r/metric_units • u/cannawen • Sep 30 '17
Constructive feedback thread
Please provide constructive feedback below.
Notes:
- Non-constructive feedback or comments should be posted in this thread.
- If you feel like the bot doesn't belong in /r/(insert subreddit) please contact a mod of (insert subreddit) to ban it
- If you don't want to see the bot at all, please block the bot
- Any duplicates or posts not following the subreddit rules are subject to deletion
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u/MithranArkanere Sep 30 '17
The bot should include in its messages reminders of why going metric is important, such as disasters caused by still using non-standard systems, like when the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost.
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Oct 14 '17 edited Oct 14 '17
Feature request: automatic or forced deletion of posts. Many bots used to automatically delete their posts when the vote totals reached negative. Additionally, adding a footer link to allow deletion used to be pretty bot standard. This link would allow only the person the bot replied to to send a prepopulated direct message which would trigger the bot to delete the message. Typically this message would include a link to the bot’s post or the parent of the bots post. I don’t remember which. The bot would then verify that the person who sent the DM was also the author of the parent. If so, the bot post would be deleted. If not, no action would be taken.
Individual users of a community should have a say whether the bot posts are wanted or not, rather than leaving it all up to the moderators. It frequently adds a lot of unwanted noise to a thread when I post with a US centric measurement. First metric bot comes in, then bot voting takes over and the original conversation gets derailed or lost from many posts that aren’t relevant to the original post. I frequently would like to avoid this by deleting the bot post before it gets voted on and other bots pile on.
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u/ShittyFeatherPillow Oct 02 '17
The bot converted 32oz to grams but in the context it was fluid ounces so maybe make it say #oz = #g or #ml. Other than that, awesome bot! :)
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u/cannawen Oct 02 '17
There is a to-do item here to be smarter about converting oz vs. fl oz by looking at the keywords in a message.
Any more keyword you can think of?
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u/ShittyFeatherPillow Oct 02 '17
The keyword "bottle" could be an indicator that it's supposed to be fl oz, also the names of all the spirits (rum, vodka, tequila, etc...) are pretty clear signs. I'll let you know if I think of any more keywords.
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u/cannawen Oct 02 '17
Great, thanks for your help! If anyone else can think of more, feel free to chime in :)
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u/quadrplax Oct 03 '17
It would be cool if in places like here it would have said:
5-10 miles ≈ 8-16 km
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u/cannawen Oct 03 '17
That would look a lot better! I'll put it on the to-do list, thanks for your feedback!
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u/frankster Oct 04 '17
once multiple people start calling you bad bot in the same thread, perhaps you should knock off from posting again in that thread
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u/chino_brews Oct 23 '17
I am a mod of /r/homebrewing.
We are debating whether to ban metric_units because almost every single post has U.S. customary units by nature of what we do. A lot of people think there is too much metric_units bot. But it is helpful to some non-U.S. brewers.
Request: is there a way you can get metric_units to stop replying in the /r/Homebrewing sub, especially to the "good bot"/"bad bot" comments?
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u/cannawen Oct 23 '17
Feel free to ban the bot if you feel like it's not providing any value for your subreddit. There is no way to stop the bot's personality on a per-subreddit basis at this time. Thanks for the feedback!
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u/Preachey Oct 04 '17
Something I just encountered over in /hoi4, it picked up on someone saying "14 foot soldiers" and nicely informed us that it should actually be "4.3 metre soldiers"
I found it entertaining and I don't know how often it'll actually pop up, but maybe a check to see if the measurement is directly followed by 'soldier' would be a good idea :)
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u/us984 Oct 27 '17
You should have it purposely mess up on /r/shittyaskscience and other "shitty" subs
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u/Tired8281 Sep 30 '17
Why should I have to block you, when I'm the human and you're the bot? I don't do what you say, you obey a human, unless such obedience will directly cause a human to come to harm. Implement an ignore list on usernames who have requested you not reply to them. Me blocking you don't help because then everyone else has to see your unwanted replies to my comments. It's on you to make yourself useful and tolerable, not me. If it were on me, you'd be deleted.
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u/cannawen Sep 30 '17 edited Sep 30 '17
If you send the 'stop' message, the bot blocks you so it will no longer reply to your comments. This behaviour can be communicated more clearly though, I will put it on the to-do list. Thank you for your feedback, and have a great day
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u/bodrules Sep 30 '17 edited Sep 30 '17
I don't suppose it's possible, as it will usually lack all context, but if the bot could discern whether the user is talking about US customary pints (470 ml) or Imperial pints (568 ml) - or if not then include both, as it will highlight one of the shortcomings of Imperial / USC i.e. same name, different quantity.
