The LAW Highlight Bot
This bot exists to repost character profiles and high-profile matches. This is done to facilitate discussion/reactions to matches in the server that might not have occurred. It is important to note that while the bot will regularly post to the spotlight channels after several hours, the spotlight channels are NOT for the bots. Anyone may post a match or character to the spotlight channels and anyone may discuss matches or characters at any given time. The bot is meant to offer opportunities for discussion, not impede or prevent it. My hope is that the presence of a match/bio link, along with the bot's attempt to summarize character profiles/opening match posts will help prompt users to talk about characters and threads that they might not have otherwise. Flowchart
Why only include Special Event Matches and character profiles of users with 2500 posts? Why exclude LAW Twitter Posts?
I expect that I'll get pushback from a vocal minority on both of these decisions. But as of now, I stand by them.
I see the merit of including all threads and all users in the bot's scans of the character and match spotlights. But I believe that there's also merit in giving users a goal to aim for, in this case, 2500 non-LAW Twitter posts. Users who have not hit this benchmark may still share their character profiles and matches. I chose the 2500 benchmark as a way to give a small nod to users who have put a considerable amount of time and effort into RP'ing at LAW over a long time. And I chose to scan/include only Special Events/PPV/Tourney matches to try and highlight some of the threads and stories LAW folks have dedicated a good chunk of their planning and passion to. Many people hold those matches dear, even long after having played them out. I think it's a good move to offer those matches a platform in the LAW discord server. It also gives people more incentive to participate in big official events at LAW.
Regarding excluding LAW Twitter posts, I've never been a fan of the abundance of low-effort content that sometimes propagates there. I felt it necessary to exclude the post count in that subforum when taking into account the inclusion of users based on post count alone. LAW Twitter has its uses and it absolutely adds to the experience for many LAW users, but I'll go into details below in the Fan Bot and Twitter Bot sections about my qualms with LAW Twitter as an admin/leader of this community.
Thus, going forward, the bot will exclusively be posting matches from the PPV subforum when it posts to the match-spotlight channel. And it will exclusively post character bios of users who have exceeded 2500 non-Twitter posts.
How will I know when I hit the 2500 benchmark?
Your name will appear in the table, below. There's no way for you to explicitly see the number of posts you have outside of LAW Twitter, so I made a table that goes down to users with 2300 non-Twitter posts. Please do not be discouraged if your name does not appear in the table. I will not be updating it frequently unless I'm asked to. These numbers are accurate as of late August 2024, and I believe that many more users will clear this benchmark as they continue to rise to prominence.
Table
| Username | Post Count (NOT including LAW Twitter) |
| anime_hentaifighter | 17240 |
| Highfly | 14878 |
| PrinceArjuna332 | 14801 |
| Bare | 11068 |
| CaptainL | 10695 |
| Devilish53 | 9199 |
| Fairy Dragon | 7775 |
| xalex | 7657 |
| The Riders | 6878 |
| ADarlingDucky | 6845 |
| Vc0m | 6506 |
| Lederface | 6329 |
| Bearhug Goddess | 5379 |
| TheManVan | 5341 |
| Devastated | 5182 |
| winner3 | 5158 |
| Dragonofdarkness | 5066 |
| Dubski | 4415 |
| BlackAkuma | 3806 |
| Void-Effect | 3433 |
| Sigma Morgan | 3353 |
| ragaz | 3289 |
| ThatPolishDude | 3274 |
| RedShinigami | 3119 |
| Misfit_Alien | 3119 |
| arktriumph | 3106 |
| Epicsnivy | 2897 |
| SweetHeart | 2862 |
| ReneeCockyUndercard | 2851 |
| Rougue | 2841 |
| deezcastforms | 2823 |
| Luncha_Libre | 2789 |
| pu-level-up | 2718 |
| Mysterdio | 2693 |
| dddybee | 2692 |
| Monsy | 2596 |
| Pegasus | 2579 |
| RJD | 2541 |
| Noob | 2384 |
| SimplyWoo | 2378 |
| DarknessMaster | 2327 |
| CyanDimitrik | 2303 |
The LAW Magazine Bot
For my money, LAW Magazine is the single most criminally underrated and underutilized part of canon/in-universe subforums at LAW. The fact that I've not seen whole stories blossom from characters publishing biased or untrue articles or other types of sensationalized journalism is almost mind-boggling IMO. I wanted to take a stab at trying to revitalize LAW Magazine, and it's my hope that the Magazine Bot helps in that endeavor. Flowchart
For the uninitiated, users are welcome to write articles about anything LAW-related in the LAW Magazine forum section. You could use a character that's a dedicated writer or you can have a wrestler write an article, that's fine, too. The point is that it's meant to be a platform for LAW stuff that's about happenings at LAW. Interviews, tabloid pieces, in-universe news, reactions to big debuts, big matches, title changes, events (both present and upcoming events), recaps, and so on. The point is that there's a lot of untapped/unrealized potential in how users could be integrating LAW Magazine into their stories, or using it to help other users become more aware of ongoing stories.
The Magazine Bot works by reposting Magazine Articles much like the Twitter Bot. But instead of simply waiting for users to post Magazine articles, it will post a random article if no one's posted an article in the last 8 hours. It will also post an AI-generated TLDR summary alongside the link to the magazine article. Once again, my hope here is that it will prompt users to discuss when they're presented with articles that they might not have seen before.
