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Feature #3090

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Prevent Retweets from showing up on Commons twitter page

Added by Matt Gold about 10 years ago. Updated over 7 years ago.

Status:
Assigned
Priority name:
Normal
Assignee:
Tahir Butt
Category name:
Twitter page
Target version:
Start date:
2014-03-02
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:
Deployment actions:

Description

Hi Dom,

I looked at the twitter page (http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/twitter/), where the default setting is to show tweets from members of the CUNY Academic Commons. But because it shows retweets, the most noticeable thing to me at first look were tweets from people not associated with CUNY.

Is there any way to prevent retweets from showing up, so that all we see are tweets directly from our members?

Actions #1

Updated by Dominic Giglio about 10 years ago

I agree that it would be nice to restrict the timeline by preventing retweets. Unfortunately twitter does expose this functionality.

The whole crux of that page revolves around a feature from Twitter called "Widgets." This means that in order to customize what each of those timelines looks like and how they behave is through the settings Twitter has made available to us. I went back in and double checked the settings and the only one that comes close is preventing Replies from showing up in the timeline (which I have turned off so replies DO NOT show up in the timeline). And even this setting is only available on the @cunycommons timeline widget. It is not available on hashtag searches (#cuny) or lists.

You can look at all the widgets I am using on that page by logging into our Twitter account, clicking on the gear icon in the right hand side of their toolbar and selecting settings. On the page that loads there is a sidebar on the left, click on Widgets and you'll see all the ones I've created during the development of this page.

I even went back to the Twitter developer page for this feature (their dev docs call it "Embedded Timelines" not widgets), and ran a find (cmd-F) on the page for "retweets" and it's only mentioned a few times - once to specifically state that retweets will be included in timelines like our @cunycommons widget.

I've added Boone as a watcher here because I know he just did some work with this feature on the profiles page. Maybe he's come across a hidden or undocumented setting or HTML5 data tag that could help us here.

But my answer right now is that this is just not a change that can be made. Not until Twitter makes it possible. We could send them an email asking for the functionality though. Let me know if that's something you're interested in and I'll draft up something to request this functionality.

Actions #2

Updated by Matt Gold about 10 years ago

Thanks, Dom! Unless Boone has a solution, it does look like this isn't possible. I think it's worth an email to twitter if that wouldn't take too much of your time. Thank you!

Actions #3

Updated by Boone Gorges about 10 years ago

I agree with Dom's assessment. From what I can see, Twitter intentionally limits the kinds of options available in these streams. There's not much we can do.

Actions #4

Updated by Matt Gold about 10 years ago

  • Target version set to Future release

Okay -- I will put this in "Future release" for now. And Dom, if you have time to write a quick email to Twitter, that would be great. Thank you!

Actions #5

Updated by Dominic Giglio about 10 years ago

I'll draft up a simple request and shoot it off as soon as I find a feedback/support email address for the Twitter dev team.

Actions #6

Updated by Boone Gorges over 7 years ago

  • Assignee changed from Dominic Giglio to Tahir Butt

Tahir, can I ask you to review the thread above? Cross-reference against Twitter's current documentation to see whether there's a way to accomplish what we're trying to do.

Actions #7

Updated by Boone Gorges over 7 years ago

For reference, here's the WP theme template responsible for rendering the Twitter page https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/blob/1.9.x/wp-content/themes/bp-nelo/twitter-stream.php

And here's the live page: http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/twitter

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