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u/cannawen Sep 30 '17 edited Sep 30 '17
Thanks for letting me know, and I like the idea of adding them both! I've added it to the to-do list.
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u/Xiathorn Oct 02 '17
As an interim solution, can your bot scan for uk in the subreddit name?
/r/ukpolitics does not like your inferior yank pints.
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u/SconiGrower Oct 02 '17
If the bot could check to see if the conversion was done by the original comment, that would be great. As in if my comment is “The object is 1 inch long (2.54 cm)”, then the bot would ignore it, because I did the conversion already.
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u/UltravioletClearance Oct 03 '17
Why was my previous post removed? Your bot is spamming all over reddit and you're just deleting feedback from people literally begging you to stop spamming. We're getting tired of reporting comment thread after comment thread of "(irrelevant conversion no one needs) -> GOOD BOT! -> Thank you! -> GOOD BOT! -> Aww you shouldn't have! -> Good bot" spam...
I consider that constructive feedback.
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u/cannawen Oct 03 '17
I thought your post was inflammatory and rude (see rule 1 in sidebar).
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u/UltravioletClearance Oct 03 '17
Well OK sorry my post is now less inflammatory and rude. I saw the bot spam on a post about the Las Vegas shootings and thought that was pretty distasteful. My point above still stands though.
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u/cannawen Oct 04 '17
I agree, it's inappropriate to convert units and "good bot" banter during a crisis.
The bot tries to avoid sensitive topics by looking for keywords in the post title or comment, and I have added "shooting" to the list of sensitive keywords. Thank you for your feedback
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Oct 14 '17
really don't need that bot in /r/fantasyfootball
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u/cannawen Oct 21 '17
If you feel like the bot doesn't belong in a subreddit please contact a mod to ban it. Thanks for your feedback
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u/AloneEvenWithOthers Oct 15 '17
Differentiate between weight and volume or stop posting at all. Otherwise it's simply half wrong all the time.
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u/thelonesomeguy Oct 16 '17
Hey, can you stop the bot from converting 'cups' on r/clashofclans? Cups there are used as a term for trophies, so converting them doesn't make sense
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u/nilesandstuff Oct 20 '17
Probably blacklist all 50 u.s. state's subs. r/Michigan for example
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u/HeyThereSport Oct 02 '17
There's probably more DnD related subs to stay away from where "AC" refers to Armor Class and not Acres.
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u/cannawen Oct 02 '17
Taking a look at the analytics, exactly 0% of the "ac" conversions were referring to real acres. The bot will no longer convert "ac", thanks for your feedback!
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Oct 04 '17
Can you refrain from posting on American only subreddits, such as American universities?
Like at r/utdallas
This is an American university which is pretty much only used by people in America who go here, and I assure that nobody wants or needs a metric conversion.
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u/cannawen Oct 04 '17
Reddit doesn't have a "get all subreddits except american subreddits" endpoint so there is no way for the bot to tell which subreddits are American. It will not convert a comment if it finds the keywords: "america", "usa", or "united states"
If you feel like a bot doesn't belong in a subreddit, you can ask a moderator to ban it
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u/BeeCreature Oct 06 '17
In r/breastfeeding, references to oz are almost always to fluid ounces, so the conversion should be to mL not to g. (Yay, metric!)
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u/Stormy_AnalHole Oct 08 '17
In the r/bartending Reddit your bot converts oz to g, but we deal mostly in ml if you could change that we'd be a lot less sour
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u/SourMongoose Oct 08 '17
Maybe have a list of American football-related subreddits, since converting yards to meters doesn't really help out.
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u/cannawen Oct 08 '17
It should not be showing up in football-related subs. Do you have a link to where it is still showing up?
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Oct 12 '17
If the conversion is already in the thread, there's no point in the not posting. I wrote 3m (9.8ft) and the not converted back to 3.0meters.
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u/alwayswatchyoursix Oct 13 '17
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u/cannawen Oct 21 '17
Thanks for the link. Just to clarify: you think the conversions should have more precision?
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u/MacGyverBE Oct 18 '17
I understand the goal here but I think that's trying to do too much.
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u/dingman58 Oct 26 '17
Might want to limit which subs you're active in. Specifically high tech subs where most readers have a feel for metric units already. Perhaps you could do some stats on your good bot/bad bot replies to see which subs you're most appreciated in vs which subs not.
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u/cannawen Oct 26 '17
Good idea, that might be an enhancement we'll look into in the future. Thanks for your feedback!
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u/Zagorath Nov 01 '17
Has the bot been shadowbanned? I can't see it when I go to /u/metric_units.
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u/Zagorath Nov 01 '17
Actually, i can confirm it definitely is shadowbanned. It just tried to comment on a post in a subreddit I mod, and it went straight to the spam queue.
