delete posts from dashboard without reblogging them?

[Ken]

I have 10,000 pages of posts from people I'm following. I need a way to pare this down - I can unfollow everybody but that's kind of defeating the point.

Regards,

Ken

[John Bunting]

You can't delete posts you do not own. You need to unfollow them or use some other method of filtering the posts in your browser.

--
John Bunting

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability
    --Edsger W. Dijkstra

[Ken]

I mean remove the copy of the post that is in my dashboard. Or are you saying it's not a copy but a pointer to the original? In which case,
what I mean is, delete the pointer to the original. Either way. I don't want to see it anymore. I want to reduce my 10,000 pages of followed
posts.

Regards,

Ken

[Ken]

What other method of filtering the posts in my browser? See also my first reply.

Regards,

Ken

On Thursday, September 13, 2012 8:00:10 PM UTC-4, John Bunting wrote:

[John Bunting]

The dashboard is an aggregation of posts. You are seeing the original post. To get rid of those pages, simply unfollow the people you don't want to see anymore.

The posts in the dashboard are not posts that are on your blog. You can only delete posts that you have created or reblogged. 

I'm sure if you google around you can find other ways to filter your dashboard if you're not interested in unfollowing blogs.

[Ken]

'filter' implies 'filter by some criterion'. You know how there's a 'delete' button on posts in your dashboard that you got there by reblogging somebody
else's post? That's what I want. You know, the concept of point & click? The old MAC concept? That's what I'm talking about.

Regards,

Ken

[Ken]

I tried googling and I got a lot of stuff that filters all posts that blah blah blah. I'm after a much simpler concept.

Pls see my just-prev post.

This CAN'T CAN'T be so difficult.

Regards,

Ken

[John Bunting]

There is no way to filter the dashboard. 

[John Bunting]

There is no way to delete things from the dashboard. There is no way to filter from the dashboard. It is not a piece of functionality offered by Tumblr. The API does not give you anyway to do this.

[Ken]

Are you saying my browser - Safari BTW, altho I also have Mozilla - has access on its own to the contents of my dashboard, apart from tumblr-supplied access?
I'm a database developer not a web developer.

Regards,

Ken

[Ken]

that's simply not true. I just reblogged, in my dashboard, a post from another user. Then I went to the top of page 1 of my dashboard and there was the post with a delete button.

Regards,

Ken

[Ken]

and the post was deleted.

Regards,

Ken

[John Bunting]

When you reblog someone, that is YOUR post. It is on YOUR blog. You can delete posts that belong to you. You cannot delete posts that you don't reblog or create.

[Ken]

I must not be making my question clear.

When I see a post that was put in my dashboard from somebody I"m following, what am I looking at?

Am I looking via a pointer at the contents of somebody else's tumblr account? If I am why can't I simply delete that pointer. There has to be
something local, something in my tumblr account, something on my dashboard, that 'represents' or 'points to' the post from somebody else.
When you say the post doesn't belong to me, then something that DOES belong to me is pointing to that thing you're saying doesn't
belong to me. Otherwise how could I see it?

I appreciate you're taking the time on this, and I'm sure at some point you're going to throw up your hands and give up.

But it seems trivial to me, and obvious, and I can't quite see what you see that makes it not trivial and not obvious.

Regards,

Ken

[Ken]

Possibly what you're saying is that tumblr doesn't provide access to those pointers. But I don't see why not. It's a much smaller piece of data :-)

Regars,

ken

[John Bunting]

It's not quite that cut and dry in the implementation.

At the highest level, Yes it is a pointer, no you can't delete it. We simply do not provide the functionality.

If you need further explanation on what the dashboard is, please email sup...@tumblr.com 

[Ken]

For example, maybe the post from somebody I'm following and have not yet reblogged is represented by a URL. That URL is a character string
embedded somewhere in MY page. It ought to be possible to remove it.

Regards,

Ken

[Ken]

OK, I get it. I was about to ask whether you worked for Tumblr and your 'We' answered that :-)

I don't mean to be such a pain in the neck but I guess I was born that way.

When you say you do not provide the functionality, you mean it's something, also,  that you can't get in
a particular theme, or by using the API? Because I was over in Tumblr Themes also, trying to see if
there's a theme that DOES provide that functionality. It sounds like you're saying Tumblr developers
(not employees of Tumblr) simply can't provide the functionality because Tumblr doesn't provide the
'hooks' if you follow me. I'm a database developer not a web developer and it's quite a different world.

I just have one final question, or maybe it works out to two, and it may really be none of my business,
but:

why don't you provide the functionality? I mean, is there some way you look at what Tumblr means as a
product that makes that functionality undesireable?

[AJ]

Are you a lawyer?

> email sup...@tumblr.com <javascript:>

[kannan nadarajan]

no!!

[Felix Bonkoski]

IANAL, but -

Ken. If you wanted to develop a "custom dashboard" that allows you to filter the posts you're seeing, then the API gives you enough hooks to develop such a program.  For example, I've developed a custom dashboard webapps that allow users to filter the posts they see in various ways. It's not that difficult.

