If you moderate a community, and you want to get automatic posts from an RSS feed, now you can. It can be used for release posts for a FOSS project, infrequent blog postings that are relevant to your community, or things like that.

To do this, send a private message to bot@rss.ponder.cat. The commands are:

/add {rss_url} {community}@{instance} - Add a new RSS feed
/delete {rss_url} {community}@{instance} - Unlink an existing RSS feed from the community
/list {community}@{instance} - List all feeds for a community
/help - Show this help message

Please don't spam. You need to be a moderator of the community to modify its feed settings, but it's still possible for moderators to spam the rest of their instance with nonsense. Be a good Lemmy. If you'd like an RSS feed that's going to post a lot, and you want to separate it into a place where it won't invade the rest of Lemmy in a flood, send me a message and we can work it out.

Enjoy! Have fun.

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[–] rimu@piefed.social 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Really great tool, thanks! A few questions...

In the commands, will {instance} always be rss.ponder.cat?

Is the full process:

create account on rss.ponder cat
create community using new account
send message to add rss feed(s)

Or do you make the communities and then we add feeds to them?

Does each message need to have only one command?

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You can add them to any community :) I added a low volume feed to !medicine@lemmy.ca as a test, and you can see the recent post it made

You can also chain multiple commands in one message iirc

I'm looking around for other feeds that don't have too much spam. Some ideas include

updates on new releases for FOSS projects
the patients feed for !marinemammalrescue@lemmy.ca, but the feed itself is down currently

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Really great tool, thanks!

Thank you!

In the commands, will {instance} always be rss.ponder.cat?

create account on rss.ponder cat

Or do you make the communities and then we add feeds to them?

No to all. This particular tool is only for communities on other instances. It doesn't interact with the big feeds on rss.ponder.cat.

rss.ponder.cat is for the all-RSS-post communities that I've been making. A lot of them will be pretty heavy on their posting, so some people may prefer to block the whole thing wholesale. I can add communities if people request it, but it's something I want to be a little bit careful with, so as not to create too much spam.

This new tool is designed to add RSS feeds to communities outside of ponder.cat. Something like releases of a FOSS project, weather updates for a city, things like that. The moderators of those communities can use the bot to do whatever they want within their communities, without having to involve me.

Does each message need to have only one command?

No, you can issue multiple commands. It should work fine. Of course if it gives you any issues, you can let me know.

Edit: Otter already answered, I just didn't see it. I'm leaving it for posterity, though.