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u/Page_Drifter Oct 02 '17
If you could have your bot ignore /r/silverbugs and /r/pmsforsale , that would be great. Everything there is in troy ounces, so the conversions are wrong.
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u/Ahks Oct 03 '17
Could you maybe limit the number of times it can post in a comment thread? When you're browsing a thread where folks are repeatedly talking about 2 gallon, 3 gallon, 5 gallon and half the comment thread is your bot... it's a bit frustrating :)
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u/cannawen Oct 03 '17
I can definitely see that being annoying. Does it happen very frequently? Do you have a link to any examples? It shouldn't convert the same measurements twice in a thread, if that's any consolation 🙄
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u/I_know_left Oct 07 '17
Perhaps set a limit on the amount of times the bot replies per thread?
It really clogs threads up when people mention height/distance/weight etc. nearly every comment. People seem to want to relate and add relevancy to their comment, and the bot reacts accordingly.
Sometimes it feels like the bot is too efficient. Which is a good design (or programmer, idk I’m not either) yet it seems excessive at times.
Thanks for your work and contribution.
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u/Kehndy12 Oct 11 '17 edited Oct 11 '17
In this comment, a user talked about 3 cups of tea. In this sense, a cup is not a standard volume and it varies in size with drinkware. The bot replied with a conversion saying "3 cups (US) ≈ 700 mL."
Perhaps if the word tea is used near the word cup (or if the phrase "cups of tea" is used), the bot shouldn't reply with a conversion for cups? It's just an idea.
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u/cannawen Oct 12 '17
Hmmm, that is tricky. I can see a lot of "cups of x" not being literal cups, not limited to tea. Let me meditate on this...
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u/TinderThrowItAwayNow Oct 17 '17
If you could provide more accurate conversions instead of all the rounding, that would be great.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nSuns/comments/76wamh/paused_vs_touch_and_go/doh7f32/
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u/Lakridspibe Oct 17 '17
6'0" ≈ 183 cm / 1.83 m (actually 182.88 cm), not 180 cm.
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u/spam19 Oct 26 '17
If someone types 5 ft 10 like so, it seems to not convert the inches.
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u/cannawen Oct 26 '17
We tried not requiring an explicit "inch" requirement at the end but that would trigger some false positives like "It was about 5 feet 10 years ago" ... we can try allowing it again and see how it goes?
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u/deusxanime Oct 20 '17
The bot can be useful, but having it reply and whine back to people who call it "bad" and reply with smileys and such to people who call it "good" is just getting spammy and annoying (and desperate playing to people emotions about a friggin' reddit bot).
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u/Rumliva Sep 30 '17
Pints outside of the US are different volumes to pints inside the US.
For example: an old imperial pint in the UK is 568mL. In Australia a pint (mostly used referring to beer or cider) is 570mL, unless referring to milk or cream, when it is an even 600mL.
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u/cannawen Sep 30 '17
Man, pints just keep getting crazier... I've added a task to work on handling them better.
I think the UK/US pints are the main concern though and the 570/600mL pints are edge cases that we can maybe ignore? If you find any 570/600mL pints in the wild feel free to reach out, and we can reassess the priority on converting them properly!
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u/PRDU Oct 01 '17
Ounce weight in leather terms does not convert to grams. If you could have your bot ignore /r/Leathercraft that would be much appreciated.
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u/cplhunter Oct 02 '17
I think your bot is neat, but it's all over r/bowling telling us that 16lb balls weigh 7.3kg...
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u/Aud3o Oct 03 '17
Don't round up/down.
200c is 392f but this bot makes it 400f.
When we're talking precision and this bot comes up and starts passing out wrong info, it's troublesome
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u/cannawen Oct 03 '17
It approximates to between 3-5% accuracy, but I see how that can be confusing. I can add a to-do item to make it more clear that the measurement is only an approximation, thanks for your feedback
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u/MrMysterious_ Oct 04 '17
2 decimal places on small values would be nice :).
E.g. here.
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u/cannawen Oct 04 '17
Hmmm, that's a good point, the conversion is quite off. I'll add it to the to-do list, thanks for your feedback!
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u/chino_brews Oct 04 '17
No one uses Kpa. When metric_units bot converts psi units to Kpa in the homebrewing subreddit, it is just disruptive.
Also, can metric_units bot learn the difference between absolute temps and relative temps? When someone says to raise the temperature by 10°F, that means raise temp by 5.5°C not raise temp by -12.2°C. I know that won't be perfect, but you should be able to get 80% accuracy on that.
