Handling duplicate Meetup events

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Continuing the discussion from Ansible-Montreal Meetup @ OVH [2023-11-08]:

@rfc2549 thanks for posting the meetup! I think our Meetup-bot has also created a topic here - is that a duplicate?

This is going to happen more & more as the forum gains traction, so we need a plan. Here’s what I’m thinking:

Prior info:

  • The bot stores metadata (the meetup event ID) in a hidden API field, so it knows which topics to update next time it runs.
  • The bot is a moderator, so it can edit other people’s posts when data on the Meetup side changes.

Proposed Workflow:

  • Wait for the meetupbot to post your meetup
    • It runs on Monday and Thursday, in the morning. If your event doesn’t show up after that, contact us and we can add your meetup to the tracking
  • Once the event exists, use the Flag action to request a moderator to transfer post ownership to you
    • How do we verify that we should give ownership of the event to someone?
  • You can now edit the event / topic as needed (but the bot will probably revert your changes :confused:)

How does that sound? I can transfer the auto-posted Montreal meetup to you right away as a test, and perhaps merge your English version as the second post?

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It’s a duplicate and we can merge them I suppose.

It’s probably fine to let the bot post events so people don’t need to do it (yay automation) but is there a constraint or limitation that prevents it from running at least once a day ?

As far as meetup ownership goes, I am an organizer for the event but I’m not sure how you would link identities from meetup to discourse to authenticate.

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Mostly I’m wary of API limits on the Meetup side. I’ve never hit them but I’d rather not find out what they are the hard way. Twice a week seems enough? Are people really posting a new meetup 2 days before the actual event?

Yeah, this might have to come down to “web of trust” style verification, I can’t see a better way

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OK, that took some fiddling but it’s done. For the record (and other moderators who might have to do this in future) an event has to be in the first post, so I got an error when moving your post to the existing topic - I had to edit it first to remove the event.

I’ve changed the ownership to you, let’s see what happens on Monday :slight_smile:

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