Using an automatic link-opener.

[[violet]]

Hi there!

Well, given that my nation is a WA member in TNP, I have to keep up with endorsing the nations there. Given the hundreds of nations, I actually found this neat little tool called Open Multiple URLs.

It goes something like this, excluding the "https://www." for the sake of examples:

nationstates.net/nation=nation1#composebutton
nationstates.net/nation=nation2#composebutton
nationstates.net/nation=nation3#composebutton
nationstates.net/nation=nation4#composebutton
nationstates.net/nation=nation5#composebutton
nationstates.net/nation=nation6#composebutton
nationstates.net/nation=nation7#composebutton

So this will open 7 WA nations (TNP has a list of WA members on another website), and I use this extension to open maybe 50-100 tabs at the same time. May I know whether is this allowed? I still click the Endorse buttons manually; just that I copied and pasted the links into the extension to create new tabs.

It slowed my laptop, obviously, but I just wonder if I am not causing the servers to slow down by opening 50-80 tabs from NS.

Thanks in advance!

[Trotterdam]

Well, the script rules limit automated page requests to, if I recall correctly, 10 per minute. So if this counts as a script, it wouldn't be allowed.

My browser allows this without any plugins or special code, just "Bookmark -> Bookmark This Group of Tabs". It's an entirely natural way to browse when there's multiple things I want to keep track of, not a special trick. So counting this as a script would feel somewhat draconian, although I've never had a cause to use it on NationStates.

Why would you even need this, though? Once you endorse a nation, it stays endorsed until you choose to unendorse it, it quits the WA, or one of you leaves the region. There shouldn't be any need of daily reconfirming your endorsements, so this whole thing seems pointless.

[Victoriaans Nederlands]

Well, the script rules limit automated page requests to, if I recall correctly, 10 per minute. So if this counts as a script, it wouldn't be allowed.

My browser allows this without any plugins or special code, just "Bookmark -> Bookmark This Group of Tabs". It's an entirely natural way to browse when there's multiple things I want to keep track of, not a special trick. So counting this as a script would feel somewhat draconian, although I've never had a cause to use it on NationStates.

Why would you even need this, though? Once you endorse a nation, it stays endorsed until you choose to unendorse it, it quits the WA, or one of you leaves the region. There shouldn't be any need of daily reconfirming your endorsements, so this whole thing seems pointless.

Oh, this is kind of an one-time thing, actually. This nation is newly made WA (my other puppets are non-WA, as they should be), and TNP is quite a huge region, so you have around 10 WA nations coming in on a daily basis.

[HMS Unicorn]

While not the same as an automatic link-opener, one thing you can do to speed up your endotarting is the following:

1) Hold down CTRL, and click on, say, 50 of the links in TNP's endorse page. When you do this, the links open in new tabs. You can adjust the exact number based on how many your browser can take before crashing.

2) Go through the tabs one-by-one (e.g., pressing CTRL+Tab), and click on the endorse buttons. They all appear at the same place, so you basically just have to press CTRL+Tab+Click multiple times.

3) Go back to 1 and repeat, until you've run through all of the links.

---

Trotterdam, in TNP, even if you endotart daily, you still have about 20 new WAs per day to endorse. If you only do it once a week, you easily have to clear about a hundred of them. So, the link clicking quickly becomes too tedious.

[[violet]]

The Script Rules cover "automated tools (e.g. scripts, macros, and browser add-ons)," which certainly includes this one. As Trott says, it's a rule violation to use it to auto-open more than 10 tabs in a minute.

Aside from that, it's unwise to send us 80-100 simultaneous requests: that's extremely high for an individual user, and may trigger code that acts to protect the server from Denial of Service attacks, which would ban your IP.

[Victoriaans Nederlands]

All right, thanks! I guess I'll just open the tabs manually, then.

[Mount Seymour]

For clarification— I often use Linkclump (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... fefj?hl=en) for endotarting and when cross-endorsing in R/D. It allows you to use your mouse instead of CTRL-clicking on each link to just drag over them and open them up all together.
Does this also count as a script and therefore subject to the 10 requests per minute rule? It's simply adding a way whatever page I'm using it on to select links, but I thought I'd check given the OP's turns out to be illegal.

Thanks!

[[violet]]

All kinds of scripts, tools, and browser add-ons fall under the Script Rules.

So yes, using Linkclump to open a lot of pages in a hurry would be considered a violation.

[Bedetopia]

While we're on the subject of requests and tools, I assume reloading a page counts too?

Reloading all tabs is a native Firefox function. Is it against the rules to use it to reload many nation tabs (like 10) at once?

[[violet]]

While we're on the subject of requests and tools, I assume reloading a page counts too?

Yep, as that generates a new request to the server. So if it's being triggered automatically, it should abide by the rate limit for scripts.

Reloading all tabs is a native Firefox function. Is it against the rules to use it to reload many nation tabs (like 10) at once?

No, as regular web browsers aren't scripts/tools/add-ons. If it's a native function, it's fine.