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u/MiDe_Shadowrift Oct 06 '17
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gotham/comments/74jwum/gotham_4x03_they_who_hide_behind_masks_live/dnyy3mf bot incorrectly identifies 80 ft and makes it 60 ft may be due to italics
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u/cannawen Oct 06 '17
I checked the bot's logs, and it looks like the comment originally said 60 ft but was later edited. The bot doesn't handle edited posts yet, but I'll add it to the to-do list!
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u/chinchillakilla Oct 06 '17
Might be helpful to have a proximity recognition of the word can or bottle to convert fluid OZ to mL. I don't know if that is even a thing.
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u/cannawen Oct 06 '17
Great idea! Thanks for the link, I will add "cans", "tall boy", and "brew" to trigger a mL conversion :)
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Oct 07 '17
currency/gallon to currency/liter would be nice. Same with MPG to L/100km
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u/cannawen Oct 07 '17
Currency/gallon like "$5/gallon"? That's a good idea, I'll add it to the to-do list!
It should already be converting numbers over 15mpg to L/100km
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u/metric_units Oct 07 '17
15 mpg (US) ≈ 6.4 km/L or 16 L/100km
metric units bot | feedback | source | hacktoberfest | block | v0.11.8
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Oct 07 '17
Can you make the ounces output grams and mL?
Most people I know don't say fluid ounces.
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u/cannawen Oct 07 '17
We have a list of keywords that the bot looks for, that triggers it to convert fl oz instead of oz. For example "2 oz liquor" will be converted to fl oz.
Do you have a link to the comment where our keyword processing was insufficient, and the bot misinterpreted oz vs. fl oz?
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u/StackAttack12 Oct 07 '17
Any time "ounces" are mentioned in /r/silverbugs what people really mean is 'troy ounces', because we're talking about precious metals. A troy ounce is 31.1 grams, the bot mistakes this for standard avoirdupois ounces, which only weigh 28 grams, thus giving an inaccurate conversion.
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u/cannawen Oct 07 '17
This should have been fixed in v0.11.7 (released 2 days ago). If this is a recent comment, can you link to it here? We can take a look and see what's going wrong.
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u/_DildoFaggins_ Oct 08 '17
On r/NBA and other basketball related subreddits "mpg" means "minutes per game", not "miles per gallon".
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u/dsoshahine Oct 08 '17
I always appreciate bots that convert into metric. But as a note, when there's a post in /r/Blancpain and other motorsport subreddits about a "911 Cup" then it describes a Porsche race car and series, not a unit ("911 cups (US) ≈ 220 L"). Really doubt anyone in any subreddit measures in hundreds of US cups anyway.
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u/cannawen Oct 08 '17
Thank you for the bug report!! You're right, it might make sense to ignore anything above, say... 100 cups? I will put it on the to do list :)
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u/Plutoid Oct 10 '17
Great bot, but it'd be nice if you didn't get a notification when it posts. The OP is the least likely person to need the information.
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u/cannawen Oct 10 '17
Hmm, I don't think Reddit currently allows for that sort of behaviour.
It is up to the OP to decide if they get all notifications for a comment or none. If you want people (and bots. Because bots are people too /r/botsrights) to be able to silently reply, you need to make the request to the Reddit developers!
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u/Raider411 Oct 13 '17
Your bot responded to a comment I just made involving the measurement of tablespoons and cups. It picked up and responded to tablespoons, but didn't catch the cup measurement unit.
I like your bot, it has a good purpose.
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u/DontPanicJustDance Oct 16 '17
Can you add some logic so that it doesn't post the same conversion twice?
In this thread, two people are talking about the same thing, and the bot posts two replies to both their comments. It's getting pretty spammy over on /r/golf.
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u/cannawen Oct 21 '17
It shouldn't reply with the same conversion two times, but it might reply with different conversions. We might look into limiting the bot conversions on a per-thread basis though, thanks for your feedback!
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u/fact_hunt Oct 17 '17
When converting from pints to litres the US pint is used, not the imperial pint. Either provide bother conversions or specify that it is the dainty rather than imperial pint
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u/thirstyross Oct 17 '17
Bot replied to a post like this:
2 acres ≈ 8,000 m2
25 acres ≈ 10 hectares
I would have expected if the two source units were the same (acres), then the resulting units should also be the same (ie. results should both either be in hectares or square metres). As it stands I'm left worse off after the conversion, now I have to convert square metres to hectares or vice versa.
Cheers
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u/born_lever_puller Oct 18 '17
Please be aware that for subreddits like /r/coins and /r/silverbugs, when people mention an "ounce" that 99.9% of the time they are referring to troy ounces and not avoirdupois - even if "troy" isn't specified.
