A couple feature requests that would be really handy

The first feature that I’d like to see is the ability for moderators to edit their own and other users’ messages after they’ve been sent. There have been a lot of times where I want to run a utility chat bot on a large Twitch channel, but the inability to edit messages means that I would have to add a new line to chat for what I’m trying to achieve. For example, I made a bot that would automatically translate any non-english messages to english with the Google Translate API. If I had the ability to edit messages though, I could automatically edit any foreign message to be automatically translated to the default language of the channel instead of effectively doubling the number of messages when translating.

Another neat implementation of this feature would be the ability to create more interactive bots. Imagine that you have a monster for the chat to fight, where the initial message shows its health with a health bar. When each person damages the monster, it could edit the health bar to display the new health, essentially creating an animated experience. There is also a bot that runs in a channel I moderate for, Flosd, that has a slots feature where you type !slots and it displays three random emotes. If we could edit messages, we would be able to create an animated slots system using a similar method to the one above.

It could also be used to filter out any unwanted spam such as links or words that are unwanted without requiring them to fully remove and time out the user that posted it. Often times a user will post a link in chat with the streamer’s permission only to be timed out due to not having the !permit command run on them. There was also a time where I was having a discussion with a user, and my chat message ended up being fairly long, resulting in getting timed out automatically for 10 minutes.

The second feature request is similar to the first. It’d be nice to have the ability to pre-screen any messages that are sent to the chat. Meaning, we can see what a user is trying to send, then decide whether or not to let it appear in chat. If we were able to do this, we could stop spam bots before they even have a chance to post, which would stop any disruption in chat. We could also filter out any copy-pastas without having a slew of messages taking up a large portion of the chat. Overall it would be a really useful utility to have when moderating a chat or creating automated systems to do so.

All of the features that your requesting have a use but only in channels with less that 10 active chatters at one time. Editing messages of users would (beyond a lot of other problems) take so much time for so little achievement. The message would be off the screen in 30 seconds tops for an “active chat” and you run into edit messages under others names. Freedom of speech is what makes Twitch, Twitch and editing others messages ruins that.

"ability to create more interactive bots" 

People are creating more and more interactive bots every single week. I’ve seen bots with rock, paper scissors that are optimized to work well in chat. There is always some sort of solution in a problem.

"filter out unwanted spam" 

There are sooo many ways to handle spam. bots, Twitch’s Banned word filter with both links and spam. Surely there is something that can meet your needs out there. Also links and long paragraphs are there to prevent spam so it’s always up to the streamers discretion.

And I’m really sorry but I do not see any point at all for the ability for pre-screening messages, Twitch isn’t the TSA at airports. And for streams with >10 chatters that pre-screen will instantly be backed up too the moon and there is just no good way to handle that situation at all. Stream chat is used to add “liveness” to interact with viewers. And pre-screening would turn it into a Youtube video with a forum type chat. <- Bad

Hope this “opens your mind” to why these features should not be added.

You’re focusing on all of the negative possibilities, rather than the positive uses. If you’re claiming that the ability to edit messages will take away from freedom of speech, then explain how that is any different from simply purging the messages of the people in question? None of the examples I have used even come close to infringing on freedom of speech. Technically, there isn’t freedom of speech anyway, since, most channels have rules regarding proper conduct in chat.

As for positive uses, take for example the translation bot. If only the ability to edit messages was added, you could check a message when it is sent to see if it can be translated, then edit the message to contain the original message as well as a translation. When I was moderating for 14k people at one time, we had many, many, foreign users in chat. So rather than time them all out, which would be alienating an entire group of people, I made a bot that allowed me to see their translated messages to decide if their content was appropriate for chat. However, if the ability to see messages before they are sent was added, you could see the foreign message before it is sent, then translate it en-route so it is posted as a translated message.

There are no queue-like properties to the pre-screening, essentially what it would do is send the message to a function to get a return value, if the value is returned as false then the message is not sent. If the return value is a string, it sends that message instead, and if there is no return value, it simply sends as written. It’s not as if there are a list of messages waiting to be checked.

In the future I implore you to think more positively about potential features instead of shooting them down due to the possible negative uses of them. If every useful thing that could be abused was discarded, there would never be any progress. Everything can be used for good, or evil, but it all depends on who’s implementing it and in what ways.