Much of my stance on LAW Magazine are sentiments that I'd extend to Another Day Another Story as well, as I feel that thread is fairly underutilized. Perhaps when I find some time, I'll make a bot around ADAS or loop that thread into the Magazine Bot's scans.
Fan Bot and Twitter Bot
Twitter Bot does not have a flowchart because I feel much of the community is already familiar with it and its functionality is very simple. Every two minutes it scans to see if anyone has posted to LAW Twitter. If anyone has posted an image of a tweet that's not in a spoiler tab, the Bot posts this tweet image to the server in the law-twitter channel. This is the simplest of the bots I've made for LAW and/or the Discord server. It's also the one users have taken to most organically. I hope the return of this bot will be welcomed by the community. Flowchart
The Fan Bot is a bit more complicated. But the short version is that every 12 hours, it will post random tweets to some of the oldest Twitter profiles in the LAW Twitter subforum.
Why do this?
This is my attempt at tackling what I believe to be one of the shortcomings of LAW Twitter. LAW Twitter has no doubt been fun for many users. Even users who don't actively use it today probably enjoyed using it at some point in the past. In my view, there are a few key reasons it fell out of favor in recent years.
- It's hard to draw a reaction - LAW Twitter is probably at its best when many users are actively involved and when many different characters are interacting, especially characters that wouldn't get the chance to interact otherwise (i.e. characters/users that you haven't necessarily planned things with, but still get a nod or acknowledgment from in-universe. Sometimes it can feel cool just to see other people acknowledge your character, even if it's a brief or small interaction). When you make a Twitter profile and post a few tweets with no responses, it feels bad. Though Fan Bot is a far cry from a living breathing person, my hope is that it helps.
- LAW Twitter is a unique ecosystem that subsists on wrestlers - To me, the biggest difference between LAW Twitter, a social media space where wrestlers interact online in-universe, and IRL social media with wrestlers, is the lack of fan presence. Often, it's the job of the RP'er to convey how their character is perceived by LAW fans in-universe. Similar to the other bots, my hope is that the presence of "fan" tweets in-universe, offers users the chance to respond to people in-universe and facilitate discussion and discourse on LAW Twitter that might not have happened otherwise, even if it starts off with simply reacting to or clarifying messaging from Fan Bot/in-universe fans
- I feel this type of content fits in better with how LAW Twitter should be used - Perhaps the FanBot posts will someday devolve into spam that people simply scroll past. But that's what we do with most social media these days. I personally feel this type of low-effort content fits in better into an in-universe social media platform than some of the other low-effort stuff I've seen. And it's my hope that the presence of a "fan base" online in-universe helps spur users to make more use of LAW Twitter.
Lastly, posts on LAW Twitter have occasionally stirred up IRL drama between users. I kindly ask that you go out of your way to have a quick chat with other users if you intend to post something on LAW Twitter about their characters. If the thought crosses your mind that something might be taken the wrong way, a quick conversation with the other user or with a mod can be a good way to save yourself and the hard-working moderators at LAW a lot of trouble.
Miscellaneous Stuff
It's been years since I've touched the code for the Twitter Bot. And it's been even longer since I've put any real thought or energy behind coding up new ones. I started working on these maybe a week and a half to two weeks ago? And in time, I've created/tested 3 new bots that I actually think run pretty well, and will hopefully not be prone to errors. They say that if you build it, they will come. That worked for me with building LAW, so I hope that it will help stimulate more activity on LAW Magazine and LAW Twitter as well. Some of the more nerdy/technically inclined users might have questions about how AI was incorporated into some of the bots. If anyone reads this post this far down, please tell them that I don't know jack about training models or making my own AI. The AI tools leveraged by the bots are hooked up to an API from some company out there online. They've exposed this API for free for the foreseeable future and my bot simply pings that API and hopes to get a response back with a TLDR. No, I will not be linking anyone to that API. The last thing I need is for that company to start getting enough traffic that they decide to start charging.
My impetus to begin working on discord bots again actually came as a result of events at my IRL workplace. For those who don't know, I'm a Senior Software Engineer for CVS. I enjoy programming, but for many reasons, I often do not enjoy my job. I wish I could say that I happened upon some free time and decided to use that time to try my hand at making more discord bots. But the truth is that after a very grueling work assignment, I sat down with the 5,000 lines of code I had written after 2 all-nighters and reflected upon my career and my prowess as a software dev. I've been the "in case of emergency, break glass" employee at my job for a few years now. But my legacy in the world of programming basically comes down to being one of the key guys behind CVS's ability to email or text you when you miss an insurance payment or when your prescription is ready at the pharmacy. And that doesn't sit very well with me. It especially doesn't sit well with me now that I feel like I'm actually pretty alright at this whole programming thing. The winner from 3-4 years ago could not have finished those 5,000 lines in 2 nights. The winner from 3-4 years ago took a month to write the Twitter Bot. Winner from today wrote 3 bots in half that time, and they all do way more than the Twitter Bot. So I'm gonna keep coding regularly. My hope is to make video games on the side until something takes off well enough that I can quit my day job. CVS pays well but I've got things I wanna do. Like RP on this site and be an asset to this community
Links to stuff I wish more people would read
Peace, Love, and Sexy Wrestling Roleplay Stories