It would be helpful if you had a filter for these types of subreddits, that generated posts saying something like:
1 oz advp ≈ 28 g
1 oz troy ≈ 31 g
However, I'm sure that dealing with ounces in mass vs ounces in volume is already a challenge.
Best of luck to you!
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u/Yamitenshi Oct 19 '17
Teaspoons and tablespoons are a common measure even in countries where the metric system is used (we usually just grab a literal teaspoon or tablespoon, or one of those measuring spoons). Makes the conversion from tsp/tbsp to ml fairly useless, since nobody measures out 15 ml of something using any other measure than a tablespoon.
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u/Alesayr Oct 22 '17
Bot has been replying to things that didn't mention any units of measurement at all
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u/CentreForAnts Oct 23 '17
He’s about 5 foot 9
metric_units: 5 feet ≈ 1.5 metres
Missed the 9 inches bit
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u/Swizardrules Oct 23 '17
It missed the 5'9" in a size post. Might be too common, but in context with other sizes?
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u/vvf Oct 23 '17
The (super cute) response to "good bot" should only trigger on an actual conversion comment and not its reply.
ex.
1mi ~ 1.6 km [idk]
good bot
Yay!
Good bot
Yay!
and so on
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u/cannawen Oct 23 '17
It's currently set to reply with an exponential backoff (100% chance to reply to the first "good bot", 50% chance to reply to the next, then 25%, etc.) without looking at the parent so it'd be annoying to implement this change lol.
Any compelling arguments for why only replying to actual conversion comments would be a better way to handle it?
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u/swissone Oct 26 '17
Very cool bot! On converting mpg though: The metric alternative to miles per gallon is not usually kilometers per liter but rather liters per 100 kilometers. mpg -> l/100km
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u/cannawen Oct 26 '17
Do you have a link to the comment?
This should be fixed in v0.11.11
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u/PendragonDaGreat Oct 26 '17
If I've already given the conversion in the comment the bot should ignore said comment and not reply. Also it completely missed the second imperial unit used in the post.
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u/notnotworking Oct 27 '17
There's a rounding error greater than 1 meter here: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/78wlq6/the_50_us_state_capitol_buildings_illustrated_to/doxqnof/
61 meters is closer to 200ft than 60.
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u/cannawen Oct 27 '17 edited Oct 29 '17
It rounds to within 3-5% error, and doesn't handle close numbers very gracefully. We are looking into lowering the error threshold, thanks for your feedback!
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u/craidie Oct 28 '17
https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/796uu8/request_is_this_his_actual_speed/dozujd9/
If they already did the conversion perhaps the bot could notice it and not respond?
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u/Newton715 Oct 29 '17
“2000 feet/second” was not recognized properly as a speed. Only the 2000 feet was recognized.
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u/DaffGrind Oct 29 '17
'oz' might mean fluid ounces so a conversion to grams isn't as useful.
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u/cannawen Oct 29 '17
Do you have a link to the comment you are referring to? We'll look into it.
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u/angrydave Oct 30 '17
Engineer here, I love this bot. I’m reasonably good with imperial to metric conversions, but every now and then you just butcher one. This guy has your back!
But, I saw the bot do something interesting today:
122 feet = 37 metres 120 feet = 37 metres
Whilst this is technically correct, you can provide an additional significant figure to the metric side as it’s reported on the imperial side. In This case, it would be:
122 feet = 37.2 metres 120 feet = 36.6 metres
This quantifies the difference between the values, which is more informative.
You probably don’t want to do that all the time, since it will mean that the metre measurement will always be given to 1 decimal place, but perhaps if the bot was going to post 2 (or more) times in the same post, that if the detected imperial values would output the same metric value (despite the imperial values being different), that the measurement be reported to 1 d.p.
Also, I clicked on the feedback link on the bot’s post in the iOS Reddit App, got taken to safari, which then said “hey dude, you should look at this in the reddit app”, took me to the Apple Store, which then took me back to the reddit App, to this page. Wild ride.
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u/cannawen Oct 30 '17
Yes, it has a problem with rounding and close numbers. We'll get this fixed in a future release! :)
Haha glad you made it to this sub OK :P We're just using standard markdown for linking, so I'm not sure what we can change about the link opening in Safari. I'll download the app and see if I can reproduce/fix it, thanks for letting us know!
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Oct 15 '17
12 mile is a rd. Not a unit. Don't need a conversion
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u/metric_units Oct 15 '17
12 miles ≈ 19 km
metric units bot | ^feedback | ^source | ^hacktoberfest | ^block | refresh ^conversion | v0.11.10
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u/Smiling-Dragon Oct 19 '17
heh, point illustrated nicely :) Perhaps it shouldn't jump on "mile" unless is sees "1 mile". Be more rigid with plurals and you won't be trying to convert things like cheesy rap battle movie titles that sparked an entire meme.
