Info: About this bot

Hello,

I hope you found this subreddit, because you were interested in this bot and not because of a problem. If you have any issues - skip this guide and just open a new self post. I'm glad to help!

Why?

Reddit is full of people from different timezones. Most users are not familiar with figuring out the difference to their own timezone - especially if it's not within the same continent.

TimezoneSimplifier tries to solve this problem.

I started looking into the issue with different timezones when I started working on my student project Simplify-Time.info. It allows user to create events and have everyone display the time in the appropriate timezone.

Since people still needed to go to the site and enter the data manually, I wanted to automate this process. This is where the idea for u/TimezoneSimplifier came from.

How?

Simplify-Time offers an API accessible with a simple http-request.

I wrote a small python script (which now runs on my raspberry pi). It uses the reddit API to grab new comments, searches them for something like "HOUR:MINUTE TIMEZONE", makes a call to the ST-API and posts a reply.

Can you add my subreddit?

Sure! Just open a self post here or send me a message and I will be glad to include your subreddit in the next update!

Examples

Comments including hour and minute (separated with a colon) and a timezone abbreviation (GMT, UTC, MEZ, CET, MET, EET, IST, WET, PST, CDT, EST, and so on) should be found by this bot. (Assuming it is online)

Examples:

• 8:00 PST
• 14:45 UTC
• 6:25 am WET
• 09:15 pm EST

Hover-to-view feature

As many users requested this feature, u/TimezoneSimplifier 's posts are now auto-hidden and reveal on hover if the subreddit uses a specific CSS.

If you'd like to add this to your subreddit, follow these steps:

1. Take this CSS code and paste it into your subreddits CSS. ("subreddit settings" --> "look and feel" --> "edit the stylesheet")
2. -- Upload the small icon on the same page and name it "st-logo-v3"
3. OR
4. -- Remove the 3 lines below "Remove the following 4 lines if you do not want the image next to the link"
5. Click on "save"

If you have questions, feel free to ask them. Many thanks to u/Dropping_fruits who developed the original version for the wikibot.

Other features:

• Utilizes a hover-to-view feature (Similar to autowikibot)
• Ignores specific users (like u/TweetPoster ) to avoid unnecessary posts.
• Ignores all users containing "_bot" to avoid responses to other bots
• Ignores comment / selfposts if they contain specific words (like "PCPartPicker") to avoid unnecessary posts.
• Can disable the response to comments (will only respond to selfposts) if subreddit mods wish to have only a single post per thread (Used in r/games for instance)

Possible issues

I try my very best to keep the bot as correct as possible. If you think there is a problem, I'd appreciate any feedback!

Known issues:

• Bot might be wrong if redditors talk about an event in the future and there is a switch between daylight saving time and standard time between now and the real time of the event. (E.g. Post from 2014-03-28 "There is an event on 2014-03-31 20:15 CET")

Is the bot online?

Please check this page to see the last time the bot connected to the servers. If it is longer than ~5 minutes ago, the bot is probably offline.

Please ignore me

If you'd like a single comment / selfpost to be ignored, please make sure it includes 'no tzs' or 'no bot answer' somewhere in the comment body / selfpost text.

If you'd like all your posts to be ignored please send me a message or open a selfpost in this subreddit.

I think I'm being ignored

The bot won't reply to comments by a bot (e.g. u/TweetPoster ) or by someone having '_bot' in his name. If you have any problems with this, send me a message!

Can I have a look at the source code?

Sure! TimezoneSimplifier is written purely in python with the help of PRAW: The Python Reddit Api Wrapper

If you want to take a look at the source code, head over to the GitHub repo.

Donations

After some requests, if you'd like to help this bot feel free to donate with bitcoins or help with the code on the GitHub page! Any help is greatly appreciated!

Wishlist

Features which are planned but, due to time problems, haven't been implemented yet.

• Improved edit subreddit system
• Improved edit other users system
• Improved edit timezones to detect and to output system
• Fix for AM/PM problematic (Bot assumes 12:xx am means 12:xx in 24 hour time
• add Dubai timezone

Further questions

Feel free to post them as a reply to this self post. I'm glad to answer them!