FAQ for the qkme_transcriber bot

Wha?

qkme_transcriber is a reddit bot that automatically finds links to Quickmeme meme pics and provides a plain-text transcript of the content of that meme in the comments section.

Why?

In short: This allows the meme to be found and enjoyed by more people.

Who the hell even uses this damn thing?

More detail is given in the next section, but here's a short list of types of people who use the bot.

1. People behind firewalls that block Quickmeme (including soldiers stationed in bases, students in college, people visiting countries with wacky laws, people using public wifi with wacky filters).
2. People who can't see (Using screen-reading software, blind/disabled people can understand the content of Quickmeme links)
3. People who don't speak english (or whatever language a post was made in). My handy Translate button helps, or people can copy/paste into their favorite translator, or built-in translation tools can work automatically on the text.
4. Everybody when Quickmeme goes down. Which is often.

How does this help anybody?

In this day and age, having content being easier to interpret is best for everybody. When meme pics are only accessible as text on an image hosted on quickmeme.com, that means the meme can only ever be enjoyed by people who:

• Currently have access to Quickmeme.com
• Have the ability to load images
• Have the ability to see images
• Have the ability to read the text in the image

This excludes anybody who:

• Is behind a firewall that blocks Quickmeme.com
• Wants to view the meme at a time when Quickmeme.com is down or slow
• Is on a mobile device or slow internet connection who cannot or would prefer not to load images.
• Is blind or has poor eyesight.
• Can't read English.

Also, the text being available on the comments page makes it much more likely that Google and other search engines will be able to find the meme you're looking for.

Not only that, but early feedback for this bot suggests that some people with two working, English-reading eyes and a perfectly fast internet connection would rather just read the text in the comments and not have to load a whole 100+KB image just to read less than 10 words.

Okay, genius, how about one more reason this bot serves any purpose?

Imagine this: It's 100 years in the future. Cars can fly, cats can talk, and the economy is based around cured meat products. Reddit is still around, but Quickmeme has long since been shut down and erased from history by the World Government for promoting stupidity (how Reddit survived is a mystery). Thousands of links to Quickmeme still exist on reddit, though, along with scores of discussions about those Quickmeme links. Cultural anthropologists will pore over these discussions trying to find out what the humans of the 21st century were like, but they'll have no idea what those discussions are about because Quickmeme no longer exists...

But wait! There's a handy transcription of what those Quickmeme links said (and an imgur mirror of the background image) posted right to reddit! Now those people will be able to tell what the hell we were all talking about. Our generational legacy is preserved!

Now, imagine instead of 100 years it's 2, and instead of "shut down by the World Government" it's "gone out of business due to being an untenable business model", and instead of future cultural anthropologists, it's you.

What is a reddit bot?

A reddit bot is no different from any other reddit account, as far as reddit is concerned. The only difference is that rather than a human logging in with the account to upvote cat pictures and post predictable comments, this account is used by an automated computer script. Just like how computers can run automatically to check weather data and send you an email if you should take an umbrella with you today, a computer can run automatically to check reddit for certain activity and post comments under certain conditions.

How Does This Bot Work?

It's kind of complicated. I'll make a technical FAQ later, but in simple terms, the bot is a series of scripts that run automatically on a timed basis that:

1. Checks Reddit for new links to quickmeme.com or qkme.me
2. Determines info about the link by loading the Quickmeme page.
3. Queries Quickmeme's server to request only the text from the meme.
4. Puts that info together and posts it as a comment on the Reddit link's comments page.

There is no OCR (Optical Character Recognition) going on.

Are you affiliated with Quickmeme?

No.

Are you affiliated with Reddit?

No.

Are you affiliated with anybody?

No.

Are you making any money off this?

No.

Does this cost you any money?

Sort of. Keeping the bot running 24/7 requires using a hosted web server, but I already had one for other projects.

Are you sure this is a bot? I've seen you reply to people. Bots don't talk!

That is a strange question.

I hate you. How can I not have to see your comments?

Unless Reddit adds a native feature to ignore comments from a specific account, you can use a browser addon called Reddit Enhancement Suite to do so.