The real limitation is that the API only allows you to go back 250 Posts in the dashboard history. It would be awesome if Tumblr allowed the dashboard API end point to go back, say 1000+ posts.

But I figure they never will, TBH, because they don't really *want* developers to have the ability of creating custom dashboard views that could compete with the Official Tumblr dashboard in any meaningful way.

My 2 cents.

Felix

--

Felix Bonkoski

[Steven Pears]

I agree with Felix - if you don't like the way the dash works, you're welcome to write something that helps you moving forward. That's the beauty of an API.

 

From a technical standpoint - you seemed to be focused on the web side of things, but as a database developer you understand the struggles of aggregating data in a manner that doesn't hinder performance so that your product is acceptable to users. In Tumblr's case this is billions of items of data for millions of users in what is actually quite a fluid manner, when you consider the tracking of reblogging notes and edits across that view; the idea that allowing any level of fine grain access, for any reason, "CAN'T CAN'T be that difficult" is a little surprising.

 

Right now you're asking questions about the underlying way Tumblr operates, which is something I would never expect Tumblr to discuss with their developer community, or any company wanting to stay at the front of a very competitive market for that matter - and you've been given an answer, more than once. We use this group as half support forum and half wishlist, and we respect the fact the guys are trying to move themselves forward as well as keep us all afloat at the same time.

 

That said, you're obviously very passionate about using Tumblr, so I look forward to working with you on future problems we will no doubt encounter :)

 

Steven

[Ken]

Hi, thanks for your reply felix.

However do you mean the API itself only allows you to go back 250 posts? because certainly I can SEE further back.

I can even by

www.tumblr.com/dashboard/10000

(on occasion) go back to page 10000 (that's ten thousand)(altho this is sporadic - apparently when it's re-building the list, adding new ones, I
can only go back to say page 7000 that way).

Regards,

Ken

[Steven Pears]

Ken

Felix did mean the API, we only have access to the last 250 posts - so if you looked at creating a custom solution, it wouldn't work for your existing thousands, just with posts from now on.

Steven

Sent from my Windows Phone

---

From: Ken
Sent: 14/09/2012 11:42
To: tumbl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: delete posts from dashboard without reblogging them?

[Felix Bonkoski]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Ken <kqui...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi, thanks for your reply felix.

However do you mean the API itself only allows you to go back 250 posts? because certainly I can SEE further back.

I said, and I quote,  "The real limitation is that the API only allows you to go back 250 Posts"

Felix

[Ken]

Thanks Steven.

I understand of course that there are limitations to what Tumblr will allow its developer community to know about its underlying workings and have never
expected the full picture (sigh). The API then is a partial revealing - those hooks into the innards Tumblr allows the developer community to use. As to my question about
how Tumblr thinks of its own product, from a kind of owner/designer/inventor/proprietor point of view, that's probably way out of line, but I didn't mean it as a way of
prying into secrets for some competitive reason, I'm just curious about everything. So I will [attempt to] cease prying into everything except the API which I think I need
now to begin investigating.

The scope of the problem of handling all the data involved in such a product as Tumblr I have actually been thinking about from a DB point of view.
I have speculated, e.g., that you MUST have a database engine, that in that lingo, you have a table of users and a table of unique posts (regardless of how often that post occurs).

So your user table probably points to a xref table which links the users to their
list of individual posts This is the table with all the volatility, and the HUGE one,
in terms of number of rows, that starts, for a post, when the post first enters the 'system'
            -undoubtedly thru submission - I can't think of any other input - submission from outside (altho I have an inkling there's
             more than one way to do this provided by TUmblr)
and has a huge number of rows but each row is not that large - the unique key of the user,
the unique key of the post, probably the date of the user's posting of the post (by reblogging or submission), not sure what else. Maybe more info for initial submissions.
Do the submitters go in the list of users, e.g.? I'd want to index that guy, the user/post xref, by user and by post id's. And I forgot tags. They'd be in the posts
table, not the xref table, at first glance.

Anyway we're talking, for the xref table, if it were one table, probably billions of rows. There would no need to have just one xref table though - the 'virtual' xref table
could be split up into hundreds of individual tables. I've never been involved w/ a database that large - tables w/ 100M rows max.

Anyway this is all speculation which is a lot of fun to write and do, but probably a lot less to read, especially given my tendency to logorrhea.

If you managed to get this far thx!

Thanks again!

Regards,

Ken

[Ken]

I certainly am not, if the question was addressed to me, nor do I have one or am in communication with one.

If the question and kannan response were ironic, then lol!

Regards,

ken

[Ken]

Thanks Felix, and thanks also Steven. I get it.

I need to do some more exploration and thinking.

I really appreciate your taking the time (and John also - and the posters w/ the lawyer question) to respond.

This is fun! And Tumblr is fun!

Regards,

Ken