Claim/Done Remover

This project is now archived, as the Transcribers of Reddit have shut down. A big thank you to all of the volunteers I've had the pleasure of interacting with over the yeras.

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Documentation for this project has been moved to Read the Docs due to the documentation growing increasingly long and not suitable for a single README.

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Deprecated README instructions

This is an unofficial program and is not officially endorsed by the Transcribers of Reddit; they are in no way involved with this program and are not liable for any matters relating to it.

WARNING: use of this program has been discovered to cause the ToR discord bot (ToR-Stats, not the subreddit bot) to freeze if the program deletes a comment while the bot is processing it. This has currently happened to two users that we know of. There is currently nothing we can do about this until an update is made on the bots side

Also known as CDRemover or CDR, this program removes blacklisted comments after a period of time or a bot response. It is designed with r/TranscribersOfReddit transcribers in mind; specifically those who are tired of these comments clogging up their profiles. While you can use this for other purposes, it will require quite a bit of config tweaking, and it isn't really specialized for use otherwise. You can also try Murdo MacLachlan's OSCR program which while also designed for ToR users, it's slightly more generalized and may be easier to setup for non-ToR use.

If you've been a transcriber for a while, chances are this program will not remove every blacklisted comment you've ever posted however you should be able to get most of them following the instructions in the FAQ, the max is 1000 comments back depending on the setting you chose, and if you have it running in the background, it should check for comment bodies that are equal to entries in a set blacklist every certain amount of time you set.

Installation and Use

1. Download the latest stable release from the releases page and extract it to a folder of your choice.
2. Run pip install -r requirements.txt in the folder where you extracted the files (you might need to do so as root/admin).
3. Before doing anything else, you should now create an app for your Reddit account. You can do this by going to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ and creating a new app. Give it a name ("ClaimDoneRemover" or "CDRemover" are easy to remember). Choose "script". Give it a description (which can really be anything you want). Set the redirect url to http://localhost:9575 as this will be important later on. You can set the about url as whatever you want (I set it to the CDR repo link).
4. Now run the ClaimDoneRemover.pyw program, don't worry if it says error.
5. Click the options button then click the Edit Config button and fill in each field. There's a description of what each field does here.
6. Now click the Edit PRAW Config button. Fill in the options with the information you got from step #3 (Client ID should be located just under the text personal use script and the client secret should be next to the word secret) and then click generate to create a refresh token. Note that after you click generate the window will not respond until you've finished authorizing the application, a prompt may come up stating that the window is not responding and whether you want to close the program, do not close it. Currently, there's nothing I can do to avoid this.
7. Restart the program
8. Done

Once you're done, just navigate to the folder where ClaimDoneRemover.pyw is and run the file. You should run it by itself (double clicking the file) but you can run it from the command line for debug purposes if you wish (although errors are usually logged into the log file). On Linux, you do this like so: ./ClaimDoneRemover.pyw or python ClaimDoneRemover.pyw on Windows. You will see an output after a few seconds. Each comment older than your cutoff or has a bot reply (depending on the config) should be deleted. You can then either leave the program running in the background to delete posts while you are transcribing as it gets triggered, or you can manually run it now and then in order to delete comments in batches. If you persistently see that a comment is "Awaiting Trigger", you may chose to override the trigger and delete it regardless of whether the bot responded or reached cutoff.

Other Instructions

Config Options Description

Description

• User: Your username (make sure NOT to include the /u/, if my Reddit username is /u/example, then you should enter example).
• OS: Your operating system name (should be automatically filled in).
• Blacklist: Exact, word-for-word body of the comments to be deleted.
• Case Sensitive: Whether the blacklist should be case-sensitive.
• Cutoff: How many units of time old the comments must be before they are deleted. This option is still required to be filled even if you're using the reply trigger option, it just won't be used. Feel free to leave it at its default.
• Cutoff Secs: How many seconds each unit of time for the cutoff is. E.g. a second would be 1, a minute would be 60, an hour would be 3600, etc. This option is still required to be filled even if you're using the reply trigger option, it just won't be used. Feel free to leave it at its default.
• Limit: How many comments to check through in the users' history, max 1000 (enter None for 1000). Keep in mind the larger this is, the longer it will take to check per run.
• Wait: How many units of time the program should wait before checking for new comments again.
• Wait Unit: The unit of time used for the wait configuration. This should be in the format:

  singular unit name
  plural unit name
  number of seconds per unit
  

• Real Time Checking: Whether you want to app to run continuously in the background and check OR check once when run/when check now button is pressed. Set True OR False.
• Start Paused: Start the program paused instead of starting scanning as soon as the program starts.
• Topmost: Whether the window shows on top of every other window.
• ToR Only: Whether the program only deletes comments on the ToR subreddit.
• Update Check: Whether the program will check for newer versions of the program on startup.
• Database Logging: Whether the program will log deleted comments into a database (when set to False, the database will still exist, it just won't be inserted into)
• Regex Mode: Whether the program will parse the blacklist values as Regex. The case-sensitive config option will be overridden to True regardless of what your current setting is as case-sensitive has to be true for Regex to work. Also, please note that this mode is experimental, and you should only use it if you know what you're doing.

FAQ

Why is the window not responding?

This is normal if you have a large amount of comments that match the blacklist that hasn't been deleted yet. If any dialog pops up asking if you want to close it, choose no/wait. It should finish within 2 seconds-2 minutes. If you're wondering why the window's not responding, it's because there's a bug where while CDR is busy deleting/processing comments, it's not processing window events which causes it to be marked as not responding. It is in fact responding in the background, it's just the GUI that isn't responding.

Can I use this to delete past comments?

Yes, if you would like it to go back and delete all of your comments, set the limit to None then let it run 3-10 times (You can skip the wait by pressing the check now button in the options' menu).

I messed up something in the configuration settings, and now it won't start/is crashing, what should I do?

Try to look at the error and correct it by editing config.json or praw.ini by yourself (See below FAQ on where the files are located). If the error cannot be resolved by yourself, delete the config.json and/or praw.ini files, then run ClaimDoneRemover.pyw. The program will re-create the files, and you'll be good to go. You WILL have to re-setup the config and PRAW files.

What's the difference between the different modes?

To change mode, click the Change Mode button in the option menu.

In cutoff mode, the program will delete comments older than set amount of time regardless of whether the ToR bot responded or not.

In bot reply mode, it ignores how old the comment is and will only delete the comment if the ToR bot has replied to it (currently it deletes regardless of what the reply is, even if it can't find your transcription. I may add a separate feature in the future to only delete if your transcription was found. For now, you can use another program (ACN) to notify you if your transcription wasn't found.)

In cutoff fallback mode, it's a combination of both cutoff and bot reply. It'll delete the comment upon receiving a bot comment OR the cutoff is reached, whichever occurs first.

How do I update CDR?

Unless otherwise noted in the release's release notes, all you have to do is extract CDR to the folder it was originally installed in and replace the original files.

Where are the config and data files located?

You can open the folder automatically by opening CDR, going into the options' menu, and clicking Open Data Folder. However, if you for some reason can't do that or have another reason not to, the folders are located in the following paths (different depending on the platform).

Windows:

C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Roaming\ClaimDoneRemover

Linux:

/home/your_username/.config/ClaimDoneRemover

MacOS:

Should be /home/your_username/.config/ClaimDoneRemover although I'm not certain

Can I see progress and planned features for this project?

Sure, there's a public list here

Where can I contact the developer?

If you want to report an issue with CDR you can open a bug report, otherwise you can email me at [email protected].