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Forum Helper browser extension

trux
4 months ago

Originally just for myself (and for another fellow user), I wrote an extension for Chromium browsers, helping me to cope with some annoyances and bugs of the forum, as well as for inserting predefined reply templates, for easy jumping to favorite subforums, for identifying anonymous users by custom tags, and for detecting spam. It also notifies me when a new post contains a keyword of my choice. Over the time its complexity grew, and I told myself that perhaps some other regular users of the forums could appreciate it too. So if you are interested, have a look at it in Chrome's webstore. It is free, it does not collect any user data, and it does not show any advertisement.

There is also a detailed description at https://gfh.truxoft.com/, including a Changelog, and a ToDo list. Below, there is a screenshot showing how it looks in the browser. Besides Chrome, it should work in Edge, Opera, and in other modern Chromium browsers.

If you have any questions, or comments, do not hesitate to ask here.

  • 0 3 months ago

    Another version was published today in Chrome's webstore. Mostly only minor tweaks and cosmetic changes.

    The only bigger change is the possibility to follow multiple RSS feeds. For example if you have set some keywords that you want be notified about, and want to watch some of the forums more closely, you can add the respective RSS feed URL to the GFH settings. The same RSS URL field may hold one, as well as several comma-separated addresses.

    For example, besides the main RSS feed containing the last 20 posts from all subforums, you can add also the German forums:

    https://forums.garmin.com/rss/,https://forums.garmin.com/de/rss/ 

    or a subforum for a specific model or app, separately. It helps catching posts especially when there are many new messages globally, and they push out some post that the RSS reader did not parse in the last cycle (by default 1 reading cycle each 5 minutes).

    If you do not know how to look up the respective RSS feed for certain subforum, either check the HTML source of the entry page of the concerned forum (the RSS URLs are listed in the HTML header), or ask here, and I'll try to help.

  • 0 1 month ago

    Great extension! May I suggest an improvement? Maybe you could also take into consideration the user's "Top X%" status:

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠
    flocsy🤠 said:
    Maybe you could also take into consideration the user's "Top X%"

    Yes maybe. In fact, at known users (in the database of the extension), the spam detection already is less sensitive, however blacklisted domains and spam-words are reported anyway. That's done intentionally, because it happens that a regular user replies to a spam and copies the spam link. And that should be removed too by the moderators. We do not want to promote spam links, even if they were posted by mistake.

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to trux

    so what do I need to do to "become" a "CIQ developer"? ;)

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠

    Just click on your name or avatar at any post, and assign you the badge you wish to have. 

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to trux

    ... the highest level of spam detection tolerance is at Staff and Moderators, though. The settings you do in your browser have no effect on other installations of the extension.

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to trux

    OK, but even Brandon.ConnectIQ isn't listed as Staff. Maybe you could update the config.

    Another thing, at the moment I see 2 spams being reported, while going to the link that user doesn't have any posts, so I guess they were already removed. Then why do I still see the 2 New spam suspects?

    And can you also detest linked usernames as forum users and do the same (click opens extension, and add the banner next to their name)? For example here: forums.garmin.com/.../1837271

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠
    flocsy🤠 said:
    so I guess they were already removed

    That is likely. I removed several posts this morning.

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠
    flocsy🤠 said:
    OK, but even Brandon.ConnectIQ isn't listed as Staff.

    There are only a few members picked up randomly, with assigned labels. However, since the end-user can assign the labels freely, I do not intend keeping the initial list up-to-date. There are frequent changes. I've already spent almost half a year on writing that extension, which is intended to remain free, and I am happy it helps some users, but I would not like that it becomes a hurdle requiring me to endlessly continue maintaining such lists. Sorry, but it is up to the end-user to keep it up-to-date Wink

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠
    flocsy🤠 said:
    Another thing, at the moment I see 2 spams being reported, while going to the link that user doesn't have any posts, so I guess they were already removed. Then why do I still see the 2 New spam suspects?

    Because removed spam is checked in the background, and removed from the New Spam either when the page returns the error 404, or after some expiry time. Typically, for the removed spam notifications it may take up to about a day to be removed, unless you discard them manually.

    flocsy🤠 said:
    And can you also detest linked usernames as forum users and do the same (click opens extension, and add the banner next to their name)?

    I am sorry, I am not sure I understand. If you mean assigning labels/banners to users, then that can be done on pages with their posts, by clicking their name or avatar. Changing their name or banner can be also done on the GFH popup, tab Users.