Format for tweets with #powercutindia

[Adi]

Hi all,

I've been working on a tweet analysis engine for automating reports
from tweets. The code (still in progress) is available at:
https://github.com/adsahay/powercuts

I recently saw some tweets marked with [news], which don't really
contain power cut reports (for the purpose of my code). Is there a
place where we can agree to what keywords/hashtags etc are going to be
followed as a rule to allow them to be hard-coded in the code? Or
should I assume every tweet is a report, and run my engine over it?

Excluding tweets marked with [news] or such will make the whole
process cleaner and simpler. However, if tomorrow someone starts using
#news instead, then the code would fail. I need some rules that I can
assume to hold good almost every time.

[Ajay Kumar]

On 17-06-2011 12:52, Adi wrote:
> Excluding tweets marked with [news] or such will make the whole
> process cleaner and simpler. However, if tomorrow someone starts using
> #news instead, then the code would fail. I need some rules that I can
> assume to hold good almost every time.

I'd suggest following Tweak the Tweak format and coming up with a
similar one for PowerCuts.
For e.g. #powercutindia #start 11:30 PM #unplanned #loc Bandra West, Mumbai
or something in the lines, highly recommend we take a look at TtT and
decide a format to automate/map.

http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Tweak_the_Tweet

--
Thanks& Regards,

Ajay Kumar
http://aju.bz/me

[Raghvendra Saboo]

+1 for format.

At the same time I think people will invariably send tweets in incorrect/incomplete format. But if for every syntactically wrong tweet,   @powercutsin can (programatically) send the correct format back to the tweeter, people will know the format better overtime.

I am talking about tweet analysis (& feedback) engine working in realtime (or so), filtering "bad" tweets & DM/@ the tweeter back with the correct format.

This is akin to command -help on OS shell.

Btw, once my app is done I am planning to work on reporting through IM clients (GTalk, AIM etc.) 

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Discussion list for http://PowerCuts.IN

--

-Raghu

http://twitter.com/saboorag

[Ajay Kumar]

On 17-06-2011 13:06, Raghvendra Saboo wrote:
> At the same time I think people will invariably send tweets in
> incorrect/incomplete format. But if for every syntactically wrong
> tweet, @powercutsin can (programatically) send the correct format
> back to the tweeter, people will know the format better overtime.

Format is important and once we freeze on that, it would help to
automatically publish reports that follow that format. And there will
always be errors :o) which will require human intervention. However once
we keep publicing a format, it would pick up. In any case, it will
reduce moderation/human time.

The kind of tweets coming so far and/or reports/categories on our website:

1) #unplanned
2) #planned
3) #daily
4) #comments
5) #good (for good news)
6) #voltage

Other Info:

Location:
#loc - for location, NO PIncode please. Its a pain and highly inaccurate
at times. So Street (or more details) then City. Both parts are
important to use GMaps API to convert to location.
#street - followed by locality
#city - city name

Time:

#start - can be followed by the time or if no time is given the time of
the tweet is considered.
#back - if the person tweeted a #start this is how we know when the
power came back.
#from - again start time.
#to - end time of cut.

Also for the main hashtag: #powercutindia #pwrcutindia
the second one is 2 characters smaller.

Um thoughts?

[Aditya Sahay]

This is good. We can use the format in your example, as well as a similar one for power coming back (won't need location again).

However I have my doubts as to how much users will be able to remember and strictly use this format.

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