The Astronomers' Periodic Table of Elements

That'll drive any chemist nuts

Haha, that's so great

Really, Randall? I has not used xkcd for that kind of thing before.

I am not generally against political discussion in the chat and I enjoy the normal xkcd postings, but this is clearly an advertisement posted by someone not active in this chatroom. @PearsonArtPhoto @called2voyage

@Hohmannfan Uh, as far as I can tell the poster is a bot that posts every new xkcd to this room soon after it's posted?

@ACuriousMind Yes. Bots are ok. This particular bot is ok. Randall is allowed to write comics about whatever he wants. But in this case a bot is automatically posting an advertisement. That is problematic as the bot is not a participator in the chat.

hm.

@Hohmannfan Given this meta post on bot activity and this meta post on promotion is this actually a problem?

ah, you're here c2v - i thought you might be busy on account of thanksgiving

For what it's worth, if the xkcd comic were pro-Trump, I'd like to say I would ask the same question.

Happy thanksgiving :)

@kimholder Still a bit early for thanksgiving.

@kimholder Thanks :)

it is? oh - it's always a monday in canada. i forget.

@kimholder I figured something along those lines might be the source of your confusion.

Random people posting to a room is allowed, if the content they post are relevant to the topic of the room. The xkcd bot posts relevant content ("geeky comics"), but this is not, in the same way as me joining a random room in the SE network and posting an advertisement for my product is treated as spam.

@kimholder always the fourth thursday of Nov in the US

@kimholder From those meta posts I get the impression that bots by default should not be treated any differently than regular users. If a user is allowed to do something, so is a bot. If a user should not do something, neither should the bot.

@Hohmannfan Pearson deleted the comic, so apparently it wasn't worth the risk of leaving up to him. There's no reason for me to contest that decision, but I'm still not entirely sure a user's post would be removed if it were relevant.

Determining relevancy of a bot post is always tricky.

Agreed.

A bot has, understandably, a limited (or non-existent) ability to review its submissions.

it's probably better not to stir up something needlessly. there will be a range of strong opinions about this and there is no reason to risk an argument.

@kimholder Agree

'k, back to modeling my favorite crater :D

@kimholder An alternative approach would have been to open a chat room for the explicit purpose of discussing that particular XKCD comic. That way only those who wanted to participate would have to see the discussion.

That could still potentially have been a minefield.

Might still be worth asking a meta question about though: "Should chat bot posts which incidentally include political promotion be removed?"

Be sure to include context. This is, as stated, a minefield.

yeah, i think the simple solution was probably wise here.

Anyone: If you disagree with this decision, feel free to say so. We are reasonable people.

@kimholder Canadian Thanksgiving is what Americans call Columbus Day, and Candians call "Thanksgiving". American Thanksgiving is last Thursday in November.

@kimholder NO! Who could feel strongly about the election tomorrow? :)

:D

@called2voyage I grant Randall the right to push any candidate he wants. It is his comic. 99% of the time, I appreciate the XKCD push. This is the first really contreversial one I recall (ever?). So I do not think we need any change.

ditto