Oh boy where to start. When focusing on adding new features it is very important to look at all the negative possibilities! That’s how you determine if something should make it past stage one. Maybe using “freedom of speech” was an incorrect way of expressing the simple thing that you never want to change people’s words. It is very simple and again in a chat of > 10 chatters, doing this would result no reason and no one chatting as someone can just change what they say on a whim.

Languages are on a whole different level when it comes to you wanting to translate them.

  • Translators are not 100% accurate and a simple spelling error can just ruin the sentence.
  • Saying “alienating an entire group” is possible considering there would be no way to respond to them back in their language.
  • It would instantly make every foreign message over a respectable 5 lines to include the original and the faulty translation.
  • Unless the streamer is bilingual then there is again no way to respond to that language.

Also I have no clue how you intend that messages to be filtered in a way before even viewed. How can you determine was is a good message or bad message? Sure base it on a computer, what could go wrong?

I’m very open to ideas, don’t get me wrong, I’m just trying to give my thoughts on why I think it wouldn’t be a good system for Twitch chat. And your right things can be used for good and evil so you always have to look on the abuse side as well as the positives.

The first feature that I’d like to see is the ability for moderators to edit their own and other users’ messages after they’ve been sent.

If you’re claiming that the ability to edit messages will take away from freedom of speech, then explain how that is any different from simply purging the messages of the people in question?

While it would be interesting if you could edit your own messages (and that’s a feature I and many others want to see), it’s not an appropriate use-case to let other users edit someone else’s messages. The primary focus of moderating a channel is to ensure a safe and enjoyable environment for chatters. People should be free to say what they want without fear of content being edited, but allowing mods to edit users’ messages does start down a path of potential corruption of mods doing just that.

For example, I made a bot that would automatically translate any non-english messages to english with the Google Translate API. If I had the ability to edit messages though, I could automatically edit any foreign message to be automatically translated to the default language of the channel instead of effectively doubling the number of messages when translating.

As for positive uses, take for example the translation bot. If only the ability to edit messages was added, you could check a message when it is sent to see if it can be translated, then edit the message to contain the original message as well as a translation. When I was moderating for 14k people at one time, we had many, many, foreign users in chat. So rather than time them all out, which would be alienating an entire group of people, I made a bot that allowed me to see their translated messages to decide if their content was appropriate for chat. However, if the ability to see messages before they are sent was added, you could see the foreign message before it is sent, then translate it en-route so it is posted as a translated message.

I’m not sure if you’ve calculated the costs of translating chat lines, but I already have. At a cost of $20 per million characters translated and a max message length of 500 characters, the worst case scenario is $20 gets you 2000 lines of chat translated to a single language (with multiple destination languages multiplying the number of characters translated). Chat runs at a rate of 300-500 lines per second. If you do the quick math on that, it’s extremely expensive to scale a service like that, so that’d never be a viable use-case for editing other users’ messages. BetterTTV already allows you to double-click on chat lines to translate, which is a far more cost-saving solution to translating foreign text.

The second feature request is similar to the first. It’d be nice to have the ability to pre-screen any messages that are sent to the chat. Meaning, we can see what a user is trying to send, then decide whether or not to let it appear in chat. If we were able to do this, we could stop spam bots before they even have a chance to post, which would stop any disruption in chat. We could also filter out any copy-pastas without having a slew of messages taking up a large portion of the chat. Overall it would be a really useful utility to have when moderating a chat or creating automated systems to do so.

There are no queue-like properties to the pre-screening, essentially what it would do is send the message to a function to get a return value, if the value is returned as false then the message is not sent. If the return value is a string, it sends that message instead, and if there is no return value, it simply sends as written. It’s not as if there are a list of messages waiting to be checked.

Lets be honest here, Twitch would never implement third party pre-screening of messages. It doesn’t make sense for them because it adds more latency to messages, and at the rate of which messages are flowing through their system there’s no sensible way to even create such a system at their scale.

The only type of “pre-screening” I see Twitch ever implementing is some sort of algorithm to drop messages from spamming users. If they implemented this, it would be completely transparent and unbeknownst to us.

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