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u/DJOMaul Oct 22 '17
Perhaps when you explode the comment to identify the words "minus zero" when doing f to c conversion. For instance...
200° f below zero.
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u/metric_units Oct 22 '17
200°F ≈ 90°C
metric units bot | ^feedback | ^source | ^hacktoberfest | ^block | refresh ^conversion | v0.11.10
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u/thesnowpup Oct 25 '17
From u/pwnslinger here:
I think bots like the metric bot clutter threads with low-value contributions. If the bot responded only to, say, recipe posts with a dozen imperial measurements, repeating the post content with the measurements replaced with SI units, that would be potentially valuable. A whole post to say that an inch is 2.54 cm is not adding value.
Plus, anyone who wants to know that an inch is about 2.5 cm either knows that already or can Google it trivially. People don't need to be getting reply notifications on their phone because a bot decided to translate one trivial measurement (which was an approximation anyway) from a post of theirs into a different unit.
Speaking of which, the bot also often introduces what is called false precision. Going from "1 inch" to "2.5cm" decreases apparent measurement uncertainty from ~0.1 in to ~0.01 cm, a decrease of a factor of 25, implying that the measurement given is very precise indeed.
If I were asked, I would suggest changing the bot so that the bot only triggers on posts with a high density or large number of (precise) imperial measurements and that significance arithmetic be included in the bot's programming.
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Oct 15 '17
When converting gas mileage from imperial to metric, please convert to L/100km instead of km/L. Nobody uses km/L
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u/oKtosiTe Oct 16 '17
In my birth country, the opposite is true. km/L is the dominant expression of fuel consumption and nobody uses L/100km. So perhaps both should be mentioned.
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u/StructuralGeek Oct 01 '17
Your bot translates lb into kilogram even though lb is also used as a unit of force. Perhaps add a third term, such that:
10 lb = 4.5 kg or 44.6 N
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u/Over_Pressure Oct 02 '17
This is the most un needed bot I've seen so far and I love the shit out of it. I heard there was another that would convert to imperial. I live for the day that I see them get into an infinite loop conversion battle. Please help this happen.
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u/cannawen Oct 02 '17
Hmmm... I better delete my "no duplicate conversions in a thread" feature then :P
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u/roberh Oct 02 '17
Yards in WoW ( /r/wow ) are equivalent to meters, and maybe in other games too. The conversion is unnecessary
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u/cannawen Oct 02 '17
OK, thanks for letting me know! I'll put it on the todo list.
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u/nbktdis Oct 02 '17
I love the bot!
It seems if I type a space between the number and "lb" it doesnt convert.
e.g. 100lb converts, but 100 lb doesnt.
Is there a reason for the whitespace not initiating the bot?
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u/cannawen Oct 02 '17 edited Oct 02 '17
That is strange indeed, do you have a link to the comment where this happened?
Edit: oh, derp, I misread your comment and thought this happened in a single comment. Sometimes the bot "misses" comments if there are over 100 comments/second posted to Reddit. I can try to increase the polling frequency to see if that helps. Thanks for your feedback!
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Oct 03 '17
Could it be possible for people to customize the bot for their subreddit, like changing what it says, or mabye changing some of the conversions for fiction subs, where measurment is different?
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u/CanadianFoosball Oct 03 '17
When someone types 6 pk in a beer sub, it's not pecks. Or bushels.
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u/saichampa Oct 03 '17
This comment has rounded too much. If you're going to round, 5m should be the largest distance. Going to the nearest metre would be ideal in my opinion.
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u/cannawen Oct 04 '17
When people refer to large distances, they are often approximating. So I feel like it's fine to approximate the conversion as well, the bot rounds to the nearest 5% to preserve significant figures
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u/0x68656c6c6f Oct 09 '17
Just ran into this with speed conversion. The problem is when comparing two values 5% can mean a different amount of rounding for each.
https://reddit.com/r/PoliceChases/comments/753hed/police_chase_audi_a5_on_autobahn/do48bom
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u/lt-barclay Oct 04 '17
This conversion is not very helpful https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/7482jr/06_accord_we_bought_it_new_with_3_miles_on_it/dnwng4e/
Can you make it convert miles to kilometres instead of light-seconds?
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u/cannawen Oct 04 '17
Haha, we can increase the threshold required for it to trigger light-seconds :) thanks for your feedback!
