying to BoingBoing posts here on the BBS with a link and an embed as I’ve run across them in the last few months. This isn’t a great solution - I’m not on the BBS all the time and so lots of videos get missed.

I understand that “Show Full Post” is based on a readability algorithm that’s designed to remove videos to improve the readability of the featured text, but because so much content here at BoingBoing features video it tends to fall flat. Since we’re unlikely to see any changes to the readability algorithm (Nope, I’ve said it so much it’s stopped looking like a word. I’m calling it the Al Gore rhythm from now on.) I’m wondering if there’s a way to automate the posting of the video links instead of relying on me being around at the right time. Perhaps the generic @boingboing user can post the video link as the first reply to any new topic containing embedded video.

[LDoBe]

Someone back in the day when BBS was brand new made a bookmarklet that opened the official article in an iFrame sized to take up the same space as the “show full post” area.

It stopped working a while back, and I wasn’t sure how to fix it.

But maybe we can do that again.

[subextraordinaire]

Let me add that I think it’s amazing that you’ve been doing this, and I thank you for that @fiddlingfrog.

But yes, I would prefer to watch the videos from the BBS. So if we could access them when we click on “Show Full Post” it would great.

[orenwolf]

I’ve talked with the Discourse folk, but they’ve informed me there’s no way to pull in the youtube embeds due to how those embeds work (they’re specifically designed not to work cross-site). You can’t just copy the html here.

Sorry.

[fiddlingfrog]

Right, which is why I figured the “first reply” route might be the simplest. Either have a bot checking the RSS feed, or as part of the Wordpress-to-Discourse plugin, that recognizes that "This post has a YouTube or Vimeo video embedded in it. Then, trigger the generic @boingboing user to post a reply that simply includes the URL of the embedded video. Discourse’s own video embedding function should take care of it after that.

Basically, is it possible to automate the thing I’m already doing?

[orenwolf]

I’d happily run a plugin if someone would be up to coding it! I doubt the Discourse folks would be up to modifying their plugin specifically for Boing Boing posts, but I would suspect that they, too, would accept code submissions from any software engineers up to the task.