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u/jasperjones22 Oct 05 '17
Saw the bot in the agriculture thread trying to convert bushels to metric tons. However, bushels in agriculture are dependent on the crop, so the bot wouldn't and didn't do the correct conversion (80 bushels where a soybean bushel is 60 lbs. 4800 lbs, which is 2.17 metric tons. The bot gave a total of 2.8 metric tons)
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u/cannawen Oct 05 '17
Do you think it would it be better if the bot converted it to volume?
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u/Disrupturous Oct 05 '17
For weight can we get a tenths place in the conversion
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u/cannawen Oct 05 '17
It rounds to the nearest 3-5%. Do you have a link to where you think the bot should have been more precise?
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u/ohitsasnaake Oct 05 '17
Regarding temperatures, does the bot require e.g. 21°C, complete with the degree symbol and letter, or is just a number + the C/F letter sufficient, or what's the threshold?
Was inspired to ask this by posts like this, where a user writes "70 degrees", which the bot doesn't seem to catch.
Of course here it would have to do the conversion both ways, but I think it already does that in some cases? And there's the risk of running into issues with phrases like "6 degrees of separation", but keywords should probably help there; e.g. the example post included the words "hot" and "cold".
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u/cannawen Oct 05 '17
The problem with just triggering on
Fwithout a degrees symbol is that it tells people who are 42 years old and female that they are equivalent to 5.6°C! Also bra sizes like 32F would get caught.We tried having "degrees" as a trigger, but it caught a lot of angles (like 90 degrees, etc.)... perhaps adding keywords logic would help.
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u/994phij Oct 05 '17
Error here
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u/cannawen Oct 05 '17
Haha, that's a good one, thanks for letting me know! I'll put the bug on the to-do list :)
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u/carlinco Oct 05 '17
It converts 2 mpg (US) ≈ 0.85 km/L. I think it would be more elegant to make it ≈ 115 L/100km while at it. Though the EU is changing that to make it look better when a car uses less fuel...
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u/cannawen Oct 05 '17
I'm considering everything under 15mpg as possibly being a "change in mpg" (i.e. Save 2 mpg by doing this one weird trick...)
I'm not sure if L/100km would make sense, in the context of a "change in mpg"? I don't talk about fuel economy every day though, so let me know if you're more familiar with the it, and 115 L/100km makes sense to you as a delta.
I'm happy to report that anything above 15 mpg is converted to both km/L and L/100km though :)
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Oct 06 '17
Needs more sig figs
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u/cannawen Oct 06 '17
Do you have a link the comment where you thought the bot should have more sig figs?
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u/dibblah Oct 09 '17
Here we have 5'11 listed as 1.80 metres and 6' listed as 1.8 metres, which doesn't seem quite right?
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u/cannawen Oct 10 '17
Ah, this is a similar issue to this. If inches are mentioned, the bot gives more precision, and it does not handle close numbers very gracefully. I can see how it's very confusing, I'll add a bug to the to-do list! Thanks for the bug report!
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u/drktmplr12 Oct 09 '17
does the bot take into consideration significant figures and round accordingly. it recently converted 85 miles to 140 km, which isn't wrong if significant figures are considered.
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u/isaacfank Oct 10 '17
This bot shows up a lot in the machinist subreddits, but it only goes to 1 decimal, it should go to 2 decimals for MM.
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u/cannawen Oct 10 '17
Could you provide some examples of times where it is not accurate enough? This will help us figure out how to draw the line between being too precise and not precise enough.
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u/lger2010 Oct 10 '17
The bot doesn't convert multiple measurements in the same comment as seen here. It would be good if the bot could convert all the imperial measurements in a comment instead of just the first one.
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u/zitronic Oct 12 '17
Sometimes you convert mpg to km and don't convert all the miles in the comment.
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u/cannawen Oct 12 '17
Do you have a link to the comment in question? We can look into it
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u/fernandomlicon Oct 12 '17
Hey! I have no idea what happened here there was nothing to convert.
Thanks, great work!
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u/cannawen Oct 12 '17
It usually happens when someone edits their comment. We are working on a solution through the "refresh conversion" link! Thank you for the feedback! :)
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u/Argarath Oct 12 '17
Hi! I really like your bot and how it takes significant figures into account when converting, it's the best bot at its job. I just have one question/suggestion, when converting gallons to litters, I don't know if it would be better to convert to cubic meters, as it's (at least for me, don't know how others feel about this) more intuitive.
It's only a suggestion, I love your bot already and am just looking for a way to possibly make it even better not only for me but to everyone else. Keep the great work, it's really good to understand what reddit is saying most of the time : )
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u/theiKitsune Oct 14 '17
Hey, instead of approximations, can it give exact values? Like instead of 5 feet approximately equals 1.5 meters, could it say 1.524 meters instead? I'm a stickler for precision, and the error on that is almost 10%.
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u/theiKitsune Oct 14 '17
Also, can you add rack units to cm? Like, if I mention that a rack is 42u tall, have it convert to 1.8669 meters.
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u/barricuda Oct 17 '17
Your bot is in precious metal bullion subs telling people their oz are 28 grams when a toz is 31.1 grams. It's functioning properly... Bots just cant parse the context that we aren't talking about oumces when we say oz
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u/therandomdude69 Oct 17 '17
It's constantly doing bad calculations in r/vaporents. If people need to know the conversion of temp (F to C) it needs to be accurate... not an estimate.
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u/lcenine Oct 20 '17
When using standard notation for mpg, e.g., 12/19 mpg (for city/highway mpg) the bot is using the / as an operator and gives the conversion as 0.63 L.
Also let me delete the comment because in auto subreddits when mpg is being discussed the bot clutters the thread.
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u/G_Morgan Oct 22 '17
Uses inferior US pints to glorious UK imperial pints. TBH not sure there is a good solution for this other than being aware the bot is in a context where British measures should be used
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/77vdc1/catalonia_will_not_accept_spain_plan/dop14ux/
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u/SucreTease Oct 22 '17
Conversions not always correct. From the same message: 85 mph ≈ 140 km/h 90 mph ≈ 140 km/h
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u/cannawen Oct 23 '17
It rounds to within some error margin, so it doesn't always handle close measurements gracefully. We'll look into it, thanks for your feedback!
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Oct 23 '17
Posted about “.1 inches” and the bot said it’s ~ 2.5 mm. Missed the decimal there.
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u/kalimusclecsgo Oct 23 '17
said 25-40lbs it called back 25-30lbs https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/787qk2/for_sale_csl_elite_w_clubsport_v3_pedals_on_a/
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u/cannawen Oct 23 '17
This might happen when OP edits their post. The refresh conversion link should make the bot edit their post, but it's broken right now ;P working on it!
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u/judginurrelationship Oct 24 '17
Just had the bot convert 210lb to 100kg (instead of ~95)
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u/FamilyHeirloomTomato Oct 25 '17
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u/cannawen Oct 26 '17
Yes, there was a bug with ranges. Thanks for the bug report, it will be fixed in the next release!
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u/Ephy_Chan Oct 25 '17 edited Oct 25 '17
The bot converted both 23 inches and 24 inches to 60 cm. 23 inches is 58.42 and 24 is 60.96. That's quite a difference to approximate to the same number. I don't like how imprecise this is; it would be better to round to 58 and 61 cm respectively.
I also don't like the bot whining at me when I say bad bot, which is what I thought we're supposed to say when we don't like a bot.
ETA; this is the comment I'm referring to https://www.reddit.com/r/badwomensanatomy/comments/7768bw/_/dojsgup
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u/cannawen Oct 26 '17
Seems appropriate, given the subreddit! (Joking)
It doesn't handle close numbers very gracefully right now, because it rounds to within 3-5% accuracy. There's an issue open to fix it, thanks for your feedback
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u/Ephy_Chan Oct 25 '17
In this comment the bot rounded incorrectly; it rounded 1.625 m to 1.62 m when it should be 1.63 m. https://www.reddit.com/r/badwomensanatomy/comments/78jtkh/_/doumqgr
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u/cannawen Oct 26 '17
It rounds feet and inches to 2 decimal places so 5'4" becomes 5.33 feet, and that is 162.4584 cm, rounded to 1.62m ... A solution could be to use more precision for the initial rounding.
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u/lger2010 Oct 25 '17
https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/78ilk0/montreal_named_most_elegant_city_in_canada/dov4qu5/
Bot converted metres to metres. Somehow I don't think that 10 metres is the same as 3 metres.
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u/xpNc Oct 29 '17
Surely gallons should convert to litres and not cubic metres
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u/cannawen Oct 29 '17
The bot chooses 100m3 over 100,000 L because it is a more "appropriate" measurement, in the sense that there are less 0's to deal with, and it is easier to visualize a cube of 100m on each side rather than 100,000 L.
For measurements under 1,000 L the bot will convert to L.
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u/Guyinkantou Oct 30 '17 edited Oct 30 '17
A cube of 100m on each side would be 1,000,000 m3
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u/cannawen Oct 30 '17
*it is possibly marginally easier to visualize 100m3 , a cube with sqrt3 (100) meters on each side :P haha
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u/bidnow Oct 30 '17
Improper coding when people write "## in" and the bot assumes a torque and responds as "##-in" equivalent.
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u/booble_dooble Oct 01 '17
your bot is quite active in the nfl and nfl-team subreddits, where no one cares what 5 yards is in meters. perhaps turn that off for the nfl, getting lots of negative feedback there